Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation (18 page)

The family at their Cape Cod vacation home, August 4, 1962.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

Despite all the good news, as the year goes on, John Kennedy will be forced to use every bit of his presidential skill to manage a situation that is getting to the boiling point: the civil rights struggle.

Kennedy was the first president to conduct televised live press conferences that were not edited or delayed. By November 1963 he would hold sixty-four press conferences.
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MAY 3, 1963

Birmingham, Alabama 1:00
P.M.

“
W
E’RE GOING TO WALK, WALK, WALK.
Freedom … Freedom … Freedom,” the protesters chant as they march out through the great oak doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It is a Friday, and these young black students should be in school. Instead, they have gathered to march for civil rights. Some are less than 10 years old. Most are teenagers. They are football players, homecoming queens, track stars, and cheerleaders.

The marchers number more than 1,000 strong. All have skipped class to be here. Their goal is to experience something their parents have never known for a single day of their lives: an integrated Birmingham, where lunch counters, department stores, public restrooms, and water fountains are open to all. The protesters plan to march into the white business district and peacefully enter stores and restaurants.

The Children’s Crusade, as
Newsweek
magazine will call it, fans out across acre-wide Kelly Ingram Park. “We’re going to walk, walk, walk,” they continue to chant.

Restrooms, drinking fountains, buses, and movie theaters were segregated in many places in the South in the 1960s.
[© Bob Adelman/Corbis]

They know that this march is not just about public toilets; this march is an act of defiance. Just four months ago, George Wallace became governor of Alabama. At his inaugural, he proclaimed, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny. And I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Those words were a call to arms for blacks and whites alike who disagreed with Wallace.

The Children’s Crusade has now reached the shade of Kelly Ingram Park’s elm trees. The temperature is a humid 80 degrees. Ahead, the marchers see barricades and rows of fire trucks. German shepherds, trained by the police to attack, bark and snarl at the approach of the young students, and an enormous crowd of black and white spectators lines the east side of the park, waiting to see what will happen next.

Martin Luther King Jr. speaks to the protesters before they set out from the church, reminding them that jail is a small price to pay for a good cause. They know not to fight back against the police or otherwise provoke confrontation when challenged. Their efforts will be in vain if the march turns into a riot.

Eugene “Bull” Connor is Birmingham’s public safety commissioner. A former Ku Klux Klan member, he is a strict segregationist. He can’t afford to let these kids get to the white shopping district. He has ordered Birmingham firefighters to attach their hoses to hydrants and be ready to open those nozzles and spray water on the marchers at full force—a power so great that it can remove the bark from trees or mortar from a brick building. If the protesters reach the shopping district, using the hoses might damage expensive storefronts. The marchers need to be stopped now.

The first children in the group are met with a half-strength blast from the fire hoses. It’s still enough force to stop many of them in their tracks. Some of the kids simply sit down and let the water batter them, following orders not to be violent or to retreat.

Firefighters turn their hoses full force on civil rights demonstrators on July 15, 1963, in Birmingham, Alabama.
[Bill Hudson/AP]

Connor, realizing that half measures will not work with these determined children, then gives the order to spray at full strength. All the protesters are knocked off their feet. Many children are swept away down the streets and sidewalks, their bodies scraping against grass and concrete. Clothing is torn from their bodies. Those who make the mistake of pressing themselves against a building to dodge the hoses soon become perfect targets. “The water stung like a whip and hit like a cannon,” one protester will later remember. “The force of it knocked you down like you weighed only twenty pounds, pushing people around like rag dolls. We tried to hold on to the building, but that was no use.”

Walter Gadsden, a seventeen-year-old demonstrator, is attacked by a police dog. This photograph enraged people across the country.
[Bill Hudson/AP]

Then Connor lets loose the police dogs.

Bull Connor watches as the German shepherds lunge at the children, ripping away their clothing and tearing into their flesh.

By 3:00
P.M.
, it all seems to be over. The children who haven’t been arrested limp home in their soaked and torn clothing, their bodies bruised by point-blank blasts from the water cannons. No longer bold and defiant, they are now just a bunch of kids who have to explain to their angry parents about their ruined clothes and a missed day of school.

Bull Connor has won. Or at least it seems that way.

But among those in Birmingham this afternoon is an Associated Press photographer named Bill Hudson. He is considered one of the best in the business, willing to endure any danger to get a great photo. On this day, Bill Hudson takes the best photo of his life. It is an image of a Birmingham police officer—looking official in pressed shirt, tie, and sunglasses—holding a leash while his German shepherd lunges toward black high school student Walter Gadsden.

The next morning, that photograph appears on the front page of the
New York Times
, three columns wide.

Young marchers head toward Kelly Ingram Park. They will become important symbols of the civil rights movement.
[© Bob Adelman/Magnum Photos]

And so it is that John Kennedy, starting his morning as he always does by reading the papers, sees this image from Birmingham. Just one look, and JFK instinctively knows that America and the world will be outraged by Hudson’s image. Civil rights are sure to be a major issue of the 1964 presidential election. And Kennedy now understands he can no longer be a passive observer of the civil rights movement. He must take a stand—no matter how many votes it might lose him in the South.

Kennedy makes a point of telling reporters that the picture is “sick” and “shameful.”

Petitions from around the country, including this one from California, arrived at the White House urging President Kennedy to support the goals of Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent protests in Birmingham. The petition asks the president “to call for nationwide prayers and national unity of purpose to secure and protect the rights of every citizen under our Constitution.…”
[JFK Presidential Library and Museum]