Q&A / REV. SAMUEL 'BILLY' KYLES, CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER
Documentary about MLK assassination up for Oscar
‘The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306’ centers on Kyles’ account
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Lorraine Motel’s cut-rate balcony — a narrow slab in front of Room 306’s teal-blue door — entered the country’s tragic iconography the instant the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot there more than 40 years ago.
King was surrounded seconds after the 1968 assassination by fellow civil rights leaders, many of whom pointed toward a rooming house across the street, where James Earl Ray had fired his single shot.
AP Photo/Files, Copyright 1968 Time Inc.
This 1968 file photo was taken minutes after an assassin’s bullet struck Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968. According to the photographer, Joseph Louw, the men at right, several of Dr. King’s aides, stand over King’s body as they point out to police where they heard the shot.
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Yet only one man was on the balcony, just steps away, the moment that shot rang out: the Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, who’d urged King to travel from Atlanta to Memphis to support the city’s striking black sanitation workers. Kyles had spent the previous hour inside Room 306 with King and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy. They were headed to Kyles’ house for dinner.
Kyles’ account centers “The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306,” a nominee for best documentary short at Sunday’s Academy Awards. The 32-minute film deftly covers well-worn ground with fresh detail and context.
(The film airs at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on HBO2, and again at 5:15 p.m. Thursday and 11:30 a.m. Saturday.)
Margaret Hyde, daughter of AutoZone founder J.R. “Pitt” Hyde, produced the film to be shown last year at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis on the 40th anniversary of King’s death. After its Oscar nomination in January, she called Kyles, who only days earlier told her he was “walking on a cloud” at President Barack Obama’s inauguration.
“I said, ‘Are you still walking on a cloud? Because I’m right up there with you,’” Hyde said.
Kyles, 74, spoke recently with the AJC about the film and the events it illuminates.
Q: Does it seem like 40 years ago that you stood on that balcony when Martin Luther King was shot?
A: My mind can’t even process where the 40 years went.
Q: Do you think about it every day?
A: Just about. There’s always something that reminds me. It’s not morbid or anything. It’s not something I dwell on. That’s why it took so long to do this documentary. Margaret [Hyde] wanted me to do a book, and said if you won’t do a book, let’s do a film, because your memory’s not going to be that good forever. And she was right.
Q: How many times have you told the story of King’s last hour?
A: I’m sure in the thousands.
Q: Why?
A: I couldn’t talk about it much at first. Then God revealed to me why I was there. When you have a crucifixion, you have to have a witness. My responsibility was to make sure that the story of his last hour would be truthful. I don’t have any problem telling that now. And one of the reasons is because of the reaction people have.
Q: What are their reactions?
A: I’ve taken at least eight Nobel Prize winners to that room. One of them was Nelson Mandela. He was asking questions about what everyone was talking about, what mood Martin was in, and I answered them all. And he wept like a baby. I just talked to young people at a school yesterday. They were amazed.
Q: Does having been there when King died obscure how you remember him?
A: I spend a good deal of time humanizing him for the young. I covered him after the shooting with a spread from the bed and took a crushed cigarette out of his hand. He never wanted children to see him smoking. Kids will say, “Martin Luther King smoked?” And I say, yes, he’s not a saint. If you make a saint out of him, it excuses us from doing anything.
Q: King didn’t think he’d live to be 40. What about you?
A: I didn’t have any fears about that. We were all so young. Everybody in that group was under 40 — Jesse [Jackson] was 27, Andy [Young] was 35. I was 33. It was a young people’s movement. I didn’t think about it at the time, but Ray could’ve wiped out the top echelon of the SCLC that day. But one shot was all he fired. That did what he wanted done.
Q: You think Ray acted alone?
A: It was definitely a conspiracy. He pulled the trigger, but he did not act alone.
Q: What did it mean to you to be at Barack Obama’s inauguration?
A: I feel honored and blessed. Pioneers so often are not around to walk the paths they blaze. I think of all the lives lost building this foundation for Barack Obama.
Q: Are you going to the Academy Awards?
A: I plan to. The nomination is an honor for so many people. I’ll accept [the award] if they give it … but I accept it for so many people who did so many things in the movement.
