By Rabbi Ben Kamin
LOUISVILLE, Kentucky — Although Georgia Davis Powers is 88 years old, she remains fit, feisty, vibrant, alert, creative, and determined to be remembered as more than a woman connected romantically to Martin Luther King, Jr. The first time she ever visited Memphis was at his behest; she drove through a rainy night from Louisville on April 3, 1968 because he had summoned her for strength and encouragement. “Senator, our time is short,” he correctly prophesied.
Yes, they were intimately involved for a year and she was fatefully present at the moment of his assassination at the Lorraine Motel at 6:01 PM on April 4. And yes, she wrote a notable book, Sharing The Dream—but only after (for his own, imprecise reasons)—the late Rev. Ralph Abernathy revealed that there was such a relationship in his 1990 memoir. And this past Sunday, as I sat with her in her sunny apartment in downtown Louisville, a home filled with civic plaques, art work, flowers, and photographs of family and friends such as her neighbor and friend Muhammad Ali, she told me that is refusing a recent bevy of requests from CNN and other media.
“I was the first woman and African-American state senator in the Kentucky State Senate,” she said proudly. “I dealt with a whole club of good old boys and was never intimidated while we passed so much legislation on child abuse, collective bargaining, public assistance, open housing, and civil rights. But all they will want to do is ask me about my time with M.L. I refuse to be drawn into that.”
Indeed, before serving with great distinction in the state senate from 1968 to 1989, Georgia Davis Powers organized the 1964 March for Freedom on the state capital of Frankfort. Besides herself, the presenters were MLK, Abernathy, baseball legend Jackie Robinson, and singers Peter, Paul, and Mary. Today, a section of Louisville-area highway is called the Georgia Davis Powers Freeway.
And yet: Just after 6 PM on Thursday, April 4, 1968, state senator Georgia Davis was brushing her hair in Room 201 of the Lorraine Motel. She heard a gunshot outside. She stepped out and saw a dreadful commotion, just above, adjacent to Room 306. “I actually had been listening to him talking to folks in the crowd below his room. We were supposed to be leaving already for dinner at [Rev.] Billy Kyles’ house. I kept thinking, ‘He’s still talking!’ I stepped to the door to get him and that’s when I heard the shot. I saw people taking cover. And police were swarming all over the courtyard.”
One can only speculate about the complexity of emotions, terror, guilt, heartache, and helplessness felt by the relatively young woman at that moment. “Someone was pointing to the second floor,” she elaborated. “I looked up to my left and gasped. One of Dr. King’s knees stuck straight up in the air and I could make out the bottom of one foot.”
When she tried to enter the ambulance that collected the dying King, Andrew Young held her back—thinking of history even through his own numbing grief. She was left stranded, stricken, and after several hours, tried to go to sleep in her room.
In the darkest night, a second layer of horror enveloped Georgia Davis in Room 201. “I began to hear the sound of metal scraping against concrete,” she said. She realized, and then saw for herself, that a workman was literally scraping Dr. King’s blood from the second floor balcony. “As he drew the metal back and forth, I began to shake and couldn’t stop. It was deafening and horrifying and shook me to the core.” Georgia worried that she would go insane from the sound.
Decades later, the Kentucky legend, “a trailblazer,” according to the governor of the state, the sweet, smart, and strong Georgia received me as a friend and writer in her pleasant condominium where she lives alone. But when she closes her eyes at night, does she not still hear the workman scraping the blood from the concrete on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel?
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Rabbi Kamin is a freelance writer whose home base in San Diego. He may be contacted at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com