July 10, 1960
Los Angeles, California
The Democratic National Convention was only one day away, and Kennedy was facing a tough audience—six thousand people, most of them Black—crowded into a hot auditorium.
JFK had few Black friends, and not a single top aide on his campaign was Black, but it was time to address this important constituency. If he wanted to win in November, he’d have to bring the Black vote into his coalition.
The throng was gathered for a rally by an influential civil rights group.
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People event in Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium, as were other leaders of the civil rights movement.
The crowd was surly. They wanted Democrats—and everyone else in the nation—to know they were finished with business as usual.
Many were from the Deep South, where they knew they could be lynched for looking at the wrong person the wrong way. Blacks all over America were finished with casual, systemic racism.
No more segregation. No more bigotry. No more prejudice. No more waiting for a better moment. Blacks didn’t want handouts; they wanted to get ahead. They needed better schools, teachers, housing, job opportunities…. But how could things ever change if they couldn’t vote for candidates who’d represent them?
The people in the audience wanted leaders who would support their fight to change the system. No more status quo. They wanted to hear words of encouragement. They wanted to hear that a new day was on the horizon.
Kennedy’s civil rights record was abysmal. For years he had done almost nothing to sponsor legislation that would curtail discriminatory practices in the South, or anywhere else.
Kennedy had lashed out against religious bigotry aimed at Roman Catholics, but that was self-serving, as he was a Catholic himself.
JFK seemed to have little empathy for the plight of Blacks in America. The only Blacks in his orbit were gardeners, maids, or drivers. Kennedy lived in a lily-white world.
And the hypocrisy of some of his causes showed.
Kennedy was outspoken in trying to help people escape oppressive communist regimes. But he was silent when American Blacks spoke out against racist governments at home.
He had met with some prominent Black civil rights leaders during his campaign. He was polite but nervous, rarely making eye contact. They noticed. Jackie Robinson said Kennedy was clearly uneasy around Blacks.
Kennedy was careful to never openly criticize southern state segregation. He thought he couldn’t afford to lose the support of white voters.
Since February, Black students all over the South had been trying to desegregate restaurants through sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters. But so far, Kennedy had been silent about the protests.
What did Kennedy believe? No one knew. But civil rights had clearly never been a political priority for Kennedy—until now.
Kennedy had to score enough Black votes to capture the White House. But to some civil rights advocates, it seemed he was more willing to meet with segregationists than with Black leaders. They pointed to that breakfast with Alabama governor John Patterson and his friend Sam Engelhardt Jr., the leader of a racist group. That certainly didn’t play well with Black leaders.
Kennedy had met with Reverend King. The pair had breakfast only a few weeks prior at Joe Kennedy’s New York City apartment. (The visit had taken place after Black leaders criticized JFK for the breakfast with the Alabama segregationists.) King described the June 23 meeting with Kennedy in a letter to U.S. Representative Chester Bowles of Connecticut, the chair of the Democratic platform committee.
King and Bowles were good friends. He had publicly supported the civil rights leader during the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.
King described his meeting with JFK as “fruitful and rewarding.”
King believed Kennedy had “a long intellectual commitment” to civil rights, but hadn’t yet developed “the emotional commitment.”
“I have no doubt that he would do the right thing on this issue if he were elected president. Of course, I am sure that you have been a great influence on Mr. Kennedy at this point,” King wrote in a letter to Bowles. A former ambassador to India, Bowles had reached out to King to urge him to travel there to study Gandhi’s nonviolent tactics—even offering to introduce him to the right people.
“It may interest you to know that I had very little enthusiasm for Mr. Kennedy when he first announced his candidacy,” King said, adding that he changed his mind after he learned that JFK had asked Bowles to serve as a foreign policy adviser.
“I said to myself, ‘If Chester Bowles is Mr. Kennedy’s adviser he must be thinking right on the major issues,’ ” King wrote.
In the letter to Bowles, King also listed what he thought should be the major planks in the Democratic Party’s civil rights platform.
