We were visiting and elderly family friend in another community the day President John Kennedy was shot in November of 1963. The adult conversation was boring so I slipped away with my younger brother to see kids we knew who lived by. On arrival one of them told us, wide-eyed, that the president had been shot and we hurried back to let our parents and host know. The black and white television was warmed up and I was introduced, as a nine-year-old, to a world in mourning. I recall the chaos of the next few days as assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was murdered and speculation began about accomplices in this heinous act. Then the state funeral with John Jr. saluting his departed father.
There was also the footage of Lyndon Baines Johnson being hastily sworn in as president on Air Force One. I had forgotten that a traumatized Jackie Kennedy was at his side.
What occurred to me in my recollections of this week is that out of this tragedy came Johnson's initiative which was unofficially named the War on Poverty. It was included in his State of the Union Address less than two months after Kennedy's death. The program was intended to improve education and healthcare in the United States and therefore reduce poverty. But The War on Poverty coincided with another war, in Vietnam, and Martin Luther King became a critic of the amount of money spent on that foreign conflict at the expense of battling inequality at home. In his speech on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in New City, King connected the two:
There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.
Where am I going with this? Ah, if I only knew! It is curious what filters back to the surface during anniversaries of life-changing events. And where history takes us, often by accident rather than design. For all the horrors of Vietnam, Johnson's initiative seems compassionate and almost -- dare we say it --socialist. Little wonder it isn't remembered kindly.
Do you remember the events of this tumultuous time? Any of your own recollections? Comments on the era?
It is always a shame that politicians don't listen to the needs and cries of protest of the people who elected them.... wars and military expenditures seem to take precedence over home needs every time
ReplyDeleteI wasn't around at the time, but have enjoyed learning about this time and the players who shaped it. The "what ifs" are enormous and speculative, but one thing is for certain: if LBJ had reduced American influence in Vietnam and withdrawn it sooner, his "Great Society" program (including the poverty piece) would have had a fighting chance.
ReplyDeleteAs the war wore on, more and more American treasure began siphoning away to fuel the conflict and its rising costs. Such a shame, really, because if you look at the scope of Johnson's political ambitions and the immense skill he brought to the table as a deal maker ... there was a very real chance he could have gone done as one of the greatest American presidents in terms of social impact.
As for JFK ... what a loss. In recent years, people have lost sight of what an asset he was to his country, and what an inspriation he was to an entire generation of Americans. He was an imperfect person, yes, but in the final analysis he gave more for his country than he took from it.
(Along the lines of giving to one's country, consider this cool fact about the young millionaire who became president: from the time he was elected to the House in 1946, through to his Senate years and his presidency, John F. Kennedy donated every single one of his government pay cheques to charity.)
ReplyDeleteJFK remains enigmatic to me. The PBS American Experience on his life was very well presented. I had heard elsewhere that just before the Cuban embargo went into effect, JFK aids were sent out to purchase all the Cuban cigars they could find. That story, along with the reported notions of his hawkish stance against communism (shared by his brother) and his views that the civil rights initiatives were a nuisance to his foreign policy leave me conflicted.
ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that LBJ got the poverty and civil rights legislation through that Kennedy didn't (perhaps because he died too soon). It was also interesting to see Stephen Lewis' interview with Steve Paiken on TVO last week, recounting a debate with JFK at Hart House U of T in 1957. Lewis didn't seem enamoured or viewed him as a progressive voice.
Nevertheless, the tragedy of his assassination remains.