Alan Price: Good evening, I'm Alan Price, Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of all my Library and Foundation colleagues, I'm delighted to welcome all of you who are watching tonight's program online. Thank you so much for joining us this evening.
I'd like to acknowledge the generous support of the underwriters for the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsors Bank of America, the Lowell Institute and AT&T; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe and WBUR.
Kennedy Library education and public programs on civil rights and social justice are supported in part by AT&T.
We look forward to a robust question-and-answer period this evening. You'll see full instructions on screen for submitting your questions via email, or comments on our YouTube page during the program.
We're so grateful to have this timely opportunity to explore Robert F. Kennedy's work and legacy with our distinguished guests this evening. I'm now delighted to introduce tonight's speakers.
I'm pleased to extend a warm, virtual welcome back to the Library to Patricia Sullivan, the William Arthur Fairey, II, Professor of History at the University of South Carolina. She is the author and editor of books, including, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement; Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era; and Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years. Her new book is, Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White.
I'm also so pleased to welcome back our moderator for this evening's discussion. Kenneth Mack is the inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Harvard University. His research and teaching have focused on American legal and constitutional history with a particular emphasis on race relations, politics and economic life. He is the author of, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer and co-editor of, The New Black: What Has Changed – and What Has Not – with Race in America.
Welcome back to both of you. Thank you for joining us this evening.
Kenneth Mack: Thank you, Alan. It is a pleasure to be here with my old friend, Patricia Sullivan, to talk about her amazing book, Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White. So just for the viewers, Professor Sullivan and I are going to have a conversation till about seven o'clock. As Director Price just mentioned there, you can submit questions. There should be instructions on the screen. And around seven o'clock or so, we will transition over to a Q&A. So, let's just get started.
Pat, I'd like to just start with the origins of this book, a book about Bobby Kennedy, race and civil rights. Now, for most of your career, you've been a historian of the civil rights movement who has written about grassroots activist who are mostly overlooked, individuals like the civil rights lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, the Southern writer and activist Virginia Durr, organizations like the NAACP. So Bobby Kennedy, maybe a bit of an unusual topic, but maybe it follows from what you've written before.
So, what drew you to write a book about somebody who's hardly been overlooked, Bobby Kennedy? And what did you hope to accomplish when you started this project?
Patricia Sullivan: Thanks, Ken, it's great to be with you, virtually, and to be at the Library. Thank everybody for organizing this event.
That is a terrific question because I didn't start out to write a book about Bobby Kennedy; it was the furthest thing from my mind. But the book project sort of grew out of the work [inaudible] covering generations who'd been in the struggle for racial justice and civil rights since the Reconstruction era. And my last book on the NAACP, which spanned a period from its founding in 1910 up to about 1960, really opened up the national framework of struggles for racial justice and civil rights. It was an amazing project to work on.
And so, just the dynamic across several generations of this struggle to realize the constitutional guarantees in the 14th and 15th Amendments and the sorts of activities people – you mentioned Charles Hamilton Houston – the lawyers, the communities, other ways in which struggles for full citizenship intersected with national developments, like the Depression, the New Deal, World War II. And how black migration during these decades is reshaping the racial landscape of the United States. And segregation is becoming more deeply entrenched in northern and western cities.
So, by the time I got to the end of it, it was the Brown decision, really activism accelerates in the South in the wake of that. You have the sit-ins in 1960. I wanted to take a fresh look at the 1960s because it's a national issue, I mean, its just struggles around the country. And we tend to look at the South and then we look at urban issues after 1964.
So, I started reading, wrote a book proposal, and Robert Kennedy would pop up in different situations. And actually, Ellen Geiger, who I work with, who's my literary agent, said, "You mentioned Bobby Kennedy, write a book about him." Well, I really didn't plan to write a book about him, but I realized, as I read more deeply and looked at Robert Kennedy through the context of the racial struggles and transformations of the 1960s that he moved through the decade in a way that would allow me to explore, to really disrupt what we think we know and look at the larger context of racial change during that decade.
And at the same time, I got to know about him in ways that I really had no idea. I really think this aspect of his public life, which is really central, I think had been largely overlooked. So I sort of came into it, and it's been an amazing journey. I've learned quite a bit.
Kenneth Mack: It's interesting. [inaudible] are snapshots of the '60s and race and civil rights as viewed through Bobby Kennedy. But it is a recreation as well of Kennedy himself. I'm wondering, you know, Kennedy is somebody who people think they know. He's this iconic figure. People have written about him; Arthur Schlesinger's famous book. Other people have written about him and about his brother. So what were the prevailing views of Kennedy, race and civil rights when you started this project? And what remained to be said about that?
Patricia Sullivan: Great question. You know, the prevailing views were, he wasn't seen as central. He's attorney general. I mean, people thought he didn't do enough or he did this wrong. He wasn't integrated into the context of African American struggle and the broader civil rights activities, and then also the challenges in urban areas that really become evident in the late '50s and early '60s with Baldwin and Malcolm X, people like that.
So he really was on the margins, on the margins of much of the work done in the civil rights movement. All these works are great that have been done, but he just– as I tell my students, what you find in the past is dependent on the questions you ask. And I was asking different kinds of questions.
And as you mentioned, Arthur Schlesinger's biography is classic, terrific; a number of other biographies I learned a lot from. But again, they looked at his life in a different kind of context. Now that the book is done, I'm kind of surprised by what all of us missed; I missed. I've been working on 20th century American history; but again, as you say, grassroots and looking at different dimensions. So it really is a fresh take. And surprisingly changes [inaudible].
Kenneth Mack: This is a book about a journey. It's about America's journey through the 1960s. It's about Bobby Kennedy's journey through the 1960s. So I just wanted you to tell the reader a little bit about what that journey is like. Where does Bobby Kennedy and America begin at the beginning of your story? How does he and America evolve? And where does the story end up? What can we learn from this journey?
Patricia Sullivan: I'll try to keep this brief. [laughter] Well, you know, when I started out, when I realized– and I really didn't know how the book would turnout, but I realized that he was significant in ways that had not been explored yet. And I knew certain aspects of what he did and how we was engaged as an attorney general, as his brother's advisor, as a Senator, as a presidential candidate, it just highlights, pointed toward the richness of the story I was exploring.
But I began by— So I realized that he was a major force. The civil rights movement created a demand that burst through with the sit-ins and the mass protests of 1960. And what I found out abbout, both Robert Kennedy and his brother, the President, is that not only did they respond to the demand, which was urgent, but they responded to the opportunities created by the demand.
So the question is, you know, what prepared Robert Kennedy to see and to act in a way that really broke away from traditional politics and public leadership? And so, the Kennedy Library was my home for so much of this, and the resources there are enormously rich. And so, I did some background research on his life up to 1960, and there are characteristics about him. He's compassionate. He had a questioning spirit. There are things about him that made him open. And he sort of told the truth.
