"We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution... whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated."
He asked citizens to search their consciences: "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 he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him... who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?"
He pledged that he would ask Congress to make a commitment to "the proposition that race has no place in American life or law." It was the most powerful statement my brother had yet given on civil rights.
A little over two weeks later, on June 26, 1963, after a visit to the wall that the Soviets had erected to pen in those who would flee from communist control, President Kennedy stood in the Rudolph Wilde Platz in West Berlin to address a cheering crowd of at least 150,000. A fortnight earlier, he had told the American people in a different context that "this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free." Echoing those sentiments, he told the people of Berlin, "Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free."
He continued:
When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."
I believe it was one of the finest speeches my brother ever gave. He inspired hope in an oppressed people. He delivered a message about the need for all men to be free that was consistent at home and abroad. And although he was a realist about the time it would take and the work that had to be done to achieve his vision of freedom and equality, he understood the importance of building alliances, challenging the best in people, and sowing goodwill.
On that same trip, President Kennedy made his first and last visit to Ireland, a time he often described as the happiest of his presidency. Jean, the future ambassador to Ireland, and Eunice accompanied him, along with Dave Powers and Larry O'Brien. He said on one of his stops, "When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston, he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty. I am glad to say that all of his great-grandchildren have valued that inheritance." As in so many things, I agree with my brother completely.
When he left Ireland, so moved by the reception and filled with love of his ancestral home, he told the Irish people, "I certainly will come back in the springtime."
On August 7, not quite eight months pregnant and feeling unexpected labor pains, Jackie telephoned for medical help from the Hyannis Port house and was rushed by helicopter to the Otis Air Force Base hospital in Falmouth. There, shortly after noon, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy was born via cesarean section. Bobby telephoned me the following night to report that the infant was in critical condition and that I had better get to Otis. At around four the next morning, before I was able to leave, Dave Powers called me with the news that Patrick had died. The cause was hyaline membrane disease, better known today as respiratory distress syndrome.
Jack met me at the hospital. On our way to Jackie's room, he emphasized the importance of keeping his wife's spirits up. I stayed with the two of them for an hour. It was evident that each was trying to bolster the spirits of the other.
Jack kept stoic about his loss, but those of us closest to him could see how he suffered. When he and Jackie returned to the Cape, Jack invited me over for a swim. He had John Jr. with him, and as we swam and then walked on the beach, Jack was absorbed in everything that his small son was doing. In the few months left to him, my brother showed an even greater preoccupation with the activities of his son and daughter than I had seen before. And he was concerned for Jackie, who took this loss as a tremendous blow. Over these months of diplomatic crisis, pivotal legislation, and cross-country travel, Jack's greatest concern was for his wife's and children's welfare.
On August 9, the day of the infant Patrick's death, President Kennedy set aside his anguish long enough to confer honorary U.S. citizenship on Winston Churchill. My brother honored the British statesman, absent from the ceremony because of infirmities, with his stirring remarks: "In the dark days and darker nights, when England stood alone, and all save Englishmen despaired of England's life, he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle."
Late August brought the March on Washington, nearly three hundred thousand demonstrators, mostly but not exclusively black, from across the United States. The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom had been organized by the most illustrious civil rights leaders of that era. A. Philip Randolph, president of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, who had nearly brought off a similar event in 1941, conceived the idea. The planners included Dr. King; the elder statesman of the movement Bayard Rustin; John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; Roy Wilkins of the NAACP; James Farmer of CORE; and Whitney Young of the National Urban League.
The general purpose of the march was to promote racial equality, but that message did not mean the same thing to all people. Most of the marchers supported the president's proposed civil rights legislation, but some were angry that it didn't go far enough. Malcolm X had declared the entire thing a farce and threatened to kick out any member of the Nation of Islam who attended. And to top it all off, the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party were expected to show up.
I had talked to the president about going down for it, but Jack thought that my presence might be counterproductive. I didn't want to be the catalyst that set things off between those who supported the legislation and those who thought it didn't go far enough. Violence was a concern, and Jack advised me to wait and see how things developed.
I still wanted to attend, however, and wrestled with the decision up until August 28, the day of the march. Jack thought that I should be in my office to greet any of the people who might come there, and in the end that's what I did. Still, I managed to slip out of the Capitol at one point, unnoticed and alone, and make my way to the Reflecting Pool, which seemed to be surrounded by thousands of people. It was an awesome sight. I walked back to my office and watched the speeches on television. That is where I saw Dr. King rise to deliver his prepared remarks about Negro suffering and aspirations for freedom. (As I learned later, leaders of the march had agreed with law enforcement officials that a longer speech with passionate rhetoric could conceivably trigger a riot in the nation's capital.)
