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 “This Matter Merits Serious and Immediate Attention…”
Summary: Western Union telegram sent by President Kennedy to Dr. James McCain, the president of Kansas State University, inviting him to attend a White House meeting on civil rights and racial disparities in education. Sent four days after his famous Civil Rights Message. John F. Kennedy. Typed Document, as President, to Dr. James McCain. June 15, 1963. 1 p. Telegram. Inventory # 21801 $3,750 Partial Transcript:
“At Four O’Clock on Wednesday, June 19, I am Meeting with a Group of Leaders in the Field of Education to Discuss those Aspects of the Nation’s Civil Rights Problem that Relate to our Schools at all Levels. This Matter Merits Serious and Immediate Attention and I would be Pleased to Have You Attend the Meeting to be Held in the East Room of the White House.” Historical Background:
On June 11, 1963, Governor George Wallace of Alabama violated a federal district court order mandating that two African American applicants be allowed to enter the University of Alabama. Wallace, in a televised encounter, stood defiantly at a university entrance, refusing to allow Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to escort the two students into the building. According to historian Charles Kenney, President Kennedy, after watching Wallace’s stunt, decided to proceed with a major televised civil rights address. In his Address, Kennedy stated, “...I am also asking Congress to authorize the Federal Government to participate more fully in lawsuits designed to end segregation in public education. We have succeeded in persuading many districts to desegregate voluntarily. Dozens have admitted Negroes without violence. Today a Negro is attending a State-supported institution in every one of our 50 States, but the pace is very slow. Too many Negro children entering segregated grade schools at the time of the Supreme Court's decision 9 years ago will enter segregated high schools this fall, having suffered a loss which can never be restored. The lack of an adequate education denies the Negro a chance to get a decent job. The orderly implementation of the Supreme Court decision, therefore, cannot be left solely to those who may not have the economic resources to carry the legal action or who may be subject to harassment. Other features will be also requested, including greater protection for the right to vote. But legislation, I repeat, cannot solve this problem alone. It must be solved in the homes of every American in every community across our country. In this respect, I want to pay tribute to those citizens North and South who have been working in their communities to make life better for all. They are acting not out of a sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency. Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world they are meeting freedom's challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor and their courage. My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all - in every city of the North as well as the South....” For a number of reasons, not least of which was the violent repression of Martin Luther King’s Birmingham (Ala.) protest movement by public safety commissioner “Bull” Connor, President Kennedy became a committed advocate of civil rights by the summer of 1863, just a few months before his assassination. To that point in his presidency, Kennedy had been wary of offending Southern Democrats and preoccupied with foreign policy crises such as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Now, with Martin Luther King, Jr. behind bars, and images of Bull Connor’s policemen using firehoses and dogs on schoolchildren, Kennedy felt it was time to act. He had the support of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, his brother. After the Civil Rights Address, according to Charles Kenney, the administration “set up a series of White House meetings with Negro and white leaders from communities across the country. They would invite sixty to seventy leaders at a time—businesspeople, educators, local elected officials—and hold two to three sessions per week all in an effort to build local support for civil rights legislation…” Kennedy and administration supporters in Congress drafted a far-reaching bill, banning discrimination in places of public accommodation, parks, libraries, and schools, and employment discrimination, with strong enforcement provisions, including the creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Events quickened to a frenetic pace in coming months, however. In August, the March on Washington proceeded, featuring King’s famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial. On September 15, white racists bombed a Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young girls. And in November, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Lyndon Johnson, four days after taking the oath of office, pledged his commitment to Kennedy’s civil rights bill, and it passed in 1964. References:
Kenney, Charles. John F. Kennedy, The Presidential Portfolio: History as Told Through the Collection of the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum (New York, 2000), pp. 191-207.
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