A: John and Robert Kennedy had the tape recorders running in the Oval Office and the cabinet room, and you are then able to hear a verbatim record of these two men really botching up a terrible crisis. And "botch up" are the words Bobby Kennedy used. He described his brother, the president …
Q: You call it "indecisive and misguided." You are being kind.
A: Yes, and it really was a disaster in progress for our country, because they lost control of a bloody confrontation in Oxford, Miss., where unfortunately, Americans were in combat – hand-to-hand combat – with each other. This was a white mob that basically went berserk, about 2,000 of them.
Q: Some people called it the last battle of the Civil War.
A: It really was, but it was also due to what I would say was the incompetence of the federal government in trying to manage this terrible crisis. And it was, Geoff, very important historically, because it was the only time that white people rose up – by the thousands – in the streets to block forced integration. It happened that night, and it evolved quickly into an armed rebellion.
Q: There were 30,000 combat troops involved in this incident!