Listening In (21 page)

As the tapes rolled into the summer and fall of 1963, it was clear that the administration had crossed the Rubicon. Despite polls that indicated he was losing six or seven white voters for every new black voter he gained, Kennedy was determined to deploy the full powers of the presidency to advance the cause. On the great day of the March on Washington, within moments of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” peroration, the leaders of the Movement were in the White House, talking strategy. Appropriately, A. Philip Randolph was there urging a president forward, using nearly the same words he had used in the Oval Office twenty-three years earlier. But this time, history had caught up to him. These conversations indicate a president committed to a meaningful Civil Rights Bill, although that bill did not become law until 1964, in a very different political environment.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY MEETS WITH MRS. MEDGAR EVERS, HER CHILDREN, REENA AND DARRELL EVERS, AND CHARLES EVERS, MEDGAR EVERS’S BROTHER, ON JUNE 21, 1963, TWO WEEKS AFTER MEDGAR EVERS’S ASSASSINATION BY A WHITE SUPREMACIST, OVAL OFFICE, JUNE 21, 1963

CALL TO GOVERNOR ROSS BARNETT, SEPTEMBER 22, 1962

President Kennedy’s first call to Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi during the crisis over the integration of the University of Mississippi revealed the battle lines. Near the end of the call, Governor Barnett, reverting to the ordinary chitchat of politicians, thanked the President for his interest in poultry. Even in that highly charged environment, the incongruity of that remark seemed to cause Kennedy to pause and suppress a laugh.

JFK:
Hello? Hello, Governor?

BARNETT:
All right. Yes.

JFK:
How are you?

BARNETT:
Is this …?

JFK:
This is the President.

BARNETT:
Oh, well, Mr. President …

JFK:
Well, I’m glad to talk to you, Governor. I am concerned about this situation, down there, as I know …

BARNETT:
Oh, I should say I am concerned about it, Mr. President. It’s a horrible situation.

JFK:
Well now, here’s my problem, Governor.

BARNETT:
Yes.

JFK:
Listen, I didn’t put him in the university, but on the other hand, under the Constitution, I have to carry out the orders of the … carry that order out, and I don’t want to do it in any way that causes difficulty to you or to anyone else. But I’ve got to do it. Now, I’d like to get your help in doing that.

BARNETT:
Yes. Well, have you talked with the attorney general this morning?

JFK:
Yeah. I talked to him, and in fact, I just met with him for about an hour, and we went over the situation.

BARNETT:
Did he and Mr. Watkins
¹
have a talk this morning, Tom Watkins, the lawyer from Jackson, or not?

JFK:
Yes, he talked to Tom Watkins, he told me.

JAMES MEREDITH, ESCORTED BY JOHN DOAR, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI, OCTOBER 1, 1962

BARNETT:
Yes, sir. Well, I don’t know what … I haven’t had a chance to talk to him.

JFK:
Now, just wait, just one minute, because I’ve got the attorney general in the outer office, and I’ll just speak to him.

BARNETT:
All right.

JFK:
Hello, Governor?

BARNETT:
Yes. Hold on.

JFK:
I just talked to the attorney general. Now, he said that he talked to Mr. Watkins.

BARNETT:
Yes.

JFK:
And the problem is as to whether we can get some help in getting this fellow in this week.

BARNETT:
Yes.

JFK:
Now, evidently we couldn’t; the attorney general didn’t feel that he and Mr. Watkins had reached any final agreement on that.

BARNETT:
Well, Mr. President, Mr. Watkins is going to fly up there early tomorrow morning.

JFK:
Right.

BARNETT:
And could you gentlemen talk with him tomorrow? You …

JFK:
Yes, I will have the attorney general talk to him and then …

BARNETT:
Yes.

JFK:
… after they’ve finished talking I’ll talk to the attorney general …

BARNETT:
All right.

JFK:
… on the phone and then if he feels it’s useful for me to meet with him …

BARNETT:
I thought …

JFK:
… I’ll do that.

BARNETT:
I thought they were making some progress. I didn’t know.

JFK:
Well, now …

BARNETT:
I couldn’t say, you know.

JFK:
… he and Mr. Watkins, they can meet tomorrow. Now, the difficulty is, we got two or three problems. In the first place, what can we do to, first place, is the court’s order to you, which I guess is, you’re given until Tuesday. What is your feeling on that?

BARNETT:
Well, I want …

JFK:
What’s your position on that?

BARNETT:
… to think it over, Mr. President.

JFK:
Right.

BARNETT:
It’s a serious matter, now, that I want to think it over a few days. Until Tuesday, anyway.

JFK:
All right. Well now, let me, let me say this.

BARNETT:
You know what I am up against, Mr. President. I took an oath, you know, to abide by the laws of this state.

JFK:
That’s right.

BARNETT:
And our Constitution here and the Constitution of the United States. I’m on the spot here, you know.

JFK:
Well now, you’ve got …

BARNETT:
I’ve taken an oath to do just that, and you know what our laws are with reference to …

JFK:
Yes, I understand that. Well now, we’ve got the …

BARNETT:
… and we have a statute that was enacted a couple of weeks ago stating positively that no one who had been convicted of a crime, or whether the criminal action pending against them, would not be eligible for any of the institutions of higher learning. And that’s our law, and it seemed like the Court of Appeal didn’t pay any attention to that.

JFK:
Well, of course the problem is, Governor, that I’ve got my responsibility, just like you have yours.

BARNETT:
Well, that’s true.

JFK:
And my responsibility, of course, is to the …

BARNETT:
I realize that, and I appreciate that so much.

JFK:
Well now, here’s the thing, Governor. I will, the attorney general can talk to Mr. Watkins tomorrow. What I want, would like to do is to try to work this out in an amicable way. We don’t want a lot of people down there getting hurt.

BARNETT:
Oh, that’s right.

JFK:
And we don’t want to have a, you know, it’s very easy to …

BARNETT:
Mr. President, let me say this. They’re calling me and others from all over the state, wanting to bring a thousand, wanting to bring five hundred, and two hundred, and all such as that, you know. We don’t want such as that.

JFK:
I know. Well, we don’t want to have a lot of people getting hurt or killed down there.

BARNETT:
Why, that’s correct. Mr. President, let me say this. Mr. Watkins is really an A-1 lawyer, an honorable man, has the respect and the confidence of every lawyer in America who knows him. He’s of the law firm of Watkins and Eager. They’ve had an A rating for many, many years, and I believe this, that he can help solve this problem.

JFK:
Well, I will, the attorney general will see Mr. Watkins tomorrow, and then I, after the attorney general and Mr. Watkins are finished then, I will be back in touch with you.

BARNETT:
All right. All right. I’ll appreciate it so much, now, and there, Watkins will leave here in the morning, and I’ll have him to get into touch with the attorney general as to when he can see him tomorrow.

JFK:
Yeah, he’ll see him and …

BARNETT:
Yes, sir.

JFK:
… we will, then you and I’ll be back and talk again.

BARNETT:
All right.

JFK:
Thank you.

BARNETT:
All right.

JFK:
OK.

BARNETT:
I appreciate your interest in our poultry program and all those things.

JFK:
Well, we’re [suppressed laughter] …

BARNETT:
Thank you so much.

JFK:
OK, Governor. Thank you.

BARNETT:
Yes, sir. All right now.

JFK:
Bye now.

BARNETT:
Thank you. Bye.