John Fitzgerald Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) served in both houses of Congress before becoming the thirty-fifth president of the United States. His assassination shocked the world.

John F. Kennedy once summed up his time as "very dangerous, untidy." He was the child of two world wars, of the Great Depression, and of the nuclear age. "Life is unfair," he remarked. And so it was to Kennedy, heaping him with glory, burdening him with tragedy. Yet, he never lost his grace, his sense of balance, or his indomitable gaiety.

Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass., on May 29, 1917. He was the second son of business executive and financier Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. His great-grandfather had emigrated in 1850 from Ireland to Boston, where he worked as a cooper. His paternal grandfather had served in the Massachusetts Legislature and in elective offices in Boston. Kennedy's maternal grandfather, John Francis Fitzgerald, had been a state legislator, mayor of Boston, and U.S. congressman. Kennedy's father served as ambassador to Great Britain (1937-1940), having been chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and of the U.S. Maritime Commission. Thus Kennedy was born into a wealthy family oriented toward politics and public service.

Education and Youth

Kennedy attended the Canterbury parochial school (1930-1931), completing his preparatory education at the Choate School (1931-1935). He enrolled at Princeton University in 1935, but illness soon forced him to withdraw. Upon recovery he went to Harvard University. During his junior year he traveled in Europe, observing the political tensions that were leading to World War II. He was gathering materials for his senior thesis, which, reflecting some of the isolationist views of his father, later became the bestselling book Why England Slept (1940).

After graduating from Harvard cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in 1940, Kennedy enrolled at Stanford University for graduate studies. In April 1941 he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army but was rejected for physical reasons (a back injury received while playing football). Months later, his back strengthened through a regimen of exercises, the Navy accepted him. He became an intelligence officer with the rank of lieutenant junior grade in Washington, D.C. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor he requested active duty at sea; this assignment was not granted until late in 1942.

War Hero

Following his training with the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron, Kennedy was shipped to the South Pacific into the war against Japan. In March 1943 he received command of a PT boat. That August, when his boat was sliced in two by a Japanese destroyer, two of his crew were killed, while Kennedy and four others clung to the half of the PT boat that remained afloat. Six other men survived in the nearby water, two wounded. In a 3-hour struggle Kennedy got the wounded crewmen to the floating hulk. When it capsized, he ordered his men to swim to a small island about 3 miles away, while he towed one man to shore in a heroic 5-hour struggle. Several days later, having displayed exceptional qualities of courage, leadership, and endurance, Kennedy succeeded in having his men rescued.

Kennedy did not see further action, for he suffered an attack of malaria and aggravation of his back injury. In December he returned to the United States. After a hospital stay he became a PT instructor in Florida, until he was hospitalized again. He was retired from the service in the rank of full lieutenant in March 1945, having undergone a disk operation. Returning to civilian life, Kennedy did newspaper work for several months, covering the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, the Potsdam Conference, and the British elections of 1945.

House of Representatives

However, Kennedy desired a political career. In 1946 he became a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from the Massachusetts eleventh congressional district. Realizing that, despite his family's background in Democratic politics, he was unknown to the district's electorate, Kennedy built a large personal organization for his campaign. On whirlwind tours he met as many voters as possible, addressing them in a direct, informal style on timely topics. In this campaign, as in all the others, his brothers, sisters, and mother supported him. His brothers, Robert and Ted, acted as his managers, while his sisters and mother held social events.

Kennedy was a driven man. "The Kennedys were all puppets in the hands of the old man," Washington newspaperman Arthur Krock once observed. "I got Jack into politics," his father said, although he admitted that neither he nor his wife could picture their son as a politician. "I told him Joe [the oldest brother, who died a hero in World War II] was dead … and I told him he had to." Kennedy fell heir to the political know-how of his grandfather, the legendary "Honey Fitz," who had charmed and utilized the tough Boston Irish electorate. Meanwhile, Kennedy climbed more stairs and shook more hands and worked harder than the 10 other contenders for the candidacy combined.

Kennedy won the primary, the fall election, and reelection to the House in 1948 and in 1950. He kept his campaign pledges to work for broader social welfare programs, particularly in the area of low-cost public housing. Kennedy was a staunch friend of labor. In 1949 he became a member of the Joint Committee on Labor-Management Relations. He battled unsuccessfully against the Taft-Hartley Bill and later supported bills that sought to modify its restrictive provisions. Although Kennedy supported President Harry Truman's social welfare programs, progressive taxation, and regulation of business, he did not follow administration policies in foreign relations. He opposed the fighting in Korea "or any other place in Asia where we cannot hold our defenses."

