1961 was a little early for the race riots. Things were still pretty calm.
Bay of Pigs was a fiasco, but again small potatoes to what came later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Riders
1961 was the year of the ‘Freedom Riders’
Riots pretty much wherever they went. Kennedy denounced them although you will never here that repeated in the media...
Really. Firebombing and a whole state under Marshall is ‘calm’?
Perhaps you also don’t remember the standoff in Berlin!