by Thomas Maier
As part of his argument, Kennedy quoted Harvard historian Oscar Handlin and his Pulizer Prize–winning book, The Uprooted, about immigrants from long ago (“Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America,” wrote Handlin. “Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.”) But Kennedy also included more recent immigrant experiences in his tribute. “In our own day, for example, anti-Semitic and anti-Christian persecution in Hitler’s Germany and the Communist empire have driven people from their homes to seek refuge in America,” Kennedy observed.“Minority religious sects, from Quakers and Shakers through the Catholics and Jews to the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses, have at various times suffered both discrimination and hostility in the United States.” Intolerance became universal in immigrant life, as Kennedy depicted it, a suffering they all shared.
Kennedy displayed his own understanding of Irish-American history in this book.“The Irish were in the vanguard of the great waves of immigration” during the 1800s, he wrote, many of whom “were mostly country folk, small farmers, cottagers and farm laborers”—just like Patrick Kennedy, his great-grandfather. These young Irish workers became a supply of “cheap labor” for the most menial, dangerous jobs. He explained how the Irish gravitated to civil service jobs in government, helped establish the Catholic Church in America and overcame the “handicaps of illiteracy” by setting up their own parochial school system and Catholic-run colleges. Above all, Kennedy emphasized their place in American history: “The Irish were the first to endure the scorn and the discrimination . . . inflicted . . . by already settled ‘Americans.’ In speech and dress they seemed foreign; they were poor and unskilled; and they were arriving in overwhelming numbers. The Irish are perhaps the only people in our history with the distinction of having a political party, The Know-Nothings, formed against them. Their religion was later also the target of the American Protective Association and, in this century, the Ku Klux Klan.”
IN THE WHITE-BREAD atmosphere of the 1950s, Kennedy’s book offered a remarkably different perspective. In prose and pictures, it celebrated a broad mosaic of American immigration—Poles, Chinese, Italians, Czechs, Germans,Armenians, Danes and Laplanders. But it also contained examples of America’s less than glorious past, including pictures of a Klan rally with two burning crosses. Kennedy’s book seemed to equate, or at least find common ground, in the experiences of all minorities in America. He reminded readers that as their numbers increased, so did nativism and the level of hostility “against the Irish, who, as Catholics, were regarded as members of an alien conspiracy.”
Kennedy held a more qualified view of the American “melting pot” ideal than the prevailing popular doctrine of the 1950s presented. It differed even from the views of some academics and political aides surrounding him. The Irish Catholics he knew—certainly those like his grandfather and own father—did not wish to become Brahmins as much as to be accepted for what they were and not have to adopt someone else’s religion or culture. In Kennedy’s concept of assimilation, public schools became a critically important tool for preparing immigrant children to get ahead in American life, but he emphasized that it should not come at the loss of self-identity. “The ideal of the ‘melting pot’ symbolized the process of blending many strains into a single nationality, and we have come to realize in modern times that the ‘melting pot’ need not mean the end of particular ethnic identities or traditions.” In an eloquent, almost philosophic way, he emphasized why immigrants were so central to the American dream. As he wrote:
Immigration is by definition a gesture of faith in social mobility. It is the expression in action of a positive belief in the possibility of a better life. It has thus contributed greatly to developing the spirit of personal betterment in American society and to strengthening the national confidence in change and the future. . . . The continuous immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was thus central to the whole American faith. It gave every old American a standard by which to judge how far he had come and every new American a realization of how far he might go. It reminded every American, old and new, that change is the essence of life, and that American society is a process, not a conclusion.
NO TRUER, MORE simply stated expression of John Kennedy’s fundamental liberalism exists. Undoubtedly, A Nation of Immigrants was created in response to Joe Sr.’s tactical advice that immigrants and their descendants could hold the key to electoral success in the 1960 race for the White House. Surely the treatise would curry favor with many minority groups whom Kennedy needed desperately in a winning coalition. But Kennedy’s book went further in scope than could ever be expected from a mere campaign pamphlet. At that time, the notion of immigration as an active agent in the “process” of an ever-changing America was far different than the worldview of many Americans who insisted that newcomers become just like them—in effect Anglicized and devoid of their cultural beliefs. Kennedy’s book stressed that America would be better off if it understood and embraced its remarkable immigration history rather than ignore or deny it. This testament of faith formed the basis for Kennedy’s strong opposition to U.S. immigration policy and his determination to reform it.
