Listening In

by Ted Widmer

  Martin Luther King is coming back, I guess he is probably in Birmingham at the present time. He is going to have a rally or meeting at five in which he is going to ask all the Negroes to go back home and stay home tonight and stay off the streets, and that violence has no role to play in this. And that they should pray for what they did last night, causing disorder. He’ll have some effect on those that attend, the rest, it’s questionable. On the other side, they’ve got, I suppose, six or seven hundred policemen now, with the ones that they’ve deputized, the ones the governor sent in, the police that are there anyway in the sheriff’s office. So they’re going to have the city pretty well patrolled. They’re going to be careful, be on top of the situation.

  On the other side, the Negroes who are tough and mean and have guns, who have been bitter for a long period of time, who are worked up about this, and figure one of the best services they can perform is to shoot some of them. So if you have an incident, and the incident, another bombing for instance, or something like that, or a fire, and it attracted large numbers of Negroes, the situation might very well get out of hand. The sheriff’s office said that he thought that if they had the same kind of situation as last night, that they probably wouldn’t be able to control them because of the feeling of the policemen, etc.

  Now we have, as far as sending the troops in, we discussed it for a long period of time, and of course there are the obvious drawbacks. We don’t have the clear-cut situation that we’ve had in the other situations where we sent either marshals or troops in. We don’t have the situation getting completely out of hand as it did in Montgomery a year ago with the Freedom Riders. In addition to protecting the riders traveling through the state, and then you sent your personal emissary down, John Siegenthaler,5 and then he was beaten, after the governor had given you assurances he would maintain law and order. We had an excuse, really, sending marshals in at that time. We had certainly as far as Oxford.

  We don’t have the same kind of situation at the present time. The governor has indicated publicly that he is going to maintain law and order. The group that has gotten out of hand has not been the white people, it’s been the Negroes, by and large. So to work up a proclamation, which you’d give us, the basis of which to send troops in, at this time, is far more difficult. The argument for sending troops in and taking some forceful action is what’s going to happen in the future. You’re going to have these kinds of incidents, the governor has virtually taken over the city. You’re going to have his people around sticking bayonets in people, and hitting people with clubs and guns, et cetera. You’re going to have rallies all over the country calling upon the President to take some forceful action, and why aren’t you protecting the rights of the people in Birmingham? And we feel that based on the success that they had in Birmingham, and the feeling of the Negroes generally, and the reports that we get from other cities, not just in the South, but this could trigger off a good deal of violence around the country now. The Negroes saying that they have been abused for all these years, and they are going to have to start following the ideas of the Black Muslims, not go along with the white people.

  If they feel, on the other hand, that the federal government is their friend, and is intervening for them, is going to work for them, this could head some of that off. I think that’s the strongest argument for doing something, the fact that we’re going to have more difficulties down in Birmingham. It won’t perhaps be as clear-cut, as it is at the present time, about sending somebody in, because they’re going to be smaller incidents, and perhaps be more difficult to hang our hat as to why we should send it in.

  Now, I do want to suggest an alternative or a possibility. What we could perhaps do in this case. It’s got some disadvantages and some advantages. It’s sort of a halfway step, of landing these three or four hundred troops in Birmingham, and just saying that they are going to stand by. Put a statement out by you that you’re greatly concerned—maintenance of law and order, the rights of people, et cetera. That these troops will stay in Birmingham and we’ll make a determination as time goes by as to whether they should be used, and whether you’re going to issue a proclamation to move them into the city. The second alternative to that would be to move them to Fort McClellan.

  UNIDENTIFIED: About thirty miles away.

  RFK: Thirty miles away. And have it get out that you sent four or five hundred troops in there, and that perhaps that more will go in tomorrow morning.

  JFK: The problem really isn’t the maintenance of law and order, as you said, is it, because it might be that if we send the troops into Birmingham or McClellan, there would be no disturbances, because there was sort of a repression of the city.

  RFK: That’s right.

  JFK: Then they might tear up that paper agreement they made. Therefore, you’d have the Negroes knocked out again without getting the agreement, and then we wouldn’t have any reason to go in there.

  RFK: The committee that made the agreement, that backed up the agreement, is meeting right now. And it’s going to be suggested to them by one of their leaders that they make their names public. To say that they made this agreement and that they come out publicly for it. Maintenance of law and order, and say that we are going to live up to it. So let it be spread throughout the city. Now these are the people that really control Birmingham—the wealthy, the important.

  JFK: They’ve been able to keep that agreement quiet, I don’t know how.

  RFK: The names, you mean? Yeah.

  JFK: Yeah. What is King? I mean, King has said that we should issue a statement.

