The Kennedy Justice Department faced challenges with no modern
precedent: the Southern defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision
in Brown v. Board of Education, the rise of non-violent protests
on a massive scale, and the Administration’s desire to break a
racial caste system that it did not fully understand.
Reconstruction provided a precedent for federal action, but the
President was, to some extent, a captive of the myth that
federal intervention had been a colossal failure, leading only
to misrule and racial division. Much has been written about
President Kennedy’s mixed record on civil rights - his
philosophical commitment to equality, his ambiguous votes on
civil rights bills as a Senator, his letter regarding Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s prison term in Georgia, his decision not to
make civil rights a priority at the beginning of his presidency,
his appointment of racist federal judges in the South, his
proposal of comprehensive civil rights legislation after two and
a half years as President, and so on