And by the time we— and there's one incident early on, which was really interesting to me, when he was a student at the University of Virginia, he was the head of the Legal Forum in 1951. And when he was a third-year law student, he invited Ralph Bunch to come speak at UVA. Bunch had just won a Nobel Peace Prize. He was a noted civil rights activist, a political scientist, just a remarkable human being. And he said he would come, but only if the meeting wasn't segregated. And the law in Virginia then was that public meetings had to be segregated. Well, he thought that was ridiculous because this was Ralph Bunche and we just fought World War II and he was aware of the court decisions in the NAACP and higher education.
So he pushed and he talked with students, faculty, ultimately the president of UVA. And they agreed to have a non-segregated meeting. From all I can tell, it's the first meeting of that kind, public, non-segregated meeting on the campus. Fifteen hundred people came; a third were African American.
That wasn't an epiphany. I mean, he didn't become a civil rights crusader. After that he went on and his first daughter was born. He was a young, married couple [inaudible]. So, by the time he got to 19— and the '50s are interesting; I write about that in my book, what's happening in the African American struggle, Brown, Mrs. Parks, King, Malcolm X, Baldwin. So things are heating up. But Kennedy's moving in a parallel; white people are moving in a parallel space.
1960, the campaign, is a pivot point because since [inaudible] ignites mass protests across the South and also ignites youth activism. So breaking through the Cold War climate, apathy. And 1960, when John Kennedy ran, by that time, due to the black migration, the black vote in the North was pivotal. So you had the importance of trying to figure out how to get the black vote, hold on to the South, get elected, at the same time they're seeing the country in turmoil, basically – in a positive way; there's this movement and all the energy coming from it.
And I'll try to speed up because we just got up to 1960. But I guess looking at, when he comes into even that year in 1960, there is evidence of him looking at conditions in urban areas. He wants to win. He's his brother's campaign manager. But by the time he becomes attorney general in 1961, he's ready. He's ready to see. He'll evolve, he'll develop, he'll see the complexity and the depth of the problem as he moves through the '60s, but he's oriented towards race and discrimination as a major crisis facing the country domestically.
And then as attorney general he responds. He builds an amazing Justice Department. Amazing is the wrong word. Hires brilliant lawyers. They quadruple the number of layers in the civil rights division. They're ready to respond to what's happening in the South.
And again, these incidents, they see how tough it's going to be. Like today, Southern governors and local officials defying the law, tolerating or even condoning mob violence. And by 1061, he says about Alabama after the Freedom Rides, talking about the governors and other public officials, "Those fellows are at war with this country." So it's not an easy road.
Maybe I should stop there, but as it goes on, he's also looking north. And let me mention one thing because this sets me on my course throughout the book. In the spring of 1961, he's at a meeting in New York at the CBS Building, doing a TV interview. And then he walks up to East Harlem and has a private, not publicized, meeting [inaudible] three different gangs. And he's starting to look at the problems of juvenile delinquency, not as an identity for young people, but the problems of young people living in poverty with poor schools and all, and how to respond to that. And he begins organizing some community programs to provide support for recreation, job training, and the rest.
So he's got a double vision, you'd say, about the South and that movement that's very much in the national spotlight and what urban areas are like with this deeply entrenched segregation that has grown up across several decades. And of course, Baldwin is writing about that and people are also bringing that out.
So. It's a long answer.
Kenneth Mack: This is great. As a matter of fact, I want to pick up on something you just said. You said that fairly early on, in 1961, Kennedy is thinking about what we might call entrenched racial inequality, entrenched segregation. He's thinking about racial problems in the North. And of course, this book, Justice Rising, is appearing at this moment that we're in, where there's this large debate in the US and across the world about things like, how entrenched is racial inequality? What should we do about it? What are the perspective of people of color, particularly African Americans, in the struggle against it? Should black people be at the center of the struggle? Should it be interracial?
So you're describing Kennedy being at the center of an analogous moment. A different moment, but analogous moment in the 1960s.
But I want to start with a story. You almost start the book with this famous meeting between Kennedy and a number of African American figures, famously James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, a bunch of other people in New York. So, describe that meeting for our listeners. What happens? What does Kennedy learn from it? And why did you use that as the opening thing to frame the book?
Patricia Sullivan: That was one of the incidents that drew me to look deeper. The meeting occurs in May of 1963; May 24th, I think. And that month, I mean, the Birmingham crisis— Birmingham exploded and protests exploded across the country after people saw Bull Conner's police turning dogs and firehoses on young protestors. So things are at a fever pitch.
And the Kennedy administration began immediately working on strong civil rights legislation because they felt– nobody thought it could get through, but "we've got to move, we've got to do something." And in the heat of this, and they're getting ready for a showdown with George Wallace. So it is a really intense short period of several weeks.
And Dick Gregory had recommended to Burke Marshall, who was the assistant attorney general for civil rights, that Baldwin and Robert Kennedy meet. And so, they had met at the White House, at a reception. In fact, Baldwin had gone with Bill and Rose Styron to this reception. He and Bobby met. They talked. And they said they should talk again. But then life happens, things move on.
So it's about a year later. They met in Washington, but Baldwin's plane was late, et cetera. So they decide to have this meeting the next day in New York. And James Baldwin just calls people. And his recollection of this meeting, he felt that Kennedy was someone he could reach. He was unlike most politicians and public figures Baldwin and interacted with, but he felt he needed to really know how things were in the North.
Kennedy went to the meeting thinking that he'd get some advice or insights into how to deal with the problems in the urban North because it wasn't just he could pass a law and desegregate. There was no legal segregation, just entrenched segregation and all that came with that.
And so, he goes to the meeting and his intention is to let them know the kind of political challenges that the Kennedy administration faced. And they were real, sort of like today. You had this Congress dominated by Southern Democrats. And so, people gather. And Baldwin had no agenda; he just had people he respected he thought should be there and they would just talk.
And one of the people who came to the meeting was Jerome Smith, 23-year-old civil rights activist from Louisiana who had been in the movement since the sit-ins; who had been beaten, just gone through horrible; just what people had met down there. This is '63. So he's on the front lines and he was in New York to have a broken jaw looked at and other injuries that he had endured. So he's sitting in this meeting and Kenneth Clark starts to give statistics and things start rolling along and he's like, "Wait a minute." And he just says, "It makes me sick to be in this room, having to even talk." And then he just calls Kennedy out, "You haven't done enough." And Kennedy looks to the others thinking– and they're, "No, he's the person you should listen to." And again, he's the one who had come from the battle. And the thing just goes, and what it showed – there's this communication gap. And then there's this young person who really carried the wounds of the whole thing.
