John F. Kennedy: Civil Rights Address

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

After an initial greeting to his “fellow citizens”—marking the familiar tone the president adopted throughout the address—Kennedy reports on the day's events at the University of Alabama, where he had acted to enforce a U.S. district court decision for the admission of two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. By federalizing the Alabama National Guard, the president overcame the resistance of Governor George Wallace and ended Alabama's status as the only remaining state with state universities closed to African Americans. In contrast to the president's similar experience with the desegregation of the University of Mississippi the previous year, no violence occurred. The president takes note of this fact and praises students at the University of Alabama “who met their responsibilities in a constructive way.” In highlighting the good behavior of students, the president introduces one of the important themes of the address, the need for individual citizens to contribute to the solution of the civil rights crisis.

In the third paragraph the president begins to emphasize the key theme of the address, the morality of the civil rights cause, which he links to the responsibility of each American to act in accord with the nation's values and the principle of basic fairness. In an allusion to President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Kennedy notes that the nation was “founded on the principle that all men are created equal.” He implicitly criticizes racist concepts regarding the nation's origins when he affirms that “this Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds.” In asserting that “the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened,” the president alludes to a long-standing labor movement slogan, “An injury to one is the concern of all.” Organized labor was a central constituency of the Democratic Party, and its leaders strongly supported the enactment of civil rights legislation.

In paragraphs 4–6, Kennedy introduces an important theme of the address—that the “worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free” was connected with the successful practice of the ideal of freedom for all in America. During World War II, many civil rights partisans raised the idea that eliminating racial discrimination at home was a logical and practical counterpart to the struggle against fascism abroad, particularly against the Nazi ideology of Aryan racial superiority. In the ensuing cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, the issue of the connection between freedom at home and freedom abroad loomed in a new way. The Soviet Union, and indeed the world Communist movement, had long criticized racial oppression in the United States and the imperialist oppression of peoples in the developing world. In advocating a heightened struggle against Communism and for the U.S. concept of freedom around the world in his Inaugural Address, Kennedy was aware of the need for the United States to improve its civil rights record at home and the quality of its interactions with nations in the developing world. In his commencement address at the American University (delivered on June 10, 1963—the day before his Civil Rights Address), in which he promoted a new approach to the cold war, Kennedy called on Americans to “examine our attitude towards peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. … Wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete.”

Noting in paragraph 4 that “we do not ask for whites only” when “Americans are sent to Viet-Nam or West Berlin,” Kennedy then argues that Americans “of any color” should be able to attend any public university without needing backup from troops, to register to vote without “interference or fear of reprisal,” and to receive “equal service” in public places. In the sixth paragraph, Kennedy couples the theme of equal rights with an allusion to the Golden Rule: “Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated.” A secular person, Kennedy nevertheless included in the address a few spiritual references.

In paragraphs 7 and 8, the president summarizes statistics on the vast economic, educational, and health gaps between blacks and whites and expresses concern about “a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety.” The perception within the Kennedy administration that deterioration in the Birmingham situation could lead to “uncontrollable” outbursts by African Americans was, indeed, a major factor in the president's deciding to take to the public airwaves on the spur of the moment (Dallek, p. 598).

The president stresses in paragraph 8 that the issue of civil rights is neither a sectional nor a partisan issue. Although the central issue of equal access to public accommodations was primarily a problem in southern states, in keeping with his sense of responsibility as the leader of the entire country, the president asserts that “difficulties over segregation and discrimination” exist in every city and state. His references to the nationwide racial gap and to discontent in cities throughout the country place the issue of southern segregation in its larger national context—perhaps to reduce white southerners' feeling that their section was being unfairly targeted. Kennedy's emphasis on nonpartisanship reflected the reality that the strongest opponents of civil rights were white southerners in his own party and evinced his determination to work with Republican leaders in Congress on his civil rights legislative proposal.

Paragraphs 9–11 are among the most important passages in the speech. After stating in paragraph 9 that the country is “confronted primarily with a moral issue,” the president calls on all Americans to do the right thing, to put fairness above partisanship, sectionalism, and comfort with the racial status quo. Kennedy makes clear that the basis of his moral appeal is fairness and a concern for others and their rights when he links a religious reference with an allusion to a central secular document of the U.S. polity: “It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.” As a secular politician, Kennedy personally confronted the issue of anti-Catholic prejudice in his run for the presidency in 1960 when he spoke before Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas, and assured them that he advocated “an America where the separation of church and state is absolute” (Dallek, pp. 283–284). In this instance, Kennedy used a nondenominational appeal to religious values to reinforce his attempt to inspire the country on a moral issue. Kennedy, like other presidents, had referred to God in his Inaugural Address.

