called a lunette. they did have logs in the back to try to close it in to support it. while the quote, battle of ft. stevens was going on july 11th to 12th, abraham lincoln, not that far away, came out to the fort, and he actually got up on the parapet to look out to see where the troops were. and there were actually some sharpshooters who took shots at him. they did not hit him. one of the -- of the story, is and i've often wondered if this is true or not, oliver wendell holmes who became famous later, was said to have said get down, you fool, meaning get down before you get shot.

i doubt that that happened, but there are people that said that that is what oliver wendell holmes said, but this is the only time that a president of the united states has actually been under fire while president of the united states, so abraham lincoln here, standing on the parapet looking out to see where the enemy troops actually were. >> you can watch this and other american artifacts programs site, c-span.org/history. and watch american artifacts every sunday at 8:00 a.m., 7:00 p.m. eastern here on c-span. the john f. kennedy presidential library convened a discussion on jfk and civil rights. in this discussion, this panel is discussing the president's actions on civil rights. this program is just over one hour. >> so, if we could have your attention. we'll now go to our next panel

on the presidencies of john f. kennedy and lyndon baines johnson. so now it is afternoon. good afternoon. and remembering that we're honoring two presidents, george washington and abraham lincoln. here is a little something from abraham lincoln that seems fit for this afternoon. the probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. that seems to be very appropriate for our conversation about civil rights in the united states. we ended the conversation in the first panel having looked at the double "v" victory, the world war ii, the cold war, the personal responses of people like ernie green of the little rock nine to what was happening in terms of the violence, and

the movement by both truman and eisenhower, though they not be supporters of social equality to do some things to move the country forward with regard to civil rights. now we come to the terms of john f. kennedy and lyndon baines johnson typically regarded by people who think of the modern civil rights movement as two presidents that were very much associated with civil rights. we think we know those stories. the question on the program is to ask how legislation was moved forward? what were the forces that inspired the legislative process by these two presidents to advance actual civil rights legislation? we certainly have the panel to do that. so, let's start with -- because i like a little context -- after we leave eisenhower and now it is john f. kennedy's time, what

was happening in the country in terms of the naacp, in terms of what lawyers were doing, kenneth mack, in terms of the restlessness of the black community about where civil rights was, because the little rock nine, that was considered a victory of sorts, but yet we were so far from legislation. so kenneth mack, i think i'll start with you. >> okay. >> all right. >> what was the context for us. >> what was going on in the country? several things. first the brown decision had been decided. it has been unevenly enforced. there had been the little rock crisis, but really nobody knew whether and when or how school desegregation would really happen in the south.

the justice department was trying to force existing civil rights laws, but there were holes in the existing civil rights laws. it was mentioned earlier that under president eisenhower's watch the 1967 civil rights act was enacted, the 1967 act gave the justice department additional powers to enforce civil rights, but really still very, very significant constraints on what the justice department can do. the naacp is caught up with the struggle of trying to implement brown versus board of education, and then there is martin luther king who was catapulted to prominence with the montgomery bus boycott in 1965 and '66, but king is also looking in 1960, '61 for ways to push the movement forward.

so what the context was that a lot had been done. desegregation of the military, brown versus the board of education. president kennedy and robert kennedy were both air ball liberals. they were comfortable with social equality. they were comfortable around african-americans which distinguished them from most of the predecessors in the office of the presidency, but still nobody knew what the next step was. in fact, the next steps were driven by things and people who were outside of the office of the president of the united states, outside of the executive branch. they whether driven -- the next steps were driven by african-americans and whites, segregationist whites, in the south. >> so harris wofford, john f. kennedy first had to get the presidency, and part of his rack seeding to the presidency, he had to deal with some of the issues of civil rights, some of this that was going on, that kenneth mack had just described,

that after eisenhower's presidency, how did he do that and how did he view civil rights at that point as a candidate before he actually got into the chair as president? >> one day, shortly after i was hired by kennedy, i had been campaigning for him on foreign policy grounds even though he had supported the jury trial amendment in 1957 of the first civil rights act since reconstruction. he was in trouble, but i was ardently for kennedy on foreign policy grounds. he picked me up on a corner in georgetown. he knew i had joined the staff by then and hadn't known anything about civil rights background i had had with dr. king in promoting civil disobedience, talking about it, at least, since writing a book with my wife on india and gandhi, et cetera. and he said now in ten minutes, pick -- tick off the things that i ought to do if i'm president to clean up the damn civil rights mess. so i had my moment. i had my ten minutes. >> what did you say?

