In this month's episode of the Book Club, Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Patricia Sullivan, a leading civil rights historian, place Robert Kennedy at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960s—and show how many of today’s issues can be traced back to that pivotal time in US history.
Prof. Sullivan is the author of this month's featured book Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White.
The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.
Footnotes:
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In this month's episode of the Book Club, Jeffrey Sachs and Professor Patricia Sullivan, a leading civil rights historian, place Robert Kennedy at the center of the movement for racial justice of the 1960s—and show how many of today’s issues can be traced back to that pivotal time in US history.
Prof. Sullivan is the author of this month's featured book Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White.
The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.
Footnotes:
⭐️ Thank you for listening!
➡️ Sign up for the newsletter: https://bit.ly/subscribeBCJS
➡️ Website: bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org
🎉 Don't forget to subscribe and share your favorite episode with your friends!
📣 Leave a rating and tell us what you thought about this episode!
Jeffrey Sachs 00:03
Hello, I'm Jeffrey Sachs, welcome to Book Club, a monthly conversation with world-leading authors who have written scintillating, inspiring, and remarkably important books about history, social justices, and the challenges of building a decent world. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to have a conversation with Professor Patricia Sullivan, Professor of American history at the University of South Carolina, and one of America's leading historians and great experts in the challenges of race and the civil rights movement in modern America. In "Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White", Patricia Sullivan puts Robert Kennedy at the center of the nation's struggle for racial justice, and offers a moving and enlightening account of a life of stirring public service marked by high ambition, remarkable moral growth, and a deep, powerful and embracing commitment to social justice.
Jeffrey Sachs 01:01
I was 14 when he ran for president;he was my candidate, and his assassination was one of the defining moments of my life as it was for so many Americans. And I have always cherished his leadership and memory, and your book added immensely to my understanding of RFK and many of his unique characteristics, noble characteristics, I think, that we're going to speak about. So, welcome. Thank you for writing the book. Thank you for being together in the conversation. Why did you write this book at this time? You've been, of course, writing about topics of race and civil rights in America throughout your career. Why RFK? And why now?
Patricia Sullivan 01:45
Well, that's a great question. And I just want to thank you, Jeff, for inviting me and for all that you do. And you came to mind as I was finishing the book, because your work reflects so much about what Robert Kennedy cared about and worked for. And for me, as a historian of civil rights and the African American experience since the Civil War in the United States, Robert Kennedy was sort of a surprising topic for me to focus on. As you mentioned, I've written a number of books that explore race and politics and civil rights struggles across the 20th century. My last book was on the NAACP, our oldest civil rights organization, and I looked at from its founding in 1909 up through the 1950s. And that was an amazing history of how African Americans and those believing in racial justice and democracy, struggled, continued to struggle, even in the midst of segregation and all the barriers that they faced, and made significant headway. The legal struggle that culminated with Brown in 1954 was a 20-year long, really grassroots effort, where lawyers work with these communities. So it really opened up this dynamic history. And by the time I finished that book, I thought, I wanted to take a fresh look at the 1960s in light of what I'd learned. You know, not just as a decade that went from civil rights to black power, but a decade of dramatic racial change and struggle, which ended segregation, and then opened up the great challenges this country faced from its long history of slavery and Jim Crow. And so as I was reading around and thinking about it, and having big ideas, you know, Robert Kennedy kept showing up and I didn't know enough about him. I knew the general, whatever, you know, great guy, and I didn't see him as central. Well, he moved to the center of my work, because he was someone in his time, he responded not only to the demands that the civil rights movement really brought to the center of America's attention after the sit-ins, but the opportunities that created for our country to really look at our history and embark on what many have called a Second Reconstruction, you know, ending segregation, and then really dealing with the deep problems of racial inequality that grew up across our history. So he became my way in.
Jeffrey Sachs 04:06
Maybe you could lay out just a little bit of Robert Kennedy's life up and to the point where you pick it up in this book. He's obviously the brother of John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy came into office January 20, 1961, and appointed his kid brother as attorney general. So maybe you can tell us a bit about Robert at that stage, a very young man, indeed.
