Was John F. Kennedy Racist

Answer 1

John F. Kennedy was, most emphatically, not a racist. He was born and raised a New England Brahman and, as such, was quite naive about the extent and virulence of racism throughout the American South and in most major cities of the North. He never really knew many black persons. This naivete accounted for his detachment from the issue throughout much of his congressional career. But this is not racism and he eventually changed for the better.

He did not, as another reviewer has claimed, vote against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. After some compromises worked out by Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson with Southern Democrats, Kennedy voted for the bill in its final form. During his bid for the presidency, when Kennedy learned of the Reverend Martin Luther King's arrest in Georgia, he intervened, with his brother Robert's help, to secure King's release and safe return to his family. When three years later, Dr. King was again arrested in Alabama, President Kennedy again intervened to ensure his safety and release. On both occasions, Kennedy called Coretta Scott King directly to console and reassure her. The 1960 episode helped coalesce black support for him in the 1960 election.

When Kennedy took office, he and his brother were skeptical of their ability to pass meaningful civil rights legislation. Instead, they relied on executive authority to integrate public interstate transportation and to prevent discrimination in federally-funded housing. They also appointed an unprecedented number of blacks to high-level positions in the administration. Attorney General Robert Kennedy championed voting rights for blacks by initiating five times as many law suits in courts throughout the South than did the Eisenhower Justice Department. They made significant appointments of blacks to the judiciary, including Thurgood Marshall, essentially paving the way for his elevation by President Johnson to the Supreme Court a few years later.

Under Kennedy, the Civil Rights Commission, created by the 1957 Civil Rights Act, was strengthened and the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity was created. These resulted in the first affirmative action programs being implemented to award federal contracts to minority-owned businesses. In upholding the Supreme Court's decision, in Brown vs. Board of Education, Kennedy used his executive authority to enforce the lawful admission of black students into the Universities of Mississippi and Alabama.

When the brave leaders and followers of the civil rights movement persevered in the face of racist violence, the need for action at the federal level became imperative and the Kennedys finally responded by formally asking of the congress its approval of the most comprehensive civil rights legislation since the 14th amendment was approved by congress in 1866 for ratification by the states. This became the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed after his death. Concurrent with drafting legislation, President Kennedy met with hundreds of business and institutional leaders at the White House, in the summer and fall of 1963, to press for voluntary desegregation of facilities throughout the United States. The Kennedys opposed the idea of the March on Washington, thinking that it would actually harm the chances for passage of the Civil rights bill. However, once it was set in motion, they did everything they could, logistically, to help it succeed peaceably.

The unfortunate and dishonorable treatment of Dr. King, in terms of the Kennedys' acquiescence in the FBI's wiretapping him in late 1963, is less a personal reflection of an animosity and distrust of Dr. King than of their fear of reprisal by J. Edgar Hoover if they had not acquiesced. The Kennedy's cannot, however, be held responsible for the extremes to which the FBI went on the pretext of this limited license and others.

In the final analysis, John. F. Kennedy made the strongest stance against racial discrimination of any President since Ulysses S. Grant during Reconstruction. That his successor did an even more extraordinary job of dismantling the institutions of racial discrimination, does not serve to qualify or minimize Kennedy's record so much as to eclipse it to an extent.

In Short: no!!!

Answer 2

No he was not. His mother was of Italian and Irish extraction and his father was of English and Irish extraction.

Answer 3

Of course not! He defended the African Americans; it's just that he held off on it because he had bigger issues to deal with.