|
Contents
Overview
Born: May 29, 1917; Brookline, Massachusetts...John Kennedy was the nation's first Roman Catholic president...Forever enshrined in myth by an assassin's bullet, Kennedy's presidency long defied objective appraisal. Recent assessments have revealed an administration long on promise and vigor, and somewhat lacking in tangible accomplishment. His proposals for a tax cut and civil rights legislation, however, promised significant gains in the months before his assassination. While maturation, as evidenced in the handling of the Cuban missile crisis, was apparent, the potential legacy of the New Frontier will forever be left to speculation... Died: November 22, 1963 (Kennedy was the first president to have died before his parents).
Did you know? - Read some fun facts about John F. Kennedy
The Era
- Soviets erect the Berlin Wall (1961)
- Freedom Riders challenge segregation on interstate buses (1961)
- Mao's Great Leap Forward ends in China (1961)
- Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring (1962)
- March on Washington for civil rights (1963)
World Timeline - See a timeline of world events during John F. Kennedy's administration.
Early Career
In
 |
 |
April 1954, John Fitzgerald Kennedy addressed his fellow senators on the situation in Indochina. It was not surprising, he said, that the French had failed to control a Communist insurgency there. In order to resist communism, the people of Indochina needed not more guns, but the freedom to govern themselves.
Years later, partly due to Kennedy's role in Vietnam, his remarks proved to be tragically prophetic. Yet his speech that day was emblematic of the development of John F. Kennedy himself. The sickly, bookish child, the adolescent rebel and collegiate playboy had grown into a serious politician. Still sexually driven, still self-absorbed, he had become a man with the power to change the world. Many of the people who knew Kennedy in his earlier years would have been surprised at the transformation.
Born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy grew up in a family defined by fantastic wealth, Roman Catholicism, Democratic politics, and patriarchal control. Kennedy's father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., had made a fortune on Wall Street and in Hollywood, and he drove his nine children to compete and to win with the same relentlessness that he pursued money and beautiful women. Joseph's wife Rose, daughter of former Boston Mayor John Fitzgerald, had her own obsession -- maintaining the Kennedys' image as the perfect family despite her husband's distance and infidelity.
From the very beginning, John Kennedy, or Jack as the family called him, suffered frequent illness. At 2, he nearly died from scarlet fever. Like his siblings, Jack enjoyed sports, but he seemed to prefer reading. He possessed a keen intelligence, a gift for creative wit, and a buoyant charm.
Educated at private schools, Jack chafed under authority and suffered from academic disinterest. At Choate, a boys' preparatory academy, Kennedy became a magnet for troublemakers. Untidy and rebellious, he made a distinctly negative impression on the Choate faculty. He consistently earned mediocre grades, and his father worried that Jack might never reach his potential.
After Choate, Jack headed for Princeton. There, he continued to cultivate what had by then become an obsession -- the pursuit and conquest of eligible females. But illness ended his Princeton career within weeks.
The problem was Addison's disease, a malady which had plagued him for years, causing weakness, weight loss, blood problems, and gastrointestinal distress. Addison's disease tortured John Kennedy for decades before it was successfully diagnosed. Several times, it nearly killed him. This time, however, Kennedy's health improved within a matter of months. He returned to college, this time at Harvard, where his older brother Joe had already made his mark.
Jack Kennedy arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1936. He quickly dispelled any notions that his academic career would be a serious one. Instead, he concentrated on the social scene, where his charm, good looks, and wealth brought him success with women. Despite his scrawny physique, he managed to win a position on the freshman football team, where he played with tenacity, but little effect.
During
|
 |
a tour of Europe following his freshman year, Jack began to show an interest in international politics. He visited Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. He questioned refugees from the Spanish Civil War about conditions under Franco.
Two years later, Kennedy traveled to France, Poland, Latvia, Turkey, Palestine, Russia, and Germany. He wrote long, detailed letters to his father, now Franklin Delano Roosevelt's ambassador to the Court of St. James, about the trouble between Germany and Poland, life in Communist Russia, and the Zionist movement in Palestine.
By early 1940, when Jack began his last semester at Harvard, most of Europe had been crushed by the Nazi war machine, and Britain lay under siege. Ambassador Joseph Kennedy faced harsh public criticism for his appeasement of Hitler, as well as for his public assertions that Britain would be destroyed by the Nazis. But Jack Kennedy had his own ideas about England's response to Hitler's rise to power, and he developed them in his Harvard senior thesis.