Patricia Sullivan 04:30
He was born in 1925. He, you know, came of age during the World War II era, which were very disruptive in all good kinds of ways in this country, but as a young person, he had a questioning spirit. He was not a great student, but he always wanted to know why. He had a kind of faith, religious faith that was truly humanitarian, I would say, you know. So he had experiences and characteristics that I explored and as he's growing up and coming into his adulthood, these changes are happening in our country–the Great Migration and the cities are changing–a few defining moments as he grows older. He went to college at Harvard and then his father sent him abroad to work for a newspaper just to get him exposure to life and what was happening in Europe after the war. And he was in the Middle East when Israel was founded. And he's reporting from the Middle East as like a 21-year-old guy and talking to Palestinians and Jewish people fighting for a homeland. And he really sees the complexity and listens to both sides and sees the challenges. So he's someone who's open and curious, and concerned about humanity across barriers.
Jeffrey Sachs 05:44
The father, Joe Kennedy, of course, was by then a very rich and famous figure who had been ambassador to the UK in the 1930s, a controversial figure, that had been a part of FDR's New Deal. And of course, it's the Kennedy children who go on to this greatness of role in American life. But both John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, as you said, very early on, were given opportunities by their dad to go see the world, John Kennedy in Europe at the end of the 1930s, and then, of course, fighting in World War II, and Robert Kennedy suddenly, as a reporter at the birth of the State of Israel and the Middle East tribulations after World War II. So they're exposed to a broad world at a young age, which makes it possible for them to become leaders at a remarkably young age.
Patricia Sullivan 06:40
Exactly. And that's a very important point you raised Jeff, that they had the opportunity thanks to their father and their background to have these experiences. But they absorbed so much through that experience. And I guess one last thing I'll say about Kennedy, before coming to the point of the book, when he moves on to the national stage with his brother, is that there was an incident at the University of Virginia in 1951, that really was curious to me. He was a law student at UVA. And again, segregation was the law in the South. Public meetings had to be segregated. You know, for listeners, first of all, younger listeners, you and I sort of remember we were young as it broke up. But segregation was so deeply entrenched and enforced.
Jeffrey Sachs 07:19
It was an apartheid society.
Patricia Sullivan 07:21
It was an apartheid society. And so when he was at Virginia, because of his trip to the Middle East, he was the head of a law group that invited speakers. And Ralph Bunche had won the Nobel Peace Prize, a great African American political scientist, he was a civil rights activist in his own right and now representative for the US to the UN. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize for settling the first Arab Israeli war, for his role in that. So Kennedy invited him to come to UVA. And Ralph Bunche that he would come, but only if it was not segregated. And so Kennedy said, okay, and he started to arrange that, and it wasn't so easy because it was the law. And his professor said, well, we'll put the signs up, but people, you know, we want to force it. He said no, no signs. I mean, he said not. So he writes to the president of the University of Virginia. It's a beautiful letter, talking about a few NAACP cases, talking about the war, and why Ralph Bunche should be welcome to the University of Virginia openly, and Darden agreed, and 1500 people came. About a third were African American. The first, really, from all I can find, the first integrated meeting on the campus of the University of Virginia of that size in '51. It was the right thing to do, you know, and he and Ralph Bunche and Ethel became lifelong friends. He stayed with Ethel and Bobby, newlyweds, because there was no place for this great Nobel Prize-winning diplomat to stay in Charlottesville, you know, all the hotels were segregated. And so that just showed that he was open when the opportunities presented, but again, he went through the 50s and worked in government and on Senate Committees and segregation was the norm. And, you know, that was that. But then he moves into national life in a big way with his brother's campaign. And as you point out, Jeff, his brother appoints him to be Attorney General.
Jeffrey Sachs 09:12
He was appointed at age 36, I think, of course, Kennedy was..."What are you doing?," they asked the president, he said, "I'm trying to give my my kid brother some experience in the law." I think we would be horrified today, if such a thing happened. The backlash would be enormous, but at the time, it seemed okay. The president wants a close advisor so he puts in his kid brother, and it was a little controversial, but it seemed okay.
