As a kid, I knew that Kennedy favored Civil Rights. I did not know he did precious little to help the movement early in his legislative career, and was a shamefully ineffective Congressman starting out. He was truly thrust into his role as guardian of the Civil Rights Movement during the last two years of his presidency, by the atrocities taking place throughout the South.
As a kid in Memphis, I was terrified by the local news broadcasts about what as happening in 90 miles away in Oxford, MS and a little farther away in Alabama. Now I know that was the last battle of the Civil War.
As a kid, I knew Kennedy was a war hero, but I didn’t know his father pulled strings to get him INTO the Navy, so that he could have a war record as a politician.
The JFK retrospectives have reminded me of some things I had forgotten and amplified some things I never knew as a kid. As a kid I knew as much as I could about politics, after I was terrorized by the Cuban Missile Crisis in the Autumn of 1962. At the time I certainly didn’t fully understand what was going on – few adults did. But I knew the world was in great danger and we could all die at any minute. That was a heady and scary thought for a 7 year-old to process.
When I was 8 one of my best friends was Jack Kuykentall, whose father Dan Kuykendall had unsuccessfully run for our local congressional seat the year before, and would later serve our district as a brazenly racist man. Pere Kuykendall passed along his politics and racial sentiments to his children. A day or so before Kennedy was killed, Jack was parroting his dad’s lines about how awful he was.
November 22, 1963 was a cold, rainy day in Memphis, but I had big social plans. It was my sister Melinda’s 3rd birthday and the 8th birthday of one of my best friends to this day, Chip Namias. My sister’s afternoon party went off without a hitch with all the young mommies present, but in a state of shock. Poor Chip was left in an empty ballroom at the prestigious Summitt Club, with his mom and a bunch of waiters glued to the TV screen. Happy F**** Birthday kid!
While walking back to class after a water and bathroom break around 1:30 I noticed there was a TV in a 5th grade classroom. When I saw most of the kids were not back from the break and the teacher wasn’t in the room, I walked back to TV room and saw Jack with his eyes GLUED to the screen. “What’s going on?” I asked. “Kennedy’s dead,” he whispered in his state of juvenile shock. To his credit, he never again trashed Kennedy that I knew of, though is father worked ardently against all of Kennedy and LBJ’s legislative agenda. Jack Kuykendall was a brazen racist and not a nice man.
Most of the TV tributes have been great. However, forgive me if I find some of these to be tiresome. Why spend time and ink speculating, “If he had lived?” I don’t think it would have been much different because LBJ was probably more effective in prosecuting JFK’s legislative agenda as President. A striking thing for me is to see the re-broadcasts of the news reports and bulletins, which were embedded into my juvenile hard drive and forever remain. Watching these, I flashback to my conceptual understanding and fears from that scary period. My sense of history is much greater now and I place these events into a historical context of what happened before and next, and why?
As a kid, I knew Kennedy was a war hero, but I didn’t know his father pulled strings to get him INTO the Navy, so that he could have a war record as a politician.
As a kid, I knew Kennedy had back issues and had also swam at Harvard. Turns out his back issues would test the limits of pain tolerance for anybody – watching him squirm on a chase lounge to find a way to stand up reminded me of my worst back spasms. And he dealt with them all the time.
As a kid, I knew Jackie was beautiful and I watched her specials on this history of the White House. She was a brilliant woman and a great historian, with a compulsive eye for detail, to have JFK’s funeral follow the Lincoln model as much as possible. The woman knew she was crafting history, while she was in the tragic midst of it.
As a kid, I knew Kennedy had “special” friendships with Marilyn Monroe, among others. I remember watching her sing at his Madison Square Garden birthday party. But I didn’t know he was a serial adulterer right under Jackie’s nose in the early part of their marriage. Later he became more discreet.
As a kid, I was terrified by the Cuban Missile Crisis – now I better understand why and what was really going on when Khrushchev was banging his shoe on the UN podium.
As a kid in Memphis, I was terrified by the local news broadcasts about what as happening in 90 miles away in Oxford, MS and a little farther away in Alabama. Now I know that was the last battle of the Civil War. One of the most compelling things I’ve ever heard is the phone argument between Kennedy and Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett during the Ole Miss crisis. Halftime of the 1962 Ole Miss-Alabama game was a scene right out of Germany or Poland in the late 1930’s with Barnett stirring the unwashed masses into a hateful frenzy.
As a kid, I knew that Kennedy favored Civil Rights. I did not know he did precious little to help the movement early in his legislative career, and was a shamefully ineffective Congressman starting out. He was truly thrust into his role as guardian of the Civil Rights Movement during the last two years of his presidency, by the atrocities taking place throughout the South. And they don’t even mention Orangeburg, SC, which was just as bad as Oxford. Many US Marshalls and citizens were killed and written off as collateral damage to the times.
If it was on TV in the 60’s I saw it and I remember it. If I knew less, I’d be a happier man.
H. Scott Prosterman