Published and promoted by Joseph Kennedy. Sr., Why England Slept, became a national bestseller. In the book, author John F. Kennedy argued that it was the isolationist character of the British population as a whole, and not Britain's political leadership, that had led to Hitler's appeasement. This isolationist tendency, compounded by the sluggish nature of democracy, had delayed the buildup of Britain's military and allowed Hitler to gain the upper hand.
Lauded
 |
|
by some reviewers as perceptive, condemned as simplistic by others, Why England Slept demonstrated that Kennedy was capable of organized, purposeful direction. At a time of international turmoil, he had shown the courage to buck the intellectual tide. Jack was continuing to develop politically. World War II would be the springboard to a full time political career.
Jack joined the Navy in the fall of 1941. Two years later, he became a certified American hero. As commander of motor torpedo boat PT 109, he had kept his men safe behind enemy lines after the boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese vessel. The incident made him famous. In 1946, at the urging of his father, Kennedy parlayed his hero status into a Massachusetts Congressional seat.
"We're going to sell Jack like soap flakes, " Joe Kennedy said, and sell him they did. Joseph Kennedy built his own political machine from the ground up, called in numerous political debts, and pumped thousands upon thousands of dollars into his son's campaign. Although he disliked campaigning and his back problems were severe, Jack Kennedy worked hard, and his good looks and charisma helped deliver him a victory.
In Washington, Congressman Kennedy became a darling of the social scene. At work in the House, he supported the kind of liberal domestic programs -- health care, housing, and labor -- that were important in his working-class district at home, but foreign policy remained his true interest.
In
|
 |
1952, with the support of his father's political machine, Kennedy won a seat in the Senate. Containing the Communists abroad became a focus of his career. Kennedy, who had toured Asia as a Congressman and witnessed colonial oppression firsthand, believed that offering young nations freedom and development aid could stop the spread of communism.
When Senator Kennedy addressed his colleagues on that day in April, 1954, he delivered an eloquent plea for American support of self-determination in Indochina. "No amount of American military assistance," he said "can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere," he warned.
Clearly, Jack Kennedy had grown. The relentless pursuit of women continued. The attraction to the society life remained. But the senator from Massachusetts had developed a vision which would help drive him to the White House. As president, he would struggle, often unsuccessfully, to implement that vision. He would die with it unfulfilled.
Domestic Policy
On
|
 |
the evening of May 3, 1963, Americans watched on television as Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama collapsed under a wave of officially sanctioned violence. Birmingham police attacked peaceful black demonstrators with clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses, and for the first time many citizens understood the breadth of America's racial divide. Perhaps no one regarded the events with more anguish than President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. The violence in Birmingham proved that Kennedy's piecemeal approach to civil rights had failed.
Elected president in 1960, Kennedy had campaigned on an idealistic New Frontier platform. The president believed that by showing the world what a free and democratic society had to offer, the United States could ensure the defeat of Communism. Unfortunately, since Kennedy had taken office, the world had seen the negative side of America -- intolerance and oppression. Despite Constitutional assurances to the contrary, African Americans were treated as second class citizens. They were frequently denied access to public facilities, prohibited from exercising their voting rights, and subjected to racist violence.
Under leaders such as King, African Americans organized nonviolent protests to gain access to public facilities. They sued in the courts for equal treatment, and used the pulpits and the press to eloquently state the case for full citizenship. And they implored their president to take a forceful public stand by issuing a call for comprehensive civil rights legislation. For the first two years of his administration, Kennedy ignored the call.
The Democrats held a narrow majority in Congress, and many of the Democratic seats were held by Southerners who opposed civil rights legislation. The president needed the white Southern vote to win reelection in 1964. So Kennedy adopted a cautious approach to civil rights, emphasizing enforcement of existing laws over the creation of new ones.
Kennedy pushed civil rights on many fronts. He ordered his attorney general to submit friends of the court briefs on behalf of civil rights litigants. He appointed African Americans to positions within his administration, named Thurgood Marshall to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, and supported voter registration drives.
But such an approach was problematic. By not addressing civil rights publicly and comprehensively, Kennedy was forced to address racial incidents on a case by case basis -- often after they had escalated to violence. In May, 1961, racists attacked Freedom Riders traveling by bus from Washington, D.C. to Birmingham, Alabama. Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect the protesters. But even armed marshals could not guarantee protection.
