Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy

by Ted Widmer

  So then the President sent Burke Marshall down … [to] Birmingham to see if something could be done about getting people together. First, he went to the Negro community to find out what they wanted. And that was difficult, because a lot of them didn’t know what they wanted. And finally, through efforts with Martin Luther King, found out what they wanted, which [unclear] to desegregate the lunch counters, which was to take the signs off the toilets and the drinking fountains, to have a better hiring system in Birmingham in the department stores, and to hire at least one clerk in one of the stores.

  So he went back to the white community, to the department store heads, the majority of whom were branch stores and had their main offices outside the city, and told them this. So they started having meetings. Douglas Dillon12 and some others called the heads of the big chains. I spoke to some of them and expressed our concern. Burke met with the local people in Birmingham, and finally they said that they’d be willing to do some of these things, but that they would want to wait until something else happened in Birmingham. They wanted to have some other desegregation take place before they took the first step.

  And what they hit upon was the schools. When the schools were desegregated, they said that they would then do these other things. Well, the earliest the schools would be desegregated was September, so the Negroes were unwilling to wait until that happened. And the department stores said they were unwilling to take the first step, so the result was, this was into Monday, Tuesday. And then the demonstrations got larger and larger, and then, as demonstrations got into the thousands, of course they got out of hand. Then Martin Luther King preaches nonviolence, and if you’re hit you kneel down and say your prayers and don’t hit back, which is all very good. And those who hear him, they follow him exceptionally well. I mean, there is no violence as far as the Negroes are concerned.

  But the Negro community of Birmingham has probably the toughest group of Negroes in the country. And so, when some of them started to turn out, they [unclear] with the police for a long period of time. And they came out with their bricks and their knives and started running through the park and going into the department stores. And so, the situation had gotten completely out of hand.

  The white community, then, became, itself, became exercised, concerned as to what they should do. And we felt that if we could get the substantial white citizens who owned the, ran the financial life of Birmingham behind the department store heads, that perhaps we could get the department store heads to move. So they had a meeting down there, and Burke attended it, and said that what you were going to have in Birmingham was complete chaos. You would have bloodshed unless something was done. That the Negro demands were quite reasonable, that they should support the department store heads and urge them to make this agreement. Finally, some of these meetings went to four or five in the morning, and Burke was the only contact between the whites and the Negroes, and finally brought them together, and the white financial, economic leaders agreed to support the department store heads, and then they would go down the line and they also would take steps to improve the lot of the Negroes. When that happened, the department store heads said that they would make this agreement.

  Then we got in touch with Martin Luther King and said that they had agreed to make the agreement, and he said, “Well, I’ve had businessmen tell me in Albany that they’d made an agreement, and then they didn’t keep their word, so we are going to go on with the demonstrations.” We said to him that you had the demonstrations to accomplish a certain purpose, you’ve accomplished that purpose, then to go on with the demonstrations doesn’t make a great deal of sense. He said, “Well, I’ve got to get people out of jail. The only way to get my people out of jail,” he then had a couple of thousand in jail, “is to have demonstrations so that they have so many people who are in jail and such a crisis in Birmingham that they let everybody out of jail.”

  This really didn’t make a great deal of sense. But if he’d had another day of demonstrations, you would have had great bloodshed in Birmingham, and then the governor, who would then start moving into Birmingham, would have taken over the city. So you would never have anything accomplished. So we were able to prevail upon him to call off his demonstrations, just really in time because I don’t think there was any question by that Wednesday night, the governor would have moved into the city, and he would have had complete control of it, and you would never have had any of these gains.

  So they called off their demonstrations, and then you had the Saturday night at ten after eleven, you had one stick of dynamite thrown in Martin Luther King’s brother’s house, and then thirty minutes later, eleven-forty, you had eight sticks of dynamite were thrown in the Gaston Motel where Martin Luther King had stayed. The Negroes gathered, several thousands, when the police came and the fire department came with their fire hoses. They threw rocks and stones, brought out their knives. They got out of hand.

  The local police, the sheriff’s office, and the police department, by two in the morning had brought them pretty much under control. Then the governor sent his people in, and his people were game wardens with armbands, and alcohol and tax people with armbands, and tough [unclear]. They had carbines and they got out of their cars with clubs with these guns, and the local police asked them to get back, go away, that they had the situation under control, and that they would kill somebody, and they said that’s what they were here for. So then they started clubbing people, beating them, and then the situation got completely out of control for the next three hours. And it was finally brought under control about six Sunday morning.

  Well, the Negro [unclear] felt that they had been betrayed, and all day Sunday, they indicated quite clearly that that night you were going to have a real war in Birmingham. A number of them were armed. They had knives, they had guns, and that they were going after these people with the armbands. And they felt that the governor had come in, taken over the city, and that there was no solution as far as they were concerned.

