JOHN F. KENNEDY AND THE STUDENT
AIRLIFT
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At a key point in the 1960
presidential campaign, a dynamic young leader from Kenya named Tom Mboya
visited Senator John F. Kennedy. Mboya led a campaign of his own that would
eventually bring hundreds of African students to America for higher education,
including Barack Obama Sr., President Obama's father. Kennedy's decision to
support the effort became an issue in the election and possibly a factor in his
narrow victory.
American Education for African
Students
Senator John F. Kennedy and Tom
Mboya first met in 1959 at a conference on international affairs. Just 28 years
old, Mboya was a labour leader and rising political star in Kenya's liberation
movement. At the time, he was on a speaking tour of North America seeking
scholarships for Kenyan and other East African students whose opportunities for
higher education under colonial rule were severely limited. Kennedy expressed
interest in Mboya's initiative.
Tom Mboya's personal quest
secured dozens of scholarships from American and Canadian institutions. He also
attracted a number of key supporters, including businessman William Scheinman,
former baseball star Jackie Robinson, singer Harry Belafonte, and actor Sidney
Poitier. Along with several others, they created the African American Students
Foundation (AASF), which raised funds for travel and living expenses. Their
fundraising supplemented money raised by African students' families and tribal
groups.
On September 11, 1959,
eighty-one students from East Africa arrived in New York City on a chartered
flight. After two days of orientation the students dispersed to colleges and
universities throughout the United States and Canada. Based on the success of
the 1959 program, AASF obtained new scholarships for approximately 250
additional students from Kenya and six other East African countries, but they
still had to raise $90,000 to cover the cost of airfare.
A Desperate Appeal
As the 1960-61 academic year
drew closer, the situation was growing desperate. Appeals to the Department of
State for help with transportation were rebuffed. Jackie Robinson approached
Vice President Nixon on behalf of AASF and Nixon agreed to contact the State
Department—again to no avail.
With the future of the project
in jeopardy, Tom Mboya returned to the United States. On July 26, he flew to
Cape Cod for a meeting with Senator Kennedy. Accompanying Mboya were his
brother Alphonse (who was studying at Antioch College), William Scheinman, and
Frank Montero, president of AASF.
Scheinman provided a thorough
briefing about the situation of the East African students and asked the senator
if he would take up their cause with the State Department. Kennedy doubted that
he would have any more success on this front than Nixon. He discussed the
options for private funding and promised a donation of $5,000 from the Joseph
P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation as long as the AASF promised not to publicize his
involvement.
Senator Kennedy followed up with
a call to his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, executive director of the
Kennedy Foundation, asking him to find out if other private foundations would
make contributions. Shriver's contacts over the next few days yielded no
additional support.
JFK then recommended that the
Kennedy Foundation contribute the entire amount needed for the 1960 airlift. In
addition to this initial $100,000 contribution, the foundation would pledge up
to $100,000 more to assist students with basic living expenses in the United
States. The AASF was informed about this decision on August 10 and reminded
again not to publicize the donation.
Word did leak out, however, and
the Nixon campaign learned that the Kennedy Foundation was financing the
airlift. A Nixon campaign staff member then went back to the State Department,
which promptly reversed its previous decisions and offered to provide $100,000
for the project. The AASF board ultimately accepted the Kennedy Foundation's
support and urged the State Department to make its funding available to other
needy African students.
Philanthropy and Politics
The situation soon erupted into
a political issue. A member of Vice President Nixon's campaign strategy board,
Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, publicly praised the State Department's
grant on August 16, neglecting to mention the prior commitment of the Kennedy
Foundation.
Speaking the next day on the
Senate floor, Senator Scott charged, according to an article in The New York Times "that a charitable
foundation operated by the family of Senator John F. Kennedy, the Democratic
Presidential candidate had 'outbid' the Government and would foot the $100,000
bill. He said this had been done for 'blatant political purposes.' Senator
Kennedy took the floor and read a telegram from Frank Montero, head of the
African American Students Foundation, refuting this charge. The Massachusetts
Senator said it was the 'most unfair, distorted and malignant attack I have
heard in fourteen years in politics.'"
