General Discussion

Kid Berwyn

(24,620 posts)

9. SO MUCH Civil Rights progress in the top ranks since JFK...gone without a whimper of protest.

Fri Mar 27, 2026, 02:29 PM

Mar 27

JFK believed in D.E.I. Not only did he say so before "there was such a thing" as DEI or AA, JFK put the principles of Affirmative Action into practice -- promoting Abraham Bolden personally to the White House Secret Service detail. Makes an excellent Labor Day story.

Former U.S. Secret Service Agent Abraham BOLDEN was the first African American Secret Service agent to serve in the White House, personally appointed and literally hand-picked by President John F. Kennedy to the White House detail. Agent Abraham Bolden reported overt racism by his fellow agents and outright hostility toward the "n------loving president," quoting fellow Secret Service agents on the JFK detail.

In addition to enduring all manner of personal indignities, he was concerned at the lack of professionalism in those assigned to protect the president and reported his concerns. He was told, "OK. Thanks" by his superiors. When the problems weren't addressed, Bolden requested transfer back to the Secret Service office in Chicago.

President Biden recently pardoned Abraham Bolden

The story of a man who told the truth:

After 45 Years, a Civil Rights Hero Waits for Justice

Thom Hartmann
June 12, 2009 11:52 AM

A great miscarriage of justice has kept most Americas from learning about a Civil Rights pioneer who worked with President John F. Kennedy. But there is finally a way for citizens to not only right that wrong, but bring closure to the most tragic chapter of American presidential history.

After an outstanding career in law enforcement, Abraham Bolden was appointed by JFK to be the first African American presidential Secret Service agent, where he served with distinction. He was part of the Secret Service effort that prevented JFK's assassination in Chicago, three weeks before Dallas. But Bolden was framed by the Mafia and arrested on the very day he went to Washington to tell the Warren Commission staff about the Chicago attempt against JFK.

Bolden was sentenced to six years in prison, despite glaring problems with his prosecution. His arrest resulted from accusations by two criminals Bolden had sent to prison. In Bolden's first trial, an apparently biased judge told the jury that Bolden was guilty, even before they began their deliberations. Though granted a new trial because of that, the same problematic judge was assigned to oversee Bolden's second trial, which resulted in his conviction. Later, the main witness against Bolden admitted committing perjury against him. A key member of the prosecution even took the fifth when asked about the perjury. Yet Bolden's appeals were denied, and he had to serve hard time in prison, and today is considered a convicted felon.

After the release of four million pages of JFK assassination files in the 1990s, it became clear that Bolden -- and the official secrecy surrounding the Chicago attempt against JFK -- were due to National Security concerns about Cuba, that were unknown to Bolden, the press, Congress, and the public not just in 1963, but for the next four decades.

SNIP...

Abraham Bolden paid a heavy price for trying to tell the truth about events involving the man he was sworn to protect -- JFK -- that became mired in National Security concerns. Bolden still lives in Chicago, and has never given up trying to clear his name.

Will Abraham Bolden live to finally see the justice so long denied to him?

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/after-45-years-a-civil-ri_b_213834.html

After the assassination, Agent Bolden traveled to Washington on his own dime and reported what he saw to the Warren Commission. For his trouble -- and despite an exemplary record of excellence as a Brinks detective, Illinois State Trooper, and Secret Service agent with integrity -- Bolden was framed by the government using a paid informant's admitted perjury and spent a long time in prison. The government also drugged him and put him into psychiatric hospitals. His real crime was telling the truth.

JFK ordered the integration of NASA. Seems some European Americans at NASA and Washington sided more with the German rocket scientist's original backer over the orders of President Kennedy.

JFK had to order Hoover to integrate the FBI.