King urged that “the 1954 Supreme Court Decision be explicitly endorsed as morally right and the law of the land and that a forthright declaration should be made that the racial segregation and discrimination in any form is unconstitutional, un-American and immoral.”
One of his other suggestions was among the most important: That the party endorse the spirit and tactics of the sit-ins as having the same validity as labor strikes.
“These are just some of the things I think are quite significant. I know that most of them would be strongly opposed by the South, but I think they are important enough to at least reach the discussion stage,” King wrote.
Now it was time for Kennedy to fill in his blank slate and make the case for why he should be the next president of the United States—and how he’d help Blacks on their journey to social justice.
This wasn’t the usual Kennedy crowd, filled with adoring white fans. No, these people were upset at being shut out of the American system. They felt Kennedy didn’t take them seriously—and maybe they were right.
When his name was announced, the Massachusetts senator took a deep breath, pushed himself up from his chair, and smiled and waved to the audience as he walked slowly to the podium. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, white button-down shirt, and tie. His hair was neatly brushed to the side.
He walked amid a loud chorus of boos. The catcalls were so loud and long that Clarence Mitchell Jr., an NAACP official, had to intervene.
“Stop it. Stop it, please,” he said, adding that they needed to show Kennedy respect.
Kennedy understood why they were booing. He knew he had to win them over. His campaign depended on it.
Kennedy said this was a critical time in American history. He warned that the nation faced issues that would shape America for generations, including civil rights. Kennedy rarely touched civil rights issues on the campaign trail—especially in the South, where segregation was a way of life one hundred years after the Civil War.
But on this day, he did. JFK said he didn’t want “second-class citizenship for any American anywhere in this country.” Kennedy said they had to find a way to turn America into a “society in which no man has to suffer discrimination based on race into a living reality everywhere in our land. And that means we must secure to every American equal access to all parts of our public life—to the voting booth, to the schoolroom, to jobs, to housing, to all public facilities including lunch counters,” he said.
Kennedy paused to scan the audience. They were Black and white and brown, carrying signs that said “Support a Strong Civil Rights Plank,” “Judge by Character Not Color,” and “We Want Freedom Now.” But their eyes weren’t wandering around the auditorium. No, they were locked on Kennedy, listening closely to every word.
“The next President of the United States cannot stand above the battle engaging in vague little sermons on brotherhood,” he said. Instead the White House needed to use all its power to protect voting rights and end discrimination in schools.
He was on a roll. He had captured everyone’s full attention.
“To be sure, there will be protest and disagreement—but if the end result is to be permanent progress instead of frustration, there must be more meetings of men and minds. And the place to begin is the White House itself, where the Chief Executive, with his prestige and influence, should exert firm and positive leadership,” he said.
When JFK ended his speech with a promise to end segregation, the crowd went wild. They cheered him, a stark contrast to the boos heard when he’d first stood before the microphones.
After Kennedy, King took the stage. He had been pushing for the Democrats to strengthen the party’s civil rights stand. Once again, King spelled out the devastating impact segregation had on Black people’s lives. It had to end. It had to end now.
“We want to be free. We are struggling to save the soul of America,” King declared.
And he turned his attention to the young people, the future of America. He praised the brave students who had started the sit-ins, risking their freedom and their lives for social justice.
“They have taken the deep groans and passionate protest of their elders and turned them into a force patterned after the Gandhi movement,” King said. “We will continue the sit-ins until the national government begins its stand-up for justice.”
Now the crowd was on its feet.
“We have a determination to be free in this day and age,” King told the crowd. “We want to be free everywhere, free at last, free at last, free at last.”
The audience cheered itself hoarse.
Kennedy wondered if King would endorse him, if the passion in the auditorium would translate into votes. Placing a strong civil rights plank in the Democratic platform might do that, but it would anger southern whites. Lyndon Johnson would make the most of that.
Kennedy was back on the high wire. There were only a few more days until the delegates voted. Could he keep his balance that long?