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"Riots just don't pay off," said King. He pronounced them an objective failure beyond morals or faith. "For if we say that power is the ability to effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose," he said, "then it is not powerful to engage in an act that does not do that--no matter how loud you are, and no matter how much you burn." Likewise, he exhorted the staff to combat the "romantic illusion" of guerrilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara. No "black" version of the Cuban revolution could succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a handful of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled the discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a right but a personal homage to untapped democratic energy. The staff must "bring to bear all of the power of nonviolence on the economic problem," he urged, even though nothing in the Constitution promised a roof or a meal. "I say all of these things because I want us to know the hardness of the task," King concluded, breaking off with his most basic plea: "We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now."
By tradition, workshops closed Monday night on a plenary round of music. "Talk about Peter, talk about Paul!" they sang in jubilant harmony, stomping their feet ahead of claps on the back beat. "Talk about Doctor King, you can talk about 'em all! Long as I know I'm gonna get my freedom, it's all right, whoa, it's all right!" A shout from Andrew Young blocked King at the door--"Don't let him out of here!"--and hands pulled him into a sudden chorus of Happy Birthday. King wore a sheepish, captured look, recorded by one home-movie camera, when pioneer television host Xernona Clayton came forward to toast his turning 39.
His affairs had been an open secret for years, but two weeks after his birthday, King confessed one of them to his wife Coretta