Interpretation as a Moral Act: Kennedy and the University of Alabama Crisis

Faced with a series of violent confrontations on civil rights in the State of Alabama in 1963, John F. Kennedy gave a formal speech that heralded the end of his unusually long-drawn-out aloofness from the issue. The speech marked a new phase in Kennedy's political leadership as the thirty-fifth president of the United States employed a rhetoric of moral failure, defining the University of Alabama crisis and the ensuing civil rights struggle as a threat to American federalism and national ideals. This paper employs the formal, neoclassical terms of rhetoric to analyze the distinct mode of persuasion Kennedy employs in which the former U.S. president (1) appeals to moral interpretation as a proper solution to the aggravating social situation and (2) puts an interpretation on civil disorder in Birmingham, Alabama as a major threat to national identity, rather than a regional, largely party-political question.