{"id":684,"date":"2013-11-18T15:08:20","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T20:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross\/?p=684"},"modified":"2013-11-18T15:09:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T20:09:36","slug":"how-black-was-jfks-camelot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross\/history\/how-black-was-jfks-camelot\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Were the African Americans in the Kennedy Administration?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Andrew<\/a>

Andrew T. Hatcher, associate White House press secretary, the first black man to hold the No. 2 communications spot in the White House, behind his longtime political compatriot, Pierre Salinger. Photo by Abbie Rowe. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library And Museum, Boston.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI regard the death of President Kennedy as the greatest tragedy that has befallen America since the assassination of Civil War President Abraham Lincoln,\u201d declared a grief-stricken John H. Sengstacke, publisher of the Chicago Defender,<\/em>\u00a0hours after the 35th president was gunned down at 46 while riding in an open limousine beside the first lady. John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassination in Dallas happened 50 years ago this Friday. Speaking to his black readership, Sengstacke added, \u201cKennedy\u2019s tragic ending is [also] the greatest blow that the Negro people has sustained since the demise of the great Emancipator.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jackie Robinson<\/a>, the first black major-leaguer and a proud Republican who had supported Richard Nixon for president in 1960, contributed to the outpouring. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for any of us to imagine even the tragedy that has hit,\u201d he was quoted in the Defender. Drawing a parallel to black civil rights leader Medgar Evers, who had only been shot and killed outside his Mississippi home the previous June, Robinson noted, \u201cEach of these gentlemen \u2026 desired a better America,\u201d and even if Kennedy had \u201cneeded prodding\u201d in advancing civil rights, \u201cwe all admired and respected him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Striking to me in going back to the immediate coverage of the Kennedy assassination is how quickly African Americans elevated him to sainthood. Just a few months prior, he had been lukewarm on the March on Washington (worried as he was about a backlash against the civil rights bill he had, at last, proposed in a televised address from the Oval Office on June 11 after sending in the National Guard to carry out a federal court-order desegregating the University of Alabama). Perhaps that sense of nuance\u2014of distinctions among events so close in time\u2014is what comes with the advance of years between my hearing the devastating news as a 13-year-old student in Mrs. Houchins\u2019 geography class in Piedmont, W.V., and reflecting on it as a professor of 63 who has just completed a six-hour series for PBS on the\u00a0500<\/em>-year history of the African American people, (Much of that history was spent making do while waiting for lawmakers to act, as you will see in\u00a0Episode 5, covering the civil rights movement<\/a>. It airs tomorrow night and is fittingly titled \u201cRise!\u201d)<\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t get me wrong: JFK is one of my favorite presidents. Yet I, like many, am aware of how much he evolved on civil rights, at least when it came to confronting the Southern Democrats in his party in the House and Senate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cTo some, he was slow to begin on his promise when he took office,\u201d George Barbour wrote in the Pittsburgh Courier\u00a0<\/em>five days after the slain president had been buried in Arlington National Cemetery, the same cemetery in which Medgar Evers was buried. \u201cHowever, to this reporter,\u201d Barbour added, \u201che [JFK] never wavered and in appointments, speeches, application of presidential power, secured direct benefits for the Negro unparalleled in modern history, and this strengthened the character of a great country.\u201d JFK was, if anything, a Cold Warrior aware of America\u2019s standing in the world, of the need to lead \u201ca new generation of Americans\u201d toward what he famously called \u201cthe New Frontier.\u201d But another Lincoln?<\/p>\n

