JFK gave one of the greatest speeches on civil rights ever on 6/11/63

[AP]

You can listen to it and read the transcript here.

I suggest that everyone does.

Here's a part of it:

We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who will represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with respect to Negroes?

Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise. The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or State or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.

[bluestateguy]

1. Same day as the Medgar Evers killing I believe

I suspect that he faced Goldwater the results would have been the same, though perhaps not quite as large of a landslide.

[AP]

2. kick.

This is the speech that made Democrats of all those children of southern Republicans, like Molly Ivings, and thousands more.

Everyone should listen to this.

[Frances]

3. I had just graduated from college and was accustomed

to hearing speeches by my governor, George C. Wallace. When I heard JFK, I contrasted my feelings with the feelings I had when Wallace spoke. Wallace spoke to the worst in me and JFK spoke to the best in me.

[AP]

4. Mario Cuomo says about the death penalty...

...that it appeals to the worst instincts in people, and that he thinks government should strive to appeal to people's best instincts.

It's one of the big differences between liberals and conservatives.

[AP]

5. kick.