In later chapters,Kennedy unsparingly dissected the racism and religious bigotry that had existed within American immigrant policy since the nation’s founding. By 1921,America had in place a “radically new policy” that set a cap on the number of immigrants allowed to enter each year; entry was determined according to a rigid formula based on the “national origins” of those foreign-born citizens already here. Immigrants from Britain, Ireland and Germany had few problems, but those from Italy, Hungary, Poland and the Baltic states faced huge backlogs, the number of applicants far greater than the number allowed to enter. This “national origins” system was still largely in place when Kennedy wrote his book.“The national origins quota system has strong overtones of an indefensible racial preference,” Kennedy charged. “It is strongly weighted toward so-called Anglo-Saxons.” Such language was remarkable for someone already plan ning to run for president and aware of the bigotry he might encounter. Kennedy called for a new immigration system judged not by race or ethnicity but by the need for each immigrant’s skills as well as by an immigrant’s ties to family members already living in the United States. In summarizing his plea, Kennedy harked back to Boston and the wisdom of an Irish Catholic immigrant who edited the archdiocese’s newspaper during Honey Fitz’s era.“We must avoid what the Irish poet John Boyle O’Reilly once called ‘organized charity, scrimped and iced / In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ,’” Kennedy concluded. “Immigration policy should be generous; it should be fair; it should be flexible. With such a policy, we can turn to the world, and to our own past, with clean hands and a clear conscience.”
John Kennedy’s manifesto, his paean to the pulsing, flowing heart of America, drew little attention when published in 1958. Many press accounts, influenced by the Kennedy publicity machine, portrayed the candidate and his family as all-American success stories, often with little examination of their cultural background. Certainly Jack’s version of American history, recounting as it did instances of hatred and bigotry, was not flattering to a Protestant nation he would soon ask to vote for him. What’s extraordinary about A Nation of Immigrants is that it existed at all. Its political usefulness was questionable and its potential to backfire loomed over the whole project. It never became a bestseller of the magnitude of Profiles in Courage, and could, by the Kennedys’must-win standards, be considered a failure. Though later editions after Kennedy’s death were printed by a major publisher, the first edition of A Nation of Immigrants was distributed by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Most notable books about Kennedy—written in the post-assassination era of “Camelot” imagery by well-known biographers—ignore A Nation of Immigrants. It’s a remarkable omission, for this book provides the clearest, most historically rooted raison d’être for John Kennedy’s presidency.
IN THE 19
50S, Kennedy gave public talks for the descendants of immigrants, who, like himself, were some generations removed but understood and appreciated the Irish experience and its link to contemporary America. “All of us of Irish descent are bound together by the ties that come from a common experience; experience which may exist only in memories and in legend but which is real enough to those who possess it,” he said as a guest of honor at a January 1957 Irish Institute dinner at the Hotel Commodore in New York.
But the special contribution of the Irish, I believe—the emerald thread that runs throughout the tapestry of their past—has been the constancy, the endurance, the faith that they displayed through endless centuries of foreign oppression—centuries in which even the most rudimentary religious and civil rights were denied to them—centuries in which their mass destruction by poverty, disease and starvation were ignored by their conquerors. . . . Let us here tonight resolve that our nation will forever hold out its hands to those who struggle for freedom today, as Ireland struggled for a thousand years. Instead we will recognize that whether a man be Hungarian or Irish, Catholic or Jew, white or black, there forever burns within his breast the unquenchable desire to be free.
