Jan 19
"Nine Days: The Race to Save MLK's Life and Win the 1960 Election" Book Talk w/ Paul Kendrick
Less than three weeks before the 1960 presidential election, thirty-one-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a sit-in at Rich’s Department Store in Atlanta. That day would lead to the first night King had ever spent in jail and would end in his terrifying transfer to Reidsville, Georgia state prison notorious for Black chain gangs and violent white guards. While King’s imprisonment was decried as a moral scandal in some quarters and celebrated in others, for the two presidential candidates–John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon–it was the ultimate October surprise: an emerging and controversial civil rights leader was languishing behind bars, and the two campaigns raced to decide whether, and how, to respond. Hear author Paul Kendrick tell the incredible story of what happened next in this virtual Book Talk sponsored by OIL.