In the long-awaited next episode in our Kennedys series, we explore how JFK went from a relatively obscure rookie senator to a viable presidential candidate. We document his imperfect but glamorous marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier, his controversial refusal to censure Joe McCarthy, and his continued battle with health problems. We also explore how the publication of Jack's award-winning book "Profiles in Courage," and his attempt to win the vice-presidential nomination in 1956, helped to raise Kennedy's national profile. The battle against organized crime took center stage in domestic politics during the 1950s, while continued decolonization abroad shook up the international situation & forced Americans to cope with the damage the Jim Crow system was doing to the effort to win over potential Cold War allies in the Third World. Kennedy would try to steer a moderate course in the debates of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, hoping to appeal to Northern liberals without alienating the White Southerners within the Democratic Party coalition. We conclude by noting how JFK promoted himself as a promising young political star in the national media, setting the stage for his successful 1960 presidential run.
In the long-awaited next episode in our Kennedys series, we explore how JFK went from a relatively obscure rookie senator to a viable presidential candidate. We document his imperfect but glamorous marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier, his controversial refusal to censure Joe McCarthy, and his continued battle with health problems. We also explore how the publication of Jack's award-winning book "Profiles in Courage," and his attempt to win the vice-presidential nomination in 1956, helped to raise Kennedy's national profile. The battle against organized crime took center stage in domestic politics during the 1950s, while continued decolonization abroad shook up the international situation & forced Americans to cope with the damage the Jim Crow system was doing to the effort to win over potential Cold War allies in the Third World. Kennedy would try to steer a moderate course in the debates of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, hoping to appeal to Northern liberals without alienating the White Southerners within the Democratic Party coalition. We conclude by noting how JFK promoted himself as a promising young political star in the national media, setting the stage for his successful 1960 presidential run.
“From Boomers to Millennials” is a modern US history podcast that provides in-depth supplemental content about a variety of historical topics. Welcome at long last to our latest podcast episode, Episode 18B, entitled “The Kennedys as Boomer Icons, Part IV: Ascendancy, 1953 to 1959.” Before we get into JFK’s journey from rookie Senator to presidential candidate, it’s time for our latest history podcast spotlight. This month’s honor goes to the One Mic Black History Podcast. This show features topical episodes and biographical sketches that together paint an insightful & accessible portrait of many aspects of African-American culture and history. The host posted the following description on his podcast website, (quote) “This is a passion project that started out as a way to have something to pass down to my son, I wanted him to see something his dad created. I also felt that there was a lack of history podcast[s] that told the story of African Americans by African Americans. Join us as we dive into little known persons and events from Black History every other Monday and learn more about the intricacies of Black History and its relationship with American History” (close quote). For audio episodes and videos produced for the One Mic podcast, you can check out the show at onemichistory.com.
With the recent announcement of Robert F. Kennedy Junior’s bid for the presidency in 2024, it seems like a good time to return to our series on the impact the Kennedy family had on generations of American politics. The fact that Robert Junior is considered a longshot candidate against another Irish-American, incumbent Pres. Joe Biden, is evidence that the Kennedy name may not carry the political weight that it once did. Then again, it also may have something to do with the fact that this RFK is a controversial anti-vaccine activist. We will now do a brief series recap that gives the back story on how the Kennedys first started making political headlines in the 20th Century.
In our first three installments, we examined the Kennedy family’s emergence as a New England political dynasty. In Part I, we discussed Joseph Kennedy Senior’s ruthless acquisition of wealth, & examined his ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a political career. In Part II, we described John F. Kennedy’s youthful health struggles and the wartime heroics that helped him get elected to Congress in 1946. In Part III, we considered the politically eccentric career of JFK’s tenacious younger brother Robert and described his work as the campaign manager who helped Jack prevail in the 1952 Massachusetts Senate race. Here in Part IV, we will explain how John F. Kennedy expanded his political profile and went from being perceived as an undistinguished young senator to being regarded as a viable presidential candidate.