James Carroll, journalist, author and the son of an FBI man promoted by JFK to be the first head the Defense Intelligence Agency, provides detail:

Another reason we felt like princes as we entered that auditorium was the FBI's role as the front line of Bobby Kennedy's own twin preoccupations: the fight against the Reds, for which he'd first become famous as an aide to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, and his newly launched campaign against Jimmy Hoffa. Bobby Kennedy, we felt, would look on us as special allies in the struggles he took most seriously. So imagine my surprise when what Bobby -- the hair, the teetch, the rolled-up sleeves -- chose to speak about that day was neither Reds nor the mob but the rights of colored people. In my mind, the NAACP might as well have been on the attorney general's list of subversive organizations, thought I knew as little about it as I did about the Lincoln Brigade.

I remember the shrill pitch of his voice and the open palm of his hand slapping the podium. I remember his direct invitation to come back to Washington after graduation to join a new American crusade. "My fundamental belief," he said once, and I recall his saying something like it that day, "is that all people are created equally. Logically, it follows that integration should take place everywhere."

Fundamental belief? Powerfully faced with his, I had to admit that it was mine too. I remember, as it were, a light going on in my dull head: the flip side of "created equal" is "integraton." It was an era when such lights went on all over the place. Arthur Schlesigner Jr. reports that after Bobby Kennedy and an aide took an early tour of the Justice Department, Kennedy asked, "Did anything occur to you as strange in our visit around the offices?" The aide referred only to how hward everyone seemed to be working. Kennedy repolied, "But did you see any Negroes?"

SOURCE: "An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us," pp. 129-130.

http://bit.ly/1nvAHpu

Hoover was conflicted. How can one control one's equals?

JFK ordered NASA to bring African American officers into the astronaut program.

Ed Dwight Was Going to Be the First African American in Space. Until He Wasn’t

The Kennedy administration sought a diverse face to the space program, but for reasons unknown, the pilot was kept from reaching the stars

Shareef Jackson
Smithsonian Magazine, February 18, 2020

In the early 1960s, U.S. Air Force pilot Ed Dwight was drowning in mail. “I received about 1,500 pieces of mail a week, which were stored in large containers at Edwards Air Force Base. Some of it came to my mother in Kansas City,” Dwight, now 86, recalls. Fans from around the world were writing to congratulate Dwight on becoming the first African American astronaut candidate. “Most of my mail was just addressed to Astronaut Dwight, Kansas City, Kansas.”

The letters, however, were premature. Dwight would never get the opportunity to go to space—despite the publicity and hype—for reasons that remain unclear even to this day.

Dwight was working at the time as a test pilot at Edwards in the Mojave Desert of California, the U.S. Air Force’s premier experimental flight base and a pathway to entering the astronaut corps of NASA. He trained in the Aerospace Research Pilot School, run by aviation icon Chuck Yeager, the first person to break the sound barrier. Edwards holds a legendary status, then and now, as the premier flight test facility of the Air Force, where the likes of Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper, two of the original Mercury 7 astronauts, and Neil Armstrong, selected in the second group of astronauts, trained as test pilots in experimental jets over the vast high desert that often served as an impromptu runway. During his time at Edwards, Dwight flew jets such as the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, a supersonic aircraft capable of soaring into the high atmosphere where the pilot could observe the curvature of the Earth.

“The first time you do this it’s like, ‘Oh my God, what the hell? Look at this,’” Dwight recently told the New York Times. “You can actually see this beautiful blue layer that the Earth is encased in. It’s absolutely stunning.”

Snip…

Around this time, Kennedy encouraged leaders in all the military branches to work to improve diversity among their officers. When the first group of NASA astronauts were selected in 1959, the nation’s military officer pilots, initially the only people who could apply to be astronauts, included no people of color. But as Murrow advocated for a black astronaut, Dwight was rising to the rank of captain in the Air Force, armed with an aeronautics degree from Arizona State University and enough flying hours to qualify for the flight test school at Edwards.

Continues…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ed-dwight-first-african-american-space-until-wasnt-180974215/

After the assassination of President Kennedy, Capt. Dwight fell off the track. He would become a sculptor, like all he worked to accomplish, one of excellence.

The International Memorial to the Underground Railroad

Trump, Hegseth and their co-conspirators in treason are on the NAZI side of history, atop the ash heap.