Funeral Flights Recalled as Treasured Memory of King Slaying

Twenty years is such a long time. Somewhere along the way, Florence Antoine stopped marking each anniversary of the slaying of Martin Luther King Jr. by wearing the white armband she brought back from the march on Montgomery.

But the emotions stirred in her by King’s calls for dignity and peace are still as strong as they were in April of 1968, when she joined hundreds of other grieving Los Angeles residents on two chartered airplanes to Atlanta to see the civil rights leader memorialized and laid to rest.

She had never met him, and as a 34-year-old secretary and single mother, she had little money to spare. But “it was gut level with Dr. King. I had to be there,” she recalled recently. “I felt that I was among the people he wanted there.”

Like others who were on the flight--entertainers, politicians, church choir members, clerks--Antoine treasures her memories of that exhausting journey, an airborne wake that left California the night before the funeral and returned as soon as the services were over.

It was a day of realization of how far blacks had taken their quest for equality and of how far they still had to go. It was a day of celebration of what King had accomplished and of trepidation because no one could take his place. It was a day of rage that he had been killed--and of confirmation that a black man who challenged white America had been risking his life.

Those feelings are resurfacing today on this 20th anniversary of King’s death.

Activists will look at his achievements and invoke his name in urging further struggle at ceremonies in Memphis, where he died, and in Atlanta, where King is buried. In Los Angeles, the local chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference plans a 7 p.m. memorial service at Good Shepherd Baptist Church, 510 W. 53rd St.

To the veterans of the 1968 funeral flight, this day has a special resonance. Once again, a black leader is accumulating power and a white-dominated society is clearly unsettled.

The advances of the last two decades do not keep them from worrying about the safety of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, now that his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination has shown unexpected strength.

All Eyes on Him

“I’m beginning to feel that all eyes are upon a black man again,” Antoine said. “I don’t think Americans are ready for this. You wonder who will step in.”

“I hope he has bullet-proof everything,” said Beverly Hester, a senior clerk with General Motors Acceptance Corp.

“Almost every conversation that I’ve had in the past month where people were talking about Jackson, that’s the one topic that always comes up,” said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Billy G. Mills.

After all, they say, none of them was surprised when King was murdered as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

Casualties of War

“You can’t fight a war without casualties,” said bail bondsman Celes King III, who headed the local NAACP chapter at the time.

“No, he couldn’t live. Uh-uh,” Hester said. “It’s unfortunate, but that is how white America thinks.”

In Los Angeles on the night King was killed, police mobilized with helmets and batons and met with community groups. The Black Congress, which encompassed groups as diverse as the SCLC and the Black Panthers, met for four hours and decided to work to keep the neighborhoods calm.

Around midnight, on the front steps of a South-Central church, Bill Burke, Richard Morris and Emerson Smith heard two women wishing out loud that they could go to Atlanta to say farewell to King. They thought it was a pipe dream. They could not afford the trip.

Smith, who had worked in the past for a travel agency, looked at the other two men. “Let’s charter a plane,” he said.

Campaign Halted

The three men had been working to elect Mills, then a city councilman, to the county Board of Supervisors, an ultimately unsuccessful effort.

With Mills’ permission, campaigning stopped. The next morning, a Friday, they started concentrating on getting as many people to Atlanta by the next Tuesday as they possibly could.

No air charter company would extend credit. “They had never done business with us before; we were a group of blacks,” said Mills. “This was unheard of.”

But two planes, for $88,000, could transport 700 people to Atlanta and back for about $125 apiece, less than half the regular fares. They decided to pay cash.

They took the money they collected at Mills’ campaign headquarters in steel strongboxes to a charter firm at Los Angeles International Airport.

About 8 p.m., Tuesday, April 8, 1968, a DC-9 and a Boeing 707 took off, with banners proclaiming the “Billy G. Mills Memorial Flight to Atlanta.”

Begged for a Seat

Florence Antoine had gone to Mills’ office as word spread about the planes. She begged and cried and cajoled her way on board.

She’d gotten the call on Monday night; she could go for free. She had lent her suitcase to a friend. The bank was closed. She got a baby-sitter for her son and went anyway.

On the DC-9, she sat between entertainers Lena Horne and Hazel Scott. Celes King and Hester sat in the next row.

On the 707, Burke and Morris remember, was an 80-year-old man who had never flown before. He kept telling them how grateful he was for the chance to be part of such a historic event.

Few slept.

The organizers had managed to get five rooms at a hotel near the Atlanta airport where everyone took turns freshening up and changing clothes.

Mills sat in the coffee shop with his wife, marveling. Black people packed the place. A few years before, they would probably have been turned away.

Leaders Assembled

Then the drama of the day unfurled. At Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father were co-pastors, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey sat in a front pew. Nearby, presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy and Richard M. Nixon sat close to each other.

Most of the Angelenos stood outside with thousands of other mourners.

Under muggy, hot skies, they followed the mule-drawn wagon that bore King’s body more than four miles to Morehouse College, where outdoor services were held.

Most went on foot, but Antoine managed to squeeze onto the bus reserved for celebrities. She cried as Ray Charles sang “Amen” and the whole group joined in on “We Shall Overcome.”

That evening, the planes took off again, homeward bound. Already, the day’s unity of spirit was unraveling.

On the 707, the passengers sang gospel songs and even cracked jokes and drank champagne.

On the DC-9, people were asking each other for food. They were so hungry. The mood was somber.

“It was over,” Antoine said, “and he was gone.”