When JFK began his career as a Democratic Senator representing the State of Massachusetts in 1953, former general Dwight Eisenhower had just been elected president, & the Republicans had recently won a narrow majority in the US Senate. Kennedy biographer Robert Dallek notes that Jack, as (quote) “a freshman member of the minority, would be one of the least-influential members of the Senate” (close quote). JFK did score a minor victory when he hired a talented young man as his speechwriter & legislative aide early on. This wordsmith & strategist would follow Kennedy all the way to the White House. He was a 24-year-old attorney from Nebraska by the name of Theodore Sorensen. “Ted,” as he was widely known, was the son of a Danish-American lawyer who had served as the Cornhusker State’s attorney general during the 1930s. Sorensen’s mother was a progressive social activist of Russian Jewish origin, and Ted may therefore qualify as the second most famous product of a Danish father & a Jewish mother in American history, running only behind the twice-Oscar-nominated actress Scarlett Johansson. The young Ted Sorensen wondered if he was too liberal to work for John F. Kennedy, and only agreed to take the job when JFK reassured him that he was striving to show ideological independence from his wealthy father, who was known for his conservative, isolationist views. Kennedy admired Ted’s intelligence, open-mindedness, & pragmatism; Dallek concludes that Sorensen (quote) “was the sort of cerebral, realistic liberal Jack felt comfortable with” (close quote).
However, John F. Kennedy showed few signs of moving to the left during his first years in the Senate. In September 1954, Senators voted to condemn notorious red-baiter Joe McCarthy for breaking Senate rules, by an overwhelming margin of 67 to 22 (see Episode 9 for details). Every single Democratic Senator voted to censure McCarthy – except for JFK, who declined to participate in the vote. According to Dallek, Jack privately disliked McCarthy’s style of paranoid accusations, & (quote) he disapproved when he (quote) “heard that his father had arranged for [his brother] Bobby to be appointed as counsel to McCarthy’s subcommittee on investigations [back in 1953]” (close quote). Dallek argues that JFK’s refusal to cast a vote against McCarthy stemmed from concerns about the Wisconsin Republican’s continued popularity among Irish Catholics in Boston, fears of incurring his father’s wrath (Joe Kennedy Senior was still a strong McCarthy supporter), & also to avoid showing disloyalty to Bobby (who still was fond of his former boss McCarthy). Dodging the vote was, nevertheless, hardly a profile in courage (to coin a phrase), and JFK spent the rest of the decade trying to explain away this decision to progressive constituencies within the Democratic Party.
Writer Robert Caro notes that Kennedy had at least one brave stand early in his Senate career. He voted in support of expanding the St. Lawrence Seaway, which was a joint project of the USA & Canada in order to provide vessels easier passage between the Atlantic Ocean & the Great Lakes. The seaway was (quote) “long opposed . . . by New England, due to apprehension over its [potential negative] impact on Boston’s seaport” (close quote). Kennedy cited the general economic benefits of the new infrastructure for the whole country in order to justify his vote. Early in his Senate career, Jack also made headlines criticizing the Eisenhower administration for being too concerned about balanced budgets and not spending enough money on conventional military forces.
However, Jack received more attention in the press for being a wealthy playboy who stood to inherit a great fortune than he did from any Senate achievements. According to Dallek, a 1953 profile of JFK in the Saturday Evening Post portrayed him as (quote) “a handsome, casual millionaire who dashed about Washington in a convertible . . . and had the pick of the most glamorous women in town” (close quote). However, it was becoming apparent that if John F. Kennedy wanted to be taken more seriously as a political figure during the conservative, family-oriented 1950s, he would need to (quote) “end his career as the Senate’s Confirmed Bachelor.” Fortunately, Kennedy met Jacqueline Bouvier, who Dallek describes as a (quote) “beautiful 22-year-old socialite” who seemed an excellent match, as she was (quote) “attractive, bright, & thoughtful, shy but charming, & [was] from a prominent Catholic Social Register family” (close quote). Jackie Bouvier’s father was a wealthy businessman and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. He also fully lived up to the “Mad Men” Fifties stereotypes due to his habitual drinking & womanizing. One Kennedy friend reported that JFK’s reputation as a ladies’ man appealed to Jackie; engaging in some armchair psychoanalysis, biographer Robert Dallek claims that Kennedy’s resemblance to the model of masculinity her father presented may have made Jack “more attractive” to her. Whatever the reasons for the connection, John F. Kennedy persuaded the former Miss Bouvier to marry him, & the charismatic couple were wed in a ceremony in the elite enclave of Newport, Rhode Island in September 1953.
