For Many Older Blacks, JFK Remains ‘our president’ – Even 60 Years After His Death

The first was Jesus, the quintessential model of unconditional love and hope. Second, there was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the personification of the moral crusade which led to the end of legal segregation. Finally, there was JFK – President John F. Kennedy.

Including Kennedy in this triad of men may seem puzzling, particularly for those born after the turbulent 60s who have either forgotten Kennedy’s significant contributions to civil rights or who may simply be unaware.

However, history shows that even 60 years ago after his untimely death on Nov. 22, 1963, the former president continues to hold an important place in Black history – albeit somewhat complicated.

Black vote is essential to Kennedy’s White House victory.

Like Dr. King and yes, even similar to Jesus, Kennedy, from the beginning of his presidential campaign, kept his eye on the prize.

As Thomas Oliphant and Curtis Wilkie, co-authors of “The Road to Camelot,” illustrate, Kennedy, then a young, undistinguished junior senator from Massachusetts, waged an arduous, five-year battle for national office which ended in one of the closest general elections in U.S. history.

The popular vote was the closest since 1888, when Americans actually elected the candidate who received the fewer votes, Benjamin Harrison. The Electoral College margin was the smallest since Woodrow Wilson’s second squeaker in 1916.

Despite the presence of 7 million additional, eligible voters, Kennedy garnered fewer votes than Dwight D. Eisenhower had in 1956 (34.2 to 35.6 million). And in 20 of the states the margin of victory for Kennedy was below 5 percentage points.

Without a doubt, every vote mattered. For example, in New Jersey, when the counting ended on Election Day, Kennedy was ahead for the state’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of only 0.8%.

Nonetheless, after a month of accusations, defenses and recounts, Nixon conceded defeat. On December 19, 1960, the Electoral College awarded Kennedy his 303 votes, barely, yet legitimately, giving him the election.

Millennials may choose to believe that it was former President Barack Obama, who in the 2012 election, revised the blueprint for political strategy by employing various technologies – from television advertising and texting, to social media and data analytics – to attract specific voters with a targeted message.

But even before the rise of online ads and fundraising emails, Kennedy, in the 1960 election, led one of the first efforts in “microtargeting” by a presidential campaign. The target: Black voters.

In fact, Kennedy maneuvered his way along a fine line between pursuing Black voters’ support while being careful to avoid alienating southern Democrats.

“Back in 1960, there was a real battle for the Black vote,” said Larry Sabato, author of “The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy.” “The GOP was still seen as the party of Lincoln in many parts of the country, while JFK’s Democrats had loads of segregationists in powerful posts,” he said.

That balance was severely threatened in October 1960 when Dr. King was arrested for participating in an Atlanta sit-in. Kennedy called Dr. King’s wife, Coretta, in response, to express his concern, while his brother, Robert Kennedy, arranged for Dr. King’s release.

Kennedy’s team, fearing those actions would hurt their chances with white southern voters, produced a pamphlet on blue paper – “the blue bomb” – which did not include Kennedy’s name nor the Democratic Party on the pamphlet. However, it still gave credit to Kennedy for his sympathetic call while contrasting the actions of his Republican nominee, Nixon, who remained silent on the issue.

The Kennedy campaign also effectively targeted African American voters by touting JFK’s promises on civil rights, distributing an estimated 2 million copies of the pamphlet in Black churches across the U.S. just weeks before the election.

Kennedy received 70% of the Black vote, which helped him win several swing states, including Illinois, Michigan and South Carolina. He even managed to hold onto much of the South. His second best state was Georgia, where he won 63% of the vote. In the end, he defeated Nixon by just 84 electoral votes.

The White House win reveals many rivers to cross

When Kennedy was inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States on January 20, 1961, Blacks faced significant discrimination in America. Throughout much of the South they were denied the right to vote, barred from public facilities, subjected to violence including lynching and could not expect justice from the courts.

In the North, Black Americans also faced discrimination in housing, employment, education and many other areas.

The pace of civil rights protests had risen sharpen after 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Southern political leaders responded with defiance, legal challenges, delays, or token compliance, so much so, that by the end of the 1950s, fewer than 10% of Black children in the South were attending integrated schools.

And there were other noteworthy events that impacted the presidency of Kennedy and his stance on issues facing America: the Montgomery bus boycott, 1956; the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas, 1957; and the student sit-ins which first began at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina.

When the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. publicly endorsed Kennedy, his decision significantly contributed to increased support for JFK. Nationwide, nearly 70% of African Americans voted for Kennedy and these votes provided the winning edge in several key states.

Blacks had high expectations for the new administration when Kennedy took office. Still, his narrow election victory and small working margin in Congress contributed to his cautious navigation of civil rights issues.

Fearing the loss of southern support for legislation on many fronts by pushing too hard on civil rights legislation, he instead appointed unprecedented numbers of African Americans to high-level positions in the administration and strengthened the Civil Rights Commission while Attorney General Robert Kennedy turned his attention to voting rights, initiating five times the number of suits brought during the previous administration.

But it would be the Freedom Rides that pushed Kennedy to move forward with unprecedented expediency in support of civil rights. For decades, seating on buses in the South had been segregated, along with bus station waiting rooms, rest rooms and restaurants.

In May 1961, the Congress of Racial Equality, led by James Farmer, organized integrated Freedom Rides to defy segregation in interstate transportation. Freedom Riders were arrested in North Carolina and beaten in South Carolina. In Alabama, a bus was burned and the riders attacked with baseball bats and tire irons. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent 400 federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and urged the Interstate Commerce Commission to order the desegregation of interstate travel.

Final acts of heroism

On the evening of June 11, 1963, the president addressed the nation.
Kennedy defined the civil rights crisis as moral, as well as constitutional and legal. He announced that major civil rights legislation would be submitted to Congress to guarantee equal access to public facilities, to end segregation in education and to provide federal protection of the right to vote.

A few hours later, Medgar Evers, the best-known civil rights activist in Mississippi and a field officer in the NAACP, was murdered outside his home.

Later that summer, on August 28,1963, an interracial and interfaith crowd of more than 250,000 Americans demonstrated for social and economic justice in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The most memorable moment came when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Kennedy, concerned about the potential impact of the March on his pending civil rights legislation, initially did not support the event. But, after the successful conclusion of the March, he invited civil rights leaders to the White House where they discussed the need for bi-partisan support of civil rights legislation.

Also, during that summer of 1963 and into the fall, the Kennedy administration worked to build bi-partisan support for the Civil Rights Act. In late fall, the comprehensive civil rights bill cleared several hurdles in Congress and won the endorsement of House and Senate Republican leaders.

However, the bill did not pass until November 22, 1963, after Kennedy’s assassinated, under the leadership of the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson, who had served more than two decades in Congress as a congressman and senator from Texas, used his political acumen, along with the assistance of Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department, while banking on an outpouring of emotion after President Kennedy’s assassination to generate passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Passed on July 2, 1964, the Civil Rights Act was a crucial step in achieving the civil rights movement’s initial goal: full legal equality. Another milestone – the Voting Rights Act – was passed in 1965. But more work remained to be done – and remains to be done.
Kennedy, just months before his death, in one of his most memorable speeches, urged all Americans to accept civil rights as “a moral issue … as old as the scriptures and as clear as the Constitution.”

“If an American, because his skin is dark … cannot enjoy [a] full and free life,” the president said in his address on June 11, 1963, “… then who among us would want to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?”