So it went on for three hours. And Kennedy tried to answer and they said, no. And just told all the things that the federal government had done or failed to do. And it was a litany. And everybody got in. And there's no real transcript, but I put it together from recollections different people had who were there at the meeting.
The gist of it is that after a while Kennedy just sat silently. And at one point, I think it was Lorraine Hansberry who said to him– she didn't think he got it. It was just a total– I mean, Baldwin describes this, when white and black come together, there's this– and she said, "If you don't get it, we're in trouble because you and your brother are the best of white America has to offer." It was quite a statement.
And Kennedy sat there for three hours. And they said, "Okay, that's it, we're done." And the people, they leave. And there he is. And so, how people— so everybody was shook up by the meeting. Kenneth Clark said it was the most dramatic, violent encounter, verbal, that he'd ever been a part of.
So that happened, then. And people say that changed Kennedy. And Burke Marshall said it did not. By 1963, he knew things were awful. He knew that the FBI was wasn’t doing it’s job. He knew all that. But it just startled him. It was emotionally a very tough thing.
But the one thing that came through, because there was a point when Baldwin said to Jerome Smith, "Would you serve"– "no, I would never, why would go fight for this country when I have to fight to vote in Mississippi?" And Kennedy was shocked by that. But then afterwards, within a couple of days, he said, "If I was in his shoes, I think it'd probably feel this way about the country."
So he heard them. And I think it’s, to me, it captures the tension of the moment. I mean, the country is at the verge of an explosion. And what to do? How to fix it? And as you say, Ken, entrenched racism, yes. And entrenched means, what do you do? And I think what you see with Kennedy and others, they realized everybody had to do it. And I think they understood what the movement had done across the board. To push these issues forward, they realized that a main part of their job was to talk to white people, to talk to the majority in the country, that they were the problem.
Because after the meeting, somebody said, it was not long after the meeting a reporter said, "you still seem a little shook up." But they said, "So will you meet with black groups again?" he says, "yes, of course!" he goes, "They're not the problem, it's the white people. The white people are denying black people rights."
So it's a dramatic meeting, and I open the book up because I think it's a snapshot of that moment. But two days later they're facing George Wallace and the challenge of integrating the University of Alabama. There was a fire on every front.
So what do you think in terms of how I approached that meeting and how it's perceived? Of course, at the end of the book, the surprise is the interview I found with Baldwin in the Kennedy Library of how he looked back on Bobby Kennedy. I mean, at the moment they were not happy, but it was intense. And he represented; he, as the attorney general of the United States, represented the failure of the government. In an abstract way. I mean, personally, people had relationships; Harry Belafonte was at that meeting. Others who knew that Kennedy had helped get bail money. So it wasn't personal as he, Bobby Kennedy; it was the government. And just tired of having to, also as Bobby said, tired of having to thread the needle on white political pressures to move. But, of course, those are realities that public figures have to deal with if they want to pass civil rights legislation and the rest.
Kenneth Mack: Yeah, this is interesting. One of the things you're, at least as I read the book as saying that does resonate with today is that the Bobby Kennedy is being educated by black people in a way. He and his brother, they are racial liberals. They're on that side of the political spectrum. But this is an era in which white people and black people don't really meet and don't really talk, frankly. And this is a pretty frank exchange, maybe one that Kennedy didn't expect to have.
Patricia Sullivan: No, he did not, I'm sure. And I think the point you make, Ken, is really important for listeners, is what the country was like by the late '50s. And the toll that segregation took on, not on white people, but they were injured, I mean, but the ignorance, the just no, you know, interaction, no contact to be mindful of. And your point about, yes, that they saw the black movement as the engine for change. But they also saw it and understood the impatience.
Again, when Robert Kennedy sees young people living under these horrible conditions, no access to good education, no jobs, a sense that there's no way out, he understood that, first of all, the inhumanity of that and that that is explosive. People don't have a way out. I mean, it’s– But how to deal with that in a– and he in his own way, in Washington, DC, he began to work in a personal way on trying to engage with these community issues.
But your point is the central one, that the African American movement, the black movement, the black struggle finally had forced this into the center of national attention. And people had to respond. And the way both JFK and Bobby Kennedy, they saw it, they learned from it, and they understood history. You know? They understood history. And continued to engage history as they tried to understand this moment, a crisis 100 years in the making, looking back to Reconstruction, and then the betrayal of Reconstruction. They saw that. And they realized a cumulative impact of time in creating this situation.
Kenneth Mack: Yeah, so I’m interested– you said earlier that critiques of Kennedy, one of which is that he and his brother didn't do enough. Now this is a book that's dedicated to realistically engaging with what they were able to do and what they were able to not do, but specifically with Bobby Kennedy I can think of several phases of his career. And I may describe this inaccurately, so feel free to correct me. But as a public figure, he helps run his brother's campaign. He becomes attorney general of the United States. And at a very pivotal moment for the civil rights movement. And the DoJ, the Department of Justice is doing a number of things, which you document in the book. Then he becomes a Senator. And again he's a public figure. And he's able to push and foreground public issues. And then he runs for President. And along the way he's doing things like the Bedford-Stuyvesant project which I'm sure you'll talk about a little bit as the discussion continues. But if you were to sort of list some of the– people say he didn't do enough. So what did he do? DoJ, Senator, running for President; what are the main things that we can say that Kennedy accomplished for race and civil rights?
Patricia Sullivan: That's why I wrote a 450-page book! We have to move into the historical context. It's not just what he did; it's what he created the opportunity to do. What he did in the Justice Department, building that team with Burke Marshall, John Doar, they create a field operation of civil rights lawyers going into the Deep South to litigate voting rights cases. Thurgood Marshall said, "That is like what we did in the NAACP." That's how you get people in the field, right? Getting to know and working with people like Bob Moses and people in SNCC and getting to see up close. So, he created that.
The Justice Department, and again I don't think it has been fully explored, to look at exactly what they did, what they were up against, how they moved. In 1962, they introduce a voting rights bill and they knew it had very little chance but he said, "We have to do something." And great testimony when Bobby Kennedy goes up against Sam Ervin, back and forth, back and forth, arguing the Constitution. And this would have been an important addition if he said, "If you have a sixth-grade education, no literacy tests." That would remove a really major way that Southern registrars used to eliminate African Americans. The bill didn't pass, but he tried.
Mike Mansfield said, "What do we tell the people?" "You tell the people you're never going to get a civil rights rule with a Democratic President," because you've got these Southern Democrats.
