DAYS OF INJUSTICE IN GEORGIA
On Oct. 19, 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. and dozens of African-American students were arrested for refusing to leave the segregated lunch counter of Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta. Following the intervention of Mayor William Hartsfield, the charges were dropped. But King remained in jail. Accused of violating parole associated with a conviction for driving with an out of state license (he was pulled over while taking novelist Lillian Smith, a white ally of the civil rights movement, to her breast cancer treatment), he was transferred to Reidsville, a notorious state prison.
The incident occurred in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, forcing Richard Nixon and John Kennedy to decide whether and how to respond.
In “Nine Days: The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Win the 1960 Election,” Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick, the authors of “Douglass and Lincoln” and “Sarah’s Long Walk,” provide an engaging and informative account of this pivotal moment in race relations and politics in the
United States.
Although the broad outlines of the story are rather well known, the Kendricks add important details. They illuminate the roles of Donald Hollowell, King’s lawyer, and Louis Martin, Harris Wofford and R. Sargent Shriver, the leaders of the civil rights contingent of Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Along with a narrative of John Kennedy’s decision to call Coretta Scott King, the authors reveal that JFK lobbied Georgia Gov. Ernest Vandiver to secure King’s release and Bobby Kennedy contacted Judge Oscar Mitchell, the arch segregationist who had sentenced King to four months in prison for a traffic violation.
The authors introduce evidence that King’s life really was in danger at Reidsville. The week he was incarcerated, they indicate, Atlanta newspapers reported a predawn stabbing at the prison that had left two inmates dead. In handwritten pleas smuggled out of Reidsville, prisoners referred to rapes, beatings by guards, who were especially hostile to Blacks, and a lack of medical attention. And Martin Luther King Sr. had been informed by reputable sources that a fight would be staged in which an inmate would kill his son, regret would be expressed, and no one would be held responsible: “It would be just one of those unfortunate things that happened all the time in prisons across the South.”
The Kendricks also document repeated attempts by Nixon’s aides to persuade the vice president (who had declared that “the future of the Republican Party today lies in pressing forward on civil rights”) to send a message of support to King and his family. Nixon delayed and then indicated he did not want to “pander.” In the end, the authors reveal, a Republican staffer relayed Nixon’s position: “He said he would lose some black votes, but he’d gain white votes, so he was going to sit it out.”
Not surprisingly, then, when John Kennedy’s call to
Mrs. King became public, Martin Luther King Sr., a Republican, told a friend, “I’ll take a Catholic or the devil himself if he’ll wipe the tears from my daughter-in-law’s eyes.” Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a close friend and colleague of MLK, said, “Since Mr. Nixon has been silent through all this, I am going to return his silence when I go into the voting booth.” Although Martin Luther King Jr. stuck to his promise not to endorse either candidate, he declared, “Senator Kennedy exhibited moral courage of a high order.”
The authors make a compelling case that AfricanAmerican voters put John F. Kennedy in the White House. In a close election, the Democratic share of the black vote increased by 7% from 1956. And the Black turnout was significantly higher than it had been in previous contests, making the difference in nine states, with a total of 142 electoral votes.
On the other hand, the Kendricks remind us, the Republicans’ surprise victory in mostly white DeKalb County, Georgia, in 1960 was a harbinger of the “Southern Strategy” Nixon would use in 1968 and 1972. By smoothing down the rough edges of racist rhetoric, identifying himself as a champion of law and order, and denouncing urban riots and Black Power, the authors write, Nixon and the party of Lincoln turned the Democratic South red, attracted white working-class voters in the Midwest, and have “kept it that way for decades.”