Although Leta McCollough Seletzky wasn’t born till eight years after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., she has all the time been haunted by the picture of that tragic night time—one of essentially the most recognizable photos of the twentieth century. And no marvel, since in it, her then 23-year-old father, Marrell “Mac” McCullough, may be seen kneeling beside Dr. King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, holding a towel over the civil rights chief’s wounded face, attempting to staunch the bleeding. Several different folks stand close by, pointing towards a spot within the distance.
“In my mind,” Seletzky says, “those were accusatory fingers. I felt a sense of blame, that on some level, those fingers were pointing at me or [at my father].” The lawyer-turned-memoirist and California resident spoke by cellphone about her fascinating debut, The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This “black-and-white image of horror” was one thing Seletzky’s household hardly ever mentioned, regardless of her father’s presence in it. His work had all the time been shrouded in secrecy and silence, and in some ways, the truth that he ultimately opened up about it’s nothing brief of a miracle.
Read our starred assessment of ‘The Kneeling Man’ by Leta McCollough Seletzky.
Seletzky’s dad and mom separated when she was 3 and later divorced. In highschool, she realized from a newspaper article that her father, who by then lived elsewhere and labored for the CIA, had been an undercover officer for the Memphis Police Department on the time of King’s assassination, tasked with infiltrating and conserving tabs on a bunch of younger Black activists referred to as the Invaders. “The revelation felt like a body blow,” she writes. Had her dad’s work spying on the Invaders been much like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s ways for harassing and controlling the Black Panthers, she questioned? Despite her curiosity and concern, Seletzky didn’t inquire about Mac’s position till 2010, after the delivery of her second son. “One of the main reasons I thought it was so important to tell this story,” she says, “was so [my sons] would not be left wondering or feeling that sense of silence and dread.”
When Seletzky ultimately requested her father about that night time, he responded with a 17-page doc. However, Seletzky was so saddened by his description of rising up in poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi that she stopped studying after three pages, placing his account away for 5 years. Finally, in 2015, she learn to the top of the letter. After that, she plunged into years of writing, analysis, Freedom of Information Act requests, interviews and, most significantly, collaboration with her father. The ensuing ebook offers an account not solely of the superb trajectory of her father’s life but in addition of her personal reconciliation with his mysterious previous as a Black man spying on a Black Power activist group for the police.
“One of the main reasons I thought it was so important to tell this story was so [my sons] would not be left wondering or feeling that sense of silence and dread.”
While writing The Keeling Man, Seletzky and her father visited King’s assassination website collectively, and he or she additionally facilitated a 2017 assembly between her father and Andrew Young, an early chief within the civil rights motion who was additionally current the night time King was murdered. “It felt like walking into history,” Seletzky says. “I mean, not only were we meeting with Andrew Young, but we were at his house. It was something I’ll never forget.” One of essentially the most endearing moments of their encounter was Young’s recollection of Dr. King playfully swatting him with one of the Lorraine Motel’s pillows simply hours earlier than his assassination. “He was a hero, but he was a human being,” Seletzky says. “I feel like sometimes this gets lost when we lionize people.”
Seletzky additionally interviewed quite a few members of the Invaders, the activist group her father was spying on, and was stunned by their heat welcome. “They were not upset,” she says. “They were not angry.” In reality, she’s come to assume of one of the group’s leaders “as family.”
On the night time of King’s assassination, Mac and a number of other Invaders had simply returned from a purchasing journey with one of Dr. King’s aides, who invited them to dinner. As they walked from Mac’s automobile towards the motel, pictures rang out, and Mac, who had been within the Army, sprinted up the steps to the balcony. “He was trying to save Dr. King’s life, and he ran into the zone of danger to try to do that,” Seletzky says. Although federal investigators by no means raised considerations about Mac’s presence that night time, he was ultimately questioned and referred to as to testify at a Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978. He was even warned that the legal professional of James Earl Ray, the convicted killer, would possibly get up and accuse Mac of assassinating King. “Sometimes I think about what it would feel like if you had tried to save someone’s life and instead you were painted as having been a wrongdoer,” Seletzky says.
“When Seletzky let her mom read the final draft, she told her daughter, ‘Leta, I didn’t know 75% of what is in this book.’”
But the hardest half of Seletzky’s writing course of was writing about herself. “It was difficult to weave my story through the magnitude of his,” she says. “I felt that it really should just be all Mac, but at the same time, I feel this story is more than that.” Three memoirs had been significantly useful as she found out stroll that line: James McBride’s The Color of Water, Sarah Broom’s The Yellow House and Edward Ball’s Slaves within the Family.
Ultimately, Seletzky is thrilled that scripting this ebook introduced her nearer to her father. “I am in awe of him,” she says, “and the way he allowed his experiences to mold him into who he is.” She was additionally happy by her mom’s response to The Kneeling Man. Her mom was a reporter in Memphis for a few years, and when Seletzky let her mother learn the ultimate draft, she informed her daughter, “Leta, I didn’t know 75% of what is in this book.” “I was shocked,” Seletzky says, “because she was born and raised in Memphis, and she was married to my dad for several years.”
When Seletzky requested her father what he wished folks to know about his life and decisions, he responded, “What I want them to understand is exactly what you wrote in that book.” That, Seletzky says, was maybe her proudest second. “At that point, I said to myself, ‘OK, well, the book is a success no matter what.’”
Author headshot of Leta McCollough Seletzky by Gretchen Adams
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