The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932-1972

by Manchester, William

  At ten o’clock in Oxford, Katzenbach reluctantly told Washington that troops were necessary. In three-quarters of an hour the first unit arrived, sixty National Guardsmen of Troop E, 108th Armored Cavalry, under the command of Captain Murry C. Falkner. Before daybreak sixteen of them would become casualties, among them Captain Falkner, two of whose bones were broken by a brickbat. To the exasperation and then the fury of the Kennedys, nearly five hours passed before regular Army contingents, who had been alerted, reached the scene. Three times the marshals almost ran out of tear gas. When the soldiers did arrive, they had to fight their way to the campus. Forty of them were hit by missiles or shotgun blasts. Most of the attackers vanished in the night. The 503rd Military Police Battalion, arriving with the main body of troops from Memphis, arrested over two hundred members of the mob, including General Walker. Only twenty-four of them were students; the others came from all over Dixie—Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Texas, as well as Mississippi. At dawn the campus was seen to be littered with chunks of cement, tear gas canisters, wrecked vehicles, rocks, smashed window glass, and green chips from thousands of pulverized Coke bottles. Governor Barnett blamed the riot on “inexperienced, nervous, trigger-happy” marshals.

  Shortly before eight o’clock Monday morning Jim McShane and two other marshals accompanied Meredith to the battered Lyceum. There, at last, he was admitted by Robert Byron Ellis, the stony-faced registrar. There was no resistance in the administration building, only resignation and studied courtesy. Meredith listed his academic goal as a degree in political science. With credits from extension courses already taken he would graduate in three semesters. As he left the Lyceum another student yelled, “Was it worth two lives, nigger?”

  ***

  Booked and fingerprinted, Major General Edwin A. Walker was charged with assaulting an officer, resisting arrest, insurrection, and conspiracy. The charges were dropped three months later after he had been given a psychiatric examination at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, and on an April evening three months after that a sniper standing on his lawn and aiming a cheap mail order rifle tried to kill him. In December 1963 ballistics experts found that the owner of that rifle, and presumably the man who had fired it, was Lee Harvey Oswald, who, among other things, had become since then an active supporter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the assassin of John F. Kennedy. The confusion of the radical left and radical right is puzzling unless one grasps that President Kennedy, supremely a man of the center, was hated by both. Their feelings for him had begun to harden at the time of the Bay of Pigs, when one extreme denounced him for backing the invasion of Castro Cuba while the other condemned him for not going all the way and wiping Castro out. By the end of his second year in office it was clear that among those at either end of the political spectrum Kennedy had become the most scorned President since Franklin Roosevelt.

  The New Left had begun to organize for the long pull in June 1962, when forty-five quiet, neatly dressed young people met at an old UAW-CIO summer camp at Port Huron, Michigan, to found the Students for a Democratic Society. The SDS then was but a shadow of its future self. The principal activity at the meeting was discussion of a moderate, sixty-two-page manifesto drafted by a weedy, pock-marked twenty-two-year-old University of Michigan undergraduate named Tom Hayden. Hayden cited, as the two greatest challenges to society, racism and “the enclosing fact of the cold war, symbolized by the presence of the Bomb.” He proposed “that we as individuals take the responsibility for encounter and resolution.” There was nothing new in the diagnosis or the prescription for cure: “We would replace power rooted in possession, privilege, or circumstances by power and uniqueness rooted in love, reflectiveness, reason and creativity.” Hayden specifically renounced what would later become an SDS trademark—violence as catalyst for change—on the ground that it “requires generally the transformation of the target, be it a human being or a community of people, into a depersonalized object of hate.”

