it in to support it. while the quote battle of fort stevens was going on july 11th to 12th, abraham lincoln not that far away came out to the fort. he actually got up on the parapit to look out to see where the troops were. and there were actually some sharp shooters who took shots at him. they did not hit him. one of the story is, i've often wondered whether this is true or not. oliver wendell holmes who became very fay house 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 is what oliver wendell holmes said. this is the only time that a president of the united states has actually been under fire while president of the united states.

abraham lincoln here standing on the parapit looking out to see where the enemy troops actually were. you can watch this and other american artifacts programs anytime by visiting our website. cspan.org/history. and watch american artifacts every sunday here on c-span3. the john f. kennedy presidential library convened a conference on the presidency and civil rights in. this discussion panelists consider president kennedy's legacy and the evolutions of his thinking and 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 presidencys of john. if kennedy and lyndon baines johnson. >> all right.

so now it is afternoon. so good afternoon. and remembering that we're honoring two presidents george washington and abraham lincoln here's 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 and the united states. we enter the panel having look t at the cold war, the personal responses of people like ernie green of the little rock nine in terms of what was happening in terms of the violence. and the movement by both truman and eisenhower though they may 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. and 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 and we certainly have the panel to do that. let's start with. after we leave eisenhower and it's john f. kennedy's time, what was happening in the country in terms of the naacp, in terms of what lawyers were doing. in terms of the restlessness of the black community about where

civil rights was. the little rock niep that was considered a victory of sorts. but yet we were so far from legislation. >> really nobody knew whether and when or how school desegregation would really happen in the south. under president eisenhower's watch the 1957 civil rights act was enacted. the 1960 civil rights act. that 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 the board of education and then there was martin luther king who was catapulted to prominence with the montgomery busboy cot. king is also looking in 1960, 1961 for ways to push the movement forward. so what the context was a lot had been done. desegregation of the military, brown versus board of education. they were comfortable with social equality. they were personally comfortable around african-americans, which was a -- which distinguished them from most of the predecessors in the offices of the presidency, but still nobody

knew what the next step was. the next steps were driven by african-americans and whites. segregationist whites in the south. >> so harris, john f. kennedy first had to get the presidency. and part of his kpieding to the presidency he had to deal with the issues of civil rights. some of this that has gone on 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'd 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. knew i had joined the staff by then. and hadn't known anything about civil rights background i had had with doctor king and promoting civil disobedience. talkling about it in the least he said tick off the things that i ought to do as president to clean up the damn civil rights mess. so i had my moment. >> what'd you say? >> among other things i said

with one stroke of a pen you can sign the executive order eliminating discrimination in federally assisted housing that the civil rights dmigs had recommended and was sitting on eisenhower's desk for six months or something like that. he said i like that. we talked about the problem of the southern legislatures fill bustering. a few days later sergeant shriver has convinced us a civil rights section of the campaign that would have black and white leaders and hispanic leaders and all the black leaders that we

could get to actually join the campaign. we've learned about your ties those years. would you work with sergeant is rooifr who i've gotten to near separately and knew it was somebody i had enjoyed more than anything. a key part of it was the democratic platform which was the most far-reaching political civil rights platform the abolition blooming. it was an extraordinary one that went even farther than we wanted. chester bowles was the chair of the democratic platform committee.

we knew he would have to compromise with the southerners and he wanted to have the maximum and we had good two runs, the minimum maximum, that morning robert kennedy got up on 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 both that that was the command. he said i don't know what will happen. the southerners didn't balk. and the whole maximum got adopted. somewhat by accident, which kennedy avowed and campaigned on a number of times.

and then came the call to mrs. king and then in due course i became an assistant to the president for civil rights having first urged louis martin our key colleague who's african-american, a wonderful colleague in my lifetime and they wanted him in the democratic national committee. twice on the edge of signing the executive order on housing, the southern legislatures came to him and said first, if you sign that, we will not support your housing and your economic plan. and then 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 if you sign it. twice when i was booked to go and explain executive order on a

radio show, he cancelled at the last minute. and the pens started flowing from the civil rights movement decided to send pens saying one stroke of the pen. and allegedly when the strokes -- when the pens came in, the first huge bundle he said send them over to warford. every cabinet department had to have a member of the subcommittee on civil rights. we met regularly to find out and to move and support each other in how much each department could do. kennedy launched it, supported it, and then the freedom writers wrote. >> so you would say he was good

on civil rights? >> i'm just giving you a beginning of the story. >> i was trying to get you to characterize it. >> i came in due course to realize what many thought was weakness or unreadiness. >> gradualism, et cetera, al sharpton interviewing chris matthews saying your book has convinced me that i was wrong that he was just a gradualist and he didn't have a commitment to civil rights. i would recommend it. looking at the democratic platform from the call to mrs. king to the executive actions that were taken to the two weeks after the worst violence of the freedom writers the order to the

interstate commerce commission was to design regulations that will end segregation in interstate housing which is the happy end to that story going through his submission of the civil rights bill. >> so not gradualism for you. pretty good. let's let it sit there for just a second. >> you're a good 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 has just told us about his setting up the civil rites division you work for kennedy and johnson. i wonder if you could pull that middle together for us and give us your assessment of where he was. did you see him as a gradualist.