In 1951 Kennedy spent 6 weeks traveling in Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Yugoslavia, and West Germany. On his return he advised the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that he believed defending Western Europe was strategically important to the United States but that he felt Western Europeans should do more on their own behalf and not rely so strongly on the United States. That autumn he traveled around the world. His visits to the Middle East, India, Pakistan, Indochina, Malaya, and Korea caused him to reverse a previous position and support Point Four aid for the Middle East. He also urged that France get out of Algeria.

The Senate

In April 1952 Kennedy announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, running against the strongly entrenched Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a Republican liberal. Kennedy won by over 70,000 votes. Lodge reeled under the impact: "those damned tea-parties," he said. He had not run against a man, but a family—the Kennedy women having acted as hostesses to at least 70,000 Massachusetts housewives. In 1958 Kennedy was reelected.

On Sept. 12, 1953, Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, daughter of a New York City financier, at Newport, R. I. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., noted of Mrs. Kennedy that "under a veil of lovely inconsequence" she possessed "an all-seeing eye and ruthless judgment." Four children were born, of whom two survived infancy: Caroline Bouvier and John Fitzgerald.

Taking his seat in the Senate in January 1953, Kennedy served on the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, the Government Operations Committee, the Select Committee on Labor-Management Relations, the Foreign Relations Committee, and the Joint Economic Committee. He secured passage of several bills to aid the Massachusetts fishing and textile industries and fought to ameliorate New England's economic problems. In 1954 he voted to extend the president's powers under the reciprocal trade program.

A recurrence of his old back injuries forced Kennedy to use crutches during 1954. An operation in October was followed by another in February 1955. He spent his months of illness and recuperation writing biographical profiles of Americans who had exercised moral courage at crisis points in their lives. Profiles in Courage (1956), a best seller, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957.

Kennedy's back operations were not completely successful, and he was never again entirely free from pain. He resumed his senatorial duties in May 1955. During the next years he opposed reform in the electoral college, favored American aid to help India stabilize its economy, and became a strong advocate of civil rights legislation. Social welfare legislation was of primary concern. The Kennedy-Douglas-Ives Bill (1957) required full disclosure and accounting of all employee pension and welfare funds. The Kennedy-Byrd-Payne Bill was a budgeting and accounting bill that placed the financial structure of the government on an annual accrued expenditure basis. Kennedy also sponsored bills for providing Federal financial aid to education and for relaxing United States immigration laws.

Campaign for the Presidency

Kennedy's record in Congress, together with his thoughtful books and articles, had attracted national attention. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1956, when presidential nominee Adlai E. Stevenson left the choice of his running mate open, Kennedy was narrowly defeated by Estes Kefauver. From then on, however, Kennedy was running for the presidency. He began building a personal national organization. Formally announcing his candidacy in January 1960, Kennedy made whirlwind tours and won the Democratic primaries in New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Oregon, Maryland, and Nebraska, plus an upset victory over Hubert Humphrey in West Virginia. On July 13, 1960, Kennedy was nominated on the first ballot, with Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate.

"Jack In Walk" shouted the Boston Globe after Kennedy gained the nomination. But it would be no walk to the White House against the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. Kennedy's candidacy was controversial because he was a Roman Catholic; religious prejudice probably cost him a million votes in Illinois alone. But his "Houston speech" on Sept. 11, 1960, met the religious issue head on. He believed in the absolute separation of church and state, he said, in which no priest could tell a president what to do and in which no Protestant clergyman could tell his parishioners how to vote.

A series of televised debates with Nixon was crucial. Kennedy "clobbered" the Republican leader with his "style." Skeptical and laconic, careless and purposeful, Kennedy displayed wit, love of language, and a sense of the past. On November 9 Kennedy became the youngest man in American history to win the presidency and the only Roman Catholic to do so. The election was one of the closest in the nation's history; his popular margin was only 119,450 votes. On December 19 the electoral college cast 303 votes for Kennedy and 219 for Nixon.

