True Compass (21 page)

Eastland returned, eyed my glass suspiciously, dropped some more ice in it, and said, "Now you have to decide that second committee." He sat down and reflected a moment. Then he filled my glass with scotch again and said, "You Kennedys always care about the Negras. Always hear about you caring about those. You finish that off, and you're on the civil rights subcommittee."

"I am?" I said. The glass in my hand looked more like a vase. But I had to give the senator credit: without even consulting me, he was two for two on my preferences. Before I could take another belt, Eastland had crossed the room again. In retrospect, he was perhaps giving me the chance to fudge my intake a little. Once again, I poured some into the potted plants and downed what was left as Eastland returned.

"Now I s'pose we have to fix you up with a third committee," he drawled. "Not a lot of people want a third committee, but I think you're always caring about the, you know, Cons'tution. Kennedys always talk about the Cons'tution. You finish that, and I'll put you on the Cons'tution subcommittee."

This was amazing. I hadn't dared hope for this level of accommodation from the senator. I began to settle into our conversation. When I checked my wristwatch sometime later, I saw that I'd been inside Eastland's office for an hour and fifty minutes. It was just coming up on noon. Both the plants and I were well lubricated.

I thanked the senator for his help, lurched out of my chair, and made it back toward my office. I found about forty people from Massachusetts outside, waiting to greet their new senator, who was weaving a bit and reeking of alcohol. The people were looking at me strangely.

"I was just, ah, getting my committee assignments," I told them.

CHAPTER TEN

1963

I badly wanted to add my voice to the issues in the headlines, but I knew it was too soon. I first needed to establish my legitimacy as a lawmaker worthy of this office, and erase the perception that I was merely the president's little brother. Building a record of independent achievement and judgment would require time and patience. My core obligation was to Massachusetts, its people, and their interests. I would focus on this obligation while I continued to study the Senate as an institution and learn its folkways.

My interest in Massachusetts is not simply or even primarily strategic. The state and the city of my birth are extensions of myself and my family. From my Boston office on the twenty-fourth floor of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, I can look out the window next to my desk and see the lines wending across space and time. I can see where my grandfather was born, and the house where my mother was born on Garden Court Street. But for a few buildings I could see where my father was born on Meridian Street in East Boston. And as I look out at Boston Harbor, I see where all eight of my great-grandparents arrived from Ireland and walked up the Golden Steps and into the hope and promise that is America.

When I arrived in Washington, I studied the Senate. I read its history. I worked hard to keep abreast of concerns that would make a difference in the lives of everyday people, like those back home.

So many of the events of 1963, both grave and trivial, are burned into my memory. For the exact dates of some of them, I have needed to consult the records. Taken as a whole, they contribute to the mosaic of America in the year that everything changed.

The issue of civil rights for African Americans was continuing to press forward. Yet some, like Governor George Wallace of Alabama, were determined to fight against it for as long as possible. Upon being sworn in at the State House in Montgomery, where Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated president of the Confederacy 102 years earlier, Wallace declared, "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"

On April 3, the Reverend Dr. King began his campaign of nonviolent protests in Birmingham with peaceful "sit-ins" at segregated restaurants. Nine days later, on Good Friday, Police Chief Bull Connor arrested King, the latter knowing full well he was violating an injunction against protests. Shortly thereafter, Connor unleashed his Dobermans and electric cattle prods on the demonstrators in the streets, escalating the brutality again in early May by knocking Negro schoolchildren off their feet with spray from fire hoses. Firebombings began, as well as rioting.

On June 11, my brother had to federalize National Guard troops, which in turn had to push aside Governor Wallace from an entrance to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa to permit the lawful entry of two Negro students. In the evening, Jack gave a nationally televised speech in which he set out his views on the crisis. His speech was historic and went further than any president before him in laying out the moral issues at stake, and it laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution... whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated."

He asked citizens to search their consciences: "If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him... who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?"

