130. Memorandum From the Director of the United States Information Agency (Murrow) to President Kennedy1
SUBJECT
- Reactions to Your June 11 Civil Rights Speech
Your speech of Tuesday2 has been well reported in the foreign press, although in a number of places the Evers murder3 drew the bigger headlines. Free world editorial comment received to date has been almost unanimously favorable.
Moscow Radio, which has paid little attention to either your Honolulu speech4 or the Tuesday address, reached a peak of invective Thursday characteristic of the Stalin era.
[Page 337]“Bands of racists are intensifying armed terror,” Moscow Radio said in an English language broadcast yesterday. “They are killing Negro leaders and marching stormtroop detachments through the streets.
“Many of the methods used by U.S. Fascists and racists resemble those of Hitler’s time. The use of dogs against people was borrowed from Nazi concentration camp practice . . . Furthermore, what are basically concentration camps of the Buchenwald and Auschwitz pattern have been set up with barbed wire cordons, starvation rations, and brutal beatings to drive the inmates to suicide. The fascist swastika can be seen more and more clearly against the background of the burning crosses of racism.
“Events in the United States are a serious accusation against the much advertised American way of life, the so-called Free World, and the entire system of capitalism. This system engenders war and slavery, oppression and deception, and baseness and murder. Such a system has no future.”
The Peking press has carried those portions of the speech which support its allegations of “. . . rabid persecution of the Negroes by the racists and Kennedy’s admission of the surging discontent of the American Negro people.”
Radio Havana reported the speech without comment, stressing the passages having to do with discontent, frustration, and discord.
Available reaction from other areas:
Africa
Prominent coverage is reported from six countries—Algeria, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Mali, and Tunisia—and favorable editorial comment from three of them. The Morning Post of Nigeria said you “will go down in history as one of the greatest champions of the rights of man that ever lived.” La Republique of Oran said your position is categoric and courageous and “it is certain that segregation will be vanquished finally.” The Minister of Commerce in Mali telephoned Ambassador Handley to say that the speech had “touched the heart of all Africans” and to express his support for what he called the “valiant struggle” for the rights of Negro Americans. “Vive Kennedy,” he concluded.
Western Europe
Many editorials viewed the situation as grave. Copenhagen’s Information termed it “the most serious crisis since the depression.” The London Daily Telegraph wrote, “The skies are dark indeed. The rest of the world can only pray with sympathy and some confidence that decent Americans of all colors will again prevail . . . over the blind [Page 338] forces of hatred, violence, unreason and fear which swirl around them.” Hopes were expressed by some papers that the speech may have served to head off the rise of extremism among both Negroes and whites. Generally, editorialists felt the speech was both courageous and a persuasive appeal to the consciences of the American people.
Latin America
The speech was reported extensively, and favorable editorial comment has appeared in Brazil, Mexico and Chile. Papers in Rio de Janeiro of all political colorations praised your action in the Alabama University confrontation.5 La Nacion of Santiago, Chile, wrote that “President Kennedy has shown himself to be a man who knows how to link skillfully the imperatives of the epoch with the generous impulses of his spirit and the right inclination of his conscience.”
Far East
Laudatory editorials have been reported from Japan, Singapore, Manila and Malaya. The Manila Times compared the death of Evers with the Buddhist suicide in Saigon6 and described your efforts to abolish the color bar as a humanitarian goal. A Singapore Chinese-language daily described you as “unquestionably the most enlightened President of the United States since Lincoln,” and contrasted your actions with those of President Diem. The Malayan Straits Times said your reaffirmation of equal rights “cannot fail to impress the peoples of Afro-Asia who everywhere are following the integration campaign with intense interest.”
Near East
There has been extensive media coverage, but only one editorial has been reported to date—an Indian daily which asserted that “U.S. citizens will have nothing to do with apartheid,” adding that the road to full equality in the South may be a long and painful one.
- Source: Kennedy Library, President’s Office Files, Departments and Agencies Series, Box 91, USIA 4/63–6/63. No classification marking. Another copy is ibid., National Security Files, Subjects Series, Box 295A, Civil Rights 6/11/63–6/14/63.↩
- Kennedy’s June 11 radio and television address on civil rights was delivered from the Oval Office at 8 p.m. In this address, Kennedy discussed the effort to desegregate the University of Alabama, as well as the impact discrimination had on domestic issues, such as education and public safety, and on U.S. foreign policy and international relations. He called on Congress to enact civil rights legislation. For the text, see Public Papers: Kennedy, 1963, pp. 468–471.↩
- African-American civil rights activist Medgar W. Evers was shot and killed in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12.↩
- For the text of Kennedy’s June 9 address in Honolulu before the United States Conference of Mayors, see Public Papers: Kennedy, 1963, pp. 454–459.↩
- Reference is to the June 11 incident at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in which Governor George Wallace attempted to block the enrollment of two African-American students at the University. Wallace only relented when President Kennedy deputized the Alabama State National Guard to enforce orders by the U.S. Federal courts to permit the enrollment of these students. (Claude Sitton, “Governor Leaves: But Fulfills Promises to Stand in Door and to Avoid Violence,” The New York Times, June 12, 1963, p. 1)↩
- Buddhist monk Quang Duc set himself on fire in Saigon in protest of the RVN’s policies, especially those related to Buddhists. See Foreign Relations, 1961–1963, vol. III, Vietnam, January–August 1963, Document 163.↩
- Sorensen signed “Tom Sorensen, for” above Murrow’s typed signature.↩