The Presidency

The inauguration on Jan. 20, 1960, of the first president born in the 20th century had a quality of pageant, as the old poet Robert Frost, the old priest Cardinal Richard Cushing, and the old president Dwight Eisenhower watched the torch being passed to a new generation. Then the challenge of Kennedy's inaugural address rang out: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country." The new "First Family" quickly captured the public imagination: Jacqueline, with her cameo beauty and her passion for excellence; 3-year-old Caroline; and newborn John.

Although happy that he could do something about "the problems that bedeviled us," Kennedy was aware that his razor-thin victory had narrowed his options. Congress was unyielding—it had seen presidents come and go, and it distrusted Kennedy's youth and wit and gaiety. Kennedy was never able to "escape the congressional arithmetic." Unlike his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy had no past political favors to draw upon. Therefore, most of his program—tax reform, civil rights, a Medicare system, and the establishment of a department of urban affairs—bogged down in Congress. Ironically, his education bill was defeated largely through the efforts of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

The Cuban invasion burst over the Kennedy administration like a bombshell in April 1961. On April 17 it became known that 1,400 exiled Cubans had invaded Cuba's Las Villas Province and had penetrated 10 miles inland. On April 18 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev sent a note to Kennedy stating that his government was prepared to come to the aid of the Cuban government to help it resist armed attack. By April 20 the invasion was clearly a failure. Who was responsible for American involvement in this shabby operation? Kennedy shouldered the responsibility for the fiasco, but his biographers have since noted that "Operation Pluto," committing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to train Cuban guerrillas, was a project of Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. Kennedy, initially overawed by the CIA and the joint chiefs of staff, in the end refused to commit the necessary American troops. He was aware that if the Cuban people did not rise up and back the invaders, the United States could not impose a regime on them. Furthermore, he was apprehensive that if America moved in Cuba the Soviet Union might move in Berlin. The Bay of Pigs fiasco proved Kennedy's ability to face disaster. When it was over, he was "effectively in control."

Kennedy rapidly learned the great limitations on a president's ability to solve problems. He wanted the United States to reexamine its attitude toward the Soviet Union, and he wanted to act upon both nations' mutual "abhorrence of war." His separate meetings with Gen. Charles De Gaulle, the president of France, and Khrushchev in the spring of 1961 were social triumphs but political defeats. Kennedy failed to dissuade De Gaulle from pulling France out of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, and he could reach no agreement with the Soviet chief on the status of Berlin. He did voice to Khrushchev, however, America's determination to stay in Berlin. Each threatened to meet force with force. In August the Berlin crisis exploded. The East Germans tightened border curbs and erected a wall of concrete blocks along most of the 25-mile border between East Berlin and West Berlin. Kennedy unequivocally stated that the United States would not abandon West Berlin.

Kennedy's civil rights bills bogged down in Congress. Civil rights was the President's foremost domestic concern. When the showdown came, "the Kennedys," as the President and his brother Robert, the attorney general, shamed southern governors. They sent 600 Federal marshals to Alabama in 1961 to protect the "Freedom Riders." In 1962 they forced Mississippi's governor, Ross Barnett, to send his troopers back to the state university, while dispatching hundreds of Federal marshals into an all-night battle to protect the right of one African American student to attend the university.

Kennedy appealed by television to the conscience of the nation. "We are confronted with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and it is as clear as the American Constitution." He called upon the American people to exhibit a sense of fairness. The political costs were high because Kennedy already had the African American vote.

Nuclear Confrontation

On Oct. 22, 1962, Kennedy addressed the nation on a grave matter. The Soviet Union, he said, had deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, and the United States had declared a quarantine on all shipments of offensive military equipment into Cuba. The United States would not allow Cuba to become a Soviet missile base, and it would regard any missile launched from Cuba "as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response."

This direct confrontation was brinkmanship. For a week the details had been "the best kept secret in government history." Through 7 days of gripping tension and soul-searching, the administration had maintained a facade of normal social and political activities. Meanwhile, American military units throughout the world were alerted.

As messages went back and forth between Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Pope John, who volunteered his aid as peacemaker, Soviet ships were moving toward Kennedy's invisible line in the Atlantic. Would they stop? They slowed, then stopped, and on October 28 the news came that the Soviet Union would remove its missiles from Cuba. For a time Kennedy seemed at least 10 feet tall, but his own wry comment on the crisis was, "Nobody wants to go through what we went through in Cuba very often."

