JFK Library Forums

Heather Cox Richardson, Boston College professor of history, discusses her new book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America with Tom Nichols, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Robert Costa, chief election and campaign correspondent for CBS News, discusses key issues in advance of the 2024 elections with David Gergen, senior political analyst at CNN and a White House adviser to four presidents.

Matthew Delmont, Dartmouth professor of history, discusses his recent book Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, which explores the crucial contributions of the more than one million Black men and women who served in World War II, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Renée Graham, associate editor and columnist at The Boston Globe, moderates.

In commemoration of the 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s June 1963 speech on civil rights, this special panel discussion explores civil rights issues in the 1960s and today. Mark Whitaker, CBS Sunday Morning contributor and author of “Saying it Loud: 1966 - The Year Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement” moderates a conversation with Jonathan Eig, author of the new biography “King: A Life”; Judge Nancy Gertner (ret.), senior lecturer on law at Harvard Law School; David Greenberg, professor of history and of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University; and Traci Parker, professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

In a nationally televised address in June 1963, President Kennedy addressed the most urgent domestic issue of the time: the struggle to guarantee civil rights for all Americans. In his speech, President Kennedy implored a nation divided by race, to rise to the challenge of that moment, to create a society in which all its citizens were afforded equal opportunity under the law. We acknowledge that the civil rights movement represented a challenge of President Kennedy’s leadership, but with this speech, he sought to lay the foundation for the protection of civil rights for generations to come. On June 9, 2023, the JFK Library Foundation convened a special commemoration of this important moment in the historical timeline of social justice in America, featuring keynote remarks from 82nd U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. Following the keynote, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and Rahsaan Hall, President and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts discussed civil rights through the intersection of the law and activism. Their conversation was moderated by Kimberly Atkins Stohr, Senior Opinion Writer for the Boston Globe.