I.

Introduction

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), 35th President of the United States (1961-1963). John F. Kennedy was the youngest person ever to be elected president. He was also the first Roman Catholic president and the first president to be born in the 20th century.

Kennedy was assassinated before he completed his third year in office; therefore his achievements, both foreign and domestic, were somewhat curtailed. Nevertheless, his influence had spread worldwide, and his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 is widely accepted to have prevented a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Perhaps no other president has been as popular, with young people in particular admiring him. He brought to the presidency an awareness of the cultural and historical traditions of the United States and an appreciation of intellectual excellence. Because Kennedy so eloquently expressed the values of mid-20th-century America, and of the post-World War II world in general, his presidency had an importance and an aura beyond its immediate legislative and political achievements.

II.

Early Life of John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was the second of nine children of Joseph Patrick Kennedy. The Kennedy family had long been active in politics; both of his grandfathers had been prominent Boston politicians. Although Joseph Kennedy never held elective office, he held positions in the federal administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, including a tumultuous period as ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1938 and 1940.

A.

Education of John F. Kennedy

John Kennedy’s education was disrupted by frequent illnesses, but he eventually graduated from Harvard in 1940. He used his undergraduate thesis at Harvard as the basis for a book, Why England Slept (1940), a study of Britain’s policy of appeasement as a logical response to German rearmament prior to World War II. The book gained attention in England and the United States. For a few months he attended Stanford University’s business school and then he travelled in South America.

B.

John F. Kennedy’s Military Service

The United States finally entered World War II in December 1941 after Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. Kennedy hoped to fight in the war but in the spring of 1941 he was rejected by the US Army because of a back injury he had received playing American football at Harvard. Determined to see active service, he passed the US Navy physical examination after a five-month programme of special exercise.

Early in 1943 Kennedy became commander of PT Boat 109 in the south Pacific. In August 1943 the boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer in waters off New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. The boat was sliced in half and 2 of the 13 men aboard were killed. Kennedy and the other survivors swam to a small island 5 km (3 mi) away. Kennedy towed a wounded crew member by clenching the long strap of the injured man’s life jacket between his teeth.

For the next four days, Kennedy swam along a water route that he knew American ships used. He finally encountered friendly natives on Cross Island. They took his message for help, carved on a coconut shell, to a US infantry patrol and Kennedy and his crew were finally rescued. For his “courage, endurance, and excellent leadership” Kennedy received the US Navy and Marine Corps Medal. Then, because of an attack of malaria and the recurrence of his back disorder, Kennedy returned to the United States for medical treatment.

III.

John F. Kennedy’s Early Political Career

In 1944 Kennedy’s older brother, Joseph, was killed on a bombing mission over Belgium. Previously, Joe Kennedy had planned to make his career in politics. Now John Kennedy, working as a reporter for the Hearst International News Service, decided to enter politics himself.

A.

Congressman John F. Kennedy

In 1946 John F. Kennedy was elected for the 11th Congressional District of Massachusetts as the Democratic Party candidate. He served three terms in the House of Representatives, all during the Democratic administrations of President Harry S. Truman. As a new member of the Congress of the United States, Kennedy supported legislation that would serve the interests of his constituents. Although he usually backed the bills sponsored by his party, he often showed his independence by voting with the Republicans against measures sponsored by the Truman administration. He also joined with Republicans in criticizing the Truman administration’s failure to support the Chinese Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek against the communists led by Mao Zedong.

Kennedy decided to run against the incumbent Republican Senator for Massachusetts Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. in 1952. Because he was little known outside his congressional district, Kennedy began his campaign two years before the election and met thousands of voters throughout Massachusetts. As a result, Kennedy defeated Lodge by 70,000 votes, despite the fact that Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican presidential candidate in the same year, won the state by 208,000 votes.

B.

Senator John F. Kennedy

As a candidate for the Senate, Kennedy had promised the voters that he would do more for Massachusetts than Lodge had done. During his first two years as senator he backed legislation beneficial to the Massachusetts textile, fishing, watch, and haulage industries. In 1953, however, he defied regional interests and supported the St Lawrence Seaway project—a system of canals that allowed sea-going ships to reach the Great Lakes, thus bypassing New England ports. Later, in 1955, he was the only senator from New England to support renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreement Act that gave the president the power to lower US tariffs, or taxes on imported goods, in exchange for similar concessions from other countries.