Patricia Sullivan 09:40
You're right. It was controversial. You know, people said well, he has no experiencing and he hasn't been in court. And what John Kennedy said, is he ran his brother's senate campaign in 1952 and did a brilliant job and he said, he gets the best people, he can get the job done. There's no one better than him. And he also said, he knew race was going to be the major issue they were facing. They didn't know the dimensions of it. It's just kind of coming to the fore. And the President said, we're going to have to change the climate in this country. I need someone I can trust. And I need someone who's going to tell me the truth. And he was so correct about his brother. But you're right, there was pushback. But Alexander Biffle, who was one of the, you know, he did a column in The Nation, he came around very quickly and said, "These people are public servants of the highest order." I mean, the team he built in the Justice Department, these amazing lawyers, he brought in, John Doerr was there, but Burke, Marshall, and...
Jeffrey Sachs 10:37
What was incredible is that the people that he brought in became leading figures for 50 years onwards, they became the preeminent moral leaders in the country for decades onwards. That is extraordinary, actually, it's not how normally our justice department works. We're not going to remember the Barr Justice Department for decades to come except for its abuses, perhaps, but with RFK, this point, maybe you could elaborate on a little bit: he and John surrounded themselves with excellent people, just as a normal part of their strategy of leadership.
Patricia Sullivan 11:16
That is so important. We think of the Kennedys as iconic figures, and it gets sort of detached from their environment. They wanted the best people in terms of intelligence, commitment to public service. There is nothing quite like the Justice Department before or since. That's one example. But throughout the Administration, they wanted smart people around them, they wanted people to argue with them, to present different points of view, and to work that through in dealing with really huge challenges in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy. And it really is one of the great legacies, as you point out, because these people go on and they're involved in public life beyond this moment, but, really to me, it was one of the great eye openers, as I looked at Robert Kennedy in the context of President Kennedy's administration.
Jeffrey Sachs 12:04
So the early 1960s, it seems a long way off. But for those of us again, who lived through it, it seems so current, completely, because we continue to debate and be divided by these issues for decades afterwards, up until today, we're still debating race, voting rights, schooling, the works. It is our daily lives in America. Can you help us understand–your book does a beautiful job of it–the tensions and the drama of that period, especially as it hit RFK, who was the chief law enforcement officer of the United States.
Patricia Sullivan 12:46
When you compare it to now there are really interesting parallels. One thing, just a little sidebar, what we spoke about earlier, they also saw how white the administration was, and they really began bringing in African Americans into government at all levels, and acting as they could. But like today, they function within a political context, a Congress dominated by Southern Democrats, deeply committed to segregation. So it was a slight Democratic majority, but with all these Southern Democrats who were opposed to any change. And at the same time, this movement demanding, not going to stop. I mean, African Americans have been struggling for decades, but the sit-ins really opened things up and people around the country, young people responded to the sit-ins, save the citizens. You have the Southern Democrats and then you have these encounters in the South. I mean, there's things happening in the North. I mean, the Freedom Rides is a great example. I mean, as soon as Robert Kennedy came in, he and Marshall, they put the Justice Department behind enforcing school desegregation rulings. I mean, Brown was decided seven years earlier, and very few schools were integrated.
Jeffrey Sachs 13:57
Just to remind all of the listeners of Brown vs. Board of Education was the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that said "separate but equal" education, segregated education, was inherently unequal and therefore, inherently unconstitutional. But it had not been enforced. And in fact, it would take decades of debate and rancor about what enforcement meant. So in the early 60s, the question of Brown versus Board of Education, in other words, desegregating American schools was very high on the agenda and schools at all levels from elementary school to universities, which did not have black students in the South.
Patricia Sullivan 14:39
Some did, but again, you have those big conflicts under the Kennedys–Mississippi, Alabama–and they push that through, they insisted, they enforced it, and began using the tools they had to enforce voting rights and really working with SNCC people in the field who are getting people to go and try to register. But when the Freedom Rides came in 1961, what both Kennedys saw... I mean the people who had supported them, John Patterson, who is governor of Alabama, they saw that as these young people black and white, attempted to ride through the South, based on a Supreme Court ruling said you could not segregate in interstate travel and the violence that met them while the governor basically condoned it–would not interfere and putting these lives at risk and really forcing the federal government to deal with these state, federal issues and try to protect these riders and enforce the law. And when they got through Alabama, where buses were firebombed, mobs met these riders at bus stations, Robert Kennedy sent in federal marshals and really helped avoid a disaster at this Mass meeting church where King was. But at the end of that, he turned to John Doerr, and he said those fellows are at war with this country. The governor, the local elected officials, and I sort of think about that today, when we see what's tolerated, with what happened on January 6; what do you do when law breaks down, when law enforcement people aren't enforcing law? So this is all churning.
