page_title: Report to the American People on Civil Rights
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Report to the American People on Civil Rights / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: With Ole Miss fraternity houses for a backdrop, US Army trucks loaded with steel-helmeted US Marshals roll across the University of Mississippi campus in the wake of the Ole Miss riot of 1962.
context_page_description: The Report to the American People on Civil Rights was a speech on civil rights, delivered on radio and television by United States President John F. Kennedy from the Oval Office on June 11, 1963 in which he proposed legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Expressing civil rights as a moral issue, Kennedy moved past his previous appeals to legality and asserted that the pursuit of racial equality was a just cause. The address signified a shift in his administration's policy towards strong support of the civil rights movement and played a significant role in shaping his legacy as a proponent of civil rights.
  Kennedy was initially cautious in his support of civil rights and desegregation in the United States. Concerned that dramatic actions would alienate legislators in the segregated southern United States, he limited his activities on the issue and confined his justifying rhetoric to legal arguments. As his term continued, African Americans became increasingly impatient with their lack of social progress and racial tensions escalated.
context_section_description: From the onset of his term, President John F. Kennedy was relatively silent on the issue of African-American civil rights in the United States, preferring executive action to legislative solutions. He was cautious not to distance the South, marked by substantial segregation and racial discrimination, by infringing upon states' rights. He also wanted to avoid upsetting members of Congress, as he was already struggling to secure their support for most of his New Frontier domestic programs. However, Kennedy's position on civil rights had begun to evolve during the Freedom Rides of 1961, when African Americans traveled along segregated bus routes in the South. Though he dispatched federal marshals to guard against the racial violence of the events, he publicly stressed that his actions were rooted in legality and not morality; American citizens had a constitutional right to travel, and he was simply enforcing that right. Regardless, several activists encouraged the President to discuss the "moral issue" of civil rights in American society. According to aide Harris Wofford, Kennedy felt that he was the strongest supporter of civil rights who had ever held the presidency, and he was irritated by such appeals. Wofford advised him, "What [President Dwight D. Eisenhower] never did was to give clear moral expression to the issues involved. The only effective time for such moral leadership is during an occasion of moral crisis. This is the time when your words mean most. Negro leaders feel sorely the absence of any such statement."
  Kennedy devoted a significant amount of his 1962 State of the Union Address to the topic of civil rights, but he confined his rhetoric to legal themes and conveyed that present legislation sufficed his administration's efforts to combat racial discrimination. In September, James Meredith, a black man, enrolled at the University of Mississippi. Although Kennedy used federal troops to guarantee Meredith's safety and  attendance, he publicly downplayed the violence that had occurred and made no changes to his legislative agenda. Despite being pleased that the federal government had protected Meredith, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was reportedly "deeply disappointed" in the President. Following the failure of the Albany Movement later that year, many civil rights activists believed that Kennedy "was more concerned with quieting the [civil rights m]ovement down than removing the practices it opposed."
  In 1963, an increasing number of white Americans, troubled by the rise of more militant black leaders like Malcolm X, feared that the Civil Rights Movement would take a violent turn. The depiction of racial violence in the media also benefited the Soviet Union's Cold War propaganda and damaged the United States' image abroad, which greatly concerned Kennedy. He determined that appropriate legislation would enable the administration to pursue suits through the court system and get the problem "out of the streets" and away from international spectators. In February, after receiving a report from the Civil Rights Commission on racial discrimination, Kennedy sent a message to Congress calling for a civil rights bill on the 28th. In addition to the suggested economic and diplomatic benefits, he justified his legislation's measures to remove institutional racism because "above all, [racism] is wrong." This marked the first time that Kennedy discussed civil rights in expressly moral terms. Regardless, the proposal garnered a flat response. Civil rights leaders were disappointed in the bill as it focused mainly on voting rights, and critics believed a bolder proposal was needed to end discrimination for African Americans. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference concluded that the Kennedy administration would need to be forced to fully confront racial problems. To do so, the Conference organized a series of demonstrations in April in Birmingham, Alabama, viewed by activists as one of the most segregated cities in the United States, which was designed to create a crisis that would require the President'
caption: Federal agents being transported to the University of Mississippi in military vehicles to maintain order
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