To author clay risen, here is his book. It was 60 years ago, june 11, 1963 when jfk gave his noted civil rights address. What was happening in the country then . Guest a couple of things had happened in the weeks before hand. That summer, that spring, you had the birmingham protests led by Martin Luther king trying to integrate retail and lunch counters in birmingham, alabama. Most people have probably seen the videos of Police Officers and firemen turning hoses and dogs on children. This is in everyones mind. They are copycat protests around the country. Just that morning in alabama and test colusa tuscaloosa, the governor had made his famous stand in a schoolhouse door where he tried to prevent black applicants were black students from entering the law school at the unersity of alabama. The Deputy Attorney general went down there with federal soldier to confront George Wallace and force him to stand aside. Civil rights was not just an issue people caredbout, it was an issue on the front pages, and issue people thought could easily turn to violence. Host reading your book, i am going to use a word here and you have got to tell me if i am wrong. This was almost an accidental speech . Guest that was right. Kennedy was never big on civil rights. It was an issue he understood was there. It was something he thought would stay on a slow summer, maybe be addressed by a few small pieces of legislation. Kennedy was a Foreign Policy guy. He wanted to focus on things going on in the cold war, policies in europe and asia. He looked at civil rights as a distraction. It was his brother, bobby kennedy, and the people around him, as well as lots of republicans and democrats in congress, who were pushing him to do something more. It was only the last minute kennedy said, well, in response to everything going on, weve got to do not just legislation but i am going to have to give a National Address to talk about this issue. Host robert drew a documentary anchor at that time was given access to the oval office as the president was talking with his brother, the attorney general, about whether and when to do this speech. We have video from that meeting. Here it is. [video clip] [indiscernible] i did not think so. It depends on whether we have something for the university. I did not think we would at this point. I think he talk about education. Do it for 15 minutes, would alleviate a lot of problems. I suppose he could do it. I think it would take a way a lot of problems. Hopeful to legislate. [indiscernible] you are going to come across reasonable and understanding. [indiscernible] i think if, we say that we will have difficulty and describe making this kind of effort at the federal level and knee grows negros understand the responsibility. That is not going to be september, october, november. Getting direction on having this for the president. [indiscernible] this is something to work with. Host that was courtesy of drew associates. Robert drew was a documentary filmmaker. That is how we got access to that. Clay, how much politics went into the decision of this speech to push this issue . Guest immense politics. So much of the pressure to do Something Big on civil rights came from the republicans. Back then, there was a pretty good split between conservative republicans who tended to align with the segregationist democrats. With the liberal republicans, and even many moderate republicans who saw civil rights as a legacy issue for the party. They were the party of lincoln, the party of reconstruction amendments. They were the party that still claimed a large part of the black electorate, especially outside of the south. They were pressing all through 1963 four civil rights legislation as a way to pressure kennedy and hopefully get a leg up on it. Kennedy was responding not just to what was going on in the country, but also to this pressure and the need to essentially get a leg up in reverse on the republicans. Host we want to hear your comments as we talk about jfks civil rights speech june 11, 1963. It is the 60th anniversary. Our, guest is clay risen who is the author of this book. 202 7488000 for those of you who live in the central and eastern time zones. 202 7488001 if you live in mountain and pacific time zones. You can send a text if you cannot get through and want to talk about this history and movement, 202 7488003. Please include your first name and city if you would. Mr. Risen, was this the first major first time that jfk addressed this issue in a major way . Guest it was. He had talked about civil rights in some of his speeches before, but this was not something he prioritized. It was something he was sensitive about. A lot of democrats, certainly southern democrats, which he considered an important part of the democratic coalition, but even some northern democrats were wary about going too far on civil rights. A lot of the things that ended up not being in the bill, housing, education, desegregation, were not southern issues. They were national issues. There was real concerned about going too far from the national democrats. Kennedy was sitting there throughout his administration trying to weave between the urgency to do something and the fear of doing too much. Isas not something he prioritized in the first place. E result was that he seially without planning on it, waited until the issue forced his hand. Host you write in your book that he walked into the oval Office Without a complete speech. Guest that is right. They had not prepared the speech. As you saw in the film, they were still debating when to do the speech, how to do the speech. Kennedy was unhappy with the drafts they gave him and ultimately, he weaned a lot of that speech. It is not his best speech in terms of rhetoric. Kennedy was a great speaker when prepared. This time, it