BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – It is a week of remembrance and anniversaries, most of them surrounding the Civil Rights era in Alabama and Mississippi.

Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of the University of Alabama. On June 11, 1963, Gov. George C. Wallace attempted to block Vivian Malone and James Hood, two blacks, from enrolling at the university. Wallace failed after President John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and ordered Gen. Henry Graham of Birmingham to order Wallace to step aside, which he did.

Wednesday marks another 50th anniversary: the murder of Mississippi civil rights icon Medgar Evers. Evers was shot in the back and killed in the early morning hours of June 12th in Jackson, just hours after Wallace's attempt to uphold the Jim Crow laws Evers had spent his life fighting and ultimately giving his life to defeat.

Today, June 10th, marks another anniversary. Fifty years ago today President Kennedy gave the commencement address at American University, an address that many historians view as one of the most important of his presidency and among the most important speeches ever given by a U.S. president on the topic of war and peace.

The speech came at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. It came just eight months after the Cuban Missile crisis where the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war between the two super powers.

In a world where children practiced for missile attacks by hiding under their school desks, Kennedy said that peace was possible if the United States and the USSR would reexamine their attitudes toward toward each other and remember:

"So, let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Today's New York Times remembers Kennedy's speech at American University in a piece in today's paper.

Shortly after Wallace was forced to step aside from Foster Auditorium, Kennedy would appear on national television to tell Americans that after two years of mixed messages he was putting his administration firmly on the side of those pushing for civil rights.