The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [299]
The Kennedys were not the only politicians worried that the political sky was falling. William Hartsfield, the mayor of Atlanta, deplored the dismal publicity his progressive city was receiving. He went ahead and arranged to have King and the other activists released and the charges against them dropped, an action he was taking, he said, only because Senator Kennedy had implored him to do so. Wofford had done all the imploring, and the Kennedy campaign staff backed away from the matter as best they could, lest they end up freeing King but losing the solid South.
That would have been the end of it, but just as King was to leave Fulton County Jail, Judge Oscar Mitchell in Georgia’s De Kalb County had him arrested again on a bench warrant for violating his parole on a traffic violation and carried away in leg irons. On the following day, less than a week before the election, the judge sentenced King to six months at hard labor. The judge had hardly banged his gavel a last time before King was taken to Georgia’s toughest prison at Reidsville to begin to serve out his term.
Early on the morning that King arrived at Reidsville, Jack called Governor Vandiver. “Governor, is there any way that you think you could get Martin Luther King out of jail?” Jack asked. The two men had a perfect commonality of interests. They both wanted to end the relentless publicity about King’s imprisonment and focus on other matters. They both wanted to win the election. They both wanted to minimize the civil rights issue in the campaign. And they both wanted to keep their role in this matter as quiet as possible. The governor made no public statements but called a close friend, Georgia Secretary of State George D. Stewart, who in turn called his close friend Judge Mitchell, who in the end arranged to release King on bond.
While this was going on in Georgia, Jack had just finished speaking at a breakfast in Chicago and was in a suite at O’Hare Airport, where the candidate’s plane would soon be taking off. Wofford had talked to Mrs. King and knew that she was terrified after her husband’s midnight ride to a new prison. Wofford called Shriver. “The trouble with your beautiful, passionate Kennedys is that they never show their passion,” Wofford said, imploring Shriver to get Jack to call Mrs. King. “They don’t understand symbolic action.”
“It’s not too late,” said the terminally optimistic Shriver. “Jack doesn’t leave O’Hare for about forty minutes. Give me her number and get me out of jail if I’m arrested for speeding.”
Shriver sped to the airport and rushed into Jack’s bedroom, where he had retreated to get a few minutes rest. He made sure that he was alone, so he would not hear the other aides nay-saying his proposal.
“Why don’t you telephone Mrs. King and give her your sympathy,” Shriver said. “Negroes don’t expect everything will change tomorrow, no matter who’s elected. But they do want to know whether you care. You will reach their hearts and give support to a pregnant woman who is afraid her husband will be killed.”
Jack knew how close Wofford and Shriver were, how fervent their concerns, and he was not about to tell his brother-in-law that he had already called the Georgia governor and hoped that King might be out of prison in a few hours. He trusted Shriver only so far, for he was an ideologue committed to this issue. Instead of confiding in his brother-in-law, he listened, as if he were hearing this matter for the first time this day. “What the hell,” he said, as if he were acting impulsively. “That’s a decent thing to do. Why not? Get her on the phone.”
Jack talked to Coretta Scott King, a call that in other circumstances would have been considered little more than a minimal act of decency. When Bobby heard of the action, he was infuriated. “You bomb-throwers have lost the whole campaign,” he told Wofford and Louis Martin. He warned them to issue no more statements. When Bobby was at his angriest,