>> well, among other things, i said with one stroke of a pen, cuisine the executive order eliminating discrimination in federally assisted housing that the civil rights commission had recommended and was sitting on eisenhower's desk for six months or something like that. with one stroke of a pen. he said i like that. you know, we talked about the problem of the southern legislators filibustering any legislation, so he jumped at the idea of executive action. and i had five or six other points. a few days later, he called me in and said sergeant shriver has convinced us that we should have a civil rights section of the campaign, not just a minority votes section but a civil rights section that would have black and white leaders and hispanic leaders and walter luther and all the black leaders that we could get to actually join the

campaign. and we've learned about your ties in those years. would you go down and work with sergeant shriver, who i had already gotten to know separately and knew he was somebody i enjoyed more than anything for the next ten years that i've had in my life. so night and day we were in the civil rights section. a key part of it was the democratic platform, which was the most far-reaching political civil rights platform that any party had ever had even with the republicans and their abolitionists blooming. it was an extraordinary one that went further than they wanted because -- because chester bowles was the chair of the democratic platform committee,

and he assigned several of us on civil rights to have a maximum platform and then a minimum that we would fight for because he knew he would have to compromise with the southerners, and he wanted to have the maximum. we had good ones. minimum and maximum. that morning, robert kennedy got up on a stair, a chair in the caucus of the democratic leaders on the floor and said today's the day for the platform, and the civil rights platform is strong, and we want the kennedy delegates, every one of them, to go all the way with bowles' platform. i went and reported to bowles that that's the command. he said oh, my god, i don't know what will happen. the southerners did not balk.

the whole maximum got adopted somewhat by accident, which kennedy avowed and campaigned on a number of times and then came the call as king and then in due course i became an assistant to the president for civil rights having first urged louie martin, our first colleague, wonderful african-american colleague in my lifetime, and they wanted him in the democratic national committee, and the -- twice on the edge of signing the executive order on housing, the southern legislators came to him and said, first, if you sign that, we will not support your housing and your economic plan. and then the second time he delayed it. they came and said we're all up for election, and if you -- we're going to lose the south or a lot of us if you sign it. twice when i was booked to go on explaining the executive order

on martin gronsky's radio show, he canceled at the last minute. the pen started flowing from the civil rights movement decided to send pens saying one stroke of a pen and allegedly when the strokes -- when the pens came in, the first huge bundle, he said send them over to wofford. he's got me into that. burr on executive action, he formed a sub cabinet group on civil rights which he asked me to chair and which every cabinet department had to have a member of the sub cabinet committee on civil rights. we met regularly to find out and to move and to support each other in how much each department could do. kennedy launched it and supported it and then the freedom riders rode. >> so you would say he was good on civil rights?

>> i'm just giving you a beginning story. >> i was trying to get you to characterize it because before we get -- >> i came in due course to realize that what many thought was weakness or unreadiness. >> gradualism. >> gradualism, et cetera. al sharpton's interview on chris matthews said, you know, your book has convinced me that i was wrong, that he was just a gradualist and didn't have a commitment to civil rights. i recommend his book because just looking at it cleanly now from the democratic platform to the call of mrs. king and the executive actions that were taken and to the two weeks after the worst violence of the freedom riders, the order to the interstate commerce commission

was to design regulations that will end segregation and interstate housing which is the happy end to that story going through his submission of the civil rights bill and the great speech. >> so not gradualism for you, pretty good, okay. let's let it sit there for just a second. >> you're the moderator. >> i'm going over to roger for a second to talk about if you could pull together the middle of this thread. kenneth has talked to us about what's happening. there is an ongoing i would say persistent thought that kennedy came late to civil rights. despite what he may have said on the campaign trail and despite what harris wofford had just told us about his setting up the civil rights decision. you worked for both kennedy and

johnson. i wonder if you could pull that middle together for us and give us your assessment of where he was, and did you see him as a gradualist? >> are you asking me? >> yes, you. >> if i saw the president as a -- you couldn't be black and alive after ernie and his schoolmates and other black youngsters in the south on freedom rides, and they are getting their heads whipped because they want decent education, and the president is nominating judges who you wouldn't jump over the moon to put on the bench if you were me. personally, i thought -- i

worked for kennedy in the campaign, and i never supported a republican. i'm a democrat all the way. when i got to washington, there was a sense that i had that many of the white guys who were in charge of running the civil rights -- present company excluded -- really weren't deeply in it and how deep and nasty and hard and mean the racism in this country still was. pretty words weren't going to fix it.