Patricia Sullivan 16:09
At the same time, Robert Kennedy is attentive to poverty in cities. And in 1961, he walks up to East Harlem and meets with some gang members. He's concerned about criminal justice issues, and young people caught up in the criminal justice system, and really starts to see the deeper problems beyond just eliminating segregation in the South, what has happened in cities where African Americans have been migrating for decades, and segregated living in poverty, poor schools, and the rest. So all of this is on their plate. I mean, what impressed me–they're finding ways, tools to use to try to begin to deal with these problems and work with communities in addressing these problems. And showing the federal government as an ally in the midst of resistance in Congress and all other kinds of roadblocks that were sort of changing the dynamic, and really pressing them to figure out what they could do to get legislation through and really begin to turn the country around. As John Kennedy said, to change the climate in this country, a country that had been built on racial segregation in the aftermath of the Civil War, with all these consequences.
Jeffrey Sachs 17:21
Two of the things that impressed me about all of it. One is how much learning they went through and how much learning was needed. Because I think the grim realities of life in slum settings, in poverty, in the Deep South, were not really known outside of those venues, not to the Kennedys, and not to so many people. So it was a constant education, first of all, and also famously, just as it's said, of John F. Kennedy in West Virginia primary in 1960, how his eyes were opened to the extreme poverty in the United States, and it was being on the ground, they were both politicians that soared, but also were on the ground in the most local encounters. And so I think that that's extremely important. The other thing that is so striking about all of the events is both John and Robert Kennedy take with such good faith, of course, people will follow the law, the court said so. So of course, Governor, you will do the following. They don't want to bring the National Guard out. They don't want to have to do these things; they trust in the rule of law. But the other side does not play by the rule of law. And this is part of the remarkable tension all along, because not only is there the constraint of a Democratic Party divided between the racists, the segregationists, and the liberals, and so it's hard enough to get votes. But with this fraught environment, the Kennedys, both of them were constantly appealing. Can we just please do this in a civilized way? What are you doing to oppose a court order? Do we really have to bring bayonets out onto the streets? And it's such a fascinating, difficult period, because they're always pressing for the goodwill to prevail. But the goodwill doesn't always prevail.
Jeffrey Sachs 18:48
They're pressing for the goodwill to prevail, but they're also enforcing the law.
Jeffrey Sachs 19:30
Yes.
Patricia Sullivan 19:31
Why didn't they do more? You know, when you send in force, right, and these people like George Wallace, and he's a famous name, but so many of the people resisting the law, I mean, elected officials and public officials. They're appealing to the fears and resentments of many white people. And that raises the tension. How do you bring people along? I mean, you've got to enforce the law and protect. In the case of Mississippi, James Meredith, but they knew James Meredith was going to enter the University of Mississippi, the court had ruled, and there was a riot, there was a massive riot on the campus. Thousands of people, two people were killed. James Meredith did enter, the Army did come and restore order. But it really showed the lengths that people would go to and how political, you know, politicians, so opportunistic, and using these moments to build resistance, to encourage people, to let people think they don't have to follow the federal law. And I think it's a great lesson for today. Because in the end, they appeal to people, and they trusted the humanity of people. And I think if you read John Kennedy's civil rights speech, the way they talk to our country, or our fellow citizens, is very powerful.
[Audio Clip: John F. Kennedy] 20:43
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures, and it's as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans ought 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 a 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 citizens are free.
Jeffrey Sachs 22:11
They were scrambling so much in those two days, the speech wasn't even finished as the cameras went on at 7pm, just as we were starting our Zoom, the same way, and then President Kennedy was getting notes, and he improvised the end of the speech, actually. So the whole thing is unbelievable.
