Posted on 05/09/2013 5:41:17 AM PDT by Nextrush
After his late Wednesday release from jail Dr. Martin Luther King was angry. He thought jail time would advance the movement but President Kennedy wanted to defuse any increase in tension. The Kennedy Administration cajoled Birmingham's black leaders to get him out.
MLK had hoped JFK would help the civil rights cause but Kennedy wanted to hold the coalition of northern blacks and liberal whites who with southern segregationist whites had narrowly elected him president in 1960.
King now set an 11am Thursday May 9th deadline for a final deal between white business leaders and black leaders in Birmingham to end the protests.
The sticking point was the bailing out of the 2-thousand plus jailed protestors, many of them children.
Dr. King thought that maybe the federal treasury should be used or perhaps the local white business leaders would be able to put up the funds.
The Kennedy Administration wasn't going to dip into taxpayers funds but with liberal Republican Nelson Rockefeller (a possible presidential opponent in 1964) putting up tens of thousands in bail money the Democrat president decided to pay the difference needed to get all the protestors out of jail.
President Kennedy was on the phone to raise 160-thousand dollars and he got a 40-thousand dollar committment from United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther. The Steelworkers union and the AFL-CIO provided the rest. The money was sent to Birmingham.
The white business leaders were afraid to show their faces or admit an integration deal had been made but Dr. King would be the one to announce it the next day, Friday May 10th.
The GOP-E treats us conservatives who want less government and a balanced budget, no amnesty for illegals and no compromise on the Second Amendment the way JFK treated MLK.
King had his vision but others didn’t share it. Violence came out of the non-violence in the 1960’s with a vengeance driving the cities down towards their present state of moral and or financial bankruptcy.
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