  RFK: Now as part of sending the troops in to some other place. The preference would be, the first thing we’d do, we’d announce that Burke Marshall6 is going back. The second thing is probably you would get out that you already have a general in Birmingham. And that’s already landed there, and that’s making this available. And that Burke Marshall is going back, and that you are watching the situation. And the third step is the fact that you are sending these troops in, and they’ll be landing in another hour and some more will come in tonight. And then …

  JFK: Let’s see, under that strategy, I would issue some sort of statement from here which would be asking the Negroes to stay off the streets, and so on, and then asking the agreement7 which was made be implemented, and so … Then Burke Marshall will be going back, then we put the troops in at the airport. How far is the airport?

  UNIDENTIFIED: It’s five miles from the center of town, Mr. President.

  JFK: The general, let’s say you began to have trouble during the evening. Once we announce that the troops had arrived, the governor would probably issue a statement saying that he had complete …

  RFK: Well, then, I think you’d probably have to nationalize the Guard, too. So he8 doesn’t take over the Guard.

  JFK: He would announce that he has control of the city. So it really is just a question, we have to have two things. First, we have to have law and order, and therefore the Negroes not to be running around the city. And then secondly, we have to get this arrangement working. We can’t just have the Negroes not running around the city, and then have the agreement blow up because … if the agreement blows up, the other remedy we have under that condition then is to send legislation up to the Congress this week as our response to that action happening. Say there’s this case, unless there’s a means of getting relief, we have to provide legislation. We may have to do that anyways, but at least that would be our public response to the, if that agreement blows up.

  BURKE MARSHALL: If that agreement blows up, the Negroes will be …

  JFK: Uncontrollable.

  MARSHALL: And I think not only in Birmingham.

  JFK: The only thing is, supposing we put our troops in there and then these whites then say, “Well, now we are going to withdraw from the agreement.” Or do you think they would?

  MARSHALL: I can’t tell what they’d do. I think, Mr. President, the governor and the outgoing city government are doing everything they can
to make that agreement blow up, the basic reason the situation is so difficult. I shouldn’t wonder but what these highway patrol are deliberately being awfully tough to provoke incidents, on the theory that the more incidents they can provoke, the more [unclear] in the city and the more scared everyone gets, including the white businessmen.

  JFK: Do we have any idea what the white businessmen would think if we put troops in there?

  UNIDENTIFIED: They would not like it.

  JFK: They wouldn’t like it?

  MARSHALL: No. I’m quite sure.

  JFK: You haven’t talked to any of them today, have you?

  MARSHALL: No. You see, their whole desire is to prevent that. They want Birmingham to look like Atlanta, and they want it to solve its own problems. So their desire is to prevent that. So they wouldn’t like that. And they might rather have that than have a racial war down there, but those are the alternatives, and they understand them clearly as they did last week. They made concessions to the Negroes because they’d rather make concessions than have a great deal of racial disturbances. So again, if the alternatives were clear to them, maybe they wouldn’t mind. But the immediate reaction of sending troops in there would be very bad, I’m sure. As the attorney general says, I think in the case of Montgomery, in the case of Oxford, a great many people in the South who are white really thought we had to do what we did. And I don’t think a great many white people in the South would think we’d have to send troops into Birmingham.

  JFK: One of the reasons is because none of the papers, you have morning and noon, the timing is different. You have morning and afternoon papers. One of the casualties [?] is, this has a lot of Oxford in it, doesn’t it?

  MARSHALL: Yes, it does, but it’s different, because there we had a white mob against a Negro. Here we have a Negro mob.

  JFK: Well, except, that’s why one of [the] things would be to control the Negro mob. That’s one of our purposes. That’s the only purpose, what we’ve got is twofold—to provide an atmosphere in which this agreement can be carried out, and in the meanwhile to prevent the Negroes from rioting, and therefore prevent the whites from reacting against it. That’s our purpose. The question really would be, what would be the thing about landing the troops at the airfield, outside, without going in?

  GENERAL EARLE WHEELER:9 Mr. President, there’s one other alternative, you could keep the troops in the air for a period of time. As a matter of fact, we could organize to keep troops constantly in the air if we had to. [unclear] They’ve got about seven hours of flying time, flying from Bragg, they have go, three hours down and three hours up, and they’d have to go and refuel, the turnaround time there is … We could organize to have a couple hundred troops in the air, on call in effect, an hour from downtown Birmingham.

  MARSHALL: I think the knowledge that the troops were sort of available, or were being moved in order to be available, might have a calming effect on Negroes.

  WHEELER: You got a couple of possibilities here. I’ve got 300 and, about 350 troops. [unclear] Which is an army helicopter … we could move to Fort McClellan, which is about thirty miles away, this is in Anniston. Now the airfield there is not very good, but we can get them in, about an hour after we get to work. They would be thirty miles away by road, Mr. President, from Birmingham. The troops that are moving from Fort Bragg in the C123s and the C130s, we could dispose of in two places. We could put Farnham into Maxwell Air Force Base, which is in Alabama. The rest of them we could put into Seward Air Force Base, which is near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Now the flying time is much shorter, from both Maxwell, and from …

  JFK: What we want to get out of Martin King is … How freely do you talk to King?

