"OUR ORIGINS MAY BE DIFFERENT BUT OUR DESTINY IS THE SAME"

JFK SPEAKS AT NAACP RALLY IN L.A.
  
Los Angeles, California (JFK+50) On July 10, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts spoke at a rally of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People*.  The leading contender for the 1960 Democratic nomination for POTUS said...


"I want our party to speak out with courage and candor on every issue--and that includes civil rights.  I want no second class citizenship for any American.

Our job is to turn the American vision of a society in which no man has to suffer discrimination based on race into a living reality.  We must secure to every American equal access...to the voting booth, to the schoolroom, to jobs, to housing, to all public facilities."

Senator Kennedy went on say...

"(We are) one nation...and we are all one great people.  Our origins may be different, but our destiny is the same.  The place to begin is the White House itself where the Chief Executive should exert firm and positive leadership."

*National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is a civil rights organization founded in 1909 by W.E.B. Du Bois, Mary White Ovington, Moorfield Storey and Ida B. Wells.  Today's membership is 500,000 with headquarters in Baltimore, MD.

 SOURCE

"Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy At NAACP Rally, Los Angeles, California, July 10, 1960," JFK Presidential Library and Museum, www.jfklibrary.org/

JFK Meets with NAACP Representatives
E. Franklin Jackson &
Stephen Gill Spottswood
Photo by Robert Knudsen (1961)
JFK Library Image

AN UNSUNG HERO OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

DOROTHY COTTON, CIVIL RIGHTS LEGEND, DEAD AT 88

Ithica, New York (JFK+50) On Sunday June 10, 2018, Dorothy Lee Forman Cotton*, head of the Citizen Education Program for the NAACP in the 1960s, passed away at the Kendal at Ithica retirement community.  The Dorthy Cotton Institute** website describes their namesake as "one of the most important unsung heroes of the civil rights movement."

Mrs. Cotton's key focus, according to Jeff Martin, was voter education in the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.  He writes that she "taught non-violence to demonstrators before marches and...calmed tensions by singing church hymns."

Civil rights activist Bernard Lafayette, Jr.*** described Dorothy as "very courageous."

Dorothy Cotton also worked at the Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee and accompanied Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on his trip to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

*Dorothy Lee Forman Cotton (1930-2018) was born in Goldsboro, N.C. & attended Shaw University in Raleigh.  DLFC earned her BS in English & Library Science at Virginia State College in 1955 and Masters at Boston University in 1960.

**The Dorothy Cotton Institute advances the knowing, sharing and protection of human rights.

***Bernard Lafayette, Jr. was born in Tampa, Florida & was a member of the Nashville Student Movement.  BLJ worked with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) & the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).  BLJ was educated at American Baptist College & Harvard University.

SOURCE

"Civil rights pioneer Cotton, an MLK colleague, dies", by Jeff Martin, Associated Press, The Knoxville News-Sentinel, June 13, 2018.

Bernard Lafayette, Jr.

Fisk University
East Tennessee History Workshop
on Civil Rights
Photo by John White (2008)