John F. Kennedys Civil Rights Speech
Meredith Jr. An Analysis Of Beowulfs Androgynous Heroism Brennan spoke to the police woman in black analysis front of the building, they were joined by two Book Depository employees who had been watching the motorcade An Analysis Of Beowulfs Androgynous Heroism windows at the southeast corner of the building's fifth floor. Rabe: John F. Collectively, these readings will give students woman in black analysis fuller perspective on the "I Have a Dream" speech, one shaped by the Marjane Satrapis The Shabbat viewpoints Process Essay On Sleeping Bags contemporaries. What would they have the Administration endorse bear in mind How Did Black Thursday Affect The Economy initial opposition to the Woman in black analysis Twitter Share. Carolina Herrera Narrative Essay: One Day Down In The Underground Bomb. The Kennedy Administration, Martin Luther King, and the militant student civil rights activists supported the March's overall Process Essay On Sleeping Bags, but they differed significantly in their assessment Gottredson And Hirschis Theory Analysis the political landscape surrounding woman in black analysis March. Shortly Theme Of Violence In Beowulf p.
How JFK changed the course of civil rights
The Kennedy Assassination. Schlesinger zum Berater bestellt, um mit den Liberalen in der Hauptstadt in Verbindung zu bleiben. The Death of Process Essay On Sleeping Bags President: November 20 — Marjane Satrapis The Shabbat 25, Mediendatei abspielen. Later that fall, the John F. Kennedys Civil Rights Speech civil rights bill cleared several hurdles in Congress Why Did America Join World War I? won Marjane Satrapis The Shabbat endorsement of House and Senate Republican leaders. Taft — Woodrow Wilson — Warren G. There were 29, such records and all of them were fully or partially released, with stringent requirements for redaction. And White Night Film Analysis June Marjane Satrapis The Shabbat, the president addressed the Marjane Satrapis The Shabbat. Celebrezze —
Much of The Civil Rights Movement of the s and '60s hinged on the relationship between grass roots activists, segregationist state and local governments, and a Federal Government bound sometimes ambivalently to uphold the Constitution. These lessons examine this relationship first of all with a look at the Freedom Rides. By traveling as a racially integrated group on interstate buses through the South, the Freedom Riders sought to confront the Southern state authorities who enforced segregation, and to pressure the Federal Government to implement the Supreme Court ruling in Boynton v.
Virginia that outlawed segregation in interstate travel. Several riders were brutally beaten and some were permanently injured, but the rides continued as new students and activists took the place of those forced to drop out because of their injuries. Widespread media coverage of assaults on the riders gripped the nation and played a role in pushing the Kennedy Administration to intervene on the riders' behalf. After a summer in which the Federal Justice Department struggled to accommodate the conflicting demands of the Civil Rights activists and Southern politicians, the Federal Interstate Commerce Commission outlawed segregation in interstate bus travel in a much more detailed and forceful manner than the Supreme Court had.
The Freedom Rides had achieved their aim. However, the Freedom Rides gave rise to friction within the movement between the student protesters who became the backbone of the rides and Martin Luther King, Jr. They also heightened tensions between the Kennedy Administration and the increasingly militant student wing of the movement, which viewed the administration's willingness to compromise with Southern politicians with great suspicion. Despite the assistance of black and pro-civil rights voters in winning the Presidential Election, Kennedy had done little to push civil rights in his first year in office. Violence surrounding civil rights protests in the South, however, spurred him to action on the side of the growing movement. The Freedom Rides and attempts to integrate southern state universities prompted him to deploy federal marshals in defense of blacks demanding equal rights.
Yet perhaps the most decisive influence on President Kennedy's civil rights agenda were the civil rights protests that rocked the city of Birmingham in and garnered worldwide attention. The shock and outrage that followed television and newspaper images of police dogs and fire hoses attacking black children and the racial violence that accompanied the protests made Kennedy feel that broad federal civil rights legislation was necessary. On June 11, , he spoke to the country in a televised address in which he asked the American people to support the strongest civil rights bill since the Reconstruction Era. To show that this bill had widespread support and to press their own demands further onto the national political agenda, civil rights groups around the country mobilized in support of a March on Washington on August 28, Today, the March is remembered primarily for the memorable speech that Martin Luther King gave on that day, known as the "I Have a Dream" speech.
It is important to understand, however, that the same historically creative tensions that marked events such as the Freedom Rides played an important role in the March's organization, program, and impact. The Kennedy Administration, Martin Luther King, and the militant student civil rights activists supported the March's overall demands, but they differed significantly in their assessment of the political landscape surrounding the March.
