BY: Vincent L. Hall
Once upon a time, during the civil rights heyday in Black America, there was a family of freedom fighters known as the Kennedys. They were rich, regal, and highly regarded.
The Kennedys were not satisfied with limiting their span of influence to their yacht and boating class peers. They pointed their masts out past the harbor to the hood.
You see, the Kennedys learned to practice being grateful by being benevolent. And not just as checkbook philanthropists.
The Kennedys offered their personal privilege as a permanent privilege to the underprivileged. And the underprivileged, especially the Black underprivileged, loved them dearly.
If you parallel the victories and vicissitudes visited upon the Kennedy family with the Black experience, there are some undeniable likenesses.
The Kennedys, like Africans in America, couldn’t win for losing and couldn’t lose for winning. Both stories are replete with brilliant examples of how great tragedy and grand triumph are always in lockstep.
John Fitzgerald and Robert Francis were slain without the benefit of invoking their final farewells.
Their older brother Joe died in military combat, and their dashing son and nephew John Jr. sent shockwaves throughout the world as he succumbed to a sudden and fatal airplane crash.
You can search the internet and find a plethora of trivia about the Kennedy family. Some say they are cursed, but the same has been said of the Bush family.
The timeline of the Kennedy curse and the calamities they suffered began in the 1940s.
Joseph and Rosemary Kennedy, the patriarch and matriarch of the family, suffered the institutionalization of their daughter Rosemary after a failed lobotomy in 1941.
1944 brings the death of their firstborn son, Joe, during World War II combat.
President John Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, lost their second son, Patrick Bouvier, on August 7, 1963. Less than four months later, John Kennedy was assassinated. Less than five years later, Robert was killed on the campaign trail, just four months after MLK was gunned down.
The list of tragedies is astounding. But the Kennedy family never stopped working for human dignity and justice.
Their focus has remained on improving the quality of life for people who can’t enjoy life in the Kennedys’ Hyannis Port enclave.
Minorities, women, the mentally challenged, organized labor, and others count them as friends.
Ted Kennedy, in a personal letter to a woman whom he wanted to console after the loss of a loved one on 9/11, had this to say. “The pain never leaves; we just carry on because we have to.”
If that is not the mantra of Black America, then pray tell what the hell is?
Once upon a time in Black America, most homes had a velour portrait hung that featured JFK, RFK, and MLK together. I want to be the first in line for any reprint should anyone ever revive that culturally sacred textile.
But if they did a reprint, you could bet that it wouldn’t include the latest of the Kennedy dynasty to impact public policy. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could never be a part of our tapestry.
Hell, the Kennedys have probably etched him out of their family album.
Junior’s alignment with MAGA and Donald Trump’s assault on democracy and science would win him nothing less than scorn from his namesake and his uncle.
This Kennedy doesn’t resemble any of his family and will probably never be welcome in ours.
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetoma
