Kennedy: The Classic Biography (92 page)

Special attention in the House focused on William McCulloch of Ohio, the key Republican on the House Judiciary Committee and a respected conservative. McCulloch’s constituency might normally have been considered too rural and Republican to have made him a champion of Negro rights, but his conscience responded to the reason of the administration and to the realities of the situation.

The President wanted not only a bill which dealt effectively with the problems of discrimination in voting, public accommodations, educational and other public institutions, Federal programs and employment, but also a bill which reflected a bipartisan approach and a national consensus which the nation would accept and obey. The test of whether this was possible came in the House Judiciary Committee. A subcommittee considering the bill under the chairmanship of Congressman Celler, split along bipartisan lines, reported out an expanded bill which appeared to be stronger and had the unyielding support of the civil rights groups, but which in fact included provisions that were of doubtful constitutionality and contained the seeds of more turmoil than solutions. Southern Democrats gleefully joined Northern liberal Democrats in giving the bill more weight than the House Rules Committee and full House membership were capable of carrying. The President had the choice of either making this new version the official Democratic bill, which would have increased enormously his prestige and influence with liberal and civil rights groups, or risking an all-out effort to re-create the badly damaged bipartisan consensus. He chose the latter course.

Recognizing that the liberal Democrats on the committee were under great pressure from the civil rights organizations, including church groups and organized labor, to support the new version, he agreed that the administration would take on as much as possible the burden of going back to a bipartisan bill. For this purpose the Attorney General came before the full committee. He testified in direct fashion that many of the changes were unenforceable, unconstitutional or undesirable; that only a bipartisan bill could pass; and that a compromise, which he outlined, should be adopted by the committee. But this was not enough. To enlist behind the compromise the full committee’s liberal Democrats, who were suspicious that the Republicans would seek to outmaneuver them and who were under public pressure to stay with the subcommittee bill, the President had to intervene personally. In a series of White House meetings and phone calls, he discovered that, to do this, he would have to get a commitment of House Republican support for the compromise, lasting through the Rules Committee and on the floor. For this he needed a commitment from Minority Leader Halleck and the rest of the Republican leadership in the House, as well as Congressman McCulloch. To enable him to make his own commitment on a bipartisan approach to the Republican leadership, he first had to persuade enough liberal Democrats on the committee to follow his lead, and that required another late-night meeting at the White House. It was a difficult juggling act, but in the end Halleck, aided by McCulloch, told the President that the votes would be there. Right-wing Republicans accused Halleck of appeasing the enemy and placed a furled umbrella on his desk, but the committee reported out the new compromise version, after a dramatic meeting, on October 29, 1963. (The commitment to Kennedy from both Republicans and Democrats which that vote entailed would make possible House passage of the compromise bill in December of that year.)

The President, discouraged by the months of hearings and maneuverings, then pressed the committee to get its report to the House Rules Committee. It arrived there on November 21 as he left for a speech-making tour in Texas.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, where the Attorney General patiently spent one day after another answering Senator Ervin’s questions on the Constitution, a real test awaited floor debate. The President hoped—but never with much confidence—that a “Vandenberg” would emerge among the Southern Senators, a statesman willing to break with the past and place national interests first. Despite idle speculation that Arkansas’ Fulbright might play such a role, no Southern solon came forward to place the judgment of history ahead of his continued career.

THE CLIMATE FOR CHANGE

Passage of his bill, the President knew, required appeals to more than the Congress; and a peaceful revolution required more than passage of his bill. Its enactment, his message made plain,

will not solve all our problems of race relations. This bill must be supplemented by action in every branch of government at the Federal, state and local level. It must be supplemented as well by enlightened private citizens, private businesses and private labor and civic organizations.

