JUNE 11

On this date in 1963, just a couple of weeks after I had graduated from high school, a photograph hit the international wire services that would greatly effect history.  Malcolm Browne's Pulitzer Prize winning photo of a Buddhist monk's body burning by self-immolation in a prominent intersection in Saigon, Vietnam shocked the world.  The monk, Thic Quang Duc, was protesting the treatment of Buddhists in South Vietnam by a government headed by a Roman Catholic president. 

Note that the United States was at that time governed by it's first Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.  Kennedy was shown the photograph and later he reportedly said, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as this one." 

Ironically, on this same day, in a prepared speech, Kennedy spoke to the nation from the oval office proposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which would guarantee equal access to all government services by all Americans, effectively eliminate segregation in education, and insure federal protection of voting rights.  JFK was assassinated in the Fall and was not able to see the Act passed by Congress.