Archive - August 4, 2017

I have been reading a massive book by Steven Levingston entitled Kennedy and King: The President, The Pastor, and the Battle Over Civil Rights. Levingston is the nonfiction editor of the Washington Post. My primary interest, of course, is what he had to say about Harris Wofford and Sargent Shriver and their role in the famous phone call to Coretta King after her husband had been jailed in Georgia during the 1960 presidential campaign. Levingston details all the events (political and otherwise) that led to JFK’s spontaneous call to Coretta from his hotel room at the O’Hara Airport. Years ago, back in 1980, Farrar Straus Giroux would publish Wofford’s own book entitled Of Kennedys & Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties that also detailed the events surrounding the famous phone call. It was first thought by the political insiders that the ‘call’ would cost Kennedy the election. As Levingston writes, “King’s . . .