The Worst Week

Just below, in the motel courtyard, two King aides, Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, were talking and joking with a local musician, Ben Branch. Dr. King emerged on the balcony and Jackson called up to him: "Doc, you remember Ben Branch?" King greeted the Memphis saxophonist and song leader. "Ben, make sure to play 'Precious Lord, Take My Hand,' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

"OK, Doc, I will," replied Branch, just before a single round from Ray's hunting rifle tore a three-inch hole in King's face.

If Martin Luther King was the black man who had done the most for the cause of civil rights in America, then Robert Kennedy was the white man. King had carried the cause with passion and vision and even ecstasy, while Kennedy was far more guarded and grudging, at least at first. But Kennedy was experiential, and the more he saw of discrimination and its cruel impact as he toured the South in the 1960s, the more he was moved and galled into action. It was Robert Kennedy, more than anyone, who pressed his brother, President John F. Kennedy, to introduce what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legal racial discrimination in the nation.

King and Kennedy should have been natural allies, brothers in the cause, but they were not. Kennedy was irritated at King for riling up the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover by not getting rid of an accused communist spy in his ranks (Stanley Levison, falsely accused). Kennedy would later deeply regret the FBI wiretaps he authorized against King. Then there was a matter of style. King was a Prince of the Church, and regarded Kennedy as fellow royalty. He spoke to him in a grave, dignified manner that Kennedy found unctuous and cloying. When King warned of physical danger to himself and his followers, Kennedy faulted him for not showing the sort of tough-guy insouciance that Kennedy himself would have shown (or wanted to show) in times of danger. In truth, King had a rollicking sense of humor, but Kennedy never saw it.

Still, Kennedy wanted King's political support, and he was on the verge of getting it. King was preparing to endorse Kennedy for president. Kennedy's reaction to King's assassination was a mixture of shock, disappointment, bitter memory of his own brother's death and revelation about the meaning of tragedy.

It was a New York Times reporter, R. W. (Johnny) Apple, who first told RFK King had been shot. He delivered the news to the candidate as the campaign plane was preparing to fly from Muncie to Indianapolis, Ind., where Kennedy was contending in his first primary. Kennedy "sagged," recalled Apple. "His eyes went blank." Arriving in Indianapolis, they learned that King was dead. Kennedy seemed to "shrink back," remembered NEWSWEEK reporter John J. Lindsay, "as though struck physically." He put his hands to his face. "Oh God," he said, "when is this violence going to stop?"