Patricia Sullivan 22:30
And, you know, it's a birthmark that he knew what he was gonna say. He felt it. He knew it by then, after those years, but it's a remarkable speech. And with that speech, he says, I will introduce major civil rights legislation; segregation has no place in American life, and then that moves forward.
Jeffrey Sachs 22:48
Your book opens with a remarkable story of an encounter that Harry Belafonte arranges, and James Baldwin arranges, of Robert Kennedy, a few blocks from where I am right now, a meeting at Central Park South, where it actually turns into a pretty tense meeting. But I thought it was a perfect opener to explain the different points of view of America and the tensions and this remarkable learning process. Could you paint the scene a bit, because it is a remarkable story.
Patricia Sullivan 23:23
It is a remarkable story, it's sort of a pivot in the book, and its happens in late May 1963. And that is the high point–the Birmingham protests that Dr. King had orchestrated had exploded, and people had seen the police dogs be turned on young protesters, and there were protests throughout the country, I mean, the lid had come off. So Robert Kennedy had an invitation to meet with James Baldwin. He had read "The Fire Next Time," he knew Baldwin's work, he really was impressed with how Baldwin captured the racial, more than problems, you know, tensions and where we were, we were at sort of the precipice throughout the country. So he meets with this group, and he's looking to them to help them understand what to do about the North. I mean, they're moving on the South, so he's looking for advice. And a number of noted artists and public figures are there.
Jeffrey Sachs 24:18
It's not a warm reception.
Patricia Sullivan 24:19
Well, it's not, because again, it reflects to me the moment. Kennedy comes in, he knows a lot, he knows things are really bad. And these folks come in and one of them is a Freedom Rider. One of them is Jerome Smith, who had been in the movement for three years and all of the violence and beatings. So he's like a soldier coming from the frontlines. And he looks at Kennedy and what he sees: Kennedy represents white America, the government, and he just is angry that more hasn't been done. And Kennedy is trying to explain, you know what they're trying to do, and the thing just goes off and it becomes an opportunity for people to unload on him as being representative of a politics that's too slow. Kenneth Clark said it was the most painful violent encounter he'd ever been part of, that went on for three hours. And halfway through Robert Kennedy stopped talking and he just listened. And it was not pleasant. But it just captured the racial divide, and not him personally, but what he represented and this opportunity to tell the second highest person in government, tell him off, and what the problem was, what they had–what especially what Jerome Smith had experienced–and I think Baldwin said later, it just represented this, when white and black meet, this kind of, you know, they bring different experiences to the conversation. And it's very hard to get at a place where you totally understand each other.
Jeffrey Sachs 25:47
It's also the classic struggle, Kennedy saying, we're doing our best, politics is hard. And the other, the African American leaders saying sorry, that best is not accomplishing what we need. That's awful, and we can't wait. And it was, of course, the ongoing great tension with Martin Luther King, also, who is of course, pushing, pushing, pushing. And the Kennedys are saying don't push so hard. It's going to make it hard. And Martin Luther King said, Well, we've been waiting hundreds of years, sorry. This is not the moment not to push.
Patricia Sullivan 26:24
No, exactly. No, it really, the Kennedys are a part of a much larger drama, and sort of transition that's happening in the 60s. And I think what I learned in writing this book is that both sides are correct, but you know, they had to deal in the political reality of how do you get a bill through Congress? You know, the president can't just wave a wand. But I think these encounters really show how tough it was, and yeah, people should be impatient and demanding. Meanwhile, they're trying to do what they can do. And I think the thing about King and we'll probably talk about this a little later, but he becomes much more closely aligned, he and Robert Kennedy around the issues of race and poverty as we move into the later 1960s. And even Baldwin looks back at Robert Kennedy after he dies and said he was someone in the 20th century with enough passion and energy and patience. He had a mind that could be reached.
Jeffrey Sachs 27:17
The next five years, from the time of that speech to Robert Kennedy's death. It's like a century of history in those five years. I don't know if America has ever had such five tumultuous years, between 1963 and 1968. Perhaps never other than maybe the Civil War would be the only comparable period. But in a limited time, can you give us a sense of how history accelerated phenomenally both for the nation and for Robert Kennedy in the period. This, of course, is the core of of the book. But every day is like a lifetime lived because of the drama and acceleration of change.
