Lemann and the Atlantic Monthly vs JFK on CIvil Rights

[James DiEugenio]

This is part of what I call "The Posthumous Assassination of John Kennedy."  In a so called liberal magazine.

I did not note in the article that Lemann wrote a hit piece on Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison for GQ back when the movie JFK came out. That cover story got the most letters of any article that magazine ever printed.  He then became the Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia! Go figure.

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/lemann-and-the-atlantic-monthly-vs-jfk-on-civil-rights

[Benjamin Cole]

17 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

This is part of what I call "The Posthumous Assassination of John Kennedy."  In a so called liberal magazine.

I did not note in the article that Lemann wrote a hit piece on Oliver Stone and Jim Garrison for GQ back when the movie JFK came out. That cover story got the most letters of any article that magazine ever printed.  He then became the Dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia! Go figure.

 

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/lemann-and-the-atlantic-monthly-vs-jfk-on-civil-rights

There is something wrong at The Atlantic magazine. They are, of course, now co-hosting Washington Week in Review, the PBS (and thus government sponsored) weekly round-up, that back in the 1970s and 1980s was really quite good (though never hard-hitting on the JFKA). 

Today, "journalists" migrate in-and-out of government, and party positions, or lobby groups and think tanks.  There is a difference between government-partisan hacks and journalists. Jen Psaki is not a journalist. 

The Atlantic ran this ridiculous but horrid headline back in July:

The Most Shocking Aspect of RFK Jr.’s Anti-Semitism

What’s surprising isn’t that Kennedy voiced an anti-Jewish conspiracy, but that it took this long.

By Yair Rosenberg

Right, RFK2 is anti-semitic. 

People are losing faith in government, media, academia.

That congressional hearing starring the three Ivy League presidents was a complete debacle. 

 

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[James DiEugenio]

Wow Ben, I did not know about that prior article.

When you combine it with this one, I mean whew.

I was really kind of startled when the writer said with such certainty, on November 22, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy.

I mean 60 years on?

BTW, does not Steve Jobs widow own that magazine?

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Wow Ben, I did not know about that prior article.

When you combine it with this one, I mean whew.

I was really kind of startled when the writer said with such certainty, on November 22, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy.

I mean 60 years on?

BTW, does not Steve Jobs widow own that magazine?

"Through Emerson, Powell Jobs (Jobs' wife) owns The Atlantic and a stake in Axios. In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Powell Jobs donated $2 million to Hillary Clinton and raised a further $4 million for her. Powell Jobs was an early investor in, and board member of, Ozy."

---30---

In the battle for control of media and government among various elites, the JFKA is merely a tool to marginalize one group or the other. So...RFK2 is a nut for suspecting the CIA had a role in the JFKA, and btw he is also an anti-semite. 

Even yet, elites do not want the JFKA story told, and will protect Biden for suppressing the JFK Records Act. It is hard to believe. I deduce that there is a fear that government will lose its last shreds of credibility if the true JFKA story comes out. 

I have to say, no one seems to regard RFK2---certainly no one who knows him, or has worked with him---as an anti-semite.  The Atlantic and other legacy media outlets on that end of the political spectrum can print that in headlines, but it does not seem to stick. 

It is astonishing that vulgar, malicious and unfounded smears are tolerated, or even the norm, in legacy media outlets today. 

But to keep the JFK Records suppressed, all is fair. 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Ben, I did not know about Axios also. Or her support for HRC.  Man she must have been one of her biggest contributors. I mean six million?

So weird, that the so called liberal media does this BS.

But hey, if you like the woman who bombed Africa with NATO?

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Ben, I did not know about Axios also. Or her support for HRC.  Man she must have been one of her biggest contributors. I mean six million?

So weird, that the so called liberal media does this BS.

But hey, if you like the woman who bombed Africa with NATO?

 

 

I am not campaigning for RFK2. But who would vote for the existing parties, now led by the weakest or most-unpleasant presidential candidates, maybe ever? 

The US, pop. 330 million, and this is what we come up with? 

[James DiEugenio]

I really wonder about Powell Jobs.

I mean, its your magazine.  How could she not have looked at it before it came out?

And this is what you do on the sixtieth?

Like I said in the article, this was a twofer. You smear JFK, and you say that Oswald killed Kennedy.

BTW, this Lemann guy is even worse than what I noted above.  Garrison had information that his uncle was part of the law firm--Monroe and Lemann-- in New Orleans that funneled money from the CIA for Sheridan's NBC special.  Which was originally designed as a two hour show.  Very few, if anyone, knew that when his article came out, since the ARRB was not in existence. But when the documents were released, I called up the law firm and talked to the secretary. And she gave me the info.

[Michael Griffith]

The most balanced and comprehensive analysis that I have seen of JFK's civil rights policies is Dr. Stephen Knott's analysis in Coming to Terms with John F. Kennedy. Any analysis that denies that JFK's initial civil rights moves were somewhat timid and halting is peddling mythology. That being said, critics from both ends of the spectrum usually ignore the fact that a few months before he died, JFK, at great political risk, openly threw the full might of his presidency behind bold civil rights reform. 

