David Margolick - The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King, Jr. And Robert F. Kennedy

CONTENTS

The unbridled public enthusiasm for RFKs 1968 presidential campaign mirrored that of his brothers eight years earlier.

AUTHORS NOTE

This book is a first for me the first time Ive attempted to write at length about people and events I remember from adolescence. I was sixteen years old in April 1968 when the boy across the hall from me, who awoke to Bob Steeles radio program on WTIC in Hartford every morning, told us the shocking news about Martin Luther King, and then about Robert Kennedy two months later.

Revisiting that time these past months, I realized how little about it I really recalled, in part because it had eluded me to begin with. For different reasons, both Kennedy and King were largely foreign to me.

Like so many others at that time, I considered Kennedy an opportunist I dont think Id have used the word ruthless, though everyone else did riding on the coattails of both Senator Eugene McCarthy and, almost ghoulishly, John F. Kennedy. As horrifying as Robert Kennedys death was, it wasnt novel: wed all been through November 22, 1963, the day that still remains for reasons I dont quite understand the saddest of my life. To me, President Bobby was a hopelessly pale imitation of his brother.

And in my privileged place, Martin Luther King was a remote figure. The day after the March on Washington, my mother pointed out to us the coverage in the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune , noting that by being out of the country wed missed something very important. But King had faded some after that, and become more divisive. I remember telling someone very sententiously how much Id lost respect for him over his opposition to the Vietnam War. Mine were the values of my small, conservative New England hometown. Of why King opposed the war I evidently didnt have a clue.

Studying these two men now only underlined what I have learned about them since how, in their separate but sometimes overlapping ways, they sought to make our country fairer and more inclusive at home and more intelligent abroad. And how irreplaceable each was, and how catastrophic their deaths were. Congressman John Lewis had it right. When these two young men were murdered, something died in all of us, he told me. We were robbed of part of our future.

There is no quick way to master the enormous historical record these two men created, and this book makes no claim of comprehensiveness. It fact, its a bit eccentric: I have gone where I thought something original was to be found, and said. Ive also gone where the material is, and since so much more is available on Robert Kennedy meticulously (though, in some instances, selectively), the Kennedys assembled vast histories of themselves, while the King papers for most of the years in question here remain less easily accessible this has unavoidably tilted the book somewhat in Kennedys direction. Where I felt I had nothing to add, Ive gone light or steered clear altogether.

Im grateful to everyone who helped me try to strip away the myth and the treacle, and illuminate the ways these two remarkable men were and werent connected. Foremost among them are the extraordinary people who knew them both: Ambassadors Andrew Young and William vanden Heuvel, Harry Belafonte, Representative John Lewis, Clarence Jones, Harris Wofford, Peter and Marian Wright Edelman. Im greatly indebted to them all. And to Jerome Smith, the Freedom Rider who confronted Robert Kennedy in 1963.

I want to thank Jules Feiffer, the great cartoonist who first bifurcated Robert Kennedy into the Bobby Twins: Good Bobby and Bad Bobby. Two former Kennedy aides Adam Walinsky and Jeff Greenfield are great repositories of RFK history, insight and lore, and put up good-naturedly with my repeated queries. So did James Tolan, Kennedys longtime advance man. Former attorney general Ramsey Clark reminisced for me from his hospital bed. Victor Navasky, the author of the first great book on Robert Kennedy, was his usual generous self. My thanks as well to historian Douglas Brinkley for writing a characteristically intelligent foreword.

Writing history is humbling: you realize how much you dont know, and how dependent you are on folks who do. Authors, like ordinary people, generally fall into three categories: those who cant be bothered to help; those who help, but only to a point; and those who are unstinting. When Ive been at the other end of this process, Ive probably fallen into the second category. But I aspire to the third, and admire anyone already there.

One person in that hallowed place is the King biographer David Garrow, who repeatedly walked me through the intricate relationship between Martin Luther King and the FBI. Another category of superheroes is those people, authors, and filmmakers who shared from their forthcoming works. In this instance, they include Michael Anderson (who is writing on Lorraine Hansberry); Ellen Meacham and Andy Greenspan (now finishing a book and a documentary, respectively, on Kennedys 1967 visit to the Mississippi delta); and Joan Walsh, who, along with Joy Reid, is making a documentary on the historic week in 1968 when Harry Belafonte hosted The Tonight Show , and had both King and Kennedy on as guests.

Writers are thankful for the great extravagance of filmmakers, who put only a small fraction of what they collect on the screen leaving the rest for us, but only if they are generous enough to do so. That describes Donald Boggs, who shared with me his interviews for Ripple of Hope , his very moving documentary about Robert Kennedys famous speech in Indianapolis.

David Ferriero, the archivist of the United States, helped liberate for me the remarkable, wide-ranging interviews the late Jean Stein did for her book on Robert Kennedys funeral train. I want to thank Karen Adler Abramson and Abigail Malangone of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library whose collection has remarkable materials on both Kennedy and King as well as Stacey Chandler, Michael Desmond, and Laurie Austin there.

As always, the master of the New York Times morgue, Jeffrey Roth, unearthed treasures for me, including the clippings files he very characteristically rescued from the papers Washington bureau en route to the Dumpster. (And then, armed with a shpritzer to protect the crumbling newsprint, he even photocopied them for me.) Also, once Eric Fettmann vouched for me, Laura Harris graciously opened up the precious King and Kennedy files of the New York Post .

In these files were dozens of articles still outside the reach of ProQuest or newspapers.com and therefore almost impossible to find, by Murray Kempton, Jimmy Breslin, Mary McGrory, James Wechsler, and others. If what follows sometimes seems top-heavy with their words rather than mine, it is largely an homage: I want to honor them, and knew I could not top them. Two other journalists, both former colleagues at the New York Times Jack Rosenthal, who worked for Attorney General Kennedy, and Roy Reed, who covered Kings great marches helped me shortly before they died. I feel blessed to have been in touch with them.

My editor, J. M. Rappaport, was literate and judicious. I also want to thank the various researchers and others who helped jump-start this project when there was little time to spare: Andrew Dunn, Kirk Mcleod, Amanda Millner-Fairbanks, Eboni Boykin, and Elizabeth Spock. Cole Margol and Sean McGowan pitched in later. As did Justin Sayles and the team at North Market Street Graphics Lainey Wolfe, Vicky Dawes, Ginny Carroll, Stewart Smith, Madeline Brubaker, and Jess Sappenfield. With his conscientious photo research and captions, Matt Maranian gave this book another dimension. With his elegant design, Henry Sanders helped make it beautiful. So did Nina Wiener, in innumerable ways.