'John Fitzgerald Kennedy ' (
May 29,
1917 –
November 22,
1963), also referred to as 'John F. Kennedy', 'Kennedy', 'John Kennedy', 'Jack Kennedy', or 'JFK', was the thirty-fifth
President of the United States. In 1960 he became the youngest person ever to be elected as President of the United States, and the second youngest, after
Theodore Roosevelt, to serve. Kennedy served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. The
Bay of Pigs Invasion, the
Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the
Berlin Wall, the
Space Race, the
American Civil Rights Movement and early events of the
Vietnam War took place during his presidency.
Kennedy's leadership as commander of
USS ''PT-109'' during
Second World War in the
South Pacific, in which he swam with an injured shipmate to a nearby island after his ship had been split in two by a Japanese gunboat attack, turned his sights toward public service. Kennedy represented the state of
Massachusetts as a member of the
U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 and in the
U.S. Senate from 1953 until his inauguration in 1961. Kennedy, 43, the
Democratic candidate in the
1960 presidential election, defeated Republican candidate
Richard Nixon, 47, in one of the closest presidential elections in American history. In 1901, Vice President
Theodore Roosevelt, age 42, was elevated to the post following the assassination of President
William McKinley. Kennedy is the most recent to be elected while serving in the Senate. He is, to date, the only practicing
Roman Catholic to be elected U.S president. He was also the first
20th century-born American president and the fourth to be assassinated in the history of the
U.S.
Kennedy was assassinated on
November 22,
1963 in
Dallas, Texas, United States.
Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime, but Oswald was murdered two days later by
Jack Ruby before Oswald could be put on trial. The
Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone in killing the president. However, the
House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that there may have been a
conspiracy. The entire subject remains
controversial, with multiple theories about the
assassination still being debated. The assassination itself proved to be a defining moment in
U.S. history due to its traumatic impact on the
psyche of the nation and the ensuing political fallout, which continues to influence the temperament of American society. Many regarded President Kennedy as an icon of American hopes and aspirations; he continues to rate highly in
public opinion rankings of former U.S. presidents.
[1]
Early life and education
Kennedy was born at 83 Beals Street in
Brookline, Massachusetts on Tuesday,
May 29,
1917, at 3:00pm, the second son of
Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and
Rose Fitzgerald; Rose, in turn, was the eldest child of
John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, a prominent
Boston political figure who was the city's mayor and a three-term member of
Congress.
Kennedy lived in Brookline for his first ten years. He attended Brookline's public
Edward Devotion School from kindergarten through the beginning of 3rd grade, then
Noble and Greenough Lower School and its successor, the
Dexter School, a private school for boys, through 4th grade.
In September 1927, Kennedy moved with his family to a rented 20-room mansion in
Riverdale, Bronx,
New York City, then two years later moved five miles (8 km) northeast to a 21-room mansion on a six-acre estate in
Bronxville, New York, purchased in May 1929. He was a member of Scout Troop 2 at Bronxville from 1929 to 1931 and was to be the first Scout to become President.
[2] Kennedy spent summers with his family at their home in
Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, also purchased in 1929, and Christmas and Easter holidays with his family at their winter home in
Palm Beach, Florida, purchased in 1933. He attended
Riverdale Country School, a private school for boys in Riverdale, for 5th through 7th grade.
For 8th grade in September 1930, Kennedy was sent fifty miles away to
Canterbury School, a lay Catholic boarding school for boys in
New Milford, Connecticut. In late April 1931, he had
appendicitis requiring an
appendectomy, after which he withdrew from Canterbury and recuperated at home. In September 1931, Kennedy was sent over sixty miles away to
The Choate School, an elite private
university preparatory boarding school for boys in
Wallingford, Connecticut for 9th through 12th grades, following his older brother,
Joe, who was two years ahead of him. In January 1934 during his junior year at Choate, he became ill, lost a lot of weight, was hospitalized at
Yale-New Haven Hospital until Easter, and spent most of June 1934 hospitalized at the
Mayo Clinic in
Rochester, Minnesota for evaluation of
colitis.
