Earlier this week, some decidedly unpleasant comments from former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis about Martin Luther King, Jr. came out. Kennedy called King a “phony,” and relayed how she’d heard about his alleged marital infidelity, saying: “I just can’t see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man’s terrible.” The Root DC contacted several Civil Rights leaders to ask, essentially, how they like her now.

Of course, Walter Fauntroy (who recently had an amazing trip to Libya) can’t stay mad:

“I make allowance for her doubting the integrity of Martin Luther King. We often have mistaken views of a person,” Fauntroy said. “I am not going to trouble myself on a statement made by a 30-year-old woman made under great stress. All of us are fallible, all of us are prone to accept what is not true.”

That was the theme for the other people The Root DC polled as well. Of course, they don’t have anything to gain from maligning Kennedy after her death, and as Dorie Ladner of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) pointed out, Kennedy was “isolated” and developed her political opinions based on the conversations of the men around her.