2 The Civil Rights Efforts of John F. Kennedy Kevin J. Doherty 4013232 HIST102 – American History since 1877 Professor Carl Bradshaw January 4, 2011 President John F. Kennedy is mostly remembered because of his assassination. However, events that occurred during his time in office were quite important to the history of the United States. Although it may not have been viewed as such at the time, the civil rights movement was possibly the most important issue and the president’s efforts toward solving the matter may have been his greatest accomplishments. President Kennedy was juggling, as most presidents do, quite a few pressing issues at the same time. The civil rights movement was not his priority, but it played an important role in the way he ran the country. The president made some very impressive headway in the fight for true equality in the United States and abroad. Civil rights never seemed to be at the top of President Kennedy’s priority list, but there is no doubt that he was more sympathetic to the issue and movement than previous presidents. In fact, Steven Lawson quotes Dr. Martin Luther King as saying that Kennedy had “schizophrenic tendencies” when dealing with the civil rights movement. He continues to explain that the president came from an upper class background in Boston and he had no personal understanding of the inequality that African-Americans dealt with in the south. However, theology expert Mark Massa points out that he was the first Catholic to be elected president and, because he was Catholic, he had to deal with a lot of discrimination during his campaign. While he never dealt with anything like African-Americans in the Jim Crow south, this may have given him some personal insight and reason to sympathize. Although President Kennedy may have been sympathetic toward the civil rights activists, he always seemed to be reactionary in nature as opposed to proactive. Thomas Borstelmann, expert in modern history, explains that the racial struggle, at the time, was mostly fought between Democrats. The president “felt he had to work both sides of the street”. Angering the southern Democrats could bring repercussions concerning other legislation that Kennedy wanted to pass. Maybe this could explain the “schizophrenia” Dr. King noticed. Foreign policy (mostly concerning the Cold War) was always the President’s top priority. He was working toward bettering the civil liberties of oppressed people in Africa at the time and trying to win them over to democracy in a sort of turf war with the Soviet Union. However, any instances of unrest surrounding civil rights in the United States the president considered to be embarrassing on the international front. Borstelmann explains that Kennedy worked with civil rights activist groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to try and keep demonstrations peaceful. How, after all, could the United State.

1. 2
The Civil Rights Efforts of John F. Kennedy
Kevin J. Doherty 4013232
HIST102 – American History since 1877
Professor Carl Bradshaw
January 4, 2011
President John F. Kennedy is mostly remembered because of his
assassination. However, events that occurred during his time in
office were quite important to the history of the United States.
Although it may not have been viewed as such at the time, the
civil rights movement was possibly the most important issue
and the president’s efforts toward solving the matter may have
been his greatest accomplishments. President Kennedy was
juggling, as most presidents do, quite a few pressing issues at
the same time. The civil rights movement was not his priority,
but it played an important role in the way he ran the country.
The president made some very impressive headway in the fight
for true equality in the United States and abroad.
Civil rights never seemed to be at the top of President
Kennedy’s priority list, but there is no doubt that he was more
sympathetic to the issue and movement than previous
presidents. In fact, Steven Lawson quotes Dr. Martin Luther
King as saying that Kennedy had “schizophrenic tendencies”
when dealing with the civil rights movement. He continues to
explain that the president came from an upper class background
in Boston and he had no personal understanding of the
inequality that African-Americans dealt with in the south.
However, theology expert Mark Massa points out that he was
the first Catholic to be elected president and, because he was
Catholic, he had to deal with a lot of discrimination during his
campaign.

