When a Nazi punched Dr. King
At 11 a.m. on Sept. 28, 1962, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the stage podium. He was in Birmingham, Ala., for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) annual convention. An audience of 300 sat in rapt attention as King spoke, but at least one audience member was not a part of the SCLC. Six rows back from the L.R. Hall auditorium stage was 22-year-old Roy James, wearing gray slacks and a white-collared shirt, his thick black hair combed to the right.
Ever since the Montgomery Bus Boycott thrust him into the national spotlight as a civil rights leader, King had endured all manner of intimidation and danger. His front porch had been bombed, he’d been stabbed with a letter opener, gotten death threats by phone and mail and arena-evacuating bomb threats. Yet he continued his pursuit for an end to segregation in the South, and the SCLC had vowed to use only nonviolent tactics to succeed.
On this day, King had just been formally re-elected SCLC president by the members and was delivering the financial report, running through future SCLC charity events.
King mentioned that 36-year-old actor and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. had agreed to perform at a benefit in New York City to help raise funds for the organization.
The name Sammy Davis Jr. was not what Roy James wanted to hear. To James, and the American Nazi Party he’d joined in 1960, Davis had been targeted because of his recent interracial marriage to May Britt, a white Swedish actress.
As King finished the report, James jumped from his sixth-row seat and within seconds had vaulted onto the stage.
At 6-foot-2 and 200 lbs., James towered over the 5-foot-9, 170 lbs. King. With no hesitation, James landed a right hook across King’s jaw, the stunned audience lunging forward.
King staggered but remained standing. James then swung again, hitting King’s neck. James was about to hit him again when King’s best friend, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and SCLC executive secretary Wyatt Tee Walker, stood in his way. James, according to Walker, “threw two blows, then dropped his arms. He muttered something about ‘I’m sorry’.”
King, Abernathy and Walker moved to the back of the stage, away from the crowd, bringing James with them. They wanted to talk to him. With police waiting with the crowd, King asked James, pointblank: “Why did you want to hit me?”
James was honest. “I just got upset. You started talking about Sammy Davis Jr. and he represents everything that is wrong.” They talked for 10 minutes, and James told King his feelings. “I represent an organization dedicated to the white race.” James then tried to find the right words. “Your race — your race is okeh [okay], but you shouldn’t go around trying to mix.”
Civil rights activist Rosa Parks was in the audience that day, and after James had punched King, she wanted to help. She rushed to a nearby drugstore and bought, according to Parks biographer Douglas Brinkley, “two Bayer aspirin and a Coca-Cola — her remedy for headaches.” She went to the back of the stage and handed them to King, who’d already bought a soft drink for James so he’d cool down.
After their brief conversation, King told the police he did not want to press charges. When King returned to the stage, he addressed the crowd. “I am proud of what has happened here today,” he told them, “because it indicates to me that the message of nonviolent discipline has been learned.
That man could not have done what he did in any other similar situation without having been literally killed.”
He went on: “The system we live under creates people like this. We are working for the day when never again will a person become twisted as this man is.”
Parks, when recalling the incident many years later, remained stunned at how King, even after being punched, “stared calmly” back at James. At one moment during the incident, it appeared other SCLC delegates were going to forcefully remove James from the stage, but King shouted, “Don’t touch him! We have to pray for him.”
For Parks, it was clear evidence of the philosophy they had been following since Montgomery.
“That, for many of us,” Parks said, “was proof that Dr. King believed so completely in nonviolence that it was even stronger than his instinct to protect himself from attack.” Parks knew that King had always put himself second to the movement, but the incident with Roy James was further proof that King was the leader they needed.
“I was so proud of Dr. King. His restraint was more powerful than a hundred fists.”