  The President then made the determination to send the troops into Alabama, and that they would be available to be used in Birmingham if it was felt to be necessary, and he also went on television that night just before Martin Luther King came back and made a speech to the Negroes. That changed the whole complexion of the situation, because Martin Luther King told these people to calm down and stay at home, that the federal government was interested and was going to be active in the situation to protect them. The fact that we moved the troops into Alabama calmed the Negro community down, so there weren’t any incidents because I don’t think there’s any question that if that step hadn’t been taken that night, that the Negro community would have gotten out of hand, and you would have had a tough fight between the governor’s people and the Negro community.

  We think that the agreement will be kept that was made. And there are problems, such as yesterday the school board suspending the thousand students that participated in the demonstrations. The Negro lawyer’s going to bring a lawsuit, which we may or may not enter also, to try to enjoin the school board from suspending the students. That will have to be worked out, but at least it would appear that the agreement that was made will be kept at least at the present time. We are optimistic about it. We’re not out of the woods as yet, but I think we feel that we have a good chance of having that kept.

  The lessons that we’ve learned from it are, first, the importance of having some biracial committee in a community. Each one of these local communities, and in the state, the Negroes and the whites talking to one another so that they can air their grievances. One of the great problems as far as the Negroes we found in the last two and a half years is, that they feel there is no solution for what they want to accomplish, that nobody will talk to them. And in community after community, we find that to be so, that they don’t have, the Negroes feel that they have grievances, that there is no place for them to go. Then they want to demonstrate and they can’t get a license to demonstrate. And so that they want to walk down t
he street, and they’re not given a license, and therefore they’re put in jail. That exercises the other Negroes, they don’t have any place to go, they don’t have any place to complain, and they can’t picket about it because then they’re put in jail. So they feel a sense of frustration, and that’s what’s growing up in the South and really in the Northern cities.

  The second thing that we learned, and which I’d like to take up with you today, is when Burke met with these business leaders in Birmingham and talked to them about hiring Negroes, they looked at the government agencies and said, “Well, why should we hire Negroes? You don’t hire Negroes.” And we looked at the situation in Birmingham, and found that it’s really a disgraceful situation as far as the government departments are concerned, that we really had done a very poor job.

  The VA had done well and there were a number of Negroes who were employed by the post office. But by and large, they were of very low grade. There weren’t any Negroes that held any positions that anybody could see them, except perhaps somebody to sweep the floor or something like that. Otherwise, they weren’t being used as clerks or out front in positions of importance in any of these offices. And so we felt that something needed to be done to remedy that, and that you could do it quickly. I talked to a number of you about the situation in your own department, and John Macy13 did a great deal about pulling it all together, and I think we helped the situation down there. But sorry, Mr. President, I’d like to have maybe Mr. Macy give a report as to what the situation was in Birmingham, and what it is in some of these other major cities, and what’s been done about it in Birmingham.

  MEETING WITH CIVIL RIGHTS LEADERS, AUGUST 28, 1963

  On what may have been the most historic day of the Civil Rights Movement, in the immediate aftermath of the “I have a dream” speech just delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr., the leaders of the March on Washington were invited to the White House. They were greeted by a president who was obviously moved by the speech he had watched on television and, more to the point, had a detailed political plan for pushing forward the legislation they wanted. The tapes continue from these excerpts to reveal him going through the membership of the entire Congress, with great specificity, to help the leaders of the movement understand how high the mountain was that they were trying to climb. A. Philip Randolph had first called for a march on Washington in the summer of 1940; at last his moment had come, even if a new generation was required to put his vision into law. In these excerpts, the leaders exult in their momentary triumph, and gird for battle in the fall. Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who often felt excluded from the inner councils of the Kennedy administration, here speaks movingly about what can and cannot be achieved by a president working to advance civil rights.

  PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND VICE PRESIDENT LYNDON B. JOHNSON MEET WITH ORGANIZERS OF “THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM” IN THE OVAL OFFICE, WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, DC, AUGUST 28, 1963

  * * *

  Willard Wirtz, secretary of labor; Floyd McKissick, national chairman of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE); Mathew Ahmann, executive director of the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice; Whitney M. Young, Jr., president of the National Urban League; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; John Lewis, representative for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Rabbi Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress; Reverend Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC); A. Philip Randolph, president of the Negro American Labor Council (NALC); President Kennedy; Vice President Johnson; Walter P. Reuther, president of United Auto Workers (UAW); Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP.

