Amalgam

 A few years ago, I noted that public opinion towards Martin Luther King was not all that favorable when he was alive.  Some news stories on MLK day made the same point.  Some of them mentioned a survey I didn't discuss in my post, which was taken a couple of weeks after his assassination.  That asked for their reaction on hearing the news:  sadness, anger, shame, fear, or "felt he brought it on himself."  Overall, 36% said sadness, 5% anger, 15% shame, 9% fear, and 30% that he brought it on himself (the rest didn't know).  But of course responses differed by race:

                                      White      Black
Sadness                           30%         74%
Anger                                4%         11%
Shame                             16%           8%
Fear                                 10%           3%
Brought it on                   35%           3%

I would put the first three in a group, since they all involve some form of distress.  Among whites, 50% were distressed and 35% unsympathetic; among blacks, it was 93% to 3% (fear is hard to classify).  The survey also had a number of questions about whether you felt particular things after King's murder.  One was "did you feel sorry for his wife and children?"  Among blacks, 83% said they felt that strongly, 6% fairly strongly, 5% that it crossed their mind, and 6% that it didn't occur to them.  Among whites, it was 41%, 30%, 16%, and 12%.  So by both measures, about 30% of whites were not particularly upset. 

 There was an even larger difference on "did you think about the many tragic things that have happened to negroes and how this was just another one of them?"  Only 15% of whites said they felt this strongly, and 44% that it didn't occur to them; among blacks, 56% said they felt it strongly and 13% that it didn't occur to them.  

The survey that included this question was what NORC called an "amalgam":  that is, it had questions on a variety of topics.  While looking at it, I saw something else that seemed interesting.  One question asked people who they would like to see elected president in November:  the choices were Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, and Rockefeller.  There was also a question about what the United States should do in Vietnam:  "begin to withdraw," "carry on its present level of fighting," or "increase the strength of its attacks against North Vietnam."  The results, going from most to least hawkish supporters:

                  withdraw    same   increase

Wallace         29%          11%     54%
Reagan         35%            8%      58%
Johnson        25%           26%     40%
Nixon           34%           16%     41%
Rockefeller  41%           15%      33%
McCarthy     48%           17%      30%
Kennedy       52%           12%      28%

Total             39%            15%     37%

The general ranking is unsurprising, but they weren't as differentiated as I expected:  e. g. 35% of Reagan supporters thought that we should start withdrawing, and 30% of McCarthy supporters thought we should increase attacks on North Vietnam.  Overall, only 15% said we should keep on as before--even for Johnson supporters, only 26% did.  So it seems like there was a lot of generalized discontent--escalate or get out, but just do something different.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]