<i>Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy's America in Black and White</i>. By Patricia Sullivan.

The extent to which the Kennedy administration aided or thwarted civil rights activism has long been a point of contention. Patricia Sullivan's Justice Rising does not fully resolve this question, but in this highly readable monograph she provides rich and extensive documentation of Robert Kennedy's ongoing commitment to human rights. Justice Rising is neither a conventional biography nor a monograph about the civil rights movement. Instead, it develops two parallel and intersecting narratives. The civil rights narrative covers the years in which the movement was at its absolute height. For this reason, Sullivan does not offer new details about the movement, but features instead Kennedy's reactions to it. Her biographical exploration deepens our understanding of his interest in finding policy solutions to the intractable problems of inequality.Sullivan depicts the young Robert Kennedy as idealistic and empathetic. As a young man he traveled the world with his brother Jack, expressing sympathy for nationalist movements in Indochina and elsewhere. By the time he entered the University of Virginia School of Law, this idealism was reflected in Robert's invitation to Ralph Bunche, the African American diplomat and activist, to speak in front of an integrated audience. This incident stands out in terms of the young Kennedy's understanding and advocacy for Black Americans. In the late 1950s he worked on the congressional Rackets Committee hearings and on his brother's vice-presidential and later presidential campaigns. A series of well-orchestrated public events by the Kennedy campaign, including a speech at Howard University, were designed to bring out the Black vote in the North. John F. Kennedy publicly came to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s aid when he was arrested at a Georgia sit-in, helping to secure his release. These key moments in the campaign possibly clinched the election and marked a turning point in the brothers’ relationship to the movement.Sullivan's parallel narratives converge once the new president appointed Robert Kennedy as US attorney general. Together, the Kennedys increased the number of Black government employees and desegregated federal facilities. Sullivan argues that Kennedy was relatively aggressive in forcing states like Louisiana and Virginia to abide by the Brown v. Board of Education decision. By 1961 Mississippi was the center of voting rights activism, supported to some extent by Kennedy-appointed civil rights division attorneys, who filed cases in support of Black activists, and by citizens seeking to vote, who faced unrelenting violence. In 1962 James Meredith attempted to enroll in the University of Mississippi, forcing the Kennedy administration's hand. After the repeated resistance of Mississippi governor Ross Barnett, the president called in the National Guard. Their delayed arrival and the mobs of white segregationists marred any hope of peaceful admission for Meredith.The 1963 Birmingham campaign gave the Kennedys a new opportunity to demonstrate support for civil rights activists. Robert Kennedy unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with Alabama governor George Wallace, and ultimately negotiated a deal with business interests. Kennedy was hopeful that these events would usher in a civil rights bill. That was not the case. The cascading protests, however, led directly to John F. Kennedy's June 11, 1963, speech, when for the first time he expressed full-throated support for the movement. Beyond these major turning points, Sullivan demonstrates that Robert Kennedy became an advocate for structural solutions to juvenile delinquency by focusing on jobs and recreation, and saw legislation passed to fund new urban initiatives. According to Sullivan, this work gave him insight into northern urban conditions of poverty and inequality—the same issues that dominated his career after his brother's assassination. Frustrated by his tense relationship with President Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination for New York senator, an election he won handily.Kennedy entered the Senate as a national figure. He took up issues of disability rights, juvenile delinquency, and civil rights. He was further removed from the struggles in the southern campaigns at this point but still spoke in support of the Voting Rights Act and ongoing civil rights struggles. He was well positioned to respond to the urban uprisings escalating by 1965. He was persuaded by King's powerful argument that “riots” were “the language of the unheard” (327). By spring 1967 Kennedy was willing to make a break from the Johnson administration's disastrous Vietnam policy, urging the administration to negotiate with the North Vietnamese while King's opposition to the war intensified.The last year of Kennedy's life was a whirlwind of political speeches, campaigning, and advocacy work, which focused on the terrible toll poverty that wrought on minority groups. He launched the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, pioneering a public/private partnership model for urban reform. During his brief presidential run, Kennedy openly criticized Johnson's record on civil rights and urban unrest. The speeches he made in the weeks before his assassination on the campaign trail were riveting and moving. Much of the history in Justice Rising will be familiar to political historians and scholars of civil rights, but tying these two narratives together offers us something new. Sullivan has left us with a deeper look at Robert Kennedy's essential decentness and commitment to justice. At times I would have liked more exposure of movement activists’ criticisms of Kennedy, beyond the depiction of the stirring 1963 meeting with James Baldwin that begins the book. However, Sullivan has provided us with a nuanced and layered narrative of how social movements and state actors create change together.