And I'll pivot that to the civil rights bill, that moment with Baldwin, all hell is breaking loose everywhere. In response to Birmingham he said, We're going to move now. Maybe the country now that they've seen this horror show, we'll be able to get pressure." But what he and his brother do is they begin to lobby, bring groups to the White House, religious groups, law groups, women's groups, to get people engaged in supporting major civil rights legislation. And they write that bill. He said, "It's unlikely we can get a strong bill through, but we have to try." But then he also said, "But if people think a law is going to make this problem go away, they're out of their minds." He understood how deep it was, but that you needed that.
And so, just that alone. But, you know, that's two-and-a-half years that President Kennedy is in the White House. Bobby's attorney general to '64. But by the spring of '63 they're writing major civil rights legislation. They're mobilizing public support and they're figuring out a strategy for getting it through. Bipartisan. Bringing Republicans along. And by the time John Kennedy goes to Dallas on November 20th, that bill is on its way. And that basically is the bill that Lyndon Johnson will sign in July. So right there, that's huge.
There are several good books on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that really document this. But if you put it in the context of– and then let me– other things. DC. That was his city, right? He saw, again, same thing in the District of Columbia as other cities, what's happening to young people – bad schools, no opportunities. The Dunbar pool is closed; it's been closed for nine years. They used to have a prize-winning swim team. He said, "What is this? The DC commission can't get the money because the Southern Senators control the budget of DC?" He pushed for home rule. But he also raised the money to have that pool restored.
He organized a job program for high school kids to get jobs in the government and in private sector, over 1000 summer jobs, one year. So he's doing things on the micro level, too. Prince Edward County, he was committed to what was– what was happening to those children, the schools were closed for five years, 1700 roughly African American children out of school, no public school. That was a cause that both he and the President were just committed to. And at one point, President Kennedy said to Burke Marshall, "Do whatever you can, as long as it's at least sort of legally plausible; just do something." And they created the Free School as they're litigating the case; as NAACP is litigating the case to force Prince Edward County. And they create a free public school, raise the money, and it opens– ironically it opens in September of 1963, the day after the Birmingham church is bombed.
This is a really explosive period. But if people have that opinion– I think people who say that haven't done the work of looking. It's sort of a gotcha; the judge thing. And really, the history is complex and rich.
And then, I shouldn't start at the Senate, but by the time he became a Senator, he understood a lot and he focused his attention on the urban, what was happening in cities. Then he was the one person after Watts exploded in august of 1965 and the push, law and order, more policing became the cry across the political spectrum, Robert Kennedy said, "How can you expect" – he used the term "Negroes" – "to obey the law when the law is used against them?" Because it's not just policing. It's landlords that cheat them, merchants that– so he had an understanding and he spoke it and he really pushed to address those conditions in urban areas to get the support, government involvement, private, in working directly with communities to begin to repair the damage of these decades of segregation, poverty, poor schools and the rest.
So I think there's no quick answer to that. You really have to move through the period. And also understand what's going on, understand the political challenges, and understand the many ways, not just one thing, but the many different ways he and the people he worked with, who worked with him, and President Kennedy– I'm talking about Robert Kennedy, but in my book I spend a good bit of time on President Kennedy. He understood what the issue was. That interview with Thurgood Marshall, met with him in April of 1960. But again, you have to find the openings. And in two-and-a-half years, they achieved quite a bit, if you look at it in the context of the period and what was done and what was attempted and how they influenced these groups lobbying for the civil rights bill, businesspeople and all the rest. It was not grandstanding, it was doing tough work.
Kenneth Mack: I hear you saying that, picking up on our previous discussion, that Kennedy is being educated by being exposed to the problems of African Americans in the South and the North, but he's doing things. His encounters with black people educate him. Things like pushing for the civil rights bill when the Democratic Party is still the party of the solid South, the party of the Southern segregationists, when it doesn't look like we can get it through. And later in his career trying to think about things like DC, home rule, problems of urban youth, things that are sort of cutting edge.
And also being, we don't want to exaggerate too much, but there's been a critique of the late '60s liberals, Elizbeth Hinton, the historian, has done this and you've mentioned her in your book, that there was this consensus around crime and that that was the main public policy to be directed at urban problems, and that that's the roots of mass incarceration. And you're saying, not to say that Kennedy was wholly apart from that, but that he could see a bit of the other side.
Patricia Sullivan: I would argue he was apart from that. He realized [39:43 - inaudible] To him, the most important thing were the conditions in these urban areas. He understood why people were rebelling. Right? And he said, "If you throw police, that is not the solution; in fact, that aggravates the problem. There's more violence."
So when I think of Elizabeth Hinton's new book, I feel like this book sort of ends where she picks up because the fact is that as we move through the late '60s, this militarization of the police, everything he describes happens. But voices like King – Kennedy and Martin Luther King – are seeing the war on poverty shrink all the programs that can help begin to redress or help these people in these communities help themselves and fix the schools and create jobs, and all that.
So, I think it's a different take. I think his analysis of the situation was correct. Right? The analysis of the Moynihans and Lyndon Johnson and the people who really saw this as a law-and-order issue, a crime issue and they said, "Oh maybe people need help," but they didn't do anything. The war in Vietnam sucked all the money.
So I think he had a different analysis. Which is important. And he's not the only one. There are many people who saw things that way. But he's sort of unique as a white public, political figure. He supported the Watts Writers Workshop. He wanted to incorporate that if he became President into a federal theater project, writers project, to support the cultural developments. And he's just one person. But he's, I think, a force for pushing things in that direction and the pull in the other director which Elizabeth Hinton's book really documents in great detail when we move from the '60s forward, is a direction that you point out we're back today with the similar questions that we had in this period.
Kenneth Mack: Okay, great. I'm interested in differences, if any, between Bobby Kennedy and his brother John. Now, of course, President Kennedy is tragically assassinated in 1963; there's always the great what-if. So to some extent we don't really have the evidence because we don't actually have President Kennedy being exposed to the post-1963 developments. But part of what you're saying is that Kennedy is seeing things early, as early as 1961, seeing urban problems maybe that a lot of other white, liberal public figures aren't quite seeing yet. Do you get the sense that Bobby is different than John in his ability to see the problem? Or maybe we just don't have enough evidence because Kennedy is assassinated; we don't know how he would have evolved.
Patricia Sullivan: I think John Kennedy, if you read– as Marshall said, he understood. Thurgood Marshall met with him. Again, this is an interview I found in the Kennedy Library which was so revealing, that John F. Kennedy phoned Thurgood Marshall, who was head of the Legal Defense Fund, to come meet with him in his Senate office when he was a candidate. And they met. He said, "I went for lunch, I was there all afternoon." He understood everything. He had statistics on voting. And what Marshall said, he is, that he's for–he wants to change things, he's for racial equality. There are great quotes in the book. That he got it, that he supported equality, citizenship, full rights. And that he wouldn't be the normal, typical politician.
