A. Bartlett Giamatti Quotes
I'm not going to sit here now and say 'do this,' or 'do that.' But you must - must - expunge any vestige of racism.
Giamatti, A. Bartlett. Quoted in "Quotations From Commissioner Giamatti," The New York Times, 2 Sept. 1989, p. 28.
This was actually a very courageous statement for an American politician running for national office. As a result of the pressure of this statement President Franklin Roosevelt allowed Black enlistment in the Army Air Forces.
The reason this quotation is important, it was the first time in American history that a President had tied racial discrimination to morality. Before that other Presidents had argued against segregation on pragmatic grounds or on legal, Constitutional grounds. Kennedy’s private moral declaration had a huge impact on Black leaders throughout the country who heard about it by word of mouth. That statement forged a bond between JFK and Blacks while most whites did not see anything striking in the statement.
Angelo Bartlett Giamatti was an American professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the seventh Commissioner of Major League Baseball.