In
 |
|
September 1962, James Meredith, a black man, attempted to register at the segregated University of Mississippi at Oxford. Kennedy had brokered a deal with segregationist governor Ross Barnett. The registration would occur on a Sunday, when opposition forces were least likely to be active. Federal marshals would be there to protect Meredith. But as Kennedy prematurely announced Meredith's successful registration on national television, marshals were fighting -- and losing -- a battle to control violent segregationists at the university.
If this incident embarrassed the Kennedy administration, it did little to alter the president's approach to civil rights. Activists asked Kennedy to issue an executive order ending discrimination in Federal mortgage loans. He put off the action for months, and issued a watered-down order in November of 1962. In February, 1963, he sent a civil rights package to Congress which included legislation to secure black voting rights. That the bill failed to address access to public facilities -- a major point of contention for civil rights activists -- was a moot point. The president did little to promote the bill's passage, and it quickly expired.
Kennedy's approach to civil rights was viewed, by civil rights leaders, as noncommittal. But the violence in Birmingham on May 3 of 1963 left him no choice but to alter his course. The nightsticks, the police dogs, and the fire hoses had revealed a glimpse of what America could become. Unless Kennedy took a firm stand, the New Frontier might deteriorate into a bloody race war.
On the evening of June 11, just hours after federal marshals had escorted black students to their dormitories at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, the president delivered a televised address to the nation. Speaking with conviction, Kennedy announced he would send comprehensive civil rights legislation to Congress. The package would include provisions for access to public facilities, voting rights, and technical and monetary support for school desegregation.
"The heart of the question," the president said, "is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and opportunities." The answer from those who opposed civil rights came later that evening, when segregationist Byron de La Beckwith shot and killed Medgar Evers, the NAACP's Mississippi field secretary.
Five
 |
|
months later, Kennedy himself was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Comprehensive civil rights legislation had not yet passed. It would be up to Lyndon Baines Johnson, Kennedy's successor -- and to committed activists across the nation -- to resume the battle for equality.
Kennedy's failure to secure meaning civil rights legislation was emblematic of other stalled domestic policy initiatives introduced by his administration. His efforts to cut taxes and increase funding for education also died in Congress. At the end of his brief presidency, much of the bright promise of the New Frontier had yet to be fulfilled.
Foreign Affairs
In
|
 |
the fall of 1963 American efforts to build a democratic firewall against Communism in South Vietnam were failing. The country's president, Ngo Dinh Diem, ran the nation like a fiefdom. Many Vietnamese began to gravitate toward the Communist opposition. In the White House, a frustrated John F. Kennedy struggled to get Diem -- and the Communist insurgency -- under control.
Kennedy had outlined his plan for stopping the spread of communism in his inauguration speech two years before. America would, he said, "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." Developing nations could expect America to "help them help themselves."
The
 |
|
young president's first battle with Communism came just three months after his inauguration -- in Fidel Castro's Cuba. With the support of the Soviet Union, Cuba had been working to export its revolutionary ideals to other Latin American countries. Castro's message of revolution was well received in the region, where many people struggled under repressive regimes. But in the United States, Castro was seen as a growing threat.
Under President Dwight Eisenhower, the C.I.A. had prepared a plan for an invasion of Cuba. Cuban exiles covertly trained and armed by the United States would attack Cuba's coast at the Bay of Pigs. Intelligence analysts believed that the Cuban people would rise up in support of the invaders and topple Castro.
Kennedy approved the invasion, and on April 17, 1961, it began. Their forces vastly outnumbered, the invasion forces were swiftly turned back; the U.S. connection quickly emerged. Kennedy, the purported defender of freedom and democracy, had been caught interfering with the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. Perhaps more significantly, he had failed to provide American air support for the beleaguered invaders. Bay of Pigs was a fiasco for the Kennedy administration. Shortly thereafter, the Soviets made a play for Berlin.
In the divided German city, capitalist democracy proved all too alluring for East Germans. They fled to West Berlin by the thousands, embarrassing the Soviets and threatening the Communist hold on Eastern Europe. In June 1961 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened to take West Berlin under Communist rule by force.
John Kennedy had long ago learned the lesson of appeasement in Europe. He met Khrushchev's challenge with a force of his own, increasing the size of America's combat forces and obtaining billions of dollars for nuclear and conventional weapons. Khrushchev parried, dividing Berlin with a cement wall, barbed wire, and a line of army tanks. The enemies stared at each other across the wall, but the peace held.
