Kennedy, John F.

Kennedy, John F. 1917-1963

BIBLIOGRAPHY

John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, was born May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Jack was the son of Joseph Patrick Kennedy (1888–1969) and Rose Fitzgerald (1890–1995); both grandfathers, Patrick Joseph Kennedy (1858–1929) and John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald (1863–1950), had been politically prominent in Boston. Jack’s father was determined to see his first born, Joseph Patrick Jr., elected president, but Navy pilot Joe Jr.’s death in 1944 caused Joe to transfer his political dreams to Jack.

Jack was an indifferent student at day schools, then in a Catholic boarding school, and finally at Choate, a preparatory school in Connecticut that Joe Jr. was attending. Fellow seniors named Jack “most likely to succeed,” and he graduated in the middle of his class. Joe Jr.’s shadow led Jack to attend Princeton University rather than Harvard, but poor health, which plagued his entire life, soon forced him to withdraw. He entered Harvard in 1936 and continued to perform modestly as a student, but public affairs then captured Jack’s attention. He registered for a heavy academic load in the fall of 1937 so that he might travel to Europe in early 1938 to research an honors thesis on contemporary politics. That paper reviewed Great Britain’s prewar policies toward Germany and was published in 1940 as Why England Slept ; it proved unexpectedly popular in an America unnerved by world events.

War approached, and Kennedy attempted to enter officer candidate schools, but failed the physical examinations. Joe Kennedy Sr., the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in the late 1930s, arranged through his former naval attaché for Jack to enter the U.S. Navy in late 1941. Kennedy was trained to operate patrol-torpedo boats and was sent to the Pacific, where his boat (PT-109 ) was rammed by a Japanese destroyer in August 1943. Jack led survivors to a nearby island, directed successful efforts to attract a rescue, and later returned to duty, but physical maladies caused his return to the states and his eventual retirement from the Navy.

Joe Kennedy enthusiastically supported Jack’s race for the eleventh Massachusetts congressional district seat in 1946, and after three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives Jack successfully challenged incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (1902–1985) for a U.S. Senate seat. Kennedy’s bid for the 1956 Democratic vice-presidential nomination fell just short, and immediately following Dwight D. Eisenhower’s (1890–1969) reelection he mounted a campaign for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy’s Catholicism was inevitably an issue, but he defused it by asserting the principle of church-state separation. He won the nomination, then defeated the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon (1913–1994), by 120,000 popular votes; the electoral vote was not so close (303–219).

Jack, his wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (1929–1994), and their young children presented active, sophisticated, optimistic faces to the country. In accepting his party’s nomination, Kennedy had described a “New Frontier” of possibilities for the nation, and his inaugural speech built on that vision. The White House became “Camelot” after the romantic stage version of King Arthur’s reign; the Kennedys were admired as royalty, and it was sometimes suggested that a Kennedy dynasty had begun wherein Jack would be succeeded first by his brother Robert (1925–1968) and then by their younger brother Edward (b. 1932).

Cold War issues hounded the Kennedy presidency, however. A 1961 invasion of Cuba, a Soviet client, at the Bay of Pigs by CIA-sponsored Cuban exiles failed, and it was soon followed by East Germany’s provocative construction of a wall isolating western sectors of Berlin. In 1962 U.S. intelligence efforts revealed that the Soviet Union was basing offensive missiles and long-range bombers in Cuba. Kennedy mobilized the military, authorized complaints in the United Nations Security Council, and ordered the Navy to “quarantine” Cuba to prevent receipt of more weapons. Diplomacy and U.S. willingness to resort to military action caused removal of the arsenal. This incident provided the most dangerous moment of the Cold War.

The “space race” gave Kennedy another means of challenging the Soviets, one that was also infused with domestic policy. Soviet satellites and manned orbital flights embarrassed the United States. Initial American efforts were spectacular failures, but science advisors concluded that a manned moon landing was feasible. Convinced that gaining the upper hand in space would enhance U.S. prestige abroad, restore American confidence, and open doors to technological and economic advances, Kennedy committed the United States to a safe manned flight to the moon and back by the close of the 1960s. His vision was fulfilled in July 1969.

The civil rights movement posed different domestic policy problems. Kennedy had telephoned the wife of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968) when King was imprisoned during the election campaign; this encouraged many to expect Kennedy to champion civil rights. His administration proved less than they hoped, although it made some efforts to extend voting rights and to reduce employment discrimination. But activists known as “freedom riders,” who were testing Kennedy’s promise to end public-transportation segregation, were violently attacked in Alabama, and the University of Mississippi was awkwardly integrated, causing a deadly riot. Kennedy proposed a sweeping civil rights bill during the summer of 1963, but Congress acted only when Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973), promoted the bill as a memorial to the slain president.

In November 1963 Kennedy traveled to Texas to end bickering among Democrats there. As his limousine approached downtown Dallas, gunshots fatally wounded him. A government commission headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren (1891–1974) later blamed Lee Harvey Oswald (1939–1963) for the act as a solitary assassin, but conspiracy theories abounded. Robert Kennedy and President Johnson were suspicious of the CIA, American mobsters, and Cuban operatives, and Johnson himself was suspected of involvement by some. Oswald’s murder as he was being transferred between jails only two days after Kennedy’s shooting further fueled misgivings that persisted for decades. Gerald Posner’s 1993 book Case Closed best refuted conspiracy advocates.

Kennedy was survived by Jacqueline, who later remarried, was again widowed, and died in 1994 of cancer; daughter Caroline, who became a writer, attorney, wife, and mother of three Kennedy grandchildren; and son John Jr., who perished in a 1999 private-plane crash. Another son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, had been born prematurely and died within days in August 1963.

Had Kennedy not been murdered, health problems may have prematurely ended his presidency; some suggest that scandals resulting from his dealings with gangsters and a succession of female acquaintances would have brought down his administration. The Vietnam War may have ended sooner under Kennedy’s leadership, but that may have delayed the eventual Soviet collapse and slowed establishment of Chinese-American relations. Civil rights legislation may have been slower and more limited, and America’s baby boomers may have become more constructively active and less cynical and distrustful. The more positive vision suggests that a “normal” Kennedy presidency could have forestalled many of the political traumas that later plagued the United States, along with the personal, combative political style that they engendered.

SEE ALSO Bay of Pigs; Civil Rights Movement, U.S.; Cuban Missile Crisis; Johnson, Lyndon B.; Presidency, The

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Allison, Graham T., and Philip Zelikow. 1999. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. 2nd ed. New York: Longman.

Branch, Taylor. 1988. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Dallek, Robert. 2003. An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963. Boston: Little, Brown.

Kennedy, Robert F. 1969. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Norton.

O’Donnell, Kenneth P., and David F. Powers. 1972. “Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Boston: Little, Brown.

Posner, Gerald. 1993. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York: Random House.

President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (Warren Commission). 1964. Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/index.html.

Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1961–1963. 1962–1964. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

James F. Sheffield Jr.