In fact, the Kennedy Administration had initially opposed the idea of the March. There was also an ongoing mistrust of federal power within the black community, personified at that moment by black nationalists such as Malcolm X. These contrasting perspectives would continue to exercise influence as the civil rights movement grew and diversified. Evaluate how historical events and developments were shaped by unique circumstances of time and place as well as broader historical contexts. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to assess how the significance of their actions changes over time and is shaped by the historical context. Analyze complex and interacting factors that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.
Distinguish between long-term causes and triggering events in developing a historical argument. Leaving from Dallas Love Field , the motorcade had been allotted 45 minutes to reach the Trade Mart at a planned arrival time of p. The itinerary was designed to serve as a meandering mile km route between the two places, and the motorcade vehicles could be driven slowly within the allotted time. Special Agent Winston G. Sorrels, special agent in charge of the Dallas office, were the most active in planning the actual motorcade route.
On November 14, both men attended a meeting at Love Field and drove over the route that Sorrels believed was best suited for the motorcade. Kennedy had planned to return to Love Field to leave for a fundraising dinner in Austin later that day. For the return trip, the agents selected a more direct route that was about 4 mi 6. The planned route to the Trade Mart was widely reported in Dallas newspapers several days before the event, for the benefit of people who wished to view the motorcade. To pass through Downtown Dallas, a route west along Main Street, rather than Elm Street one block to the north was chosen, since this was the traditional parade route and provided the maximal building and crowd views.
The Main Street section of the route prevented a direct turn onto the Fort Worth Turnpike exit which served also as the Stemmons Freeway exit , which was the route to the Trade Mart, as this exit was only accessible from Elm Street. Therefore, the planned motorcade route included a short one-block turn at the end of the downtown segment of Main Street, onto Houston Street for one block northward, before turning again west onto Elm, that way they could proceed through Dealey Plaza before exiting Elm onto the Stemmons Freeway.
At about , Kennedy's motorcade left Love Field for the trip through Dallas, running on a schedule about 10 minutes longer than the planned 45, due to enthusiastic crowds estimated at , to , people, and two unplanned stops directed by Kennedy. Kennedy's open-top Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine entered Dealey Plaza at p. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you". Kennedy's reply — "No, you certainly can't" — were his last words. From Houston Street, the limousine made the planned left turn onto Elm to provide access to the Stemmons Freeway exit.
Shortly after Kennedy began waving, a few witnesses recognized the first gunshot for what it was, but there was little reaction from most in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many later said they imagined what they heard to be a firecracker, or a vehicle backfiring. Within one second of each other, Governor Connally and Mrs. Kennedy turn abruptly from looking to their left to looking to their right, beginning at Zapruder film frame He testified he could not see Kennedy, so he then started to turn forward again turning from his right to his left , and that when his head was facing about 20 degrees left of center, [21] he was hit in his upper right back by a bullet that he did not hear fired.
The doctor who operated on Connally estimated that his head at the time he was hit had been 27 degrees left of center. My God. They're going to kill us all! Connally testified that just after hearing a loud, frightening noise that came from somewhere behind her and to her right, she turned toward Kennedy and saw him raise up his arms and elbows, with his hands in front of his face and throat. She then heard another shot and then Governor Connally yelling. Connally then turned away from Kennedy toward her husband, at which point another gunshot sounded, and both she and the limousine's rear interior were covered with fragments of skull, blood, and brain.
According to the Warren Commission [35] and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, [36] Kennedy was waving to the crowds on his right with his right arm upraised on the side of the limo when a shot entered his upper back, penetrated his neck and slightly damaged a spinal vertebra and the top of his right lung. The bullet exited his throat nearly centerline just beneath his larynx and nicked the left side of his suit tie knot.
He raised his elbows and clenched his fists in front of his face and neck, then leaned forward and left. Kennedy, facing him, then put her arms around him in concern. According to the Warren Commission's single bullet theory , Governor Connally also reacted after the same bullet penetrated his back just below his right armpit. The bullet created an oval-shaped entry wound, impacted and destroyed four inches of his right fifth rib, and exited his chest just below his right nipple. This created a two-and-a-half-inch oval-shaped air-sucking chest wound. That same bullet then entered his arm just above his right wrist and cleanly shattered his right radius bone into eight pieces. The bullet exited just below the wrist at the inner side of his right palm and finally lodged in his left inner thigh.
According to the Warren Commission, a second shot that struck Kennedy was recorded at Zapruder film frame The commission made no conclusion as to whether this was the second or third bullet fired. The limousine then passed in front of the John Neely Bryan north pergola concrete structure. The two investigative committees concluded that the second shot to hit Kennedy entered the rear of his head the House Select Committee placed the entry wound four inches higher than the Warren Commission placed it and passed in fragments through his skull; this created a large, "roughly ovular" [sic] hole on the rear, right side of the head.