Earlier in Chicago, Kennedy gave a similar speech for St. Patrick’s Day 1956, invoking the same “emerald thread” imagery, with a deep appreciation for the transcendent themes of liberty and struggle for independence contained in Irish history. With the same Republican spirit his cousins in Wexford might express, Kennedy noted that “all of the classic weapons of oppression were employed to break the will of the Irish. Religious persecution was encouraged—mass starvation was ignored. . . . Even assassination was employed to end resistance.” Only in retrospect does Kennedy’s allusion to “assassination” grab the ear. For in the next breath, Kennedy seemed to recognize the devastating impact of a young leader taken by an early death.“Listen, if you will, to the wild melancholy of the Irish after the murder by Cromwell’s agents of their beloved Chieftain, Owen Roe O’Neill,” Kennedy said, hushing the crowd of Chicagoans before reading from the poem, which ended:
We’re sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky—
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen? Why did you die?
To Kennedy, this “emerald thread” extended across the Atlantic, from the migration out of famine Ireland to the political and social barriers still faced by immigrants of all kinds in post–World War II America. His understanding of immigrant history in this country—and the fierce bigotry and sometimes violence it evoked—provided some personal perspective as he embarked on his presidential bid. Kennedy wouldn’t view anti-Catholic bigotry and ethnic slurs as a personal affront as Al Smith did in 1928, nor would these attacks wound Kennedy in quite the same way. Instead, this historical perspective provided a kind of ballast that kept his candidacy afloat and on course, without being swamped by rancor or resentment. As his small book proclaimed,America was indeed a nation of immigrants, and in many ways, John Kennedy was determined to become their heir, the first of their kind as president.
Chapter Twenty-One
Matters of Church and State
IN JUNE 1950, President Harry Truman left a frustrating cabinet meeting concerned with the Korean War and hurried to another White House appointment. He’d been up since 4:30 A.M., worried about the Russian expansion in the Baltic states. This noontime meeting would require a delicate balancing act and it promised even more headaches for him. The president had agreed to talk privately with Joseph P.Kennedy, the Vatican’s most powerful advocate in America.
“The Russians have no God and no morals,” Truman fumed, as he entered the room,“and I’ll be damned if I would trust anyone who did not have both.” For a few moments, the president and Kennedy chatted about tensions with the Soviets before turning to discuss their main business.
The Roman Catholic Church, with its millions of faithful living throughout the United States, still felt very much like a second-class entity, the object of lingering bigotry at home and of disdain abroad. Though many Catholics were Democrats in Northern industrial states, Truman’s party also encompassed many Southerners deeply suspicious of the Pope in Rome. Truman weighed both factors in listening to the church’s requests. For the past several years, the Vatican had pushed without success for reparations from the U.S. government for damages caused by Allied bombing during World War II. Some U.S. officials adamantly opposed paying any money to the Vatican.
But most of the conversation between Truman and Kennedy centered on an even thornier and more pressing issue—whether the U.S. govern- ment would replace its special emissary at the Vatican, a position Kennedy himself had persuaded FDR to fill. In 1939, Roosevelt had appointed Myron C. Taylor, an Episcopalian, as his personal representative to the Vatican. Taylor was the first U.S. emissary to the Holy See in nearly one hundred years, and his appointment resulted from a deal brokered by Kennedy himself back in 1936, when Pacelli came to the United States, escorted by Count Enrico Galeazzi and Spellman. Though Kennedy wasn’t thrilled with Taylor (in his meeting that afternoon with the president, he called Taylor a “horse’s ass”), he lasted in the job until January 1950, stepping down without a replacement.
Once again, opposition to the Vatican post arose from several quarters, including Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America, who expressed concern about Cardinal Spellman’s undue influence on public policy. Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (POAU), an anti-Spellman group with many allies in the Democratic Party, also urged no new Vatican appointment. As Truman explained to Kennedy, even top Democratic congressmen—some of whom were Catholic—advised him to wait. “They all felt it would defeat Democratic Senators and Congressmen in the Bible Belt if it were done right away, so Truman decided to do it after the election,” the senior Kennedy recorded in his diary. “He pointed out that [Massachusetts Congressman John] McCormack, a Catholic,was very insistent on this as a plan. . . .As far as the Vatican is concerned, he [Truman] is not going to take all the abuse that the Protestants and Oxnam have been heaping on him all the time for keeping Taylor there.”
