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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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Session:         Page of 763

Q:

In other words was he somewhat deficient in his grasp of practical politics generally?

Clark:

Yes. Like most of us. You know, he never got over (or maybe it was I who never got over) the fact that when Martin went to Chicago for the first time and organized that march, at his side was Daley, walking down with him. Not the cattle prods.

Q:

Are you talking about the march that occurred during an NAACP convention in Chicago?

Clark:

I don't know what it was in relation to. But that's when he announced that he wanted to deal with the problems of race and inequities in northern urban centers. Why he selected Chicago as his pre-test area I don't know. But he was confronted--before Cicero--with Daley being a marching ally. However it didn't affect a damn thing on the South Side.

Q:

Did Martin Luther King ever talk to you about his age--especially relative to how he was a highly visible symbol, yet he was only in his middle thirties?

Clark:

No we never talked about things that personal. What we did talk about that came closest to that was the J. Edgar Hoover blackmail apporach. Martin was attracted--two things; women were attracted to him, I guess because of his person, his celebrity. And





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