by Thomas Maier
President Kennedy’s strong commitment to immigration reform, motivated by more than politics, was engrained in family lore. Nearly a century earlier, Honey Fitz had opposed the arbitrary and often racist restrictions that Know-Nothings would have placed on the flow of immigrants into the country, many of them ethnic Catholics like the Kennedys. In A Nation of Immigrants, Kennedy railed against the “national origins” restrictions in immigration law since 1924 that favored Northern Europeans (including the Irish) but shut down immigration from Italy, Greece and Southern Europe and virtually barred any immigration from Asia and Latin America. His new program, unveiled in July 1963, called upon Congress to eliminate this quota system. In his announcement,Kennedy said “a compelling need” existed for a new immigration system “that serves the national interest and reflects in every detail the principles of equality and human dignity to which our nation subscribes.”
Under Kennedy’s plan, immigration would not be based on race or ethnicity implicit in the national origins system, but upon three criteria: skills, family reunification and priority of those applying. Kennedy knew the odds for his immigration reform were long, not unlike his civil rights program. As Tom Wicker of the New York Times calculated:“Congressional approval of these changes, most of them controversial, is not believed likely this year and promises to be difficult at any time in the House of Representatives.” Indeed, many of the same white Southern legislators, such as Democratic Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, who opposed Kennedy’s civil rights program also planned to block his reform on immigration. By abolishing the “national origins” system of immigrants, Kennedy opened the door particularly for Chinese immigrants, blocked since the first racial-restrictive law, aimed specifically at them, was passed in 1882. “The so-called ‘yellow peril’ caused an emotional reaction not unlike the prejudice against Negroes that resulted in the racial segregation laws of the eighteen-nineties,” the Times reminded its readers. Kennedy’s proposed change, upping the total immigrant entry by less than 10 percent, sounded relatively modest. “Such legislation does not seek to make over the face of America,” he assured. Yet inherently, like Kennedy’s civil rights program, the results of these proposals would become transforming to the nation.
America’s long history of racial discrimination, epitomized by the shame of slavery and Jim Crow, was also found in its immigration laws. Rather than persecuting those already here, this form of racism ostracized those who wished to share in the American dream of opportunity for all, denying the promise inscribed on the Statue of Liberty to “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” In finding a common bond between the two, the Kennedys made plain their intent to address both injustices. As Robert Kennedy later explained, “It doesn’t make any sense that we discriminate against people because of the color of their skin and it doesn’t make any sense when we discriminate because of the place of their birth.”
Unlike the civil rights struggle, John Kennedy had a much lengthier involvement in this effort. His brother later claimed that “every step in immigration legislation since World War II bore the John F. Kennedy imprint.”As much as the cool and detached president was willing to reveal anything publicly, this feeling about immigration reflected something deep inside him, part of his own history. So much of the Kennedy family’s experience in America—the deep resentments of his father against Boston’s Brahmins, the history of Irish Catholic struggles on both continents mindfully taught by his grandfather and mother—seemed wrapped up in this effort for reform.
JOHN ROCHE, a former JFK advisor and historian, agreed in a 1986 preface to A Nation of Immigrants that Kennedy’s impetus for immigration reform could be found within his own family’s experience. Rather than resort to resentment or defensiveness, however, Jack Kennedy, an Irish Catholic on his own terms, turned his familial desire for reform, perhaps even payback, into a national initiative.“John and his siblings grew up in an environment where the plight of the Irish, at the hands of the British and of the Americans whom they encountered in emigration, was a vibrant cause,” Roche contended.“The great jump between Joseph P.Kennedy and his son was that the Ambassador’s concern was purely for the Irish- Americans and their woes, while the Senator who prepared this primer had broadened his vista to include all immigrant groups—including a number his father would have surely kept outside the pale!”Though JFK was cautious in many realms of political life, Roche noted there was one area where “Kennedy, despite himself, went over the line between political cost/ benefit analysis and crusading: immigration.”
