Class Three:
1963: A Tragic and Pivotal Year
Background Programs and Videos
The Streets of Greenwood, Mississippi documentary about voter registration, 1963 (00:18:00)
Birmingham “Children’s Crusade” 1963 (approximately 00:20:00): WATCH
Medgar Evers Assassinated 1963 (00:02:50)
Associated Press Clip of Buddhist Monk Setting Himself on Fire 1963: WATCH (00:04:10) (WARNING: this video may be inappropriate for some users.)
Malcolm X Interview at UC Berkeley October 1963
John Lewis commenting on his speech at the March
Thurston Clarke’s 2013 talks about his book JFK’s Last Hundred Days
CBS Sunday Morning 50th Anniversary Review of Kennedy’s Presidency
Coup d’etat in Vietnam 1963: Good background of the Coup.
PBS’s Robin MacNeil and Jim Lehrer Remember JFK Assassination, 1963
Speeches
JFK’s “Peace” Speech American University Commencement June 10,1963: WATCH (00:26:55)
In an earlier version of these notes, I said that this speech is not your typical collaboration of Sorensen and Kennedy with its rhythmic cadence and memorable phrases. After listening to and reading the speech again, I think that’s wrong. While it may not sound as scintillating as some of his others, I don’t think that’s a fault of the text, which is full of JFK’s rhythmic, balanced sentences, but more a matter of delivery. According to Richard Reeves, (President Kennedy: Profile of Power) Kennedy had just returned that morning from a trip to Hawaii via San Francisco where Sorensen gave him the latest draft of the speech. He reviewed it on the plane on the way back to Washington. I think jet lag and perhaps unfamiliarity with the text may explain some of why the speech sounded flat. Also, the seriousness of the topic calls for a straightforward, sober tone.
Listening to the speech again, I noticed that he made an implicit, perhaps unconscious, allusion to his Houston Ministers speech in 1960. As you recall, one of the big concerns he addressed so forcefully in that speech was his freedom, as a president who happens to be a Catholic, to participate in public events associated with other religions. He starts the speech, “It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony at the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church…”. Participate was a word used again and again in the earlier speech and in his answers to the audience’s questions after the speech.
A speech doesn’t always have to “sound good” to be good. But the style must reflect the speech’s purpose and content and be right for the audience and the occasion. This may not be your typical, inspirational commencement address, but it was one of Kennedy’s most important statements.
In the Cold War era, this was a very gutsy speech. It seeks to move the two adversaries—Russia and the United States—away from their entrenched positions toward a “practical, attainable peace”.
Looking at the moment it was given—barely half a year since the showdown with Premier Khrushchev over the missiles in Cuba—it’s no wonder peace is on Kennedy’s mind. And despite all the other challenges he’s facing—civil rights violence, difficulties with Congress getting his legislation passed, a worsening situation in Vietnam—he is intent on improving relations with the Soviet Union since China is becoming a stronger and more bellicose adversary. He was probably thinking it’s better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Reeves seems to think that Khrushchev felt the same way.
The speech represents Kennedy as a leader and statesman. He was so intent on making this overture to the Soviet leader that he held off showing it to his people in the Defense and State Departments until it was too late for them to make any substantive changes. Why? Because he’s advocating a major departure from the usual Cold War, anti-Communist stance and rhetoric that have prevailed since WW ll. He’s asking Americans to change their attitude toward the Russians as a first step in creating a climate in which agreements can be reached to help prevent nuclear war.
Any kind of attitude shift is difficult and has to begin at the top. He has to lead by example even if such a move might be politically costly. I think if Kennedy had been less straightforward, and more upbeat in his rhetoric, this speech would not have been taken as seriously as it was. By either the Russian leadership, our allies, or the American people.
The speech was well received in Europe and especially in Russia. The State newspaper, Izvestia, printed the entire text. And the government didn’t jam the broadcast of the speech, allowing it to be heard by the Soviet people over Voice of America. But it would still take months to convince a fearful American public and a divided Senate that the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which the speaker talked about, should be ratified. JFK signed the treaty on October 7, 1963. It’s probably one of his prouder achievements.
President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Address 1963: Kennedy basically ad-libs the ending)
Once again, Kennedy is forced to talk about civil rights. Like his previous one, it’s about the integration of a state university. But unlike the earlier speech, it is much less an explanation for taking action and a much stronger commitment to facing up to the moral challenge that civil rights demanded. And this is in response to what Black leaders had been asking for all along. Yes, they wanted legislation that would grant and protect their rights. But even more important, they wanted the President of the United States to make a moral commitment to equal rights and racial justice. JFK heard it from Dr. King directly. And his brother, Bobby, heard it from Black intellectuals and leaders he met with in his New York apartment during the spring. They accused the administration of dragging its feet and resented Kennedy for not facing up to his responsibility as the nation’s leader to set an example for the rest of the nation.