To enlighten and encourage those citizens, the President, accompanied by the Vice President and Attorney General, embarked on an unprecedented series of private meetings in the White House—seeking to enlist the cooperation and understanding of more than sixteen hundred national leaders: educators, lawyers, Negro leaders, Southern leaders, women’s organizations, business groups, governors, mayors, editors and others, Republicans as well as Democrats, segregationists as well as integrationists. He briefed them not only on the bill but on their responsibilities beyond the bill. He had neither funds nor sanctions to induce their assistance, but he offered Presidential leadership.

He pressed for action from the leaders of the American labor movement some of whom had long given lip service to civil rights but had excluded Negroes from many craft unions, or forced them into segregated locals or seniority systems, or denied them the required apprenticeship training. He pressed for action from clergymen of all faiths, certain they would “recognize the conflict between racial bigotry and the Holy Word.” What about racial intermarriage? asked one minister. “I am not talking about private lives,” replied the President, dismissing this familiar bugaboo, “but public accommodations, public education and public elections.” He pressed for action from the blue-ribbon Business Council (noting later in a caustic aside that it was the only audience not to rise to its feet upon the entrance of the President of the United States).

The over-all response made Kennedy proud of his country. The citizen “lobby” on behalf of the bill—led particularly by religious groups and supported by editorial writers usually poles apart—was massive and effective. Even more striking was the voluntary removal of segregation signs and practices in chain stores, theaters and restaurants. Southern mayors and chambers of commerce began talking with Negro leaders. Employers and unions, North and South, began lowering racial bars. The nation’s clergy were goaded into effective action on a major moral issue which had long preceded Kennedy’s leadership. Progress was slow and insufficient, but, compared to the previous hundred years, rapid and gratifying.

Federally sponsored apprenticeship programs opened the building trades to more Negroes. James Meredith received his degree. The Prince Edward County, Virginia, schools were reopening on a voluntary basis. “We, as a country, are doing well…passing through a very grueling test,” said the President. But not everyone passed the test. Alabama’s Governor Wallace, hoping to re-enact another summit in the doorway, turned Negro children away from newly integrated schools in Birmingham and two other cities, first with state troopers, then with his National Guard. When Kennedy federalized the Guardsmen once again and simply returned them to their quarters, Wallace backed down as before.

But the Governor’s example of defying the law and oppressing Negro children was not lost on his fellow Alabamans. Many white students boycotted the schools. A white man threw a rock at two Negro girls on their way to school. Four days after Wallace’s performance, a bomb planted in a Birmingham Negro church killed four little girls in Sunday school, another Negro youth was shot dead by a Birmingham policeman and still another by two white boys. Almost all the warnings about violence in 1963 had been directed at Negroes, yet almost all the victims had been Negroes. “I deplore violence,” said George Wallace.

The President sent FBI bomb specialists to the city and left no doubt whom he held at least indirectly responsible. “Public disparagement of law and order has encouraged violence which has fallen on the innocent.” He conferred with Negro and white leaders from Birmingham, dispatched General Kenneth Royall and Colonel Earl Blaik as a special negotiating team, and obtained pledges of cooperation from all sides.

In the space of a few months President Kennedy had made the Negroes’ troubles his troubles and their problems his priority. Their assailants were attacking him. Their overwhelming endorsement, combined with continued white resentment, the President was told, created the danger of political division along racial lines. “I would doubt that,” he said. “I think the American people have been through too much to make that fatal mistake…. Over the long run we are going to have a mix. That will be true racially, socially, ethnically, geographically, and that is really, finally, the best way.” (A recording of the last two sentences, taken out of context, appeared in the radio commercials of Southern segregationist candidates warning of intermarriage.)

At times there was still grumbling from Negroes, and it was not confined to extremist leaders such as Malcolm X or intellectuals such as James Baldwin. Many of the more genuine and practical leaders failed to understand that Kennedy had to work simultaneously on his tax bill, on the Test Ban Treaty, on the threat of a railroad strike and on Vietnam—in their interest as well as the interest of all Americans. When he did not cancel his European trip in June, some complained that he was interrupting his attention to their problems. But the President valued the trip partly because it did interrupt the nation’s attention to this problem. Too much attention, he believed, could accelerate demands and expectations more rapidly than they could be fulfilled, and thereby increase tensions during a long, hot summer.