2. While he never dealt with anything like African-Americans in
the Jim Crow south, this may have given him some personal
insight and reason to sympathize.
Although President Kennedy may have been sympathetic toward
the civil rights activists, he always seemed to be reactionary in
nature as opposed to proactive. Thomas Borstelmann, expert in
modern history, explains that the racial struggle, at the time,
was mostly fought between Democrats. The president “felt he
had to work both sides of the street”.
Angering the southern Democrats could bring repercussions
concerning other legislation that Kennedy wanted to pass.
Maybe this could explain the “schizophrenia” Dr. King noticed.
Foreign policy (mostly concerning the Cold War) was always
the President’s top priority. He was working toward bettering
the civil liberties of oppressed people in Africa at the time and
trying to win them over to democracy in a sort of turf war with
the Soviet Union. However, any instances of unrest
surrounding civil rights in the United States the president
considered to be embarrassing on the international front.
Borstelmann explains that Kennedy worked with civil rights
activist groups such as the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE)
and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to try
and keep demonstrations peaceful.
How, after all, could the United States champion equality in
Africa when violence was occurring over inequality at home?
President Kennedy was somewhat successful at keeping the
issue under control, but he could not keep everyone happy
forever. In October of 1962, the inevitable happened when
segregationists tried to stop an African-American student from
enrolling in classes at the University of Mississippi. Violent
riots followed forcing the president to send troops to gain
control. Borstelmann explains that extreme violence broke out
in Birmingham again in April 1963 which was coincidentally at
the same time as the founding conference of the Organization of
African Unity. The violence demanded international attention

3. and the president realized that he had no choice but to take a
side and react. On June 2 1963, he gave a nationally televised
address in which he called for legislation for complete public
desegregation.
President Kennedy began his time in office by rhetorically
championing civil rights and trying to walk a fine line so as to
stay in good favor with both sides of the argument. After
uncontrollable violence broke out interfering with his foreign
affairs efforts, he reacted strongly. He put his full political
weight behind legislation to end segregation. The president put
America on the track to truly offer its citizens equality and be a
role model for the world in the matter of civil rights.
Bibliography
Borstelmann, Thomas. "`Hedging Our Bets and Buying Time':
John Kennedy and Racial
Revolutions
in the American South and South Africa." Diplomatic History
24, no. 3
(2000): 435-463. Academic
Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed January 3, 2011).
Lawson, Steven F. "The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the
Struggle for Black Equality." American Historical Review 112,
no. 1 (2007): 242-243. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost
(accessed January 3, 2011).
Massa, Mark S. "A Catholic for president?: John F. Kennedy
and the `secular' theology of the Houston speech, 1960." Journal
of Church & State 39, no. 2 (1997): 307. Academic Search
Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed January 4, 2011).
� Steven F. Lawson, "The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the
Struggle for Black Equality," American Historical Review 112,

4. no. 1(2007):242-243.
� Mark S. Massa, "A Catholic for president?: John F. Kennedy
and the `secular' theology of the Houston speech, 1960," Journal
of Church & State 39, no. 2(1997): 307.
� Thomas Borstelmann. "`Hedging Our Bets and Buying Time':
John Kennedy and Racial Revolutions in the American South
and South Africa,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 3(2000): 438.
� Ibid. 441.
� Borstelmann, 443-444.
Short Research Papers, Due weeks 3 and 6, 3-5 Pages
This document provides important information to help you write
a great research paper. You must
use the Chicago style for citations and bibliography. See
examples below. You must use credible
academic sources. See information below.
Resources to help you write a great research paper:

5. and under course policies,
Newsletter 1.
the course.
Possible Topic Categories
Please narrow down the topic once you select a category. For
example, instead of Grant as
President, write about corruption in the Grant administration.
The topic selected must be
substantially different than the one you write about in your
short paper. This list is not all inclusive.
1. Grant as President
2. “Jim Crow”
3. Boss Tweed
4. J.P. Morgan
5. The Transcontinental Railroad
6. The Steel Industry

6. 7. J.D. Rockefeller
8. The American Labor Movement
9. The New Immigration
10. Booker T. Washington
11. The Growth of American Cities
12. The Suffrage Movement
13. The Indian Wars
14. The Settlement of the West
15. The Populist Movement
16. William Jennings Bryan
17. The Spanish American War
18. Theodore Roosevelt
19. The Conquest of the Philippines
20. Theodore Roosevelt and the Monroe Doctrine
21. The Building of the Panama Canal
22. The Great White Fleet
23. The Conservation Movement
24. Woodrow Wilson

7. 25. The United States in World War I
26. The Sinking of the Lusitania
27. Wilson’s Fourteen Points
28. Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference
29. The United States and the League of Nations
30. The Roaring Twenties
31. Prohibition
32. Herbert Hoover
33. The Scopes Monkey Trial
34. The Rise of Professional Sports
35. The Stock Market Crash of 1929
36. Interwar U.S. Foreign Policy
37. The Washington Naval Treaty
38. Franklin D. Roosevelt
39. The New Deal
40. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
41. The Bonus March of 1932

