This note showcases President John F. Kennedy writing the last names King, Abernathy, and Wilkins on his gold-embossed Aboard Air Force One stationery. JFK was obviously referring to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Abernathy, who headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Roy Wilkins, president of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Exactly sixty years ago, during the summer of 1963, Kennedy became the first president since Abraham Lincoln to address the civil rights agenda nationwide. The riots in Birmingham with police dogs and fire hoses; George Wallace's face-down with Nicholas Katzenbach over two blacks wishing to enroll at the University of Alabama; the killing of four young black girls at a church bombing in Birmingham; the August 28th Freedom March at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; and the eventual assassination of Kennedy himself dominated the 1963 news.

The late Evelyn Lincoln called it one of the most critical doodles ever sketched by John Fitzgerald Kennedy!

Provenance: comes from the John Burke Jovich collection. World-renowned US Presidential Historian.
JFK's personal secretary during his senatorial and White House years, Evelyn Lincoln, was a dear friend of mine. She frequently reminded Kennedy to pass on his doodles and notes, all unofficial documents, to his friend Congressman Mike Kirwan. Evelyn and her husband Abe (Harold) Lincoln, reviewed every one of JFK's doodles in my Kirwan collection during my visit at their Chevy Chase, MD home back in the early 1990s. She never questioned their authenticity, and her vivid memory of Kennedy scrawling some of the documents brought tears to her eyes. Evelyn was the expert at deciphering the late president's difficult to read handwriting

Size: 7.25 x 4.25 in.
Unframed

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