Patricia Sullivan 28:05
Well, you know, the Civil Rights Act, which they put together, they figured out how to get a strong civil rights bill through. But by then Robert Kennedy knew they needed a civil rights law that would end legal segregation, legally mandated segregation, but that a law would never be sufficient to deal with the problems and the racial inequalities in this country. So he understood that. And again, he's in tune with what Baldwin's writing, what he's seeing in cities, and with the American public. And so by the time John Kennedy goes to Texas, what will be the Civil Rights Act is written and ready. The Kennedys really, that's their Act. I mean, Lyndon Johnson takes it to the finish line and signs it. But so he leaves for Texas, November 20. And that's in place. And to me, that's very important. In two and a half years, they had figured out and put together a strategy for getting a major civil rights bill through that we would have signed in July of '64. But within two weeks of the signing of the Civil Rights Act, Harlem explodes, a police shooting of a 15-year-old high school student just sets things off with this encounter between police. And when you have sort of an uprising that lasts for several days, and there are several that summer, which really are an expression of frustration and anger about the conditions in urban areas. And these encounters, or these uprisings, triggered by an incident with the police, but it really is much deeper. And so as we get the Civil Rights Act, we're moving into that territory. And the next year, after the Voting Rights Act, you have the major Watts Uprising in August of '65. By this time, Kennedy understands. Robert Kennedy understands what this is about. In '63 he and John Kennedy both talk about a hundred years of delay, linking us back to Reconstruction and the Amendments that secured citizenship and voting rights for African Americans, totally undone by segregation and what happens around the country, so this is all bursting forth.
Jeffrey Sachs 30:03
So the dam bursts, the hundred years of delay explodes in all of the economics, social, racial, political, every possible cleavage in society. And that's exactly that period.
Patricia Sullivan 30:19
That wasn't just a Southern thing at all, you know, it was national. And again, right after these acts come, you get these uprisings in cities. And after Watts, many politicians started to call for law and order. That was their response, just immediately. And Robert Kennedy said, "How can you ask Negroes, the term used then, African Americans to obey the law when the law is used against them?" And he wasn't just talking about policing, he was ralking about landlords that cheated people, merchants that cheated people, just not having access. He said that the law doesn't mean the same to black people as it does to white people. And these conditions, we have to face them. And I think what's fascinating about this volatile period is that many people shared that and they felt there was an opening to begin to deal with the deep consequences of racial segregation, particularly as it played out in these cities where people had been segregated into ghetto conditions with terrible housing, no good access to education, high unemployment, and young people just seeing no way out. What's to me interesting is that if you follow Robert Kennedy, you see the people trying to address these issues, Dr. King being a major one, who goes to Chicago, and seeing the interconnection between race and poverty, and economic justice. And in '66, which is a really interesting year that I wrote about, as you say, Jeff, there's something happening almost every day, but the you know, hearings in the Senate, field hearings out going around exposing these conditions, and the sense that they could turn things in a new direction. I mean, there was really a feeling that that could happen, because in the Civil Rights struggle, which ignited activism throughout the country, unlike any period since the New Deal, there's a tremendous energy in our country to address these issues, to work to end poverty, to work to end racial discrimination. So even though by the end of the '60s, things have really taken a really bad turn, there's great hope. And people like Robert Kennedy devoting his effort and working with people, as you say, he had a capacity to attract people find people who share these concerns, and really try to build a new kind of politics that was pushing against this rising white backlash.
Jeffrey Sachs 32:40
So I think that it's important, and I think we should highlight the fact that the race issues and the Civil Rights movement and ending desegregation and the de jure discrimination was broadened to see the economic linkages, and the foreign policy linkages and the military linkage, because one of the incredible developments for Robert as with Martin Luther King, was the Vietnam War was drawn into this. The global scene, Robert Kennedy takes a remarkable trip to South Africa in 1966. But there's a war going on at the same time, the US war in Vietnam. Could you talk about how the agenda just kept becoming larger and larger? It was incredible.
