Chapter 26
He’ll remember that exchange with her, word for word, the tone in her voice, a few days later, early Wednesday morning, the twenty-sixth of October, when he calls Ernest Vandiver at the governor’s mansion in Atlanta. News of King’s arrest has spread. A landslide of petitions have come from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and twenty other civil-rights groups. Eisenhower has done nothing, said nothing. Only silence from the Nixon camp.
The phone rings twice before Vandiver, half-asleep, picks up.
“Governor, this is Senator Kennedy calling. Is there any way you can get Martin Luther King out of jail? It would be of tremendous benefit to me.”
A pause, then Vandiver says, “I don’t know if we can get him released or not.”
Careful words. Noncommittal. Thewe.
“Would you try and see what you can do and call me back?”
That afternoon, Sargent Shriver comes into his hotel room and tells him that King, shackled and handcuffed, was driven to the state prison in Reidsville.
“We’re thinking you should call Coretta King,” says Sarge. “Convey to her that you think what’s happened is wrong and you’ll do what you can.”
Jack thinks of her. Not King’s wife but his own. What Sarge is suggesting and what she said.
“You know, that’s a pretty good idea,” he says. “How do I get to her?”
An hour later, on a plane to Detroit, Jack mentions to his press secretary that he made a phone call to King’s wife. Pierre Salinger just stares at him.
“I’ve got to call Bobby,” Salinger says. “Three Southern governors said that if you supported Hoffa, Khrushchev, or King, they’d throw their states to Nixon.”
“We’ll see.”
The following morning, they learn King will be released on a two-thousand-dollar bond. That afternoon, King walks out of his cell into the open sky and steps onto a plane at DeKalb–Peachtree Airport to fly home. Thronged by the press, he’ll make a brief statement, acknowledging his debt to Senator Kennedy, who supported his release, underscoring his courage and principles. King will add that Eisenhower did nothing, and neither did Nixon.
Bobby fumes, tracking pollsters by the hour. They’ve learned to hide under their desks when he calls.
“Like the rest of us,” Jack says.
“When the press comes at you,” says Bobby, “what are you going to say?”
“That I called Mrs. King because it was the right thing to do.”
“That’ll look like grandstanding.”
“Even if I win, there’ll be consequences for that call. They’ll expect a lot from me.”
“And if you lose?”
“I’ll go write another book.”
When Pierre Salinger hands him a copy ofThe Chicago Defender with the photo of King reunited with his family, it’s the daughter who catches his eye. About six, in a pale dress, black patent-leather shoes, white socks, a cardigan sweater, small bows in her hair. She stands by her mother’s elbow, that shining wonder in her face, a little girl staring up at her father like she can’t quite believe he’s returned to her.
Over the next few days, the press tweaks the story of that phone call to Coretta King, adding more raw emotion, more humanity, softer phrases, words he never used.
“You said that to her, Jack?” Salinger says.
“Can you imagine me saying that?”
“Seems to be working. Even theTimes reported today, Kennedy gaining strength in Southern states once meant for Nixon…”
“And the Southern whites?”
“Jury’s still out,” says Salinger.
“That jury’s always out.”
“I like to think the jury will see things your way on November eighth.”
He shakes his head. “That’s the day that, if I win, they’ll start to love me less.”
The final two weeks of the campaign.
Tuesday: Philadelphia to Los Angeles.
Wednesday: San Francisco.
Thursday: Phoenix, New Mexico, Oklahoma.
Friday: Virginia, then a torchlight parade in Chicago, where 1.5million turn out for a rally at the stadium. Mayor Richard Daley introduces him as “the Irish Prince.”
The following night, the plane touches down long after midnight in Bridgeport, Connecticut. From the airport, the motorcade snakes through the Naugatuck Valley, headlights brushing the stubbled green of trees. For twenty-five miles through town after town, crowds flank the route—lanterns, flashlights, flares. Hands wave, faces lit, nightgowns, pajamas, and slippers under winter coats. They’ve tumbled from their beds to line the road. Thousands. They chant. The cold dark is filled with his name.