8. 42. The America First Movement
43. U.S. Neutrality 1939-1941
44. Lend-Lease
45. America’s Entry into WWII
46. George C. Marshall
47. Any U.S. Military Leader of World War II
48. Individual Battles and Campaigns of World War II
49. The U.S. Army in World War II
50. The U.S. Navy in World War II
51. Allied Grand Strategy in World War II
52. The United States and the Atomic Bomb
53. Women in the Military: World War II
54. The Battle of Midway
55. Douglas MacArthur
56. The Truman Doctrine
57. Post War American Society
58. The Early Days of the Cold War
59. The Civil Rights Movement

9. 60. Martin Luther King
61. The Occupation of Germany
62. The Korean War
63. MacArthur in Japan
64. The Red Scare
65. Senator Joseph McCarthy
66. Eisenhower as President
67. The Sixties
68. John F. Kennedy
69. The Bay of Pigs
70. The Cuban Missile Crisis
71. Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society
72. Any Aspect of the Vietnam War
73. Nixon and Vietnam
74. Nixon and China
75. Watergate
76. The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973

10. 77. Feminism
78. Jimmy Carter as President
79. The Reagan Revolution
80. Arms Control Treaties
81. Reagan and the Soviet Union
82. George Bush and the End of the Cold War
83. Desert Shield/Desert Storm
84. The Impeachment of Bill Clinton
85. The United States in the Post Cold War World
86. The 2000 Presidential Election
87. The Bush Administration
88. The War on Terrorism
89. Immigration in the 1990s
90. Minorities in Contemporary America
91. The Changing American Family
92. The Drug Wars
93. The United States and the Global Economy
94. PAX Americana

11. 95. Contemporary American Foreign Policy
96. The United States Military in the 21st Century
97. U.S. Policy Toward Cuba
98. Operation Iraqi Freedom
99. The War in Afghanistan
100. Kosovo Crisis 1999
101. The Middle East Technology Revolution
Acceptable Academic Research Sources
There have been many questions on what sources are acceptable
for academic referencing.
Below is something I copied from the APUS library. How and
where you access the source is not
important; its academic validity is. Your best bets are books and
journal articles. You
can never cite wikipedia or encyclopedias of any type.
B. Peer-Reviewed/Refereed/Scholarly Journals
Whenever you receive a research assignment in college,

12. instructors normally assume that you
will avoid citing “popular” web sites, magazines and
newspapers. While useful for context and
anecdotes, such resources often lack the rigor needed for
university studies. Similarly, you are
advised to avoid citing Wikipedia. It can be an excellent
launching pad; but, as an encyclopedia,
is considered common knowledge and not to be formally cited.
Instead, your professors expect you to reference and be party to
an established professional
literature. This typically includes monographic book-length
studies, but especially focuses on
articles from peer-reviewed or refereed scholarly journals.
What does “scholarly,” "refereed," or “peer-reviewed” really
mean? Essentially, it implies
academic “quality control"--articles by scholars that meet the
publications standards as vetted by
other scholars in the field. The submission has been inspected
by a publication panel or
individual reviewers, who are experts on the topic (that is, the
author’s professional peers; hence,

13. “peer-reviewed”). Reviewers or "referees" look for proper use
of research methods, significance
of the article’s contribution to the existing literature, and
appropriate scholarly style. As
signified by their publication in a peer-reviewed journal,
accepted materials have earned the
expert stamp of approval.
Online Library Research: But, with so many articles out there,
how do you know if an article has
been peer-reviewed? The Online Library’s article databases can
help. The main suites, Ebsco
and ProQuest, give you the option of limiting your searches to
articles from scholarly journals
Find and check this option below the search box, and your
results will be only expert-approved
articles.
(See: Ebsco example).
Other databases, like PsycARTICLES and Sage Criminology,
automatically search only peer-
reviewed journals. A simple click filters out popular sources
that you can’t use from the

14. appropriate literature. Can’t find the article databases…or
don’t know which are the best to
search for yourtopic? Of course, if you’ve already found an
article that you’d like to use in a
research paper but you’re not sure if it’s popular or scholarly,
there are ways to tell. The table
below lists some of the most obvious clues (but your librarians
will be happy to help you figure it
out as well--e-mail [email protected]!).
SCHOLARLY
Authors’ names, credentials and even addresses are almost
always included (so that interested
researchers can correspond). Authors will be experts in their
fields. Articles are written for
experts (or college students!) in the field (lots of technical
language and/or discipline specific
jargon, statistical analyses, written in a formal tone).
Articles typically report, in great detail, the authors’ own
research findings (and include support
from other research)…these articles will be more than just 1 or
2 pages.