Out of this confrontation came the greatest single triumph of the Kennedy administration: the nuclear testban treaty with the Soviet Union. Kennedy called this treaty "the first step down the path of peace." Before negotiations for the treaty were completed, Khrushchev had defiantly reopened the nuclear race. Kennedy, however, held firm, and the treaty was signed on July 25, 1963. "Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness," Kennedy said. A "hot line" for emergency messages was also established between Washington, D.C., and Moscow.

Vietnam Commitments

According to Kennedy's biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Vietnam "was his great failure." Certainly it consumed more of his time than any other problem. Kennedy had inherited the commitment, but he stepped up the conflict, despite his assertion that "full-scale war in Vietnam … was unthinkable." Kennedy had opposed the French military operations in Algeria and was aware of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's and Eisenhower's warnings against a land war in Asia. Yet he tripled American forces in Vietnam at a time when South Vietnamese troops greatly outnumbered the enemy. Why? Senator William Fulbright has suggested that Kennedy put troops in Vietnam to prove to Khrushchev that "he couldn't be intimidated."

Kennedy was well aware of the dangers of the presidency. One of his favorite poems was "I Have a Rendezvous with Death," and he had always been haunted by the poignancy of those who die young. "Who can tell who will be president a year from now?" he would ask. On the fatal day of his arrival in Dallas, Tex., he remarked that if anyone wanted to kill a president he needed only a high building and a rifle with a telescopic lens.

That day—Nov. 22, 1963—Kennedy was assassinated by a lone sharpshooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, who fired on Kennedy's motorcade with a rifle equipped with a telescopic lens. Within hours, that "live, electric" figure was dead. Gone was all that brilliance and wit and purpose. In Indonesia, flags were lowered to half-mast; in New Delhi, India, crowds wept in the streets; in Washington, D.C., "grief was an agony."

His Legacy

Kennedy was the first president to face a nuclear confrontation; the first to literally reach for the moon, through the nation's space programs; the first in half a century to call a White House conference on conservation; the first to give the arts a prominent place in American national councils; the first since Theodore Roosevelt with whom youth could identify. He made the nation see itself with new eyes.

Yet his most cherished dreams foundered without the influence of his inspiration and guiding hand. The Alliance for Progress, his program to revitalize life throughout the poor nations of South America, disintegrated—Latin American leaders were simply not committed to democratic change. The youthful idealism of the Peace Corps eroded under the impact of disillusionment and reality. The romantic "Green Berets" degenerated into a cloak-and-dagger outfit.

What Kennedy accomplished was not as important as what he symbolized. He enjoyed unique appeal for the emerging Third World. As the African magazine Transition expressed it, murdered with Kennedy was "the first real chance for an intelligent and new leadership in the world. His death leaves us unprepared and in darkness."

Further Reading

Perhaps the most objective, scholarly biographical account of Kennedy is Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (1965), combining the insights of the "insider" with the detachment of the historian. Intimate but more romanticized is Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (1965), winner of a Pulitzer Prize. Useful books by intimates of Kennedy include Evelyn Lincoln, My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy (1965), and Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (1966). The most critical, but well-annotated, study is Victor Lasky, J. F. K.: The Man and the Myth (1963). Valuable insights are in the anthology by Donald S. Harrington, As We Remember Him (1965), and in Tom Wicker, JFK and LBI: The Influence of Personality upon Politics (1968). Kennedy's election to the presidency is detailed in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History of American Presidential Elections (4 vols., 1971). Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days (1969), illumines the tensions of the Cuban missile crisis. William Manchester, The Death of a President (1967), is the definitive work on the assassination. See also Hugh Sidey, John F. Kennedy, President (1963), and Alex Goldman, John Fitzgerald Kennedy: The World Remembers (1968). □

KENNEDY, JOHN FITZGERALD

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the thirty-fifth president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Although his administration had few legislative accomplishments, Kennedy energized the United States by projecting idealism, youth, and vigor.

Kennedy was born May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, was a self-made millionaire and the son of a Boston politician. His mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the daughter of John F. ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, who served as a Representative and a mayor of Boston.

Kennedy, one of nine children, graduated from Harvard University in 1940. His senior thesis, "Why England Slept," which addressed the reasons why Great Britain had been unprepared for world war ii, was published in 1940 to great acclaim. His father thought that Kennedy would become a writer or teacher, and that Kennedy's older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., would go into politics. World War II changed those plans.

