Kennedy, Johnson, and the Quest for Justice PDF Download

Author: Jonathan Rosenberg
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393051223
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
This volume is composed of transcripts from the secret recordings that Presidents Kennedy and Johnson made of White House meetings and phone conversations about the violent Civil Rights crisis. As fly-on-the-wall history, this book gives an unprecedented grasp of the way the White House affected civil rights history and consequently transformed America.

Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812994930
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
An inspiring look at the historic foreign policy triumph of John F. Kennedy’s presidency—the crusade for world peace that consumed his final year in office—by the New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Civilization, Common Wealth, and The End of Poverty The last great campaign of John F. Kennedy’s life was not the battle for reelection he did not live to wage, but the struggle for a sustainable peace with the Soviet Union. To Move the World recalls the extraordinary days from October 1962 to September 1963, when JFK marshaled the power of oratory and his remarkable political skills to establish more peaceful relations with the Soviet Union and a dramatic slowdown in the proliferation of nuclear arms. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, led their nations during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two superpowers came eyeball to eyeball at the nuclear abyss. This near-death experience shook both leaders deeply. Jeffrey D. Sachs shows how Kennedy emerged from the Missile crisis with the determination and prodigious skills to forge a new and less threatening direction for the world. Together, he and Khrushchev would pull the world away from the nuclear precipice, charting a path for future peacemakers to follow. During his final year in office, Kennedy gave a series of speeches in which he pushed back against the momentum of the Cold War to persuade the world that peace with the Soviets was possible. The oratorical high point came on June 10, 1963, when Kennedy delivered the most important foreign policy speech of the modern presidency. He argued against the prevailing pessimism that viewed humanity as doomed by forces beyond its control. Mankind, argued Kennedy, could bring a new peace into reality through a bold vision combined with concrete and practical measures. Achieving the first of those measures in the summer of 1963, the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, required more than just speechmaking, however. Kennedy had to use his great gifts of persuasion on multiple fronts—with fractious allies, hawkish Republican congressmen, dubious members of his own administration, and the American and world public—to persuade a skeptical world that cooperation between the superpowers was realistic and necessary. Sachs shows how Kennedy campaigned for his vision and opened the eyes of the American people and the world to the possibilities of peace. Featuring the full text of JFK’s speeches from this period, as well as striking photographs, To Move the World gives us a startlingly fresh perspective on Kennedy’s presidency and a model for strong leadership and problem solving in our time. Praise for To Move the World “Rife with lessons for the current administration . . . We cannot know how many more steps might have been taken under Kennedy’s leadership, but To Move the World urges us to continue on the journey.”—Chicago Tribune “The messages in these four speeches seem all too pertinent today.”—Publishers Weekly

Author: Steven Levingston
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316267406
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick "Kennedy and King is an unqualified masterpiece of historical narrative . . . A landmark achievement." -- Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Rosa Parks Kennedy and King traces the emergence of two of the twentieth century's greatest leaders, their powerful impact on each other and on the shape of the civil rights battle between 1960 and 1963. These two men from starkly different worlds profoundly influenced each other's personal development. Kennedy's hesitation on civil rights spurred King to greater acts of courage, and King inspired Kennedy to finally make a moral commitment to equality. As America still grapples with the legacy of slavery and the persistence of discrimination, Kennedy and King is a vital, vivid contribution to the literature of the Civil Rights Movement.

Author: Clay Risen
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1608198251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the single most important piece of legislation passed by Congress in American history. It gave the government sweeping powers to strike down segregation, to enforce fair hiring practices, and to rectify bias in law enforcement and in the courts. The Act so dramatically altered American society that, looking back, it seems preordained-as Everett Dirksen, the GOP leader in the Senate and a key supporter of the bill, said, “no force is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” But there was nothing predestined about the victory: a phalanx of powerful senators, pledging to “fight to the death” for segregation, launched the longest filibuster in American history to defeat it. The journey of the Civil Rights Act was nothing less than a moral and political epic, a sweeping tale of undaunted activism, political courage, historic speeches, backroom deal-making and finally, hand-to-hand legislative combat. The larger-than-life cast of characters ranges from Senate lions like Hubert Humphrey and Strom Thurmond to NAACP lobbyist Charles Mitchell, called “the 101st senator” for his Capitol Hill clout, and industrialist J. Irwin Miller, who helped mobilize a powerful religious coalition for the bill. Looming over all was the figure of Lyndon Johnson, who deployed all his legendary skills to steer the controversial act through Congress. This critical turning point in American history has never been thoroughly explored in a full-length narrative. Now, New York Times editor and acclaimed author Clay Risen delivers the full story, in all its complexity and drama.

Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher:
ISBN: 0195167791
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 2637

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Book Description
Alphabetically-arranged entries from O to T that explores significant events, major persons, organizations, and political and social movements in African-American history from 1896 to the twenty-first-century.