Kennedy is in a position to do that. And he does. The speech was incomplete when JFK went on network television that night. As a result, he goes on with a partial text and statistics prepared by a Black staffer showing the severe disadvantages in quality of life and economic opportunities that African-Americans faced. He ad-libs the last two minutes of the speech. But it’s probably a stronger conclusion because of it. The president is looking at and speaking, one-on-one, with every citizen of the country about their moral responsibility to treat Blacks as equals. It’s almost like a televised version of one of FDR’s “Fireside Chats”* (see note below). At the end of the speech, he’s basically having a conversation with the American people.
The speech goes about as far as this president could go. And I think it came about because of the disturbing scenes of violence against the demonstrators in Birmingham seen, night after night that spring, on television news. We can’t overlook the power of television to shine a spotlight on problems that needed to be addressed and to put pressure on politicians to remedy them. We’ll also see it in subsequent years as Vietnam replaces civil rights as the focus of television’s unblinking eye.
Finally, the civil rights speech was not something that Kennedy meant to do at this time. He had been focusing rather on the speech he gave at American University the previous day. But like so much of his presidency, Kennedy seems to go from one crisis to the next. The timing is not his own. In the space of just a couple of days he gives his Peace Speech, George Wallace bars the door to the University of Alabama and he has to give his Civil Rights speech, a Buddhist monk burns himself to death on a street in Saigon to protest the Diem regime’s attacks on the Buddhists, and Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader in Mississippi, is murdered outside of his home.
*To keep the American people informed and probably also boost their morale, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a number of radio broadcasts during the Depression and WW II. They would become known as his “Fireside Chats” because of their seemingly informal and conversational style. According to the FDR Presidential Library and Museum website, these broadcasts “gave President Roosevelt an opportunity no U.S. president had yet had: to speak directly to broad sections of the American public without having his message filtered through the press.” TV would provide that same open channel to the public for later presidents. More recently, we’ve seen the internet and cell phone enable leaders to target their messages to particular audiences without any filter whatsoever on what they say.
Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” Speech 1963
Three weeks later, Kennedy is in Berlin where he gives his rousing “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” (June 26,1963) speech before a crowd of over 100,000 people. Only a couple of weeks after the toned-down rhetoric of the Peace Speech, he turns up the heat again on the Cold War. In this city, surrounded by the Communist state, Kennedy praises the inhabitants and reassures them of America’s lasting commitment to their freedom. The visit is a morale booster for Berliners and Kennedy leads them in a pep rally.
Seeing that he is using note cards rather than pages of text, this is more of an impromptu than a formal speech. Kennedy is in his element and in the moment, relying on his wit and his several, crudely-pronounced German phrases to convey his and his country’s identification with this beleaguered city. He must have felt in his glory, surrounded by so many grateful Germans. It’s not hard to imagine that this might have been the high point (for him personally) of his political career. Against repeated Russian threats to close the city, Kennedy stood up for them and the audience was showing its gratitude There is a reciprocal relationship between an inspirational speaker and an appreciative audience. Each feeds the other.
John Lewis’s Speech at the March on Washington 1963
Can you imagine, at 23, stepping up to the microphone and facing an audience of over 200,000 people? And to do so as the last speaker before the star of the day, Dr. King, addresses the crowd? That’s what John Lewis did. He also faced the additional challenge of having to make some major, last-minute changes in his prepared remarks to get the approval of the March leaders. The original version with its threat of a modern-day, General Sherman-like march through the south if strong civil rights legislation wasn’t passed, was considered too incendiary for this important occasion. It would alienate many of the people they would need to get a bill passed.
One of the things that impresses me so much about this speech is Lewis’s poise. Despite having to go on with an altered text—the conclusion, no less—he also has a number of people moving all around him while he’s speaking. Someone adjusts the mic. Several others are walking back and forth directly behind him. It even looks like Bayard Rustin, one of the leaders of the March, whispers something in his ear. How do you maintain your cool with all those distractions? Yet, Lewis does.