And of course, when he pushes for the Civil Rights Act, he said, "Why he expected Republicans to come along. This is like war. Our country's at stake." And as you say, again, people– but they also saw the way this issue was being manipulated by politicians to exacerbate white racial fears and resentments.
But no, I think President Kennedy's interesting on this score, and I think he understood it. That speech he gave in Hawaii, June 10th, right before he gave his big civil rights speech, which again defines the problem as a national problem. Our cities are on fire. Police repression will not meet this. Tokenism will not fix this. We have got to be who we say we are and end discrimination and provide equal rights."
I think that's a great question. I don't have a final answer on it, but I think they were closer together than people thought. They had different personalities, different kind of ways of engaging. And I think Robert Kennedy felt this intensely. Again, compassionate. Passionate.. And he really gave it his all in ways that were unique to him.
Kenneth Mack: This is interesting because the standard criticism of the Kennedys, but particularly President Kennedy, as you said, it's that he didn't do enough, that he was too beholden to the Southerners, particularly in the Senate, the white Southern Senators who wanted segregation, that he had promised to end segregation with a stroke of a pen, an executive order on housing, and that after he's elected African Americans begin sending him pens, "Okay, you haven't issued the executive order." And that what the Kennedy administration does, they do kind of indirectly through administration through the Department of Justice.
So why that misconception?
Patricia Sullivan: I think that's a very good question to put to colleagues, historians because it's incorrect. I would argue that. 1962, their effort to get a civil rights bill introduced in May of '62 and how it played out, and Mansfield's advice. And Mansfield was all for civil rights legislation. But the reality, the power of Southern Democrats, you can only do what you can do. As he moved towards '63, his closest advisors told him not to give a speech on civil rights because they thought it would jeopardize his reelection in 1964. And it could have. "No, I'm doing it." And Burke Marshall said the only two people who thought he should do it was his brother and him. And Marshall said, "And he got that from his brother."
But the point is, he was willing to put his political future on the line. I think he had the confidence. I mean, he was a charismatic leader. He was smart. And I think they had a sort of faith in this country. I think he knew he'd lose if he did it, but it'd be tough with Southern Democrats. And Democrats traditionally needed the South to win.
So I think we shouldn't be judging. To say that I think without digging in and doing the work and contextualizing it as a political figure what you can do or can't and falling on your sword does not move anything forward. You may be a hero in some quarters, but it doesn't– how do you make change? Again, we're looking at that today. It's very tough to think about, the challenges President Biden faces. How do you navigate this in that sphere? There are other places that people can work at the state and local level. There are many ways that people can begin to or continue, but depending on your position as an elected official, you have to– not about winning again, but just about accomplishing something. And I think the Kennedys, by '63, it was about accomplishing something. And they really realized it. And the country was going to– I mean, the late '60s shows this, where things were moving. And they saw it by '62/'63; certainly by '63.
Are you convinced yet? [laughter]
Kenneth Mack: I'm much more sympathetic to the side than I was before you wrote your book.
Patricia Sullivan: The thing is, I'm not trying to put them– they moved in their time and they connected with forces that were moving the country, challenging the country and moving it forward. So it's not that– and that's I think what's significant. Not the great leader or that. Because it's not about that. It's about how do you function. And as Robert Kennedy said, the law, if you think that's going to– there are so many ways we have to face this and move to change; people's attitudes, ideas, local, state.
And I have a much better appreciation of that. Because I was one of those historians that you're describing. I just, whatever, I wasn't interested. I thought I knew. It didn't matter. And so again, it's the context and looking at the history in a fuller measure, for the period.
Kenneth Mack: Before we get to questions, I want to maybe talk about one other thing that's in your book. And we mentioned it briefly earlier in the conversation. Near the end of the book, you talk about the Bedford-Stuyvesant– there's are several corporations, I can't remember the names of all of them, they all have similar names, but the Bedford-Stuyvesant Redevelopment Corporation. And I'd like you to talk about it. What was it supposed to do? How did Kennedy facilitate it? Because, what's interesting about it is it becomes a site of struggle between black people and well-heeled white people with money, about who's going to control the thing. And eventually Frank Thomas winds up being in charge of it.
But, can you just narrate that story and how Kennedy becomes involved? And also how Kennedy helps resolve the tension about who's going to run it.
Patricia Sullivan: Again, it's another example. The war on poverty is shrinking. The cities are needing so much. He's a Senator from New York. And he really wanted to do something that could address this, something he can do. And he said, "People like me need to not just make speeches, we have to act."
So he takes a tour, he goes to Bedford-Stuyvesant in February of '66, I think, and walks through, talks to people, talks to local leaders, sees the conditions, and decides that they are going to try to develop a project here.
And, you know, Robert Kennedy had a real talent for attracting and hiring really smart, committed people. And he had two younger aides, Peter Edelman and Adam Walinsky, who were young, very bright, energetic, in line with what Kennedy was concerned about. And so, they started this study. I think Adam Walinsky– oh, Tom Johnston was very important in this. He ran Kennedy's New York office. And they just explored. They talked with urbanists, with Black Power people, all kinds of people working in cities to figure out what might work.
And they developed this redevelopment corporation. And they also managed to get some funding put in that could help. He's working on that level on this committee with Joe Clark from Pennsylvania. Anyhow, basically, since there's not enough government money to do what needs to be done, they develop a project with two entities. One is the community; community board representing the interests and concerns of the community for what should be done, looking at everything – housing, education. A number of projects that would be developed over time to redevelop the community.
And then one of his aides had the bright idea, what about getting a board of corporate people to help raise money and to provide some advice. Robert Kennedy was not liked by businesspeople. But he appealed to a number of people and got some tremendous support. The names are flying out of my head right now, but an impressive group of people involved in business and finance. And that was set up. And I think for these businessmen, they saw what was happening in cities and their interest was, I think, motivated by that as well. Something had to be done, basically. And Kennedy really emphasized that.
So they were advisory. The community was developing the projects. And there was tension at the beginning, as you said. I mean, this is life, right? Who's going to run in the community, who's in charge in the community? There are these women that had been working forever and they had helped Senator Kennedy, but then there were young people, there were more militant people. So that kind of all blew up and that had to be put back together again.
And then, when things finally got– and Franklin Thomas who'd grown up in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Kennedy had met him. Earl Graves, who was an aide to Robert Kennedy, knew– they had both grown up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. So he brought Franklin Thomas in and he agreed to head the community part. He didn't like the fact that there was this business group and they seemed to be taking more control. So that got a little testy.
