Dr. Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy's tense 1963 meeting

Throwback Thursday Hobbservation!

"I assume you know you're under very close surveillance…"

Those were the opening remarks that President John F. Kennedy made to Dr. Martin Luther King in June of 1963, just prior to a White House meeting that he convened with civil rights leaders A. Phillip Randolph, Whitney Young, James Farmer, and attended by his brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and Vice President, Lyndon B. Johnson. (Photo below)

As to President Kennedy’s bold initial statement to Dr. King, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Taylor Branch writes, "King said little in reply; he (King) was trying to figure out whether this amazing precaution meant that the president feared that he himself was bugged, or, whether he meant that the surveillance of King extended even into the White House." 

Now, the public aim of the meeting was for the Kennedy administration to ensure the civil rights leaders that the White House would back a push for what would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the private undertone was for Kennedy to pressure King into standing down on his planned March on Washington that was scheduled for that August. A part of Kennedy’s coercion was to reveal the information that then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover provided that suggested that King’s march was to be led by groups"affiliated with Communists”—specifically King aide Bayard Rustin, lawyer Stanley Levison, and Jack O'Dell. Kennedy felt that if the public learned this information, that a filibuster would ensue that defeat any civil rights measure in Congress. 

King initially demurred on Kennedy’s request to sever ties with Levison and O'Dell, but he later conceded the point out of a sincere desire to have the full backing of the administration on legislation that included a public accommodations aspect that most Southern Democrats—and even Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen—decried as "violations of property rights." 

King, however, refused to budge on the planned March on Washington, averring that the march and the congressional back room dealings were "complimentary" and bluntly telling President Kennedy that "it (march) may seem ill timed. Frankly, I have never engaged in a direct-action movement that did not seem ill timed. Some people thought that Birmingham was ill timed." President Kennedy quickly pointed to his brother and replied that among those believing Birmingham to be ill timed "included the attorney general (Bobby Kennedy.)"

Indeed…

As we all know, King’s defiance won out and the March on Washington proceeded as planned on August 28, 1963; President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed by President Lyndon Johnson on July 2, 1964—barely a year after the tense meeting between King and the Kennedys.

Lest we forget…