Barbour's Foggy MLK Memory

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's fond memories of growing up in Yazoo City continue to put him in awkward situations. First he praised the anti-integration White Citizens Council in the Weekly Standard; now it seems his memory of Martin Luther King speaking, described in the same profile, may be hazy. The King Papers at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute make no mention of King speaking in Yazoo City in 1962. "I think he mixed up King with somebody else," said Norman Mott, the former owner of The Yazoo Herald. King did speak in Yazoo in 1966, not in 1962. "The simple fact of the matter is, Gov. Barbour misattributed the year Dr. King spoke," said an aide.