By Kevin McDermott
03.31.2010
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. A set of newly released audio tapes this week
from President Lyndon Johnson's White House, from early April 1968,
lets listeners in on some tense conversations with various other
public officials around the country as riots spread in the days after
the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The tapes (and transcripts) were posted Tuesday by the Miller Center
for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Especially telling
are three conversations between Johnson and then-Chicago Mayor
Richard J. Daley, (late father of the current Mayor Richard M. Daley).
The tapes may shake the old assumptions that JFK, Johnson and other
top national Democrats quaked before the elder kingmaker Daley in the 1960s.
In fact, Johnson chides Daley in the tapes for what Johnson clearly
thought was the mayor's failure to act quickly and forcefully enough
when the rioting started.
In the conversations, Daley has called Johnson to ask that federal
troops be sent to Chicago to quell rioting in the aftermath of King's
assassination:
Richard Daley: Mr. President?
President Johnson: Yes, Dick?
Daley: We're in trouble. We need some help.
President Johnson: Yes. I was afraid of that.
Daley: Yes. It's starting to break down in different places.
President Johnson: Yeah.
Later in the same conversation, Johnson explains to Daley how to
formally ask for federal troops. What doesn't come through in the
written transcripts, but clear as day in the sound of Johnson's
voice, is how aggravated he is with Daley for having waiting as long
as he did to request federal troops. (Johnson couldn't send them in
without a formal request from local leaders.)
"Now, Mayor, if you want my judgment what's wrong," Johnson tells
Daley in another, later conversation, "it's wrong with your not asking for it."
"I see," says Daley. Which isn't the kind of meek response he was
publicly known for.
Johnson ultimately sent in about 5,000 federal troops, after telling
Daley that the 3,000 he initially asked for wouldn't be enough. In
the end, Chicago saw 11 deaths, more than 2,000 arrests and millions
worth of destruction in the King riots.
Later that year, Chicago hosted the Democratic National Convention,
which erupted in anti-war demonstrationswhich Daley put down with
what critics at the time said was an over-use of force.
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