How does Kennedy's comment that "civil rights is a moral crisis” coincide with his push for more
aggressive legislation?

If Civil Rights is truly a moral issue, then America should act immediately to ensure that it is acting in a moral way so that it can retain its moral superiority in the world.

Explanation:

Kennedy took the presidency during an important fight between progressives who supported civil rights issue that segregationists who believed that black and white citizens should conform to 'separate but equal ideology'.

At that time, many institution openly discriminate against a certain social group based on their race or gender. (For example, many of the companies at that time openly reject job application from Black candidates and )

The comment made by kennedy challenged the view that a lot of American people at that time. As a leading country it human rights, keeping such discrimination in American soil basically tainted all credibility that USA has as the leader of the free countries. In order to held that status, he argued that USA need to set  a moreal example and eliminate such discrimination. This contributed to the creation of the civil right Act in 1964

affirmative action refers to the policies that take gender, race, or ethnicity into account in order to promote equal opportunity.

employers subject to title vii are prohibited from taking race or sex into account in any employment decisions. aa is a penalty for having any job group substantially statistically "underutilized" in any race or either sex. the employer must take steps to eliminate the underutilization, then stop, ending its aa efforts

to make world peace not vileonce with fist but words