In 1963, immigration reform didn’t burn with the ferocity of the civil rights movement, nor were there Know-Nothings to oppose Kennedy directly. Newspaper editorials and religious leaders suggested the newest immigrants must be treated fairly and with dignity, just like all Americans. Before his passing, Pope John XXIII reminded Catholics that governments have the moral obligation to accept immigrants, other peoples arriving on their shores. But rather than a directive from his church or political pressure, Kennedy’s commitment to immigration came from the heart, from his own sense of family—the best reason, as his proposals suggested, to let someone into the country. In his bones, this president understood why so many came to America. “If he failed to achieve the dream for himself,”Kennedy said of the striving immigrant in his book,“he could still retain it for his children.”
John Kennedy didn’t see his own dream come to fruition. His proposals eventually led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as well as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, largely as a tribute to his memory. The two pieces of legislation dramatically changed life in America for millions of people of color—“non-Caucasians” under the old system— whether their ancestors had been sharecroppers or boat people or migrants from across the Rio Grande. As president, Kennedy sought to ensure that all minorities were given the same opportunities that his own family enjoyed, a sentiment repeated again and again by other Kennedys. A few months before the immigration bill passed, the reissued edition of A Nation of Immigrants was published. In its front, Robert Kennedy, mindful of his roots, dedicated the new book—“To those committed to the battle for immigration reform.”
Chapter Thirty-One
In the Springtime
DOROTHY TUBRIDY HAUNTED her old friend Jack. She reminded him that no American president—despite all the Irish emigrants who became productive and distinguished U.S. citizens—had ever traveled while in office to Ireland. As the first Irish-Catholic president, Jack could visit his family’s ancestral homeland and surely be welcomed as a native son. With a wink and smile,Tubridy pestered him as only a family friend could. She vowed “to persecute him until he did come.”
Tubridy was like an Irish cousin to the Kennedys. Her husband, an Irish riding champion, met Ethel Kennedy in the early 1950s at a horse show in New York and the two young newlywed couples hit it off as friends. When Dot’s husband was killed in an accident, Ethel and Bobby invited their grief-stricken friend for an extended getaway in America, where she met all the Kennedys, including a week or two spent with Jack and Jackie at the family’s summer place in Palm Beach. When they breezed through Dublin in 1956, Jack and Jackie stopped by to see Tubridy as well. Usually when Dot came to call, Jack and the other Kennedys spent the night by the piano, singing and playing the Irish tunes.
During the 1960 West Virginia primary, she knocked on doors with the Kennedy sisters and asked in her Dublin accent for a vote for her friend Jack. Some flatly told her they weren’t for the “Catholic candidate,” but others invited her in for tea and a chat about the old country. “I thought West Virginia was rather like Ireland,” she remembered,“because it’s quite a poor state compared with the other states in America, and the people there are very reserved and very quiet and noncommittal.” Dot rejoiced with the other Kennedys on primary night at Jean’s house. When Jack became president, she reminded him about visiting Ireland.
Finally in early 1963, Dot received a telephone call from the Wh
ite House, saying the president wanted to see her. At that time, she was living in the States,working for the Waterford crystal company. When she arrived, Jack could barely contain his grin.
“I want you to be the first to know,” he began,“I’m coming to Ireland.”
Nearly forty years later,Tubridy still recalls her excitement at the news. “I felt he would immediately identify with the Irish people, and he did,” she said at her home near Dublin.“Here was the most powerful person in the world, that he was Irish Catholic, and I knew it would be a great uplift for the country. There were a lot of people in the White House who said he shouldn’t go, but he was determined. He said, ‘I want to go.’”
With America entangled in a bloody and protracted battle over civil rights, several in the press wondered aloud whether the trip to Ireland was nothing more than a joyride. Even the Irish Mafia within the White House questioned Kennedy about it. “It would be a waste of time,” argued aide Kenny O’Donnell, when he first heard of the president’s plans.“You’ve got all the Irish votes in this country that you’ll ever get. If you go to Ireland, people will say it’s just a pleasure trip.”
Amused at the thought, Kennedy replied,“That’s exactly what I want— a pleasure trip to Ireland.”
The next day, after conferring with McGeorge Bundy, the president’s foreign policy expert, who agreed the Irish stay was unnecessary, O’Donnell persisted. Finally, Kennedy looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading and cut him off.
“Kenny . . . let me remind you of something,” he said. “I am the President of the United States, not you. When I say I want to go to Ireland, it means that I’m going to Ireland. Make the arrangements.”
