Niven explores how the Freedom Rides set a pattern for JFK's reaction to the civil rights movement, and how the president tried to make a half-hearted stand for civil rights while shoring up his support among segregationist white southern Democrats. Drawing on voting data, public opinion polls, and a shrewd analysis of the existing literature, he shows that Kennedy and his advisors--including Attorney General Robert Kennedy--had ample evidence to recognize that the old Democratic Solid South would soon be lost and that they should court the African American vote and the white liberal vote outside the South.
The Politics of Injustice clearly shows that, despite his liberal reputation, President Kennedy stood in the way of civil rights progress due to a political miscalculation. It is a critical book for understanding the early 1960s and the Kennedy administration, and for contemplating what might have been in those turbulent times.
The Author: David Niven is associate professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University and co-author, with Jeremy Zilber, of Racialized Coverage of Congress: The News in Black and White.
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