Patricia Sullivan 33:28
The Vietnam War. I mean, when Lyndon Johnson becomes president, the war becomes an American War, we send ground troops. I mean, the war has been going on, American involvement escalating across decades. But after '64, it really becomes an American war. And so there's the war, and protests against the war. And then the war is taking the money that should be going to anti-poverty programs. As Dr. King said, the bombs in Vietnam are exploding at home. So you have a shrinking anti-poverty program, as the cities are really demanding and needing this attention. And the Vietnam War is terrible. And Kennedy and King both see the immorality of that war. And so their efforts to fight racism and poverty also put them on the front lines of opposing America's war in Vietnam, and directly challenging it and aligning with the anti-war movement, which is growing during this period.
Jeffrey Sachs 34:24
It's so poignant, by the way, because Martin Luther King's advisors are telling him don't get into that, Martin, it's already complicated enough. You have enough problems with poor people, with racial discrimination. Now you're going to take on the Vietnam War. And he goes, just a few blocks from where I am in the northern direction, Riverside Church, and gives an incredible speech saying we cannot solve our problems of justice at home, if we are fighting an unjust war abroad.
[Audio Clip: Martin Luther King Jr.] 34:55
Since I'm a preacher by calling, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field in my moral vision. There is, at the outset, a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and other have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if that was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the build up in Vietnam. Now watch this program broken and eviscerated, as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor, so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place, and it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 8000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia, which they have not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with a cruel irony, watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.
Jeffrey Sachs 37:27
And Robert reaches the same conclusion. And so they tie together the politics in the most incredible way. In my work, I spend a lot of time on issues of environment, of course, and sustainable development, and we bemoan the narrow economic focus. And this is again where Robert Kennedy said the most beautiful thing ever said about the issue of how we need a broad vision and measurement of what we're after. If I could just say for listeners, because it's another great speech that he gave in the 1968 presidential campaign, when he talked about the Gross National Product, which we use as our measurement after all, for what's good. But listen to Robert Kennedy's words, everybody, when he says, "Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate, or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, nor our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion, nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile." Unbelievable. It gives me goosebumps!
Patricia Sullivan 38:53
It's so true. He really got to the heart of the matter.
Jeffrey Sachs 38:58
For me, just unbelievably powerful and poignant remarks that he gave in Indianapolis the night that Martin Luther King was killed. I can't recall another impromptu set of remarks anywhere in any context as powerful as those words.
[Audio Clip: Robert F. Kennedy} 39:18
Do they know about Martin Luther King?
[Audio Clip: Robert F. Kennedy} 39:28
Could you lower those signs please? I have some very sad news for all of you. And that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight.
[Audio Clip: Robert F. Kennedy} 39:48
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, and this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are, and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black, considering the evidence, evidently is that they were white people who were responsible. You can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization, black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that is spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love. For those of you who are black, and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust, of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart, the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States.
[Audio Clip: Robert F. Kennedy} 41:54
We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond or go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Escolas. He once wrote, "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own day, despair, against our will, comes wisdom, through the awful grace of God." What we need in the United States is not division. What we need in the United States is not hatred. What we need in the United States is not violence, and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white, or whether they be black.
[Audio Clip: Robert F. Kennedy} 42:52
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence. It is not the end of lawlessness. And it's not the end of disorder. But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land. We want to dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago, to tame the savageness of man, and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country, and for our people. Thank you very much.
Jeffrey Sachs 44:13
Pat, on behalf of everybody, let me thank you for helping us understand what happened behind us so that we can understand what's going on around us. This is a wonderful book and you've given us, I think, a very practical and powerful message from the book to get active, to work for social justice, to build on the legacies of what Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and the other leaders of the 1960s contributed to creating a country that we want. This is a fantastic read. So please, everybody, "Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White." Pat, it's a privilege to have you with us.
Jeffrey Sachs 45:01
In the next episode, I will be speaking with Rick Perlstein, historian and author of Reaganland: America's Right Turn, 1976-1980. Perlstein details the history of how US President Ronald Reagan came to power and ushered in 40 years of conservatism and reaction in Washington. It's a riveting and unsettling history that teaches us a lot about today's trials and tribulations. Thank you for joining in the conversation. Please subscribe rate and write a review on whatever platform you listen to your podcast. I would love to hear your thoughts as we continue to develop the series.