OVER THE NEXT several weeks, Kennedy brushed up on his Irish history, adding to the tales he had learned at home and deepening his understanding of the troubles that plagued this land. He read of ancient Irish kings, their brave fights to be free of England and of the cruelties endured by the Irish. He gravitated to the story of Owen Roe O’Neill (Eoghan Ruadh O’Neill) and the Thomas Davis poem that expressed the pain of the Irish at their leader’s sudden death, particularly the refrain that cries out: “Oh, why did you leave us,Owen, why did you die?”Around the White House, he recited the poem so often that it stuck in other people’s heads. Kennedy studied Irish émigrés who fled their homeland as “wild geese” and played a part in American history. He absorbed the writings of John Boyle O’Reilly, who, after he fled Ireland, became a writer in Boston and a favorite of Honey Fitz. The Irish Brigade’s exploits during the American Civil War became a point of pride. Few knew of Kennedy’s long-held interest in Irish history, which dated back to the mid–1940s when he had visited Ireland on his own. Dave Powers was duly impressed. “He’s getting so Irish,” said the president’s crony,“the next thing we know he’ll be speaking with a brogue.”
Kennedy’s sojourn to Ireland in late June 1963 came on the back end of a long European trip, highlighted by his stirring speech in Berlin in defense of liberty against the Soviet threat. All free people were Berliners at heart, resisting communism, and he proudly declared “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Later that same day, he flew to Ireland, exhilarated but physically drained from the intensity of Berlin. A throng of joyful Dubliners lined O’Connell Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, to catch a glimpse of Kennedy as he waved from an open limousine.
When Kennedy entered the U.S. embassy at Phoenix Park, Dot Tubridy could see the fatigue in her friend’s face.“He was very tired, I thought, and he seemed in a very thoughtful mood,”Tubridy recalled. Ireland rejuvenated his spirits and “as each day went on, he became happier and more relaxed.” For a time, they talked of staying only in Dublin, but Kennedy was persuaded by Tubridy and others to travel the countryside during his three days in Ireland—an idea that didn’t require much arm-twisting. On the plane ride from Germany, Kennedy had regaled Powers and O’Donnell with stories from his earlier trips to Ireland, including his 1947 visit to Lismore Castle, and about his own search for the Kennedy ancestral home in Dunganstown. He was particularly enthusiastic about seeing his Irish relatives again.
At the embassy that night, the president chatted with guests. “To what do you attribute your success?” one asked him offhandedly. Kennedy paused but for a moment in reflection.
“To my family,” he asserted, then added, as if with a tip of the hat to his audience,“and my Irish heritage.”
As he gazed out at the lush landscape of Phoenix Park, Kennedy vowed to endorse the first Democratic presidential candidate in 1968 who’d appoint him ambassador to Ireland and send him back to live in the embassy.
THE NEXT MORNING, Kennedy rose early. Though Jacqueline Kennedy, seven months pregnant, had stayed home, the president’s entourage resembled a small army, including White House aides Dave Powers and Larry O’Brien, as well as his two sisters, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith, and Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill. After his helicopter touched down at New Ross, where he engaged in the humorous encounter with Mayor Minihan and his troublesome dung heap, Kennedy moved on to Dunganstown and similar misadventures.
For the arrival of their world-renowned relation, Mary Kennedy Ryan and the other Kennedys of Dunganstown scrubbed their modest homestead from head to toe. They cleaned up the yard and slapped a new coat of whitewash on the farmhouse. But their efforts weren’t enough to please Matt McCloskey, the rather brusque U.S. ambassador to Ireland. McCloskey, a Philadelphia contractor appointed to his post more for his mastery of fundraising back home than his international diplomacy, insisted that Mrs. Ryan do something about the unrelieved muck in front of her barn. After all, the president was expected to stand there and perhaps say a few words without sinking in ankle-deep.
