By Tanner Adomaitis, Staff Writer
Originally Published March 12, 2024
On Feb. 21, Dr. Stephen Knott, a retired Professor of National Security Affairs at the United States Naval War College visited Saint Vincent College (SVC) on behalf of the Center for Political and Economic Thought (CPET) to discuss his most recent book, Coming to Terms with John. F. Kennedy. To begin his talk, Knott shared his two earliest memories–the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
“My parents watched President Kennedy announce that the Soviet Union placed missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, and I can remember that speech. Not that I necessarily knew who the man on the screen was, but I could see the fear in my parents’ faces,” Knott said. “Not long after that, my father, who was an architect, came back with blueprints for a bomb shelter.”
Knott discussed the fear brought by the crisis, explaining how he believed it was the closest the world had come to nuclear warfare in history. Knott also discussed how when the assassination of President Kennedy was televised, it was the first time he had seen his mother cry. When he worked at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston and noted how he would often see people leaving with tears in their eyes after visiting the museum, noting the emotional ties of the public to Kennedy.
Knott shifted his discussion to Kennedy and civil rights, and how Kennedy had to politically outmaneuver the southern, segregationist Democrats of Congress at the time to show he wasn’t a threat to them to secure the Democratic Presidential nomination.
“He was more active as a junior member of Congress on civil rights issues, but by 1960, he is less inclined to take on that issue,” Knott said. “Dr. King and his followers believed initially that they had a friend in Kennedy. That he was going to support their civil rights agenda. They were quickly disappointed when Kennedy moderated his position.”
Knott noted that for Kennedy, it made sense politically to moderate his view. However, when James Meredith, an African American veteran, was denied enrollment at the University of Mississippi, Kennedy was shocked by the violence and the treatment of a veteran. Kennedy nationalized the Mississippi National Guard and mobilized the 82nd Airborne to enforce the court order to allow Meredith to enroll.
This and other incidents, such as denied enrollment of twoAfrican American students at the University of Alabama and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, led to Kennedy’s approach to civil rights becoming more assertive. He gave a televised address on civil rights in 1963. Through the speech, Kennedy put his administration at the forefront of the civil rights effort, and from that point on, Kennedy was viewed as an ally by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists.
Knott then shifted the discussion to Kennedy’s assassination, noting the reason Kennedy was in Dallas, Texas, the place of his murder, was because he was losing support in the south after taking a more radical approach to civil rights. Kennedy made this risky political move in hopes of regainingthe support of a crucial southern state to secure his reelection after his approval rating dropped from 70 percent to the high 50sfollowing his civil rights speech.
Knott explained that Kennedy blamed the Eisenhower-Nixon Administration for allowing Cuba to become communist, for Sputnik, for being behind the Soviet Union in the space race, and for being behind in missile technology. Kennedy promised to do something about Cuba, which resulted in the catastrophic Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed attempt to overthrow the communist leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro. Kennedy took complete responsibility for the event and refused to escalate the situation after its failure.
“It could not have gone more poorly than it did, but this does not stop his efforts to remove Castro,” Knott said. “In fact, it intensifies them, and he puts his brother, the Attorney General, in charge of a renewed effort to eliminate Castro. We know now today that there were eight separate attempts sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency to kill Fidel Castro while both Eisenhower and Kennedy were president. This built up to the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Knott noted that while Kennedy had many reasons for wanting the missiles removed from Cuba, one of the largest was his determination to avoid nuclear exchange and World War III.
While the missiles were eventually removed from Cuba, Kennedy agreed to remove some missiles from Turkey and promised not to invade Cuba. Knott noted Kennedy’s hatred of war and how nothing was worth World War III. Kennedy also refused to escalate efforts in Vietnam further than he had. Knott speculated that the Vietnam War would never have escalated to what it had under President Lyndon B. Johnson if Kennedy had been President.
Knott concluded his speech by discussing Kennedy’s and President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War efforts, comments on Kennedy’s private versus public life, and ended with questions from the audience.
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