JFK ISSUES STATEMENT ON BIRMINGHAM CHURCH BOMBING
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On September 16, 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued a statement in response to the tragic bombing that took place the previous day at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama which took the lives of four African-American girls.
The President's statement reads...
"It is regrettable that public disparagement of law and order has encouraged violence which has fallen on the innocent. If these tragic events can awaken (us) to a realization of the folly of racial injustice...then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in...peaceful progress."
President Kennedy added that Burke Marshall*, Assistant Attorney General, had been sent to Birmingham to lend assistance and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's resources were being utilized to identify those responsible for the bombing.
*Burke Marshall (1922-2003) was born in Plainfield, New Jersey & earned his law degree at Yale, 1951. BM served as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department 1961-1963.
SOURCE
"Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963," United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1964.