The newlyweds honeymooned in Mexico, & they then purchased an estate called Hickory Hill in DC’s Virginia suburbs, a residence that had formerly belonged to the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who we have met before in this podcast (see Episode 1A). It seemed like they were living a charmed life, but the appearance of domestic bliss could be misleading. Dallek reports that Jackie, despite apparently knowing JFK’s reputation when she married him, felt hurt by his regular long absences from her & his attentions to other women, and she fatalistically told friends that she did not believe most men could be faithful. To make matters much worse, Jackie suffered a miscarriage in 1955, and another pregnancy concluded in August 1956 with the birth of a stillborn daughter. With these latest entries recently having been added to the ledger of Kennedy family tragedies, John & Jackie Kennedy decided there were too many unhappy memories at Hickory Hill, and they sold the estate to Jack’s brother Bobby and his wife Ethel. Robert F. Kennedy & his family happily resided at Hickory Hill until Bobby’s death via assassination in 1968. Meanwhile, John & Jackie moved into a Georgetown townhouse, and happily, Jacqueline successfully gave birth to a daughter, Caroline, in 1957.
John F. Kennedy now had the picturesque nuclear family a Fifties politician needed, but he needed something more to stand out from the Senatorial pack. Given the past success of his book “Why England Slept” back in 1940 (see Episode 16B), JFK decided that it was time to add to his personal bibliography. According to Dallek, he asked Sorensen to (quote) “find examples of senators ‘defying constituent pressures’” as material for a book about the idea of political courage. Journalist Nicholas Lemann observes that (quote) “Thanks to his heroic & well-publicized exploits as a Navy officer in the South Pacific during the Second World War, courage was already identified as one of Kennedy’s salient qualities, & the framing device for the book underscored that” (close quote). Sorensen & Kennedy worked together on the work that was published in 1956 under the title “Profiles in Courage.” The book became a bestseller and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. However, controversy emerged when rumors spread that the book had been ghostwritten. Dallek’s take on the matter is that (quote) “Jack did more on the book than some later critics believed, but less than the term ‘author’ normally connotes. ‘Profiles in Courage’ was more the work of a committee than any 1 person” (close quote). Journalist Nicholas Lemann concludes that Ted Sorensen probably was its “principal author.”
Dallek argues the book’s success (quote) “was largely a case of good timing: In a period of national challenge & peril . . . Jack’s book was seen as a rallying cry” to put the country’s best interests above more petty concerns. After all, in 1957, Americans felt they needed to band together in order to overcome the Soviet technological challenge presented by Sputnik. However, while “Profiles in Courage” may have been what audiences & critics wanted in ‘57, Lemann argues that it reads as more problematic today. Writing in the New Yorker magazine, he recounts that its subjects were quote “distributed pragmatically” in terms of geographic region & historical era, befitting JFK ‘s status as a (quote) “regional politician preparing to go national.” Some entries in the group biography were designed to appeal to White Southerners, a constituency Jack would need in order to win the presidency under the Democratic ticket. Lemann argues the displays of courage JFK highlights in the book rarely involve progressive struggles for “social justice,” and Kennedy instead primarily praises compromises made in the name of national unity & American greatness.
