The Kennedy Half-Century (102 page)

42
. Reeves,
President Kennedy
, 501.

43
. Wallace’s stand in the schoolhouse door was pure political theater. He knew that his action would not prevent the integration of the University of Alabama and that Alabama’s elected state attorney general, Richmond Flowers, opposed his policies. In addition, the university’s Board of Trustees had previously adopted a resolution promising to obey the orders of the courts. Memorandum from Burke Marshall to RFK, May 22, 1963, Burke Marshall Papers, Box 8, “Attorney General, April–June 1963,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

44
. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “Address on Civil Rights (June 11, 1963),” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3375
 [accessed January 27, 2011].

45
. Louis Martin Diary, June 16, 1963, Louis Martin Papers, Box 12, Folder 5, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC; Letter from JFK to Mrs. Medgar Evers, June 13, 1963,” Burke Marshall Papers, Box 8, “Presidential, April 8, 1963–August 17, 1964 and undated,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts; Sorensen,
Classic Biography
, 496–97.

46
. Lewis’s original line was, “We cannot support the administration’s civil rights bill.” At Kennedy’s behest, he changed it: “It is true that we support the administration’s civil rights bill in Congress. We support it with great reservations, however.” Lewis also deleted “We will march through the South, through the heart of Dixie, the way Sherman did. We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground nonviolently.” John Lewis has been a Democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia since 1987.

47
. Transcript of
Meet the Press
, produced by Lawrence E. Spivak. Guest: The Honorable Robert F. Kennedy, attorney general of the United States. June 23, 1963; vol. 7, no. 24. Merkle Press, Washington, DC, in Victor S. Navasky Papers, Box 3, “Background Civil Rights,” Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC; Michael Lind, “The Candidate,” review of
Robert Kennedy: His Life
, by Evan Thomas.
New York Times on the Web
,
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/09/10/reviews/000910.10lind.html
 [accessed January 28, 2011];
JFK: A Presidency Revealed
, DVD (New York: A&E Home Video, 2003).

48
. Malcolm X criticized King for allowing the Kennedys to dilute the strength of the protest: “And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. It ceased to be angry, it ceased to be hot, it ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a circus, with clowns and all.” Howard Zinn,
A People’s History of the United States, 1492–Present
(New York: Harper Perennial, 1980), 458.

49
. E. W. Kenworthy,”200,000 March for Civil Rights in Orderly Washington Rally,”
New York Times
, August 29, 1963; Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 645. There were many moderate and liberal Republicans serving in Congress at the time, and most ended up backing the civil rights bills of the 1960s.

50
. James Reston, “Birmingham: The Crisis of Lawlessness in Alabama,”
New York Times
, September 18, 1963; Sorensen,
Classic Biography
, 506; Comment by Sarah Collins Rudolph at UVA Center for Politics seminar, Charlottesville, Virginia, April 15, 2013.

6. EUROPE, SPACE, AND SOUTHEAST ASIA

1
. John F. Kennedy, “The Strategy of Peace,” in Theodore C. Sorensen, ed.,
“Let the Word Go Forth”: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Delacorte Press, 1988), 282–90.

2
. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 904; Kenneth P. O’Donnell, David F. Powers, and Joe McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 414–15; Bono, “What I Learned from Sargent Shriver,”
New York Times
, January 19, 2011. Ireland’s obsession with JFK has hardly waned in half a century. In 2013 various tributes to Kennedy were posted on the
Irish Times
website:
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage
 [accessed June 19, 2013].

3
. John Morton Blum,
Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961–74
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 114; John F. Kennedy, “ ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ Speech (June 26, 1963),” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3376
 [accessed February 1, 2011]; “Berlin Marks Kennedy Rally,” BBC News, June 26, 2003,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3020202.stm
 [accessed February 2, 2011].

4
. O’Donnell, Powers, and McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,”
417–18.

5
. Kennedy’s advisers later realized that he should have said, “Ich bin Berliner” instead of “Ich bin ein Berliner” (
ein Berliner
can mean “jelly doughnut” in German). JFK learned the phrase from McGeorge Bundy during the flight to Germany. Bundy later wrote, “Fortunately the crowd in Berlin was untroubled by my mistake; no one in the square confused JFK with a doughnut.” Michael R. Beschloss,
The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–63
(New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), 606.

6
. James Robert Carroll,
One of Ourselves: John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Ireland
(Bennington, VT: Images from the Past, 2003), 11–23.

7
. Herbert S. Parmet,
JFK. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Penguin Books, 1984), 322–23; Carroll,
One of Ourselves
, 69.

8
. O’Donnell, Powers, and McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,”
421–23.

9
. Carroll,
One of Ourselves
, 184.

10
. Parmet,
JFK
, 323; Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin,
The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence
(New York: Gallery Books, 2010), 84.

11
. See “Travels of President John F. Kennedy,” U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian,
http://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/travels/president/kennedy-john-f
 [accessed August 2, 2012].

12
. O’Donnell, Powers, and McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,”
424–25.

13
. Jacqueline Jones, Peter H. Wood, Thomas Borstelmann, Elaine Tyler May, and Vicki L. Ruiz,
Created Equal: A Social and Political History of the United States
, 2nd ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2006), 868; John M. Murrin, Paul E. Johnson, James M. McPherson, Gary Gerstle, Emily S. Rosenberg, and Norman L. Rosenberg,
Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People
, 3rd ed. (New York: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2002), 995.

