Back in May, 1963, then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy invited a select group of black entertainers to meet with him at his father's apartment in New York City. Singer-actor Harry Belafonte was there. So was Lorraine Hansberry, whose play about black upward mobility, A Raisin in the Sun , had received rapturous reviews when it debuted two years earlier. Writer James Baldwin came, as did singer Lena Horne. Each of the invitees was active in civil rights, and Bobby Kennedy was interested in hearing more about the movement. What he got instead was an earful, says Larry Tye, author of Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon. "They came there — they thought — to tell Bobby what the situation was in American civil rights and what he ought to be doing," Tye says. "Bobby saw the meeting instead as his explaining all the things he and his brother were trying to do. He thought he should get a pat on the back; people thought he should get a kick in the butt." The administration was moving
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