In paragraph 10, Kennedy refers to the obligations of the Golden Rule—“The heart of the question is … whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated”—and issues a creative call for white people to imagine how they would feel if they were black. What would you think, he asks, about being denied service at restaurants, access to the best public schools, the right to vote, and “the full and free life which all of us want”? The paragraph closes with an incisive critique of the moderate approach that he himself had earlier followed and which Martin Luther King, Jr., had so sharply criticized two months earlier in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” The president asks, “Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?” Kennedy is asking Americans to look beyond the sometimes disconcerting and disruptive means used by civil rights activists to see the justice of their cause. As the president himself had only recently come to perceive, the time for incremental changes that essentially left the Jim Crow system intact had passed. Those who saw the issue as a struggle between two extremes, violent racists and civil rights activists, were mistaken. Rather, the struggle was between justice and injustice.

To reinforce the notion that the time for ending racial equality had come, Kennedy notes in paragraph 11 that one hundred years had passed “since President Lincoln freed the slaves,” yet “their heirs … are not fully free.” A few years prior to the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had begun a “Free by '63” campaign. On the occasion of Lincoln's birthday in 1963, the president and the first lady hosted a reception for African American leaders and their spouses and distributed to the guests the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report Freedom to the Free: Century of Emancipation, 1863–1963. In Paragraph 11 Kennedy also reiterates the opening theme from paragraph 3, the interconnection of one person's freedom with another, remarking that the nation “will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

Paragraph 12 focuses on the interconnection between the consequences for the U.S. advocacy of “freedom around the world” and for U.S. foreign policy brought about by the treatment of African Americans as “second-class citizens.” As concerned as he was about foreign policy, the president maintains that a bigger problem is that people can “say … to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes.” Kennedy emphasizes the heinousness of this situation by alluding to Nazi ideology with the use of the term “master race.” For Kennedy, who had fought in World War II, and for all those over the age of thirty-five or so, memories of the struggle against Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers were still vivid.

In paragraphs 13–17, Kennedy emphasizes that crisis conditions are at hand, calling for immediate action. The “cries for equality” are too great to ignore; the president declares in paragraph 14 that with “legal remedies” unavailable, people are taking to the streets in protests that “create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.” The opponents of civil rights, of course, were the ones who committed the acts of violence. Although civil rights activists' decisions to violate the laws of segregation and to protest in the streets certainly contributed to confrontations, they were committed to nonviolence. Kennedy was worried, however, that spontaneous eruptions of anger among members of the black community could lead to violence. This is the only moment in the speech where the president seems to tilt against the civil rights movement. In the next paragraph he returns to the underlying positive theme of the address, asserting, “We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people.” He notes that he opposes “repressive police action.” While the president says that the situation “cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets,” he also calls for substantive action, not “token moves or talk,” at all levels of society.

In paragraph 16, Kennedy calls on the nation to avoid sectionalism and attempts to place blame. He characterizes the vast change needed as a “revolution” but notes that it should be “peaceful and constructive for all.”

In paragraphs 18–21, Kennedy focuses on the need for civil rights legislation and announces that he will submit a proposal to Congress for equal access to public accommodations, which he characterizes as “an elementary right.” Kennedy notes that without legislation, the only remedy that African American citizens have for wrongs inflicted on them “is in the street”; “in too many communities, in too many parts of the country,” no “remedies at law” could be found. Kennedy maintains that the denial of access is “an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do,” thus appealing once again to white viewers and listeners to empathize with African Americans and to see that the recognition of equal rights is long overdue.

In paragraph 22 the president reports that he has met with many business leaders and is pleased that they have responded to his call for “voluntary action” to end discrimination in public accommodations. Kennedy comments that despite progress in over seventy-five cities in the past two weeks, legislation is nevertheless needed because “many are unwilling to act alone.”

In paragraphs 23–26, Kennedy outlines additional features of the civil rights legislation that he will propose, including federal government involvement in lawsuits to promote desegregation in schools and “greater protection for the right to vote.” He notes that “too many” black students who entered segregated grade schools at the time of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision “will enter segregated high schools this fall.” Only a small percentage of black students had yet moved from segregated to desegregated schools. The consequence of this delayed desegregation, the president argues, is lost job opportunities.

In paragraph 26, the president again emphasizes the need for action “in the homes of every American in every community,” while in paragraphs 27 and 28 he praises the “honor” and “courage” of those working for civil rights. Kennedy asserts that these individuals have acted “out of a sense of human decency” and compares them with “our soldiers and sailors” because “they are meeting freedom's challenge on the firing line.” This was high praise, indeed, given the importance Kennedy attached to foreign policy and the stress that he placed on political and moral courage in his book Profiles in Courage.

