Morrow had done his part in speeches, linking Kennedy to racist Georgia Democrats and declaring, “You must laugh heartily at how Senator Kennedy and Senator Johnson have suddenly become bleeding hearts for the rights and advancement of Negroes.” The one asset Morrow still had was Jackie Robinson, who, like him, was taking time off work to campaign nationally on Nixon’s behalf. Unfortunately, Robinson’s disillusionment was growing, too. An unnamed Nixon adviser told Robinson that Nixon would be avoiding Harlem because it could cost him South Carolina and Georgia. During Eisenhower’s presidential campaign, at least Morrow had been seen with the candidate. The midnight meeting at the convention was a distant memory at this point.
Still, with one forceful remark, all these lost opportunities could be redeemed. And yet Morrow kept finding himself being blocked by aides. When he got any response at all, he was told by those close to the candidate that making a statement would be “bad strategy.” One person told him, “You’re always thinking up things to get us into difficulty, so forget it.” Morrow believed that if he could just sit down one-on-one with the candidate, the old Nixon could be persuaded to do the right thing. His message to advisers was, “Send a telegram to the governor, or to the mayor, or to Martin Luther King’s family expressing regret … asking if there was anything he could do.”
On the vice president’s campaign train, Morrow settled for talking to Nixon’s press secretary, Herb Klein, cornering him to make his case. Morrow was nearly begging; he even handed Klein a statement he had drafted, directed at the mayor of Atlanta and requesting his help in freeing King. While Louis Martin spent hours on the phone with Black editors, the Nixon camp was now shunning Black journalists to the degree that Simeon Booker of Jet asked to be moved to the Kennedy campaign so he might be more effective in his reporting on the election.
Klein accepted Morrow’s statement and slipped it into his pocket. Morrow feared it would never be used. Klein said he would “think about it.” However, Klein did show the note to Nixon, who read it, apparently wrestling with the decision. Finally, Nixon looked up and briskly told Klein that issuing such a statement would “look like he was pandering.”
Morrow thought back to Nixon’s superb convention acceptance speech, wondering what had happened to that man. He had thought that moment would be a jumping-off point for a leader he believed in, a new kind of Republican campaign championing racial equality. Leaving the campaign train, Morrow headed back to the White House. He would await the outcome of the election in room 224 of the Executive Office Building. He had tried to save his party.
Jackie Robinson kept on barnstorming for the GOP. This Wednesday in Memphis, Robinson told an adoring audience of five thousand, Nixon would indeed appoint a Black cabinet member. He reminded them of the violently racist Democratic governors Kennedy was so closely allied with; Robinson’s instinct that Kennedy would strike bargains with them would turn out to be accurate. He warned them, “Kennedy goes the way the wind blows.” The old ballplayer was used to losing streaks; the only way through was to keep swinging.
* * *
Pacing in his suite at campaign headquarters, Bobby interrogated his assistant John Seigenthaler, “Did you know about that call?” Bobby had been campaigning in Pittsburgh the day before, so maybe he’d missed something. Seigenthaler wondered if Wofford and Shriver had kept their scheme from Louis Martin, because he thought Martin would have informed Bobby about it.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, get every Southern chairman of the Democratic Party. Find out how this is going down.”
Seigenthaler called Georgia’s Griffin Bell, who responded, “Well, I was a little surprised to read it, but tell Bobby not to worry about it. We’re gonna carry Georgia, big. But tell him I could use a little more advance notice on something like this.” So could Bobby, Seigenthaler thought to himself. Mississippi’s chairman was more upset. Though most southern politicos were still feeling all right about their chances, Seigenthaler knew the campaign’s director of organization, Lawrence O’Brien, would also be irritated that he had not been part of the decision as to whether a call to Coretta should have been made.
Bobby Kennedy called his brother-in-law, and in Shriver’s recollection Bobby “landed on me like a ton of bricks … He scorched my ass.” Bobby sputtered, “Who in the hell do you think you are, screwing up the whole campaign?” Shriver just listened, knowing how hot Bobby’s temper could be. “You’ve gotten Senator Kennedy exposed on this highly volatile issue and you should never have brought it up without clearing it. You’ve wrecked the campaign. Who the hell do you think you are?”