I listened to those remarks and watched as Dr. King finished and turned to sit down and then abruptly turned back to the crowd. Although I could not distinguish her, and her voice was not picked up by the microphones, the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson had blurted out to Dr. King from behind him, "Tell them about your dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!" And Martin Luther King did. In a decade in which cataclysmic events inspired lasting oratory, the Georgia-born minister spontaneously delivered the great aria of the civil rights movement.
I was riveted, listening to the amplified cadences that echoed into my ears and into history. And if I hadn't been before, from Grampa's lessons of discrimination, from my own awakening to the plight of African Americans in our own nation, I was, that day in Washington, D.C., fully baptized into the civil rights movement. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had spoken of his dream that had become my own.
Through all the turmoil of 1963, the swelling crises in South Vietnam and the American South, and through his own and Jackie's deep sorrows over the loss of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, Jack kept touch with his capacity for playfulness and laughter.
His laughter was a gift--to him, but also to all of us around him. His laughter is among the things I miss the most about him to this day.
He enjoyed guiding me through my initial months in the Senate, and his enjoyment continued through that summer. He knew all of my colleagues very well; he understood them, and when he heard reactions and reports from them about me, he would let me know what they said. On some evenings he would call me at my Senate office, often on short notice, and say he was going down for a swim; would I like to join him? We'd wind up our swim at around 8 p.m., and then talk until perhaps nine. Afterward, we'd go up to the small dining room in his living quarters and there would be a dinner prepared in the oven, and not another soul present. The table would be set, and then maybe Dave Powers or another of his friends would drop by and we'd dine. Jack would continue the conversation until ten or ten-thirty, when he'd retire to his room and start to read through reports before going to sleep.
Other times, Jack would call me just to come over and smoke a cigar with him on the balcony. He'd sit in his rocking chair, holding a cigar that he didn't pay much attention to after it was lit, and ask me questions about my colleagues. He, of course, knew them much better than I did, and I learned a lot from his queries. But mostly I just enjoyed the camaraderie of being with my brother.
When I say that the president knew and understood my colleagues very well, I am understating the case. Jack's perception of senators and congressmen, especially the key ones, was extraordinary. One Christmas Eve, before I was in the Senate, the two of us had been together in Palm Beach. We'd just been for a swim, and as we were changing clothes we fell into a discussion about one of Jack's favorite topics, the Civil War. We were trying to recall the name of a famous battle fought in 1863, in which the Confederate forces halted a Union advance into Georgia at a terrible cost of lives on both sides. The battle's name was an Indian one, and Jack, for the life of him, couldn't recall it. Neither could I.
"Dick Russell will know the answer," Jack said. He meant of course Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who was then chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "You're going to call up Richard Russell on Christmas Eve and ask him about a Civil War battle?" I asked. Jack nodded.
"Where are you even going to find him?"
"In his office," Jack answered matter-of-factly. He called the Capitol operator and asked to be put through to Senator Russell's office. "It's Christmas Eve, sir. Shouldn't I try him at home first?" No, my brother assured her, he really did mean the office. Of course, he was right.
Russell came on the line. "That's Chickamauga you're talkin' about," he told Jack. And proceeded to give him a detailed account of the threeday battle. There was some friendly dispute between them over which side actually won.
"How the hell," I asked Jack when he'd hung up, "did you know that Richard Russell was going to be in his Senate office on Christmas Eve?" Jack just smiled.
In summers, we'd often transport our get-togethers to the Cape. Our father especially enjoyed these times. On weekends, we would all go over to the house that Jack and Jackie had leased on the nearby section of oceanfront known as Squaw Island. (Joan and I had purchased a house there in 1961.) The early evenings were devoted to Caroline and John, who in 1963 were five and two. No matter who his guests were, Jack reserved that time of day for his children. He would tell them stories and listen to theirs. They liked to hear about his experiences flying in airplanes and traveling on boats, and about their favorite animals.
Our father got great satisfaction out of seeing Jack play with his children. It touched something deep in him. How deep, we learned not long before he suffered his first stroke. This was on a misty day in the spring of 1961, just before Jack flew off to Vienna for his summit with Khrushchev.
We were at Jack's house next door to our parents'. McGeorge Bundy, who had helped plan the invasion of Europe in World War II and now was Jack's adviser on national security affairs, had come along with us, probably to give the president last-minute advice and preparation for the consequential summit with Khrushchev.
Tradition held that we would show up for cocktails at the big house at 7 p.m. Dad would serve us daiquiris. (After all, we were grown men, and Jack was president!) If it was a Friday night, we could have two daiquiris; on Saturdays, we got one apiece; and on Sundays, none--we had to be at work the next day.
