ABSTRACT
Clarence Mitchell was embarrassed by the boss and catcalls that greeted the young senator as he took the podium. The mostly black crowd of 6,000 had packed the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-sponsored civil rights rally, which had been timed to coincide with the start of the 1960 Democratic National Convention. John F. Kennedy and the other Democratic contenders had been invited to address the rally. Kennedy had grown up in the wealthy, racially sheltered world of Boston's patrician society. Kennedy's congressional and Senate years in the early 1950s were fairly unobtrusive. Like most Americans, he basked in the relative racial quiescence of the early Eisenhower administration and apparently gave little if any thought to racial problems. At 1956 convention, Kennedy got his first real taste of national exposure and was almost selected as Adlai Stevenson's vice presidental running mate. Congress was only one front in the civil rights battle.