Shriver said, “I didn’t think I was anybody, except I thought it was a decent idea.” He added, “Jack is a decent man, and people will read the call as an indication of the kind of character that he has.”
Bobby replied that his brother “was going to get defeated because of this stupid call to Martin Luther King, and for Christ Sake, who had given [you] permission to do this.”
After the smoldering phone was slammed down, Bobby instructed Seigenthaler to call the CRS office. Seigenthaler simply said, ominously, “Bob wants to see you bomb throwers right away.”
Wofford suggested that Martin go over first, and then he would join him later. Martin understood the logic: Bobby simply liked him better, and he might be able to calm the campaign manager down before Wofford arrived. Martin rushed out of the CRS’s office, thinking about how to handle the conversation. As he headed to meet Bobby, the view opened up on Sixteenth Street, all the way down to the White House. Winning over Bobby would determine whether they could all now seize this unexpected opportunity in the campaign. If he were advising Nixon, he would tell him to act, now, and Martin guessed there were people on the other side just as smart as he was. At this very moment, someone like Jackie Robinson was out there as the critical piece on the chessboard, and Robinson and Nixon could checkmate Kennedy simply by speaking up for King. No matter how angry Bobby was, Martin resolved not to just sit there and take it; he had to make it clear to his boss that Nixon was going to help King. While Martin did not know this to be true, it could well be, and thus they should operate as if it were.
Bobby was furious, but Martin leaped in before he had a chance to unload, informing him of King’s transfer to Reidsville over a traffic citation. Then Martin pretended as if the scenario he imagined coming to pass were in fact happening: “You know, Jackie Robinson is trying to get Nixon to call a press conference.” He said Nixon was going to blast the Democrats for jailing King. Growing more animated about the (imagined) imminent threat, Martin said that Nixon “would charge that King had been arrested and jailed by the minions of the Georgia Democratic-controlled state and blame racist Democrats for persecuting the black hero.” He wanted Bobby to understand that “they’re going to blame the jailing of King on Democrats because the judiciary and everybody down there are Democrats and I think you’ve got to do something about it.”
When his speech was over, Bobby surprised him by saying, “What the hell do you mean, four months for a goddamn license?”
“Wait a minute, don’t talk about that. He’s black, this is what I’m talking about.” It was as if the black-and-white Bobby at his most lawyerly were outraged at the improper sentencing procedure and unable to respond to the larger racial injustice at hand. Bobby indeed looked aghast, but Martin could not tell if it was for the right reasons. Martin realized he needed to situate what had happened in a moral framework Bobby would understand.
Before Martin could determine if his line of argument had succeeded, however, Wofford walked in, hoping that Martin had gotten Bobby to calm down. No such luck. Wofford’s arrival sent Kennedy spiraling back into his earlier outrage. Bobby was white with anger, pacing back and forth, but he also seemed frightened. By this point in the campaign, Bobby’s already slim frame was gaunt, dark circles had formed under his eyes, and exhaustion was visible in every movement. Bobby glared at the two of them, saying, “Do you know that
three Southern governors told us that if Jack supported Jimmy Hoffa, Nikita Khrushchev, or Martin Luther King, they would throw their states to Nixon? Do you know that this election may be razor close, and you have probably lost it for us?” He reminded them, almost in pain, “We said we wouldn’t support King,” and now it looked as if that were exactly what they were doing.
Before they could reply, Bobby laid down a command—not firing them, exactly, but instructing them that they must do nothing further to generate publicity.
Wofford protested that nothing was going to stop the story in Atlanta (he wrestled with whether to inform him that The New York Times was already on the trail, while Martin knew the New York Post was on it as well). Bobby concluded his tirade by saying, “You bomb throwers probably lost the election. You’ve probably lost three states. From now on in, the Civil Rights Section isn’t going to do another damn thing in this campaign.”