In many respects, Lewis sounds like a younger, more militant version of his mentor, Dr. King. Both will use names of cities and cite specific people. Both will talk about the need to do something now as opposed to taking a more gradual approach. And both will create memorable images with their words—Lewis’s of the segregated south being splintered into a thousand pieces and King’s “(the Negro lives) on a lonely island of poverty in a vast ocean of material prosperity…”. While both will make effective use of anaphora to create a rhythm, King’s rhetoric is more polished, smoother, and more pleasing to the ear, befitting the much more experienced preacher. Lewis is the young firebrand, less patient and less respectful, more conversational and less formal, but no less authentic in his presentation of himself and his beliefs. His youthful impatience probably led to his somewhat agitated, staccato cadence.
It’s interesting to note that King himself picks up some of the words and phrases that Lewis uses in his speech. They just sound better because they come in the more-seasoned (34) preacher’s voice.
One other thing to note: Listen to how differently A. Philip Randolph, the civil rights elder and creator of the March introduce Lewis and King. The former is “the young John Lewis…”; while Dr. King is called, “The moral leader of our nation….”.
MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech” 1963
I call this speech his “sermon on the steps.” What more can one say about this wonderful speech than, “Wow!” I never get tired of hearing it. And it is just as relevant today as it was when it was given almost 60 years ago on a summer day at the end of the biggest demonstration for civil rights and jobs.
King was a master preacher. While he starts off slowly, reading the speech from a text that was prepared by Clarence Jones and others, he departs midway to riff on common themes that he has addressed, again and again, in earlier sermons and speeches. Supposedly, the reference to the dream, which wasn’t in the original text, came about when the famous gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, not far from Dr. King on the steps said, “tell us your dream, Martin”. From that point on, he is on his own, looking out at the sea of faces and recalling the things he has been saying for years. The first part of the speech, the written part, is largely about the nightmare of segregation and discrimination, and the lack of progress over the last 100 years. Then he pivots to his dream, his vision for what can happen, what the nation can become. The pace of the speech picks up. The emotion and the voice are much stronger. He is now singing a song that he knows by heart to an audience who also knows the words and believes in them. He is getting them psyched up to go back to the Jim Crow South or the ghettos of the North to continue the dangerous work that still needs to be done to accomplish that dream.
He creates some striking images and recites the first verse of the song, America (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee”) which, as a 10-year-old he’d heard the Black opera singer, Marian Anderson sing in the same setting in 1939. The song lyrics enable him to not just reinforce his American identity, but also structure his powerful peroration (emotional high point of the speech) with successive phrases beginning with “Let freedom ring…” and emphasizes the national scope of their work. Finally, the song leads him to the concluding, uplifting refrain: “Free at last… Free at last… Thank God Almighty, we are free at last”. By that time, he is virtually levitating off the dais in time with his lyrics.
MLK was probably our finest speaker. He knew how to use rhetoric to move people. He created images with his words—from narrow jail cells to molehills in Mississippi. He captured the beauty of the biblical quotes with his wonderful voice. He used anaphora and alliteration and allusions to help create memorable speeches because they were rhythmical speeches. He believed in what he was saying and got the audience to believe as well by the way he delivered those words. He led with his words as well as his actions.
While the March was taking place in Washington, the South Vietnamese government was raiding Buddhist temples and arresting activist monks. Behind the scenes, Vietnamese generals were plotting a coup against that government with the tacit support of the United States.
The coup d’état took place on November 1, 1963, and was a moral turning point in the administration’s commitment to the war. We had blood on our hands because we had supported and even encouraged the generals who overthrew the government and killed its president and his brother. While our involvement wasn’t admitted at the time, it was assumed, since we immediately acknowledged the new government and had frequently criticized the old one, and even started to withhold some of our financial aid from them. Only when the “Pentagon Papers” were published, almost a decade later, would the US role be public. It was reported that when Pres. Kennedy learned that Diem had been killed, and he was horrified. In a tragic irony, Kennedy himself would be killed only 21 days later.
JFK’s “A President’s Visit” a University of Maine film, October 19, 1963: including his major foreign policy speech). Great background of preparation for Presidential visit.)
Like a number of offerings in this course, I didn’t know about this speech. It took a woman in my class, a graduate of Maine who was in the audience, to tell me about it.
It’s not one of Kennedy’s “great” speeches in terms of rhetoric and persuasiveness, but it certainly deserves inclusion in the course. And not just because he gave it in Maine. Why? Because it occurs so close to his assassination and because it is a major statement of America’s foreign policy at that moment in the Cold War. But most importantly, in its content and delivery, you hear and see a much more mature man, a more confident president at the top of his form. He has been tested and come out a wiser, stronger leader.
