JFK: Fifty years ago, 4 of John F. Kennedy's speeches moved the world

JFK: Fifty years ago, 4 of John F. Kennedy's speeches moved the world

President Kennedy addresses nation on Civil Rights on June 11, 1963. (Photograph by Abbie Rowe, National Park Service, in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.Creator: Photo courtesy of JFK Library )



Fifty years ago this month, John F. Kennedy stood on a platform in West Berlin and uttered one of the most iconic phrases of 20th-century American politics: “Ich bin ein Berliner.”


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President John F. Kennedy stands on a platform erected on the steps of West Berlin's city hall, Rathaus Schoeneberg. A crowd watches the President (back to camera) as he delivers his 'Ich bin ein Berliner' speech on June 26, 1963, at Rudolph Wilde Platz, West Berlin, in the Federal Republic of Germany.
AP File Photo



If you are of a certain age, that single line of grammatically imperfect German probably still sends a shiver down your spine. In angry, passionate and decidedly undiplomatic language, Kennedy spoke truth to the power of Soviet totalitarianism in the shadow of the horrid Berlin Wall and proudly declared, “I am a Berliner.”

That speech, delivered on June 26, 1963, during a spectacularly successful tour of Europe, was one of best-remembered moments of Kennedy’s tragically short presidency. But here’s the amazing thing about the final springtime of JFK’s life: During the course of just 19 days that month, he delivered four brilliant speeches, any one of which would stand alone as testament to his intellect, his charisma and his leadership.

June of 1963 may be remembered as the high point of American presidency in the second half of the 20th century thanks to Kennedy’s words and actions. In Washington, the president challenged his fellow Americans to reconsider their attitude toward the Cold War and demanded that white America see civil rights as a moral issue.

In Berlin, he told the truth about those who built walls to stabilize a rotten system. And in Ireland, this cool, detached president spoke warmly of those who dream things that never were and ask, “Why not?”

No American president since — not even Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama — commanded the world’s stage as John Kennedy did 50 Junes ago. It was, to be sure, a bright, shining moment, one that passed ever so quickly.

THE PEACE SPEECH




"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal."


Kennedy’s memorable June began with a seemingly prosaic task: a commencement speech at American University in Washington, D.C., on June 10. Less than a year removed from a brush with nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke of the need for peace with the nation’s avowed enemy, the communists in Moscow.

“Let us re-examine our attitude towards the Soviet Union,” he said — the words coming from a man who, in his inaugural address, spoke of engaging in a “twilight struggle” with communism. “No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue,” he said, urging Americans to “hail the Russian people for their many achievements — in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.”

Only a decade earlier, during the darkest days of the McCarthy era, anyone who expressed such sentiments would have been labeled a borderline traitor. But Kennedy’s speech changed the nation’s conversation and set in motion the era of détente with the Soviets. The speech also laid the groundwork for a historic agreement with the Soviets to ban the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere.

‘A MORAL ISSUE'




"If an American, because his skin is dark, ... 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?"

Kennedy recognized the importance of his speech, but he had no time for self-congratulation. A day later, Alabama Gov. George Wallace barred two young African-Americans from enrolling in the all-white University of Alabama. JFK had been ambivalent about the civil rights movement, viewing it as a distraction from foreign policy. But Wallace’s actions convinced him that the time was right for presidential intervention.

On the evening of June 11, Kennedy delivered a remarkable television address to the nation during which he called the struggle for civil rights a “moral issue … as old as the Scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution.” Civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, who was planning a huge march on Washington that summer, had been waiting years to hear that kind of language from the White House.

Kennedy ad-libbed a large portion of the speech, in part because he was handed his text just five minutes before he went on the air. He reminded Americans that when troops were sent to Vietnam, “we do not ask for whites only.” He announced that he would introduce a new civil rights bill within a matter of days, risking the support of Southern Democrats still violently opposed to integration.

Kennedy’s bill became law in 1964, months after he was murdered.

ON THE WALL




"All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' "

Next on the president’s agenda was a trip to Europe. He brought with him a drab speech that he was to deliver in West Berlin, the former German capital that had been divided and occupied since the end of World War II. As he toured the city’s western sector and peeked across the wall into Soviet-controlled East Berlin, gray and lifeless, he decided the inoffensive speech had to go.

Instead, he delivered the speech history remembers so well. In front of tens of thousands of cheering West Berliners, Kennedy cast diplomacy aside and told us how he really felt about the Berlin Wall. For those who thought communism was the wave of the future, for those who believed there was no real issue separating west from east, he had one piece of advice: “Let them come to Berlin!” Berliners by the tens of thousands chanted the president’s name.

The wall would not come down until 1989, but Kennedy’s words — his identification of himself as a Berliner — inspired the city’s beleaguered residents and framed the Cold War as a struggle for human dignity and freedom.

As he left Germany, Kennedy told an aide, “We’ll never have a day like this as long as we live.” In fact, no president since has had a day like June 26, 1963. Others have had successful international tours. Others have seen their popularity spike during a crisis. But in the early summer of 1963, John Kennedy stood alone as leader of the free world and as a powerful new advocate for social change in his home country. After Kennedy came Vietnam and Watergate. After Kennedy came cynicism, impeachment and hyperpartisan rhetoric.

NEVER TO RETURN



It is that quality of the Irish - that remarkable combination of hope, confidence and imagination - that is needed more than ever today."

He ended his trip with a short visit to Ireland, a place his great-grandparents fled in 1849, at the height of a murderous famine. He delivered a wonderfully literate speech to Ireland’s Parliament, and was cheered by hundreds of thousands who saw him as one of their own — as, indeed, he was. “I’ll come back in the springtime,” Kennedy told the Irish.
He was dead five months later.

To this day, American presidents are still trying to recapture the magic of June 1963, when words and leadership and conviction came together to create political poetry. Perhaps they never will, which makes the memory of those weeks all the more special, and all the more sad.