Bobby had left Martin and Wofford with the unequivocal message that their shop was shut down. He gave them no sense of whether he personally would do anything to aid King, but they had better not. With their morale at its lowest point, Martin and Wofford shuffled out. Their window of opportunity to swing the election and help King appeared to have closed. Perhaps their careers in politics were over as well.
* * *
George Stewart came and went in Georgia politics like a ghost, a shadowy presence wafting through judges’ chambers and the state capitol. He had receding dark hair sharply parted to the side and a full, jowly face. After his unexpected conversation with the governor that morning, he pondered what to do next. If he could get King released on solid legal grounds, the Democrats might as well get credit for it. But how to smooth down his friend’s grit?
The day before, a more liberal-minded Decatur attorney, James Mackay, went to Judge Mitchell’s office, pleading with him, “You can’t do this. You can’t deny a man bail on a misdemeanor pending appeal.” But Mitchell was resolute: “I’m committed to it. I’m going to do it.” Stewart needed to soften his friend’s resolve to keep King in prison.
Once the two were together, Stewart drew on his own legal degree to tell Mitchell to just follow the law by offering King bail while his case went through appeal. Mitchell said that was not possible: the thirty-day window had expired for King’s appeal on the traffic case. Always resourceful, Stewart had an idea: a holiday, Columbus Day, fell during that period, and that day should not count. Add that extra day, and the appeal was still possible in the thirty-day window since King’s original legal paperwork was filed. With this legal angle accounted for, Stewart stressed the political necessity of doing this for their party. Vandiver later claimed that Stewart told Mitchell a federal judgeship might just be in the cards if the Kennedys won.
Mitchell knew he would not have his position on the bench if not for his friend Stewart, a political insider, who was asking for this favor. But there were two problems: Governor Vandiver’s fingerprints had to be effaced, and Mitchell needed political cover in order to reverse course so abruptly. They decided on a surprising plan: Bobby Kennedy would have to call Mitchell personally. Vandiver would be left out of the affair, his reputation intact. It could hurt the Democrats in Georgia, but if the Kennedys wanted it done because they thought it could help them overall, then the Georgians were more than happy to let them deal with the fallout. Vandiver and Mitchell were not going to take the blame on their behalf, no matter how the election turned out.
* * *
Governor Vandiver was pleased when, at last, Stewart called him to report on his promising conversation with Judge Mitchell. The governor called Mitchell as well to reinforce that this request was coming straight from the Kennedys. Vandiver then phoned Bobby, who seemed to be expecting to hear from him. He told Bobby what he needed to do: call the judge. Vandiver pleaded with Bobby that this “would affect my political future if I get involved in it. Please don’t involve me in it … they’d run me out of Georgia.”
Bobby understood. Not only did he have a sense of how southern politics worked from attending law school at the University of Virginia, but he had personally been to the governor’s mansion and been introduced to Vandiver’s children.
Bobby had told Wofford and Martin that they were to do nothing, but that did not preclude him from taking action, in secret, on his own.
* * *
There were no special privileges that came with being a famous prisoner. A few guards took it upon themselves to remind King that he was just another Black man, threatening and harassing him with epithets he refused to repeat later. Every meal was cold—greens and black-eyed peas. The breakfast eggs were speckled with pieces of shell. There was at least bread to ease his hunger: a light corn bread for breakfast and again later in the day. It made him miss the Fulton County prison meals.
King began a letter to his wife: “Hello darling.” Not knowing if she knew what had befallen him, he wrote, “Today I find myself a long way from you and the children.” He understood it was a burden on her for him to be so many miles away: “This whole experience is very difficult for you to adjust to, especially in your condition of pregnancy, but as I said to you yesterday this is the cross that we must bear for the freedom of our people.” Asking her to be strong in faith, he told her that her strength would uphold him. “I can assure you that it is extremely difficult for me to think of being away from you and my Yoki and Marty for four months, but I am asking God hourly to give me the power of endurance. I have faith to believe that this excessive suffering that is now coming to our family will in some little way serve to make Atlanta a better city, Georgia a better state, and America a better country.” Because he thought himself a man, not a prophet, he added, “Just how I do not yet know, but I have faith to believe it will. If I am correct then our suffering is not in vain.”
