Like virtually everyone who was around at the time, Leon Taylor, owner of Leon’s Barbershop, remembers exactly where he was on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963.
He was cutting a patron’s hair at the barbershop on the city’s Eastside when television programming was suddenly interrupted with news that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
“It was hard to believe at first,” Taylor said. “We were being told so many things, and we didn’t know what was true. It was hard to understand that it had actually happened.”
Taylor was stunned by the announcement, and noticed the wave of dismay and shock that went through his customers in the shop.
“It was a shock to all of us,” he said. “People were saying things like ‘I don’t think it’s true,’ and ‘it couldn’t happen to him.’”
Taylor is among many people who remember the day the United States lost the charismatic 46-year-old president, who historians often credit for, among other things, averting a nuclear war with Russia during the Cuban missile crisis, spurring economic growth and expanding the country’s space program.
However, 50 years after his untimely death, Kennedy continues to hold a special place among many in the African-American community, largely for helping to build a foundation that led to passage of significant civil rights legislation.
Taylor stated his belief, shared by many, that prior to Barack Obama, Kennedy was among the few presidents African-Americans loved and felt truly had their best interest at heart, along with Bill Clinton.
“Kennedy got involved in trying to help Black people and always tried to reach a sound resolution to everything,” Taylor said.
Kennedy had won the close 1960 presidential election with significant African-American support. Still, he was at first reluctant to offend Southern segregationist legislators who were powerful in the Democratic Party at the time. However, Kennedy ultimately decided to take a bold stand in favor of civil rights.
After taking office in 1961, Kennedy spoke out in favor of school desegregation and set up what later became the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
Kennedy also instructed federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders in the South. In 1962, he sent federal troops to keep order as African-American students successfully integrated the University of Mississippi and the University of Alabama.
After seeing footage of police dogs and fire hoses being used by authorities to attack peaceful demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala., Kennedy decided it was time for Congress to draft a comprehensive Civil Rights Bill, and on June 11, 1963, delivered a landmark speech to the nation, defining the civil rights crisis as moral, constitutional and legal.
“This was not just stirring rhetoric. Kennedy followed through on his promises by submitting strong civil rights legislation to Congress, which he pushed aggressively until his assassination,” said Peniel Joseph, founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy.
Joseph added that Kennedy’s death made him a martyr of many causes, and under his successor, Lyndon Johnson, Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Kennedy’s advocacy for equality is one of many reasons why he is still admired by many in the African-American community, said Mississippi native Shirley Phillips. She still has a letter Kennedy sent to her brother for his service as a Chicago volunteer on his 1960 presidential campaign.
“There were many things I loved about President Kennedy, and it was just amazing that he would stop to take time to write a note to my brother,” Phillips said.
She was working at a local meat processing plant when she was informed by her sister that Kennedy had been killed.
“I just fell to my knees because it really hurt me so bad. I remember that like it was yesterday,” she said. “Later that day my niece and nephew were with me. I had just bought a color television, and they both were crying. It just broke my heart.”
Debbie Thrasher was in her sixth grade social studies class when she heard news of Kennedy’s assassination.
“I remember our teacher going out in the hallway, and he was crying with some of the other teachers,” Thrasher said. “The next thing you know we were released from school.”
Thrasher said that when students got home, however, ongoing coverage of the assassination flooded living rooms.
“I knew that the president had been assassinated, it just did not register what that truly meant,” she said. “My dad was crying, and I had never seen that before. That did register, and I started crying too. When a lot of people talked about Kennedy back then, he was recognized as one of our greatest presidents, who did what he could for the African-American community.”
Agent remembers Kennedy
Abraham Bolden, who in 1961 became the first African-American secret service agent assigned to the presidential detail, at John F. Kennedy’s request, published his memoir, The Echo from Dealey Plaza.He recounts his experience meeting Kennedy and offers his theories related to the president’s assassination, one of which is that he overheard Secret Service agents from the South saying they were suspicious of Kennedy and would refuse to adequately protect him. Visit echofromdealeyplaza.net.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s impact
President John F. Kennedy was iconic, but his wife Jacqueline also made a lasting impact. Her grace and fashion sense drew international attention; more than any other First Lady up to that time, and her style influenced both commercial manufacturers and a large segment of young women, regardless of race or economic status.
However, Jacqueline Kennedy also took a stand on the issues, including civil rights, by her integration of daughter Caroline’s school class, in her support for a memorial to Black activist Mary McLeod Bethune, in her visits to poverty-stricken areas of Washington, D.C., and in her request that a Black opera singer entertain at the White House.
