Stanley Levison rode the train to Washington for the Kennedy funeral. He came back talking of “a whole city in which no one talked in a normal tone of voice.” People were whispering, moving in slow motion. In all the eerie mass pain he saw only one hopeful turn of emotion: the news commentators were not hysterical, but instead were talking about how much hatred there had been. “A feeling like that covering a country can be more important than anything else,” Levison told his secretary. He called King’s literary agent to say that the Birmingham book must be postponed yet again. “This book
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