And as it worked out, Thomas pushed ahead and he really began doing redevelopment of homes, getting people jobs, finding out what the community wanted, really grassroots kind of stuff, to make a plan. And eventually, Kennedy found out John Doar was leaving the Justice Department and he brought John Doar to work on the Development Service Corporation, which was the business. And it was John Doar's coming out of the civil rights movement. John Doar is– he and Thomas got along famously. And eventually Frank Thomas was– so it evolved, let's just say that, it evolved.
And it, you know, became a model. And Martin Luther King pointed to it as a model of a project that was run by the community. And to a large extent it was and increasingly that was not even in question. But again, you needed to raise the money and get the support.
There's a terrific book on the Bed-Stuy project, which I cite a number of times, but that is certainly worth people looking at.
But again, it's not perfect, but it was an initiative that was very well received in [56:25- inaudible] As I said, King pointed to it as a model. Leon Sullivan was doing something similar in Philadelphia. Just finding other ways because the war on poverty was drying up and the federal funds were drying up and these cities needed help, and local people, community people needed to be involved in determining what they needed.
Kenneth Mack: Alright, so, we're going to start questions in about three minutes, but I do have to ask though the what-if question. Obviously, you've thought about this. Bobby Kennedy is the great what-if of the late 1960s. As you say in your book, when he's running for President, his advisors advise him against giving civil rights speeches in places like Indiana; "you've got to sort of cultivate the white people." And he sort of moderates a little bit, but, no, he's really committed to actually speaking out on civil rights. But they get a lot of white, working class voters and some voters in the South, though that's kind of limited.
But the great what-if of Bobby Kennedy is perhaps he's the person who could have kept the liberal coalition intact. There was ability to both speak out on civil rights and to garner at least support for some white, working class people. Which of course is the question we sort of face today.
So for people who are optimistic about Bobby, they think he had that potential. I'm just interested in your thinking, speculation about this what-if question. Are those people optimistic about Bobby in that regard, is their optimism misplaced? We don't have enough evidence? What's your thinking about the great what-if with Bobby Kennedy?
Patricia Sullivan: I think if Robert Kennedy– and I think it's highly likely that he would have been nominated after California, if he had become President– I don't know about keeping the liberal– because that is passé. He needed something new. And not totally new, but I think he inspired people to public service, young people. And he also brought tremendous, attracted tremendous talent who were committed the way he was. And I think back in the '60s with the civil rights movement, young people, civic activism really attracted a lot of people who went into public life, who wanted to be part of the solution. So I think he would have had that drawing power if he had become President. And he would have built an administration that would have been amazing.
And again, you don't want to minimize the challenges because things are tipping as we see in Elizabeth Hinton. But it would have given us some– someone said to me once, the difference between what if, Kennedy or Nixon, it's like Hoover and Roosevelt. Now, imagine if Herbert Hoover was elected in 1932. [laughter]So, Kennedy had the kind of Roosevelt flair in terms of creative, energetic, confident and attract– I mean, look at who came into the media. Robert Kennedy would have attracted people like that. And they would have been there in the late '60s, ready to go.
So I think keeping the old– there's a lot that had to change about American politics and public life in the '60s that began changing. And I think his capacity and his ability to bring people in and delegate– it was just something that could have made a huge difference at that moment compared to when you think about how things turned. And again, the country, we talked about entrenched racism and Hinton shows us what's coming. So the problems would have been huge. And there's no telling. But it would have been certainly different and it would have been– I think what he had hoped was to move our public life and our democracy in a new direction. And who knows what that would have brought, but it certainly would have been interesting to see.
Kenneth Mack: Okay, great. That's a great segue to questions. Last thing I'll say on that what-if question, for one of these people who you describe who would have been– he's too young to have joined the administration, but was certainly inspired by Bobby Kennedy, is David Axelrod, Barack Obama's campaign manager, of course, who became an advisor in the White House. Axelrod in his book talks about how he remembers Bobby Kennedy. He's the inspirational figure. And when he saw Barack Obama, the thing that he recalled was how Bobby Kennedy inspired people. So you're certainly right about his ability to inspire young and creative people to enter public service.
So questions. I'm going to jump around in the questions. Some of them we've talked about, like there's a question about Kennedy's efforts outside of the South, and we've talked a little bit around that. But I'm going to ask a question that you've thought about before, and I'm just going to read the question: How do you reconcile Robert Kennedy's work done on behalf of Senator McCarthy's Un-American Activities Committee and Roy Cohn with the work he did later to support civil rights?
Patricia Sullivan: That's a great question. And one I had when I started the book. And the answer is that Robert Kennedy joined that committee, when was that, in 53, I guess, after his brother was elected to the Senate. First of all, he and Roy Cohn hated each other. From day one. They were hired around the same time. And Roy Cohn went off and looked for communists in the libraries and American embassies and stuff. Robert Kennedy's job on that committee was to investigate allies trading with what then was known as Communist China. So he was not sitting, peppering questions with McCarthy; he was doing a study of who was trading with– and he found out; I think Rees in Britain. And his work got praised by the Washington Post and somebody in the New York Times, saying this is the really, really good thing to come out of this committee, this is important information.
But by the time he was there six months, Roy Cohn became– McCarthy made Roy Cohn head of the staff and Robert Kennedy quit. But before he quit, they almost had a fistfight after one hearing, the Army-McCarthy hearing when– oh, yeah, that's right. So he quit and he went and worked on some other committee for a while. Then he was hired by the Democrats. When he worked for McCarthy, he was working on the Republican side. He was hired by the Democrats and he came in right before the Army-McCarthy hearings began and he challenged Cohn on a number of things. And then Robert Kennedy was the one who wrote the report that censured Joe McCarthy.
Again, he had a friendship with McCarthy which went back with his family, for ten years earlier. So there was a personal relationship. But his work on the committee was not digging out communists and that sort of thing.
And years later, he did feel there was a domestic threat. A lot of people felt that back in the '50s. But in the early '60s, Peter Maas, who was a journalist– some people never forgave Robert Kennedy for having anything to do with Joe McCarthy. But his friends were like, How did this happen? And they'd ask him. And he said to Peter Maas, "Well, I thought there was a threat. And I was wrong."
So it really is a headline grabber; people kind of gravitate to that. But my sense is he did not– in fact, when he was working for the committee, he went to meet Earl Browder, who was the former head of the Communist Party, to find out more about the Communist Party. Curiosity, questions in a nice meeting.
So I think that that's more complicated than it's perceived looking back.
Kenneth Mack: Here's an open-ended question: Did he, Robert Kennedy, ever feel like he did enough? I guess I'm going to phrase this as, we all worry about whether we're doing enough. How did you get a sense of how he felt about the work that he was doing? Did he feel like he was doing enough? That he should be doing more? Was he disappointed in what he accomplished?
