Race and the election, 48 years after MLK changed the presidential election
Forty-eight years ago this week, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested for participating in a sit-in at an Atlanta department store. After the other protestors had been released, King was kept behind bars. Almost overnight, civil rights and race became key issues in the 1960 presidential election. Senator John F. Kennedy reached out to Coretta Scott King that week to allay fears that her husband would be lynched. JFK’s civil rights advisor and former U.S. Senator Harris Wofford tells The Takeaway how one phone call influenced the outcome of the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy Presidential election and why the story matters now. Guest: Senator Harris Wofford, former U.S. Senator and former civil rights campaign adviser to President John F. Kennedy.
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