{"id":16974,"date":"2019-06-24T01:44:12","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T01:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=16974"},"modified":"2019-06-25T07:35:56","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T07:35:56","slug":"the-civil-rights-activist-so-close-to-martin-luther-king-jr-she-was-thought-of-as-his-other-wife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/the-civil-rights-activist-so-close-to-martin-luther-king-jr-she-was-thought-of-as-his-other-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"The civil rights activist so close to Martin Luther King Jr. she was thought of as his ‘other wife’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jason Miller<\/a>, North Carolina State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In a recent article<\/a> published in Standpoint Magazine, Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Luther King Jr. biographer David Garrow details new information about King he discovered in FBI documents. The most damaging is that King may have witnessed \u2013 and encouraged \u2013 a sexual assault at a Washington, D.C. hotel in January 1964.<\/p>\n

Some historians have cautioned against<\/a> taking too much stock of Garrow\u2019s findings; the FBI, after all, has a well-known track record<\/a> of trying to undermine the beloved civil rights leader.<\/p>\n

But in the ensuing controversy, one aspect of Garrow\u2019s explosive, 7,800-word article has gone largely overlooked.<\/p>\n

Garrow publishes content from FBI files noting that a woman named Dorothy Cotton was King\u2019s \u201cconstant paramour.<\/a>\u201d He also details FBI wiretaps from 1964<\/a> noting that King\u2019s wife, Coretta, \u201cberated\u201d him \u201cfor not spending enough time alone with her.\u201d At the time of the phone call, according to the FBI files, King was with Dorothy at a hideaway apartment in Atlanta. Garrow, at one point in his piece, calls Cotton \u201cthe most important woman in King\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who was Dorothy Cotton?<\/p>\n

She had a significant role in the civil rights movement: She was the only woman to eventually take the title of director within King\u2019s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She often traveled with King. And she was with him in Memphis during his last days alive.<\/p>\n

She died in June 2018<\/a>. But in July 2017, I spent two days interviewing Cotton. As part of my research on the relationship between King and poet Langston Hughes<\/a>, I was searching for the last letter Hughes sent from his deathbed, which he wrote to King. I hoped Cotton might know of its whereabouts.<\/p>\n

Cotton didn\u2019t know anything about the letter. However, over the course of the interview, she spoke, unprompted, about her close relationship with King<\/a>. For over 50 years, she had suppressed her excruciating memories of their final hours in Memphis, leading up to his assassination.<\/p>\n

Now, with the publication of these FBI records, I believe it\u2019s time to acknowledge the full extent of their relationship.<\/p>\n

The making of a civil rights leader<\/h2>\n

Dorothy Foreman Cotton was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1930. While enrolled at Shaw University, a historically black college in Raleigh, she worked as a housekeeper for psychology professor Robert Prentiss Daniel. When, in 1952, Daniel was named president of Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, he asked her to accompany him. She agreed.<\/p>\n

In Petersburg, she eventually joined pastor Wyatt Tee Walker\u2019s church, Gillfield Baptist, and participated in their successful effort to desegregate a local library<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cotton first met King on June 1, 1960, when he came to speak before Walker\u2019s congregation. The two were introduced afterwards during a dinner<\/a> at Walker\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Wyatt Tee Walker, on the far right, travels with Martin Luther King Jr. in October 1967.<\/span>
\nAP Photo<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In my interview, which she allowed me to record, she told me how they instantly hit it off \u2013 laughing, singing and enjoying each other\u2019s company.<\/p>\n

When Walker was invited in the fall of 1960 to join King permanently in Atlanta as King\u2019s executive director, Dorothy joined him.<\/p>\n

In Atlanta, her role in the burgeoning civil rights movement grew. By 1963, she was named director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference\u2019s Citizen Education Program. She organized protests in St. Augustine, Florida to challenge segregated beaches and in Selma, Alabama, to advocate for voting rights. In her autobiography, \u201cIf Your Back\u2019s Not Bent<\/a>,\u201d she estimated she trained upwards of 8,000 grassroots activists using a workshop model developed by civil rights activist Septima Clark<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was during these protests, workshops and long road trips that she became closer to King. She told me how she sometimes helped him craft his speeches, and would jot down lines of verse or parts of a sermon that she thought might inspire him.<\/p>\n

Dorothy Cotton recalls collaborating with King on his speeches.
\nJason Miller<\/span>, Author provided<\/span>532 KB (download)<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

King\u2019s \u2018other wife\u2019<\/h2>\n

Garrow told me he first learned about Cotton\u2019s relationship with King in 1979. Since then, many subsequent scholars have even come to think of Cotton as King\u2019s \u201cother wife<\/a>\u201d \u2013 but each has deferred to Cotton\u2019s wishes to stay silent about it while she was alive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Cotton was an intensely private woman, and she may have worried that her relationship with King might overshadow her remarkable civil rights work.<\/p>\n

As she noted in our interview, she didn\u2019t ever want to be \u201creduc[ed] to some glamour girl.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she went on to describe the intimacy of their relationship. They shared a deep love of poetry. When he\u2019d spend the night at her place, she recalled how he would occasionally wake up in the middle of the night to recite verses.<\/p>\n

Her Atlanta apartment became a refuge from the demands and pressure of his growing fame. Sometimes he would slink off to her place and, as Cotton put it, \u201cgiggle like a schoolboy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDorothy,\u201d he\u2019d say, \u201cthey don\u2019t know where I am!\u201d<\/p>\n

Dorothy Cotton remembers how her apartment was like a refuge for King.
\nJason Miller<\/span>, Author provided<\/span>843 KB (download)<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

According to Cotton, King once revealed that he wished they could live somewhere where polygamy was legal. But while King stayed married to Coretta Scott, the amount of time Cotton spent with King undid her own marriage.<\/p>\n

She was always by King\u2019s side, she explained, \u201cand that\u2019s why I\u2019m not married anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

The last night at the Lorraine<\/h2>\n

In 1989, civil rights activist Ralph Abernathy published his autobiography, \u201cAnd the Walls Came Tumbling Down<\/a>.\u201d In it, without naming names, he noted that King spent his final night alive in Memphis alone with different women at various points.<\/p>\n

At the time, many dismissed Abernathy\u2019s account<\/a>, arguing that he had perhaps written to spite King, whom he sometimes felt had received the lion\u2019s share of the credit for the civil rights work the two friends had done in concert.<\/p>\n

However in the years since, Abernathy\u2019s portrayal has gradually been verified on several fronts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The register from the Lorraine Motel shows that Cotton was assigned a room adjacent to King\u2019s.<\/span>
\nThe Commercial Appeal<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And in my interview with Cotton, she went into even more detail about those heartbreaking final hours.<\/p>\n

On April 3, 1963, Dorothy had flown with King and others to Memphis to support the city\u2019s sanitation workers\u2019 strike. She checked into the Lorraine Motel and was assigned room 307, right next to King\u2019s room 306. That evening, King delivered his \u201cMountaintop<\/a>\u201d speech at Mason Temple before a feisty crowd of striking workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want you to know tonight,\u201d King boomed, \u201cthat we as a people will get to the Promised Land! So I\u2019m happy tonight \u2013 I\u2019m not worried about anything, I\u2019m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!\u201d<\/p>\n