Review

2008-01-14

The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality
Nick Bryant
Basic Books (2006)
545 Pages

Reviewed by Brian Gilmore

In a variety of ways, John F. Kennedy is the Robert Johnson of white liberal politics. Like the legendary blues singer,  Kennedy is a historical paradox. The mystery of Kennedy, of course, doesn’t involve his contribution to the Delta blues like Johnson, but Kennedy’s output on civil rights and black causes. We all know Kennedy’s production is minimal; yet, many hail him as a champion of the black struggle during the civil rights period.

It is convenient mythology. 

Truth is, if JFK had lived, he would have had to deliver much more than he did to Black America and probably would have been revealed as short on accomplishments. But because he was famously assassinated early in his life, he is now part of the racial history of America, and is absolved of his crass treatment of black people.

BBC reporter Nick Bryant in his book “The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality,” now out in paperback, gets all of this down very well. In a precise, well-researched narrative, Bryant reduces Kennedy to his essence: a politician who played with the lives of black people whenever necessary. This, I should advise, is not Camelot stuff.

There are countless examples of Kennedy’s weird politics in regards to Black Americans in “The Bystander.” The fight over the Civil Rights Act of 1957 when Kennedy was in Congress is one telling episode lost until now in the pages of history.

The bill, the very first serious civil rights bill to be passed in America in over 80 years, is a pathetic document.  While it created the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and a civil rights division in the Justice Department, the tough parts of the bill, those that would humble the overtly racist South, wound up on the congressional cutting-room floor. It was an easy vote for Kennedy and other spineless Democrats to cast: the law was ineffectual on its face, so vote for it, and throw the Negroes a bone so to speak, was the agenda.

But even under these conditions, Jack Kennedy still laid an egg.

According to Bryant, Kennedy spent much of the time during the debate that gutted the bill assuring the South that they had nothing to fear from the federal government. “Kennedy tried to straddle both sides,” Bryant writes, and emerged from the process looking “opportunistic and unprincipled.” Over and over, Kennedy is seen holding his finger in the air, seeing which way the political winds are blowing, and then making decisions with little political capital to offer.

His close ties with a well-known white supremacist, John Patterson (Patterson visits Kennedy’s Georgetown home) fall into this category, as does his lukewarm support of the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954. Another episode that fits this mold is the 1952 U.S. Senate race in Boston where Kennedy symbolically used civil rights to turn out the black vote and win the Senate seat.  Of course, Kennedy forgot to tell the good black people of Massachusetts that there wasn’t much he could do with one lousy vote in the overwhelmingly white and still very pro-segregation U.S. Congress.

Bryant is also at his best here when he describes Kennedy’s indifferent relationship to Black America during the Presidential race of 1960. Kennedy meets with entertainer Harry Belafonte at his New York apartment for three hours after Adlai Stevenson enters the campaign. The meeting with Belafonte, a strong supporter of Stevenson, is again indicative of Kennedy’s approach to black empowerment:
“Kennedy knew that Belafonte, an unabashed admirer of Stevenson, was a lost cause, but he was nonetheless curious to know why so many blacks harbored such deep misgivings about his own candidacy. Belafonte explained that Kennedy’s main problem was that he had no record of genuine accomplishment on civil rights and remained an unknown quantity to many blacks.”

When Kennedy asks Belafonte to arrange a meeting with baseball icon, Jackie Robinson, a supporter of Richard Nixon, Belafonte is disturbed by Kennedy’s conduct. The fact that Kennedy didn’t even recognize that Black America had viable political leadership at the time (SNCC and SCLC were two examples) again proved Kennedy didn’t get it and didn’t want to get it.

Bryant also notes that while Kennedy was straddling the civil rights fence, Black America’s unofficial leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., became “impressed” with the Republican nominee for President, Richard Nixon. King’s father, “Daddy King,” had already endorsed Nixon and King was “on the verge” according to Bryant. This moment indirectly leads to Kennedy’s famous phone call to King’s wife, Coretta.

The call, triggered after King is sentenced to a Georgia work camp, is historical madness.  Kennedy’s approach to the problem was not to confront the southern racism but to get King released from the hard labor sentence quietly behind the scenes because he did not want to “antagonize southern whites...” 

Even more disturbingly, Kennedy, despite being advised to, never condemned Judge Oscar Mitchell, the county judge who threw the book at King. He also called Mrs. King only after his brother in law, Sergeant Shriver, had literally twisted his arm, and forced him to make the call, which came after Mrs. King had braved the night thinking her husband might get lynched in a southern work camp.

Of course, Kennedy’s civil rights life is really just one thing: the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kennedy was dead by the time the bill was passed, rocketed to civil rights glory by gunfire in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. President Lyndon Johnson forced the bill down the country’s throat. But, Bryant still gives Kennedy his props.

“Had Kennedy lived,” Bryant writes, “he most certainly would have secured the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.”  The law, the most sweeping of the civil rights movement, is Kennedy’s racial legacy to the world and it is huge. “The Bystander,” Nick Bryant’s outstanding book is just as large, and in light of its truth, much larger for future black struggles.

Brian Gilmore is an attorney and writer based in Washington, D.C.