[James DiEugenio]

As a famous professor once said, facts are like sunshine.  let us look at facts, and not opinions.

First up.

But what Lemann did with this was completely unwarranted. In portraying the era that the book was published in as one of change, Lemann praises President Eisenhower for sending troops to Little Rock during the crisis at Central High and he prefaces that with the 1954 Supreme Court’s Brown vs Board decision. (pp. 205-06)

What he leaves out is that Eisenhower let the students trying to integrate Central High be terrorized by the redneck governor of the state, Orval Faubus, for 21 days. He was being publicly humiliated so he more or less had to act. Why? Because he had let Faubus trick him at their face-to-face meeting. Lemann also leaves out the fact, noted by historian Michael Beschloss, that Eisenhower advised Earl Warren not to vote for the Brown vs Board decision. And Eisenhower did not support that decision, for example, in the Autherine Lucy case at the University of Alabama in 1956. He literally let her be run off campus amid riots and rocks being thrown—even though she was there under a court order. (Jack Bass, Unlikely Heroes, p. 64)

Lemann then adds that it must not have been clear to Kennedy “that a systematic change was on the way.” Can the man be serious? In two terms Eisenhower filed ten civil rights lawsuits, two on his last day in office. In just one year, Attorney General Robert Kennedy doubled that amount. And by 1963, the number of lawyers in the Civil Rights Division had quintupled. (Harry Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, pp. 100, 104, 105) As the great southern jurist Frank Johnson said, no one in Washington was doing anything of substance on civil rights in the fifties. But when JFK came in:

…there was almost an immediate and dramatic change. He was like electricity compared to Eisenhower….He put the nation on notice that there were changes that were long overdue. (Frank Sikora, The Judge, Chapter 6)

What Lemann does with the Civil Rights Act of 1957 is startling, even for him. He says that Senator Kennedy voted for a watered down bill. (p. 206) What he does not say is this: Kennedy did not want to vote for the bill, precisely because it had been watered down. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had never voted for a civil rights bill in nearly 20 years. But he commandeered this one by pleasing his fellow southerners, segregationists Strom Thurmond and Richard Russell. Kennedy was so reluctant to vote for it that Johnson had to send two emissaries to his office to persuade him to do so. When that did not work, LBJ had to lobby Kennedy in person. Senator Kennedy reluctantly voted for it since it did provide for a (toothless) Civil Rights Commission. (Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power, pp. 136-37)

[James DiEugenio]

More facts vs the msm.

In 1956, the same year Profiles in Courage was published, Kennedy made a speech in New York endorsing Brown vs Board. He specifically said, “We might alienate Southern support but the Supreme Court decision is the law of the land.” This speech was covered in the New York Times on February 8, 1956, on page 1. Therefore much of the country, including the south, knew about it. But to show just how bad the Atlantic Monthly article is, the next year Kennedy went to Jackson Mississippi. He said the same thing: the Brown decision must be upheld. (Golden, p. 95) As author Harry Golden noted, it was at this point that Kennedy began to lose support in the south and to get angry letters about his support for the Brown decision. Golden’s book was published in 1964. Could both authors have missed it, or not consulted it? It seems almost superfluous to add that near the end, the Atlantic Monthly article says that on November 22, 1963 Oswald “shot and killed Kennedy in Dallas.” So, in one article on the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, The Atlantic Monthly scores a twofer: a smear of Kennedy, coupled with an endorsement of the cover up around his assassination.

So as a senator, Kennedy thought the Johnson/ Eisenhower civil rights bill was so weak he did not want to vote for it.  In fact Kennedy wrote to a voter that he hoped that they woudl later get a bill with some real force to it.

Secondly, can anyone here show me a northern senator as nationally popular as JFK at the time who went to Mississippi and said, the Brown vs Board decision must be enforced? Sounds. bit wild to me, but he did it. 

 

Edited December 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

As per being late on civil rights, on the day Kennedy was inaugurated he called up Doug DIllon at Treasury.  He wanted to know why there were no black faces in the Coast Guard parade that day. Dillon said he did not know.  Kennedy told him to find out.  It turned out that the Coast Guard Academy had not admitted a black student in something like 4 years. 

This suggested to Kennedy that something was wrong government wide in hiring practices.  So at the first full cabinet meeting he asked that everyone bring a graph with numbers of all persons of color in their departments and where they were employed.  They did, and Kennedy was taken aback.  First by the paltry numbers, and second by the fact that they were mostly located in the bottom rungs of the the hierarchy. He then signed the first affirmative action order in history in March of 1961, about 45 days into his presidency.

That order was later expanded because it only applied to the government structure.  JFK later modified it so that the same rules would apply to any government contracting.  In other words if you manufactured briefcases for the State Department, weapons for the army, or uniforms for the Navy, you now had to show you were applying affirmative action rules in hiring.   So for the first time, in places like North Carolina, textile plants hired African Americans.  When a reporter went to one and interviewed the manager, she asked him why he had done so.  The guy said, well, it was either that or shut down the plant. Quite effective policy I would say.

Kennedy did the same thing to colleges in the south.  For the first time, you had to prove that you were recruiting and admitting African American students in order to get grant money for research projects.  Kennedy applied this to private schools as well as public ones.  So places like Duke and Clemson had to prove they were using affirmative action rules and admitting African Americans.  This was a big part of his program in integrating higher education for the first time in the south.  And it was quite effective.

Unlike Eisenhower, Kennedy added the federal government to lawsuits requesting integration at Ole Miss and Alabama.  And unlike Ike, he did not wait  after the fact for protection of the new students--Little Rock--, or at Alabama in the 1956 Autherine Lucy case, where Ike never acted at all and let her be forced off campus by harassment and intimidation, even though she had a court order. Kennedy sent in federal marshals at Ole Miss for Meredith, and 2000 troops for Hood and Malone at Alabama,  this time stationed right in town.  The Kennedy administration had done in less than three years what FDR, Truman and Eisenhower had not even begun to do in three decades: they had eliminated segregation in higher education throughout the south. 

I for one will burn in Hades before I listen to a Reagan Democrat tell me who JFK was. 

Edited December 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I really wonder about Powell Jobs.

I mean, its your magazine.  How could she not have looked at it before it came out?

And this is what you do on the sixtieth?

Like I said in the article, this was a twofer. You smear JFK, and you say that Oswald killed Kennedy.

BTW, this Lemann guy is even worse than what I noted above.  Garrison had information that his uncle was part of the law firm--Monroe and Lemann-- in New Orleans that funneled money from the CIA for Sheridan's NBC special.  Which was originally designed as a two hour show.  Very few, if anyone, knew that when his article came out, since the ARRB was not in existence. But when the documents were released, I called up the law firm and talked to the secretary. And she gave me the info.

What Sheridan did to Garrison in New Orleans is unbelievable. Sheridan once wrote a book about Jimmy Hoffa and worked with RFK1. Now I wonder who the heck was Sheridan. Was he assigned to RFK1 as a handler of sorts from the intel community? 

Powell Jobs likely knows little about the JFKA, the Kennedy legacy, RFK 1 and RFK2. Perhaps she is told a few lurid details about RFK2, and then is hands-off anyway. She has a gigantic empire to govern, and likely receptions, parties, soirees every day and night. 

Likely, she is satisfied if The Atlantic is perceived as liberal, and boosts her image and access to D-Party lawmakers. Why does Bezos own the WaPo? 

You know how it goes.

Real journalism, and history-writing, is done by guys who grunt around libraries, read primary documents, interview people low and high on various organization chains, and eat sandwiches or burrito-truck fare between documents. 

Powell Jobs? A somewhat different life story.

[Benjamin Cole]

Well, getting OT here, but here the Wiki on Walter Sheridan, the man who helped torpedo Garrison in 1967. 

Sheridan possibly worked at ONI (that is what told Garrison), then did work at FBI and NSA, before joining RFK1. 

So was he a Deep State mole watching over RFK1? 

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Sheridan was born in 1925 in Utica, New York.^[3][4] During World War II, he served in the US Navy's Submarine Service,^[3] and according to some sources worked for the Office of Naval Intelligence.^[5] After the war he benefited from the G.I. Bill, graduating from Fordham University in 1950.^[1]

Career[edit]

Sheridan joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation, resigning after four years over J. Edgar Hoover's focus on anti-Communism.^[4] As Sheridan later put it, "Hoover was more interested in guys who were Communists for 15 minutes in 1931 than he was in guys who were stealing New Jersey."^[1] He was then a National Security Agency investigator for three years.^[1][4]

Sheridan was an investigator for the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, recruited to its staff by Robert F. Kennedy in 1957.^[1][2] He was a regional coordinator for John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign, and a coordinator for the Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign, 1968.^[4] After Robert Kennedy was appointed Attorney General in 1961, Sheridan became a special assistant to Kennedy working as the effective chief of a team investigating Hoffa and the Teamsters.^[3] From 1965 to 1970, he was an NBC News special correspondent, producing documentaries on crime and gun control among other issues;^[4] his unit received a Peabody Award for work on the 1967 Detroit riot.^[3] Sheridan also covered the 1967 prosecution of Clay Shaw by Jim Garrison, and in 1967 produced an hour-long special for NBC on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.^[6]

 

[James DiEugenio]

Sheridan did work for ONI, very high up in counter intelligence. Which probably means he knew James Angleton.

That was in Navasky's book on Robert Kennedy.

[Benjamin Cole]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sheridan did work for ONI, very high up in counter intelligence. Which probably means he knew James Angleton.

That was in Navasky's book on Robert Kennedy.

Well, ONI-FBI-NSA for Sheridan. Sure looks like he was a handler or mole working inside the RFK1 team, and then went to New Orleans to torpedo Garrison.