Thursday, October 14, 2021 • 7:00 pm
on Zoom History, race, and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. In Justice Rising, a landmark reconsideration of Robert Kennedy’s life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan draws on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews to reveal how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader.
When protests broke out across the South, the young attorney general confronted escalating demands for racial justice. What began as a political problem soon became a moral one. In the face of vehement pushback from Southern Democrats bent on massive resistance, he put the weight of the federal government behind school desegregation and voter registration. Bobby Kennedy’s youthful energy, moral vision, and capacity to lead created a momentum for change. He helped shape the 1964 Civil Rights Act but knew no law would end racism. When the Watts uprising brought calls for more aggressive policing, he pushed back, pointing to the root causes of urban unrest: entrenched poverty, substandard schools, and few job opportunities. RFK strongly opposed the military buildup in Vietnam, but nothing was more important to him than “the revolution within our gates, the struggle of the American Negro for full equality and full freedom.” |
Patricia Sullivan specializes in modern United States history, with an emphasis on African American history, race relations, and the history of the Civil Rights Movement. Professor Sullivan teaches courses in twentieth century U.S. history. Areas of interest include African American history; the South since the Civil War; race, reform and politics in the United States; and the history of the Civil Rights Movement. She teaches graduate courses on modern American history, African American history and on civil rights struggles in the twentieth century. Her book, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement, is the first history of the formative decades of the nation's oldest civil rights organization. Henry Louis Gates Jr. described the book as "a major contribution to our understanding of the political and cultural history of African Americans-indeed of America itself."
|
Our Mission: |
The Byrd Center advances representative democracy by promoting a better understanding of the United States Congress and the Constitution through programs and research that engage citizens.
|
© 2021 Robert C. Byrd Center for
Congressional History and Education |