  MARSHALL: I talk to him freely. I’ll tell you what he intends to do, Mr. President. He intends to go to this church and call upon his people to [unclear] the attorney general said. And then tomorrow, he intends to go around the city and visit pool halls and saloons and talk to the Negroes and preach against violence. Those are his intentions.

  JFK: Now, what has he, he’s issued a statement calling upon me to make a statement. But what our problem is here, we can make this statement, but if there’s going to be violence tonight, that is obviously what Governor Wallace wants. We don’t want to, we don’t like to put troops in there because then we think it is going to be more difficult for a success to be made of this agreement. But we will if there’s going to be violence tonight. Now, what is his judgment about that?

  MARSHALL: Well, now, do you want to get into a discussion I had about that?

  [several people talking]

  RFK: He might say that we are talking to him about it.

  MARSHALL: I haven’t done that, sir.

  JFK: Well, I think you ought to look like you’re talking just on your own, without saying we’re considering it then. What our problem is, is to try to make a judgment on whether the Negro community is going to be out in the street tonight. If it is, then we are going to have to put troops in there, because they’re either going to get beaten up or they’re going to beat someone up. Maybe he can’t tell us that. The other thing, he wants me to make a statement. I don’t know what a statement … He said that “he hopes would not jeopardize these bombings, et cetera.” Now there’s one other thing where he’s asked me to make a statement, “said today the new outbursts would make it mandatory to take a forthright stand against the indignities as to …”

  RFK: I think you can make a statement, because, I mean, you can say about the fact that these two places have been bombed. His brother’s house was bombed.

  JFK: Yeah.

  RFK: And the motel was bombed.

  JFK: We’d also urge the Negroes to …

  RFK: I mean, you can make a pretty strong statement at this time.

  MEETING ABOUT BIRMINGHAM, MAY 21, 1963

  Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had been leading the Kennedy administration’s response to the violence in Birmingham, and as this recording makes clear, he felt a rising indignation. He launches the meeting with what is in effect a long soliloquy, including not simply a denunciation of violence against African-Americans, but the larger problem—that decent jobs are unavailable to them, including those they might expect from the federal government. He does not mention Martin Luther King, Jr., for some time, which only increases the perceived influence of this other powerful actor on the stage. Then, near the end of these remarks, King is finally named. He is clearly now seen as an ally, and a much-needed force for restraint. Simultaneously, the Kennedy administration was preparing a Civil Rights Bill. Birmingham was a watershed.

  RFK: … to come out for some accommodation with the Negroes were as against him10 coming back, and we were against him coming back. And we tried to prevail upon him to wait until Boutwell11 had been able to take over the administration of the city, and put in the reforms that he indicated that he would do. So we were not successful. He came back and, as I say, did not have the support of the Negro community, and he sought a license to parade and to put on a demonstration, and Bull Connor refused. So he went out and got eight or ten people, and they were all arrested.

  And then when they were arrested, that got a little bit more publicity, although the papers had arranged between them that they would never put this on the front page, and that they would play it down. Television played it up, and it got around the Negro community. So then he started to get more and more support as more and more of his people were arrested. Then he got himself arrested on Good Friday, so that he stays in jail over Easter Sunday, and then of course he got everybody around the Negro community, and then he came out. And he started having larger and larger demonstrations, and as more and more people were arrested, the Negro community, the local Negro community, felt that they couldn’t let him do all these things by himself, ’cause they didn’t have the support. So they started to support him.

  And then the NAACP, which had been strongly against him going in there and having these demonstrations, they started to feel that they
had to support him, because they were losing everything to him. And so finally you start getting more and more people who come his way. And then he hit upon the idea of having children come out, and that’s when the thousands of people started to gather. He got these large groups of people out, Friday or Saturday, about two and a half weeks ago. And there was then, of course, with all those children and all those people, there was great danger.

  The problem at that time was that the white people and the Negro people weren’t talking to one another. Many in the Negro leadership didn’t know what they were demonstrating about. They didn’t know whether they were demonstrating to get rid of Bull Connor, or whether they were demonstrating about the stores, or whether they were demonstrating against the city government. Ninety percent of the people who were demonstrating certainly didn’t know what they were demonstrating about, and none of the white community knew what they were demonstrating about. None of the white community would get near the Negro community at that juncture, because they felt that they were being disorderly, and so nobody was talking to anybody. And you had all these demonstrations, which were getting larger and larger.

  So then the President sent Burke Marshall down … [to] Birmingham to see if something could be done about getting people together. First, he went to the Negro community to find out what they wanted. And that was difficult, because a lot of them didn’t know what they wanted. And finally, through efforts with Martin Luther King, found out what they wanted, which [unclear] to desegregate the lunch counters, which was to take the signs off the toilets and the drinking fountains, to have a better hiring system in Birmingham in the department stores, and to hire at least one clerk in one of the stores.