According to Lemann, some of the politicians profiled by Kennedy (or the committee of whoever wrote the book) were (quote) “compromisers on racial justice” issues, such as Senator Lucius Lamar of Mississippi. Lemann reports that (quote) “Lamar, who was an especially militant secessionist & defender of slavery, won inclusion because of a counterintuitively warm eulogy he gave on the Senate floor in 1874 for Charles Sumner, the radical Republican senator from Massachusetts, who had been a leading abolitionist” (close quote). The chapter on Senator Lamar focused on his complimenting of a Northern political opponent, but its description of the era nevertheless offended the New England based descendants of Mississippi’s reconstruction-era governor, Adelbert Ames, who was a former Union Army general. Kennedy’s book described Ames’s 1870s tenure in the Mississippi statehouse as a period when local white southerners suffered under the weight of rampant “corruption” & “high taxes” due to (quote-unquote) “carpetbag rule.” Lemann notes that what goes unsaid in the book is that (quote) “an overwhelmingly Black constituency” had voted for Ames because he was a Northerner who would actually try to protect their rights. The violent end of Reconstruction that occurred at the end of the 19th Century was called “redemption” by white Southerners like Senator Lamar, but it was a catastrophe for Black Southerners, who were widely disenfranchised & terrorized upon the reimposition of white supremacy.
Lemann’s article points out the irony that JFK, who is remembered by some as a liberal hero, gained fame from crafting a book that praised senators who supported the Jim Crow system. Nevertheless, Lemann argues against “Profiles in Courage” being revised or (quote-unquote) “cancelled.” He suggests the problematic chapters provide historically significant examples of the American cultural blind spots of the pre-civil rights era. Lemann concludes that (quote) “People are smart enough to be able to disassemble, reconsider, and reject, rather than simply imbibe uncritically, the message of a book like ‘Profiles in Courage,’ [which serves] as a lesson in the dangers of historical misunderstanding” (close quote).
As we have discussed before on this podcast, one aspect of John F. Kennedy’s life where he did show genuine courage was his handling of chronic & painful health problems that might have sidelined the political career of a man with fewer resources & less fortitude. Throughout his first few years in the Senate, JFK suffered from severe back pain, and he became so desperate to alleviate it that he underwent back surgery in 1955. Robert Caro reports that after surgery, Kennedy was depressed to learn that matters had not much improved. According to Caro, he finally gained some relief when he found a physician who put him on a new treatment regimen. Her name was Dr. Janet Travell, and I suppose Jack deserves some credit for being willing to try a female physician in an era when women doctors were rarely employed. Dr. Travell had graduated from Cornell University Medical College in Upstate New York during 1926, & she went on to specialize in the subject of musculoskeletal pain. She treated Kennedy’s back pain with drug injections and vapocoolant “freeze sprays,” and her methods helped him more than any previous form of treatment. Dr. Travell would eventually follow JFK to the White House as the president’s personal physician, although Kennedy always kept the severity of his health problems a closely-guarded secret. Caro indicates that John F. Kennedy now had both the Addison’s Disease & the back pain he suffered from under control, and as a result, by the late 50s he had gained weight, looked better, & felt more energetic than he had at any prior time in his political career.
After he received this relief for his medical issues, the newly energized John F. Kennedy more ambitiously pursued political power. This effort involved not only writing “Profiles in Courage,” but also JFK’s seeking of the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nomination at the 1956 national convention. He hoped that becoming the VP nominee in ’56 would help pave the way for his own presidential run in 1960. However, old Joe Kennedy Senior, with his preternatural understanding of public opinion, discouraged the idea. JFK’s father knew that Adlai Stevenson, who had already lost to Eisenhower back in ’52, would likely be the Democratic nominee once again. Joe thought that Stevenson was a sure loser. Interestingly, Dallek reports that Joe Kennedy thought the moderate Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson might be a better pick for the Democratic nomination, but LBJ didn’t end up running for president in 1956. According to Dallek, (quote) “Joe [Kennedy] feared that a Democratic defeat [in ‘56] would be blamed on Jack’s Catholicism [if he were on the ticket] and would undermine his [future] chances for the presidency” (close quote). JFK still decided to seek the veep spot on the Democratic ticket, in spite of his father’s advice, and Dallek writes that family members recall Joe exclaiming that Jack was (quote) “an idiot who was ruining his political career.”