He graduated from Choate in June 1935. Kennedy's superlative in his yearbook was "Most likely to become President". In September 1935, he sailed on the
SS ''Normandie'' on his first trip abroad with his parents and his sister
Kathleen to
London with the intent of studying for a year with Professor
Harold Laski at the
London School of Economics (LSE) as his older brother Joe had done, but after a brief hospitalization with
jaundice after less than a week at LSE, he sailed back to America only three weeks after he had arrived. In October 1935, Kennedy enrolled late and spent six weeks at
Princeton University, but was then hospitalized for two months observation for possible
leukemia at
Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston in January and February 1936, recuperated at the Kennedy winter home in Palm Beach in March and April, spent May and June working as a ranch hand on a 40,000 acre (160 km²)
cattle ranch outside
Benson, Arizona, then July and August racing sailboats at the Kennedy summer home in Hyannis Port.
In September 1936 he enrolled as a freshman at
Harvard College, residing in
Winthrop House during his sophomore through senior years, again following two years behind his older brother Joe. In early July 1937, Kennedy took his
convertible, sailed on the
SS ''Washington'' to France, and spent ten weeks driving with a friend through France, Italy, Germany, Holland and England. In late June 1938, Kennedy sailed with his father and his brother Joe on the SS ''Normandie'' to spend July working with his father, recently appointed U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's by President Roosevelt, at the
American embassy in London, and August with his family at a villa near
Cannes. From February through September 1939, Kennedy toured Europe, the
Soviet Union, the
Balkans and the
Middle East to gather background information for his Harvard senior honors thesis. He spent the last ten days of August in
Czechoslovakia and
Germany before returning to London on
September 1,
1939, the day
Germany invaded Poland. On
September 3,
1939, Kennedy, along with his brother Joe, his sister Kathleen, and his parents were in the
Strangers Gallery of the
House of Commons to hear speeches in support of the United Kingdom's declaration of war on Germany. Kennedy was sent as his father's representative to help with arrangements for American survivors of the
SS ''Athenia'', before flying back to the U.S. on
Pan Am's ''
Dixie Clipper'' from
Foynes, Ireland to
Port Washington, New York on his first transatlantic flight at the end of September.
In 1940, Kennedy completed his thesis, "Appeasement in Munich," about British participation in the
Munich Agreement. He initially intended his thesis to be private, but his father encouraged him to publish it as a book. He graduated ''
cum laude'' from Harvard with a degree in
international affairs in June 1940, and his thesis was published in July 1940 as a book entitled ''
Why England Slept'',
[3] and became a
bestseller.
[4]
From September to December 1940, Kennedy was enrolled and audited classes at the
Stanford Graduate School of Business. In early 1941, he helped his father complete the writing of a memoir of his three years as ambassador. In May and June 1941, Kennedy traveled throughout South America.
Military service
Main articles: Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109
In the spring of 1941, Kennedy volunteered for the
U.S. Army, but was rejected, mainly because of his troublesome back. Nevertheless, in September of that year, the
U.S. Navy accepted him, due to the influence of the director of the
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), a former naval
attaché to the
Ambassador, his father. As an
ensign, Kennedy served in the office which supplied bulletins and briefing information for the
Secretary of the Navy. It was during this assignment that the
attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. He attended the Naval Reserve Officers Training School and Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Training Center before being assigned for duty in
Panama and eventually the
Pacific theater. He participated in various commands in the Pacific theater and earned the rank of
lieutenant, commanding a
patrol torpedo (PT) boat.
[5]
Lt. Kennedy on his navy patrol boat, the ''PT-109''.
On
August 2,
1943, Kennedy's boat, the ''PT-109'', was taking part in a nighttime patrol near
New Georgia in the
Solomon Islands. It was rammed by the
Japanese destroyer ''Amagiri''.
