UPDATE: ROMNEY CAMPAIGN SAYS “TOGETHER” MAY MEAN DIFFERENT CITIES, DIFFERENT
DAYS
A spokesperson for Mitt Romney now
tells the Boston Phoenix that George W. Romney and Martin Luther King Jr. marched
together in June, 1963 -- although possibly not on the same day or in the same
city.
Romney, according to one piece of written source
material provided by the campaign, made a “surprise” appearance at a small march in
Grosse Pointe, Michigan, in late June -- several days after
King led a much larger march in Detroit. Romney spokesperson Eric Fehrnstrom
suggests that these two were part of the same “series” of events, co-sponsored
by King and the NAACP, and is thus consistent with Romney’s claim that “I saw my
father march with Martin Luther King.”
“The record is convincing and clear
– George Romney marched with Martin Luther King and other civil rights
demonstrators,” Fehrnstrom wrote in an email.
Fehrnstrom had originally told the
Phoenix that the two men
marched together in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, either in June 1963 or March 1968, a claim the
Phoenix called into
question earlier today. An additional source, William LeFevre of the Reuther
Library at Wayne State University, who is in charge of the papers of the
Grosse Pointe Civil Liberties Association, has since confirmed to the Phoenix that George
Romney was not at the 1968 event, and that King was not at the 1963
event.
Fehrnstrom now says that the event
in question was King’s “Freedom March” in Detroit on June 23,
1963.
He provides one reference, a 1972
book about Detroit, which mentions that Michigan’s then-governor George Romney
“was among the prominent whites marching with Reverend King” in the Freedom
March (which the book erroneously says took place on July
23).
However, numerous contemporaneous
and historical accounts say that Romney did not participate in the Detroit
Freedom March, because it was held on the Sabbath. The New
York
Times, for example, wrote the next day that “Gov. George Romney, who
is Mormon and does not make public appearances on Sundays, issued a special
proclamation.”
The Romney campaign also provided
one account, from a 1987 book about Detroit, that places George Romney at the march
in Grosse Pointe later the same month. A Grosse Pointe historian has told the
Phoenix that Romney
did not participate in that 1963 Grosse Pointe
event.
King did not participate in the
Grosse Pointe event, but Fehrnstrom argues that the King’s Freedom March in
Detroit and the
Grosse Pointe march later that month, were part of the same “series” of marches,
co-sponsored by King and the NAACP.