Civil rights movement

=== Kennedy administration: 1961–1963 ===
[[File:Robert Kennedy speaking before a crowd, June 14, 1963.jpg|thumb|[[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]] [[Robert F. Kennedy]] speaking before a hostile Civil Rights crowd protesting low [[Affirmative action in the United States|minority hiring]] in his [[United States Department of Justice|Justice Department]] June 14, 1963<ref name="Risen 2014 76">{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eOu1AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA76 |title=The Bill of the Century: The Epic Battle for the Civil Rights Act |last=Risen |first=Clay |date=2014 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-1-60819-824-5 |page=76 |language=en}}</ref>]]

For the first two years of the Kennedy administration, civil rights activists had mixed opinions of both the president and his younger brother, [[Robert F. Kennedy]], the [[United States Attorney General|Attorney General]]. Historian [[David Halberstam]] wrote that the race question was for a long time a minor ethnic political issue in [[Massachusetts]] where the Kennedy brothers came from, and had they been from another part of the country, "they might have been more immediately sensitive to the complexities and depth of black feelings."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Halberstam |first1=David |title=The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy |date=1968 |publisher=Random House |page=142}}</ref> A well of historical skepticism toward liberal politics had left African Americans with a sense of uneasy disdain for any white politician who claimed to share their concerns for freedom, particularly ones connected to the historically pro-segregationist Democratic Party. Still, many were encouraged by the discreet support Kennedy gave to King, and the administration's willingness, after dramatic pressure from civil disobedience, to bring forth racially egalitarian initiatives.

Many of the initiatives resulted from Robert Kennedy's passion. The younger Kennedy gained a rapid education in the realities of racism through events such as the [[Baldwin-Kennedy meeting]]. The president came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matter, resulting in the landmark [[Civil Rights Address]] of June 1963 and the introduction of the first major civil rights act of the decade.<ref>James Hilty, [https://books.google.com/books?id=Za8TAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA356 ''Robert Kennedy: Brother Protector''] (Temple University Press, 2000), p. 350-361.</ref><ref>Schlesinger, Arthur Jr, ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002)</ref>

Robert Kennedy expressed the administration's commitment to civil rights during a May 6, 1961 [[Law Day Address|speech]] at the [[University of Georgia Law School]]:

{{blockquote|Our position is quite clear. We are upholding the law. The federal government would not be running the schools in [[Massive resistance|Prince Edward County]] any more than it is running the University of Georgia or the schools in my home state of [[Boston desegregation busing crisis#Racial Imbalance Act|Massachusetts]]. In this case, in all cases, I say to you today that if the orders of the court are circumvented, the Department of Justice will act. We will not stand by or be aloof—we will move. I happen to believe that [[Brown v. Board of Education|the 1954 decision]] was right. But my belief does not matter. It is now the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkgeorgialawschool.htm | title=Law Day Address at the University of Georgia Law School | publisher=American Rhetoric | access-date=23 August 2016 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160822211236/http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rfkgeorgialawschool.htm | archive-date=August 22, 2016}}</ref>}}

That same month, during the [[Freedom Rides]], Robert Kennedy became concerned with the issue when photographs of the burning bus and savage beatings in [[Anniston, Alabama|Anniston]] and Birmingham were broadcast around the world. They came at an especially embarrassing time, as President Kennedy was about to have a [[Vienna summit|summit with the Soviet premier]] in Vienna. The White House was concerned with its image among the populations of newly independent nations in Africa and Asia, and Robert Kennedy responded with an address for [[Voice of America]] stating that great progress had been made on the issue of race relations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the administration worked to resolve the crisis with a minimum of violence and prevent the Freedom Riders from generating a fresh crop of headlines that might divert attention from the President's international agenda. The [[Freedom Riders (film)|''Freedom Riders'']] documentary notes that, "The back burner issue of civil rights had collided with the urgent demands of Cold War [[realpolitik]]."<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/freedom-riders-cold-war/|title=The Cold War &#124; American Experience &#124; PBS|website=www.pbs.org}}</ref>

On May 21, when a white mob attacked and burned the First Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, where King was holding out with protesters, Robert Kennedy telephoned King to ask him to stay in the building until the U.S. Marshals and National Guard could secure the area. King proceeded to berate Kennedy for "allowing the situation to continue". King later publicly thanked Kennedy for deploying the force to break up an attack that might otherwise have ended King's life.

