otiable" demands concerning the organized
reserves, for example, commission member Father Theodore Hesburgh
remembered the President saying:

Look, I have a serious problem in West Berlin, and I do not think
this is the proper time to start monkeying around with the
Army.... I have no problem with the principle of this, and we'll
certainly be doing it, but at this precise moment I have to keep
uppermost in mind that I may need these units ... and I can't
have them in the midst of a social revolution while I'm trying to
do this.[20-14]

[Footnote 20-14: Quoted from O'Connor's oral history
interview with Hesburgh, 27 Mar 66.]

Kennedy temporized. He would promptly and positively endorse the
principle of equal rights and enforce the civil rights decisions of
the Supreme Court through negotiation, moral suasion, executive order,
and, when necessary, through the use of federal marshals.[20-15] The
Justice Department meanwhile would pursue a vigorous course of
litigation to insure the franchise for Negroes from which, he
believed, all civil blessings flowed.

[Footnote 20-15: For a critical interpretation of the
Kennedy approach to enforcing the Court's
decisions, see Navasky's _Kennedy Justice_, pp.
97-98, and Howard Zinn, _Postwar America_,
1945-1971 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973), ch.
iv.]

Civil rights was not mentioned in Kennedy's first State of the Union
message. With the exception of a measure to outlaw literacy and poll
tax requirements for voting, no civil rights bills were sent to the
Eighty-seventh Congress. Yet at one of his first press conferences,
the President told newsmen that a plan to withhold federal funds in
certain segregation cases would be included in a general study "of
where the Federal Government might usefully place its power and
influence to expand civil rights."[20-16] On 6 March 1961 he signed
Executive Order 10925, which combined the committees on government (p. 506)
contracts and employment policy into a single Committee on Equal
Employment Opportunity chaired by the Vice President.[20-17] His
order, he believed, specified sanctions "sweeping enough to ensure
compliance."[20-18] Finally, in November 1962, after numerous and
increasingly pointed reminders from civil rights advocates, the
President i