In 1953 Kennedy married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (1929-1994). They had four children: a daughter, who was stillborn in 1956; Caroline (1957- ); and two sons, John (1960-1999), born 17 days after the presidential election in 1960, and Patrick Bouvier, who died less than 48 hours after his birth in 1963.

Less than a year after his marriage, Kennedy underwent two back operations. During his convalescence, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, a book of essays on American politicians who risked their careers standing up for just but unpopular causes. Published in 1956, the book received the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. Because of the success of Profiles in Courage, many people who had known little about Kennedy came to admire him, both for his literary skill and for his understanding of the great issues of American history.

C.

Presidential Election of 1956

At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1956, Kennedy made the nomination speech for former Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson as Democratic candidate for the presidency. Stevenson, breaking with tradition, left the selection of a vice-presidential candidate to the vote of the convention. Kennedy attempted to win the nomination but on the third ballot the convention chose Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Kennedy then moved that the vote be made unanimous.

Kennedy’s failure to gain the vice-presidential nomination probably did more good than harm to his political career. The convention had brought him to the attention of Americans without associating him with Stevenson, who, for the second time, lost the election to Eisenhower.

D.

Later Senate Career of John F. Kennedy

In 1957 Kennedy became a member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was a severe critic of France’s refusal to make concessions to its colony, Algeria, and he advocated Algerian independence. He urged increased economic aid to underdeveloped nations. Later he won a place on the Senate Committee on Improper Activities and became an advocate of the rights of union members to union meetings, free speech and assembly, and the election of union officers by secret ballot. In 1958 Kennedy stood for re-election in Massachusetts. His margin of victory, 874,000 votes, was the largest ever recorded in a Massachusetts senatorial contest.

E.

Presidential Election of 1960

Kennedy wanted to win the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination, and almost as soon as the 1956 election was over, he began to work towards it. He faced several major obstacles. Many party leaders considered him too young and too inexperienced for the presidency. Many also doubted that a Roman Catholic could win a national election in a country that was mostly Protestant. In addition, Kennedy still lacked the support of many Democratic liberals, who backed either Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota or Adlai Stevenson.

Kennedy announced his candidacy in early 1960. By the time the Democratic National Convention opened in July, he had won seven primary victories (at this time primary election results were not binding upon convention delegations). His most important had been in West Virginia, where he proved that a Roman Catholic could win in a predominantly Protestant state.

When the convention opened, it appeared that Kennedy’s only serious challenge for the nomination would come from the Senate majority leader, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. However, Johnson only had strong support among Southern delegates. Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot and then persuaded Johnson to become his running mate. Two weeks later the Republicans nominated incumbent vice-president Richard Nixon for president and ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., whom Kennedy had defeated for the Senate in 1952, for vice-president.

Although his opponents refused to make Kennedy’s religion an issue, it was an important factor in many areas of the country, and one that Kennedy decided to approach head-on. Many Protestants feared that a Catholic might be subject to the orders of the head of the Roman Catholic church, the Pope. In a speech before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Kennedy said: “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute... where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from... [an] ecclesiastical source.” Kennedy also promised to “get the nation moving again” with a political programme he called the New Frontier, a name that invoked memories of the New Deal programme of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The two candidates faced each other in four nationally televised debates—the first in US history to be broadcast on the television. Kennedy’s manner, especially in the first debate, seemed to eliminate the charge that he was too young and too inexperienced to serve as president, and many believed these debates gave Kennedy victory. Another important element of the campaign was the support Kennedy received from blacks in important Northern states, especially Illinois and Pennsylvania. They supported him in part because he had tried to obtain the release of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been jailed for taking part in a civil rights demonstration in Georgia, and because he seemed to offer the greater hope for action on civil rights.

The election drew a record 69 million voters to the polls, but Kennedy won by only 113,000 votes. He won 49.7 per cent of the popular vote, and Nixon won 49.6 per cent. It was the closest popular vote in 72 years. However, because Kennedy won most of the larger states in the north-eastern United States, he received 303 votes in the Electoral College to Nixon’s 219.

IV.

John F. Kennedy as President of the United States

Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he emphasized America’s revolutionary heritage. “The same... beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe,” Kennedy said.

“Let the word go forth from this time and place to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.”

Kennedy called for “a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved”. He recognized the difficulties of this goal. “All this will not be finished in the first 100 days,” he said. “Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

Kennedy challenged Americans to assume the burden of “defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger”. The words of his address were: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

A.