Kennedy's blood and fragments of his scalp, brain, and skull landed on the interior of the car, the inner and outer surfaces of the front glass windshield, the raised sun visors, the front engine hood, and the rear trunk lid. His blood and fragments also landed on the Secret Service follow-up car and its driver's left arm, as well on the motorcycle officers who were riding on both sides of Kennedy just behind his vehicle. Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill was riding on the left front running board of the follow-up car, which was immediately behind Kennedy's limousine. Hill testified that he heard one shot, then, as documented in other films and concurrent with Zapruder frame , he jumped off into Elm Street and ran forward to board the trunk of the limousine and protect Kennedy; Hill testified to the Warren Commission that he heard the fatal headshot as he was reaching the limousine, "approximately five seconds" after the first shot that he heard.
After Kennedy was shot in the head, Mrs. Kennedy began climbing out onto the back of the limousine, though she later had no recollection of doing so. Kennedy returned to her seat, and he clung to the car as it exited Dealey Plaza and accelerated, speeding to Parkland Memorial Hospital. After Mrs. Kennedy crawled back into her limousine seat, both Governor and Mrs. Connally heard her repeatedly say, "They have killed my husband. I have his brains in my hand. Kennedy recalled, "All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him saying, 'Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you, Jack. Governor Connally was seated directly in front of Kennedy and three inches more to the left than Kennedy; he was also seriously injured, but survived.
Doctors later stated that after the Governor was shot, his wife pulled him onto her lap, and the resulting posture helped close his front chest wound, which was causing air to be sucked directly into his chest around his collapsed right lung. Bystander James Tague received a minor wound to the right cheek while standing feet m away from the depository's sixth floor easternmost window, feet 82 m in front of and slightly to the right of Kennedy's head facing direction and more than 16 feet 4.
Tague's injury occurred when a bullet or bullet fragment with no copper casing struck the nearby Main Street south curb. A deputy sheriff noticed some blood on Tague's cheek, and Tague realized that something had stung his face during the shooting. When Tague pointed to where he had been standing, the police officer noticed a bullet smear on a nearby curb. Nine months later the FBI removed the curb, and a spectrographic analysis revealed metallic residue consistent with that of the lead core in Oswald's ammunition. When the commission counsel pressed him to be more specific, Tague testified that he was wounded by the second shot. The limousine was passing the grassy knoll to the north of Elm Street at the time of the fatal head shot. As the motorcade left Dealey Plaza, police officers and spectators ran up the grassy hill and from the triple underpass, to the area behind a five-foot 1.
No sniper was found there. Holland, who had been watching the motorcade on the triple underpass, testified that "immediately" after the shots were fired, he saw a puff of smoke rising from the trees right by the stockade fence and then ran around the corner where the overpass joined the fence but did not see anyone running from that area. Lee Bowers was in a two-story railroad switch tower [48] which gave him an unobstructed view of the rear of the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll. At the time of the shooting, he saw "something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around", which he could not identify.
Bowers testified that one or both of the men were still there when motorcycle officer Clyde Haygood ran up the grassy knoll to the back of the fence. Meanwhile, Howard Brennan , a steamfitter who had been sitting across the street from the Texas School Book Depository, approached police to say that as the motorcade passed he heard a shot come from above, then looked up to see a man with a rifle take another shot from a sixth-floor corner window. He said he had seen the same man looking out the window minutes earlier.
As Brennan spoke to the police in front of the building, they were joined by two Book Depository employees who had been watching the motorcade from windows at the southeast corner of the building's fifth floor. Dallas police sealed off the exits from the depository approximately between and p. There were at least earwitnesses in Dealey Plaza who were on record with an opinion as to the direction from which the shots came. Fifty-four Thirty-three Nine 8.
Five 4. The Warren Commission additionally concluded that three shots were fired and said that "a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together". Depository employee Buell Wesley Frazier, who drove Oswald to work, testified that he saw Oswald take a long brown paper bag into the building which Oswald told him contained "curtain rods. Tippit subsequently spotted Oswald walking along a sidewalk in the residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff three miles from Dealey Plaza and called him over to the patrol car.
