November 18, 2021
About This Episode:
While President Kennedy didn’t live long enough to see Congress pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his brother Robert would pick up where JFK left off. Historian Patricia Sullivan discusses both Kennedys roles during the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The episode also takes a look at how President Kennedy appointed NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall to the federal bench. Marshall would later be the first African American appointed to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
View the transcript for this episode.
What We Talked About:
- Watch President Kennedy's Televised Address to the Nation on Civil Rights (June 11, 1963)
- Read blog post “The Long Siege”: Thurgood Marshall’s Other Court Nomination Battle
- Read Thurgood Marshall's oral history
- Read or listen to John Seigenthaler's oral history
- Read or listen to Louis E. Martin's oral history
- Watch a 2015 Kennedy Library Forum on Thurgood Marshall
- View letters to President Kennedy on Thurgood Marshall
- View information on Patricia Sullivan's book - Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White
- Watch a 2021 Kennedy Library Forum with Patricia Sullivan on her book