Indeed, Enoc Waters wrote in the Philadelphia Tribune on Nov. 26, 1963, \u201cIn spite of occasional criticism of his civil rights actions and legislative proposals, the thirty-fifth President of the United States was held in warm affection by all Negroes\u201d (despite the fact that, on the day of his assassination, black Republicans were gathered in Cleveland for a political strategy session) so that the only presidents who could be fairly be compared to him were \u201cLincoln\u201d and that other monogrammed man, \u201cFDR.\u201d The great civil rights attorney Constance Baker Motley agreed, telling the National Council of Women of the United States on Dec. 1, 1963, according to the Atlanta Daily World: JFK was \u201cthe greatest presidential advocate of equal rights this century has heard,\u201d and there was only a century exactly separating his murder and the original Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln had issued before his assassination at the climax of the Civil War.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The mourning rites of those four November days in 1963\u2014the shock, the arrival of the body in Washington, the lying in state, the Oswald murder, the funeral procession\u2014certainly etched this image of Kennedy as the second coming of Lincoln in American minds. Whereas the late president had complained about the lack of black faces in the U.S. Coast Guard Academy honor guard at his inaugural parade, at his funeral, there were, Dan Day noted in a column appearing in the Philadelphia Tribune\u00a0<\/em>on Nov. 26, two \u201cdark-skinned\u201d military personnel in the eight-man detail \u201cclearly in view at all times about the coffin.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly in view\u201d\u2014that was the point, I\u2019ve come to realize, the brilliance of John Fitzgerald Kennedy\u2019s stagecraft. A noted devotee of Broadway musicals, including\u00a0<\/span>Camelot,<\/em>\u00a0of course, JFK personally may have opposed discrimination as a moral matter; but, when it came to politics, he was a pragmatist who balanced his cautious legislative approach with a commitment to advance the symbols of desegregation and diversity in and around the White House, his Camelot. Stagecraft was something he, like FDR before him, made part of the modern presidency, and it\u2019s something we take for granted today. On one hand, to keep Southern Democrats like Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia in the fold, he gave in on appointing their judges in the South. At the same time, to keep black voters in the North on his side, he went out of his way to see that talented black professionals, especially black newspapermen, were hired to get the message out to their readers that they\u2014and the message\u2014would be \u201cclearly in view.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBut the Cake Was Already Made\u201d<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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The success of JFK\u2019s public relations strategy rested on the abilities of his advisors. They included a few prominent blacks, who charted his segmented outreach efforts. While top Kennedy surrogates soft-pedaled his civil rights record in the South (there were few blacks who could vote there anyway in 1960), these black strategists targeted specific messages to black voters. It was a \u201cstrategy of association,\u201d Nicholas Andrew Bryant writes in his valuable 2006 book,\u00a0The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0The key to their strategy: black talent and a black press committed to showcasing it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The man the Kennedy team recruited to lead the charge was the long-time former editor of the Chicago Defender,<\/em>\u00a0Louis E. Martin, whom the Washington Post once called \u201c \u2018the godfather of black politics.\u2019 \u201d He was the eventual advisor of three sitting presidents, and a \u201cwell-versed representative of the black protest tradition,\u201d with strong ties to labor, as Alex Poinsett writes in his 1997 biography,\u00a0Walking With the Presidents: Louis Martin and the Rise of Black Political Power<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Back in the 1930s and \u201840s, Martin had helped turn Detroit Democratic in support of FDR\u2019s New Deal as editor of the Michigan Chronicle.\u00a0<\/em>In joining the Kennedy campaign, he, along with black Washington attorneys Frank Reeves and Marjorie Lawson, customized JFK\u2019s image for their friends at leading black newspapers across the country. After all, Martin had helped found the National Newspaper Publishers Association in 1940.<\/p>\n

It was a two-pronged attack far more sophisticated than the Nixon people had calculated. While Kennedy toned down his message in the mainstream white papers (and had Lyndon Johnson campaign for him in the South), Martin and company amplified JFK\u2019s support of the Democrats\u2019 strong civil rights plank in a series of brilliant advertisements. The campaigns included a Martin favorite, \u201cA Leader in the Tradition of Roosevelt,\u201d as well as a set of side-by-side pictures of JFK and famous black heroes,\u00a0from Rep. William Dawson of Chicago (his support was vital) to Virginia Battle, the African-American secretary\u00a0Kennedy\u00a0<\/strong>had recruited to his Senate campaign in 1952.<\/p>\n

