Page 60 of Jackie

“But it could be.”

“You want me to do the right thing and lose?” He gives that quick laugh and, for a moment, I let the silence hang. I do what, by then, I’ve learned how to do.

“All right,” he says finally, “what do you think?”

“Kenny thinks of politics as a chess match,” I say. “A winner, a loser, and a strategy of moves you can map out and count on. But not every game is zero sum.”

“In a campaign, only one person wins.”

“But ‘How do I win?’ can’t be the only question you ask.”

“If I help King, I’ll lose the South.”

“And if you win the Black vote?”

That stops him. I knew it would. Then, “That’s not why you’re asking me to do this.”

“No, but that’s why you will.”

Jack

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. The we.

“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.

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