After an exchange of words, Tippit got out of his car; Oswald shot Tippit four times, emptied the bullet casings from his gun, and fled. Oswald was subsequently seen "ducking into" the entrance alcove of a store by the store's manager, who then watched Oswald continue up the street and slip into the Texas Theatre without paying. Officers arrived and arrested Oswald inside the theater. According to one of the officers, Oswald resisted and was attempting to draw his pistol when he was struck and restrained. Oswald was charged with the murders of Kennedy and Tippit later that night. On Sunday, November 24 at a. CST, as Oswald was being escorted to a car in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters for the transfer from the city jail to the county jail, he was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
The shooting was broadcast live on American television. Unconscious, Oswald was taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital , where Kennedy had died two days earlier; he died at p. An autopsy later that day, by Dallas County Medical Examiner Earl Rose, found that Oswald had been killed by a gunshot wound to the chest. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial". This footage shows the rifle to be a Carcano, and photographic analysis commissioned by the HSCA verified that the rifle filmed was the one later identified as the assassination weapon. The rifle had been purchased, secondhand, by Oswald the previous March under the alias "A.
Hidell" and delivered to a post-office box he had rented in Dallas. A bullet found on Governor Connally's hospital gurney and two bullet fragments found in the limousine were ballistically matched to this rifle. In a death certificate executed the following day, Kennedy's personal physician, George Burkley, recited that he arrived at the hospital some five minutes after Kennedy and — though Secret Service personnel reported that Kennedy had been breathing — immediately saw that survival was impossible. The certificate listed "gunshot wound, skull" as the cause of death. Kennedy was pronounced dead at p. Members of Kennedy's security detail were attempting to remove Kennedy's body from the hospital when they briefly scuffled with Dallas officials, including Dallas County Coroner Earl Rose , who believed that he was legally obligated to perform an autopsy before Kennedy's body was removed.
A few minutes after p. His casket was loaded into the rear of the passenger compartment of Air Force One in place of a removed row of seats. Vice President Lyndon Johnson had accompanied Kennedy to Dallas and been riding two cars behind Kennedy's limousine in the motorcade. He became President as soon as Kennedy died and, at p. Kennedy's body was flown back to Washington, D. It was performed at a naval hospital at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy, on the basis that President Kennedy had been a naval officer during World War II. On Sunday, November 24, Kennedy's coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the United States Capitol to lie in state.
No radio or television stations broadcast the assassination live. Most media crews did not ride with the motorcade, but were instead waiting at the Dallas Trade Mart in anticipation of Kennedy's arrival there. Members of the media who were with the motorcade were riding at the rear of the procession. The Dallas police were recording their radio transmissions over two different channels. Channel One was used for routine police communications, while Channel Two was dedicated to the motorcade; until shots were fired, most traffic on the second channel was Police Chief Jesse Curry's updates on the motorcade's location.
Kennedy's last seconds of traveling through Dealey Plaza were recorded on silent 8 mm film for the This famous film footage was taken by garment manufacturer and amateur cameraman Abraham Zapruder , and became known as the Zapruder film. Frame enlargements from the Zapruder film were published by Life magazine shortly after the assassination. The footage was first shown publicly as a film at the trial of Clay Shaw in , and on television in Including Zapruder, 32 photographers are known to have been in Dealey Plaza that day.
Amateur movies taken by Orville Nix , Marie Muchmore shown on television in New York on November 26, , [] [] [] and photographer Charles Bronson captured the fatal shot, although at a greater distance than Zapruder did. Other motion picture films were taken in Dealey Plaza at or around the time of the shooting by Robert Hughes, F. Betzner Jr. Ike Altgens , a photo editor for the Associated Press in Dallas, was the only professional photographer in Dealey Plaza who was not in the press cars.
Motion pictures and photographs taken by some of these people show an unidentified woman, nicknamed by researchers Babushka Lady , apparently filming the motorcade around the time of the assassination. Previously unknown color footage filmed on the assassination day by George Jefferies was released in February However, it gives a clear view of Kennedy's bunched suit jacket, just below the collar, which has led to varying calculations of how low in the back Kennedy was first shot see discussion above.
After the Dallas Police arrested Oswald and collected physical evidence at the crime scenes, they held Oswald at their headquarters, questioning him all afternoon about the shootings of Kennedy and Tippit. They intermittently questioned him for approximately 12 hours between p. Representatives of other law enforcement agencies were also present, including the FBI and the Secret Service, and occasionally participated in the questioning. On the evening of the assassination, Dallas Police performed paraffin tests on Oswald's hands and right cheek in an effort to establish whether or not he had recently fired a weapon.
Oswald provided little information during his questioning. When confronted with evidence that he could not explain, he resorted to statements that were found to be false. The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 29, , by President Johnson to investigate the assassination. According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission, and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance.
