The Kennedy Half-Century (98 page)

2
. “Inaugural Gala in Honor of the Inauguration of the Honorable John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Honorable Lyndon Baines Johnson, Thursday, January 19, 1961,” Gerald Bruno Papers, Box 3, “1961 Inauguration Gala,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts; Theodore C. Sorensen,
Kennedy
(New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 243.

3
. According to some scholars, the famous phrase may date back to JFK’s days as a high school student at Choate, a posh Connecticut prep school, where the headmaster would periodically remind his students about what mattered most: “Not what Choate does for you, but what you can do for Choate.” In 2011 a document surfaced at Choate that supports this notion. A notebook kept by the school’s headmaster for his sermons included the following quotation, attributable to a Harvard dean: “The youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask, not ‘What can she do for me?’ but ‘What can I do for her?’ ” Ted Sorensen indicated that Kennedy’s inaugural statement was repeated from a televised speech JFK delivered on September 20, 1960: “We do not campaign stressing what our country is going to do for us as a people. We stress what we can do for the country, all of us.” See Edward Wyatt, “Two Authors Ask About ‘Ask Not,’ ”
New York Times
, May 10, 2005; Michael Melia, “Document May
Shed Light on Origins of JFK Speech,” Associated Press, November 3, 2011,
http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-03/news/30356106_1_sermons-choate-officials-thurston-clarke
 [accessed November 8, 2011]; Sorensen,
Kennedy
, 241. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, “Inaugural Address (January 20, 1961),” Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia,
http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3365
 [accessed January 9, 2011].

4
. Nathan Rott, “ ‘Ask Not …’: JFK’s Words Still Inspire 50 Years Later,” January 19, 2011, National Public Radio website,
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/18/133018777/jfks-inaugural-speech-still-inspires-50-years-later
 [accessed February 11, 2011].

5
. Telephone interview with Nancy Pelosi, May 26, 2011.

6
. Matt Viser, “JFK’s Words Echo Once More in Washington,”
Boston Globe
, January 21, 2011.

7
. Adam Frankel, “Author, Author,”
New Yorker
, February 28, 2011,
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/02/28/110228ta_talk_frankel
 [accessed March 9, 2011]; E. J. Dionne, “Kennedy’s Inaugural Address Presents a Challenge Still,”
Washington Post
, January 20, 2011.

8
. James N. Giglio,
The Presidency of John F. Kennedy
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 28; E. H. Foley, “Inaugural Committee, 1961, Final Report of the Chairman,” Gerald Bruno Papers, Box 3, “1961 Inauguration Committee Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts; Frances Wilson, review of
Mistresses: A History of the Other Woman
, by Elizabeth Abbott,
London Daily Telegraph
, December 12, 2010,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/8188789/Mistresses-A-History-of-the-Other-Woman-by-Elizabeth-Abbott-review.html
 [accessed December 24, 2010]; “Oral History Interview with Joseph W. Alsop, June 18, 1964,” Joseph and Stewart Alsop Papers, Box 183, Folder 7, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC; Thomas C. Reeves,
A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Free Press, 1991), 236.

9
. During his first dinner at the executive mansion, Joseph Alsop learned from Mrs. Kennedy that there were “twenty ‘calligraphers’ working away in the White House basement, to produce place cards, menus and everything else in the White House in [a] copper plate style.” In addition, Mrs. Kennedy asked Alsop to find out if the White House could buy the “noncommercial crus” that California wine growers produced for their own consumption. According to Alsop, these were the “best” California wines—unpasteurized, mature, and bursting with “the true taste of the soil.” Joseph Alsop, “Dear Ann,” January 23, 1961, and Alsop to Betty Flood, January 31, 1961, Joseph and Stewart Alsop Papers, Box 17, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC. In later years, Alsop recalled that the Kennedys “always gave you too much to drink. They had the best wine I’d ever had in any house in Washington, including the French embassy … We’d start off with this perfectly wonderful white burgundy … And then along comes superb claret and then that champagne that he was so fond of that I always thought was overrated.” Alsop added that the Kennedys themselves never drank much. Joseph Alsop Oral History Interview, June 26, 1964, Joseph and Stewart Alsop Papers, Box 183, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

10
. Some organizations still sponsor Confederate commemorations that do not acknowledge the sickness of slavery. In December 2010, the Sons of Confederate Veterans sponsored a “Secession Ball” in Charleston, South Carolina, that promised participants a “joyous night of music, dancing, food, and drink.” In 2011, the same group celebrated Jefferson
Davis’s inauguration in Montgomery, Alabama. See Rick Hampson, “Across the South, the Civil War Is an Enduring Conflict,”
USA Today
, February 17, 2011.

