2007.10.14: October 14, 2007: Headlines: Figures: Staff: COS - Ethiopia: Country Directors - Ethiopia: Presidents - Kennedy: Worcester Telegram: Harris Wofford helped win 1960 election for JFK

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Ethiopia: Special Report: Ethiopia Country Director and Senator Harris Wofford: February 9, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: Staffer Harris Wofford : 2007.10.14: October 14, 2007: Headlines: Figures: Staff: COS - Ethiopia: Country Directors - Ethiopia: Presidents - Kennedy: Worcester Telegram: Harris Wofford helped win 1960 election for JFK

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Harris Wofford helped win 1960 election for JFK

Harris Wofford helped win 1960 election for JFK

Fortunately for Kennedy, a young aide named Harris Wofford had the idea that if there was nothing specific the Democratic candidate could do for King, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to at least call Mrs. King to offer his sympathy and moral support. When the idea of phoning Mrs. King was proposed to Kennedy by his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, Kennedy replied, “What the hell. It’s the decent thing to do.” Kennedy made the call, talked for about two minutes, and forgot about it soon after. But King’s family and friends did not forget. King’s father, “Daddy King,” who was one of the most powerful leaders in the black church community, promptly announced that he was switching his vote from Nixon to JFK, and other black leaders, especially black church leaders, followed suit. In addition, sensing a unique opportunity in this black church support, Kennedy’s campaign secretly distributed through a nationwide network of black churches a pamphlet that quoted black leaders praising Kennedy’s courage in phoning Coretta King. The goal was to influence the black vote — especially in the North — without alerting, and thereby jeopardizing, the mainstream white vote — especially in the South. Did it work? In 1956 Eisenhower and Nixon got 60 percent of the black vote. In 1960 Kennedy, without losing significant Southern support, got 70 percent of the black vote, a switch that more than accounted for his victory margins in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey. Those states totaled 95 electoral votes. Kennedy beat Nixon by 84 electoral votes. Former Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania, was the Country Director of Ethiopia.

Harris Wofford helped win 1960 election for JFK

JFK’s critical call

HISTORY LESSONS

By Bruce G. Kauffmann
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Forty-three years on the planet and the only black man John F. Kennedy had ever spent any time with was his valet. Yet the two-minute phone call he made this week (Oct. 20) in 1960 to Coretta King, the wife of America’s most important black leader, Martin Luther King Jr., probably made Kennedy, and not Richard Nixon, president.

It all started when, in the middle of the 1960 presidential campaign, King was put in a hard-time Georgia prison on a trumped-up charge related to an old traffic violation. Worried about King’s safety, members of his entourage implored both the Kennedy and Nixon presidential campaigns to intervene with Georgia political leaders on King’s behalf.

For both candidates, such intervention posed a political risk, not only because it could cost them the South, which was still segregated and significantly racist, but also because — and this is not usually remembered — in those days blacks traditionally voted Republican. Thus Nixon’s camp declined to help, seeing little to gain (the black vote was already theirs) but plenty to lose by aiding the controversial civil rights leader. Ditto Kennedy’s camp. Why jeopardize Southern votes to help a member of an ethnic group that habitually supported the other party?


Fortunately for Kennedy, a young aide named Harris Wofford had the idea that if there was nothing specific the Democratic candidate could do for King, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to at least call Mrs. King to offer his sympathy and moral support. When the idea of phoning Mrs. King was proposed to Kennedy by his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, Kennedy replied, “What the hell. It’s the decent thing to do.” Kennedy made the call, talked for about two minutes, and forgot about it soon after. But King’s family and friends did not forget. King’s father, “Daddy King,” who was one of the most powerful leaders in the black church community, promptly announced that he was switching his vote from Nixon to JFK, and other black leaders, especially black church leaders, followed suit. In addition, sensing a unique opportunity in this black church support, Kennedy’s campaign secretly distributed through a nationwide network of black churches a pamphlet that quoted black leaders praising Kennedy’s courage in phoning Coretta King. The goal was to influence the black vote — especially in the North — without alerting, and thereby jeopardizing, the mainstream white vote — especially in the South.

Did it work? In 1956 Eisenhower and Nixon got 60 percent of the black vote. In 1960 Kennedy, without losing significant Southern support, got 70 percent of the black vote, a switch that more than accounted for his victory margins in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey. Those states totaled 95 electoral votes. Kennedy beat Nixon by 84 electoral votes.




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Headlines: October, 2007; Staff Member Harris Wofford; Figures; Staff; Peace Corps Ethiopia; Directory of Ethiopia RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Ethiopia RPCVs; Country Directors - Ethiopia; Presidents - Kennedy





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Story Source: Worcester Telegram

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; Staff; COS - Ethiopia; Country Directors - Ethiopia; Presidents - Kennedy

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