He’s on campus to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He takes advantage of the one-year anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis to talk about that event and the delicate juggling act required in a world of nuclear weapons to seek peace while being prepared for war. As he says, “The United States must continue to seek a relaxation of tensions, but we have no cause to relax our vigilance.”
The speech has many of the usual rhetorical devices—anaphora, antithesis, and alliteration. And there is classic JFK humor in the opening story about universities. But there are also two poignant anecdotes—one about a puzzled leader in WWI and another about America’s patriotic symbol, the eagle, and how, in the Oval Office, it now faces toward the symbol of peace and away from the arrows of war. He uses each of these vignettes to remind the audience of the unthinkable horror of nuclear war.
Finally, the speech is also a campaign speech. With the 1964 election just a year away, JFK uses this opportunity to review his administration’s dealings with the Soviet Union during his presidency. For example, his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the limited test ban treaty, the sale of wheat to the Russians, etc. Republicans will attack him as weak on communism and he uses this speech to show the country that he knows how to deal with the Russians. That he is able, like the eagle, to hold both the arrows and the olive branch in his talons.
After a very confident, strongly-delivered speech, I was a little surprised by the very quiet, almost humble “thank you” the President utters at the end. I hadn’t been aware of that in other speeches. But he seems to perk up again when they start singing the Maine Stein Song. After all, it is Homecoming Weekend.
Sample of JFK’s Wit
JFK’s Speech to Ft. Worth Chamber of Commerce November 22, 1963 (speech begins at 00:32:00)
I was aware of this final speech for some time but had never seen it. Nor even considered it for inclusion in this course. However, after finally seeing it on YouTube, I’ve decided to include it because of its poignancy—hours before he was assassinated.
This is a typical campaign speech. It is full of things that are meant to appeal to a specific audience, in this particular case, an audience of Texans, proud of their city (Fort Worth) and their state. He talks a lot about the importance of Fort Worth to the military and the nation’s national security in general. He appeals to their pride and their concern about a strong America—able to fight communism anywhere in the world. In a sense, Kennedy is really kicking off his 1964 campaign for reelection by going to Texas and doing everything he possibly can to try to keep this important state in the Democratic camp.
As the announcer makes clear, JFK is running behind schedule. As a result, I think he cuts the speech short and ad-libs a good part of the ending. Not a particularly strong ending. And it’s fairly repetitious. But I think he gets his point across; he reassures those who want “a strong America.” In fact, he even refers to ads that have been placed by the opposition to question how strong an anti-communist he is. Like the campaign speech to the Houston Ministers in 1960, Kennedy is not afraid to face a challenging audience if he feels it is going to help him politically.
While nowhere near the rhetoric that Kennedy’s speeches are known for, this one certainly is successful; he was appealing to this particular audience, at this particular time and place and saying what they wanted to hear. He also displays his wit and humor with his asides during the speech and his reaction to the Stetson and the cowboy boots they give him at the end.
You do not have to watch the lengthy introduction to the speech as the television announcer is waiting for Kennedy to arrive. But, considering that this will be the last speech he gives, it is ironic in many ways. First, the reporter gives his listeners the exact parade route that the presidential motorcade is going to follow in downtown Dallas. Second, he talks about how, for security reasons, the Secret Service has Kennedy enter the auditorium through the kitchen. You might remember that RFK was assassinated when he exited the hotel ballroom through the kitchen in L.A. in 1968. Finally, again referring to the Secret Service, the announcer, trying to use up time as he waits for the president to arrive, talks about the assassination of Pres. McKinley. Ironic, when you consider what will happen to this president three hours later.
Kennedy’s death was a national trauma. Not only was the President’s fatal motorcade watched over and over again in the days that followed, but the public also witnessed the swearing-in of his successor with the dead president’s widow, in shock, standing by his side, and the assassination of his killer two days later. And television had a major role in the national grief that followed. We witnessed the body lying in state and then the procession from the Capitol to the final resting place in the national cemetery. We could not tune out this tragic moment in our history.
LBJ Address to Congress following JFK Assassination 1963 (start at 00:02:16)
Re-reading Robert Caro’s excellent The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, has given me a much better appreciation for just how critical this speech was—for Johnson, but also for the nation. Presidential succession is usually an orderly and stately affair. During the time between the election in November and inauguration in January, there is time for the President-elect to form a team to help him or her transform his/her vision into reality. There is (usually) also ample opportunity for the nation to absorb the replacement of the old by someone new. And plenty of time to work on the Inaugural address.