15. Authors always cite their sources throughout the article,
normally in conformance with a Style
Manual, and include list of references at the end.
Articles seldom include photographs, but may include tables or
graphs of data (may seem bland
at a glance).
The journal has very specific guidelines for articles to be
published (often this information can
be found on the journal’s web site), and a rigorous peer-review
process (each article will list
when it was submitted to the reviewers, and when it was
accepted for publication…often several
months apart!).
Chicago Style Format — Common Source Citations
B= Bibliography Format
N= Footnote (bottom of a page) / Endnote (end of the
document) Format
S = Second Usage

16. Book (single author)
B Brown, Joseph L. The Third Wonder of the World. New York,
NY: Vintage Press, 1999.
N 1 Joseph L. Brown, The Third Wonder of the World (New
York, NY: Vintage Press, 1999), 210.
S 2 Brown, 153.
Book (two authors)
B Sampson, Larry M. and Timothy B. Landers. A Review of
Modern Western Conflicts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002.
N 1 Larry M. Sampson and Timothy B. Landers, A Review of
Modern Western Conflicts (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 362.
S 2 Sampson and Landers, 410.
Book (multiple authors)
B Price, Nancy R., Stacey Sanders, Rice Moore, and Julie
Finch. Studies of Women in Combat. Boston and New
York: Pave Press, 1987.

17. N 1 Nancy R. Price, et al., Studies of Women in Combat
(Boston and New York: Pave Press, 1987), 32.
S 2 Price, 188.
Article in a Scholarly Journal
B Johnson, Adam S. “The New Deal in Retrospect.” Political
History 88, no.1 (Spring 1995): 58-70.
N 1 Adam S. Johnson, “The New Deal in Retrospect,” Political
History 88, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 61.
S 2 Johnson, 70.
Article in a Popular Magazine
B Briggs, Andrew M. “The Roots of Transcendentalism and
Walden Pond.” Transcendentalism Today, May 2003, 34-
42.
N 1 Andrew M. Briggs, “The Roots of Transcendentalism and
Walden Pond,” Transcendentalism Today, May 2003,
40.
S 2 Briggs, 37.
Article in a Newspaper
B Robbins, Carol L. “Time Stands Still: Revisiting Appomattox
Court House.” Richmond Times, 3 June 2009, A8.
N 1 Carol L. Robbins, “Time Stands Still: Revisiting

18. Appomattox Court House,” Richmond Times, 3 June 2009, A8.
S 2 Robbins.
Web Site
B Baring, Janey. “History and Eastern Asian History.” 5
February 2007. http://www.uoc.edu/Asia/culturalstudies.htm
(accessed 3 March 2009).
N 1 Janey Baring, “History and Eastern Asian History” (5
February 2007) http://www.uoc.edu/Asia/culturalstudies.htm
(accessed 3 March 2009).
S 2 Baring.
Web Site (no author)
B “Higgins Boats.” 3 November 1999.
http://www.wwtwostudies.com/boats/higgins.htm (accessed 2
June 1001).
N 1 “Higgins Boats,” (3 November 1999)
http://www.wwtwostudies.com/boats/higgins.htm (accessed 2
June 1001).
S 2 “Higgins Boats.”
Discussion Board Post
B Smith, Darryl. “End of the Cold War.” Thu Jun 10 01:49:50
2010.
N 1 Darryl Smith, “End of the Cold War,” Thu Jun 10 01:49:50
2010.
S 2 Smith.
THERE ARE MANY MORE EXAMPLES/DETAILS ABOUT

19. THE
CHICAGO STYLE IN THE APUS LIBRARY.