Patricia Sullivan: He strikes me as the kind of person who wouldn't waste time thinking like that. Do it! He was active. He had passion, energy and patience. He understood. He said, You saw one problem, there are 12 more and they're more complex than the one before. Just keep moving. Keep learning. Keep looking.
One civil rights activist said about Robert Kennedy, "He went, he saw, he listened, he grew." And that describes him. And handwringing and "did I do enough," I think if he felt he made a mistake somewhere he'd think about that and do a course correction or whatever, but I think he understood human nature. And he understood– And he wasn't self-absorbed. He was engaged in the life of the country, the work of the country at a time when the urgency was great.
So I think in running for President, to me that was interesting to see what brought him that decision. Because you have to weigh things and you don't know. It was really interesting to get inside of that. But none of it was– there's no clear path. Robert Kennedy understood that, there was no clear path. But you had to keep trying, keep moving, learning, growing. And he did that.
Kenneth Mack: Here's another question: Can you discuss RFK's role in the Ole Miss crisis and how that affected him? Also his visit to the Mississippi Delta; was it another turning point in his life and understanding?
Patricia Sullivan: That's a great question, both parts. I'll try to keep this brief. The Ole Miss crisis was huge, that was the biggest domestic crisis the Kennedy administration faced. And they deal with this rogue governor. They had a Supreme Court ruling that James Meredith be admitted to the University of Mississippi. They had what Burke Marshall called a potential insurgency – interesting word – on their hands with this– that all hell could break loose if this governor did not do his job.
And so, the buildup to that was this dance to try to– and then he said he would and then he didn't. And marshals got there and full-scale riot. Full-scale riot on the campus of Ole Miss. Meredith was protected. Marshals could shoot to kill only if Meredith was threatened. And two people were shot and killed. And then they called out the Army and the Army got delayed. Robert Kennedy said, “It was the worst night of my life." He and the President and their aides are sitting in the White House with Katzenbach calling in from a payphone. This was way before cellphones. It was just awful.
And after it was over, someone asked him what his brother had learned – I really think this is interesting – from the crisis. And he said, "My brother learned never to believe another book on Reconstruction again" – the old-school interpretation, the poor South and it's the federal government. It brought it to life.
The trip to the Delta– let me add one other thing because Kathleen Kennedy told me about this film about when Robert Kennedy went back in 1966. He was invited by the law students to come back to Ole Miss. He's like, "What is this? What's going to happen when I go back there?" That's just four years later. And they really wanted him. And so he went. Ethel Kennedy went with him. They had some protection, but really, people in that state still hated him. But the law students wanted him. And he went.
The film is great; the background and how he got there and the students. And he gave a wonderful speech there. And got a standing ovation with 6000 students in that auditorium. So that was another Mississippi moment.
But the Delta, the trip in 1967, they would hold field hearings to investigate war on poverty programs, what was happening. And one of them was in– the hearings were in Jackson. And there's a great picture in the book of Fannie Lou Hamer and Unita Blackwell testifying and Robert Kennedy listening. He heard about the poverty and the Head Start project, and he wanted to see. Again, he wanted to see.
So he and another Senator went with Marian Wright and Peter Edelman. Marian Wright was really the reason that they went because she came and testified in Washington. And he had never seen poverty like he saw there, as bad as it was in so many cities. And then he went back and immediately, more food stamps, really pushed to get more federal aid. But it had a huge impact on him and horrified him and just kept him going.
But he wanted the country to see. They had hearing and they brought people to Washington to try put a spotlight on this and to really push the federal government to expand the anti-poverty programs around the country.
Great question though.
Kenneth Mack: Here's another one. This question asks about a 1968 late-night meeting in West Oakland. A 1968 late-night meeting in West Oakland bookended the 1963 Baldwin meeting, I guess the one we had discussed before. Discuss how RFK's approach had changed, why he went and how he tried to translate the session into action. And I guess the questioner also wants to ask, didn't the Oakland meeting also garner the get out the vote support for the black community for the primary?
Patricia Sullivan: It certainly helped. That's a great observation about the other side of the Baldwin meeting. Kennedy understood people were angry and he was going to catch it. And so, as part of the California primary, he went to a church in Oakland. It was ten o'clock at night, and he took Rafer Johnson with him and John Glenn, who had been campaigning with him, and John Seigenthaler, and off they go.
And he says to them, "Just be quiet. it's going to be rough, but don't worry," he's telling his friends. And he got up there and it started – "This is wrong, that is wrong. You need to do this. Why don't you do that?" And he answered and talked about, "I can possibly do Bed-Stuy." And people just kind of unloaded on him. And he responded. And at one point, Rafer Johnson wanted to get up, he was so angry. He said, "Nope, this is between them and me." And it went on.
Willie Brown was the moderator. So they finally brought it to a close. And there was some, by the end, a little sense that they had at least reached him in the discussion. And they went back to the hotel and John Glenn said, "Well, I don't think you got too many votes tonight." And Willie Brown said, "Oh, no, they're going to turn out. They're going to work."
And the next day, Tom Berkley, an African American newspaper publisher helped organize, had people calling him, wanting to help. And yes, people joined up and worked on the get out the vote campaign. And it was such a– and then we went back to Oakland the next day. He was supposed to go somewhere else, to a park, and spoke to the community and they had a big get out the vote rally.
It was a great moment. But he understood that you had to listen and be there and be responsive. And of course, in the primary I think he got 96% of the African American vote in Oakland. And huge voter turnout.
Kenneth Mack: It's interesting. What I hear you saying is that – I forgot the way you phrased it earlier about Bobby – he came, he did this and he listened. It seems like he is continually listening to people who were really willing to tell him in a very aggressive way that "you're not doing enough." And he reached some of those people, even though they didn't necessarily agree with everything about his particular approach.
Patricia Sullivan: And, you know, one thing, we were talking about liberals before, one of the people in the park, an African American activists, said, "He's not one of the last liberals; he's the last of the great believables." I titled a chapter that, the last of the great believables.
Kenneth Mack: Could you expand on that? What does that mean, the last of the great believables? What does that mean?
Patricia Sullivan: People trusted what he said. He didn't overpromise. He didn't make things up. He listened. He said what he thought. And again, coming from– even Baldwin said, he's a different kind of political figure. So I think truth-telling is believable. And trusting that there's a concern.
Kenneth Mack: Here's another question: How much did JFK's assassination open a wound that allowed Bobby to feel and see things differently by 1968 than he had prior to November 22, 1963? Maybe that's too speculative, I don't know.
Patricia Sullivan: When I wrote about President Kennedy's assassination– I was 13 when he was assassinated. And I remember. Just awful and just terrible. But writing about it, I experienced it in a different way. I knew what was going to happen, but when it happens– and writing about Robert Kennedy in that moment, I talked to several people who knew him then, John Seigenthaler and William vanden Heuvel, and read oral history interviews, I mean, it was devastating in ways that are indescribable.