Kennedy joined the Navy in 1941 and commanded a PT boat in the Pacific Ocean. In 1943, the boat was attacked and destroyed, and Kennedy emerged a as hero, owing to his valiant efforts to save his crew. His older brother Joseph was killed in action in 1944. Kennedy's father then transferred his political goals to Kennedy.

In 1946, Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from the solidly Democratic Eleventh District of Massachusetts. He was re-elected in 1948 and 1950.

In 1952, he was elected to the Senate, defeating the incumbent, Republican Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. Kennedy kept a low profile at first, working on legislation that benefited Massachusetts. Back problems and other physical maladies bedeviled Kennedy during this period. He underwent two operations on his back, to alleviate chronic pain. During his convalescence, he wrote Profiles in Courage (1956), a series of essays on courageous stands taken by U.S. senators throughout U.S. history. It won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography.

In 1956, Kennedy sought the Democratic vice presidential nomination. He made the presidential nominating speech for adlai stevenson, of Illinois, who was nominated for a second time to run against dwight d. eisenhower. Despite a vigorous effort, Kennedy lost the vice presidential nomination to Senator Estes Kefauver, of Tennessee.

In 1957, Kennedy was appointed to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he became a critic of the Eisenhower administration's foreign policy and a champion for increased aid to underdeveloped countries. He also served on the committee that investigated corruption and racketeering in labor unions and the head of the Teamsters Union, james r. hoffa.

In 1960, Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination. He selected Senator lyndon b. johnson, of Texas, to be his running mate. After a vigorous campaign that included television debates with Republican richard m. nixon, Kennedy won the election by fewer than 120,000 popular votes. He was the youngest American ever to be elected president, as well as the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. His impressive inaugural speech contained the popular phrase "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country."

Once in office, Kennedy drafted a series of ambitious measures that were collectively entitled the New Frontier. These policies included expanding the space program, instituting civil rights legislation, aiding education, improving the tax system, and providing medical care for older citizens through the social security program. Most of the New Frontier programs failed to progress through a Congress that was dominated by southern Democratic leadership, but many were enacted by President Johnson following Kennedy's assassination.

The Kennedy administration was enmeshed in a series of foreign crises almost immediately. In April 1961, Kennedy was severely criticized for approving an ill-fated invasion of the Bay of Pigs, in Cuba. This clandestine operation, conceived during the Eisenhower administration, was conducted by anti-Communist Cuban exiles who had been trained in the United States, and it was directed by the central intelligence agency. The invasion achieved public notoriety when it failed and created international tension.

In June 1961, Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev, of the Soviet Union, met in Vienna to discuss ways of improving Soviet-U.S. relations. Instead of proceeding with those discussions, Khrushchev announced an increased alliance with East Germany. Later, the Berlin Wall was constructed to prohibit Western influence and to prevent persons from fleeing East

Germany. In response, the United States added to its military forces in Germany.

The most serious crisis occurred in October 1962, when the U.S. learned that Soviet missiles were about to be placed in Cuba. Kennedy issued a forceful statement demanding the dismantling of the missile sites and ordered a blockade to prevent the delivery of the missiles to Cuba. The world was poised for nuclear war until Khrushchev backed down and agreed to Kennedy's demands. Kennedy's handling of the crisis led to national acclaim.

U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia began to increase during the Kennedy administration. Kennedy agreed to send U.S. advisers to help the South Vietnamese government fight Communist rebels. In 1963, the United States became involved in overthrowing the corrupt and unscrupulous South Vietnamese government of President Ngo Dinh Diem.

On the domestic front, Kennedy interacted with a newly invigorated civil rights movement that was seeking to integrate the South. In 1961, federal marshals were sent to Montgomery, Alabama, to help restore order after race riots had erupted. In 1962, Kennedy sent 3,000 federal troops into Oxford, Mississippi, to restore order after whites rioted against the University of Mississippi's admission of james meredith, its first African-American student. In 1963, Kennedy was forced to federalize the Alabama National Guard in order to integrate the University of Alabama. Later that year, he federalized the Guard again, in order to integrate the public schools in three Alabama cities.

Faced with these problems, Kennedy proposed legislation requiring that hotels, motels, and restaurants admit customers regardless of race. He also asked that the U.S. attorney general be given authority to file lawsuits demanding the desegregation of public schools. Most of these proposals were passed in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000a et seq.).

