A Forced Awakening in 1963

Andrew Young - a pastor, an author, a Congressman in the mid-1970s from Georgia's 5th district, a former Ambassador to the United Nations, a former Mayor of Atlanta, a leading member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and a personal friend of Martin Luther King Jr. - noted this past week, in remembering the life of John F. Kennedy, that for the first part of his Presidency, Kennedy knew little, and cared even less, about African-American civil rights. He wished it would all just go away, and barely even spoke or otherwise engaged with the leaders of the Movement, according to Young.

By late-1962, however, events and politics were combining in a way that would completely change Kennedy's focus, and much else. Democrats had done relatively well in the mid-term Senate election in November of that year, making a net gain of three seats from the Republicans and thus increasing their control of the Senate to two-thirds. So Kennedy's near-obsession with not alienating Southern Democrats - who were White, and who, given their still-complete political control of the South, would be critical to his re-election in 1964 - became somewhat less immediate. But, more importantly, the Civil Rights Movement's policy of non-violent civil resistance was continuing to do exactly as intended - produce crisis situations between activists and local southern government authorities. In particular, Movement leaders had initiated the Birmingham Campaign in early 1963, with a carefully-defined goal of de-segregating the merchants of downtown Birmingham, Alabama. In a march to that city's county buildings, black protesters came up against the infamous Eugene "Bull" Connor, the Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety. The mass arrests that followed included that of Martin Luther King Jr., an event which, given Reverend King's emerging national prominence at that point, led to Attorney General Robert Kennedy's intervention to obtain King's release from jail after five days. Subsequent events in Birmingham, including Mr. Connor's brutal response (police dogs and fire hoses) to the Children's Crusade in May of 1963, and the attempt by Alabama's Governor George Wallace in June to block the integration of the University of Alabama, led to widespread public disgust in America, and to the Kennedy administration's far more forceful intervention. US Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, and the Second Infantry Division, were sent on June 11, 1963 to physically remove Governor Wallace from the steps of the University's Foster Auditorium, thereby allowing the enrollment of Vivian Malone Jones and James Hood. That same evening, President Kennedy addressed the nation with his landmark civil rights speech, and on June 19 introduced his Civil Rights bill to Congress.

While the bill began its inevitably difficult passage through the House and Senate that summer, civil rights leaders were making final plans for what would become in August the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Kennedy, who initially feared the march would damage his bill's prospects for passage, changed course and decided that it was important to work to ensure the success of the march, mobilizing support from more church leaders and even the UAW. Success indeed ensued - an estimated 300,000 demonstrators, black and some white, showed up in front of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, witnessed Reverend King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, then disbursed peacefully.

By November of 1963, with passage of the Civil Rights bill proceeding (though facing considerable opposition in the House Rules Committee from its chairman, Howard W. Smith, a known segregationist) , Kennedy decided on a trip south, to Dallas, in part to appease the southern white Democratic power structure in time for the upcoming presidential campaign in 1964. Ensuing events in that city on November 22 would, of course, change politics, and much else, in America forever. 

Kennedy's assassination left the bill in danger of languishing in Mr. Smith's Rules Committee, until the new President, Lyndon Johnson, stepped forward on November 27, addressing a joint session of Congress and imploring them to pass the bill. He said: "No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honor President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long". In the face of Johnson's unrelenting persuasion by any and all means, the bill moved to the Senate, where despite 54 days of filibuster against it by the "Southern Bloc" of 18 Democratic senators, was passed (somewhat modified) by both houses of Congress, and signed into law by President Johnson on July 2, 1964. Racial, religious and sexual discrimination, and southern politics, would never be the same again.

Consider for a moment what could be accomplished legislatively if America's current President were willing and able to utilize the bully pulpit in a manner even approaching that of Presidents Kennedy or Johnson. Instead, we have a President who prefers aloofness, and whose very credibility has sunk so low that even matters of a fiscal nature cannot be resolved, not to speak of a long list of opportunities missed regarding health, immigration and foreign policy. It seems Mr. Obama's legacy will be more like that of President Carter than of President Kennedy.