New Martin Luther King Jr. tape sheds light on JFK call

NASHVILLE As Americans reflect on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., an audiotape of an interview with the civil rights leader discovered in a Tennessee attic sheds new light on a famous phone call John F. Kennedy made to Kings wife more than 50 years ago.

Historians generally agree that Kennedys phone call to Coretta Scott King expressing concern over her husbands arrest in October 1960 and Robert Kennedys work behind the scenes to get King released helped JFK win the White House a month later.

King himself, while appreciative, wasnt as quick to credit the Kennedys alone with getting him out of jail, according to a previously unreleased portion of the interview with the civil rights leader days after Kennedys election.

The Kennedy family did have some part in the release, King says in the recording, which was discovered in 2012. But I must make it clear that many other forces worked to bring it about also.

A copy of the original recording will be played for visitors at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, for a King Day event on Monday.

King was arrested a few weeks before the presidential election at an Atlanta sit-in. Charges were dropped, but King was held for allegedly violating probation for an earlier traffic offense and transferred to the Georgia State Prison in Reidsville, Georgia.

The Kennedys intervened, and King was released. Their intervention won the support of black voters who helped give Kennedy the winning edge in several key states.

Despite their help, however, King was careful not to give them too much credit.

I think Dr. King was aware in the tape that he probably did more for John F. Kennedy than perhaps John F. Kennedy did for him, said Keya Morgan, a New York-based collector and expert on historical artifacts. Morgan acquired the reel-to-reel audiotape from Chattanooga, Tennessee, resident Stephon Tull, who discovered it while cleaning out his fathers attic.

Raymond Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Marylands Morgan State University, said Kennedys call to Kings wife was political in nature because the Kennedys had been slow to get involved in the civil rights movement.

Follow this link:
New Martin Luther King Jr. tape sheds light on JFK call