On this evening, while Mac Bundy worked the telephones next door, and Joan and Jackie chatted with Mother and Dad, Jack challenged me to a game of checkers--a chance for us to be alone for a while. There was something wonderful, something so characteristic, about the way Jack played checkers. He was good at the game: decisive, precise. He moved very quickly. And he peppered the conversation with humor, to sort of throw you off. Jack got a lift from checkers as from so much else. He played the game with a joyous frivolity.
We played and talked until my brother looked at his watch and said, "Well, it's five to seven. Let's go on over to Dad's." We walked across the lawn in the heavy mist. Caroline--she would have been three--spotted us from her grandparents' kitchen. She came running out and grabbed her father's arms. As Jack walked his toddling daughter around to the front porch, Bundy opened the screen door and said, "Mr. President, they need you on the phone. Something's come up." Jack turned to me: "Will you walk Caroline in?" I took her small hand and we headed inside the house.
Our father had been watching all this through the window. Instead of preparing the daiquiris for us, he strode alone into the dining room, half an hour early, and stiffly sat down. Jack entered the room shortly afterward and sat down next to him. None of us had ever seen this happen before. As our father sat in grim silence, Jackie, Joan, and Mother drifted in and took their seats, along with Jack. Bundy remained in the living room.
As we sat there perplexed, Dad finally broke the silence. "Jack," he said, "I know you're worried about Khrushchev. But let me tell you something. Nothing is going to be more important in your life than how your daughter turns out. And don't ever forget it."
There was an awkward silence at first, but then Jack said, "You're absolutely right, Dad." In fact, Jack was a kind and doting father, and Dad knew it; but Joe Kennedy never expected anything less than the best.
Soon the two of them were joking. Jack confided to Dad: "I have this nice boat model. If you read in the papers that I've given the model to Khrushchev, it'll mean that the talks are going well. If they don't go well, I won't give it to him. And frankly I'd rather keep that model for myself anyway. It's pretty nice."
In the end, President Kennedy kept the boat model. And Caroline turned out pretty well, too.
On September 9, 1963, Jack sat for an interview on Squaw Island with Walter Cronkite that inaugurated the expansion of the CBS Evening News from fifteen minutes to half an hour.
Four days after that, I sat at a luncheon table in Belgrade next to one of the fiercest figures of the embattled Diem regime. The occasion was a conference of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, which I attended along with Joan and a small American congressional delegation. Unbeknownst to us, the leader of the American delegation, Mrs. Katharine St. George, a Republican from New York, had invited the controversial head of the Vietnam delegation, Mrs. Ngo Dinh Nhu, to join us. Madame Nhu, who served as political adviser and unofficial first lady to her unmarried brotherin-law, Ngo Dinh Diem, wound up as my luncheon partner, and my conversation with her marked my first real public--albeit accidentally public--involvement with the situation in Vietnam.
My notes describe her as a woman of about five feet five inches tall, dressed entirely in white and green--green dress, bracelets, earrings, and pin; white pants and shoes. She wore deep red lipstick, rouge, nail polish, and a lot of eye makeup. She had small, delicate hands, which she moved with grace and expression, and spoke directly in a quiet but firm voice.
Madame Nhu was not the most conventional of luncheon conversation partners. When I politely asked her how long she planned to stay in Belgrade, she replied that she was often called
a dragon lady, but that actually she was just a dragonfly, and that she remained in one place as long as she enjoyed it. Then the pleasantries ended.
She launched into a ninety-minute tirade, giving her spin on the current situation in South Vietnam. Propaganda is probably a more accurate description of what was essentially her monologue. She complained that the United States supported the Buddhists, who'd been stirred up by the communists at any rate. South Vietnam was a democratic country that elected its own officials; the press was free; in fact, hers was the most tolerant of all the Asian countries. I understood that she viewed me as more than just a member of the American delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting--I was, after all, the president's brother--so she barely paused to take a breath as she continued her diatribe. She spoke of her conversations with the pope--he supposedly called her "too, too, too, too poetic" as she told him that they needed women priests to deliver the sacraments in her country--and she declared that people are only Buddhists because they are casual about their religion, and that the government is betrayed by the press. I wondered more than once how in the world I had ended up in this lunch and with this woman sitting next to me. I found it amusing when the State Department later sent a message that I should steer clear of Madame Nhu. I needed no convincing.
One of the last ceremonial events Jack participated in was an All New England Salute Dinner in his honor on Saturday, October 19. Seven thousand people paid one hundred dollars apiece to attend the event at the Commonwealth Armory near Kenmore Square in Boston. It was the most profitable Democratic fund-raising dinner of its time. Jack had attended the Harvard-Columbia football game that afternoon with Kenneth O'Donnell, Dave Powers, and Lawrence O'Brien. He was delighted at the success of the evening and with the money that had been raised.
True Compass: A Memoir Page 21