Khrushchev
|
 |
continued to probe for American weakness. In response to the Bay of Pigs and to American nuclear missiles posted near the Russian border in Turkey, the Soviet leader approved the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba. An American reconnaissance plane discovered the missile sites in October, 1962.
For days, Kennedy and his advisors heatedly debated a range of military and diplomatic responses. Finally, a conclusion was reached: while the risk of war was great, to show weakness might be worse.
On October 22, in a televised address, Kennedy revealed the crisis to the American public. He announced a naval "quarantine," or blockade, of Cuba which would remain in effect until the Soviets withdrew their missiles. He also warned that the launching of Cuban missiles against any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be regarded as an attack on the United States and would result in a "full retaliatory response" on the Soviet Union. The world stood closer than it ever had to full-scale nuclear war.
Within
 |
|
a week, Khrushchev capitulated -- but not without some American concessions. The Soviets withdrew their missiles in return for public assurances that the U.S. would not invade Cuba. In addition, Kennedy secretly agreed to withdraw missiles from the Turkish bases.
Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis were decided quickly, but other situations would not be resolved as quickly. In South Vietnam, the Communist insurgency showed no signs of letting up.
Some of Kennedy's "advisers" warned him that American involvement could mire America in a bloody, protracted war. Despite these warnings, the president increased financial and military assistance to the Diem government. By the end of 1962, more than 15,000 American advisors were in South Vietnam, and US spending there had passed the $2 billion mark. The results were not encouraging.
Diem seemed more interested in establishing an autocratic regime than he did in promoting democracy. He consolidated power among his family members and refused to share power with local leaders. A Catholic, Diem oppressed the Buddhists who made up the overwhelming majority of South Vietnam's population. Kennedy threatened Diem with a loss of American aid if he did not institute democratic reforms. Diem ignored these warnings, and support for the Communists grew.
As 1963 wore on, Kennedy considered his options. He could commit further, even send in American combat troops. He could withdraw, and let the Communists claim victory. Kennedy found neither solution palatable. Then another option developed. Some of Diem's generals began to plot a coup against their leader. Kennedy, who had promised to help developing nations help themselves, gave his approval.
On November 2, 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem died at the hands of his generals. In South Vietnam, citizens responded positively to the coup. With Diem out of the way, hopes rose that South Vietnam could stave off the Communists.
Less than two weeks after Diem's death, Kennedy himself was assassinated. The man who promised the world he would stand up to the Communists had done so -- for better and for worse. Now another Cold Warrior, Lyndon Baines Johnson, would take his place. And in the jungles of Vietnam, America's bloodiest Cold War confrontation was only beginning.
Presidential Politics
Democratic
 |
|
presidential candidate John F. Kennedy and his Republican rival Richard M. Nixon met on September 26, 1960 in a debate that changed the course of American politics. Vice President Nixon defended the Eisenhower administration against charges that its domestic programs had failed. Kennedy denied Nixon's assertions that he lacked the necessary experience. But it was not the content of the debate that made it a political milestone. It was the medium by which most Americans experienced the debate -- television.
Before the debate began, public opinion polls showed a close race between the two men. But the television cameras changed that. An estimated 75 million viewers, at the time the largest television audience ever, saw a contrast between Nixon and Kennedy that had nothing to do with political positions. Nixon, who was recovering from a recent illness, appeared haggard and pale. He wore a five o'clock shadow and perspired profusely. His makeup ran under the hot studio lights. Kennedy looked fit, relaxed and handsome. He exuded confidence and poise.
The power of these televised images revealed itself in post-debate polls. Many radio listeners gave the edge to Nixon. Television viewers, however, overwhelmingly agreed that Kennedy had won. By their next debate, Nixon had solved his appearance problems, but the damage was done. Kennedy had strengthened his bond to a medium which would significantly influence the course of his presidency.
On
|
 |
inauguration day, January 20, 1961, President Kennedy proclaimed to a national television audience that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty." His gravity, his determination, and his charismatic good looks transmitted an air of competence and trustworthiness to viewers across the nation. Kennedy had only defeated Nixon by a slender margin, but television was on his side. He looked like a hero and sounded like a hero. His approval ratings rose.