  The right was much farther along. The John Birch Society, the SDS’s mirror image, was four years old and flourishing. His membership in it had been the reason for General Walker’s dismissal from the Army, and the Kennedy brothers had increased its fame by damning it, the attorney general calling it “ridiculous” and the President warning that it was an inept adversary of Communism. Robert Welch, “The Founder,” as he called himself, continued to mastermind Birch activities from a two-story brick building in the Boston suburb of Belmont. He seemed to enjoy publicity and was doubtless aware that it helped recruit new Birchers. The basic unit in the society was the chapter, which was frankly based on the Communist cell. (Welch was fascinated by Communism and imitated it slavishly.) Each chapter numbered between ten and twenty members. By the early 1960s there were reported to be chapters in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia with a total membership of about one hundred thousand. Birch ranks were increased by what The Founder called “fronts,” such as the Patrick Henry Society, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Minute Women and Minutemen. In many communities the Birchers were treated as a joke, but it was no joke in places like Shreveport, Tampa, Houston, and Dallas, where, as the New York Times reported, “businessmen, management executives, physicians, lawyers, and other ‘solid’ people have joined chapters.”

  As the decade grew older the New Left would emerge as the greater threat to democratic institutions, but that was not apparent in the Kennedy years. The resources of the right overshadowed anything at the other extreme; during the Kennedy Presidency outlays by ultraconservative organizations rose from five million dollars a year to over fourteen million, while the national budget for a liberal enterprise like the Americans for Democratic Action ran to a mere $150,000. The worst the left could do then was an occasional ill-tempered remark—C. Wright Mills was reported to have said on his deathbed that he was “ashamed to be an American, ashamed to have John F. Kennedy as his President”—while Senator Fulbright uncovered a working political arrangement between ultraconservative organizations and career officers in the regular Army. When Fulbright held hearings to bring it to light, he was all but drowned out by charges that he was trying to “muzzle the military.”

  Among the more conspicuous activities of the ultras in those years were Dallas’s National Indignation Convention, first convened in 1961 and again in 1963. In its first session the 1,800 delegates to the convention roared their approval of a speaker who protested that the chairman was becoming moderate—“All he wants to do is impeach Warren—I’m for hanging him.” Two years later the convention counteracted United Nations Day by holding a “United States Day”—an event blessed by Governor John B. Connally Jr. with an official proclamation.

  Under the ultra umbrella were gathered such groups as the Reverend Billy James Hargis’s Christian Crusade and Dr. Fred Schwarz’s Christian Anti-Communism Crusade. The farthest reaches of the right wing were dismissed as a refuge for impotent crackpots. It is true that George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party never threatened American liberties, but elsewhere ultras were both respectable and influential. C. D. Jackson, publisher of Life, bore reluctant witness to this. After an issue of his magazine had treated Schwarz with disdain the flak from powerful advertisers was so great that Jackson flew to a Schwarz rally in the Hollywood Bowl to eat crow: “I believe we were wrong, and I am profoundly sorry. It’s a great privilege to be here tonight and align Life magazine with Senator Dodd, Representative Judd, Dr. Schwarz and the rest of these implacable fighters against Communism.”

  Extremists of both left and right were characterized by what Benjamin DeMott has called “the Spirit of Overkill.” Susan Sontag wrote in the Partisan Review that “the white race is the cancer of history.” The Berkeley Barb flatly declared, “The professors have nothing to teach…. We can learn more from any jail than we can from any university.” An off-Broadway cast chanted, “The middle class/ Are just like pigs… The middle class/ Are just like pigs,” and in 1961 Bertrand Russell said
, “We used to call Hitler wicked for killing off the Jews, but Kennedy and Macmillan are much more wicked than Hitler…. They are the wickedest people who ever lived in the history of man and it is our duty to do what we can against them.” On the opposite horizon The Founder of the Birchers said of the United States that “the whole country is one vast insane asylum and they’re letting the worst patients run the place,” while Dean Noebel, a Christian Crusade prophet, maintained that agents in the bowels of the Kremlin had formed a “Commie-Beatle Pact”—“the Communists have contrived an elaborate, calculating, and scientific technique directed at rendering a generation of American youth useless through nerve-jamming, mental deterioration, and retardation…. The destructive music of the Beatles… reinforces… mental breakdown.”

