The Mountaintop

Early in The Mountaintop, the audience hears Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. relieve himself in a motel bathroom—a mundane but nevertheless disarming depiction of a historical figure. From here, the play challenges King’s sanitized image as a martyr and saint, using his physical and emotional needs to reinforce his humanity. The 1960s was a decade of assassinations, many of which were related to Black civil rights: King outlived civil rights leader Medgar Evars (1963), President John F. Kennedy (1963), and fellow activist Malcolm X (1965), and likely knew he might be next. In the play, his daughter Berniece (Bunny) predicted his death and prayed on his behalf. While Bunny’s prediction, Camae’s angelic reveal, and God’s existence create a supernatural tone, the play actively reinforces King’s humanity and inability to stop death. The sanctification of his life’s work may be done out of respect, but makes him and his activism read as daunting to the average person, impossible even. Thus, the play questions not only what made King human, but what makes all people human—and thus equally capable of enacting change.

Overall, Katori Hall’s fictionalized King is arrogant and susceptible to temptation. He alternates between being, as Camae says, “just a man” (14) who feels the need to assert masculinity and someone more than a man who leads sanitation workers in a chant of “I AM A MAN!” (15). In American history, Black men have been both emasculated and hypersexualized. King himself quotes newspaper headlines that paint him as a coward: “Chicken À La King” and “Martin Loser King” (15). Simultaneously, the FBI sees King as a threat requiring constant surveillance. To Hall, King must be humanized, because his questionable choices don’t change his legacy as a civil rights leader. In private, he smoked and cheated on his wife Coretta Scott King (Corrie), but any new information will become a part of his legacy as a man rather than a leader. With that said, the play contextualizes these flaws without excusing them.

Bad habits and work take a toll on King’s body and its human limits. At the start of the play, he’s exhausted from yet another evening of preaching. He has a cough, perhaps from smoking, a cold, or exposure to mace. In an attempt to calm King, Camae warns him, “You might be 39 but you got the heart of a 60-year-old man” (24)—which is later noted by the real-life medical examiner who autopsied his body. Outside of his physical body, he has begun to doubt his nonviolent activism. While a competent leader, he has an inner child—represented by childhood name “Michael”—which fellow activist Ralph Abernathy and Camae use to soothe him when he’s afraid. Overall, King asserts “At the most human level we are all the same. […] Fear makes us human” (18). In the face of mortality, he worries about looking older, considering shaving his now-iconic mustache; he also weeps and wishes to be held by Camae after their pillow fight. Again, Hall’s intention is not to criticize King, but critique him and encourage others to continue his work: “It was important to see the humanity in this hero so we can see the hero in ourselves” (Brown, DeNeen L., “Playwright Katori Hall: Young, Gifted and Fearlessly Redefining Theater,” The Washington Post, 8 Mar. 2013).