The summer was, in fact, cooler than the President had feared. The influence of extremist groups in the Negro community dwindled; one civil rights leader was privately persuaded to reject some Communists who had infiltrated his movement; and the President in turn rejected the claims of the Wallaces and Barnetts that the whole civil rights movement was Communist-inspired. It was not surprising, he said, that the nation’s few Communists would attempt to “worm their way into those movements…. But I must say that we looked into this matter with a good deal of care. We have no evidence that any of the leaders of the civil rights movements in the United States are Communists.”

Asked at a late summer news conference about the diminution of demonstrations, he emphasized that a period of calm should be used to advance progress and not be regarded as the end of the effort. With considerable candor, he explained that demonstrations had subsided partly because of the progress under way and “partly because…the responsible Negro leadership…realizes that this is a long-drawn-out task…and a quick demonstration in the street is not the immediate answer…. In some cases…particularly in their extreme form…[or] fringe actions…they were self-defeating.”

But those opposed to demonstrations could take little comfort from his words. “Some of the people,” he said at another news conference, “who keep talking about demonstrations never talk about the problem of redressing grievances…. You can’t just tell people ‘Don’t protest,’ but still keep them out of your store.” The massive march on Washington earlier mentioned had been altered. Instead of a menacing sit-in in the legislative galleries—which he had strongly opposed—it was to be a peaceful assembly on the Washington Monument grounds, marching from there to the Lincoln Memorial. Kennedy worked through the Department of Justice, personal intermediaries and such friendly sponsors as Walter Reuther to make the planning as responsible and effective as possible. While he shared some of the trepidation of those officials who forecast disaster, he was ahead of his team in endorsing the project and recognizing the necessity for its success without turning it into a Federal undertaking. Washington and Park Police and Federally financed facilities were made available. The project was still under fire as a high-pressure, explosive demonstration. But the President termed it “a peaceful assembly calling for a redress of grievances…and that is in the great tradition.”

As August 28, the day of the march, neared, the President was concerned about how peaceful an assembly it would be. The American Nazi Party threatened a countermarch, the Black Muslims opposed the march, and at least one of the Negro student leaders prepared to denounce the “inadequacies” of the President’s bill. Thousands of extra police were to be on hand, with four thousand troops standing by across the river. Many Washingtonians, fearing trouble, said they would stay home that day. Some Congressmen wanted protection for the Capitol. The President made it clear that he would be in his office. Aware of the hard political fact that a crowd of 230,000 is capable of many reactions, he declined to appear before the march. Nor did he want to meet its leaders in advance of their reports, agreeing to see them instead at day’s end.

On August 28 all went well. Kennedy marveled, as the world marveled, at the spirit and self-discipline of the largest public demonstration ever held in Washington. Participants from every state and race, arriving by every means of transportation, maintained dignity with enthusiasm, sang, chanted and listened patiently to hours of entertainment and exhortation. The most impassioned oratory from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial was delivered by Martin Luther King. “I have a dream,” he cried over and over, describing the day when harmony and equality would prevail.

“I have a dream,” said the President to King as he greeted the group’s leaders at the White House. His dream was theirs. He had been deeply touched by the proceedings and was full of admiration for march leader A. Philip Randolph. Their cause, he said, had been advanced by the moving but orderly events of the day. Then, around a table of coffee and sandwiches, he brought them back to the harsh world of legislative committees, compromises and constituent pressures. He doubted that any votes in the Congress had been changed. He doubted that any segregationists had been converted. But he felt that the march had helped to unite the adherents of civil rights more closely; and merely the absence of violence in such a huge and restless throng had awakened new interest and won new adherents in white America.