The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [298]
Over his political career Jack had learned that it was at times impossible to shake the hands of black and other ethnic leaders in equality when many of them offered nothing but outstretched palms. Louis Martin, the one important black aide in the campaign, said that the way to win the black vote was through his colleagues at black newspapers. “And I know those papers aren’t going to do a damn thing for you unless you pay us some money.”
The most admired figure among the black minority was not the controversial Reverend King but the legendary baseball player Jackie Robinson, and he had already endorsed Nixon. Adam Clayton Powell, the Harlem congressman, was the most powerful political figure in black America, and the second-most-desired endorsement. His golden tongue could be had for a golden price, in this case an offering in the Reverend Powell’s collection plate of $300,000 cash to get out the black vote. Kennedy’s people knew that Powell would take most of that to get out his own vote, and they countered with $50,000 for ten endorsement speeches.
King was a leader of a different kind. He sought a harder currency for speaking positively of Jack’s candidacy. King was a figure with various constituencies to satisfy, and strategies beyond the grasp of almost any of them. He couldn’t afford to squander his moral capital by publicly endorsing Jack. Still, he knew that for his people Kennedy was a far better choice than Nixon. He wanted the minions of youthful protest to lie low during the election campaign, or they might give Nixon the election.
King asked for a meeting with Jack in the South, but Jack turned down that modest request when he learned that the civil rights leader felt that he should offer to meet with Nixon as well. “The hell with that,” Jack told Harris Wofford, a lawyer and campaign aide concerned with civil rights matters. “Nixon might be smart enough to accept. If he does, I lose votes. I’m taking a much greater risk in the South than Nixon, but King wants to treat us as equals. Tell him it’s off.”
King had been looking for a worthy excuse to be out of Atlanta, where the new wave of protests had already begun and his absence was so evident.
Jack’s intransigence led King to do what he did not want to do, to lead where he did not want to lead, and to become the leader he might not have become. He was left with no good excuse to stand apart from his young brethren in protest. On October 19, he joined eighty student protestors asking for service in the segregated Magnolia Room at Rich’s, Atlanta’s premier department store.
That morning the Atlanta police arrested King, and for the first time in his life he spent the night in a jail cell. King refused bail, and the matter threatened to create an embarrassing dilemma for a candidate who was trying to draw southern blacks to his banner while holding on to southern segregationists.
When Jack sought counsel on this matter, he turned to Sarge Shriver and Harris Wofford, who led the campaign’s civil rights efforts. Wofford reflected years later that Jack was not completely comfortable with his two “super idealistic” subordinates. Neither his brother-in-law Shriver, “a radical Catholic,” nor Wofford, who had become an advocate of Gandhian nonviolence in India, were likely to accede easily to the inevitable compromises of politics. Wofford wrote a strong statement for Jack to release in defense of King and condemning his arrest. Jack read the passionate statement with dismay. He had been talking to Ernest Vandiver, the governor of Georgia, politician to politician, and now, a few days before the election, Jack was not about to make such a statement.
“Look, our real interest is getting Martin out, right?” Kennedy