Kennedy’s Cabinet

Kennedy sought with considerable success to attract brilliant young people to government service. His hope was to bring new ideas and new methods into the executive branch. As a result, many of his advisers were teachers and scholars. Among them were McGeorge Bundy and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. Kennedy’s Cabinet appointments included Dean Rusk, the president of the Rockefeller Foundation, as secretary of state, and Robert S. McNamara, president of Ford Motor Company, as secretary of defense. Neither had been active in politics, and McNamara was a Republican. Other appointments were C. Douglas Dillon, who had been under-secretary of state in the Eisenhower administration, as secretary of the treasury, and Kennedy’s own brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney-general.

Kennedy’s most influential adviser was Theodore C. Sorensen, a member of Kennedy’s staff since his days in the Senate. Sorensen wrote many of Kennedy’s speeches and exerted a strong influence on Kennedy’s political development.

B.

New Frontier Programme

Kennedy’s first year in office brought him considerable success in enacting new legislation. Congress passed a major housing bill, a law increasing the minimum wage, and a bill granting federal aid to economically depressed areas of the United States. The most original piece of legislation Kennedy put through Congress was the bill creating the Peace Corps, an agency that trained American volunteers to perform social and humanitarian service overseas. The programme’s goal was to promote world peace and friendship with developing nations. The idea of American volunteers helping people in foreign lands touched the idealism of many young Americans of the baby-boom generation. Within two years, Peace Corps volunteers were working in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, living with the people and working on education, public health, and agricultural projects.

However, after his initial success with Congress, Kennedy found it increasingly difficult to get his programmes enacted into law. Although the Democrats held a majority in both houses, Southern Democrats joined with conservative Republicans to stop legislation they disliked. The Medicare bill, a bill to make medical care for the elderly a national benefit, was defeated. A civil rights bill and a bill to cut taxes were debated, and compromises were agreed to, but even the compromises were delayed. A bill to create a Cabinet-level Department of Urban Affairs was soundly defeated, partly because Kennedy wanted the black economist Robert C. Weaver to be the new secretary. Southern Congressmen united with representatives from predominantly rural areas to defeat the bill.

Kennedy did win approval of a bill to lower tariffs and thus allow more competitive American trade abroad. Congress also authorized the purchase of US$100 million in United Nations bonds, and the money enabled the international organization to survive a financial crisis. Further, Congress appropriated more than US$1 billion to finance sending a man to the Moon by 1970.

C.

US Civil Rights Movement

The major American legal and moral conflict during Kennedy’s three years in office was in the area of civil rights. The civil rights movement against discrimination had become widespread and well organized. Although Kennedy faced opposition in Congress in formulating new civil rights legislation, he attempted to aid the black cause by enforcing existing laws. Kennedy particularly wanted to end discrimination in federally financed projects or in companies that were doing business with the government.

In September 1962 Governor Ross R. Barnett of Mississippi ignored a court order and prevented James H. Meredith, a black man, from enrolling at the state university. On the night of September 30, even as the president went on national television to appeal to the people of Mississippi to obey the law, rioting began on the campus. After 15 hours of rioting and two deaths, Kennedy sent in troops to restore order. Meredith was admitted to the university, and troops and federal marshals remained on the campus to ensure his safety.

In June 1963, when Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama prevented two blacks from enrolling at the University of Alabama, Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce the law. The students were enrolled at the university. Three months later, Kennedy again used the National Guard to prevent Wallace from interfering with integration in the schools of Birmingham, Tuskegee, and Mobile.

Kennedy also asked Congress to pass a civil rights bill that would guarantee blacks the right to vote, to attend school, to have equal access to jobs, and to have access to public accommodation. Kennedy told the American people: “Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promises... to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made in this century to the proposition that race has no place in American life or law.”

Public opinion polls showed that Kennedy was losing popularity because of his advocacy of civil rights. Privately, he began to assume that the South would oppose him at the next election, but he continued to speak out against segregation. To a group of students in Nashville, Tennessee, he said: “No one can deny the complexity of the problem involved in assuring all of our citizens their full rights as Americans. But no one can gainsay the fact that the determination to secure those rights is in the highest tradition of American freedom.”

D.

Bay of Pigs Invasion

When the communist Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba in 1959, the Caribbean island became a focus for the Cold War and many Cubans fled to the United States. During the Eisenhower administration the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had begun to train Cuban exiles secretly for an invasion of Cuba. When Kennedy became president, he approved the invasion.