  John Kennedy was very much aware of both varieties of irreconcilables. At Seattle in November of 1961 he suggested that it was the very insolubility of the day’s problems which engendered a yearning for simple answers. “There are two groups of these frustrated citizens,” he said. “It is a curious fact that each… resembles the other. Each believes that we have only two choices: appeasement or war, suicide or surrender, humiliation or holocaust, to be either Red or dead.” When possible he pricked them with wit. At a White House gathering, E. M. “Ted” Dealey of the morning Dallas News said, “We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle.” The editor of the evening paper in Dallas, the Times Herald, wrote Kennedy to say that Dealey did not speak for Texas. The President wrote back, “I’m sure the people of Dallas are glad when afternoon comes.”

  Ultra humor tended to be black humor. In milder versions it was innocuous. The sign on the marquee outside a Georgia theater showing PT-109, the story of the President’s World War II heroism, read, “See How the Japs Almost Got Kennedy.” A riddle ran, “If Jack, Bobby, and Teddy were on a sinking boat, who would be saved?” The answer: “The country.” A mimeographed, widely circulated leaflet set forth plans for a Kennedy monument in Washington: “It was thought unwise to place it beside that of George Washington, who never told a lie, nor beside that of F. D. Roosevelt, who never told the truth, since John cannot tell the difference.”4 It continued:

  Five thousand years ago, Moses said to the children of Israel: “Pick up thy shovels, mount thy asses and camels, and I will lead you to the Promised Land.” Nearly five thousand years later, Roosevelt said: “Lay down your shovels, sit on your asses, and light up a Camel; this is the Promised Land.” Now Kennedy is stealing your shovels, kicking your asses, raising the price of Camels, and taking over the Promised Land.

  From there to the outer limits of the lunatic fringe, however, ultra wit became increasingly unprintable. As in the Roosevelt years it was often preoccupied with unusual sexual practices, and it involved not only the Kennedy men and women, but also their children and even their pets. The sons of men who had mimicked FDR’s upper-class accent now mimicked JFK’s while telling stories about hot lines running from the Pope’s toilet and the sewers of Rome to the White House, about the strange ways he spent his father’s money, about a woman who claimed to be his first wife—Joe Kennedy was supposed to have bought an annulment—and even about his illnesses. Arthur Schlesinger noted that virtually every aspect of Kennedy fed resentment: “His appearance, his religion, his wealth, his intelligence, his university, his section of the country, his wife, his brothers, his advisers, his support of the Negroes, his determination to de-emotionalize the cold war, his refusal to drop the bomb.” The ultras simply hated everything they read about the President.

  That was a lot. News of the First Family and its various affiliates at times seemed to have preempted the attention of the communications industry. Kennedy lore was featured in films, on television, on the Broadway stage, and in musical tributes. Every bookshop had its department of Kennedy books, of which by 1962 there were already over a hundred; book collectors were paying small ransoms for signed copies of Profiles in Courage. The fact that Lord David Cecil’s biography of Melbourne was the President’s favorite book was enough to turn what had been a book of limited appeal into a best seller; a report that Kennedy had enjoyed Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love made Fleming a millionaire. Caroline Kennedy’s picture was on the cover of Newsweek, and three screen magazines adopted the rule that every cover, every issue, must feature a photograph of Caroline’s mother.

  Once it became known that the President had learned to read 1,200 words a minute at a speed-reading course, the number of such courses increased tenfold. Courses at hairdresser schools gave instruction in how to imitate the First Lady’s bouffant coiffures. Because her husband usually appeared bareheaded, Danbury, Connecticut, the center of the hatting industry, entered a severe recession. The White House press revealed that his favorite cocktail was a daiquiri; suddenly bottled daiquiri mixes appeared on the shelves of package stores. Jackie believed it was smart to have small dinner parties at home. As a result, the names of the great party givers of the Eisenhower years—Pearl Mesta, Gwen Cafritz, etc.—went into eclipse. The word went out that busy as they were, such key figures in the administration as Robert McNamara and General Taylor were finding time to improve their minds at “Hickory Hill University,” the evening and weekend seminars at Robert Kennedy’s Virginia home. The idea spread to Alexandria and Arlington, to Georgetown and Cleveland Park, and presently such firms as Johnson & Johnson were offering self-improvement courses for their executives.

