Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [164]
“To make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.”
Finally came the radical commitment: “Our primary long-range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament—designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms.”
What Kennedy had said would quickly become known to the men and women of the Soviet Union—but only because Nikita Khrushchev had dictated that it be so. According to a New York Times piece three days later, headlined “Russians Stirred by Kennedy Talk About Cold War,” the Communist daily Izvestia had published the speech in full. Reported the Times, “The decision to make the speech available to the Soviet people through the government newspaper was interpreted here as an indication that the speech had made a favorable impression in the Kremlin.”
The story then quoted a Soviet intellectual: “The speech and its publication in Izvestia show that there can be mutual understanding.” While a young woman worker was “overheard to ask a friend: ‘Have you read the Kennedy speech? It is all about peace.’ “
The previous month, however, most Americans had witnessed something they wanted no one in the world to see. It had been in their newspapers and on their television sets. The incident had occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, in early May, when Eugene “Bull” Connor—the unrepentantly racist commissioner of public safety, just elected for his sixth term—had unleashed dogs and ordered fire hoses turned on peaceful African-American civil rights demonstrators.
Now, on June 11, the day after Kennedy’s American University speech, two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, had attempted to enroll at the University of Alabama. Their way was blocked by order of Governor George C. Wallace, who’d campaigned on a promise to do just that. Watching the eleven o’clock news two weeks earlier with Jackie and the Bradlees, the president had grown solemn at clips of Wallace promising—in the face of a federal court order—personally to “bar the door” against any attempts at desegregation. “He’s just challenging us to use the marshals . . . that’s going to be something.”
He’d once met Wallace—whose recent campaign slogan had been “Segregation now—Segregation tomorrow—Segregation forever”—and was disgusted by the man. “Make him look ridiculous. That’s what the president wants you to do,” Attorney General Robert Kennedy instructed his deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach.
There in Tuscaloosa, flanked by an enormous contingent of National Guardsmen—his earlier experience at Ole Miss had taught him about strength in numbers—Katzenbach instructed Wallace to allow the two students to be admitted. When the governor remained immovable in the door of Foster Auditorium, the commander of the Alabama Guard, General Henry Graham, told him to “stand aside,” which Wallace then did.
Thanks to a documentary shot at the time by Robert Drew, we can see much of what happened next. Titled Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment, it shows Kennedy standing in the Oval Office and asking his top aides—Ken O’Donnell, Larry O’Brien, Ted Sorensen, Pierre Salinger, and his brother Bobby—to join him around a small coffee table. Kennedy assumed the captain’s seat, in this case a rocking chair. He did so with a subtle, two-thumbs-up gesture as if he were still a young skipper calling his crew to quarters. General Graham’s success, acting on his behalf, obviously had energized Kennedy. At that moment he made the call to deliver a major speech that night, giving Sorensen only three hours to prepare it.
In his State of the Union that January, President Kennedy