Nevertheless, Jack began working his contacts. He had prominent allies, such as his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver, who lobbied Governor Stevenson to select Senator Kennedy. Adlai was skeptical; he thought that as a liberal Northerner from Illinois, he needed a moderate Southerner to help balance out the ticket. Dallek reports that Stevenson wanted to say ‘no’ to JFK without upsetting Joe Kennedy, who was a useful source of campaign funds for Democrats (depressingly, appeasing big donors was important, even back in the 50s). Stevenson decided that, instead of hand-selecting a candidate, he would leave the VP choice up to the party convention – that way defeated contenders would blame the delegates for their defeat, not the presidential nominee. As usual for the era, the 1956 Democratic convention was being held in Chicago. In the period from 1932 to 1968, fully 6 out of 10 Democratic National Conventions were held in the Windy City. In the middle of the 20th Century, major-party political conventions were chaotic spectacles that could make or break presidential & vice-presidential nominations. Today, they are much less exciting, because the nominees are always decided in advance & the conventions are little more than television commercials for a political party & its pre-determined ticket. Every election cycle, at some point pundits speculate, ‘maybe it’ll be a contested convention this year,’ & it has never happened in my lifetime. I’ll believe it when I see it!
Historian Robert Dallek reports that Jack, Bobby, & the rest of the Kennedy for Vice-President team (quote) “ran from one convention hotel to another, asking, begging, cajoling, flattering, & pressuring delegates [from various states] to join the swelling ranks of a man they described as a likely future president, who would remember their support in his ‘hour of need’” (close quote). The Kennedys actually made real progress in winning over the convention’s delegates, because there were many forces in the Democratic Party who opposed the vice-presidential front-runner. That man was a squeaky-clean political crusader, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. We will now take a brief detour to examine Kefauver’s interesting role in mid-20th Century American politics.
Senator Kefauver was the type of politician seldom seen in the US anymore. Supporters viewed him as a paragon of integrity, while detractors found him self-righteous. Kefauver came from a small town in the South, and he championed both liberal reforms & conservative moral panics. He supported consumer protection laws & fought monopolies, but he also held hearings investigating purported threats to “public morals,” such as comic books & pornography. Kefauver obtained nationwide fame back in 1951, when he delighted his rural constituents by shining a national spotlight on the issue of urban corruption & crime. Kefauver led a Senate committee investigating organized crime, and this Kefauver Committee held hearings that fascinated the nation during the winter of 1951. Believe it or not, in an era before cable television & streaming services provided Americans with seemingly endless entertainment options, viewers gave some of the largest audiences in television history to these C-SPAN style congressional hearings. Author Gilbert King, writing in Smithsonian magazine, recounts that the hearings (quote) “brought a parade of gamblers, hoodlums, crooked sheriffs & organized-crime figures out from the shadows to . . . testify [& face scrutiny] before the white-hot lights & television cameras” (close quote).
This podcast has not previously examined the issue of 20th Century US organized crime in detail, although we did mention 1948 Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey’s prosecution of mobsters, such as Lucky Luciano, way back in Episode 3, & we emphasized the mafia’s power & influence in Havana prior to the Cuban Revolution during Episode 14. If we haven’t yet made it clear, organized crime syndicates were a serious problem in mid-20th Century America. These criminal organizations had become fixtures of urban life since Prohibition enabled them to dominate the market for alcohol back in the 1920s. The Mob also exploited the market demand for other types of “vice,” such as gambling & prostitution. They often engaged in violent reprisals against anyone who crossed them, & they damaged democracy by wielding corrupt influence over big-city political machines & labor unions. The most successful organized crime groups usually emerged in tight-knit urban communities of so-called “white ethnics” who often had their paths to business success blocked by their membership in low-status groups outside of the American Protestant norm. There were Irish mobsters, including Bugs Moran and Whitey Bulger, & there were Jewish mobsters, such as Bugsy Siegel & Meyer Lansky, but the most famous & influential group was the dreaded Norwegian mob. All right, all right, it was the Italian mob, which had origins in the La Cosa Nostra criminal organizations that have historically held considerable power on the island of Sicily. Some commentators credit coverage of the Kefauver hearings with first introducing the Italian term “mafia” into common use in the USA.
