Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  Ray raced out of the rooming house, dropped the rifle in the doorway of a nearby shop, and made a successful getaway. He moved north through the U.S. into Canada and on to London. The FBI, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and Scotland Yard tracked him. After a few months a Scotland Yard detective tapped him on the shoulder and he was soon extradited to Memphis. As with Oswald, there was a good deal of speculation about conspiracy. Ray himself talked of “Raoul,” a shadowy French-Canadian, who allegedly used him for illicit international operations and provided him with money. Raoul never materialized. At the trial Ray changed his plea to guilty and bargained for a 99-year sentence instead of death. He also signed a stipulation of 55 statements of fact. No. 37 read as follows: “That at approximately 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968, defendant fired a shot from the second floor bathroom in the rooming house at 422½ S. Main Street and fatally wounded Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.” Ray thought that George Wallace would be elected President in 1968 and, as a fellow racist, would pardon him.

  The King assassination reverberated around the world with expressions of grief, compassion, and rage, laced with this question: What had brought America to another such calamity? Pope Pius VI expressed his “profound sadness” to the American Catholic hierarchy. There were resolutions of horror in the House of Commons. In Bonn both houses of the West German parliament stood in silent tribute. In Memphis, Mayor Loeb, bowing to public opinion, recognized the sanitationmen’s union and accepted a decent contract.

  At the King funeral in Atlanta on April 9 the Ebenezer Church was packed with celebrities, and 60,000 to 100,000 others listened to the service outdoors. Attorney General Clark, Jacqueline Kennedy, and most of the presidential candidates were present. Humphrey, Kennedy, McCarthy, and Nixon were there. Wallace was not. Neither was President Johnson. He attended a memorial service at the National Cathedral in Washington on April 6. Johnson did not go to Atlanta because both the Secret Service and the FBI thought it too dangerous. He also canceled his scheduled trip to Hawaii and Saigon.

  The black community was enraged. At a meeting of the President with the civil rights leadership on April 5 at the White House, Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Indiana, bitterly attacked racism in American society. The militants, both black and white, who had rejected King’s leadership and detested nonviolence now exploited his death. Stokely Carmichael from Cuba issued a call over Radio Havana for “urban guerilla warfare.” White America, he charged, specifically Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy, had murdered King. “Now … there is no black man who will ask black people not to burn down the cities.” He urged blacks to get their guns and take to the streets. Bernardine Dohrn, a white New Left extremist, who later became a leader of the Weathermen, had done legal work for King on open housing in Chicago. In New York, when she heard of his death, she cried. Then she went home to change into her “riot clothes: pants.” Dohrn and a friend went to Times Square to rip up signs and trash stores. She said this was the moment for “guerilla warfare.”

  In fact, a number of large cities, the FBI, and the army had anticipated serious rioting during the summer of 1968, and accounts of their preparations reached the press in early March. After Watts the Los Angeles Police Department had introduced a general staff plan with personnel, intelligence, operations, and logistics divisions. This included a mobile command post, a communications trailer, helicopters, armored cars, and, most important, a Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT), consisting of four-man groups (a rifleman, a spotter, and two officers with shotguns and handguns) to handle snipers. The LAPD planned more than 30 SWAT groups. It wished it could afford a new $35,000, 20-ton tank-like vehicle which carried 20 men and was equipped with a machine gun, tear-gas launchers, a smokescreen maker, a siren, and chemical fire extinguishers. Chicago, Detroit, Tampa, Washington, Philadelphia, and Newark had less ambitious plans. Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson told Congress that he had seven brigades (16,000 troops) trained for domestic riot duty with special equipment which could be quickly airlifted anywhere in the U.S.

  In 1967 in Detroit and Newark the army had suffered from poor intelligence. To deal with an urban riot, Califano explained, “they have to know where things are. They have to know where the cops are, … where they can incarcerate people, … where water is, … where they can bivouac.” Thus, the Army analyzed the major cities to obtain this information. This was, Califano said, “not directed at Communists and subversives; it was directed at keeping order.”

  On the night of April 4–5 black ghettoes exploded across the nation. Riots broke out in 110 cities and 39 people were killed, most of them black. There were 75,000 soldiers and guardsmen patrolling the streets. Washington took the biggest hit. There were 711 fires, widespread looting, and ten dead, including a white man dragged from his car and stabbed. The President saw the advances made from his speech drain away. “Everything we’ve gained in the last few days,” he said, “we’re going to lose tonight.” There were 14,000 Army, Marine, and National Guard troops, along with 2800 District police officers on the streets. A good number of FBI and Army intelligence agents dressed as priests and nuns were there gathering intelligence.

  Chicago seems to have had the second most serious riot. The night of April 4 was quite calm and schools opened the next day. Absenteeism in ghetto high schools was unusually high and many other students left during the day. Black youths threatened white students and there were several assaults. By noon most high schools in black neighborhoods were closed. White businessmen along West Madison Street shut their stores and went home. That afternoon many shops were damaged, fires were set, and looting began. Vandalism increased on the West Side during the afternoon and the police could not bring it under control. Mayor Daley obtained an executive order from the governor to bring in the National Guard. Madison turned into a sea of fires and snipers. Rioting continued throughout the night. Guard troops were on the streets on April 6, but were unable to cope.

