curious
Attwood argued that the end of the European colonial empires had brought about "one of the most revolutionary periods in human history." During this period, he wrote, "the supremacy of the world's white Christian minority" was vanishing and Americans should accept that "being the strongest power on earth doesn't mean that we can impose our system or our way of life on other countries." Kennedy liked the article so much that he asked the Democratic National Committee Chairman, John Bailey, to send a copy to every member of the Senate and House, although one wonders how he squared Atwood's warning about imposing our system on other nations with promoting bogus student demonstrations in the Dominican Republic, and supporting the sabotage campaign of Cuban exile groups. Like many great men in the making, he wanted to be inspirational and successful - high minded in public, and pragmatic in private.
Hours after asking Bailey to distribute Attwood's lofty article, he flew to New York to accept the Protestant Council's first annual "Family of Man" citation, bestowed for his support of human rights. He had been battling Congress over cuts to his foreign aid budget, and used his speech to the council to defend foreign assistance on practical and humanitarian grounds, painting it as an effective cold war weapon and a moral imperative. He criticized congressmen who found it "politically convenient to denounce foreign aid and the Communist menace," and enumerated its economic benefits - a half million jobs created at home and the promotion of US exports. But moments later he was insisting that "the rich must help the poor. The industrialized nations must help the developing nations." Referring to the Marshall Plan and the robust foreign aid program of the Eisenhower years, he said, "Surely the Americans of the 1960s can do half as well as the Americans of the 1960s... I do not want it said of us what T. S. Eliot said of others some years ago: 'These were a decent people. Their only monument: the asphalt road and a thousand lost golf balls.'"
At a black tie party afterward, William Styron was surprised to see him "quite alone and looking abandoned." He greeted Styron and his wife Rose with "a grand smile," Styron remembered, as if they were "long-lost loved ones," and asked, "How did they get you to come here? They had a hard enough time getting me." He was in an amiable mood, but Styron detected "an undercurrent of seriousness, almost an agitation" when he spoke about civil rights. He asked Styron if he was acquainted with any Negro historians and if he knew the black authors James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison, and if he thought they might accept an invitation to the White House. Recalling their Labor Day conversation about the Nat Turner rebellion, he said, "What a great idea for a novel. I hope it's done soon." Styron felt himself being swept away by his charm, "overtaken by a grand effervescence" that he compared to "being bathed in sparkling water." Kennedy was distracted, turned away and Styron never saw him again.
In 1967, Styron did in fact write a novel entitled The Confessions of Nat Turner, which told the story as fictionally narrated by Nat Turner, the leader of the 1831 Virginia slave revolt.