Author Gilbert King describes Kefauver as (quote) an “endlessly polite Southern senator in horn-rimmed glasses” who calmly faced down hostile witnesses. One of these was Virginia Hauser, girlfriend of a prominent mobster who defiantly maintained she didn’t know (quote) “anything about anybody.” After her testimony, King reports that she cursed the assorted photographers and shouted, (quote) “I hope the atom bomb falls on every one of you!” While such scandalous scenes drew TV audiences, King expresses doubt that the hearings made much headway in reducing the power of organized crime. Although there were some prosecutions that resulted from the Congressional investigations, King argues that (quote) “the Committee’s recommendations on how to clean up organized crime were largely ignored, and the crime syndicates went back to business as usual, often with the same shadowy characters from the hearings still in control” (close quote).
The hearings may have failed to bring down the mafia, but they made a political star out of Estes Kefauver, and he almost beat Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson in the contest for the 1952 Democratic presidential nomination. Kefauver ran in the Democratic Primary again in 1956, but was less competitive, and he had to settle for the consolation prize of being the favorite for the vice-presidential nomination. Stevenson thought Kefauver’s reputation as a clean-cut crusader could be an asset to the ticket. The fact that he came from the South was also viewed as a plus, because that region was still a vital part of the Democratic coalition. However, unlike Stevenson’s 1952 running mate, Senator John Sparkman of Alabama, Estes Kefauver was a supporter of civil rights, which made him a unique figure in the South (back in Episode 11, we pointed out that Kefauver was one of only three Southern senators who refused to sign the infamous pro-segregation “Southern Manifesto”).
In his attempt to out-campaign Kefauver, John F. Kennedy was able to take advantage of some big-city machine delegates’ resentments of the Tennessee Senator’s investigations into urban graft & corruption. Oddly for a New England man, Jack was also able to benefit from white segregationists’ dislike for Kefauver’s views on civil rights. JFK had not been outspoken on racial issues up to this point in his career, and some southern delegations threw support to him in order to express opposition to Kefauver’s integrationist views. Among these was the Texas delegation, headed by Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. According to Caro, LBJ privately viewed Jack as a mediocre senator with few legislative accomplishments. However, because supporting Kennedy for vice-president had become politically convenient, Johnson declared from the convention floor (quote) “Texas proudly casts its 56 votes for the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle” (close quote). However, despite such displays of support by prominent party leaders, JFK ultimately fell short of the VP nomination, as Kefauver won a narrow majority of delegates on the third ballot at the convention. Writer Robert Caro notes that this was the first time in JFK’s political career that he had ever tasted defeat, and he found he did not care for the experience.
Yet, the 1956 Democratic convention was likely still a net positive for JFK. One reason for this was that Kennedy had snagged a starring role narrating a brief documentary about the history of the Democratic Party that aired at the beginning of the convention. According to biographer Robert Caro, newspapers noticed his charismatic presence in this film, & gushed that Kennedy looked more like a movie star than a typical senator. Furthermore, Kennedy had succeeded in raising his national profile by almost capturing the vice-presidential nomination. According to Caro, JFK bragged to a staffer in the months after the convention that a recent poll had found he was now the 2nd most well-known Senator in the United States, second only to Kefauver, & Kennedy believed the main reason for this was his nationally televised play for the vice-presidency.
Furthermore, losing out on the VP spot was probably a blessing in disguise for Jack. He was perceived as a rising star in the party by the late 50s, but he wasn’t stuck with the “loser” tag from being on the Stevenson ’56 ticket, which of course was handily defeated by Eisenhower. JFK had campaigned with Stevenson when he visited New England in 1956, and he would retain a good relationship with the Illinois statesman in the years after the race. When Kennedy finally achieved what Adlai never could by winning the White House in 1960, he appointed Stevenson as the US Ambassador to the United Nations. As we will see in our next full-length episode, in that capacity Stevenson, the failed presidential candidate, would succeed in playing a very important role in US History during 1962. We have to give him credit for that, to help make up for previously mispronouncing his name as ‘Ad-lie’ on this podcast.
