Characterizing the jailing as the latest shenanigan, the Times’s Herb Robinson castigated the state. “Officials performed a preposterous flip-flop by arresting Gregory for illegal net-fishing only four days after they had indicated action would not be taken if the violation clearly was part of a fish-in and not a threat to conservation of the state’s fisheries resource.” Robinson continued, “The Indians, meantime, have undercut the dignity of their own position by resorting to the importation in the past of controversial figures such as Marlon Brando and Melvin Bell to generate additional publicity for their fish-ins. Even some Indians themselves were dismayed at the antics on the banks of the Nisqually where men and children joined Indian fishermen in brawling with the state game agents and where Gov. Dan Evans was burned in effigy.”

At first, Gregory acknowledges, his involvement was met with some skepticism. But his name drew interest in Northwest fish-ins across the country, and the tribes appreciated his droll sense of humor. Once asked by a reporter if the tribes would welcome him as a new member, Gregory retorted, “No thanks, I’ve got enough problems.”

Gregory caught more fish in Washington, and later served more time in jail. He fasted behind bars. When his weight plummeted to 135 pounds, authorities approved him for house arrest. “They sure as hell didn’t want a black man dying in their jail,” Billy says.

In early April 1968, seventy-two hours before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he sat in Atlanta next to Hank Adams at Paschal’s Motor Hotel and Restaurant, a gathering place for the civil rights movement. King had just missed his daughter’s birthday and the group agreed to keep the meeting brief. Adams was named to the steering committee of King’s latest undertaking, the Poor People’s Campaign, a crusade to end poverty. King had threatened sit-ins in the halls of Congress if lawmakers did not meet demands of the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders:

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have announced a Poor People’s Campaign in Washington to arouse the conscience of America to reconstruct our society in consonance with the democratic process. We join with Dr. King in renouncing violence as an instrument of change, and support his plan for a dramatization of the desperate conditions of the poor in rural areas and city ghettoes as expressed through the current Poor People’s Campaign. In the present climate of tension, citizens should be given every opportunity to petition for redress of their grievances. Society must recognize that non-violent demonstrations are a salutary alternative to self-defeating violence.

By 1968, King had professed his dream and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Lyndon Johnson had just announced he would not seek reelection to the presidency. King summarized Johnson’s contributions to the civil rights movement and the standing of Indians in the country held the group’s attention.

King was a hero of Billy’s. The elder remembers the synergy of that period in history. “He was looking for what he was looking for in civil rights. We were looking for protecting our treaties, and our natural resources, and natural world. We gathered up together and we marched with him. We did a lot of things together back in D.C. Them things are direct action things. All of that in that time was direct action.” At the end of the meeting, the group stood, clasped hands and sang, “We Shall Overcome.” Within seventy-two hours of the Atlanta gathering, an assassin targeted King. The way Billy puts it, hope for Indians went out the door.

King’s dream for the Poor People’s Campaign lived on at the U.S. Capitol, precisely as the leader had planned. Participants demanded “more money and dignity for the needy and hinting disorder if the demands aren’t met.” After the funeral, Adams and the steering committee met to plan a May 1 schedule for the Committee of One Hundred.

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  billy Franks, demonstrations, fishing rights, indians, protests, treaty, washington