Jackie Kennedy said Martin Luther King was ‘terrible,’ tapes reveal
Jacqueline Kennedy was not a fan of Martin Luther King Jr., according to never-before-released interviews, ABC News reports--and it appears her opinion was shaped by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.
"I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man's terrible," the former first lady revealed in a series of interviews with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in the months following the 1963 assassination of husband John F. Kennedy.
According to tapes of the interviews--which ABC plans to reveal Sept. 13 during a two-hour special--Kennedy's displeasure with the civil rights leader stemmed from information Hoover gleaned from secret wiretaps and revealed to the Kennedy family.
Hoover reportedly told the president that King attempted to arrange a hotel orgy while in town for his now-famous March on Washington and Hoover told Robert F. Kennedy that King insulted JFK's funeral.
"He made fun of Cardinal [Richard] Cushing [who issued Kennedy's eulogy] and said that he was drunk at it. And things about they almost dropped the coffin and--well, I mean Martin Luther King is really a tricky person," Jacqueline Kennedy reportedly said.
Caroline Kennedy told ABC's Diane Sawyer that her mother's comments are evidence of Hoover's "poisonous" activities and that her mother admired the civil rights leader "tremendously."
Historian Michael Beschloss posited to ABC that Hoover was trying to manipulate the Kennedys to turn against King.
Jacqueline Kennedy also reveals in the historic interviews that her husband was incredibly wary of his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson, becoming commander-in-chief.
"He said, 'Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?'" Kennedy quoted her husband saying.
Kennedy said that in the months before the assassination, JFK spoke to his brother about how to prevent Johnson from running to succeed him in the 1968 election.