Dallek notes by the late 1950s, the combination of almost winning the vice-presidential nomination & having won the Pulitzer Prize for “Profiles in Courage” gave JFK a (quote) “stamp of seriousness & even wisdom” (close quote). In 1957, Kennedy used his raised public profile to successfully lobby for a seat on the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Jack had always found foreign policy more interesting than domestic matters, and upon joining the committee, in ’57 he made headlines with a speech urging the US government to support Algerian independence from France. This was a controversial position at the time, & the US did not change its stance of supporting its French NATO allies in the conflict, but the events of coming years would show that supporting independence for Algeria would have been betting on the right horse (see Episode 18).
The ripple effects of decolonization were shaking up the policies of major Western powers, forcing them to adjust their paradigms. An example of this was an incident that I recently learned of & found so interesting that I just had to shoehorn it into this episode. It started one day in October 1957, when the Finance Minister of the newly-independent nation of Ghana, a man named Komla Gbedemah, entered a Delaware restaurant with his secretary and attempted to get lunch. These visiting African dignitaries were told by an employee that (quote) “colored people are not allowed to eat in here” (close quote). Even after Gbedemah protested to the restaurant’s manager, identifying himself as a visiting foreign government official, the restaurant would not accommodate them. An outraged Gbedemah brought the story of this snub to the American press. He noted that he had hosted Vice-President Nixon recently on his trip through Africa, and said (quote) “If the vice president of the US can have a meal in my house when he is in Ghana, then I cannot understand why I must receive this treatment at a roadside restaurant in America” (close quote).
The US government scrambled to respond to this undiplomatic incident, due to Cold War prerogatives that required them to keep even small nations like Ghana within the capitalist fold. As noted previously on this podcast, the Americans feared exposure of the country’s racial problems would push newly-independent African nations into the arms of the Soviets. According to journalist Andrew Glass, writing in the online publication Politico, the US State Department issued an official apology to Finance Minister Gbedemah, and the American ambassador to Ghana disingenuously claimed the discrimination had been (quote) an “isolated incident.” Then President Eisenhower himself stepped in and invited Gbedemah to breakfast with himself & Vice-President Nixon at the White House. During this meeting, Gbedemah was able to extract a promise from them to contribute more US funding for the construction of a dam on the Volta River in Ghana. The incident also spurred change within US borders; Andrew Glass reports that the company that owned the Delaware restaurant that had discriminated against the African dignitary promised that it would serve (quote) “anybody who comes to our doors” from that point forward.
Of course, one way the US government could prevent foreign officials from being subjected to such indignities in the future would be by eliminating localities’ ability to impose the so-called “color line.” As mentioned in Episode 12, in 1957 the US Senate finally passed a bill designed to protect the rights of African-Americans in the South. However, the compromises made in order to get the law passed were so extensive that it ended up being mostly symbolic in nature. John F. Kennedy played the role of a moderate in the debates over the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and he ended up supporting some of the compromise amendments that watered down the bill in order to get it across the finish line. Because JFK planned to run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1960, historian Robert Dallek argues that he felt it necessary to maintain (quote) a “bridge to the South & border states.” However, compromising with the Dixiecrats brought criticisms from other political constituencies. According to Dallek, Roy Wilkins, who was a leader in the NAACP (quote) “publicly berated Jack for ‘rubbing political elbows’ with southern segregationists” (close quote).
Dallek adds that, during the Fifties (quote) “Jack’s interest in civil rights was more political than moral. The only Blacks he knew were chauffeurs, valets, or domestics, with whom he had minimal contact. Unlike Hubert Humphrey, another rival for the White House [during 1960], who had a long-standing, visceral commitment to ending segregation, or even LBJ, whose political actions masked a sincere opposition to segregation, Jack Kennedy’s response to the great civil rights debates of 1957 to 1960 was largely motivated by self-serving political considerations” (close quote).