Author: Karin Williamson Pedrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351751069
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Affirmative action is still a reality of the American workplace. How is it that such a controversial Federal program has managed to endure for more than five decades? Inside Affirmative Action addresses this question. Beyond the usual ideological debate and discussions about the effects of affirmative action for either good or ill upon issues of race and gender in employment, this book recounts and analyzes interviews with people who worked in the program within the government including political appointees. The interviews and their historical context provide understanding and insight into the policies and politics of affirmative action and its role in advancing civil rights in America. Recent books published on affirmative action address university admissions, but very few of them ever mention Executive Order 11246 or its enforcement by an agency within the Department of Labor - let alone discuss in depth the profound workplace diversity it has created or the employment opportunities it has generated. This book charts that history through the eyes of those who experienced it. Inside Affirmative Action will be of interest to those who study American race relations, policy, history and law.

Author: Robert Mann
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807147877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
When Freedom Would Triumph recalls the most significant and inspiring legislative battle of the twentieth century -- the two decades of struggle in the halls of Congress that resulted in civil rights for the descendants of American slaves. Robert Mann's comprehensive analysis shows how political leaders in Washington -- Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, and others -- transformed the ardent passion for freedom -- the protests, marches, and creative nonviolence of the civil rights movement -- into concrete progress for justice. A story of heroism and cowardice, statesmanship and political calculation, vision and blindness, When Freedom Would Triumph, an abridged and updated version of Mann's The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights, is a captivating, thought-provoking reminder of the need for more effective government. Mann argues that the passage of civil rights laws is one of the finest examples of what good is possible when political leaders transcend partisan political differences and focus not only on the immediate judgment of the voters, but also on the ultimate judgment of history. As Mann explains, despite the opposition of a powerful, determined band of southern politicians led by Georgia senator Richard Russell, the political environment of the 1950s and 1960s enabled a remarkable amount of compromise and progress in Congress. When Freedom Would Triumph recalls a time when statesmanship was possible and progress was achieved in ways that united the country and appealed to our highest principles, not our basest instincts. Although the era was far from perfect, and its leaders were deeply flawed in many ways, Mann shows that the mid-twentieth century was an age of bipartisan cooperation and willingness to set aside party differences in the pursuit of significant social reform. Such a political stance, Mann argues, is worthy of study and emulation today.

Author: Philip A. Goduti, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786476729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., lived parallel lives. Their leadership helped millions of Americans recover from the assassination of John F. Kennedy and inspired hope for a more peaceful and egalitarian society (which endured well after their own tragic deaths five years later). Their rhetoric addressed the pervasive issues of the era--poverty, war and civil rights--and encouraged young people and the disadvantaged throughout the United States and the world. This book examines the vision they shared through their speeches, writings and public appearances in the years of the cultural groundshift of 1963 through 1968.

Author: Harvard Sitkoff
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429923385
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
In this fast-paced, concise biography, Harvard Sitkoff presents a stunningly relevant and radical Martin Luther King, Jr. whose greatest accomplishments may have been yet to come. King's murder in April 1968 did far more than cut tragically short the life of one of America's most remarkable civil rights leaders. In commemorating King's achievements at the end of his life and ignoring his defeats, too many Americans quickly relegated the civil rights struggle to the past, halting the progression of the activist’s evolving movement. King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop honestly assesses his successes along with his failures—as an organizer in Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida; as a leader of ever more strident activists; and as a husband. Harvard Sitkoff weaves both high and low points together to capture King's lifelong struggle, through disappointment and epiphany, with his own injunction: "Let us be Christian in all our actions." By telling King's life as one on the verge of reaching its fullest fulfillment, Sitkoff powerfully shows where King's faith and activism were leading him—to a direct confrontation with a president over an immoral war and with an America blind to its complicity in economic injustice.

Author: Todd S. Purdum
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 0805096736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
A top Washington journalist recounts the dramatic political battle to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the law that created modern America, on the fiftieth anniversary of its passage It was a turbulent time in America—a time of sit-ins, freedom rides, a March on Washington and a governor standing in the schoolhouse door—when John F. Kennedy sent Congress a bill to bar racial discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations. Countless civil rights measures had died on Capitol Hill in the past. But this one was different because, as one influential senator put it, it was "an idea whose time has come." In a powerful narrative layered with revealing detail, Todd S. Purdum tells the story of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, recreating the legislative maneuvering and the larger-than-life characters who made its passage possible. From the Kennedy brothers to Lyndon Johnson, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Hubert Humphrey and Everett Dirksen, Purdum shows how these all-too-human figures managed, in just over a year, to create a bill that prompted the longest filibuster in the history of the U.S. Senate yet was ultimately adopted with overwhelming bipartisan support. He evokes the high purpose and low dealings that marked the creation of this monumental law, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of new interviews that bring to life this signal achievement in American history. Often hailed as the most important law of the past century, the Civil Rights Act stands as a lesson for our own troubled times about what is possible when patience, bipartisanship, and decency rule the day.