Explaining he could have visitors two Sundays a month, he told Coretta, “I hope you can find some way to come down. I know it will be a terrible inconvenience in your condition, but I want to see you and the children very badly.” He asked her to notify Wyatt Tee Walker to come, too, because there were urgent things he wanted to tell him. As always, he asked for books, along with certain of his sermons, with instructions on where to locate them in his files. He asked for the dense volumes of The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich, works on Jesus and Gandhi, a Bible, a dictionary, and a radio. He concluded with a message to his family: “Please ask them not to worry about me. I will adjust to whatever comes in terms of pain. Hope to see you Sunday.”
One reporter asked Warden Balkcom if King could be assigned to ministerial duty but was rebuffed; Reidsville already had a chaplain. The Amsterdam News predicted King’s four-month sentence would entail hard labor on a public road gang.
* * *
Hollowell received a call in the mid-afternoon from Daddy King’s friend A. T. Walden, a prominent Black Atlanta lawyer of the previous generation, who was at Abram’s office. Also working alongside Abram that afternoon was a young lawyer named Charles Wittenstein, a Brooklyn native who had come to Atlanta eight years earlier to support the cause of civil rights. Wittenstein made the same discovery that George Stewart had: because of a holiday, they were by one day still within the month window to appeal King’s traffic sentence. If they submitted a bill of exceptions to appeal within the next few hours, King could be freed on bond while that appeals process went through.
To Hollowell, this was dramatic news. He jumped into his car to get over to Abram’s office and go through the statutes with the other lawyers. Once satisfied that this idea was exactly what they should pursue, he grabbed one of Abram’s typewriters and, without notes, wrote the first section of the motion they would file. Abram’s secretary went to work on cleaning up Hollowell’s rapidly written draft, and the attorneys agreed that it was ready to go less than an hour later.
The problem was that the business day was nearly over, and Hollowell would never make it to Decatur in time to file the motion with Mitchell. The month window was cl
osing fast, so Hollowell resolved to call Mitchell on the phone and, however improbably, persuade him to accept the document late that night. Miraculously, the lawyer reached Mitchell and, ignoring the tense hearing earlier that day, implored the judge to let him just slide the papers under his door. Technically, with a little indulgence, they would have been delivered on that day. Then he asked if Mitchell would just insert the correct date in the record when he picked them up in the morning.
The judge hemmed and hawed but eventually said yes. Stewart had already talked to Judge Mitchell by this time. Would Mitchell have otherwise offered King’s defense team this favor? And yet Hollowell must have believed there was some chance that the judge could be won over as well. Mitchell told him to appear before him the next day.
Hollowell now had reason for hope. He left Abram’s office and began driving toward Decatur.
* * *
Seigenthaler drove Bobby to the airport for a flight after his meeting with the chastised “bomb throwers.” Bobby’s anger at them had apparently dissipated, and Seigenthaler could see he was genuinely galled at King’s being imprisoned for a traffic citation. Bobby said, “I can’t understand why … the American Bar Association doesn’t say to this Judge in Georgia … it’s a basic tenet of American jurisprudence that you have to provide bond. This man is not an outlaw or criminal; he’s an American.”
Bobby, as usual, knew more than he was letting on, because he had almost certainly discussed the King situation with his brother several times before he dressed down Martin and Wofford—both before and after JFK’s call to Governor Vandiver that morning. Ever since Wofford’s call to Morris Abram inaugurated the Kennedy campaign’s involvement in the King situation, Bobby and his brother had been working quite effectively to fix this thorny political problem through quiet back channels, and then Wofford, Martin, and Shriver had so clumsily transformed it once again into an unpredictable public relations issue through their unsanctioned intervention.
Nine Days Page 19