A skillful media manipulator, the new president used television to present a carefully constructed public image to Americans. Kennedy's constituents saw him as vigorous, healthy, a dedicated husband, a giant among men. That he was none of these things did not matter. Americans viewed televised images of domestic harmony and regal splendor, and they believed what they saw.
Television showed Kennedy in moments of bliss and of glory. It showed him in moments of danger and uncertainty as well. When U.S. reconnaissance flights discovered Soviet missile-launching facilities on Cuban soil, Kennedy faced the greatest challenge of his presidency. On the evening of October 22, 1962, he delivered a televised address to explain the situation and announce his response to the Soviets -- a naval blockade of Cuba.
Never before had so many Americans seen their president at such a dangerous moment. If Kennedy took pains to show resolve, he knew that not only Americans, but his Soviet adversaries, were watching. Within days, the Russians backed down. By declaring his ultimatum over the airwaves, Kennedy had shown the power of television as a diplomatic weapon. But this power, Kennedy soon learned, was double-edged. The camera could highlight not just his strengths, but his weaknesses as well.
On May 3, 1963, television network news programs brought images of horrifying racial violence into living rooms across America. Viewers watched as blacks protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, were viciously attacked with clubs, dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses by Birmingham police. The extent of America's racial problems had at last gone irrefutably public, and Kennedy, who had shown lukewarm support for civil rights legislation, was forced into action. The next month, he announced a comprehensive package of civil rights legislation in a nationally televised address.
If Kennedy is remembered as a friend to blacks, it is not because of the civil rights legislation that passed during his administration -- none did. But in living rooms across America, the president of the United States had looked his fellow citizens in the eye and told them that black Americans deserved equal treatment under the law. Not just the president's words, but the immediacy and reach of television, made his civil rights address one of the most powerful in U.S. history.
Some five months after his civil rights speech, John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Within minutes, television news anchors revealed the tragedy to the nation. The networks broadcast images of grief, pain, and violence: Jacqueline Kennedy leaving the hospital with her husband's body. Assassin Lee Harvey Oswald being murdered by Jack Ruby. A horse-drawn carriage rolling slowly down Pennsylvania avenue, carrying the president to his grave. John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s final salute.
The Kennedy presidency ended as it had begun -- on the television screens of America. In the days and weeks after the president's death, broadcast images helped complete his transformation into an American icon. And as a nation grieved its fallen leader, the institution of the television presidency lived on.
Legacy
President
|
 |
John Kennedy took office during one of the most turbulent times in American history. The Cold War between democracy and communism was becoming more belligerent, and the United States and the Soviet Union possessed enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world many times over. In American cities, racial tension was rising. Growing numbers of black Americans had begun to demonstrate for equal treatment under the law, and white segregationists promised to deny these rights, using violence if necessary.
From the first moments of his presidency, Kennedy evoked a sense of security and a spirit of idealism which reassured Americans of their nation's strengths and inspired them to serve their country and the world. "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man," Kennedy said in his inaugural address. Dazzled by his poise, moved by his eloquence, Americans proudly embraced the vigor and vision of their young president.
As
 |
|
he struggled with the complexities of foreign and domestic politics, Kennedy sometimes fell short of his idealistic rhetoric. A self-proclaimed supporter of civil rights, he moved forward slowly on the issue until 1963, when racial violence forced his hand. An advocate of peaceful development abroad, he hastened America's descent into the Vietnam war, a conflict that would end countless lives and bitterly divide the nation.
Kennedy's
|
 |
hard-line international diplomacy helped preserve Western democracy and may have prevented a catastrophic nuclear war, but it also heightened the tension between the superpowers. When Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev threatened to take West Berlin in 1961, Kennedy promised a military response, and the Russians backed down. When the Soviets began to install missiles in Cuba in late 1962, Kennedy demanded their removal, then skillfully transacted a diplomatic settlement which kept the two enemies at peace. Later, he negotiated a treaty to end atmospheric nuclear testing, the first nuclear weapons treaty in history.
The popular legend of John F. Kennedy superseded reality; he made a singular, seemingly indelible impression upon the American scene. With his beautiful wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and his adorable children at his side, John Kennedy created an image that later revelations of his moral and physical weaknesses could tarnish, but not destroy. His assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, marked a bloody conclusion to his presidency, but hastened his coronation as the martyred prince of American politics. In death, he became a cultural icon.
The
idealism that Kennedy evoked did not die with him. Although Kennedy failed to realize his promise, he left a legacy of hope to millions of Americans.
|