He pledged that he would ask Congress to make a commitment to "the proposition that race has no place in American life or law." It was the most powerful statement my brother had yet given on civil rights.

A little over two weeks later, on June 26, 1963, after a visit to the wall that the Soviets had erected to pen in those who would flee from communist control, President Kennedy stood in the Rudolph Wilde Platz in West Berlin to address a cheering crowd of at least 150,000. A fortnight earlier, he had told the American people in a different context that "this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free." Echoing those sentiments, he told the people of Berlin, "Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free."

He continued:

When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I believe it was one of the finest speeches my brother ever gave. He inspired hope in an oppressed people. He delivered a message about the need for all men to be free that was consistent at home and abroad. And although he was a realist about the time it would take and the work that had to be done to achieve his vision of freedom and equality, he understood the importance of building alliances, challenging the best in people, and sowing goodwill.

On that same trip, President Kennedy made his first and last visit to Ireland, a time he often described as the happiest of his presidency. Jean, the future ambassador to Ireland, and Eunice accompanied him, along with Dave Powers and Larry O'Brien. He said on one of his stops, "When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty. I am glad to say that all of his great-grandchildren have valued that inheritance." As in so many things, I agree with my brother completely.

When he left Ireland, so moved by the reception and filled with love of his ancestral home, he told the Irish people, "I certainly will come back in the springtime."

On August 7, not quite eight months pregnant and feeling unexpected labor pains, Jackie telephoned for medical help from the Hyannis Port house and was rushed by helicopter to the Otis Air Force Base hospital in Falmouth. There, shortly after noon, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born via cesarean section. Bobby telephoned me the following night to report that the infant was in critical condition and that I had better get to Otis. At around four the next morning, before I was able to leave, Dave Powers called me with the news that Patrick had died. The cause was hyaline membrane disease, better known today as respiratory distress syndrome.

Jack met me at the hospital. On our way to Jackie's room, he emphasized the importance of keeping his wife's spirits up. I stayed with the two of them for an hour. It was evident that each was trying to bolster the spirits of the other.

Jack kept stoic about his loss, but those of us closest to him could see how he suffered. When he and Jackie returned to the Cape, Jack invited me over for a swim. He had John Jr. with him, and as we swam and then walked on the beach, Jack was absorbed in everything that his small son was doing. In the few months left to him, my brother showed an even greater preoccupation with the activities of his son and daughter than I had seen before. And he was concerned for Jackie, who took this loss as a tremendous blow. Over these months of diplomatic crisis, pivotal legislation, and cross-country travel, Jack's greatest concern was for his wife's and children's welfare.

On August 9, the day of the infant Patrick's death, President Kennedy set aside his anguish long enough to confer honorary U.S. citizenship on Winston Churchill. My brother honored the British statesman, absent from the ceremony because of infirmities, with his stirring remarks: "In the dark days and darker nights, when England stood alone, and all save Englishmen despaired of England's life, he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."

Late August brought the March on Washington, nearly three hundred thousand demonstrators, mostly but not exclusively black, from across the United States. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom had been organized by the most illustrious civil rights leaders of that era. A. Philip Randolph, president of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who had nearly brought off a similar event in 1941, conceived the idea. The planners included Dr. King; the elder statesman of the movement Bayard Rustin; John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; James Farmer of CORE; and Whitney Young of the National Urban League.

The general purpose of the march was to promote racial equality, but that message did not mean the same thing to all people. Most of the marchers supported the president's proposed civil rights legislation, but some were angry that it didn't go far enough. Malcolm X had declared the entire thing a farce and threatened to kick out any member of the Nation of Islam who attended. And to top it all off, the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party were expected to show up.

I had talked to the president about going down for it, but Jack thought that my presence might be counterproductive. I didn't want to be the catalyst that set things off between those who supported the legislation and those who thought it didn't go far enough. Violence was a concern, and Jack advised me to wait and see how things developed.

