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100as long as the rivers runas a new member, Gregory retorted, “No thanks, I’ve got enoughproblems.”Gregory caught more fish in Washington, and later served moretime in jail. He fasted behind bars. When his weight plummeted to135 pounds, authorities approved him for house arrest. “They sure ashell didn’t want a black man dying in their jail,” Billy says.In early April 1968, seventy-two hours before Martin Luther KingJr. was assassinated, he sat in Atlanta next to Hank Adams at Paschal’sMotor Hotel and Restaurant, a gathering place for the civilrights movement. King had just missed his daughter’s birthday andthe group agreed to keep the meeting brief. Adams was named to thesteering committee of King’s latest undertaking, the Poor People’sCampaign, a crusade to end poverty. King had threatened sit-ins inthe halls of Congress if lawmakers did not meet demands of the President’sCommission on Civil Disorders:The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern ChristianLeadership Conference have announced a Poor People’s Campaign inWashington to arouse the conscience of America to reconstruct oursociety in consonance with the democratic process. We join with Dr.King in renouncing violence as an instrument of change, and supporthis plan for a dramatization of the desperate conditions of the poor inrural areas and city ghettoes as expressed through the current PoorPeople’s Campaign.In the present climate of tension, citizens should be given everyopportunity to petition for redress of their grievances. Society mustrecognize that non-violent demonstrations are a salutary alternativeto self-defeating violence.By 1968, King had professed his dream and won the Nobel PeacePrize. Lyndon Johnson had just announced he would not seek reelectionto the presidency. King summarized Johnson’s contributions