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In other words, Bryant\u2019s work suggests: Long before the assassination of JFK catapulted him into the pantheon of civil rights leaders, Louis Martin et al. planted the idea in black newspapermen\u2019s minds.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Along the way, Louis Martin (with others) had a hand in persuading candidate Kennedy to place a timely call to Coretta Scott King when her husband Martin was in jail and got New York\u2019s black powerbroker, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem, to accept $50,000 in exchange for making pro-Kennedy speeches. The call to Mrs. King was \u201c \u2018the icing on the cake,\u2019 \u201d Bryant quotes Louis Martin as saying. \u201c\u2018But the cake was already made.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And when it came out of the oven \u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kennedy, in a tight election, won 78 percent of the black vote. Soon after, Martin became deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee; but really, Bryant writes, Martin was, with his \u201cgreat savvy in public relations,\u201d Kennedy\u2019s \u201cpersonal point man on civil rights\u201d (the stage manager of the black\u00a0Camelot,\u00a0<\/em>if you will).<\/p>\n

On the eve of the inauguration in Jan. 1961, Martin, with Kennedy\u2019s other point man on civil rights, Harris Wofford (chairman of the subcabinet group on civil rights), lobbied the president-elect to at least include a nod to \u201chuman rights \u2026 at home and around the world\u201d in the sterling speech Ted Sorenson more famously helped draft. All through the campaign, Kennedy had stressed that his approach to civil rights would flow from executive\u2014more than legislative\u2014action, and now, with Martin\u2019s counsel in casting the players, he was ready to deliver.<\/p>\n

The Black New Frontiersman<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\u201c \u2018I am not going to promise a Cabinet post to any race or ethnic group,\u2019 \u201d JFK announced before the election, Bryant writes. \u201c \u2018That is racism at its worse.\u2019 \u201d Yet that is exactly what his \u201cstrategy of association\u201d called for, except that the black men Kennedy hired were (to borrow from the late David Halberstam) \u201cthe best and brightest,\u201d finally being given their shot to shine like Jackie Robinson had in a different \u201cmajor league\u201d 13 years before. In Kennedy\u2019s first six months in office, the New York Amsterdam News\u00a0<\/em>reminded readers after the assassination, the Kennedy White House appointed some 50 black men (and<\/em>\u00a0women) to executive branch jobs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But Louis Martin had already pushed those talking points out over a year before to Democratic party field workers (conveniently, those same talking points found their way to the Chicago Defender\u00a0<\/em>on April 21, 1962). In them, Martin emphasized the ceilings JFK had helped black professionals shatter in the federal government. He also reminded them that, unlike previous presidents, the positions Kennedy offered weren\u2019t merely \u201cadvisory,\u201d but were, as the headline ran, for \u201cNegro Decision-Makers.\u201d Their names, though largely forgotten to us now, were illustrious and continued being added to the rolls throughout JFK\u2019s 1,000 days.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Few of the African Americans in the Kennedy Administration<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

Andrew T. Hatcher,<\/strong>\u00a0associate White House press secretary, the first black man to hold the No. 2 communications spot in the White House, behind his longtime political compatriot, Pierre Salinger. In fact, according to a profile in Ebony\u00a0<\/em>in October 1963, Hatcher pinch-hit for Salinger \u201c200 days \u2026 as the official White House spokesmen at press briefings, on the mikes and on the job,\u201d including during \u201cthe Mississippi Meredith case.\u201d \u201cThe appointment was enough to jar \u2018the old pros\u2019 who had long become accustomed to Negroes serving only as porters, messengers, maids, clerks and valets at the White House,\u201d Simeon Booker of Ebony wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Dr. Robert Weaver,<\/strong>\u00a0administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, \u201cthe highest appointive federal office ever held by an American Negro,\u201d the Chicago Defender\u00a0<\/em>noted in its coverage of Weaver receiving the NAACP\u2019s Spingarn Medal on June 5, 1962. (JFK tried to elevate Weaver to a full Cabinet member but was rebuffed by Southern Democrats around the same time he pushed to open up federal housing for blacks. Lyndon Baines Johnson, the legislator\u2019s legislator, eventually made it happen, naming Weaver his first H.U.D. secretary in 1966.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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George L.P. Weaver,<\/strong>\u00a0assistant aecretary of labor for Internal Affairs<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Carl Rowan,<\/strong>\u00a0deputy assistant secretary of state for Public Affairs (later LBJ\u2019s director of the U.S. Information Agency, after Edward R. Murrow, and a nationally syndicated columnist)<\/p>\n