In paragraph 29, the president highlights the economic gap between blacks and whites throughout the country. Kennedy argues that this is a problem that “faces us all,” in “the North as well as the South.” Describing in detail the crisis facing the nation, Kennedy again calls on “every citizen” to care and to act.

In paragraphs 30 and 31, Kennedy makes an appeal based on cultural pluralism, national unity, and equality: The United States “has become one country because all of us and all of the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents.” He reiterates the need to give the “10 percent of the population” constituted by African Americans alternatives to discrimination and to demonstrations as the only means of gaining rights. The issue, he insists, is one of basic fairness and in the interests of all: “I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that.”

In paragraph 32 the president makes an explicit appeal for people's help and reiterates the theme of treating people as one would want to be treated. In this and the following paragraph, the president emphasizes the theme of equality of opportunity and the importance of treating children right—“to give a chance for every child to be educated to the limit of his talents.” Kennedy uses exclusively male pronouns here and throughout most of the address.

In paragraph 34 Kennedy speaks of the reciprocal obligation to be held by black citizens (“be responsible … uphold the law”) and by society (“the law will be fair … the Constitution will be color blind”). In advocating a color-blind Constitution, Kennedy alludes to John Marshall Harlan's use of this terminology in his dissent in the Plessy v. Ferguson separate-but-equal Supreme Court decision of 1896. In the closing paragraph, the president states that basic principles are at stake—what the country “stands for”—and again asks for the support of “all our citizens.”

Additional Commentary by Chester Pach, Ohio University

No issue was more important, troubling, or divisive for Americans during the early 1960s than civil rights, the subject of a White House address by Kennedy on June 11, 1963. When Kennedy spoke, racial tensions had been high for months, especially in Alabama. In April and May, Martin Luther King, Jr., had organized peaceful demonstrations in Birmingham to desegregate lunch counters and open job opportunities to African Americans. Local authorities, however, used fire hoses and police dogs against the demonstrators, and the news photographs and film reports shocked many viewers. Kennedy sent Justice Department officials to help negotiate a compromise settlement, but a series of violent incidents threatened the fragile accord. The Alabama governor, George Wallace, inflamed the situation when he announced that he would personally block the admission of two African American students to the University of Alabama, the country's last all-white state institution of higher education. On June 11, as promised, Wallace stood in the “school house” door, before yielding to federal authority and allowing the students to register (Giglio, p. 180).

Aides warned Kennedy that conflicts over civil rights might yet erupt in dozens more cities during the summer, and so the president decided to speak to the American people later that same day about the nation's racial crisis. His intent was to address a problem that was affecting every part of the country and that raised fundamental questions of law, justice, and morality. He read from a text, one that Sorensen had finished only five minutes before the president faced the television camera. Kennedy, however, had spent much of the afternoon discussing what he would say with aides. At times during his address, he spoke extemporaneously, his words reflecting the urgency and conviction he felt. And, indeed, the speech revealed that the president's thinking about civil rights had changed. During his first year in office, Kennedy had made only tepid efforts to eliminate racial barriers, since he feared losing vital support from white southern Democrats. By mid-1963 Kennedy realized that inaction or delay was no longer possible.

Kennedy begins by placing the civil rights movement in the long sweep of American history and explaining that the movement's urgency arises from the discrimination and deprivation that afflicts African Americans in their daily lives. He indicates that he had come to believe that civil rights involved fidelity to basic American principles of decency, fairness, and equality: “One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.… And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.” Kennedy also connects civil rights to the cold war. He asserts that the United States could not “preach freedom” to other nations if it did not follow its own advice: “Are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes?” He goes on to declare, “The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand.” Americans faced “a moral crisis” that they could not resolve through “repressive police action” or “token moves or talk.”

Kennedy proposes a combination of government and citizen action to ensure that “race has no place in American life or law.” He announces that he will send Congress the most ambitious civil rights legislation since the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s, a bill that would end racial segregation “in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments,” as well as outlaw discrimination in employment. New laws, necessary though they were, would not be enough; Kennedy also calls on his fellow citizens to examine their consciences—as he had his—and to work to make life better for all people in their communities “out of a sense of human decency.”

Kennedy's speech was a landmark in the civil rights movement. Never before had a president declared that racial justice was a moral issue. Kennedy did not live, however, to see the passage of the legislation he submitted to Congress. Instead, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his extraordinary political skills to maneuver the legislation through Congress, calling on the public to rally behind it as a memorial to his slain predecessor. On July 2, 1964, Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important laws enacted in U.S. history.