meetings with the russian spy to open a back channel between the president and khrushchev. it was really something quite extraordinary. things like that had probably never gone on before. kennedy had taken risks by having bobby set up this back channel. and he was hopeful that the soviets would respond. bobby, through the russian spy, had been led to believe that khrushchev was ready to talk about nuclear arms. as it turned out, he wasn t the least bit interested. khrushchev has only one agenda, berlin. divided by the russians and the west after world war ii, people are flooding through sovi soviet-controlled east berlin to escape communism. it s a major source of embarrassment for khrushchev. people are fleeing the eastern part into the west, and khrushchev wants to stop that
bobby knew that he had to protect them. it was really a question of doing the right thing, politics be damned. bobby sends in a federal force to protect the lives of martin luther king jr. and the freedom riders. and this was bobby s real baptism in terms of what the civil rights movement meant to him. bobby kennedy has to be educated. he doesn t come to the civil rights struggle with anything much different than any other wealthy white man of privilege would. but after the freedom riders, bobby went from wanting nothing to do with the civil rights movement to feeling he had to play a role. i think we just have to face up to our responsibilities. it s 1961, not 1861. and we re going to have to continue to make progress. for jack, the freedom riders
another bus halted by a flat tire was set afire. it put the savagery and it puts the brutality on television, it puts this massive resistance on display, not just across the country, but across the world. and the governor of alabama, john patterson had said citizens of the state are so enraged, i cannot guarantee protection for this bunch of rebel rousers. the whole world is watching. the violence could undermine kennedy s presidential authority. jfk says get them off the buses. stop them from demonstrating. jack does not want to back the protesters. supporting civil rights would make him very unpopular with southern democrats. let s not forget the south is solidly democratic. they call them dixiecrats. but they were democrats. so a big part of the power base for the kennedys rests in the south. in a desperate attempt to diffuse the situation, bobby makes a call. bobby tried to convince the freedom riders they should hold
it s going to take a little while, i think. jack s brother robert and wife ethel joined in the family s triumph. bobby had been jack s campaign manager, and their father is adamant he is handed an important role in the new administration. joe kennedy let jack choose his cabinet with one exception. joe insisted that the next attorney general be robert kennedy. one cold december morning, the president gets bobby kennedy up in his house in georgetown and tells him he s going to be appointing him as attorney general. and he says, bobby, grab your balls, let s go. jfk stops at the door and says, hey, comb your hair. bobby for most of his career
violence. lynching is still the reality. if you were black, you couldn t vote. you couldn t buy property. you couldn t go certain places. i m sorry, but our management does not allow us to serve negroes in here. while jfk is looking at the moon and stars, you see real hypocrisy and contradiction. how can the united states be a democracy if its citizens are killing or hurting or hospitalizing its other citizens. but in the spring of 1961, john f. kennedy and his brother robert didn t care that much about civil rights. jack and bobby kennedy grew up rich and privileged. they never saw any african-americans other than those who waited on tables. so they didn t get just deep just terrible, terrible