Tomorrow-Land by Joseph Tirella Page A

. . . that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?
    â€”President John F. Kennedy, June 11, 1963
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    If I die, it will be in a good cause. I’ve been fighting for America just as much as the soldiers in Vietnam.
    â€”Medgar Evers
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    By the end of 1962, President John F. Kennedy had reason to celebrate. Although the 1964 presidential election was more than a year away, he was riding high in the polls, leading potential Republican rivals by thirty points or more. After the dark days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was contemplating ways to reduce Cold War tensions by having the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the United States sign a treaty limiting nuclear testing. Ever the cautious and pragmatic politician, domestically he moved to solidify his position with one hostile constituency, the business community, even as he kept a friendly one, African Americans, at arm’s length.
    The country was enjoying a buoyant economy with low unemployment and nearly nonexistent inflation, but Wall Street was distrustful of Kennedy. After his appearance at the ground-breaking ceremony for the World’s Fair’s US Federal Pavilion at Flushing Meadow Park, the president gave a speech to the Economic Club of New York at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, where he pledged a significant cut in federal and corporate taxes to spur the economy to even greater heights.
    Introducing pro-business tax reform one year prior to his reelection bid was a politically astute move. Meanwhile, although Kennedy had pledged his support for civil rights during the 1960 presidential election—as did his Republican opponent, Vice President Richard M.Nixon—he moved slowly on the issue once in office. On the campaign trail, Kennedy had promised to sign an executive order ending segregation in federally subsidized housing with “a stroke of a pen.” But he had waited until November 1962 to issue the order—and only after civil rights activists had mailed dozens of pens to the White House reminding him of his pledge—and even then it was a watered-down version, which left many of his supporters disappointed. “He had at this point, I think, a terrible ambivalence about civil rights,” said historian and Kennedy advisor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
    Kennedy was all too aware of the bloc of Southern Democratic senators who were militantly opposed to any substantive civil rights measures. The last thing he wanted going into the 1964 campaign was to incite rebellion within his own party. Besides, at the time, Kennedy’s advisors told him he could afford to be prudent: One aide stated that African Americans were “pretty much at peace,” and while civil rights could be explosive on a local level and were not necessarily relegated to the South—as Robert Moses’ problems in New York showed—the issue ranked extraordinarily low in national polls.
    In fact, civil rights was so low on the president’s domestic agenda that he neglected to even mention the topic during his State of the Union address in January 1963. Louis Martin, a Chicago newspaper publisher, Democratic National Committee member, and one of Kennedy’s closest African-American advisors, summed up how many civil rights leaders felt about Kennedy. “The fact is, the President cares more about Germany than about Negroes, he thinks it’s more important,” Martin complained.
    Some civil rights leaders were even considering making new alliances with liberal Republicans such as New York’s Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, Senator Jacob K. Javitz, and Senator Keating—all strong supporters of civil rights, the World’s Fair, and Moses. Rockefeller was already sharpening his attacks on Kennedy, as he prepared another run for the White House in 1964. During a February 1963 speech celebrating President