Nixon, for his part, had gone on a three-week, eight-nation vice presidential tour of Africa in 1957. In Accra, he represented the United States at Ghana’s independence celebrations and quizzed Nkrumah on what the new country’s nonaligned foreign policy would mean in practice. Nixon returned alarmed about the declining European influence in Africa and recommended that Eisenhower lavish newly independent African states with aid. He did not reach this conclusion out of respect for Africans, toward whom he was racist in private, once saying that they had an “animal-like charm.” Rather, he viewed Africa as an emerging battleground between “the forces of freedom and international communism.” The goal was to put as many African states as possible into the Western column. Kennedy criticized Nixon’s Cold War conception of Africa, arguing that its people were “more interested in development than they are in doctrine.”
Kennedy’s support for Algerian independence had helped him win the favor of Michigan’s staunchly progressive governor, G. Mennen Williams, and thus most of Michigan’s fifty-one votes at the Democratic National Convention. But after clinching the nomination in July, Kennedy was in trouble. An August poll put him six percentage points behind Nixon. White southern Democrats were learning from their Baptist preachers that a Catholic president would answer to Rome. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s centrist voting record, including on civil rights, turned off Black voters and the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. He needed to find an issue on which he, often regarded as a cautious, finger-in-the-wind politician, could inspire those voters but without alienating the Dixiecrats he needed to win southern states.
At some point that summer, an idea arose among his advisers: What if Kennedy made Africa a campaign issue?
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