In April 1961 about 1,500 Cuban exiles made an amphibious landing in Cuba at a place called Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). Their plan was to move inland and join with anti-Castro forces to stage a simultaneous revolt; instead, Castro’s forces were ready to meet the invaders. Neither did the revolt in the interior materialize, and air support, promised by the CIA, never came. The exiles were defeated and most of the survivors were taken as prisoners. Castro demanded money for their release. Kennedy refused to negotiate with Castro, but he took steps to encourage both businesses and private citizens to reach an agreement with Castro and to contribute to the ransom. On December 25, 1962, 1,113 prisoners were released in exchange for food and medical supplies valued at approximately US$53 million.

E.

Alliance for Progress

Most other Latin American countries had the same grave social, economic, and political conditions that had led to Castro’s success in Cuba. Many of these nations seemed ripe for a revolution that could easily be exploited by the communists. Upon taking office, President Kennedy looked for a programme that would accelerate change in Latin America by strengthening democratic institutions. In March 1961 he introduced the Alliance for Progress, and in August it was established by the charter of Punte del Este. The Alliance for Progress was to be a Latin American version of the Marshall Plan. All Latin American nations except Cuba joined the Alliance for Progress, pledging “to bring our people accelerated economic progress and broader social justice within the framework of personal dignity and individual liberty”. The United States promised US$20 billion for the first ten years. The success of the Alliance’s economic programmes, however, was limited by the gravity of the problems that they confronted.

F.

Cold War Confrontation With the Soviet Union in Europe

In August 1961, in an effort to prevent East Germans nationals from fleeing to the West, the communists ordered a wall to be built on the border between East and West Berlin. When East German soldiers also began blocking the Allied route through East Germany into West Berlin, Kennedy sent a force of 1,500 soldiers. The troops went unchallenged. Communist interference with Allied travel to and from Berlin stopped.

G.

Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the world’s closest brush with nuclear war. In 1960 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev decided to use Cuba as a base to house nuclear missiles that would put the eastern United States within range of nuclear missile attack. Khrushchev, when asked, denied that any missiles were being supplied to Cuba, but in the summer of 1962 US spy planes flying over the island photographed Soviet-managed construction work and spotted the first missile on October 14.

For seven days President Kennedy consulted secretly with advisers, discussing possible responses. Finally, on October 22, Kennedy gave a televised address about the discovery of the missiles, demanded that the Soviet Union remove the weapons, and declared the waters around Cuba a quarantine zone. Kennedy called upon Khrushchev “to halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace and to stable relations between our two nations” and warned that an attack from Cuba on any nation in the western hemisphere would be considered an attack by the USSR on the United States itself.

At the same time, US troops were sent to Florida to prepare to invade Cuba, and air units were alerted. American ships blockaded Cuba with orders to search all suspicious-looking Soviet ships and to turn back any that carried offensive weapons.

For several tense days Soviet vessels en route to Cuba avoided the quarantine zone, while Khrushchev and Kennedy discussed the issue through diplomatic channels. Khrushchev, realizing his weak military position, sent a message on October 26 in which he agreed to Kennedy’s demands to remove all missiles. The following day, before the United States had responded to the first note, Khrushchev sent another, trying to negotiate other terms. Kennedy decided to respond to the first message, and on October 28, Khrushchev agreed to dismantle and remove the weapons. In return, Kennedy secretly promised not to invade Cuba and to remove older missiles from Turkey. Kennedy called off the blockade and spy planes confirmed that the missile bases were being dismantled. Nuclear war had been avoided.

H.

Cold War Crisis in South East Asia

In South East Asia, as elsewhere, the United States and the USSR competed to establish governments favourable to themselves. Both Laos and South Vietnam were threatened by communist rebellions. In July 1962 Kennedy’s roving ambassador, W. Averell Harriman, negotiated an agreement that arranged for a neutral coalition government in Laos headed by Prince Souvanna Phouma. The coalition government, which consisted of both communist and non-communist elements, was shaky, but it survived for some time.

Kennedy was less successful in South Vietnam where US military advisers had been training the South Vietnamese army since 1954. The South Vietnamese government of President Ngo Dinh Diem was threatened by a communist-dominated guerrilla movement, called the National Liberation Front, which was supported by many of the people living in the countryside. The Diem government proved unable to defeat the communists or to cope with growing unrest among South Vietnamese Buddhists and other religious groups. In 1961 Kennedy demonstrated America’s commitment to South Vietnam by increasing the number of military advisers from 700 to 15,000 and ordering them into combat.