it made it impossible for me to first of all continue as a lawyer who was going to make some money, which it turns out i didn't do to my wife's unhappy dismay. but you couldn't live in this society, this heated racial society, and not get in it. and get in it with force and effort. and i thought -- i thought that the kennedys were nice people for being so rich. [ laughter ]

but that they didn't really understand the depth the americanism and awfulness of america's racial problems. there wasn't a quick thing to do. oh, get mack. mack bundy can come in and say something clever, and maybe we can figure out how to do this. that's not how you can do it. there was no way to do it, but for people to get into the trough and go and use years and years all of their lives to change it. and i would say that though -- and you have to be honest about these things. this is not going to -- the next sentence is not going to be a

very nice one, but it was really hard to get into -- try to get into civil rights and make it better and get the administration to do more when you got the sense that you were moving around in several conglomerations of fairly arrogant white guys. who, many of them, who never had anything to do with race at all until they got into the thing and started working. now, harris was -- is -- he is my exculpation. he was one of the white guys that people could go to early on

in a president's term. he was a good guy. but there are a lot of guys who just wanted it to be near the top. and guys who didn't know about it. so i got lucky. i made a contact inside the white house. remember? and ralph, i would go is an assistant for the president. a nice guy. foreign aid and ralph would come or have me come, and we would talk about issues at the top of the foreign aid program. and then it always turned to race. and then i would really argue hard and say the president needed to be pushed, and one of

the things i used was stroke of the pen. we believed it. the president when he was campaigning had gone through alabama. and had seen the governor. his name was paterson. what was he saying that for? that man is a rat. he's just terrible. he's going to make such trouble.

most feelings was not express that had harshly. but it was feelings that the administration was getting its way. the attorney general in charge of this stuff was in the tough guy. the administration was full of tough guys. it's one of the things >> that's about the appointment of federal judges. in eisenhower kennedy did not do

that. >> just to take one of the judges he apoints, he was proposed to the eisenhower justice department. laughed when he heard his name. you couldn't possibly appoint this guy. when kennedy comes in, cox gets appointed. he was probably the worst of the lot. eisenhower did not have that

problem. by blocking legislation. and, you know, it's one of it is one that requires a little bit of confrontation. and the president and the attorney general shied away from the confrontation and appointed a number of segregationalist federal judges in the south. one thing that people don't understand is we understand the role in little rock. the role of judiciary is always key in the civil rights movement. we're going to have a protest. will there be an injunction

against the protect. state courts want to join a protest. are they going to act? in fact, even as far back as the boycott, what most people don't know is that, in fact, the federal judiciary helped save the busboy cot because they won the boycott because they filed a lawsuit and they got it in front of the federal judiciary and eventually the u.s. supreme court declared the statute unconstitutional. they were going be key and the administration put a number of federal judges in who issued rulings that were contrary to law.

>> when the district judges ruled against him they had to go the judges in the fifth circuit to get basic constitutional rights for african-americans in the south. >> can i continue this? just on this road because it -- when you are sitting inside the government and you are seeing that and if your party and president -- you're in a terrible mess. and so, you have to do what you have to do. it is to point out to the

president of the united states that they were not responding to green and his colleagues. you look at the picture, torn by rage. again you got say come on government i work for. move and do something. and i woultd say it in words and then i decided -- and ralph would say write it. write it. you know this stuff. and then i finally said to myself what do you need to do? i said to myself, what are you?

a man or a bunch of -- you can't ask yourself that question if you're not ready to give the right answer. and i did give the right abc and it came back from bob kennedy like a rocket that you knock down tanks with it. it was really tough. he's green. he doesn't know what it's talking about.

>> the pressure to end the enlightening and particularly the young people. and you say you have got do it. you have got change things to respond to these people. i will be quiet. >> okay. we're talking about the combination of street versus court. let me just explain who elizabeth is. she was one of the students who was going to be a part of the