Kennedy, Congress and Civil Rights

Abstract

President Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 was quickly followed by a wave of instant history, mainly produced by those who worked closely with him in the White House. Sorensen, Schlesinger and Salinger all published their memoirs in the mid-sixties, while O'Donnell and O'Brien followed suit in the early seventies. It was inevitable that their assessment of the Kennedy Presidency would be a favourable one and it was equally inevitable that it would generate a reaction from those who believed that the Kennedy myth needed to be destroyed. The instant history of the sixties has now given way to the instant revisionism of the seventies and John F. Kennedy is getting a distinctly unfavourable press. Leaving aside foreign affairs, it is Kennedy's handling of civil rights to which the revisionists are most antagonistic. Here the relationship between the President and Congress is brought sharply into focus. It is argued that Kennedy did not put before the legislature the wide-ranging and bold commitments on civil rights made during the election campaign; that his approach to the problem was tailored to suit the sensibilities of the southern Democrats in the House and Senate, and that he studiously avoided offering moral and political leadership to the country at large. Thus Henry Fairlie blames Kennedy for “ procrastination and tokenism”; Lewis Paper argues that Kennedy's handling of civil rights “ did not speak well of his success as a public educator ” and Bruce Miroff, perhaps the most outspoken of all the critics, places Kennedy's performance in the context of “ pragmatic liberalism rooted in elite politics ” — an approach which he unhesitatingly condemns.