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.ÿþhis alienation from God, social divisions and man s attempt to escapefrom himself.Twentieth-century man is a lonely creature, wrestlingwith the anxieties and the doubts, meaninglessly guilt and death.Heis haunted by the failures of the past, perplexed by the problems of thepresent, and fearful about the uncertainties of the future.Man is thrustinto a world of mass culture.Manipulated by hidden, eh, persuaders,95robbed our, us of selfhood and made a slave of superficial conformity.He is confused about who he is.He does not know what to do.He doesnot know from whence he is come, neither does he know where he isgoing.Man is like a leaf blown about in the wind.Kennedy accep- accepted the responsibility in this twentieth cen-tury, in this, and faced the complex and confused world situation with-out succumbing to despair.He accepted the challenge, and like JesusChrist he faced it resolutely.For he accepted the office truly, in a criticaltime.There was race tension throughout the universe and there are manyother problems at which he faced that time will not permit me to men-tion tonight, that really deserves notation, but I want to confine my argu-ment to his stand on civil rights.For truly he was a friend to the Negro.Abraham Lincoln, the great emancipator, live today in the heartsof millions of people, and like Abraham Lincoln the memory ofKennedy still linger in our hearts.He was a friend to civil rights.In1963 the Negro revo- revolution in America rose more rapidly thanever before.Kennedy did not start the revolution and nothing he couldhave done could have stopped it, but in 1963 he befriended it and, eh,gave it the high aspiration and helped guide it, that, eh, it might runmore smoothly.He was not forced into this position by circumstancesbeyond his control, as many have written.On the contrary, the sympa-thy he displayed, the appointees he assembled, the courage he demon-strated in placing himself at the head of the revolution all encourageda climate for reform and reason for hope within the southern Negroleadership.And really and truly the new efforts, eh, and, eh, pressureswould probably not have been risked had there been a different attitudein the White House and in the Department of Justice, but Kennedy wasthere.He came on scene at such a time as this.He was the man of thehour.He seemed to have long realized that the Negro was not just ablack man, the Negro was not just a brown man, but he was a man withThe Day the Worl d Stood Stil l [ 157 ]
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