There was frustration in Kennedy's voice as he talked with the 20 members of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action about the now-iconic Associated Press photo of the dog lunging at the teenager's midriff, as bystanders in the background turn and look.
''There's no federal law we could pass to do anything about that picture in today's Times. Well, there isn't," he snapped. ''I mean, what law can you pass to do anything about police power in the community of Birmingham? There is nothing we can do."
The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston released the tape, which was captured on the White House recording system, to coincide with Martin Luther King Day today.
The tape was discovered in the past month among White House tapes being examined for declassification; most other civil right rights-related meetings were released in the 1980s, said Maura Porter, head of the library's Declassification Unit.
''This is the only meeting that I know of where you have much more of a give-and-take, and I think he's being terribly honest, about what he would like to accomplish, but the reality is he can't do it at the pace that everyone would like," Porter said.
The meeting came as Kennedy was under increasing pressure from the left to take a more forceful stand in favor of civil rights, beyond his earlier interventions. He also faced opposition from Southerners in his own party.
The month before, King had written his seminal ''Letter from a Birmingham Jail," chastising white clergy on the sidelines of the civil rights struggle.
While young Walter Gadsden was just a bystander on May 3, the photo of the dog lunging at him perfectly epitomized the atmosphere, according to Horace Huntley, director of the Oral History Project at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.
''The picture is very, very symbolic of exactly what was going on in Birmingham in that particular time and space," Huntley said.
Kennedy plainly felt the pressure from Americans for Democratic Action, urging him to do more against segregation beyond his earlier interventions on the side of civil rights advocates.
