Growing Up King by Dexter Scott King, Ralph Wiley Read Free Book Online

“dead” or not.
    “You don’t want another human being’s death on your conscience,” my father said. “You want to have life. I’d rather see you
     boys play sports like football than play with guns. I’d rather you play a musical instrument, debate, or even fight… but not
     with these…”
    He talked with us for a while longer. The way he spoke was so effective that at the end of it he actually had us destroy those
     plastic guns. We put them in a metal trash can and burned them, melted them down. I didn’t fully understand it then. I liked
     the toy guns, and the real guns police and security officers wore. But I was moved by what my father had said. He had such
     a cool way of explaining things that it was almost like we were happy to do what he had asked us to do, even though I still
     didn’t quite know why.
    This and other lessons stuck with me. He was very much a talker, he would talk about subjects with us, was intimate in his
     feelings, in terms of our being able to understand the subject and his feelings. You felt like his equal, almost, like he
     was bringing you up in the world to his level, not like he was coming down to you. He was soothing to listen to, authoritative
     you knew, because he was Daddy, but also deliberate, precise; when he spoke, you listened.
    I don’t remember exactly where, it was probably a passerby in later years who didn’t want to believe that my father had mortal
     qualities, vices, fallibilities, and shortcomings; these would come out when he was under duress. “Your father never smoked
     a cigarette in his life,” I heard from people who claimed to be authorities, “believers” of my father’s life and work. They
     were talking about what they’d read. I’m talking about what I’d lived, seen, and felt.
    I thought to myself, “Not only are there photos of him holding a cigarette, my sister and brother and I once took his cigarettes
     and hid them.” Maybe it was something he wanted to keep private. He struggled with it. He knew it was not good for him, but
     it happened.
    There was an unbelievable amount of stress on him at the time. He didn’t start smoking until the last few years of his life.
    Early in 1968, he seemed more quiet than usual; he was being pulled into causes around the country. Yet he was just a man.
     He’d just returned from a trip. Now there were calls from Rev. James Lawson, for him to go to Memphis.
    We just wanted him to take us to Pascal’s Restaurant, or to an amusement park, or to the next SCLC outing that spring, or
     up to the Ollie Street Y, but he didn’t have any more time.
    He planned to take me and Marty on a quick trip around Georgia in March. We just knew it was a trip with Daddy. He was drumming
     up support for his Poor People’s campaign. It was then that Yoki, Marty, and I hid his cigarettes. Maybe this was to get his
     attention, I don’t know what our motivation was, really, but we hatched an elaborate scheme first to find where he kept his
     cigarettes, then take them out and squirrel them away, and surprise him when he couldn’t find them, and tease him. A whole
     carton too. We hid his carton of cigarettes in the closet of the guest room. He didn’t smoke regularly that we saw; he only
     smoked when he was going through tense times. By the time I turned seven years old, in January of 1968, all his times were
     tense. We were children and didn’t know specifics. He’d been to California right after New Year’s, he’d spoken there at a
     college. Now he was getting requests to go to Memphis. Memphis I knew nothing about; my mother said some garbage men—“sanitation
     workers”—wanted my father to help them. I plotted with Yoki to steal Daddy’s cigarettes. Don’t know why. Yoki’s motives were
     nobler. Maybe she didn’t want to see him smoke. I know she ended up smoking when she was older (and has since stopped). She
     may have started as a way of communing with him. We hid them, and he came