was not his issue. It was not something he had given a normas amounts of thought to enormous. Amounts of from the topic. The important thing is the content. That is why the speech is so historic. The speech is still a pretty good speech. What he says in content is dramatic. He essentially says, from now on the force of the federal government is going to be behind civil rights legislation. Up until then for decades, it had been an open question. Was the federal government and ally of the Civil Rights Movement . It is run in large part by southern democrats. Was the federal government going to get behind the equal rights of people of color in the United States . With this speech, kennedy changed that completely and said, from now on, we will. Host lets watch a little of that speech from june 11, 1963. [video clip] we are confronted primarily by a moral issue. Half of the question is whether all americans ought to be supported, equal rights and equal opportunities. Whether we are going to treat our federal 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 School available, if you cannot vote for the public official to represent him. If he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, who among us will be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place . Who among us would then be content with the council of patients and delay . 100 years of delays have passed since president lincoln freed the slaves, yet their grandsons are not fully freed. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. This nation, for all its hopes and all of its will not be bully free until all of its citizens are free. Host clay risen, 8 00 p. M. On june 11, 1963, about 15 minutes in length. Did all three carry it and what was the reaction . Guest the reaction was for right forthright. Back then, everyone watched the news when they tuned in when there was something to watch. You cannot watch it online. This was where you saw it. The country was enthused. This was a call to arms by the president. I would not say the southern democrats were particularly happy, but this was a statement, a flag in the ground. At the same time, a lot of people on the left, liberal democrats and republicans and many in the Civil Rights Movement heard his words and wanted to see the actual work. They wanted to see the legislation and what would happen. Until then, kennedy had paid lip service to civil rights. This was an adamant statement. They wanted to see actual action. Host , two months after this the march on washington. Three months after that, the death of jfk. Guest yeah, this was one of those runs a month. A pretty short time in American History changed and it is hard to imagine all of those events happening so quickly one after the other. I think part of what made the Civil Rights Act so successful was the fact it came amid so much change, so much hope and tragedy. All of that gave energy to this sort of magnum opus bill. Host when you look back at the Eisenhower Administration and little rock and brown, does the battle for civil rights start even earlier then john f. Kennedy and lbj . Guest the battle for civil rights has been going on a long time. It was not always in the National Focus in the sense of outside the south and the sense of being in the minds of many white americans. Certainly, if you were a politically aware black person or a liberal activist, this was an issue long and coming and people had fought over their employment during the administration during world war ii. They fought for it during the run up during the montgomery bus boycott. These are episodes we think of happening, in one time but they had president. The brown versus board of education decision in 1954 had been in the works for years. Earl warren was the chief justice oversaw the decision. It had come in under his predecessor. There had been concern under fred benson, his predecessor, there would have been a much different decision. There is all this history. You had mentioned eisenhower, there were multiple small pieces of small legislation under eisenhower. By the time kennedy got it, there was both a feeling civil rights had been around as an issue for a long time and also a certain wariness on all sides. Was this an issue that was ever going to be solved . It wasnt going to be one of those contractile problems politicians flopped off and try to Pay Lip Service to and try to pass a small piece of incremental adulation, but never do anything about. Host remind us, what was the bill introduced in congress after the speech . When, and what was the role of Everett Dirksen . Guest the bill came a few weeks after kennedys speech. It focused on the issue that had been raised by Martin Luther king in the birmingham protes, which was equal access to public facilities. Here, we mean retail stores, lunch counters, public accommodations. This was an issue that focused directly on the jim crow south. There were other items in the bill. The bill expanded greatly. One of the things that made that happen was that it had early support from Everett Dirksen, the Senate Minority leader. He was a airily conservative republican from illinois. He had been an ally, a strong ally of joe mccarthy in the 1950s. He was someone who felt civil rights was certainly a party issue, something the republicans had to stand by. I think dirksen had a moral Energy Behind him. He often play politics with the bill. People from the democrats and other republicans did not know exactly where he was all the time. In the end, it was Everett Dirksen who makes her the bill had strong support from the very beginning among republicans and carried through up through the historic filibuster the next year. Host before we move on, lets take calls from our audience and hear from terry in tennessee. You are on with author and