Kennedy soon realized that Diem was more interested in maintaining his own hold on power than in defeating the communists and introducing democracy in South Vietnam. In 1963, when Kennedy was informed of a planned coup to overthrow Diem, he chose to leave the matter in the hands of the US ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., whom he knew to be in favour of the planned coup. The coup was successful, and Diem was killed in the back of a military personnel carrier. However, the new government was unable to keep the guerrilla war from spreading, in spite of increased US aid.

I.

Test Ban Treaty

Kennedy's prospects in foreign affairs improved in 1963. During a successful European tour he was warmly received in West Berlin, where he pledged continuing support for West Germany. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin,” he declared. “And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’.” In June he delivered an innovative foreign policy speech calling for an end to the Cold War. The two superpowers agreed to establish a “hot line” between Moscow and Washington, D.C., to facilitate communication in times of crisis. On August 5, 1963, the United States signed a limited nuclear test ban treaty with the United Kingdom and the USSR. The treaty outlawed nuclear explosions in the atmosphere or underwater, but allowed them underground. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the treaty was an important step that Kennedy called “a historic landmark in man’s age-old pursuit of peace”. He considered it the greatest single achievement of his administration.

V.

Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

On November 22, 1963, President and Mrs Kennedy were in Dallas, Texas, trying to win support in a state that Kennedy had barely carried at the 1960 election. On his way to lunch in downtown Dallas, Kennedy and his wife sat in an open convertible at the head of a motorcade. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was two cars behind the president, and the Texas governor John B. Connally and his wife were sitting with the Kennedys. The large crowds were enthusiastic.

As the motorcade approached an underpass, three shots were fired in rapid succession. One bullet passed through the president’s neck and struck Governor Connally in the back. A second bullet struck the president in the head; a third one missed the motorcade. Kennedy’s car sped to Parkland Hospital, where at 1pm he was pronounced dead. He had never regained consciousness.

Less than two hours after the shooting, aboard the presidential plane at Dallas airport, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States.

A.

Lee Harvey Oswald: The Assassin

The bullets that killed Kennedy were fired from a sixth-storey window of the nearby warehouse of the Texas School Book Depository. That afternoon, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US marine who was employed in the warehouse, was arrested in a Dallas cinema and charged with the murder. Two days later, as the suspect was being transferred, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby sprang out from a group of reporters and, as millions watched on television, fired a revolver into Oswald’s left side. Oswald died in the same hospital to which the president had been taken.

B.

National Mourning for President Kennedy

On November 24 Kennedy’s body was carried on a horsedrawn carriage from the White House to the Rotunda of the Capitol. Hundreds of thousands of people filed past the coffin of the assassinated president. A state funeral was held the next day. Representatives of 92 nations attended. As many as 1 million people were believed to have lined the streets of Washington as the funeral procession made its way to Arlington National Cemetery. The grave is marked by an eternal flame.

C.

The Warren Commission

Five days after the funeral, President Johnson appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren as chairman of a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s death. The findings of the commission were announced nearly a year later on September 27, 1964. The investigators found no evidence of conspiracy in the assassination. Their report concluded that “the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald”. Although numerous conspiracy theories have been expounded, concerning variously the Mafia, Cuban exiles, the FBI, or the CIA, it is now widely accepted by historians and other experts that the Commission’s conclusions were correct.

VI.

Legacy of President Kennedy

Kennedy's wit and charm earned him considerable popularity at home and abroad. The glamour, romance, and charisma of the “Camelot” presidency, especially when compared with later presidencies overshadowed by the Vietnam War and, later, the Watergate scandal, seemed to represent a time of hope and idealism. However, the myth of Camelot, burnished by his supporters and family, successfully hid Kennedy’s ill-health and sexual peccadilloes among other flaws in his personality. Although his achievements domestically were limited by a recalcitrant Congress and a politically realistic cautiousness, many of his policies were carried through by his successor, such as in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His achievements in foreign affairs, after early failures, were long lasting and effectively reduced the temperature of the Cold War. In reality, many of his greatest achievements—from the desegregation of Southern universities, to the establishment of the programme to send a man to the Moon—were as a result of executive action that bypassed constitutional checks and balances. His willing establishment of this assertive executive (the triumph of The Imperial Presidency as Arthur M. Schlesinger described it in his 1973 book) would have a lasting effect upon the powers, and expectations, of future American presidents.