11
. “January–February 1961 Democratic Digest, Special Inaugural Issue, Vol. 8, No. 1,” Gilbert A. Harrison Papers, Box 8, “Inauguration 1961 (Nancy Blaine Harrison 1960–62),” Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

12
. The civil rights movement was more than just a by-product of
Brown v. Board of Education
. Twentieth-century urbanization also played a key role. In 1870, 90 percent of the nation’s blacks lived in the South and worked on farms. By 1940, only 77 percent still lived in the South. “By 1960 only half the black population lived in rural areas; less than one in ten still worked on a farm.” Thomas C. Holt,
African-American History
in
The New American History Series: A Publication of the American Historical Association
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1997), 15.

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), 855. Milton Viorst, “D.C. Is a Hardship Post for Negro Diplomats,”
Washington Post
, August 28, 1960; John F. Kennedy to the Honorable Christian A. Herter, August 25, 1960, Winifred Armstrong Papers, Box 1, Series 1, “Discrimination Against African Diplomats in Washington, DC,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

14
. Harris Wofford,
Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 63; Larry Sabato, ed.,
The Sixth Year Itch: The Rise and Fall of the George W. Bush Presidency
(New York: Pearson Longman, 2008), 9; John Hart, “Kennedy, Congress and Civil Rights,”
Journal of American Studies
13 (August 1979): 165–78. During the campaign, Senator Kennedy expressed support for sit-ins. On June 24, 1960, he told the press that, “Such action inevitably involves some unrest and turmoil and tension, part of the price of change. But the fact that people are peacefully protesting the denial of their rights is not something to be lamented.” See Anthony Lewis, “Kennedy Salutes Negroes’ Sit-Ins,”
New York Times
, June 25, 1960.

15
. Brooks Jackson, “Blacks and the Democratic Party,” FactCheck.org, April 18, 2008,
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/04/blacks-and-the-democratic-party/
 [accessed February 26, 2013].

16
. “Harlem Leader Talks to Kennedy,”
New York Times
, July 7, 1960; “Jack Robinson Raps Kennedy,” New Orleans
Times-Picayune
, December 12, 1960; Jackie Robinson to RFK, May 25, 1961, Box 5, Folder 14, Jackie Robinson Papers, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC; Jackie Robinson to JFK, February 9, 1961, Box 5, Folder 14, Jackie Robinson Papers, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

17
. Mark Stern, “John F. Kennedy and Civil Rights: From Congress to the Presidency,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
19 (Fall 1989): 797–823; Russell Baker, “Kennedy Pledges Civil Rights Fight,”
New York Times
, September 2, 1960; “Democratic Party Platform of 1960, July 11, 1960,” John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters,
The American Presidency Project
[online], Santa Barbara, CA,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29602
 [accessed December 9, 2010]; “He Will Support Negro Rights, Kennedy Tells Jackie Robinson,”
Los Angeles Times
, July 2, 1960.

18
. Wofford,
Kennedys and Kings
, 151; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
Robert Kennedy and His Times
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 295–97. Seigenthaler later described the scene in
Montgomery as “absolute war.”
Freedom Riders
, DVD, produced, written, and directed by Stanley Nelson (Boston: Firelight Media, 2010).

19
. Nelson,
Freedom Riders
.

20
. Personal interview with Maxwell Taylor Kennedy during the Virginia Film Festival, November 3, 2012, Charlottesville, Virginia.

21
. Susan Page, “The Kennedy Mystique,”
USA Today Special Edition
, “JFK’s America,” Fall 2010, 5; Susan Page, “50 Years After Win, a Legacy Endures: JFK’s Short Tenure Is Still Shaping USA,”
USA Today
, September 27, 2010.

22
. Personal interview with Maxwell Taylor Kennedy during the Virginia Film Festival, November 3, 2012, Charlottesville, Virginia.

