King had sent open telegrams to Eisenhower, Nixon, and Attorney General Brownell decrying the violence and beseeching the White House for help. “A state of terror prevails” across the South, he declared. He asked the president to use his “immense moral power” by coming to the South, making a major speech, and condemning these acts of violence. King sent a pointed message to Nixon questioning why, having conducted a “fact-finding” mission to Austria to examine the plight of Hungarian refugees fleeing Soviet repression, he would not also come to the South to examine the repression of American
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