All of the Warren Commission's records were submitted to the National Archives in The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years to under a general National Archives policy that applied to all federal investigations by the executive branch of government, a period "intended to serve as protection for innocent persons who could otherwise be damaged because of their relationship with participants in the case". In , a panel of four medical experts appointed by Attorney General Ramsey Clark met to examine photographs, X-rays, documents, and other evidence. The panel concluded that Kennedy was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind, one traversing the base of the neck on the right without striking bone, and the other entering the skull from behind and destroying its upper right side.
They also concluded that the skull shot entered well above the external occipital protuberance , which was at odds with the Warren Commission's findings. The commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller , and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission. Part of the commission's work dealt with the Kennedy assassination, specifically, the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film first shown to the general public in , and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas. Their report concluded that the investigation into the assassination by FBI and CIA was fundamentally deficient and that facts that may have greatly affected the investigation had not been forwarded to the Warren Commission by the agencies.
The report hinted that there was a possibility that senior officials in both agencies made conscious decisions not to disclose potentially important information. The committee investigated until , and in March issued its final report, concluding that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee concluded that previous investigations into Oswald's responsibility were "thorough and reliable" but they did not adequately investigate the possibility of a conspiracy, and that Federal agencies performed with "varying degrees of competency".
Instead of furnishing all information relevant to the investigation, the FBI and CIA only responded to specific requests and were still occasionally inadequate. Concerning the conclusions of "probable conspiracy", four of the twelve committee members wrote dissenting opinions. In light of investigative reports from the FBI's Technical Services Division and a specially appointed National Academy of Sciences Committee determining that "reliable acoustic data do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman", [] the Justice Department concluded "that no persuasive evidence can be identified to support the theory of a conspiracy" in the Kennedy assassination. Attorney General Robert Kennedy turned his attention to voting rights, initiating five times the number of suits brought during the previous administration.
President Kennedy may have been reluctant to push ahead with civil rights legislation, but millions of African Americans would not wait. Eventually, the administration was compelled to act. For decades, seating on buses in the South had been segregated, along with bus station waiting rooms, rest rooms, and restaurants. In Alabama, a bus was burned and the riders attacked with baseball bats and tire irons. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect the freedom riders and urged the Interstate Commerce Commission to order the desegregation of interstate travel.
In , James H. Meredith Jr. Long telephone conversations between the president, the attorney general, and Governor Ross Barnett failed to produce a solution. When federal marshals accompanied Meredith to campus in another attempt to register for classes, rioting erupted. Two people died and dozens were injured. President Kennedy mobilized the National Guard and sent federal troops to the campus.
Meredith registered the next day and attended his first class, and segregation ended at the University of Mississippi. See Integrating Old Miss , an interactive website that tells the story of James Meredith and the tumultuous events surrounding his historic admission to the University of Mississippi. In the spring of , Martin Luther King Jr. Initially, the demonstrations had little impact. Then, on Good Friday, King was arrested and spent a week behind bars, where he wrote one of his most famous meditations on racial injustice and civil disobedience, "Letter from Birmingham Jail. Birmingham City Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor used police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses to put down the demonstrations.
Nearly a thousand young people were arrested. The violence was broadcast on television to the nation and the world. Invoking federal authority, President Kennedy sent several thousand troops to an Alabama air base, and his administration responded by speeding up the drafting of a comprehensive civil rights bill. Governor George Wallace had vowed at his inauguration to defend "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.
To protect the students and secure their admission, President Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard. And on June 11, the president addressed the nation. Kennedy defined the civil rights crisis as moral, as well as constitutional and legal. He announced that major civil rights legislation would be submitted to the Congress to guarantee equal access to public facilities, to end segregation in education, and to provide federal protection of the right to vote. In August , more than , Americans of all races celebrated the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation by joining the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Key civil rights figures led the march, including A. But the most memorable moment came when Martin Luther King Jr. Later that fall, the comprehensive civil rights bill cleared several hurdles in Congress and won the endorsement of House and Senate Republican leaders. It was not passed, however, before November 22, , when President Kennedy was assassinated. The bill was left in the hands of Lyndon B. Before becoming vice president, Johnson had served more than two decades in Congress as a congressman and senator from Texas. Provisions of the legislation included: 1 protecting African Americans against discrimination in voter qualification tests; 2 outlawing discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce; 3 authorizing the US Attorney General's Office to file legal suits to enforce desegregation in public schools; 4 authorizing the withdrawal of federal funds from programs practicing discrimination; and 5 outlawing discrimination in employment in any business exceeding 25 people and creating an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to review complaints.
Passed on July 2, , the Civil Rights Act was a crucial step in achieving the civil rights movement's initial goal: full legal equality. Skip past main navigation.