23
. Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy
, 299.

24
. Howard Zinn,
A People’s History of the United States, 1492–Present
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003), 454.

25
. Louis Martin, “Memorandum on Black Muslims,” April 12, 1961, Louis Martin Papers, Box 6, Folder 12, Library of Congress Manuscripts Division, Washington, DC.

26
. At a speech in San Francisco on November 2, 1960, Kennedy said, “I am convinced that our young men and women, dedicated to freedom, are fully capable of overcoming the efforts of Mr. Khrushchev’s missionaries who are undermining that freedom.” “Making Economic Aid Effective: An American Youth Peace Corps,”
Current
8 (December 1960): 55.

27
. At two A.M. on October 14, 2010, Peace Corps director Aaron Williams and former senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania gathered on the steps of the student union at the University of Michigan to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK campaign speech that led to the formation of the Peace Corps; fifteen hundred students turned out to celebrate the anniversary. “Peace Corps Director Visits Michigan: Commemorates 50th Anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s Speech That Inspired the Peace Corps,”
US Fed News
, October 16, 2010.

28
. Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
(New York, Simon and Schuster, 1993), 69; Kevin Lowther and C. Payne Lucas.
Keeping Kennedy’s Promise: The Peace Corps: Unmet Hope of the New Frontier
(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1978), 3. The Peace Corps was not Kennedy’s idea, but he turned it into reality. Some historians trace the Corps’ origins to FDR’s CCC program. “In 1950 a group of World Federalists advanced the idea of a voluntary ‘peace force’ to work in the developing countries. In the same year, the Public Affairs Institute published a pamphlet proposing American ‘work centers’ in the Third World.” “Harris Wofford, one of the major architects of the Peace Corps, helped set up the International Development Placement Association, which, in the early 1950s, sent a small number of college graduates to teach or do community development in the Third World.” Sargent Shriver made an unsuccessful attempt to sell his idea of three-man political action teams to the Eisenhower administration. Henry Reuss (D-WI) promoted a “Point Four Youth Corps” in the late 1950s and introduced H.R. 9638, which called for a study on the “advisability and practicability of the establishment of a Point Four Youth Corps.” Hubert Humphrey’s youth service bill, S. 3675 (June 1960), was the first to use the name “Peace Corps.” Kennedy picked up on the idea during the campaign. Gerard T. Rice,
The Bold Experiment: JFK’s Peace Corps
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 4–11.

29
. Shriver to JFK, March 8, 23, and 27, 1962, R. Sargent Shriver Papers, Box 12, Series 2, “PC: Memorandums to President Kennedy,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.
The Peace Corps produced its share of headaches as well. At least one volunteer sent to the nation of Gabon brought along a firearm “for recreational hunting purposes.” Bill Moyers, deputy director of the Peace Corps, thought that taking guns to Africa sent the wrong message. “White men have been coming to Africa for generations with guns,” he wrote; “if we are truly different, it seems we ought to be different on the little issues as well as the big ones.” He also argued the presence of guns could be misinterpreted “by the leftists and anti-Americans.” Bill Moyers to Sargent Shriver, undated, Box 13, Series 2, “Peace Corps Policy,” R. Sargent Shriver Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. Shriver came under fire for both preserving the secularity of the Peace Corps and attempting to link it with the service arms of churches. The Catholic-affiliated American Council of Voluntary Agencies expressed their “regret” and “resentment” at Shriver’s decision not to award contracts to church groups. Later, when Shriver attempted to strengthen ties between the Corps and the churches, Cardinal Richard Cushing resisted: “I don’t want any part of federal aid for anything because I don’t see how you can get it without control. It is for this reason that I ‘keep my mouth shut’ with regard to federal aid to education and other projects.” Richard Cushing to Shriver, January 31, 1962, and “Recent Peace Corps Rebuff to Churches,”
The Tablet
, December 23, 1961, Box 12, Series 2, “Peace Corps Correspondence,” R. Sargent Shriver Papers, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. Despite these problems, the Peace Corps remains popular today, having convinced generations of people they could make a difference in the world. It has become the creative basis for many other proposals about national service. See, for example, my own plan for Universal National Service (UNS) in Larry J. Sabato,
A More Perfect Constitution:
23
Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country
(New York: Walker, 2007), chapter 5 (entire).