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REAGAN'S DOUBTS ON DR. KING DISCLOSED [1]
['Francis X. Clines']
Date: 1983-10-22
Since leaving office in 1979 after six years as Governor, Mr. Thomson, a conservative Republican and member of the John Birch Society, has continued to press conservative causes. Mr. Thomson said he urged the veto because he considered Dr. King, the civil rights leader assassinated in 1968, to be ''a man of immoral character'' whose associations with communists were ''well established.''
Mr. Reagan replied: ''On the national holiday you mentioned, I have the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. Indeed to them, the perception is reality. We hope some modifications might still take place in Congress.''
The President had endorsed a day of national recognition for Dr. King rather than a Federal holiday, citing the costs involved. But in the end, all efforts to modify the legislation were defeated as Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, the Republican leader, shepherded the bill through the Senate. Apology to Mrs. King
Upon arriving here, the President, speaking in response to a question, said that in his telephone conversation with Mrs. King, she had accepted his apology.
''We had a nice conversation,'' he said of his phone call to Mrs. King from the White House. Mrs. King had termed the remark, made by the President at his news conference Wednesday, an insult to the memory of her husband, the slain civil rights leader.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/22/us/reagan-s-doubts-on-dr-king-disclosed.html
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