Source: John F. Kennedy, “Radio and Television Report to the American People on Civil Rights,” June 11, 1963, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, White House Audio Collections, 1961–1963, WH-194-001. Available online from Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://goo.gl/2Pb6gt;  Originally Broadcast on CBS Reports: Filibuster—Birth Struggle of a Law, March 18, 1964. Available at The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom, Library of Congress, https://goo.gl/HoS9YC.

President John F. Kennedy, Report to the American People on Civil Rights, June 11, 1963

Good evening, my fellow citizens:

This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened to have been born Negro.

That they were admitted peacefully on the campus is due in good measure to the conduct of the students of the University of Alabama, who met their responsibilities in a constructive way.

I hope that every American, regardless of where he lives, will stop and examine his conscience about this and other related incidents. This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.

Today we are committed to a worldwide struggle to promote and protect the rights of all who wish to be free. And when Americans are sent to Vietnam or West Berlin, we do not ask for whites only. It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops.

It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street, and it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.

It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color. In short, every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. But this is not the case.

The Negro baby born in America today, regardless of the section of the Nation in which he is born, has about one-half as much chance of completing high school as a white baby born in the same place on the same day, one-third as much chance of completing college, one-third as much chance of becoming a professional man, twice as much chance of becoming unemployed, about one-seventh as much chance of earning $10,000 a year, a life expectancy which is 7 years shorter, and the prospects of earning only half as much.

This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right.

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 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 a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class or cast 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.

The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South, where legal remedies are not at hand. Redress is sought in the streets, in demonstrations, parades, and protests which create tensions and threaten violence and threaten lives.

We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and as a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your State and local legislative body and, above all, in all of our daily lives. . . .

Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law. The Federal judiciary has upheld that proposition in a series of forthright cases. The executive branch has adopted that proposition in the conduct of its affairs, including the employment of Federal personnel, the use of Federal facilities, and the sale of federally financed housing.

But there are other necessary measures which only the Congress can provide, and they must be provided at this session. The old code of equity law under which we live commands for every wrong a remedy, but in too many communities, in too many parts of the country, wrongs are inflicted on Negro citizens and there are no remedies at law. Unless the Congress acts, their only remedy is in the street.

I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public—hotels, restaurants, theaters, retail stores, and similar establishments.

This seems to me to be an elementary right. Its denial is an arbitrary indignity that no American in 1963 should have to endure, but many do. . . .

I am also asking Congress to authorize the Federal Government to participate more fully in lawsuits designed to end segregation in public education. We have succeeded in persuading many districts to desegregate voluntarily. Dozens have admitted Negroes without violence. Today a Negro is attending a state-supported institution in every one of our 50 States, but the pace is very slow. . . .

Other features will be also requested, including greater protection for the right to vote. But legislation, I repeat, cannot solve this problem alone. It must be solved in the homes of every American in every community across our country.

In this respect, I want to pay tribute to those citizens North and South who have been working in their communities to make life better for all. They are acting not out of a sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency.

Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world, they are meeting freedom’s challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor and their courage.

My fellow Americans, this is a problem which faces us all—in every city of the North as well as the South. Today there are Negroes unemployed, two or three times as many compared to whites, inadequate in education, moving into the large cities, unable to find work, young people particularly out of work without hope, denied equal rights, denied the opportunity to eat at a restaurant or lunch counter or go to a movie theater, denied the right to a decent education, denied almost today the right to attend a state university even though qualified. It seems to me that these are matters which concern us all, not merely Presidents or Congressmen or Governors, but every citizen of the United States.

This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents. . . .

Therefore, I am asking for your help in making it easier for us to move ahead and to provide the kind of equality of treatment which we would want ourselves; to give a chance for every child to be educated to the limit of his talents.

As I have said before, not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or an equal motivation, but they should have the equal right to develop their talent and their ability and their motivation, to make something of themselves.

