We all ask ourselves that question at least once in our lives. What if…. I was thinking about the events that unfolded today in history. November 22, 1963. It was the day that defined a generation of Americans. Many of us were not around or maybe too young to remember the event, but it still defined a clear change in American history.
Recently documents have been released pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy. There is still speculation and theories pointing to a conspiracy. Was Lee Oswald the lone shooter? Were the CIA/mafia/anti-Castro groups involved? I honestly don’t know. I have read over a hundred different books on the subject, walked Dealey Plaza in Dallas more than once, watched numerous documentaries from all different perspectives and still am undecided.
What if…?
What if President Kennedy really wanted us out of Vietnam? How would America look today? I don’t think we would have had so many cultural changes in our country if he had accomplished that. No anti-war music written. No POW/MIA controversies. Thousands of young men would still be alive. Lyndon Johnson would not have been President.
That brings up my next point. What if President Johnson did not assume office? Would Kennedy have promoted civil rights in a different manner than Johnson? Would race relations be different today than they are? What if the racist comment by President Johnson was revealed at the time he said it?
LBJ, a beer-swilling, blunt-speaking Texan, didn’t shy from using what today we refer to as The N Word. One sentence often attributed to LBJ, which has gained great fame on the internet, is this: "I'll have those n****** voting Democratic for 200 years."
MSNBC reporter Adam Serwer writes:
"For two decades in Congress he was a reliable member of the Southern bloc, helping to stonewall civil rights legislation. As [biographer Robert] Caro recalls, Johnson spent the late 1940s railing against the “hordes of barbaric yellow dwarves” in East Asia. Buying into the stereotype that blacks were afraid of snakes (who isn’t afraid of snakes?) he’d drive to gas stations with one in his trunk and try to trick black attendants into opening it. Once, Caro writes, the stunt nearly ended with him being beaten with a tire iron.” (Serwer 2014)
“These Negroes, they're getting pretty uppity these days and that's a problem for us since they've got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppityness. Now we've got to do something about this, we've got to give them a little something, just enough to quiet them down, not enough to make a difference.” (Conservative 2011)
What if we didn’t have a president who ultimately signed the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 who was a racist and only signed for political reasons? What if we had a President who actually believed in equality?
What if, we as Americans, could see the vision of President Kennedy of serving our great nation and being a better place for liberty and freedom for all and a country of peace and prosperity?
What if?
References
Conservative, The Relentless. 2011. The Huffington Post. 8 24. Accessed 11 22, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-relentless-conservative/the-democratic-partys-two_b_933995.html.
Serwer, Adam. 2014. Lyndon Johnson was a civil rights hero. But also a racist. 4 12. Accessed 11 22, 2017. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-civil-rights-racism.
