Chance meeting and a song for Dr. King: Prairie View choir lifted his spirits in ’68
For many years, an impromptu middle-of-the-night concert at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis in March 1968 — two weeks before the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot dead — was attributed by many historians to, simply, a “Texas choir.”
But the historical record has been corrected more recently, now that the mystery choir that serenaded the famed civil rights leader during this chance encounter has finally been identified: The singers came from Prairie View A&M University in Waller County.
During its two-week spring tour 50 years ago, the Prairie View A Cappella Concert Choir’s motor coach pulled into
Memphis on March 18, 1968, for a layover between performances. Unbeknownst to the traveling singers, King was in the city to support striking sanitation workers and to plan a demonstration.
He also was lodging at the Lorraine.
Tom Jones, the choir’s president at the time and a current Houston resident, called the revelation “the great discovery of a lifetime.”
Choir members and their director, the acclaimed music professor and conductor H. Edison Anderson, also learned that King wouldn’t be returning to the motel anytime soon.
Still, Anderson was determined to have his choir sing for the civil rights leader, Jones said.
The students socialized in their rooms late into the night. Choir members had just settled in to sleep when they were rousted early on March 19 as King returned to the motel. Instead of their elegant performance tuxedos and formal gowns, they wore pajamas and threw on coats. Some of the women had rollers in their hair.
“That was the most interesting kind of presence when we walked into the room. He and several of his staff people were seated at our left. I didn’t know any of them except Dr. (Ralph) Abernathy as we shook hands and moved down the line,” said Jones, who is shown in archival footage in a button-down plaid shirt.
Then a 20-year-old sophomore, he was starstruck by leaders of the nonviolent civil rights movement he’d only seen on television or in publications.
“We began to get questions from Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy: Where are you guys coming from? And I froze and forgot,” Jones said.
The group sang Randall Thompson’s angelic “Alleluia” arrangement for unaccompanied voices.
“Dr. King seemed just moved from a low spirit to a heightened kind of spirit. His face brightened up,” Jones said. “He went for the ride with that song and enjoyed it.”
King — who had delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech five years earlier and was sharpening his activism on an economic equity agenda through the Poor People’s Campaign — delivered a speech on March 18 to more than 15,000 people at a Church of God in Christ temple supporting pay raises for the city’s sanitation workers and advocating a march.
The Memphis Strike demonstration in late March 1968, which featured the now-iconic “I Am A Man” signs, would be derailed by violence.
King returned to Memphis for another march and gave his famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech to sanitation workers on April 3. He was assassinated on a balcony at the Lorraine on April 4, 1968.
The Lorraine was converted into the National Civil Rights Museum, which opened in 1991.
A half-century later, the surviving Prairie View choir members were to perform “Alleluia” on Monday night during a tribute concert honoring the three dozen surviving sanitation workers. The event was to feature the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, operatic soprano Jessye Norman, saxophonist Kirk Whalum and actor LeVar Burton.
Jones, 70, graduated from Prairie View in 1971. The longtime music educator’s career has taken him to classrooms in Oklahoma and California. He now organizes boys’ choirs in four local schools through My Brother’s Keeper Houston and volunteers with homeless individuals.
Over the years, he has recounted the connection between Prairie View A&M University, located in Waller County about 50 miles northwest of Houston,
and King’s last days to new campus administrators, including current president Ruth Simmons, who arrived last year.
“I did that a few weeks ago with the new president,” Jones said. “I made sure that she knew about that piece of history.”