Indeed, the main focus of John F. Kennedy during the final years of the 1950s was upon doing whatever was necessary to help him launch a successful presidential campaign. He did not have to focus much energy on his Senate re-election campaign in 1958. Because JFK had been a relatively moderate senator whose views were compatible with most Massachusetts voters, the Republicans were unable to find a prominent candidate to run against him. Instead, his opponent ended up being an obscure Boston attorney named Vincent Celeste who had lost all of his previous races for public office. Now, Celeste had working-class Italian-American roots, and he attempted to play the populist card against the wealthy Senator Kennedy. According to journalist Bryan Marquard of the Boston Globe, Celeste would introduce himself to voters by saying (quote) “I am running for US Senator against that millionaire Jack Kennedy.” However, although Republican candidates during the 1970s & 80s would have more success at populist appeals to blue-collar “white ethnic” voters, the Massachusetts electorate remained overwhelmingly loyal to the Democratic candidate in 1958, and JFK crushed Celeste by a margin of 73% to 26%. Jack benefitted from the fact that ’58 was a Democratic wave election during the biggest economic recession of the Eisenhower years (see Episode 13), but it was an impressive performance nonetheless.
With his Senate position in Massachusetts secured, JFK focused on elevating his national public image. He tried to get booked on televised Sunday national interview shows, such as “Meet the Press,” as often as possible. To combat whispers about his poor health, Dallek says that Jack (quote) “played golf & touch football with photographers present” (close quote). Kennedy also gave hundreds of speeches all across the country in order to help lay the groundwork for his upcoming White House bid, despite the toll this travel took upon his bad back. As a result, he gained more confidence as a campaigner, & he picked up political allies in every region of the nation. He pursued publicity via print media as well. The photogenic Kennedy family was often featured in glossy magazine profiles, which no doubt helped raise JFK’s name recognition & visibility with the American public. However, this coverage caused a minor backlash with some political pundits, who viewed it as a triumph of style over substance. One skeptical journalist wrote, (quote) “Jack & Jackie Kennedy smile out at millions of readers, he with his tousled hair & winning smile, she with her dark eyes & beautiful face. We hear of her pregnancy, of his wartime heroism, of their fondness for sailing. But what has all this to do with statesmanship?” (close quote).
In his 1960 presidential bid, Senator John F. Kennedy would, of course, would also face some criticism for benefitting from the financial support of his wealthy father, who apparently had forgiven JFK for defying his advice about pursuing the vice-presidency back in ’56. Joseph Kennedy Senior felt his son’s stock was rising, & that the country was finally ready to put an Irish Catholic in the White House. Dallek reports that when Jack fretted about whether he could be truly viable as a presidential candidate within an American political culture long dominated by Anglo-Saxon Protestants, Joe told him (quote) “There’s a whole new generation out there, & it’s filled with the sons & daughters of immigrants from all over the world, & those people are going to be mighty proud that one of their own is running for president” (close quote). And wouldn’t you know it, the wily old gambler turned out to be right. We will not rehash the details of JFK’s successful 1960 presidential campaign in this supplemental series, as we covered it in detail back in Episode 16. Instead, Part V of the “Kennedys as Boomer Icons” series will focus on John F. Kennedy’s time in the White House, looking beyond the “Camelot” myth to uncover the more complicated reality. But first, we will examine the dramatic events of 1962, the year that the world almost ended.
I truly regret the delay in getting this episode out. I really do love this project, even if life circumstances sometimes require me to set it aside for a time. If I ever do decide to end the podcast, I will definitely record an episode letting my listeners know. Until that day, please remain subscribed to the show, even when the episodes seem as infrequent as Dan Carlin’s “Hardcore History” program. Anyway, the From Boomers to Millennials podcast is still co-produced by Erin Rogers and Logan Rogers and is written & researched by me, Logan Rogers. If you have compliments, complaints, or questions, please reach out to us via email at boomertomillennial@outlook.com. You can also help the show by giving us a 5-star rating on Apple Podcasts or by following us on Instagram (or on the social media network formerly known as Twitter, I guess, although we don’t really hang out there much anymore). Finally, we would like to let our listeners know that, unlike the hostile witness during the Kefauver Hearings, we hope no atom bomb falls on any of you. Not only that that, we wish you a healthy & happy Fall 2023, and thank you for listening.