  That evening the mayor and governor asked the President for federal troops. Califano brought the proclamation for signature to him in the living quarters. “Johnson’s eyes were heavy with fatigue, the jaw sagging,” Califano wrote. “Lying on his back in bed, he signaled me to hand him a pen, and signed the papers as he held them up over his head, which he was too exhausted to raise from the pillow.”

  General George Mather commanded both the federalized Illinois Guard and army troops flown in from Fort Hood, Texas, and Fort Carson, Colorado, landing at O’Hare Field and the Glenview Naval Air Station on the morning of April 7. Daley ordered a curfew for persons under 21 from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m. Calm was restored as the troops spread through the city. The schools reopened on Monday, April 8. They were closed Tuesday as a memorial to Dr. King. On Wednesday the mayor declared the emergency over and lifted the curfew. The army began to withdraw. Chicago suffered over $14 million in property losses and about 3000 persons were arrested.

  In the aftermath of the King assassination and the riots, Congress, amazingly, enacted an open housing law, the first such federal statute since Reconstruction. With Johnson’s presidency so deeply wounded, it was both a miracle and an ordeal. The northern Democratic and moderate Republican coalition which had passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965 seemed now in disarray. Dirksen, the pivot in defeating cloture for these laws, strongly opposed fair housing and supported cloture in 1966. As a result of the 1966 elections, the House was more conservative. After the 1967 riots white people in the north had no desire to “reward” black radicals and looters.

  Johnson had proposed open housing as part of an omnibus civil rights bill in 1966. The House had adopted a modified version, but two cloture votes had failed in the Senate because of the housing provision. The President renewed his request in his civil rights message on February 15, 1967. The House passed it handsomely on August 16, but the Senate loomed once again as an insurmountable barrier.

  Enter Clarence M. Mitche
ll, Jr., the longtime lobbyist for the NAACP and presently the legislative representative for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. At the opening of the session no one expected the bill to pass. But Mitchell, according to Congressional Quarterly, “refused to accept this prognosis and continued to prod the Administration and Senate liberals until they promised him another big push.” Many in Congress went along because they wanted to show the black firebrands what moderates like Mitchell and his NAACP boss, Roy Wilkins, could accomplish.

  Debate opened in the Senate on the House bill on January 18, 1968. The big opposition lobby, the National Association of Real Estate Boards, was so convinced that fair housing had no chance that it took a nap. On January 24 the President again urged an omnibus bill—open housing, protection against interference for those exercising their civil rights, enforcement powers for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and reform of jury selection. Only protection of civil rights and jury reform were thought to have any chance.

  On February 6 Walter Mondale, the Minnesota Democrat, and Edward W. Brooke, the black Massachusetts Republican, proposed an amendment to the House bill which would exempt only owner-occupied dwellings which housed no more than four families. It would leave 91 percent of the nation’s housing covered. Sam Ervin, the North Carolina Democrat, immediately announced a filibuster.

  This was Dirksen territory, and, as everyone watched, the old pro rewarded them with another dramatic switch. He urged his colleagues not to look up the speech he made in September 1966 in which he called fair housing unconstitutional. Biology taught that change was always constitutional. “One would be a strange creature indeed in this world of mutation if in the face of reality he did not change his mind.” He was worried about ghetto riots and did not want to “worsen the … restive condition in the United States.” Nor did he want black veterans returning from Vietnam to face discrimination in housing. Perhaps most important, the 1966 elections had added four moderate Republicans to the Senate—Charles Percy of Illinois, Robert Griffin of Michigan, Mark Hatfield of Oregon, and Dirksen’s son-in-law, Howard Baker of Tennessee. Baker was said to have urged the switch so that Republicans could appeal to black voters in the 1968 elections.

  But it took four roll calls to gather two-thirds of the senators present to end cloture. This required a number of Democratic switches, particularly from small states in the West. On March 4, 1968, the fourth vote required 65 in favor. It was exactly that number, 65 to 32.

  As his price for delivering the Republicans for cloture, Dirksen won his own substitute for the Mondale-Brooke amendment. Single-family owner-occupied dwellings sold or rented by the owner rather than by an agent were exempted. This reduced coverage to 80 percent of the nation’s housing. It was adopted 83 to 5. The whole bill passed by a vote of 71 to 20 on March 11.

  The question before the House was whether to accept the Senate version and avoid conference, where the housing provisions would probably have been weakened. Despite pleas from the President, the Rules Committee, in his words, engaged in “fiddling and piddling.” Nixon and Rockefeller, both running for President, joined Johnson in support. On April 9 the Rules Committee reported out the Senate bill. The House went along the next day in a roll call 250 to 172. The President signed it on April 11, 1968.

  The new law prohibited the refusal to sell or rent a dwelling because of the buyer’s or renter’s race, color, religion, or national origin. Brokers and lending institutions were forbidden to discriminate. The sale or rental by a private individual of not more than three houses without use of a broker was exempt from the law.

