A June 1963 speech given in Waikiki by then- President John F. Kennedy may have helped persuade leaders of the United States Conference of Mayors to return here in June 2019 after a 50-plus-year absence.

Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell, who’s been trying to get the mayors conference to hold its annual meeting here since he was elected in 2012, said excerpts of Kennedy’s civil rights speech to the group at Hilton Hawaiian Village were played at last year’s gathering in Miami.

“I think that helped; he talked about America looking like us,” Caldwell said about his latest pitch to the event’s leaders. “‘You gotta come to check it out and see what we look like,’” he said.

Upon arriving in Honolulu on June 8, 1963, the day before his speech, Kennedy told a crowd at the then-Honolulu International Airport that he appreciated Hawaii’s diverse population. “This island represents all that we are and all that we hope to be,” he said.

It was decided recently to hold the 2019 mayors conference, the 87th annual, from June 28 to July 1 at Hilton Hawaiian Village. It is the same location as the 1963 and 1967 gatherings.

The mayors conference is composed of the 1,400 mayors or other top elected executives of American cities and municipalities with populations of 30,000 or more residents.

About 300 mayors, and between 1,000 and 1,500 people including staff, family, resource people and speakers, are expected to come to Honolulu to attend.

The group meets each January in Washington, D.C., and again each June in a city hosted by one of its members. This year’s conference is in Boston.

“You have some of the best and brightest mayors from major cities, and forward thinkers in the country, coming together,” Caldwell said. “I do think that the great ideas in our country and around the world come out of our cities, and it starts with the mayors in many cases.”

Honolulu, he said, is the ideal place for the mayors and other leaders to discuss climate change, sea level rise, food sustainability and global warming as well as other topical issues. Caldwell said he wants to show off some of the island’s homeless facilities to his colleagues. Side trips might take some to Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park or attractions on other islands, he said.

The event was founded in 1932, the year Franklin Roosevelt was elected president. Its goals then, and now, are to form a united front on positions of importance to the country’s top cities and to discuss ways of dealing with mutual issues.

The 1963 mayors conference was highlighted by Kennedy’s June 9 speech in which he warned the mayors to anticipate a rise in civil rights demonstrations that summer. He urged the group to embrace changes being brought about by the civil rights movement and to help expedite them.

“The federal government does not control these demonstrations,” Kennedy told a crowd that included the late Gov. John A. Burns and the late Honolulu Mayor Neal Blaisdell. “It neither starts them, directs them or stops them,” he said.

“What we can do is seek through legislation and executive action, to provide peaceful remedies for the grievances which set them off, to give all Americans, in short, a fair chance at an equal life,” the president said.

“The final responsibility, both now and after such legislation is enacted, will rest with you as mayors on the local level,” Kennedy said. “The problem is growing. The challenge is there. The cause is just. The question is whether you and I will do nothing — thereby inviting pressure and increasing tension, and inviting possible violence — or whether you will anticipate these problems and move to fulfill the rights of your Negro citizens in a peaceful and constructive manner.”

Even if they couldn’t embrace the movement philosophically, Kennedy said, the mayors should recognize that “the financial history of those communities which have been beset with racial disturbances shows that they attract less capital and do less business.”

The trip, which lasted less than 48 hours, was to be his only visit here as president. Less than six months later, Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas.

Both an audio recording and a transcript of the speech can be found at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website.

President Donald Trump has not been as friendly with the mayors conference. Caldwell said while previous presidents have invited all mayors attending the winter conference to visit the White House, Trump in January only asked 75 Republican mayors.

The 2019 meeting is expected to generate at least $3 million in direct spending for the Hawaii economy.

Most of the organizing for the meeting’s on-site activities is being coordinated by the group’s staff, with assistance from Honolulu Economic Development Executive Director Ed Hawkins, Caldwell said. The city will be responsible for hosting four evening events and three “late night” events. None of those events have been finalized, but Caldwell said one possibility is a sunset dinner.