Tue 6/8 @ noon
Robert F. Kennedy was a much more complicated figure than many people’s rosy revisionist ideas make him out to be. But his commitment to civil rights was unquestioned, then and now. He was appointed to be attorney general by his brother John F. Kennedy (and unlike Ivanka Trump, was actually qualified for the job) and served under Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson as well, until he decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1964.
During that time, he reactivated a civil rights department that was essentially dormant under President Dwight Eisenhower. He expanded its staff and took on southern segregationist governors such as Ross Barnett (Mississippi) and George Wallace (Alabama), civic leaders and local officials who were digging their heels in to oppose the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education decision, which mandated integrated schools, while they also worked to ensure that Black people could not vote.
While this material has been much covered, it can always use more attention, especially as we now face a wave of voter suppression measures with the same intention as those in place back then. There’s not a lot of daylight between George Wallace and current Texas Governor Greg Abbott as far as their goals go. Civil rights historian Patricia Sullivan’s new book Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White looks at Kennedy’s legal battles on behalf of black Americans.
Dr. Sullivan, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, will talk about her research on Kennedy’s work to further civil rights in a free, live streamed program hosted by the City Club of Cleveland, where Kennedy delivered his famous Mindless Menace of Violence speech that day after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The program will be facilitated by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
Go here to listen to the forum. Questions can be tweeted to @TheCityClub or texted to 330.541.5794.
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