Regina Doman Quotes

There was violence but ironically in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, it was not the civil rights leaders who were murdered but 4 little girls.

Gelb was referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. The Russians had installed ICBMs in Cuba and more were coming by sea. WWIII could have started with a misstep by the United States or the Soviet Union. President rejected the advice of some hawks to attack and/or invade Cuba and be ready to attack Russia with nuclear weapons. Instead, he authorized a naval blockade of all ships and planes going in or out of Cuba. There were some negotiations with the Russians, and in a few days, the Russians dismantled and removed the missiles from Cuba and we lifted the naval blockade. The perception was that Kennedy faced down the Russians who capitulated when faced with firmness and force. Actually, Kennedy gave the Russians much more. He agreed to remove the American ICBM Jupiter missiles from Turkey. But if that were known in America, the right wing would criticize Kennedy mercilessly for appeasing and capitulation to the Russians. The Russians agreed to keep it secret, and the Executive Branch classified it top secret and kept the entire deal from the public. 50 years later, Gelb, one of the few people in the government then who knew the entire deal, wrote this article pointing out that there was a serious danger to what we did to make that deal a secret. Many hawks took the Cuban Missile Crisis as proof that the Russians would back down when faced with a fait accompli and would not retaliate. They then formulated much American foreign and military policy on the assumption that the Russians will capitulate when faced with our tough unilateral terms. The reality of course was just the opposite. The Russians would only agree to a peaceful solution if we withdrew all our missiles that were threatening them and end the naval blockade of Cuba. The Russians got us to remove our missiles for the relatively cheap price of removing from Cuba just a few missiles that they had just installed. Kennedy looked like the strong hero who stood up to the Russians while in reality, he and our military and state department lost a diplomatic contest of sorts. Kennedy apologists argue that because America had developed longer range ICBMs, the Jupiter Missiles in Turkey were not that important, and Kennedy really gave up nothing of value. The Kennedy team clearly didn’t want to argue that point in a public debate, and chose secrecy where the enemy clearly knew the whole story, but our allies, our civilians, our politicians and even most of our military were in the dark.

The meeting was to discuss continuing strategy for the Civil Rights Movement. There were, at this point, several different directions in which they could go. The irony of this meeting is that King was not pleased that most of the other leaders did not place the strategic importance of the Memphis strike that he did. They wanted him do appear in other venues for other purposes. His statement about getting killed was meant for the others to consider carefully how and why they wanted King to appear. In a few days, he was killed in Memphis—not implementing one of the other leader’s “brilliant” ideas, but implementing his own where most of them thought it of secondary importance and would prefer that he appear elsewhere instead. After King’s assassination, every leader at that meeting wished that he had been more persuasive in talking King out of the Memphis activity.

After the Korean War there was a complex web of economic controls in place. Treasury Secretary George M. Humphrey led the cabinet faction urging rapid removal of the controls while others argued the opposite position. The President went along with his Treasury Secretary: