June 11 · This Day in America
In the morning, Governor George Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door at Tuscaloosa, blocking Vivian Malone and James Hood from registering. Federalized National Guardsmen arrive; Wallace steps aside; the two students enroll. That night, John F. Kennedy goes on television, much of the speech still being written as he speaks. He does not call this politics. "We are confronted primarily with a moral issue," he tells the country. "It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution." He asks whether Americans are going to treat their fellow Americans as they want to be treated. It is the first time a president frames civil rights as a matter of right and wrong, not law and order. Hours later, in Mississippi, Medgar Evers is shot in his driveway. The speech becomes the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Source: www.jfklibrary.org
Also on this day · 1919
He had never won a single race before that spring. Then a colt named Sir Barton took the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and on this day the Belmont Stakes — three classics in thirty-two days — before anyone had a name for the feat. The phrase "Triple Crown" came later, written backward onto what he'd done. Only a dozen horses have ever matched it since.
Source: www.history.com
“We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.”President John F. Kennedy, 1963