14
. Parmet,
JFK
, 326; Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 490, 516.

15
. Kennedy vacillated for many weeks. He did not want another Bay of Pigs to unfold in Southeast Asia. During meetings in late August, he peppered his aides with questions: Would it be possible to delay the coup until they could gather more information on the political situation in Saigon? Could the coup really succeed, and if so, what came next? How would the U.S. conceal its role in the operation?

16
. Roger Hilsman,
To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Dell Publishing, 1967), 481; Robert Dallek,
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–63
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 674; diplomatic cable from Henry Lodge to JFK, August 30, 1963, John M. Newman Papers, Box 14, “30 August 1963,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

17
. Memorandum from Roger Hilsman to Dean Rusk, August 30, 1963, John Newman Papers, Box 14, “August 1963,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

18
. Howard Zinn,
A People’s History of the United States, 1492–Present
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 474–75; Blum,
Years of Discord
, 132; Parmet,
JFK
, 335; Tim Weiner,
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
(New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 242.

19
. “JFK Library Releases Remaining Presidential Recordings,” January 24, 2012, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website,
http://www.jfklibrary.org/About-Us/News-and-Press/Press-Releases/JFK-Library-Releases-Remaining-Presidential-Recordings.aspx
 [accessed January 24, 2012].

20
. President’s press conference, April 11, 1962, Neil Sheehan Papers, Box 69, Folder 13, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC; John F. Kennedy, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union, January 14, 1963,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,
The American Presidency Project
, Santa Barbara, CA,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9138
 [accessed February 7, 2011]; “President Kennedy’s Undelivered Remarks at the Trade Mart in Dallas 22 November 1963” in James N. Giglio and Stephen G. Rabe,
Debating the Kennedy Presidency
(Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 92.

21
. O’Donnell, Powers, and McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye,”
443.

22
. Reeves,
President Kennedy
, 450; Jack Raymond, “G.O.P. Asks Candor on Vietnam War,”
New York Times
, February 14, 1962; “An Open Letter to President John F. Kennedy Against U.S. Military Intervention in South Vietnam,” April 11, 1962, and “An Open Letter to President John F. Kennedy For Ending the War and Making Peace in South Vietnam,” March 18, 1963, Neil Sheehan Papers, Box 69, Folder 12, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

23
. Dallek,
Unfinished Life
, 685–86.

24
. James W. Douglass believes that Kennedy had already decided to withdraw from Vietnam, “part of the larger strategy for peace that he and Nikita Khrushchev had become mutually committed to, which in Kennedy’s case would result in his death.” James W. Douglass,
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 94.

25
. Giglio and Rabe,
Debating the Kennedy Presidency
, 64.

26
. Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, 154.

27
. Ted Sorensen,
Kennedy: The Classic Biography
(New York: Harper Perennial Political Classics, 2009), 734–40; John F. Kennedy, “Remarks at Dedication of Aerospace Medical Health Center, San Antonio, Texas, November 21, 1963,” in Sorensen,
“Let the Word Go Forth,”
181; James Giglio,
The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 142–43.

28
. Two court cases strengthened the Equal Pay Act: Schultz v. Wheaton Glass Co. (1970) and Corning Glass Works v. Brennan (1974). In 2009 President Obama expanded the amount of time women have to file a pay related grievance with the government by signing the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. For more information on both court cases and the Ledbetter Act, see Borgna Brunner, “The Equal Pay Act: A History of Pay Inequity in the U.S.,”
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/equalpayact1.html
 [accessed June 10, 2013].

29
. JFK wrote: “Dedicated to my Mr. J. P. Kennedy. My recent allowance is [$].40. This I used for [airplanes] and other playthings of childhood but now I am a scout and I put away my childish things. Before I would spend 20 [cents] of my [40 cents] allowance and in five minutes I would have empty pockets and nothing to gain and 20 [cents] to lose. When I, a Scout, I have to buy canteens, haversacks, blankets, [searchlights], poncho things that will last for years and I can always use it while I can’t use a chocolate marshmallow sundae with vanilla ice cream and so I put in my plea for a raise of thirty cents for me to buy scout things and pay my own way more around.” Undated letter from JFK to Joseph P. Kennedy, “Correspondence, 1929–35,” JFKPP-001-010, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website,
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKPP-001-010.aspx
 [accessed May 1, 2013].

30
. Seymour M. Hersh,
The Dark Side of Camelot
(Boston: Back Bay Books, 1997), 399; Reeves,
President Kennedy
, 626.

31
. Hersh,
Dark Side
, 230; Cynthia R. Fagen, “Teen Mistress Addresses Relationship, Pol’s Cold War Fears in Memoir,”
New York Post
, February 5, 2012,
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/inside_my_teen_affair_with_jfk_FGF4aS7OdoQozP4tyySsmK/o
 [accessed February 7, 2012]; Lance Morrow, “Woman, Interrupted,”
Smithsonian
(December 2008): 87–95. In 1964 Meyer was murdered under mysterious circumstances during a botched robbery attempt in Washington, DC.