NYTimes: Kennedy’s Finest Moment

[MinM]

The New York Times has not always been kind to JFK. So this is a good read...

Kennedy’s Finest Moment

MEDFORD, Mass. — JUNE 11, 1963, may not be a widely recognized date these days, but it might have been the single most important day in civil rights history.

That morning, Gov. George Wallace, in an effort to block the integration of the University of Alabama, made his futile “stand at the schoolhouse door.” That evening, Boston N.A.A.C.P. leaders engaged in their first public confrontation with Louise Day Hicks, the chairwoman of the Boston School Committee, over de facto public school segregation, beginning a decade-long struggle that would boil over into spectacular violence during the early 1970s. And just after midnight in Jackson, Miss., a white segregationist murdered the civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

But the most important event was one that almost didn’t happen: a hastily arranged speech that evening by President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy had dabbled with the idea of going on TV should the Alabama crisis drag out, so when it ended, his staff assumed the plan was off. But that afternoon he surprised them by calling the three networks and personally requesting airtime at 8 p.m. He told his speechwriter Theodore Sorensen to start drafting the text, but shortly before he went on air the president was still editing it...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/kennedys-civil-rights-triumph.html?src=me&ref=general

[question everything]

1. See the same story, below

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101665825

The 24 Hours That Rocked U.S. Race Relations

Also added that at the end of the day, Medgar Evers was assassinated.