The following article by David Pitts- about one momentous day in the presidency of John F. Kennedy -- appeared in newspapers in June 2003. This particular text is taken from the Fort Myers News-Press on June 13, 2003.
SCHOOLHOUSE DOOR WAS SEGREGATION’S LAST STAND
It was one of the most eventful days in memory and a milestone in U.S. civil rights history. Before it was over, President John F. Kennedy announced he would send to Congress a civil rights bill that, when passed eight months after his assassination, transformed American race relations.
In a very real sense, the fate of segregation – the patchwork of laws in the South, and de facto practices elsewhere in the country, that had humiliated African Americans for almost a century after Emancipation – was sealed on that day. That is why it is worth remembering 40 years later.
As the morning of June 11, 1963 began, the attention of the nation was focused on the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. George Wallace, the state’s segregationist governor, had pledged during his campaign for the state’s top office that he would stand in front of the schoolhouse door to prevent the admission of African American students. In the hours before two qualified black students were escorted to the campus, Wallace made it clear he intended to keep his promise.
In a dramatic confrontation televised around the world, Wallace stood eyeball to eyeball with Nick Katzenbach, an aide to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Kennedy sent Katzenbach to Tuscaloosa to enforce a federal court order requiring the admission of the two students. When Katzenbach asked Wallace for “an unequivocal assurance that you will not bar entry to Vivian Malone and James Hood and do your constitutional duty,” Wallace responded by reading a proclamation. “I stand here today as governor of this sovereign state,” he declared, “and refuse to willingly submit to illegal usurpation of power by the central government.”
What many people didn’t know at the time was that Wallace let it be known that he did not want a confrontation with federal authorities or a repeat of the violence that occurred at Ole Miss the previous year when James Meredith had tried to register there. But he did want Alabama voters to see him blocking the schoolhouse door. So Robert Kennedy, after consulting with Burke Marshall, his civil rights enforcer, decided to let Wallace grandstand before the cameras, hoping he would eventually step aside – which in fact he did later in the day. The crisis ended peacefully with Malone and Hood safely registered by late afternoon.
In Washington, Robert Kennedy breathed a sigh of relief, lit a cigar, and called his brother to give him the good news. With a symbolic victory now in his pocket against one of the nation’s most die-hard segregationists, John Kennedy seized the moment. He addressed the nation on civil rights at 8 o’clock that evening. The hastily written speech would become one of the most memorable of all presidential addresses not only for its content, but also for its eloquence. By all accounts, Kennedy had just minutes to review it before he took to the airwaves.
For the first time, Kennedy defined the civil rights crisis as a moral issue. “It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. 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 schools available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life that all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place.”
Then Kennedy announced he would send a comprehensive civil rights bill to Congress affirming that race “has no place in American life or law.” The bill was delivered the following week. Kennedy’s speech is considered by many historians to be the most forceful address ever given by a president on civil rights. Martin Luther King, Jr. called it “a hallmark in the annals of American history.” After hesitating and wavering earlier in his presidency, Kennedy clearly and dramatically put the full weight of his administration behind the cause of equality for African Americans. As the sun set over the nation’s capital near the close of a momentous day, there was no longer any doubt about the course on which he had set the nation.
Just a few hours after Kennedy finished speaking, Medgar Evers, a prominent civil rights leader in Mississippi who had watched Kennedy’s speech at his NAACP office, was gunned down in the driveway of his Jackson home. The murder dramatically underscored the urgency of the task at hand. Sadly, Evers would not be the last to die for a cause that could wait no longer. Even before the summer was over, four young African-American children were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham.
But as June 11, 1963 passed into history, it was clear that the tide had turned, that a great change in American life was about to unfold, and that the country had embarked on an irreversible journey toward the infinitely more tolerant America of today.