LBJ assumed power in a matter of minutes. He and the nation were in shock. Furthermore, as we know now, he was not a big player on the Kennedy team. In fact, he was usually kept out of important decisions and was even ridiculed for his country ways by the insiders. For him to replace their leader was a bitter pill to swallow. Yet, he needed their minds and their support to help him lead the nation. And despite their misgivings about and dislike of him, being the master persuader he got most of them to stick with him. While the nation was watching the events on television, he was working behind the scenes to form his administration and reassure world leaders that America was in capable hands and would keep its commitments.
Johnson has to address the nation, but he can’t interfere with the rituals necessary to honor and mourn the fallen leader. It is an especially painful moment for most Americans because JFK (and his family) were so lively and familiar. Thanks to television.
So, he respectfully waits a day and-a-half after the state funeral to speak to the nation. Johnson goes where he feels most at home—to Capitol Hill – to give this crucial speech. He’s appearing before both houses of Congress and uses the opportunity, this eulogy for a fallen president, to goad his former colleagues to pass Kennedy’s stalled legislation. And the first and most important piece of legislation is his predecessor’s civil rights bill.
As we saw earlier, a president speaks from the White House when the setting of his office gives him the additional aura of authority to accept responsibility, convey something only he should convey or explain actions he is taking. He comes to Congress if he wants to talk to the country’s representatives about actions that they can or should take. When he does, he’s not only talking to them, but to their constituents who are listening in. They are witnesses to what he is asking for.
Eulogy, in its classical roots, is both a commemoration for the dead and a call to action for the living. Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” was a classic eulogy. He came to Gettysburg to dedicate a piece of battleground as a cemetery for the Union dead. But his real work, which is outlined in the second half of the speech, is to get the nation ready for the end of the war, to pull it together again under its founding principles. Johnson paraphrases Lincoln when he says “let us highly resolve that John Kennedy did not live or die in vain…” There is no question in anybody’s mind that he is alluding to the “Gettysburg Address” since Lincoln’s “little” speech is probably the most-memorized of any in American history.
In Johnson’s skilled hands, the eulogy becomes a persuasive speech. The president reminds the audience of his long connection with and respect for them. He has the credibility to ask for their help. But he also uses the occasion to make an emotional appeal to take action which, for some, will be a very difficult thing to do. LBJ, the persuader, was willing to use whatever means he could to get what he wanted or what he judged the nation needed.
Johnson quotes Kennedy’s Inaugural Address and even paraphrases some of the wording from FDR’s First Inaugural Address in 1934 when he faced the challenge of the Great Depression. The really good speakers—and speeches—build on the shoulders of great ones that went before.
Written largely by Ted Sorensen, I think the tone of the speech was just right for the occasion. The country was in shock. And was looking for its new leader to take command in a way that continued what his predecessor was doing rather than suddenly changing course and causing even more anxiety. Johnson’s somber tone seems authentic. He genuinely seems to feel the weight that has suddenly been thrust on his shoulders. And I think he rightly honors the man who went before and what he stood for.
At the same time, Sorensen is still writing in a style that was right for Kennedy and sounds a little stilted and uncomfortable coming out of Johnson’s mouth. But the occasion allowed this, probably needed this familiar “voice”, at this moment. Moreover, Johnson, who was not a good speaker, needed this speechwriter and the occasion to become a powerful one.
As Caro points out, a lot was riding on this speech. This was the country’s first impression of him as its new leader. But it was also important to LBJ’s own sense of himself. He succeeded on both fronts.
The speech is accompanied by lots of applause even if the words being said were often demanding actions that weren’t going to be easy to take. The applause is probably a natural demonstration of the coming together that a national tragedy like an assassination (or a terrorist attack) calls for.
Look at Bobby Kennedy in the front row. You see a man who is in shock, trying to absorb the loss of his brother and mentor, listening to a man he despised. It would take years for him to process the grief. The assassination profoundly changed Bobby Kennedy.
One other thing to note: LBJ’s rural Texas accent must have been a shock for most Americans’ ears after the much more eloquent president he succeeded. Likewise, many of his mannerisms seem a little forced or corny. For example, the recitation of the refrain from America, the Beautiful would not be a conclusion that Sorensen would write. It sounds like pure Johnson. But it was appropriate since this was Thanksgiving eve. We were a nation in mourning and the familiar song probably helped unite people and aid their healing.
There has definitely been a change in leadership and this will become more apparent in the months ahead. But you can’t argue with the results: within nine months, Congress would pass the toughest civil rights legislation in history. And the nation endured despite the trauma of the assassination.
Buck Benedict 