Kennedy's achievements during his brief term as chief executive included an agreement with the Soviet Union to restrict nuclear testing to underground facilities; the creation of the Alliance for Progress, to establish economic programs to aid Latin America; and the creation of the Peace Corps program, which provides U.S. volunteers to work in underdeveloped countries.

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy's term was ended by an assassin's bullets in Dallas, and Johnson was sworn in as president. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the murder. Oswald was killed two days later by Dallas nightclub owner jack ruby, while being moved from the city jail to the county jail. Johnson appointed a commission headed by Chief Justice earl warren to investigate the Kennedy assassination. In its report, issued in September 1964, the commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone in murdering Kennedy.

Kennedy's assassination has remained one of the nation's most heated controversies. Many people were initially doubtful of the report's conclusions, and the skepticism has grown over time. Thousands of articles and books have been written that challenge the commisssion's findings and allege that agencies of the federal government withheld information from the commission and that the commission itself concealed evidence that contradicted its conclusions. In 1978 and 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations re-examined the evidence and concluded that Kennedy "was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy." Nevertheless, critics charged that vital information remained withheld from the public. In an effort to restore government credibility, Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, 44 U.S.C.A. § 2107, which established the Assassination Records Review Board, an independent federal agency whose mission was to identify and release as many records relating to the assassination as possible. The board completed its work in 1998, releasing thousands of documents relating to the events on, and leading to, November 22, 1963. However, no conclusive evidence has surfaced to indicate the true assassin or any other individuals who participated in the assassination.

"The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened."
—John F. Kennedy

Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953. They had two surviving children, Caroline and John F. Kennedy Jr. Following Kennedy's death, the activities of Jacqueline and the two children remained part of the American consciousness. In 1968, Jacqueline married wealthy Greek businessman Aristotle Onassis, who died in 1975. She worked as an editor with Doubleday until her death in 1994. John F. Kennedy Jr. emerged as a popular media figure, and in 1995 he founded the now-defunct political magazine George. However, like his father, the junior Kennedy died an early, tragic death when he was killed in a plane crash along with his wife and sister-in-law in 1999.

further readings

Anderson, Catherine Corley. 2004. John F. Kennedy. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications.

Kovaleff, Theodore P. 1992. "The Two Sides of the Kennedy Antitrust Policy." Antitrust Bulletin 37 (spring).

Raatma, Lucia. 2002. John F. Kennedy. Minneapolis, Minn.: Compass Point Books.

Schlesinger, Arthur M. 2000. John F. Kennedy, Commander In Chief: A Profile In Leadership. New York: Gramercy Books.

cross-references

Cuban Missile Crisis; "Inaugural Address" (Appendix, Primary Document); Limited Test Ban Treaty; Warren Commission.

Kennedy, John F. (1917–1963), thirty‐fifth president of the United States.Kennedy's standing in American political history far supersedes the actual achievements of his tragically foreshortened administration. Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the son of Joseph P. Kennedy, a wealthy and ambitious Irish‐American businessman, and his wife, Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of a popular mayor of Boston, Kennedy early absorbed his father's expectations that he would go far in politics. Although plagued with lifelong serious health problems, he became a naval hero in World War II and won election to the House of Representatives in 1946 and to the Senate in 1952 and 1958, aided by his rugged good looks and youthful, energetic campaign style. He won the Democratic party's 1960 presidential nomination after a hotly contested series of primaries and went on to defeat the Republican Richard M. Nixon by the narrowest of margins. He thus became the youngest person (and the first Roman Catholic) ever elected to the White House. With his attractive and glamorous wife Jacqueline Bouvier (whom he married in 1953) as First Lady, Kennedy infused the presidency with an aura of excitement and sophistication.

Foreign policy was Kennedy's principal concern. The Cold War, he argued, required a more active use of American power than the inflexible policies of the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration had permitted. While enlarging the nation's nuclear arsenal, he also backed the military's commitment to new forms of warfare suitable for fighting insurgences in what was becoming known as the “Third World.” He escalated the American drive to unseat Fidel Castro's communist regime in Cuba, first through the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (whose plans he had inherited from his predecessor) and then through a series of covert assassination schemes hatched by the Central Intelligence Agency. A tense 1961 confrontation with the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev over Berlin was defused only by the Soviets' construction of the Berlin Wall. The Peace Corps, launched in 1961, stands as one of his most admired initiatives.