historian clay risen. Go ahead, terry. Caller yes. In 1921, there was the black wall street massacre. You showed a picture of the government and white people, i mean black people in the school. What about the hp you schools who only want like kids in the school today . Is that the same thing . Host do you have anything you would like to say to that . What was happening at the hbcus . Guest i should say at the front, the hbcus do allow white people to attend. I know friends of mine have gone to howard, white friends of mine have attended white have attended Howard University. There are schools by their history and i would say by their appeal, they tend to attract black students. During segregation, these were schools that only black people could go to. It was not that white people could not go there, it was that by the culture of the south at the time, it was culturally forbidden. It was not illegal. I think that is an important distinction. So much of what we think about when we talk about jim crow, these were laws. A lot of it was the absence of laws, it was a culture that existed that allowed people, private individuals to bar black people from eating at a restaurant or shopping at their store. It was not in most cases a law that prevented that. That is why this bill was so important. It did not overturn laws, it created new laws that banned, that affected private action. Back to your question as far as hbcus, they were important see the beds for the Civil Rights Movement. When we think about Howard University back then, so many young activists who came out of Howard University went into the Civil Rights Movement right down to mississippi and alabama. I think the Civil Rights Movement would have looked very different had it not been for the strength of the hbcus at the time. Host philip, baltimore, good morning to you. Caller i was a child during this time. I remember what it was like, the apartheid in america. I remember what it was like in the Greater School attacked and being told African Americans done nothingor history. I remember the kennedy speech. E watch on washington. Oing to to see where america was now wao ere america is w, it is a lot different. Imagine if your family were a veteran. You come home and you cannot go to college. You cannot buy a house. Kennedy was right about the different america. George wallace standing in the door, this is totally crazy. Like a junior desantis. It is good. To change america still need to change. America had apartheid. Just to see the difference now. I hope American People are for it. I see the reaction. Desantis is like a baby george waller. Host what are you doing in baltimore . Caller i am getting ready to open a business. Host mr. Risen . Guest i think he is absolutely right. We have so many racial problems today. It is easy for people to say nothing has changed. You look at what happened in 1963. Fire hoses, dogs on children, George Wallace staing in the schoolhouse door to try to prevent qualified, brilliant, black students from attending a public university. It is night and day. So much of it was because of the Civil Rights Act, not only because of the specifics of the act, but the moral position that all of washington, both congress and the white house and a bunch of the Supreme Court took in backing this legislation, saying from now on, the federal government is behind the equality of the races. We can debate whether the bill went far enough, whether anything went far enough. The amount of change that happened because of it is astounding. Host clay risen, the night of that speech, june 11, 1963, there was also an assassination. Guest that is right. That evening, matt, grabbers the director of the mississippi chapter of the naacp was coming home. He had been working on his own Civil Rights Activism, trying to pick up from the energy from birmingham and recreate it in jackson. As he was carrying a box of shirts into his front door, a hidi in bushes, a white racist, shot evers right as was going through the door. His wife heard thet, ce out, sawer husband dying on ont steps. That night, there was almost violence in jackson. Everest was a very popular figure. He was not as wellknown as king, but in mississippi, he was well respected and someone in the future might have become a National Leader of the naacp. It was only because of the federal intervention, specifically john door, an assistant attorney general who worked in the civil rights division, he happened to be there. He helped calm the people that were out in the streets. The next day, this was on national television. As tragic as it was and horrible as it was, it helped put an exclamation point on what kennedy was saying. This was not just a legal issue. This was a emotional issue. This was an issue of life or death. Host you write in your book that mrs. Evers was watching the speech at home when, while waiting for her husband. Guest that is right. You think about moments where the entire country is on the same page, so to speak. That is a great example of it. Host ralph in men what, ralph in new york. You are on with clay risen. We are talking about the 60th anniversary of john f. Kennedys civil rights speech. Caller i am a you wa worker from upstate. When i was in grade school, we were insulated from what was going on in the south. The reason i learned about the Civil Rights Movement, through my union, the uaw, taught me that. The interesting point of all of this was a member of the house, his name is william. He was a congressman in the house. He added a poison pill during the closing day. He added gender in order to defeat the bill. It backfired on him. That was a lot of people, a lot of people do not know the extra category was added to defeat it. The credit goes to president Lincoln Johnson that got this bill passed. 19