We have a right to expect that the Negro community will be responsible, will uphold the law, but they have a right to expect that the law will be fair, that the Constitution will be color blind, as Justice Harlan said at the turn of the century.^[1]

This is what we are talking about and this is a matter which concerns this country and what it stands for, and in meeting it I ask the support of all our citizens.

Thank you very much.

Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-MN) and Senator Strom Thurmond (D–SC), Debate on the Civil Rights Act, March 18, 1964^[2]

Senator Hubert Humphry:

We simply have to face up to this question: Are we as a nation now ready to guarantee equal protection of the laws as declared in our Constitution to every American regardless of his race, his color, or his creed? The time has arrived for this nation to create a framework of law in which we can resolve our problems honorably and peacefully. Each American knows that the promises of freedom and equal treatment found in the Constitution and the laws of this country are not being fulfilled for millions of our Negro citizens and for some other minority groups. Deep in our heart we know, we know that such denials of civil rights, which we have heard about, which we have witnessed, are still taking place today. And we know that as long as freedom and equality is denied to anyone, it in a sense weakens all of us. There is indisputable evidence that fellow Americans who happen to be Negro have been denied the right to vote in a flagrant fashion. And we know that fellow Americans who happen to be Negro have been denied equal access to places of public accommodation, denied in their travels the chance for a place to rest and to eat and to relax. We know that one decade after the Supreme Court’s decision declaring school segregation to be unconstitutional that less than two percent of the Southern school districts are desegregated. And we know that Negroes do not enjoy equal employment opportunities. Frequently, they are the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Now the time has come for us to correct these evils, and the civil rights bill before the Senate is designed for that purpose. It is moderate, it is reasonable, it is well designed. It was passed by the House 290 to 130. It is bi-partisan, and I think it will help give us the means to help secure, for example, the right to vote for all of our people, and it will give us the means to make possible the admittance to school rooms of children regardless of their race. And it will make sure that no American will have to suffer the indignity of being refused service at a public place. This passage of the civil rights bill, to me, is one of the great moral challenges of our time. This is not a partisan issue, this is not a sectional issue, this is, in essence, a national issue, and it is a moral issue. And it must be won by the American people.

Senator Strom Thurmond:

Mr. Sevareid^[3] and my colleague, Senator Humphry: This bill, in order to bestow preferential rights on a favored few, who vote in block, would sacrifice the Constitutional rights of every citizen, and would concentrate in the national government arbitrary powers, unchained by laws, to suppress the liberty of all. This bill makes a shambles of Constitutional guarantees and the Bill of Rights. It permits a man to be jailed and fined without a jury trial. It empowers the national government to tell each citizen who must be allowed to enter upon and use his property without any compensation or due process of law as guaranteed by the Constitution. This bill would take away the rights of individuals and give to government the power to decide who is to be hired, fired and promoted in private businesses. This bill would take away the right of individuals and give to government the power to abolish the seniority rule in labor unions and in apprenticeship programs. This bill would abandon the principle of a government of laws in favor of a government of men. It would give the power in government to government bureaucrats to decide what is discrimination. This bill would open wide the door for political favoritism with federal funds. It would vest the power in various bureaucrats to give or withhold grants, loans, and contracts on the basis of who, in the bureaucrats’ discretion, is guilty of the undefined crime of discrimination. It is because of these and other radical departures from our Constitutional system that the attempt is being made to railroad this bill through Congress without following normal procedures.^[4] It was only after lawless riots and demonstrations sprang up all over the country that the administration, after two years in office, sent this bill to Congress where it has been made even worse. This bill is intended to appease those waging a vicious campaign of civil disobedience. The leaders of the demonstrations have already stated that passage of the bill will not stop the mobs. Submitting to intimidation will only encourage further mob violence to gain preferential treatment. The issue is whether the Senate will pay the high cost of sacrificing a precious portion of each and every individual’s Constitutional rights in a vain effort to satisfy the demands of the mob. The choice is between law and anarchy. What shall rule these United States: the Constitution or the mob?