I still wanted to attend, however, and wrestled with the decision up until August 28, the day of the march. Jack thought that I should be in my office to greet any of the people who might come there, and in the end that's what I did. Still, I managed to slip out of the Capitol at one point, unnoticed and alone, and make my way to the Reflecting Pool, which seemed to be surrounded by thousands of people. It was an awesome sight. I walked back to my office and watched the speeches on television. That is where I saw Dr. King rise to deliver his prepared remarks about Negro suffering and aspirations for freedom. (As I learned later, leaders of the march had agreed with law enforcement officials that a longer speech with passionate rhetoric could conceivably trigger a riot in the nation's capital.)

I listened to those remarks and watched as Dr. King finished and turned to sit down and then abruptly turned back to the crowd. Although I could not distinguish her, and her voice was not picked up by the microphones, the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson had blurted out to Dr. King from behind him, "Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!" And Martin Luther King did. In a decade in which cataclysmic events inspired lasting oratory, the Georgia-born minister spontaneously delivered the great aria of the civil rights movement.

I was riveted, listening to the amplified cadences that echoed into my ears and into history. And if I hadn't been before, from Grampa's lessons of discrimination, from my own awakening to the plight of African Americans in our own nation, I was, that day in Washington, D.C., fully baptized into the civil rights movement. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had spoken of his dream that had become my own.

Through all the turmoil of 1963, the swelling crises in South Vietnam and the American South, and through his own and Jackie's deep sorrows over the loss of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, Jack kept touch with his capacity for playfulness and laughter. His laughter was a gift--to him, but also to all of us around him. His laughter is among the things I miss the most about him to this day.

He enjoyed guiding me through my initial months in the Senate, and his enjoyment continued through that summer. He knew all of my colleagues very well; he understood them, and when he heard reactions and reports from them about me, he would let me know what they said. On some evenings he would call me at my Senate office, often on short notice, and say he was going down for a swim; would I like to join him? We'd wind up our swim at around 8 p.m., and then talk until perhaps nine. Afterward, we'd go up to the small dining room in his living quarters and there would be a dinner prepared in the oven, and not another soul present. The table would be set, and then maybe Dave Powers or another of his friends would drop by and we'd dine. Jack would continue the conversation until ten or ten-thirty, when he'd retire to his room and start to read through reports before going to sleep.

Other times, Jack would call me just to come over and smoke a cigar with him on the balcony. He'd sit in his rocking chair, holding a cigar that he didn't pay much attention to after it was lit, and ask me questions about my colleagues. He, of course, knew them much better than I did, and I learned a lot from his queries. But mostly I just enjoyed the camaraderie of being with my brother.

When I say that the president knew and understood my colleagues very well, I am understating the case. Jack's perception of senators and congressmen, especially the key ones, was extraordinary. One Christmas Eve, before I was in the Senate, the two of us had been together in Palm Beach. We'd just been for a swim, and as we were changing clothes we fell into a discussion about one of Jack's favorite topics, the Civil War. We were trying to recall the name of a famous battle fought in 1863, in which the Confederate forces halted a Union advance into Georgia at a terrible cost of lives on both sides. The battle's name was an Indian one, and Jack, for the life of him, couldn't recall it. Neither could I.

"Dick Russell will know the answer," Jack said. He meant of course Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who was then chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "You're going to call up Richard Russell on Christmas Eve and ask him about a Civil War battle?" I asked. Jack nodded.

"Where are you even going to find him?"

"In his office," Jack answered matter-of-factly. He called the Capitol operator and asked to be put through to Senator Russell's office. "It's Christmas Eve, sir. Shouldn't I try him at home first?" No, my brother assured her, he really did mean the office. Of course, he was right.

Russell came on the line. "That's Chickamauga you're talkin' about," he told Jack. And proceeded to give him a detailed account of the threeday battle. There was some friendly dispute between them over which side actually won.