  ROY WILKINS:14 You gave us your blessings. We think it changed the character of the protests. It was one of the prime factors in turning it into an orderly protest to help our government rather than a protest against our government. I think you’ll agree that was psychologically important. And the mood and attitude of the people there today pleased all of us, without exception.

  [break]

  WALTER REUTHER:15 The other thing that I think will come out of this, as I said today in my speech, after we get the legislation, that only means we’ve got a set of tools to work with. It doesn’t mean that automatically this problem is resolved. What we have to do is to develop a broad coalition of men of goodwill in every community, where we’ve got to implement this program. And I think that this is what this march has done. It has brought into being an active, functioning coalition around this central question of equality of opportunity and first-class citizenship. And I think if we reflect this by practical work in each community, we can mobilize the community, we can mobilize the men of goodwill, and we can search for answers in the light of reason by rational, responsible action. Because if we fail, then the vacuum that we create, through our failure, is going to be filled by the apostles of hatred. And reason is going to yield to riot. Brotherhood is going to yield to bitterness and bloodshed. So I think that this is really a more significant aspect of what we’re doing. We have put together the kind of coalition that can be meaningful at the community level, across this country, after we get the legislation, and it can be effective in mobilizing support for the legislation.

  JFK: Very fine, but let me just say a word about the legislation. There’s one thing that I, on this question of education. We have this juvenile program, as you know, in New York, and a lot, and the attorney general was out in Chicago on it the other day and was shocked by some of the crowding of the class, the leaving [?] of the school, the fact that the best teachers … and there’s no visiting by the teachers in their homes. And they won’t study, and the children won’t study unless [unclear] regardless of what their color or their income level is. Now, isn’t it possible for the Negro community to take the lead in committing major emphasis upon the responsibility of these families, even if they’re split and all the rest of the problems they have, on educating their children? Now, in my opinion, the Jewish community, which suffered a good deal under discrimination, and what a great effort they made, which I think has made their role influential, was in education, education of their children. And therefore they’ve been able to establish a pretty strong position for themselves.

  [break]

  A. PHILIP RANDOLPH:16 Mr. President, from the description you have made of the state of affairs of the House and Senate, it’s obvious that it’s going to take nothing less than a crusade to win approval for civil rights measures. And if it is going to be a crusade, I think that nobody can lead this crusade but you. I think that the people have got to be appealed to over the heads of the congressmen and senators.

  [break]

  JFK: Here’s the vice president, he would like to say something before we …

  LBJ: [unclear] … this president has issued the strongest executive orders in housing, employment, armed services, that any administration has ever issued. He’s made the strongest recommendations to Congress, so far, [unclear]. Now he had more conferences in this room over here, where Medgar Evers17 used to hang out, [unclear]. He’s had [unclear], he’s had lawyers, has had business societies, councils, all others, the attorney general, the vice president, the President, [unclear] with them to get behind this legislation. I think he’s demonstrated in his television appearances and other public statements that he’s a champion in the cause of human rights, as a moral commitment because that’s what’s right, regardless of the political effect it may have.

  Now there’s one thing the President can do, he can plead and lead and persuade and even threaten Congress, but he can’t run the Congress. Franklin Roosevelt at the height of his popularity in ’37 lost his court plan overwhelmingly, and he only lost two states in the ’36 election. I came here during that period. And this President can’t get those sixty votes, if he turned this White House upside down, and he preached on the television an hour every day, it will just drive some of those men stronger into [unclear]. Maybe the men at this table can do it. But things are going to be pre
tty hard, because those men have agreements, working language.

  MEETING WITH DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., SEPTEMBER 19, 1963

  The euphoria of the March on Washington did not last long, as conditions continued to deteriorate in Birmingham. On Sunday, September 15, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. The bomb killed four girls and wounded twenty-two others. Anger seethed through many of the leaders of the movement as they came to the Oval Office to vent their frustration and demand justice.

  AMBASSADOR ADLAI STEVENSON, THE U.S. DELEGATE TO THE UNITED NATIONS, SHAKES HANDS WITH MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., PRESIDENT OF THE SOUTHERN CHRISTIAN LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE, AT THE WHITE HOUSE ON DECEMBER 17, 1962. THE MEETING OCCURRED AS PRESIDENT KENNEDY MET WITH MEMBERS OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO LEADERSHIP CONFERENCE ON AFRICA

  MLK: We come today representing Birmingham in general, and more specifically some two hundred business and professional, religious, labor leaders who assembled the day after the bombing to discuss the implications and to discuss the seriousness of the whole crisis that we face there in Birmingham. And we come to you today because we feel that the Birmingham situation is so serious that it threatens not only the life and stability of Birmingham and Alabama, but of our whole nation. The image of our nation is involved, and the destiny of our nation is involved. We feel that Birmingham has reached a state of civil disorder.