Congressman Tip O'Neill recalled that the Kennedy men "had a disdain for Johnson that they didn't even try to hide.... They actually took pride in snubbing him."[87]

Vice President Johnson and Attorney General Robert Kennedy meeting with civil rights leaders at the White House on June 22, 1963.
Kennedy, however, made efforts to keep Johnson busy, informed, and at the White House often, telling aides, "I can't afford to have my vice president, who knows every reporter in Washington, going around saying we're all screwed up, so we're going to keep him happy."[88] Kennedy appointed him to jobs such as the head of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities, through which he worked with African Americans and other minorities. Kennedy may have intended this to remain a more nominal position, but Taylor Branch contends in Pillar of Fire that Johnson pushed the Kennedy administration's actions further and faster for civil rights than Kennedy originally intended to go. Branch notes the irony of Johnson being the advocate for civil rights when the Kennedy family had hoped that he would appeal to conservative southern voters. 