In the defining international event of his presidency, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy went to the brink of war to pressure the Soviets to remove nuclear missiles from Cuba. Perhaps ironically, the successful resolution of that crisis seemed to ease Soviet‐American relations. In 1963, Kennedy negotiated a ban on atmospheric nuclear tests and called for a new and more cooperative relationship with Moscow. At the same time, however, he increased Washington's commitment to the survival of a noncommunist government in South Vietnam, and in the Fall of 1963 he authorized a coup to topple South Vietnam's unpopular president, Ngo Dinh Diem, who was subsequently murdered by the coup leaders.

Domestically, the administration developed ambitious plans for a war on poverty, national health insurance for the elderly, and other initiatives, but none was implemented, stalled by an essentially conservative Congress. Kennedy's principal domestic achievement was one that Attorney General Robert Kennedy (his brother) at first sought to avoid: allying the federal government with the African American drive for civil rights. In June 1963, after the savage attacks of southern authorities against civil rights demonstrators had galvanized public opinion, Kennedy in a notable television speech expressed his and the nation's commitment to equal rights and proposed a bill that, after his death, would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963. In death, he came to symbolize a youthful idealism and optimism that many Americans ultimately concluded had died with him. For decades after, despite revelations of character blemishes largely unacknowledged during his lifetime, he loomed large in the American political imagination—his dynamism and radiant charm a reminder to millions of citizens of what seemed a better time and a loftier politics than what they had come to know in the difficult years that followed.
See also Civil Rights Legislation; Civil Rights Movement; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; Nuclear Strategy; Roman Catholicism; Sixties, The; Vietnam War.

Bibliography

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. , A Thousand Days, 1965.
Garry Wills , The Kennedy Imprisonment, 1982.
Herbert Parmet , J.F.K: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 1983.
Richard Reeves , President Kennedy, 1993.

Alan Brinkley

Kennedy, John F. (1917–1963), thirty‐fifth U.S. president.Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, to a large, wealthy, politically active Irish American family, “Jack” Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 when his financier father, Joseph Kennedy, was U.S. Ambassador to Britain. In the navy (1941–45), John Kennedy commanded a torpedo boat in the Pacific. He was hailed a hero when he helped rescue crew members after a Japanese destroyer sank PT‐109 in 1943.

As a Cold War Democrat from Massachusetts, Kennedy served in the House of Representatives (1947–53) and U.S. Senate (1953–61), calling for increased military spending and the vigorous containment of communism, particularly in the Third World.

In 1960, Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon to become the first Catholic and the youngest man (at forty‐three) to become president. In the campaign, Kennedy had incorrectly charged that the Eisenhower administration allowed a “missile gap” to develop in the Soviet Union's favor. Kennedy's failure during the CIA‐sponsored invasion of the Bay of Pigs by Cuban exiles in April 1961 may have emboldened him to be assertive elsewhere. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara dramatically expanded the defense budget, increasing nuclear missiles (from 63 to 424 ICMBs, 1961–63) and conventional forces (including the elite counterinsurgency Special Forces) under the concept of “flexible response.” Kennedy also instituted covert operations to depose Cuba's Fidel Castro, and mobilized military reservists in the Berlin Crisis of 1961. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, Kennedy directly challenged Soviet deployment of medium‐range missiles in Cuba, even risking nuclear war before the Soviets backed down. Afterwards, Kennedy obtained a Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963), but continued the arms buildup. NATO allies, meanwhile, began to complain that the United States too seldom consulted them.

To combat suspected communism in the Third World, Kennedy developed the Peace Corps and the Food for Peace program, but he also used military force. Responding to Communist guerrilla warfare in Southeast Asia, Kennedy accepted neutralization of Laos, but he committed American military assistance to South Vietnam, increasing the number of U.S. military “advisers” attached to the South Vietnamese Army from 685 to 16,732. By the end of 1963, 120 Americans had died in combat there. The administration later tacitly authorized the Vietnamese generals' coup against the unpopular Ngo Dinh Diem, although not his murder on 1 November 1963. Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks later in Dallas, Texas.

The debate over what Kennedy would have done had he lived continues. He offered some statements favorable to hawks, others to doves. His actions, however, dramatically increased the U.S. military role in Vietnam and emphasized it as the test case against Communist wars of “national liberation.” At the end, ambiguity marked his presidency, as mystery shrouded his assassination.
[See also Berlin Crises; Central Intelligence Agency; Vietnam War: Causes.]