  The Kennedys were very outdoorsy. Not since Theodore Roosevelt had so ardent an advocate of the strenuous life lived in the White House. There was touch football, and sailing off Hyannisport, and Jackie’s water-skiing. One or another of them was enthusiastic about nearly every sport: tennis, swimming, horseback riding, badminton, golf, softball, isometrics, skiing at Aspen, and hiking before breakfast. The fact that Pierre Salinger, the White House press secretary, had a stocky build which was growing stockier made him an apostate, almost un-American, and the President tried to redeem him by challenging him to push-up matches. With Pierre in mind, Kennedy at one time asked everyone on his staff to lose five pounds each. The President himself faithfully went through special back exercises in the miniature White House gym, in hotel rooms on trips, and on the floor of Air Force One.

  At times the preoccupation with keeping fit became obsessive. The Hyannisport version of touch football was a rough sport; catching a pass in the rose bushes could be dangerous; Jackie quit playing after she broke a leg. When Kennedy appointed Red Fay Undersecretary of the Navy, Red, a balding friend from PT days, toured Navy bases taking on gobs in push-up contests. Guests at Hickory Hill were expected to play at least one set of tennis before breakfast, and after the President saw his Green Beret guerrilla fighters master an almost unbelievable obstacle course at Fort Bragg, he told his three middle-aged military aides that he wanted them to do it, too.

  The most memorable physical education exploit of those days became known as the Great Hike. It began with General David M. Shoup, commandant of the Marine Corps and a Kennedy favorite. Shoup unearthed a 1908 Theodore Roosevelt directive which had required Marine Corps company officers to march fifty miles in twenty hours, double-timing the last seven hundred yards. He sent a memo about it to the President, who after a little research wrote back: “President Roosevelt laid down such requirements not only for the officers of the Marine Corps but, when possible, for members of his own family, members of his staff and Cabinet, and even for unlucky foreign diplomats.” Kennedy then challenged the Marine Corps. He asked Shoup whether today’s marines could do as well as the marines of 1908. They could and did, but that was only the start of it. Robert Kennedy hiked the length of the C & O Canal path; assistant attorneys general and Justice Department secretaries followed him. The story reached the papers and engendered a craze. Walking long distances became the latest thing. People who seldom strolled farther than the distance from the armchair to the martini pitcher were
on the road. Alarmed physicians pointed out that overenthusiasm in exercise was dangerous. At their behest the President warned against overdoing it, and Salinger, who had rashly agreed to lead the White House press corps fifty miles, gratefully backed down.

  Salinger was pitched into the Hickory Hill swimming pool fully dressed at the end of an uproarious lawn party there, and on impulse Ted Kennedy dove in after him. When stories of the incident found their way into print the frowns on the faces of Kennedy haters deepened. For some reason the episode seemed particularly decadent to them. Private swimming pools were an affront to the Protestant ethic anyhow; entering them wearing anything except a bathing suit was almost a perversion. But those who felt that way received an even ruder shock. June 17, 1962, was the attorney general’s twelfth wedding anniversary. He and Ethel gave a party to celebrate it. Tables were set around the pool; Ethel was at a table that teetered on an impromptu catwalk which actually crossed the pool. Arthur Schlesinger and a partner decided to dance between courses. That was a mistake. Their weight on the catwalk tilted it. The hostess’s chair started to slide, and, splash, there was Ethel, in the drink. Schlesinger, mortified, plunged in after her. They put on dry clothes and the party continued, but that wasn’t the way the Kennedy haters told it; in their accounts the cavorting around the pool had stopped just shy of Babylon. For the next year Ethel had to set new guests straight on what had really happened, and sometimes she had the uneasy feeling that they didn’t believe her.