The meal that never was

As a woman from Atlanta by way of Stone Mountain, Martin Luther King, Jr., or rather Dr. King as we have always called him, is never far from my understanding of what it means to be home and to belong. Martin grew up in very Black Atlanta but from a particular slice of Atlanta that has a legacy of connectedness: the historic district and neighborhood Sweet Auburn. 

After the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre, Black folk who were once clustered in the downtown area flocked to this pocket of the city in the eastern Atlanta neighborhood of Old Fourth Ward. Martin was born there and grew up there, before leaving for Montgomery, Alabama, where he came into his own as a preacher, outside of the shadow and purview of his father, Martin Luther King, Sr. 

During his time in Montgomery, Martin flourished outside of his comfort zone of Atlanta and built connections he would come to rely on for the rest of his short career and life. It was in Montgomery that he strolled to Chris’ Hotdogs on Dexter Avenue, a few blocks away from where he preached at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. And it was in Montgomery where met Georgia Gilmore, later giving her money to establish her own restaurant because he loved her Southern meals so much. 

The South was Martin’s home and in many respects, the place he grieved the most. When the weight of the world and unrelenting injustice wore on his soul, Martin took to the gentle fellowship of breaking bread, eating a meal with others to soothe what ailed. He reached for the dishes that were most comforting to him through both habit and nostalgia: Southern fare. And on April 4, 1968, the day he was murdered, there was a meal planned, plated and waiting for him to feast on.

He never arrived.

It shall forever be known as the meal that never was. 

The late Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, formerly a pastor at Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis, was a civil rights activist in his own right as well as a close associate to King. The day of his death, Kyles spent the last hour that he was alive with him. And was right by his side, after chatting with him for an hour and meticulously picking out a dinner necktie, as he was murdered on the balcony of Lorraine Motel. 

Dinner in King’s honor was to be held at Kyles’ home and Virginia Boyland, along with many other church mothers and aunties, prepped and prepared the meal with pride. They, in Boyland’s own words, “[...] wanted everything to be perfect.” The menu was an assemblage of King’s Southern favorites: fried chicken, ham, sweet potatoes, two types of greens, crowder peas and a sweet potato pie (pecan pie) for dessert. 

But of course, King never arrived. That dinner, that plate, all the painstaking details to make it, were laid bare with his death. I think about the dinner table at Kyles’ home a lot when I recall this story, this poignant and intimate history. I imagine Boyland and others playfully fussing over the tablecloth and place settings.

Breaking down the greens to be washed, soaked and cooked down in a massive pot as the smoked turkey necks and ham hocks soften, giving the greens a buttery texture. Seasoning endless pieces of chicken—including putting aside the pieces that King himself liked the most—and shaking them in brown paper grocery bags with such vigor and joy that the flour creates wispy clouds of white. Shelling the crowder peas and letting them soak overnight, so that the next day they’d be ready to cook down in a few hours.

I think of all the minutiae that went into that day. The amount of love that was in the very room that King was supposed to be in. Where does all that love and reverence go in times of violence, shock and mourning? 

We think grief is reserved for those we intimately know personally. Those who we cross paths with in our everyday lives, during the holiday season or other occasions that call for gathering en masse. But grief—the longing, the disbelief, the horror, the profound melancholia, the rage—can be a ripple felt with those we admire from a distance. Like those of public figures. Men like Martin Luther King, Jr., who while flawed and deeply human, loved us in a way that meant he fought for us in ways that most others could not. Who was led by courage in the way he spoke, galvanizing fellow organizers to take up the cause alongside him. 

In 1968 when King died, he’d seen The Civil Rights Act passed by Congress. He didn’t get to see how desegregation continued to unfold in the years and decades after his and others tireless work for years. He didn’t get to grow old with his wife, Coretta. He didn’t get to continue to parent his children. He didn’t even reach 40 years old.

There is a certain grief in a life marred and grabbed through hatred. There is so much grief in never getting to become a Black elder, as increasingly so as is the case for so many Black people in recent years. There has been so much death, so much loss, so much grief and almost no pause or still moments for us to reckon with it all. 

Subsequently, there is more grief for not having space to grieve and mourn in the first place because it’s another loss. Another thing that has been taken without our control. Another way we feel powerless in the aims and ways of being bereaved. 

I don’t know what else to say. But sometimes, grief is best understood in relation to our primal needs of food, hunger, appetite, nourishment and eating. Just like in thinking of the loss of Dr. King all these years later, we can understand the thrush and pang of setting a table for a guest of honor, who never arrives and the lasting void of permanence it leaves.

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