Bill Rutherford remembered an occasion when King arrived thirty minutes late for a crucial SCLC meeting at Ebenezer church. “We walked in, and there was the janitor of the church, pushing his broom, and Martin said, ‘How’s your wife?’ He said, ‘Well, she ain’t doing too well. Her back’s bothering her …’ Martin said, ‘Really? It didn’t get any better from the medicine?’ Anyway, I stood there; there are three hundred people sitting in that church, waiting on the leader, and he’s inquiring about the janitor’s wife’s back.… I was so impressed.”
