Re: RIP Reverend Jerry Falwell

SMBalloon wrote:

And JFK was hardly a crusader for equal
rights for all people. He relied upon the votes of racist southern
states to win the 1960 presidential election.

That's true. JFK considered civil rights a political loser for him and didn't make major efforts to win black voters for the 1960 election. But by the end of his first year in office, in part because JFK found that the issue of civil rights couldn't be contained, and in part because America's "race problem" was generating terrible international publicity, civil rights became a priority for JFK's administration.

Thus, in 1962, JFK sent federal marshals into Mississippi, allowing James Meredith to register Ole Miss.

And in 1963, Wallace's efforts to prevent the integration of the University of Alabama prompted JFK's call for landmark civil rights legislation.

The full text of his June 11, 1963 speech on civil rights is here:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/13/documents/jfk.civil/

Here are some snippets:

"Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore...for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case."

[...]

"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution."

If fact, JFK did better
in the South than he did in most of the Northeast. And both JFK and
RFK initially viewed MLK as a trouble maker, to the point where RFK
ordered illegal wiretaps of MLK.

That's shameful--but from RFK's perspective it was a anti-Communism issue, not a racial issue. And let's keep the blame on Hoover where it belongs.

-ez
.

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