The 24 Hours That Rocked U.S. Race Relations

[question everything]

Cross post from Good Reads

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101665825

By WARREN KOZAK

Fifty years ago, on June 11, 1963, the United States opened a new chapter regarding a pivotal matter—race—that had been a source of contention from the nation's beginning. At the center of this watershed moment for America were the president, a governor, two 18-year-old college students and one of the leading civil-rights activists of that era. The dramatic 24 hours played out in three separate locales, with repercussions that are still felt half a century later.

The day began in sweltering heat at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, when two black students, James Hood and Vivian Malone, tried to enter Foster Auditorium to register for classes. They couldn't because the governor of the state, George Wallace, physically blocked the door in a desperate attempt to stoke the dying embers of the segregated South. Television news cameras were rolling when Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, from the Justice Department, asked Wallace to step aside. He refused. But President Kennedy, foreseeing Wallace's refusal, had federalized the Alabama National Guard. Gen. Henry Graham, the head of the Alabama Guard, ordered the governor, who was essentially his commander, to move.

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JFK's own views had evolved by the early 1960s, and he became a major force in the struggle. At risk to his political career, he had decided to send a federal civil-rights bill to Congress. Kennedy asked the three TV networks for time on the evening of June 11 to announce it to the nation... In one of the strongest speeches of his presidency, Kennedy laid out the case for ending all forms of racial segregation in America. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue," Kennedy said. "It is as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution."

"This is one country," Kennedy told the nation. "It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. We cannot say to 10% of the population that you can't have that right; that your children cannot have the chance to develop whatever talents they have; that the only way they are going to get their rights is to go in the street and demonstrate. I think we owe them and we owe ourselves a better country than that."

(snip)

Three and a half hours after Kennedy's speech, Medgar Evers, a World War II veteran and civil-rights activist, got out of his car in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss., and was shot in the back. Evers died less than an hour later, leaving behind a widow and three young children. The murder underlined the urgency of Kennedy's appeal for racial equality earlier that night. Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens Counsel, was arrested 10 days after the murder, but all-white juries deadlocked twice. He was finally convicted in 1994, 31 years after Evers was killed. De La Beckwith was 80 when he died in prison in 2001.

More..

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324809804578511213977903512.html

(If you cannot open at the link, copy and paste the title onto google)

Some media outlets covered JFK and Wallace. Only NBC News included Medgar Evers.

[Number23]

1. Great read. Would have liked for there to have been more to the story.