  But the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was an empty gesture. Enforcement was fatally defective. The Department of Housing and Urban Development could only investigate complaints and must turn cases of probable cause over to the Justice Department. HUD had little stomach for enforcement. There was also a debilitating philosophical disagreement over whether Congress intended only to prohibit racial discrimination or sought more broadly to promote racially integrated communities. The real estate industry—builders, realtors, appraisers, insurance companies, banks, mortgage lenders, sellers, and buyers—systematically defied and undermined the statute with virtual impunity. While there were exceptions, most whites and many blacks seemed to prefer to live racially separated and to send their children to segregated neighborhood schools. As a result, while there was a slight movement towards integration, American cities remained overwhelmingly segregated both in their central areas and in their suburbs.6

  After they watched the President announce his withdrawal on March 31, Larry O’Brien said to his wife, “I have a feeling I won’t get to bed this evening without a couple of phone calls.” A few minutes later Bobby Kennedy was on the line asking O’Brien to manage his campaign.

  Kennedy asked whether he had gotten to him first and O’Brien said he had. Kennedy said, “This is a new ball game. … You have discharged your loyalty. … We’re really going after you. … Will you promise me you’re really going to seriously think about this now?” O’Brien said he would. Humphrey, who was in Mexico, did not reach him until the following morning and he made an almost identical appeal.

  It was a tough call and O’Brien spent a week examining it. He felt badly about leaving the post office before his reorganization plan had been adopted, but felt that he had discharged his obligation to the President. Further, he was the only member of the cabinet with a son in Vietnam and he wanted the war to end.

  As between Kennedy and Humphrey, it was pretty much a toss-up. He later said he had asked himself, “Would you feel comfortable with either one of them being President and the answer was yes.” “With Hubert, the pluses are pretty obvious. He was bright, intelligent, experienced. The minus might be Hubert had been faulted for not being tough enough. On Bobby the reverse.”

  He loved Humphrey and admired him greatly. The men and their wives had spent a lot of time together and had become close friends. But the strongest factor was his relationship with the Kennedy family. It went back to 1951. “My memories of Jack, my great regard for him, fondness for him went into the equation. … We’d been through a great deal and it had a tremendous effect on my life. So the ultimate decision was that I would go with Bobby.”

  The following Saturday O’Brien went to see Humphrey to inform him of the decision. The Vice President was deeply disappointed, though, characteristically, low-key, respectful, and understanding. But he wanted something from O’Brien. No one could predict the course of the campaign and at some point it might become critical for the candidates to communicate with each other. He wanted O’Brien to keep the channel open and hoped that Bobby would accept the arrangement. “So we closed out the meeting with our arms around each other and I pretty much staggered out of there.”

  O’Brien told Kennedy that he was coming on board, which delighted him. He then conveyed Humphrey’s desire to keep communications open. “He accepted it with enthusiasm.” Kennedy added, “I think he’s a terrific guy and there’s no fun in running against a guy like Hubert.”

  O’Brien then went to the President to tender his resignation, which became a long conversation. As it ended, Johnson asked, “Are you going with Bobby?” O’Brien nodded. The President smiled. “I had to feel in his own mind that probably O’Brien, the Kennedy years, what else?” A few minutes after he got to his office Johnson called him to tell him to look at the ticker. “If I missed an adjective describing my regard for you, it’s because of the limit of my vocabulary.”

  Kennedy had spent six tortured months since the fall of 1967 trying to decide whether to seek the nomination. The arguments for doing so were powerful. He hated the war, was convinced that it was tearing the nation apart, and was determined to seek peace. Since Lyndon Johnson stood in the way, he must go. Kennedy had become deeply involved with the under-classes—the crisis of the cities, the misery of the black ghettoes, the dreams of aspiring Chicanes, the difficulties of young people. He was convinced that American democracy could n
ot be fulfilled unless, in Harrington’s phrase, the “other America” was brought into the mainstream. Again, in his view, Johnson blocked the road. The recent Kerner Commission report had so argued, and Johnson, annoyed, had pushed it aside.

  But every politician learned with his mother’s milk that no one in his right mind challenged a sitting President because he always held the winning cards. This is what the knowledgeable people he trusted told him—his brother Teddy, Ted Sorensen, Dick Daley, and many others.

  But in early 1968 two events pushed him into the race—Tet, which promised a prolongation of the war, and McCarthy’s success in New Hampshire, which both exposed LBJ’s weakness and threatened that McCarthy would win without challenge. Like many other experienced politicians, Kennedy thought McCarthy was temperamentally unfit to be President—among other characteristics, unfocussed and lazy. McCarthy did not disagree.

  Thus, on March 15, 1968, in the Senate Caucus Room, where his brother had declared his candidacy, Bobby now made his statement: “I am announcing today my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. I do not run for the Presidency merely to oppose any man but to propose new policies.” With Johnson’s withdrawal 15 days later, it became a three-man race—Humphrey, McCarthy, and Kennedy. Humphrey stayed out of the primaries and went after state delegations. Kennedy had no choice but to battle McCarthy in the few remaining primaries—Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, and the big prize, California.