[6][7] Kennedy was thrown across the deck, injuring his already-troubled back. Nonetheless, he swam, towing a wounded man, to an island and later to a second island where his crew was subsequently rescued. For these actions, Kennedy received the
Navy and Marine Corps Medal under the following citation:
Kennedy's other decorations in
World War II included the
Purple Heart,
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal and the
World War II Victory Medal. He was honorably discharged in early 1945, just a few months before
Japan surrendered. The incident was popularized when he became president and would be the subject of several magazine articles, books, comic books, TV specials and a feature length movie, making the ''PT-109'' one of the most famous U.S. Navy ships of the war. Scale models and even
G.I. Joe figures based on the incident were still being produced in the 2000s. The coconut which was used to scrawl a rescue message given to
Solomon Islander scouts who found him was kept on his presidential desk and is still at the
John F. Kennedy Library.
During his presidency, Kennedy privately admitted to friends that he didn't feel that he deserved the medals he had received, because the ''PT-109'' incident had been the result of a botched military operation that had cost the lives of two members of his crew. When asked by a reporter how he became a war hero, Kennedy joked: "It was involuntary. They sank my boat."
In May 2002, a
National Geographic expedition found what is believed to be the wreckage of the ''PT-109'' in the Solomon Islands. One of the Kennedy family also returned to the islands to give a gift to the scouts who are still alive today, but were turned away when they traveled to the
inauguration because of communication problems. The
Australian
coastwatcher who dispatched the natives was also invited to the
White House.
[8]
Early political career
After World War II, Kennedy considered becoming a journalist before deciding to run for political office. Prior to the war, he hadn't really considered becoming a politician because the family had already pinned its political hopes on his older brother,
Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. Joseph, however, was killed in World War II, making John tops in seniority. When in 1946 U.S. Representative
James Michael Curley vacated his seat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district to become mayor of Boston, Kennedy ran for the seat, beating his Republican opponent by a large margin. He was a congressman for six years but had a mixed voting record, often diverging from President
Harry S. Truman and the rest of the Democratic Party. In 1952, he defeated incumbent Republican
Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. for the U.S. Senate.
Kennedy married
Jacqueline Lee Bouvier on
September 12,
1953. He underwent several spinal operations over the following two years, nearly dying (in all he received the Catholic Church's
"last rites" four times during his life), and was often absent from the Senate. During his convalescence, he wrote ''
Profiles in Courage'', a book describing eight instances in which U.S. Senators risked their careers by standing by their personal beliefs. The book was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957.
[9]
In 1956, presidential nominee
Adlai Stevenson left the choice of a Vice Presidential nominee to the Democratic convention, and Kennedy finished second in that balloting to Senator
Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Despite this defeat, Kennedy received national exposure from that episode that would prove valuable in subsequent years. His father, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., pointed out that it was just as well that John did not get that nomination, as some people sought to blame anything they could on Catholics, even though it was privately known that any Democrat would have trouble running against Eisenhower in 1956.
John F. Kennedy voted for final passage of the
Civil Rights Act of 1957 after having earlier voted for the "Jury Trial Amendment", which effectively rendered the Act toothless because convictions for violations could not be obtained. Staunch
segregationists such as senators
James Eastland and
John McClellan and
Mississippi Governor
James Coleman were early supporters of Kennedy's presidential campaign.
[10] In 1958, Kennedy was re-elected to a second term in the United States Senate, defeating his Republican opponent, Boston lawyer
Vincent J. Celeste, by a wide margin.
Years later it was revealed that in September 1947 when he was 30 years old and during his first term as a congressman, Kennedy had been diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The
London Clinic with
Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. The nature of this and other medical problems were kept secret from the press and public throughout Kennedy's lifetime.
[11]
Sen.
Joseph McCarthy was a friend of the Kennedy family: Joe Kennedy was a leading McCarthy supporter;
Robert F. Kennedy worked for McCarthy's subcommittee, and McCarthy dated
Patricia Kennedy. In 1954, when the Senate was poised to condemn McCarthy, John Kennedy drafted a speech calling for McCarthy censure but never delivered it. When on
December 2,
1954, the Senate rendered its highly publicized decision to censure McCarthy, Senator Kennedy was in the hospital. Though absent, Kennedy could have "paired" his vote against that of another senator, but chose not to; neither did he ever indicate then nor later how he would have voted. The episode seriously damaged Kennedy's support in the liberal community, especially with
Eleanor Roosevelt, as late as the 1960 election.
