1963 - Segregation is morally wrong said Kennedy

On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered a historic address on civil rights, calling it a “moral crisis.” Hours after Alabama Governor George Wallace attempted to block the entry of Black students at the University of Alabama, JFK responded with a national televised speech. He announced plans to propose sweeping civil rights legislation that would later become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kennedy emphasized the need to guarantee equal rights for all Americans, regardless of race, and asked, “Are we to say to the world… that the United States is a land of the free except for the Negroes?” This moment marked a pivotal shift in federal involvement in civil rights and signaled the White House’s stronger support for racial equality. The speech transformed the civil rights movement into a defining moral and political issue of the era.