For Joe Kennedy, the Vatican vacancy meant more than just reneging on the hard-fought original deal but symbolized the lack of clout many American Catholics still felt with their own government. Truman afforded the former ambassador time to air his views, largely as a personal courtesy. Though no admirer, the president was mindful of Joe Kennedy’s religion and his family’s sizeable political influence. But, Truman, like most Americans, was unaware of the depth of Joe Kennedy’s alliances with the church.
IN THE DECADE FOLLOWING World War II, the Kennedys frequently blended matters of church and state. The former ambassador and his eldest son, a rising star in Congress, acted on several measures advocated by the Catholic hierarchy. Some were proposed pieces of legislation, though many were actions taken out of view of the American public. On the surface, the Kennedys’ involvement extended merely to generous contributions to Catholic-run charities and a tip of the hat to local clergy, the kind of deference often accorded by Irish Catholic politicians of their era. Most perceived the Kennedys’s advocacy of church causes as just part of the ethnic politics found throughout America, a polyglot of interests and pride common among many groups. Few had any idea about the Kennedy influence with the Vatican.
For Joe Kennedy, the direct pipeline to the Vatican remained Count Galeazzi, the aide-de-camp to Pope Pius XII.After more than two decades of working together on church-related issues, Galeazzi had become one of Kennedy’s truest confidants, a man to whom he confided his ambitions and resentments. The church could not wish for any more devoted advocate than Joe Kennedy, as he promised in his letters. A year before his meeting with Truman about the Vatican, Joe Kennedy made clear his fidelity to Rome.“Of course, with the problems of the world now centering to a great extent at the Vatican, I realize what a terrible burden the Holy Father is under and how he must d
epend on you for help,” he wrote to Galeazzi in 1949. “I don’t know what I can continue to do to be of any assistance to him, but you know all you have to do is command me and, if it is humanly possible, I shall do it.”
The duality of Joe Kennedy’s interests—his combined loyalties between his church and his government—were evident in negotiations over the Vatican appointment. Shortly after Taylor left his post, Kennedy requested the meeting with President Truman. “I am writing you not as a Catholic but as the man more responsible than anyone for the suggestion of establishing the so-called Taylor mission at the Vatican,” Joe Kennedy plainly stated to Truman.“I feel there is a great deal more to this appointment than its religious aspect.”
But as his letters indicate, Kennedy was committed privately to serving as a negotiator for the church hierarchy, consulting with Cardinal Spellman before his Friday meeting with the president. After his White House chat, he dispatched a note to Count Galeazzi in Rome. Detailing his conversation with Truman,Kennedy wrote:“I was quite critical of the sudden manner in which the Vatican office was closed and he told me that he had personally sent word to the Pope and that Taylor has also informed the Pope three months ahead of time that the office was to be closed. Cardinal Spellman certainly is not of that opinion, I am sure, and did not give me this impression.” He explained Truman’s reasons for not filling the post immediately and mentioned that, after the 1950 election, the president had promised to submit “the name of a Protestant Republican as Minister to the Vatican.”
Kennedy knew the lack of Catholic political influence, even among the Democrats, did not bode well for his son’s chances for the White House, and appeared anxious to do something about it.“I still believe, as I told the Pope, and as I told you, that until the day comes when the hierarchy of the United States makes up their mind that they should have political influence, we are not going to fare very well in this country, and unless we do it right away, the opportunity will be lost,” he wrote. Then showing his own biases, Kennedy added that, by comparison, “a Jewish minority group, well-organized, gets whatever it wants and we get nothing.” In closing, Joe Kennedy emphasized to Galeazzi that he remained at the Pope’s disposal: “If there is anything you want me to do, all you have to do is ask,”Kennedy ended. “Please convey my deepest respects to His Holiness and tell him I am prepared to do anything he suggests in this matter.”