Mrs. Ryan, a plump, full-bosomed woman whose gentle blue eyes had seen their share of sorrows, didn’t like to be pushed around. She and the American ambassador argued for days about the plans. Finally, three weeks before the presidential visit, Mrs. Ryan relented. The concrete was poured across her backyard. Mrs. Ryan, a widow who lived with her daughter Josie at the homestead, endured a number of other changes. The Secret Service drilled through the walls of her parlor and set up a special red “hotline” telephone for the president’s use in an emergency. Indoor plumbing was installed to create what some wags called “John’s john.” A small souvenir shop selling hand-painted pictures, rosary beads and mementos of her famous relative popped up on Mrs. Ryan’s farm, now dubbed “The Kennedy Homestead.” Out in the barley and wheat fields, a landing field for the president’s helicopter was prepared. It wasn’t far from the large beer tent erected by Smithwick’s, makers of the popular ale in Ireland, to entertain guests and members of the press. In scouting out the trip, presidential aide Kenny O’Donnell remembered how he witnessed several distant relatives haggling Mrs. Ryan for an invitation.
“You haven’t shown your face at this door in twenty years and now you’re horning in here because President Kennedy is coming!” she shouted at one startled man, her finger pointing at his face.
O’Donnell later asked this estranged cousin for his name. “John Kennedy,” the man replied sheepishly.
WHEN PRESIDENT KENNEDY arrived in Dunganstown, he spotted the winding, crooked road leading to the Kennedy Homestead—the same dirt pathway with maze-like hedgerows he remembered from 1947. He thought of the stranger he had encountered while driving around lost. “See if you can find that fellow Burrell,” the president instructed, still amused by Burrell’s highly entertaining methods of giving directions. When the Secret Service finally found him, Robert Burrell didn’t want to be bothered with Kennedy again. “I met him sixteen years ago,” Burrell replied obstinately. Kennedy’s aides fibbed a bit and told the president that Burrell, the man he wanted to thank, was not feeling up to par. No matter. Plenty of well-wishers gathered around the farm, pushed back from its rock walls and metal gate by police. Security agents remained alert to all sorts of potential dangers (including monks who might be assassins
in disguise). Kennedy ignored them and embraced the crowds, shaking as many hands as he could. At Mrs. Ryan’s doorstep, the president kissed his hostess on the cheek. She wore a simple flowered frock and had tied her hair in a bun. Kennedy then grasped the hands of her two daughters, Josephine and Mary Ann, and began asking the names of all the cousins.“He was regarded as an Irishman coming home,” recalls Mary Ann Ryan, who stood next to her mother as their famous cousin reintroduced himself.
The president entered the modest farmhouse and was ushered into the living room, where turf simmered in the fireplace.“The fire feels good,” he told Mrs. Ryan. She sat in a chair beside him and smiled for a photograph of them sipping tea that was carried around the world the next day.“Cousin Jimmy, meet Cousin Jack,” Mrs. Ryan motioned to one of the older men in the house. James Kennedy, a gaunt, ruddy-faced man who ran the other Kennedy farm in town, offered their guest something else to warm his bones. A healthy amount of Jameson’s whiskey was poured into a glass with the expectation that the president would slowly imbibe its pleasures. Instead, when no one was looking, Kennedy slipped the whiskey glass to Dave Powers, who dutifully downed its contents in a few gulps. Kennedy recognized the rascal inside this cousin. Eating cold salmon spread on wheat bread, served from a silver tray atop a white-linen tablecloth, the president motioned to James Kennedy and inquired about his meal. “Was this one poached?” the president asked his cousin, an impish remark that delighted his Irish relatives.
Outside in the back, the Ryans and Kennedys and dozens of other Irish kin and neighbors from Dunganstown, including the local parish priest, helped prepare for a formal ceremony and served cakes and tea to the crowd of dignitaries. Some wore aprons over their Sunday best. Mary Ann, a blonde-haired twenty-three-year-old, poured the tea for the president. Milk and two lumps of sugar, she was told. A local baker produced a mam moth sheet-cake fashioned in JFK’s likeness. With a proud, beaming smile, Mrs. Ryan gave him a knife to do the honors. Kennedy gently kidded his relatives, staring at his frosted image in the cake, and asked them teasingly, “Cut myself?” After more small talk and good humor, the president turned to all those assembled, lifted his cup and offered a toast.“We want to drink a cup of tea to all the Kennedys who went and to all those who stayed,” he declared.
