The Bystander; John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality
Phil Goodman (author photograph) New York: Basic Books, 2006. First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. viii, 545, [7] pages. Abbreviations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Publisher's ephemera laid in. DJ has slight wear and soiling. Nick Bryant was born in Bristol, England, and works in Australia for the BBC as one of its most trusted and senior foreign correspondents. He is a regular contributor to several Australian magazines and newspapers, including The Australian, The Spectator, The Monthly and The Australian Literary Review. Nick studied history at Cambridge and has a doctorate in American politics from Oxford. Nick Bryant has recently been appointed as a BBC South Asia correspondent based in Delhi. Prior to this he was the BBC Washington correspondent from 1999. He joined the BBC news trainee scheme in 1994 after writing for the Independent, the Daily Mail and the Times newspapers. A year later Nick was a reporter on BBC Radio Five Live and reported from various countries on stories such as the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Derived from a Kirkus review: JFK turns out to have been indifferent to the question of civil rights for black Americans. Kennedy was not so much bigoted as he was opportunistic; he needed the Southern Democrats in order to advance his political ambitions, and while in Congress he played to them so much that throughout the ’50s he was praised in Deep South newspapers as an ally of segregation. The very suggestion seems anathema, but it certainly explains Kennedy’s actions in helping denature the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Shocking, too, is Kennedy’s alliance with white-supremacist politician John Patterson. Kennedy admired Martin Luther King Jr., but mostly for his rhetorical skills; King, in turn, thought Kennedy not a bad man but in need of much guidance. The Birmingham strike of 1963, with Sheriff Bull Connor’s setting attack dogs on black demonstrators, finally turned Kennedy. But before Connor did so, only four percent of Americans thought civil rights was the country’s most urgent issue, while 52 percent thought so afterward. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: John F. Kennedy, Civil Rights, African-Americans, Ross Barnett, Segregation, Chester Bowles, Bull Connor, James Farmer, Freedom Riders, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Burke Marshall, Louis Martin, NAACP, Richard
ISBN: 9780465008261
[Book #74704]
Price: $37.50