Stephen Kendrick

Paul Kendrick

The authors of Douglass and Lincoln present fully for the first time the story of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s imprisonment in the days leading up to the 1960 presidential election and the efforts of three of John F. Kennedy’s civil rights staffers who went rogue to free him—a move that changed the face of the Democratic Party and propelled Kennedy to the White House. 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 the time that King’s family most feared for his life. An earlier, minor traffic ticket served as a pretext for keeping King locked up, and later for a harrowing nighttime transfer to Reidsville, the notorious Georgia state prison where Black inmates worked on chain gangs overseen by 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. Stephen and Paul Kendrick’s Nine Days tells the incredible story of what happened next. In 1960, the Civil Rights Movement was growing increasingly inventive and energized while white politicians favored the corrosive tactics of silence and stalling—but an audacious team in the Kennedy campaign’s Civil Rights Section (CRS) decided to act. In an election when Black voters seemed poised to split their votes between the candidates, the CRS convinced Kennedy to agitate for King’s release, sometimes even going behind his back in their quest to secure his freedom. Over the course of nine extraordinary October days, the leaders of the CRS—pioneering Black journalist Louis Martin, future Pennsylvania senator Harris Wofford, and Sargent Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps—worked to tilt a tight election in Kennedy’s favor and bring about a revolution in party affiliation whose consequences are still integral to the practice of politics today. Based on fresh interviews, newspaper accounts, and extensive archival research, Nine Days is the first full recounting of an event that changed the course of one of the closest elections in American history. Much more than a political thriller, it is also the story of the first time King refused bail and came to terms with the dangerous course of his mission to change a nation. At once a story of electoral machinations, moral courage, and, ultimately, the triumph of a future president’s better angels, Nine Day is a gripping tale with important lessons for our own time.

The Race to Save Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life and Win the 1960 Election

Nine Days

Although Abraham Lincoln deeply opposed the institution of slavery, he saw the Civil War at its onset as being Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln had only three meetings, but their exchanges profoundly influenced the course of slavery and the outcome of the Civil War.primarily about preserving the Union. Frederick Douglass, himself a former slave, by contrast saw the War's mission to be the total and permanent abolition of slavery. And yet, these giants of the nineteenth century, despite their different outlooks, found common ground, in large part through their three historic meetings. In elegant prose and with unusual insights, Paul and Stephen Kendrick chronicle the parallel lives of Douglass and Lincoln as a means of presenting a fresh, unique picture of two men who, in their differences, eventually challenged each other to greatness and altered the course of the nation.

How a Revolutionary Black Leader & a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery & Save the Union

Douglass and Lincoln

In 1847, a five-year-old African American girl named Sarah Roberts was forced to walk past five white schools to attend the poor and densely crowded all-black Abiel Smith School on Boston's Beacon Hill. Incensed that his daughter had been turned away at each white school, her father, Benjamin, sued the city of Boston on her behalf. The historic case that followed set the stage for over a century of struggle, culminating in 1954 with the unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America

Sarah's Long Walk

The never-before-told story of the African-American child who started the fight for desegregation in America's public schoolsIn 1847, on windswept Beacon Hill in Boston, a five-year-old girl named Sarah Roberts was forced to walk past five white schools to attend the poor and densely crowded black school. Incensed that his daughter had been turned away at each white school, her father, Benjamin, sued the city of Boston on her behalf. He turned to twenty-four-year-old Robert Morris, the first black attorney ever to win a jury case in America. Together with young Brahmin lawyer Charles Sumner, this legal team forged a powerful argument against school desegregation that has reverberated down through American history, in a direct legal line to Brown v. Board of Education. When the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Sarah Roberts, Chief Justice Shaw created the concept of "separate but equal," an idea that affected every aspect of American life until it was overturned one hundred years later by Thurgood Marshall.Today, few have heard of the Roberts case or of the three thousand free blacks in Boston who fought valiantly and successfully-long before the civil rights movement of the 1960s-to integrate schools, theaters, and railway cars; to legalize interracial marriage; and to form the first black army regiment. Now, Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick tell the inspiring story of the remarkable activist community of which Sarah and her family were a part, bringing to light the human side of this crucial struggle. Sarah's Long Walk recovers stories of black and white Boston, of Beacon Hill in the nineteenth century, and of all the concerned citizens, both white and black, who participated in the early struggles for equal rights. The result is a rich historical tapestry, a fascinating story of the courage and conviction of ordinary people who achieved extraordinary things.

Paul Kendrick

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