>> you're asking me? >> yes, you. >> if i saw the president -- you can't be black and alive after ernie and his schoolmates and other black youngsters in the south on freedom rides end up getting hedge whipped because they want a 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 never supported a republican. i've been 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 civil rights present company excluded -- [ laughter ] >> really weren't steeped deeply in it and how deep and nasty and hard and mean the racism in this country still was. and pretty words weren't going

to fix it. that made it impossible for me first of all to continue as a lawyer who was going to make some money, which it turns out i didn't do to my wife's dismay. but you can't -- you can'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 the kennedys were nice people for being so rich. but that they didn't really

understand the depth, the americanism, and the awfulness of america's racial problems. there wasn't no quick thing to do. oh get mack say something clever and maybe we can figure out how to do this. there was no way to do it but to use all their lives to change it. >> i would say though, you have to be honest about these thins. 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. a fairly arrogant white guys who many of them who had never had anything to do with race at all until they got into the thing and were working. how harris was is, you have my exculpation. you're not, you weren't. he was one of the white guys that people could go to early on

in the president's term. he was the good guys. but there were a lot of guys who just wanted to be near the top. and guys who didn't know a lot. so i got lucky. i made a contact inside the white house ralph dumbman. remember ralph? ralph, i would go with assistant to the president. a nice guy. he was in foreign aid. 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 -- then i would really argue hard and say the president need to be pushed. one of the things i used was stroke of the pen. we believed it. where's the pen?

what's he doing about it? and then you had the president when he's -- you remember that the president when he was campaigning had gone to alabama and had seen the governor. his name was patterson. and the president elect said oh, he's a man i can work with. well, thorough goode marshal who is a close family friend of ours. i grew up knowing him, he said to me, what is the president saying that for? that man is a rat. he's just terrible. he is -- he's going to make such trouble in alabama. most feeling was not expressed

that harshly. but it will feeling that his administration was feeling its way. and that this -- the attorney general who was in charge of this stuff was being a tough guy and that's the administration was full of tough guys. was he tough enough was one of the things that people would ask of somebody as -- >> let me ask this question before i i get cheryl into this conversation. you said something that's very important particularly after our first conversation, that's about the appointment of federal judges. where is eisenhower worked very carefully to make sure judges he put in place were pro civil rights to the extent of his

ability. kennedy did not do that. as a sock to southerners he appointed segregationist judges. the impact of that, if you would. >> the impact of it was huge. so just to take one of the judges he appoints harold cox in mississippi. harold cox was proposed to the eisenhower justice department as a judicial appointment and herbert bradle left when he heard harold cox's name. you can't possibly appoint this guy when kennedy comes in.

they can make his life unhappy. by depriving programs of money. it's one of many instances where it requires a little bit of confrontation. and the president and the attorney general shied away from that confrontation. and appointed a number of segregationist federal judges in the south. and this was very, very important. one thing that people don't understand that we understand the role to have judiciary in little rock, the role of the judiciary was also key in the civil rights movement. so protesters said are they going to get out of jail. will they have an injunction against the protest. state courts went to join a protest. are the courts going to act.

even as far back as the montgomery busboy cot, what most people don't know is that they won the boycott because they filed a federal lawsuit and got it in front of the judiciary. eventually the supreme court declared the statute unconstitutional. so federal judges were going to be key in whether or not the movement was going to succeed or fail in the south. and the kennedy association put a number of federal judges in which issued rulings contrary to law. cox would speak in racial epithets from the bench. would refer to african-americans as monkeys and things like that from the bench. and this was someone who kennedy put in. the judges who the kennedys liked were the eisenhower

appointees on the fifth circuit men the district court judges invariably ruled against them they have to go to the eisenhower judges in the fifth circuit to get bassing constitution rights for african-americans in the south. the federal judges were key. >> can i continue this just on this road. when you are sitting inside the government and you're seeing that and it's your party and your president, you're in a terrible mess. and it is the point out to the president of the united states that he wasn't -- they weren't responding toer near green and

his colleagues. he looked at the picture of elizabeth and that girl screams at her in rage. come on, move and do something. i would say it in words and then i decided ralph would say write it roger. you know this stuff. right. break my career. write. and then i finally said to myself what 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. i did give the right answer. it came back from kennedy like a rocket to knack down tanks with. it was really. it was really tough. he's green. he doesn't know what he's talking about. he will certainly never get an poim in this department as long as i'm attorney general. >> het me get shar lain into this conversation -- okay. >> i just want to say that this challenged some stuff.

i'm trying to say what the people on the street were doing and their demands. and the pressure and their enlightning in particular the young people. and you say, you've got to do it. you've got to change things to respond to these people, period. i'll be quiet. >> okay. [ applause ] >> so we're talking about the combination -- kenneth mack has told usa what's happening administratively and inside the legislation as well. let me just if i can explain who elizabeth exford is. she's one of the student who was going to be a part of the se segregation of central high school along wither near green and the rest. she's captured in that iconic photograph where there is a

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