Kennedy’s best qualities remained his alone, untransferable to King, but the reverse was not true. In death, the late President gained credit for much of the purpose that King’s movement had forced upon him in life. No death had ever been like his—Niebuhr called him “an elected monarch.” In a mass purgative of hatred, bigotry, and violence, the martyred President became a symbol of the healing opposites, King’s qualities, which had been much too earnest for the living man. President Johnson told the nation that the most fitting eulogy would be swift passage of his civil rights bill. By this
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