With a very small majority in Congress, the president's ability to press ahead with legislation relied considerably on a balancing game with the Senators and Congressmen of the South. Without the support of Vice-president Johnson, a former Senator who had years of experience in Congress and longstanding relations there, many of the Attorney-General's programs would not have progressed.

By late 1962, frustration at the slow pace of political change was balanced by the movement's strong support for legislative initiatives, including administrative representation across all U.S. Government departments and greater access to the ballot box. From squaring off against Governor [[George Wallace]], to "tearing into" Vice-president Johnson (for failing to desegregate areas of the administration), to threatening corrupt white Southern judges with disbarment, to desegregating interstate transport, Robert Kennedy came to be consumed by the civil rights movement. He continued to work on these social justice issues in his bid for the presidency in 1968.

On the night of Governor Wallace's capitulation to African-American enrollment at the [[University of Alabama]], President Kennedy gave an [[Civil Rights Address|address]] to the nation, which marked the changing tide, an address that was to become a landmark for the ensuing change in political policy as to civil rights. In 1966, Robert Kennedy visited South Africa and voiced his objections to [[apartheid]], the first time a major US politician had done so:

{{blockquote|quote=At the [[University of Natal]] in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. "But suppose God is black", I replied. "What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?" There was no answer. Only silence.|Robert Kennedy |''LOOK'' Magazine<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050313181151/http://www.rfksa.org/magazines/magazine.php?id=6|title=Ripple of Hope in the Land of Apartheid: Robert Kennedy in South Africa, June 1966|archive-date=March 13, 2005}}</ref>}}

Robert Kennedy's relationship with the movement was not always positive. As attorney general, he was called to account by activists—who booed him at a June 1963 speech—for the Justice Department's own poor record of hiring blacks.<ref name="Risen 2014 76" /> He also presided over [[Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI Director]] [[J. Edgar Hoover]] and his [[COINTELPRO]] program. This program ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of Communist front groups, a category in which the paranoid Hoover included most civil rights organizations.<ref name="WRH">{{cite web |url=http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/COINTELPRO/COINTELPRO-FBI.docs.html |title=COINTELPRO Revisited – Spying & Disruption – In Black and White: The F.B.I. Papers |website=What Really Happened}}</ref><ref name="pbsco">{{cite web |title=A Huey P. Newton Story – Actions – COINTELPRO |url=https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html |website=[[PBS]] |access-date=June 23, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080420042603/http://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/actions/actions_cointelpro.html |archive-date=April 20, 2008}}</ref> Kennedy personally authorized some of the programs.<ref>Weiner, Tim (2012). Enemies: A History of the FBI (1st ed.). New York: Random House. {{ISBN|978-1-4000-6748-0}}. OCLC 1001918388</ref> According to [[Tim Weiner]], "RFK knew much more about this surveillance than he ever admitted." Although Kennedy only gave approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so." Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of the black leader's life they deemed important; they then used this information to harass King.<ref>Hersh, Burton (2007). ''Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America''. Basic Books. {{ISBN|978-0-7867-1982-2}}. OCLC 493616276</ref> Kennedy directly ordered surveillance on [[James Baldwin]] after their antagonistic racial summit in 1963.<ref>{{Cite journal |jstor = 4384813|title = James Baldwin and the FBI|journal = The Threepenny Review|issue = 77|page = 11|last1 = Campbell|first1 = James|year = 1999}}</ref><ref>Talia Whyte, "[http://www.baystate-banner.com/issues/2008/02/14/news/blackhistory02140890.htm Baldwin: A literary standard] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402133252/http://www.baystate-banner.com/issues/2008/02/14/news/blackhistory02140890.htm |date=April 2, 2015 }}", ''Black History'' 43 (27), February 14, 2009.</ref>