Nicolaus Mills: Grits and Bear It

Nicolaus Mills is professor of American studies at Sarah Lawrence College and co-editor with Michael Walzer of Getting Out: Historical Perspectives on Leaving Iraq.

In the wake of the primaries in Mississippi and Alabama, Mitt Romney’s effort to ingratiate himself with Southern voters by proclaiming, “I’m learning to say ‘y’all’ and I like grits,” has gotten almost as much attention as his third-place showing. Critics have made fun of Romney’s efforts to win Southern voters, but they have also been forgiving. Their assumption has been that changing his way of speaking, like tailoring the issues he addresses, is all part of the political game Romney, like every modern politician, must play.

But we shouldn’t automatically make that assumption. The best counterexample comes from the speech Robert Kennedy, another Massachusetts politician (then a new attorney general), gave in the South at the University of Georgia Law School in May 1961.

If anyone had reason to try to ingratiate himself with his Southern audience, it was Kennedy. In October 1960 John and Robert Kennedy helped get Martin Luther King, Jr. out of a jail in Reidsville, Georgia, after he was arrested during a civil rights protest. The future president called Coretta King to express his concern, and Robert called the judge handing the case to inquire into King’s right to bail. The pressure from the Kennedys worked, and King, who had spent nine days in jail, was suddenly released on a $2,000 appeal bond....