Bibliography

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. , A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, 1965.
Thomas G. Paterson, ed., Kennedy's Quest for Victory: American Foreign Policy, 1961–1963, 1989.
Michael R. Beschloss , The Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960–1963, 1991.
James N. Giglio , The Presidency of John F. Kennedy, 1991.
Diane B. Kunz, ed., The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations During the 1960s, 1994.

Thomas G. Paterson

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917–63) 35th president of the United States (1961–63), born in Brookline, Massachusetts. During World War II he served with the navy in the Pacific and was hailed as a hero when he helped rescue crew members after a Japanese destroyer sunk their PT boat (1943). In Kennedy's three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (first elected 1946), his record was undistinguished. But his political career took off with his election to the Senate in 1952, in which the young Irish-Catholic candidate defeated the Yankee incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, scion of an old New England family. His 1956 book Profiles in Courage (reputedly ghostwritten) won a Pulitzer Prize. In 1958 he was reelected by a lopsided margin and, in preparation for a run for the presidency in 1960, began speaking out on issues related to national defense and an alleged missile gap with the Soviet Union. With Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy won a razor-thin popular plurality of about 100,000, although he had a comfortable margin in the electoral college (303 to 219), over his opponent Richard M. Nixon, becoming the first Roman Catholic president of the United States. The staff and cabinet he brought to Washington were known for their youth and vigor, particularly in contrast with the departing administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower. His main concern was the Soviet Union and its increasing sphere of influence, which led to his involvement in South Vietnam and Cuba. He approved the ill-conceived Bay of Pigs invasion (1961). Tensions with the Soviets came to a head with the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), when Nikita Khrushchev backed down and removed Soviet missiles from the island, marking a key turning point in the Cold War. In 1963 the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The situation in Vietnam was heightened when Kennedy sent combat troops, under the guise of “advisers;” their number was doubled by November 1963. One success in his attempts to keep Third World countries out of the Communist bloc was the creation of the Peace Corps, an organization of volunteers who worked at the grass-roots level in remote areas. His Alliance for Progress was less successful in its aim of establishing democratic policies in Latin America. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963 while on a routine political trip to Texas to raise money for the upcoming campaign. His murder made him a martyr, and his image and that of his administration were romanticized by his friends and family. Despite later revelations that his personal life was less than impeccable, Kennedy remains a figure of reverence in the eyes of many Americans.

Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (1917–63) 35th US president (1961–63). He was badly wounded while serving (1941–43) in the US Navy during World War II. Kennedy served three terms as a Democrat representative from Massachusetts (1946–53). In 1953 he successfully ran for the Senate, and soon after married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (later Onassis). In 1960 Kennedy gained the presidential nomination, and narrowly defeated his Republican challenger Richard Nixon. Kennedy adopted an ambitious and liberal program, under the title of the “New Frontier”, and embraced the cause of civil rights, but Congress frequently blocked his planned legislation. In foreign policy, he founded the “Alliance for Progress” in order to increase US influence in Latin America and created the Peace Corps. Adopting a strong anti-communist line, he was behind the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (1961), and stood firm against Nikita Khrushchev in the ensuing Cuban Missile Crisis (1962). He also increased military aid to South Vietnam in the Vietnam War (1954–75). Perhaps Kennedy's greatest foreign policy success was the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty between the US, UK, and Soviet Union. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was succeeded by his vice president, Lyndon B. Johnson. See also Cold War

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents; http://www.jfklibrary.org

Kennedy, John F(itzgerald) (known as ‘JFK’) (1917–63) US Democratic statesman, 35th President of the USA (1961–63). A national war hero during World War II, Kennedy became, at 43, the youngest man ever to be elected President, as well as the first Catholic. He gained a popular reputation as an advocate of civil rights, although reforms were delayed by Congress until 1964. In foreign affairs he recovered from the fiasco of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba to demand successfully the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from the country, and negotiated the Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 with the USSR and the UK. Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas, in November 1963; Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with his murder, but was himself shot before he could stand trial. Oswald was said to be the sole gunman by the Warren Commission (1964), but the House of Representatives Assassinations Committee (1979) concluded that more than one gunman had been involved; the affair remains the focus for a number of conspiracy theories.