Dr. Grace Hewell,\u00a0<\/strong>program coordination officer, Department of Health, Education and Welfare<\/p>\n

\n

Christopher C. Scott,<\/strong>\u00a0deputy assistant postmaster general for transportation<\/p>\n

Lt. Commander Samuel Gravely,<\/strong>\u00a0of the\u00a0U.S.S. Falgout<\/em>, the first black Navy commander to lead a combat ship, according to Martin<\/p>\n

\n

Dr. Mabel Murphy Smythe,\u00a0<\/strong>member, U.S. Advisory Commission on Educational Exchange, Department of State<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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John P. Duncan,<\/strong>\u00a0commissioner of the District of Columbia<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clifford Alexander Jr.,<\/strong>\u00a0national security council (later secretary of the army under President Carter)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A. Leon Higginbotham,<\/strong>\u00a0a member of the five-man Federal Trade Commission, which, in September 1962, made him the first African American ever to be appointed to a federal regulatory agency\u2014and only at age 35. (Higginbotham was a distinguished Philadelphia attorney who had graduated from Yale Law School and served as the city\u2019s NAACP chapter president and former assistant district attorney; I was proud to recruit him and his wife Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham to teach at Harvard after I arrived in 1991.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Plus:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The ambassadors:<\/strong>\u00a0Carl Rowan, to Finland; Clifton Wharton, to Norway; and Mercer Cook, to Niger<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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U.S. attorneys:<\/strong>\u00a0Cecil Poole, Northern California; and Merle McCurdy, Northern Ohio<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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President\u2019s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity:<\/strong>\u00a0Alice Dunnigan; John Hope; Azie Taylor (later, U.S. treasurer under President Carter); Hobart Taylor; John Wheeler; and Howard Woods.<\/p>\n

Federal judges:<\/strong>\u00a0James Benton Parsons, Northern District of Illinois, the first black federal district judge to serve inside the continental U.S.; Wade McCree, Eastern District of Michigan; Marjorie Lawson, Juvenile Court of the District of Columbia; and, \u201cMr. Civil Rights\u201d himself (as Louis Martin referred to him), Thurgood Marshall<\/a>, the Second Circuit, U.S. Court of Appeals. A. Leon Higginbotham would have made No. 5 when JFK nominated him for a district court judgeship in October 1963, but after the assassination, he was held over until LBJ submitted his name again in January 1964.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Read more of this blog post on\u00a0The Root<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website.\u00a0Read all 100 Facts on\u00a0The Root<\/em>.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI regard the death of President Kennedy as the greatest tragedy that has befallen America since the assassination of Civil War President Abraham Lincoln,\u201d declared a grief-stricken John H. Sengstacke, publisher of the Chicago Defender,\u00a0hours after the 35th president was … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-100-amazing-facts","category-history","category-people"],"yoast_head":"\nWho Were the African Americans in the Kennedy Administration? | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | PBS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Some 50 black men (and women) were appointed to executive branch jobs in the first six months of the Kennedy Administration.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/wnet\/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross\/history\/how-black-was-jfks-camelot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who Were the African Americans in the Kennedy Administration? 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