[12]
1960 presidential election
Main articles: United States presidential election, 1960
On
January 2,
1960, Kennedy declared his intent to run for President of the United States. In the Democratic
primary election, he faced challenges from Senator
Hubert Humphrey of
Minnesota and Senator
Wayne Morse of
Oregon. Kennedy defeated Humphrey in
Wisconsin and
West Virginia and Morse in
Maryland and Oregon, although Morse's candidacy is often forgotten by historians. He also defeated token opposition (often write-in candidates) in
New Hampshire,
Indiana and
Nebraska. In West Virginia, Kennedy visited a
coal mine and talked to mine workers to win their support; most people in that
conservative, mostly
Protestant state were deeply suspicious of Kennedy's Catholicism. His victory in West Virginia cemented his credentials as a candidate with broad popular appeal.
With Humphrey and Morse out of the race, Kennedy's main opponent at the convention in Los Angeles was Senator
Lyndon B. Johnson of
Texas.
Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956, was not officially running but had broad grassroots support inside and outside the convention hall. Senator
Stuart Symington of Missouri was also a candidate, as were several
favorite sons. On
July 13,
1960, the Democratic convention nominated Kennedy as its candidate for President. Kennedy asked Johnson to be his Vice Presidential candidate, despite opposition from many liberal delegates and Kennedy's own staff, including Robert Kennedy. He needed Johnson's strength in the
South to win what was considered likely to be the closest election since
1916. Major issues included how to get the economy moving again, Kennedy's Catholicism,
Cuba, and whether the
Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the U.S. To address fears that his Catholicism would impact his decision-making, he famously told the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on
September 12,
1960, "I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me."
[13] Kennedy also brought up the point of whether one-quarter of Americans were relegated to second-class citizenship just because they were Catholic.
In September and October, Kennedy debated Republican candidate and Vice President Richard Nixon in the first televised
U.S. presidential debates in U.S. history. During these programs, Nixon, nursing an injured leg and sporting "five o'clock shadow", looked tense and uncomfortable, while Kennedy appeared relaxed, leading the huge television audience to deem Kennedy the winner. Radio listeners, however, either thought Nixon had won or that the debates were a draw.
[14] Nixon did not wear make-up during the initial debate, unlike Kennedy. The debates are now considered a milestone in American political history--the point at which the medium of television began to play a dominant role in national politics.
[15] After the first debate Kennedy's campaign gained momentum and he pulled slightly ahead of Nixon in most polls. On Tuesday, November 8, Kennedy defeated Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the twentieth century. In the national popular vote Kennedy led Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent (49.7% to 49.5%), while in the
Electoral College he won 303 votes to Nixon's 219 (269 were needed to win). Another 14 electors from
Mississippi and
Alabama refused to support Kennedy because of his support for the
civil rights movement; they voted for Senator
Harry F. Byrd, Sr. of Virginia.
Presidency (1961–1963)
John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th
President at noon on
January 20,
1961. In his
inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens, famously saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." He also asked the nations of the world to join together to fight what he called the "common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself."
[16]
In closing, he expanded on his desire for greater
internationalism:
"Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you."
Foreign policy
Cuba and the Bay of Pigs Invasion
Main articles: Bay of Pigs Invasion
Prior to Kennedy's election to the presidency, the Eisenhower Administration created a plan to overthrow the
Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. Central to such a plan, which was structured and detailed by the
CIA with minimal input from the
State Department, was the arming of a counter-revolutionary insurgency composed of anti-Castro Cubans.
