America is celebrating Black History Month at a time of great stress on the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movements and agenda. Most visible are the attacks on ethnic and racial groups of color by right wing extremist and Neo-confederates, the attacks on institutions of learning that attempt to portray the reality of a multicultural landscape, violence in the name of police authority and the denial of voting rights among others.
When I think of Civil Rights accomplishments, I immediately think of the Great Society and its successful leader President Lyndon Johnson. Most of us tend to overlook the fact that much of that agenda, especially Civil Rights, were issues already being addressed by President Kennedy when he was killed.
Kennedy was the first President of the United States born in the 20th Century (1917). He came to power at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union when things were so serious that a nuclear conflict was deemed a strong possibility.
I remember being in Germany at the time of the 1961 Berlin Crisis and the wall that went up to separate communist East Berlin from the rest of that historic city. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year as President Kennedy was clearly being tested as a world leader.
I remember seeing the President as he came by to greet the troops on his way to give the famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in that divided city a year later. Five months after that, he died in Dallas, a victim of assassination.
My thoughts about President Kennedy in the years following were about his famous PT 109 combat adventure in World War II, his leadership as a Cold War warrior, his challenge to America about going to the moon and his style of speech that offered humor as well as unforgettable statements that have been repeated over and over again, especially in moments of great historical significance. Given that his life was cut so short, I did not generally pay as much attention to his domestic agenda found under the umbrella of the “New Frontier” that included plans to improve the economy, education, healthcare and civil rights.
Yet, his work on civil rights initiatives laid the foundation for a new measure of equality and fairness in the treatment of the Black community in particular and all Americans in general. He did this in an incremental fashion until he could no longer do it that way.In 1961 President Kennedy nominated Thurgood
Marshall of the 1954 “Brown v. Board of Education” fame to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York that put him in a position to be nominated to be the first African American to be nominated for the Supreme Court by President Johnson in 1967. That same year Kennedy sent U.S. Marshals to pro- tect freedom riders in the South.
In 1962 he moved to intervene in the admission and registration of James Meredith, an Air Force veteran and activist at the University of Mississippi at Oxford.
On June 11, 1963 President Kennedy, risking his reelection, decided to go all in and bring before Congress comprehensive civil rights legislation that included access to public facilities, voting rights and technical and monetary assistance to support school desegregation. That legislation became his active legacy to the Great Society initiatives that President Johnson was later able to pass in Congress. It also rounded out Kennedy’s stature as a hero, a world leader and a champion of civil rights.
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of la Voz bilingüe. Comments and responses may be directed to news@lavozcolorado.com.
