 Senator from Georgia, although there were no serving African-American senators at the time.King reportedly gave the offer serious consideration but eventually turned it down, feeling that it might cause hostility and hurt the civil rights movement.Former Vice President Richard Nixon was offered the role of the Vice President, but refused and pointed out some "glaring and obvious" errors in the script, presumably including the critical fact that under Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the Vice President automatically assumes the office of the president upon the president's death, and would not have been able to cast a tie-breaking vote as Vice President even if he had wished to.