[17] U.S.-trained Cuban insurgents were to invade Cuba and instigate an uprising among the Cuban people in hopes of removing Castro from power. On
April 17,
1961, Kennedy ordered the previously planned invasion of Cuba to proceed. With support from the CIA, in what is known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1,500 U.S.-trained Cuban exiles, called "Brigade 2506," returned to the island in the hope of deposing Castro. However, Kennedy ordered the invasion to take place without U.S. air support. By
April 19,
1961, the Cuban government had captured or killed the invading exiles, and Kennedy was forced to negotiate for the release of the 1,189 survivors. The failure of the plan originated in a lack of dialog among the military leadership, a result of which was the complete lack of naval support in the face of organized artillery troops on the island who easily incapacitated the exile force as it landed on the beach.
[17] After 20 months, Cuba released the captured exiles in exchange for $53 million worth of food and medicine. The incident was a major embarrassment for Kennedy, but he took full personal responsibility for the debacle. Furthermore, the incident made Castro wary of the U.S. and led him to believe that another invasion would occur.
[19][20]
Cuban Missile Crisis
Main articles: Cuban Missile Crisis
Kennedy's Cabinet meets during the Cuban Missile Crisis on
October 29,
1962.
The Cuban Missile Crisis began on
October 14,
1962, when American
U-2 spy planes took photographs of a Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile site under construction in Cuba. The photos were shown to Kennedy on
October 16,
1962. America would soon be posed with a serious nuclear threat. Kennedy faced a
dilemma: if the U.S. attacked the sites, it might lead to
nuclear war with the
U.S.S.R., but if the U.S. did nothing, it would endure the threat of nuclear weapons being launched from close distance. Because the weapons were in such close proximity, the U.S. might have been unable to retaliate if they were launched pre-emptively. Another consideration was that the U.S. would appear to the world as weak in its own
hemisphere.
Many military officials and cabinet members pressed for an air assault on the missile sites, but Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine in which the U.S. Navy inspected all ships arriving in Cuba. He began negotiations with the Soviets and ordered the Soviets to remove all defensive material that was being built on Cuba. Without doing so, the Soviet and Cuban peoples would face naval quarantine. A week later, he and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached an agreement. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles subject to U.N. inspections if the U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and quietly remove US missiles stationed in Turkey. Following this crisis, which brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since, Kennedy was more cautious in confronting the Soviet Union.
Latin America and Communism
Arguing that "those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable", Kennedy sought to contain
communism in
Latin America by establishing the
Alliance for Progress, which sent
foreign aid to troubled countries in the region and sought greater
human rights standards in the region. He worked closely with
Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz MarÃn for the development of the Alliance of Progress, as well as developments in the autonomy of the Commonwealth of
Puerto Rico.
Peace Corps
As one of his first presidential acts, Kennedy created the
Peace Corps. Through this program, Americans volunteered to help underdeveloped nations in areas such as
education,
farming,
health care and
construction.
Vietnam
In South East Asia, Kennedy followed Eisenhower's lead by using limited military action to fight the Communist forces ostensibly led by
Ho Chi Minh. Proclaiming a fight against the spread of Communism, Kennedy enacted policies providing political, economic, and military support for the unstable French-installed
South Vietnamese government, which included sending 16,000 military advisors and U.S. Special Forces to the area. Kennedy also agreed to the use of
free-fire zones,
napalm,
defoliants and
jet planes. U.S. involvement in the area continually escalated until regular U.S. forces were directly fighting the
Vietnam War in the next administration. The Kennedy Administration increased military support, but the South Vietnamese military was unable to make headway against the pro-independence
Viet-Minh and
Viet Cong forces. By July 1963, Kennedy faced a crisis in Vietnam. The Administration's response was to assist in the
coup d'état of the Catholic President of South Vietnam,
Ngo Dinh Diem.
[21] In 1963, South Vietnamese generals overthrew the Diem government, arresting Diem and later killing him (though the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear).
[22] Kennedy sanctioned Diem's overthrow. One reason for the support was a fear that Diem might negotiate a neutralist coalition government which included Communists, as had occurred in
Laos in 1962.
Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, remarked "This kind of neutralism...is tantamount to surrender."
