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Claim: During the 1960's,
Example: [Collected via e-mail, June 2008]
Origins: Amidst the turmoil of the civil rights movement in the 1960's (and prompted by acts of violence such as those recently visited upon the As reported at the time, Kennedy said:
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, in a broadcast to the world, today acknowledged the United States' imperfections in the area of equal rights for Negroes. He pleaded, however, for recognition of the progress that had been made
and for an awareness that everything pointed to continuing progress.
"There's no question that in the next thirty or forty years a Negro can also achieve the same position that my brother has as President of the United States, certainly within that period of time," the Attorney General said. The Voice of America beamed his extemporaneous remarks to more than sixty countries through thirty-nine radio transmitters. Translations were superimposed in
Consistent with a Voice of America policy of acknowledging the worst in the news as well as the bright side, "It's a matter that disturbs us tremendously," he declared. "But I think that people should also understand some of the good things that are being done in this area, that this doesn't really represent the American people or the American Government, that this is just a small minority group which is causing these problems and difficulties. "It doesn't represent the vast majority of people in the South, this kind of riot, this kind of lawlessness, and it certainly doesn't represent the feelings of the United States Government or the American people. That is why we took the steps that we took to try to prevent it, and we have prevented it." The Attorney General also told the world that the suppression of the recent outbreaks did not mean the end of them. "I am not saying to you, and I would be less than frank if I did, that these kinds of events are ended now and that they won't have any racial prejudice or violence of the future, because we will have them," he declared. But, Mr. Kennedy said, "we are not going to accept the status quo" in the matter of Negro rights. "We are not going to accept the riots or the disorders in Montgomery or Birmingham, Alabama," he said. "We sent people in in order to end it, and that is the feeling of the vast majority of American people, and that's the feeling of the United States Government."
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