The events of 55 years ago today, as recounted in The New Yorker:
Even the President’s speech, vital and often eloquent though it was, sometimes seemed detached from the crisis. That “we are confronted primarily with a moral issue” is precisely what some Negroes have been urging Mr. Kennedy to say ever since his inauguration, and what, from the time of the Supreme Court decision in 1954, they vainly asked President Eisenhower to say. But then, as President Kennedy noted, the issue “is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution,” and “the heart o
Source: The Day J.F.K. Set the Civil Rights Act in Motion | The New Yorker