JFK continued by detailing the
sequence of events that led to pledging financial support for the African
airlift. He concluded his rebuttal of Senator Scott with an assertion that
"the Kennedy Foundation went into this quite reluctantly... It was not a
matter in which we sought to be involved. Nevertheless, Mr. Mboya came to see
us and asked for help, when none of the other foundations could give it, when
the Federal Government had turned it down quite precisely. We felt something
ought to be done. To waste 250 scholarships in this country, to waste $200,000
these people had raised, to disappoint 250 students who hoped to come to this
country, it certainly seemed to me, would be most unfortunate, and so we went
ahead."
Other senators, from both sides
of the aisle, came out in support of Kennedy. Vice President Nixon also
appeared to distance himself from Scott's accusations. Senator J. William
Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, subsequently attacked
the State Department's apparent surrender to partisan politics and sent a
letter to Secretary of State Christian Herter demanding answers to a series of
questions regarding his department's involvement in the affair.
The controversy received a good
deal of attention in the press over the next few weeks. Commentary in African
American newspapers was especially critical. A writer in The Pittsburgh Courier editorialized: "One of
Nixon's henchmen showed State the deep point that the Kennedy gift would be
worth a lot of Negro votes, which it would be best for Nixon to have in a tight
contest, so all of a sudden State recalled that it had been for the project
from the beginning!"
JFK's slim margin of victory in
the 1960 presidential election could not be credited to any single group of
supporters. But winning 68 percent of the African American vote was
significant, amounting to a 7 percent increase compared with the previous
election.
Encouraging Democracy in Africa
Fifteen former French, British,
and Belgian colonies in Africa became independent during the summer and fall of
1960. Kennedy repeatedly stressed the importance of the United States reaching
out to these emerging nations. Viewing American support as vital to their
future, he also framed it as part of the larger Cold War struggle for hearts
and minds—as in these remarks to a women's organization:
I believe that if we meet our
responsibilities, if we extend the hand of friendship, if we live up to the
ideals of our own revolution, then the course of African revolution in the next
decade will be towards democracy and freedom and not towards communism and what
could be a far more serious kind of colonialism. For it was the American
Revolution, not the Russian revolution, which began man's struggle in Africa
for national independence and national liberty. When the African National
Congress in Rhodesia called for reform and justice, it threatened a Boston Tea
Party, not a Bolshevik bomb. African Leader Tom Mboya invokes the American
dream, not the Communist Manifesto.
By mid-September, "Airlift
Africa, 1960" brought 295 students to New York City on four separate
flights. (Many people referred to it as "The Kennedy Airlift.") Among
those meeting with the students during their orientation week were Eunice
Shriver of the Kennedy Foundation, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Malcolm
X. The students enrolled in colleges and high schools in forty-one states and
several Canadian provinces.
They would face challenges on
many levels—dealing with racial segregation (particularly for those on campuses
in the South), different social and cultural norms, and much higher costs for
basic living expenses. At the same time, small support groups formed around
many students, helping them to cope and to feel that they had a home away from
home. In the process, a number of lifelong friendships were formed.
Another Presidential Connection
A large proportion of the
students would subsequently assume leadership positions in government and the
professions in their home countries. One of them was the future Nobel Peace
Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya. Another Kenyan, a 23-year-old named
Barack Obama, was inspired by the 1959 airlift and made his own way to the
University of Hawaii. The first African to study in Hawaii, Obama was supported
in part by an AASF scholarship fund set up by Jackie Robinson. He graduated at
the top of his class. At the university, he met and married an American student
named Ann Dunham. Their son, Barack H. Obama Jr., was born on August 4, 1961.
The airlifts continued through
1963, eventually bringing more than 750 East African students to the United
States. Kenya would celebrate its independence in a ceremony on December 12,
1963, three weeks after President Kennedy's death. Tom Mboya went on to hold
several senior ministry posts in the new Kenyan government, and many expected
he would one day become the nation's leader. Tragically, he was assassinated in
Nairobi in 1969.
COURTESY OF THE JFK LIBRARY
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