JOHN KENNEDY CUBAN MISSILE VS. CIVIL RIGHTS SPEECH

John Kennedy Cuban Missile vs. Civil Rights speech



John Kennedy Cuban Missile vs. Civil Rights speech

Introduction

At the same time as Jack struggled to handle Soviet influence abroad, a revolution of epic proportions was taking place in his very own country: the civil rights movement. Throughout JFK's presidency, civil rights advocates struggled to effect change in the racially segregated South, where whites controlled state governments and denied African-Americans basic rights. Although Kennedy opposed segregation and had shown some support for the civil rights movement (most notably through a 1960 phone call to Coretta Scott King), he did not make civil rights a major priority of his presidency until his last months as commander-in-chief. On 16 October 1962, the course of Jack Kennedy's presidency changed forever. On that chilly morning in October, Jack faced both his greatest challenge and his greatest opportunity as president: the chance to stand up to Nikita Khrushchev and assert the strength of the United States in a major Cold War confrontation

Comparison

Civil rights concerns could not be ignored. Kennedy first experienced the challenges of leading a socially turbulent nation in May of 1961, when a group of black and white civil rights activists known as the Freedom Riders boarded buses and attempted to break segregation codes by traveling together through violently racist regions of the South. When the Freedom Riders reached Montgomery, Alabama, they were attacked by a white mob; after fleeing to the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, the mob followed, threatening to storm the building. At this point, President Kennedy, following the advice of his brother Bobby, now serving as Attorney General, ordered a group of U.S. Marshals to protect the Freedom Riders. But Kennedy was unwilling to take any other federal action, immediately handing over power to Alabama Governor John Patterson. Following the incident, Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the president if he would agree to meet the Freedom Riders in Washington as a symbol of solidarity. Jack refused the request.

President Kennedy demonstrated a similar reluctance to undertake major civil rights action during a 1962 conflict at Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi). On 25 September, James Meredith, an African American man, attempted to register as a student at Ole Miss, the only remaining all-white public university in the nation. Mississippi's notoriously racist governor, Ross Barnett, blocked Meredith's efforts, and tensions in the college town of Oxford, Mississippi grew explosive. Seeking to avoid the kind of bad publicity that had resulted from President Eisenhower's decision to send federal troops to integrate a Little Rock high school in 1957, Kennedy wanted to exercise as little presidential power as possible. Jack and Bobby tried to engineer a behind-the-scenes negotiation with Governor Barnett, but were unable to reach any solid agreement. In a televised address on the evening of 30 September, Jack assured the nation that James Meredith was safely living on the Ole Miss campus; almost simultaneously, violence was erupting in ...