April 1969: Speechwriter Warns Nixon Not to Visit Martin Luther King’s Widow; Calls King ‘Divisive’ and ‘a Fraud’

Pat Buchanan, June 1969. [Source: Bettmann / Corbis]President Nixon’s speechwriter, Pat Buchanan, writes a memo urging Nixon not to visit “the Widow King”—his term for civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.‘s wife Coretta Scott King—on the first anniversary of her husband’s assassination. Buchanan writes that a visit would “outrage many, many people who believe Dr. King was a fraud and a demagogue and perhaps worse.… Others consider him the Devil incarnate. Dr. King is one of the most divisive men in contemporary history.” The memo will be publicly revealed in the 1980s. [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 2/26/1996]