1. Grant as President 2. “Jim Crow” 3. Boss Tweed 4. J.P. Morgan 5. The Transcontinental Railroad 6. The Steel Industry 7. J.D. Rockefeller 9. The New Immigration 10. Booker T. Washington 11. The Growth of American Cities 12. The Suffrage Movement 13. The Indian Wars 14. The Settlement of the West 15. The Populist Movement 16. William Jennings Bryan 17. The Spanish American War 18. Theodore Roosevelt 19. The Conquest of the Philippines 20. Theodore Roosevelt and the Monroe Doctrine 21. The Building of the Panama Canal 22. The Great White Fleet 23. The Conservation Movement 24. Woodrow Wilson 25. The United States in World War I 26. The Sinking of the Lusitania 27. Wilson’s Fourteen Points 28. Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference 29. The United States and the League of Nations

30. The Roaring Twenties 31. Prohibition 32. Herbert Hoover 33. The Scopes Monkey Trial 34. The Rise of Professional Sports 35. The Stock Market Crash of 1929 36. Interwar U.S. Foreign Policy 37. The Washington Naval Treaty 38. Franklin D. Roosevelt 39. The New Deal 40. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) 41. The Bonus March of 1932 42. The America First Movement 43. U.S. Neutrality 1939-1941 44. Lend-Lease 45. America’s Entry into WWII 46. George C. Marshall 47. Any U.S. Military Leader of World War II 48. Individual Battles and Campaigns of World War II 49. The U.S. Army in World War II 50. The U.S. Navy in World War II 51. Allied Grand Strategy in World War II 52. The United States and the Atomic Bomb 53. Women in the Military: World War II 54. The Battle of Midway 55. Douglas MacArthur 56. The Truman Doctrine 57. Post War American Society 58. The Early Days of the Cold War 59. The Civil Rights Movement 60. Martin Luther King 61. The Occupation of Germany 62. The Korean War 63. MacArthur in Japan 64. The Red Scare 65. Senator Joseph McCarthy 66. Eisenhower as President 67. The Sixties 68. John F. Kennedy 69. The Bay of Pigs 70. The Cuban Missile Crisis 71. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society 72. Any Aspect of the Vietnam War 73. Nixon and Vietnam 74. Nixon and China 75. Watergate

76. The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 77. Feminism 78. Jimmy Carter as President 79. The Reagan Revolution 80. Arms Control Treaties 81. Reagan and the Soviet Union 82. George Bush and the End of the Cold War 83. Desert Shield/Desert Storm 84. The Impeachment of Bill Clinton 85. The United States in the Post Cold War World 86. The 2000 Presidential Election 87. The Bush Administration 88. The War on Terrorism 89. Immigration in the 1990s 90. Minorities in Contemporary America 91. The Changing American Family 92. The Drug Wars 93. The United States and the Global Economy 94. PAX Americana 95. Contemporary American Foreign Policy 96. The United States Military in the 21st Century 97. U.S. Policy Toward Cuba 98. Operation Iraqi Freedom 99. The War in Afghanistan 100. Kosovo Crisis 1999

101. The Middle East Technology Revolution

 
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The Civil Rights Efforts of John F. Kennedy

Kevin J. Doherty 4013232

HIST102 – American History since 1877

Professor Carl Bradshaw

January 4, 2011

President John F. Kennedy is mostly remembered because of his assassination. However, events that occurred during his time in office were quite important to the history of the United States. Although it may not have been viewed as such at the time, the civil rights movement was possibly the most important issue and the president’s efforts toward solving the matter may have been his greatest accomplishments. President Kennedy was juggling, as most presidents do, quite a few pressing issues at the same time. The civil rights movement was not his priority, but it played an important role in the way he ran the country. The president made some very impressive headway in the fight for true equality in the United States and abroad.

Civil rights never seemed to be at the top of President Kennedy’s priority list, but there is no doubt that he was more sympathetic to the issue and movement than previous presidents. In fact, Steven Lawson quotes Dr. Martin Luther King as saying that Kennedy had “schizophrenic tendencies” when dealing with the civil rights movement. He continues to explain that the president came from an upper class background in Boston and he had no personal understanding of the inequality that African-Americans dealt with in the south. However, theology expert Mark Massa points out that he was the first Catholic to be elected president and, because he was Catholic, he had to deal with a lot of discrimination during his campaign. While he never dealt with anything like African-Americans in the Jim Crow south, this may have given him some personal insight and reason to sympathize.

Although President Kennedy may have been sympathetic toward the civil rights activists, he always seemed to be reactionary in nature as opposed to proactive. Thomas Borstelmann, expert in modern history, explains that the racial struggle, at the time, was mostly fought between Democrats. The president “felt he had to work both sides of the street”. Angering the southern Democrats could bring repercussions concerning other legislation that Kennedy wanted to pass. Maybe this could explain the “schizophrenia” Dr. King noticed.

Foreign policy (mostly concerning the Cold War) was always the President’s top priority. He was working toward bettering the civil liberties of oppressed people in Africa at the time and trying to win them over to democracy in a sort of turf war with the Soviet Union. However, any instances of unrest surrounding civil rights in the United States the president considered to be embarrassing on the international front. Borstelmann explains that Kennedy worked with civil rights activist groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to try and keep demonstrations peaceful. How, after all, could the United States champion equality in Africa when violence was occurring over inequality at home?

President Kennedy was somewhat successful at keeping the issue under control, but he could not keep everyone happy forever. In October of 1962, the inevitable happened when segregationists tried to stop an African-American student from enrolling in classes at the University of Mississippi. Violent riots followed forcing the president to send troops to gain control. Borstelmann explains that extreme violence broke out in Birmingham again in April 1963 which was coincidentally at the same time as the founding conference of the Organization of African Unity. The violence demanded international attention and the president realized that he had no choice but to take a side and react. On June 2 1963, he gave a nationally televised address in which he called for legislation for complete public desegregation.

President Kennedy began his time in office by rhetorically championing civil rights and trying to walk a fine line so as to stay in good favor with both sides of the argument. After uncontrollable violence broke out interfering with his foreign affairs efforts, he reacted strongly. He put his full political weight behind legislation to end segregation. The president put America on the track to truly offer its citizens equality and be a role model for the world in the matter of civil rights.

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