Tackling Civil Rights Issues
Kennedy was painfully aware that he had been voted into office with only 49.7 percent of the popular vote. He feared that even though the Democrats held the majority in the House, getting progressive bills through Congress could prove tricky, especially with a sizable population of Southerners in both parties. Kennedy decided not to pursue the civil rights agenda he had proposed during the campaign. Instead of congressional legislation, he intended to use executive orders to confront the issue. He told Harris Wofford, his special assistant on civil rights, that he felt racial discrimination was “nonsense,” but he knew it was useless to attempt to pass anything through Congress.
THEY SAID…
“The fact of the matter is that the time when President Kennedy started televised press conferences there were only three or four newspapers in the entire United States that carried a full transcript of a presidential press conference. Therefore, what people read was a distillation…. We thought that they should have the opportunity to see it in full.”
— Pierre Salinger, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Interview
Next, Kennedy created a new organization, the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, to address the issue of the meager number of blacks working in government. The committee promised to punish businesses that discriminated against blacks by denying them government contracts. Kennedy appointed Lyndon Johnson to chair the committee.
THEY SAID…
“It is not surprising that the President had an inadequate sense of the breadth and depth of the problem. Prejudice and discrimination were irrational, he felt, but many immigrant groups had overcome similar barriers, and he was sure Negroes would do so too, in due course, with appropriate help.”
— Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings
If his prior actions had failed to prove his commitment to civil rights, Kennedy expected that these next measures would garner him support. He supported the renewal of the Civil Rights Commission, which was responsible for assessing the progress of civil rights around the nation, ordered the inclusion of blacks in the coast guard and other branches of the armed forces, and appointed African Americans to important posts in his administration. However, civil rights leaders felt let down. They believed Kennedy was delivering less than he had promised during the 1960 election.