But how it impacted him, people say, many people say he changed. And people closest to him said no, he was always himself, the compassion. But what his law professor, and really, I thought this was really interesting, Mortimer Caplin, he said, "He was the blocking back for his brother. He took care of his brother. They worked in tandem." And he said, "Once he was gone, Bobby became more and more himself. He moved into his public life." And again, bringing the concerns that he had developed.
So it's very interesting to think about that. But wound is what I would– for the rest of his life, that was just a deep loss. But that notion that he didn't change, he continued on and had room to put all this energy into things that he cared about.
Kenneth Mack: Here's another question, back to the critical vein of questioning. This is one you've thought about before. The question goes like this: How should we look at Kennedy's complicated relationship with Martin Luther King? With wiretapping him? With following Hoover's instructions against King? I take that questioner to be asking about the fact that Robert Kennedy authorized the wiretaps of Martin Luther King. What should we think about that?
Patricia Sullivan: You should read my book because I was concerned about that. Again, that's one of the gotchas – he did this, he did that. Very complicated. Hoover's pressure, Hoover's power, they knew, he knew that King was not a communist, and President Kennedy knew that. But Hoover kept pressing the whole Levison thing and were they talking.
I don't want to get too deeply into it, but the pressure, Hoover's pressure on Kennedy and the evidence he had, that Martin Luther King said he wouldn't see Levison and he was talking to Levison, and all this.
So finally, October 20, '63, he agreed to a temporary, 30-day wiretap on King's phone in Atlanta and in New York. And as you read about Courtney Evans, he was– so he did it. And there are a couple of reasons that people speculate – Hoover had things on the President, on his private life. And the civil rights bill; this is October, they're fighting to get the civil rights bill moved past the judiciary committee. If Hoover leaked to the press, as he would often do, King and his communist connection and whatever, that'd be it.
And so, I think it was an attempt – I'm speculating here – to also kind of keep that at bay. But again, President Kennedy was killed a month later. President Johnson came in, became President, and Lyndon Johnson was very close to J. Edgar Hoover and had no problem with– and had different feelings towards King.
So yeah, it came late and I hope the questioner will read about it in the book, because I really gave this a lot of thought and read everything I could and laid it out where it’s a little more– and it certainly does not diminish– in fact, fast forward, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King become much more closely aligned as time goes forward. Their concerns about poverty, their concerns about the war in Vietnam.
And there's a wonderful scene in these hearings on conditions in the cities, which Senator Kennedy was a part of, where he and King had almost this soliloquy about the conditions and what to do. And so, that relationship grew. And they both were so closely– what they saw as the problems and the solutions were very close. And their opposition to the war in Vietnam as well.
So it was interesting to see how their relationship developed after '64/'65. I mean, it was never distant. Well, it was distant, actually, but they weren't at odds. But they became much more closely aligned around the issues of poverty, the cities and the war.
Kenneth Mack: Here's a long and thoughtful question, so I'm just going to read the whole thing: From the moment I read Robert Kennedy's work, he always seemed like a brain to me, someone who could keep things in order and keep working, but a bit reluctant to be the image. I think maybe to be the public figure? Even after John's murder, Robert continued with his duties a little longer beyond the complicated relationship he had with LBJ. What do you think was Bobby's breaking point, the moment when he understood that he had the strength and power to fight for the Senate and then in the race for the presidency?
Patricia Sullivan: That's a great question. Well, he stayed through '64. He and his team were critical to getting the civil rights bill through, so he carried that through, the completion of the work that he and his brother had begun.
By '66, in 1966, he campaigns in the midterms for other candidates around the country, and the press see him as transformed, that he'd become a terrific public speaker, energetic, charismatic. Really, just fully engaged in the work of politics, the Senate and the causes he believed in. So I don't know what the breaking– I think it took time.
Adam Walinsky noted the day that Robert Kennedy stopped wearing a black tie, and it was when they were in Latin America. When was that? It was a couple years after President Kennedy was assassinated. I think there was a gradual– but always working. But coming into his own. I think certainly by '66 he has fully come into his own as a public figure.
Kenneth Mack: So here's a different kind of question: What role did Robert Kennedy's Catholic faith play in his political life?
Patricia Sullivan: I think his faith was formative. He went to church on Sundays. But it's more than that. I think he had a deep faith and he was of the social justice. I think it's hard to identify specifically. I have moments in the book where I look at that. But I think he was a deeply spiritual person and he was, I think his Catholic faith was a formative force in his life. And I think for how he moved forward and what he achieved, I think that was an important part of his strength, with other factors, too; it's hard to single one out.
And, you know, he was the kind of Catholic who did not hesitate to challenge clergy. He was his own person. He had that kind of faith, that he was responsible for it. John XXIII was Pope. Not that that influenced him, but he reflected that kind of care for the poor public service, living that kind of life.
Kenneth Mack: Okay, so we've got three minutes. We have time for one last question. I think this is an appropriate last question, too. This questioner asks about the title of your book: Can Professor Sullivan comment on her selection of the title of the book, Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White. Why did you select that title?
Patricia Sullivan: Justice Rising, we had early; that sounded good. But now I know what it means. [laughter] I figured out what it means. The Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White describes the book because it's him moving through our country in that way. But Justice Rising, there's this convergence in this period of, first of all, the civil rights struggle, black freedom struggle that's been going on for decades. But by 1960, it's really broken through in a way that demanded national attention and action. And then it impacted, again it broke through the Cold War political culture, and really energized American engagement, particularly among young people. And you had the Kennedy administration coming in and being in sync with that.
So together, all these different forces that come together in the early '60s, justice is rising. And it has an impact that is difficult to measure. We can look at civil rights acts and all the rest, but we're sitting here talking about this today and I think not everything was achieved, you had this backlash at the end of the decade, but justice was rising and in ways that were formative and historically significant, and I think have tremendous lessons.
But again, it's a convergence. And the Kennedys really were part of that, responded to it, and really helped to contribute to that kind of movement.
Kenneth Mack: Okay. Well, that was a great question on which to end. This is the book: Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White by Patricia Sullivan. Amazing book. I've read the whole thing. I recommend that our listeners get out and read it. As you said, Pat, at various points, a lot of these are really complicated questions and what you're doing in the book is mobilizing all the evidence around them, to sort out things about the wiretaps. So it's well worth reading.
So thank you, Professor Patricia Sullivan, for being at the Kennedy Library Forum. Thank you to the audience for coming and for your wonderful questions. And thank you to the Kennedy Library for inviting both of us to appear.
Patricia Sullivan: Yes, my thanks, too, to all. Thank you, Ken, so much, and everybody.
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