In Mad Men Season 6 Episode 4: The Flood is the reaction to MLK's assassination accurate?
The men and women of this fictional Madison Avenue react in a manner similar to the reactions to J.F.K.'s assassination. Offices are closed, everyone is shocked and crying, reacting to a unanimous tragedy.
While MLK's assassination is now rightly considered a incredible tragedy, I am curious as to wether this reaction is historically accurate. Especially considering many of the characters portrayed are affluent and white, some of which are alluded to as racist. I wonder if everyone reacted to the news as a shock and tragedy or were some indifferent or even supportive?
The reaction to Martin Luther King's death, as you might expect, was varied depending on the demographic. In the case you're talking about, upper class whites with racist leanings, you're right, it seems out of character. There were supportive reactions to the assassination of MLK, prominent among them southern legislator Strom Thurmond, who remarked that, "[W]e are now witnessing the whirlwind sowed years ago when some preachers and teachers began telling people that each man could be his own judge in his own case."
A conservative name you'd likely be more familiar with, Ronald Reagan, reacted by remarking that, "it's the sort of great tragedy when we begin compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they would break."
On the other hand, as TIME magazine demonstrates, there were more sympathetic reactions and students at Duke University also staged a silent vigil in memory of him. Though peaceful demonstrations were far from the only reactions to his death; the King assassination riots are a subject I am not well informed about, honestly, but they show a more violent reaction to the assassination. The riots were early in 1968, and Nixon would go on to win the 1968 election, though the 1968 Democratic Convention did help push the country to the more conservative side when it lead to tear gas in the streets of Chicago.
Riots like this also likely emboldened law and order proponents, and the end result, as already pointed out, was Nixon's election. While I cannot recall Nixon's statement or reaction to MLK Jr.'s death, I do recall reading, in Perlstein's book, about him appealing to farmers (Iowan, I believe) by telling them that MLK Jr. was training militant blacks on motorcycles to kidnap and rape their daughters, rhetoric that certainly helped to set the stage for violence like MLK Jr.'s assassination. To avoid giving a one-sided impression of this, it is worth noting, King and Nixon did have a positive relationship at times prior to this, as detailed by Chris Matthews in his book Kennedy and Nixon.
Sources:
Rick Perlstein, Nixonland
Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge
Chris Matthews, Kennedy and Nixon
Conrad Black, Richard M. Nixon