Baldwin, James(1924–
87): Expatriate writer who
warned of racial confla-
gration if the civil rights
movement failed.
Twenty-fourth Amend-
ment: This 1964 con-
stitutional amendment
outlawed poll taxes in
federal elections.
found. At the moment of King’s greatest triumph, nonviolence was losing its
hold on the civil rights movement.
President Kennedy moved rapidly to quell the Birmingham disorder. The
president promised to do ‘whatever must be done’ to prevent the agreement
from being ‘sabotaged by a few extremists.’ He had learned the lessons of
Little Rock and Ole Miss and sent federal troops to Ft. McClellan near
Birmingham. Fortunately, federal force was unnecessary because the black
community accepted King’s call for nonviolence. More important, the mayor
and city council complied with the negotiated settlement and went beyond
it to desegregate the library, golf courses, and public schools.
The Kennedys congratulated themselves on the Birmingham agreement,
but ignored warnings that race relations remained in dire need of repair.
Novelist James Baldwinblamed whites for dehumanizing blacks through
‘torture, castration, infanticide, rape, death and humiliation.’ He thought
that white liberals were worse than southern bigots because liberals were
hypocrites who talked one way but lived another. In his best-selling work,
The Fire Next Time, Baldwin forecast imminent racial violence unless ‘total
liberation’ was forthcoming. Such sentiments led attorney general Robert
Kennedy to set up a freewheeling meeting in his New York apartment with
Baldwin and other black intellectuals and activists, including psychologist
Kenneth Clark, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, singers Harry Belafonte and
Lena Horne, and freedom rider Jerome Smith. For three hours, the group
cursed Kennedy as the devil incarnate. ‘What is it you want me to do?’
Kennedy kept asking. Inside, the attorney general deeply resented such
ingratitude over his brother’s record. This was Kennedy’s first exposure to the
deep sense of black alienation in America, and, as Baldwin hoped, the fed-
eral government took a more active role in securing civil rights. The Kennedy
administration filed a record 57 voting rights suits, appointed forty blacks to
important posts, including Thurgood Marshall to a federal appeals court, and
endorsed the 24th amendmentthat banned poll taxes in federal elections.
While the drama in Birmingham played out, two accomplished black
students – Vivian Maloneand James Hood – sought admission to the
University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, George Wallace’s alma mater and the
last all-white state university in America. A federal judge ordered the univer-
sity to admit them to the 1963 summer session, but Wallace had other ideas.
He asked colonel Albert Lingo, the state’s public safety director, to dig up
enough dirt on Malone and Hood to force them to withdraw their applica-
tions. When Lingo came up empty-handed, Wallace arranged a charade to
enhance his political standing among white voters, as governors Orval
Faubus and Ross Barnett had done. This showdown with Washington ran
against the advice of his own attorney general and many of the state’s news-
paper editors, business executives, and university officials. Fearing the worst,84 THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Malone, Vivian(1942–
2005): Desegregated the
University of Alabama.