Witnesses Corroborate Romney On MLK

How convenient!

Witnesses recall Romney-MLK march

By: Mike Allen
Dec 21, 2007 05:45 PM EST


Shirley Basore, 72, says she was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair in wealthy Grosse Pointe, Mich., back in 1963 when a rumpus started and she discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and her governor, George Romney, were marching for civil rights — right past the window.

With the cape still around her neck, Basore went outside and joined the parade.

“They were hand in hand,” recalled Basore, a former high-school English teacher. “They led the march. We all swung our hands, and they held their hands up above everybody else’s.”

She remembered the late governor as “extremely handsome.”

Until this week, that was just a vivid memory for a sweet retiree who now lives in Pompano Beach, Fla.

But Basore’s memory became important this week when news accounts questioned the recollections of the late Michigan governor’s son, Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor.

News stories suggested that Romney was exaggerating. It turns out that he may not have attended the Grosse Pointe march, but it certainly happened.

more...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7524.html

It's funny how they all want a post-humous endorsement from a leader that most of them despised and wouldn't have anything to do with back then. I find this story about Romney hard to believe.

Nobody deserves to be crucified on a lie, not even a Republican...

I'd like reliable corroboration or rejection...

If Romney had embellished, that is the sort of illuminating thing that would have really really hurt him.

why he'd do that if his father actually did so, is a mystery to me.

and welcome to DU.

:hi:

but I haven't heard him admit his father didn't march with MLK.

Mitt Romney acknowledged yesterday that he never saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr. as he asserted in a nationally televised speech this month, and historical evidence shows that Michigan's Governor George Romney and the civil rights leader never did march together.

Romney said his father had told him he had marched with King and that he had been using the word "saw" in a "figurative sense."

"If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term 'saw' includes being aware of in the sense I've described," Romney told reporters in Iowa. "It's a figure of speech and very familiar, and it's very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort."

But historical evidence, including news accounts at the time, shows that George Romney never marched with King, though he supported King's agenda.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/12/21/romney_never_saw_father_on_king_march/

If he didn't walk with MLK he's a big liar for saying so...

That strikes me as fair...

Father or son, or both?

:shrug: I'm just trying to think of an explanation.

you never really know if you're getting the whole truth or a tiny kernel of truth wrapped in many layers of embellishment. I think it's nice that George Romney was that into civil rights, however--pretty cool for a white Mormon Republican in the 60's.