Remembering the real JFK: What is the late president's legacy with black Americans?

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

Kennedy first attempted to address the Gordian knot of the Democratic alliance by saying little publicly to upset southern segregationists, while quietly signaling his support to black voters under the table. This worked during the campaign of 1960 when Kennedy called Coretta Scott King to express his sympathies following the jailing of Martin Luther King in an Atlanta sit-in. At the same time, Bobby Kennedy put in a call to the judge, encouraging him to release King on bond. News of the efforts of the Kennedy brothers was encouraging to black voters, but quiet enough not to upset southern segregationists.

As Kennedy came into office in 1961, the ongoing efforts of movement activists forced him to put morality before political expedience. As president, Kennedy could not ignore the wave of national and international attention on the fight for civil rights. The Freedom Rides of 1961, the desegregation of the University of Mississippi by James Meredith in 1962, and finally the Birmingham campaign and the March on Washington of 1963 forced Kennedy’s hand.

In the end, it would be the moral persuasion of the movement that forced Kennedy to affirm the movement’s principles and goals, even as it guaranteed the exodus of segregationist Democrats from the party.

So movement participants pushed Kennedy to stand much more clearly on their side. His full commitment to the cause of equality both in terms of policy and stated principles came in the wake of George Wallace’s resistance to the integration of the University of Alabama in June of 1963.

The federal court had ordered that three impeccably qualified black students that had been rejected from the university on the basis of race be admitted to the university. Alabama’s governor, George Wallace who had pledged in his inaugural speech “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” stood in the school house door to try and bar two of the student’s registration in defiance of the order of the Deputy U.S. Attorney General and federal marshals. Using federal authority to enforce the court decision, Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard in order to have them move the governor from the schoolhouse door.

In the wake of the Wallace’s “Stand at the Schoolhouse Door” Kennedy gave a nationally televised address calling for the passage of a federal civil rights bill. The events of that year had made the necessity of federal intervention clear to Kennedy. In his groundbreaking speech he noted, “One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.”

Facing the question of national hypocrisy head on, Kennedy insisted that second-class citizenship for black Americans could not stand in a nation espousing the virtues of liberty and democracy abroad. Kennedy could no longer be political on the question of African-American rights; the simple justice of the civil rights cause had finally compelled him to lead.

So rather than remember Kennedy with rose-colored glasses, let us remember him accurately. As a man that, like so many who had lived lives far from the epicenter of southern segregation, was pushed by the challenge of the times to come down on the side of civil rights advocates. Kennedy and millions like him finally realized that indeed it was “time for this nation to fulfill its promise.”

Blair L. M. Kelley is an associate professor at North Carolina State University. Follow her on Twitter at @ProfBLMKelley