Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White
By Patricia Sullivan
Belknap. 515 pp. $ 39.95
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Robert Kennedy plays a supporting role in most of the reports about the turbulent 1960s. He was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy. His work as attorney general in the Kennedy administration is believed to support the president’s agenda. His 1968 election campaign for the presidency is often formulated as a promise to continue the Kennedy legacy. Even his violent death that year is typically mentioned as one of a trio, overshadowed by his brother’s murder and the aura of conspiracy that surrounds him, and the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., with its profound repercussions on the world Racial Relations and Impact on the Civil Rights Movement.
In Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White, Patricia Sullivan corrects this and puts Robert Kennedy at the center of the national struggle for racial justice. It offers a moving and insightful account of a life in the public service that is full of ambition and grave misjudgments, but is more than redeemed by a sincere, powerful and enduring commitment to social justice. Kennedy was a political insider who became a sharp critic of the status quo; a privileged son who deeply sympathized with the least fortunate. Sullivan describes how Kennedy went from an idealistic but naive young man to a passionate and demanding advocate of racial justice. At the beginning of the book, Kennedy is shocked and confused when a civil rights activist says he would not willingly defend his country during wartime. Towards the end, Kennedy berated white college students who applied for a postponement of drafting for themselves but were indifferent to the plight of the black soldiers who had taken their places on the front lines.
Sullivan reminds us that many civil rights activists were initially skeptical of Kennedy. Some never forgive him for accepting a position on the staff of the Senate Standing Subcommittee on Investigations, which is headed by the Red Senator for Incitement, Joseph McCarthy. Kennedy later admitted that the job for McCarthy was “wrong”.
Sullivan recounts a notable meeting in 1963 when Kennedy met essayist and novelist James Baldwin, actress Lena Horne, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, singer Harry Belafonte, sociologist Kenneth Clark, and a member of Congress on Racial Equality Jerome Smith, had been a guest. Kennedy did not impress the group: At one point, Hansberry complained that “You and your brother are the best that white America has to offer. If you are insensitive, there is no alternative to the streets and the chaos. ”Later, Baldwin, along with other progressives like Paul Newman and Gore Vidal, supported Kennedy’s Republican rival, Kenneth Keating, in the 1964 Senate election.
Kennedy explored the violence related to the civil rights struggle in Jim Crow South and worked to understand the characteristic humiliations and hardships of black life in northern cities. As attorney general, he developed the Kennedy White House’s positions on civil rights and the nation’s response to the unruliness of southern politicians anxious to uphold racial segregation. His efforts shaped and helped make civil rights legislation into law of the 1960s. He was a powerful advocate of racial justice, both in office and in campaigning, when he ran for senator and later for president. After the Watts Uprising in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson compared black “looters” to “the night riders of the Ku Klux Klan,” Kennedy insisted that “just saying ‘obey the law’ won’t work. … We still have a long way to go before the law means the same to a Negro as it does to us. “
Kennedy became a trusted ally of the civil rights movement and one of the most popular and effective politicians of his day. Sullivan notes that civil rights activist (and later Congressman) John Lewis noted that after King was assassinated, “all the loyalty I have received from Dr. King had left, transferred to Bobby Kennedy. ”Rather than flattering bigots, Kennedy insisted that black lives matter. He urged the nation “to reject the vanity of our false distinctions among people. The future of our own children cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. ”He chastised and often alienated white voters who opposed social programs and civil rights. Today campaign strategists would view such language as political suicide. But despite – or perhaps because of – this moral courage, Kennedy was on the verge of winning the Democratic nomination and the presidency when he was fatally shot in Los Angeles in 1968.
Justice Rising ends on a plaintive note inviting us to wonder what could have happened if Kennedy had survived to beat Richard Nixon, whose punitive “Law and Order” policies lead into today’s mass incarceration crisis and abusive policing. In the decades after Kennedy’s death, there were seldom examples of inspirational political leadership overshadowed by an ever-present atmosphere of corruption, cynicism, and incompetence. But in addition to a deep sense of loss, the book also contains a touch of optimism in chronicle of a moment when this nation was almost able to deliver on its promise. Kennedy’s personal growth and political triumphs are a reminder of the transformative potential of American democracy.
Richard Thompson Ford is a law professor at Stanford. His latest book is “Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History”.
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