It remains a point of controversy among historians whether or not Vietnam would have escalated to the point it did had Kennedy served out his full term and possibly been re-elected in 1964.
[23] Fueling this speculation are statements made by Kennedy's and Johnson's Secretary of Defense
Robert MacNamara that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. In the film "The Fog of War", not only does McNamara say this, but a tape recording of Lyndon Johnson confirms that Kennedy was planning to withdraw from Vietnam, a position Johnson states he disapproved of.
[24] Additional evidence is Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 on
October 11,
1963 that gave the order for withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963. Nevertheless, given the stated reason for the overthrow of the Diem government, such action would have been a dramatic policy reversal, but Kennedy was generally moving in a less hawkish direction in the Cold War since his acclaimed speech about World Peace at American University the previous
June 10,
1963.
After Kennedy's assassination, new President Lyndon B. Johnson immediately reversed Kennedy's order to withdraw 1,000 military personnel by the end of 1963 with his own NSAM #273 on
November 26,
1963.
West Berlin speech
Under simultaneous and opposing pressures from the Allies and the Soviets, Germany was divided. The
Berlin Wall separated West and East Berlin, the latter being under the control of the Soviets. On
June 26,
1963, Kennedy visited
West Berlin and gave a public speech criticizing communism. Kennedy used the construction of the
Berlin Wall as an example of the failures of communism: "
Freedom has many difficulties and
democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in." The speech is known for its famous phrase ''"
Ich bin ein Berliner"''. Nearly five-sixths of the population was on the street when Kennedy said the famous phrase. He remarked to aides afterwards: "We'll never have another day like this one."
[25]
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Troubled by the long-term dangers of
radioactive contamination and
nuclear weapons proliferation, Kennedy pushed for the adoption of a Limited or
Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic testing on the ground, in the atmosphere, or underwater, but did not prohibit testing underground. The United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union were the initial signatories to the treaty. Kennedy signed the treaty into law in August 1963.
Ireland
President Kennedy in motorcade in Ireland on June 27, 1963.
On the occasion of his visit to
Ireland in 1963, President Kennedy joined with Irish President
Éamon de Valera to form The American Irish Foundation. The mission of this organization was to foster connections between Americans of Irish descent and the country of their ancestry. Kennedy furthered these connections of cultural solidarity by accepting a grant of
armorial bearings from the
Chief Herald of Ireland.
He also visited the original cottage where previous Kennedys had lived before emigrating to America, and said: "This is where it all began ..."
On
December 22,
2006, the Irish Justice Department released declassified police documents that indicated that Kennedy was the subject of three death threats during this visit. It was interpreted as a hoax.
[1]
Iraq
In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed a coup against the government of Iraq headed by General
Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new
Baath Party government in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In a Baathist bloodbath, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite--killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.
[26] [27] [28] According to an
op-ed in the New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same
Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and U.K. oil and other interests, including Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.
[29]
Domestic policy
Kennedy called his domestic program the "
New Frontier". It ambitiously promised federal funding for
education,
medical care for the elderly, and government intervention to halt the recession. Kennedy also promised an end to
racial discrimination. In 1963, he proposed a
tax reform which included income
tax cuts, but this was not passed by Congress until 1964, after his death. Few of Kennedy's major programs passed Congress during his lifetime, although, under his successor Johnson, Congress did vote them through in 1964–65.
As President, Kennedy oversaw the last pre-Furman federal execution, and last, to date, military execution. In both cases he refused to ask for commutation of the death sentences (
Iowa governor Harold Hughes personally contacted Kennedy to request clemency for
Victor Feguer, who was sentenced to death under federal law in Iowa, and executed on
March 15,
1963).
Civil rights
The turbulent end of state-sanctioned racial discrimination was one of the most pressing domestic issues of Kennedy's era. The
United States Supreme Court had ruled in 1954 that
racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. However, many schools, especially in southern states, did not obey the Supreme Court's judgment. Segregation on buses, in restaurants, movie theaters, bathrooms, and other public places remained. Kennedy supported
racial integration and civil rights, and during the 1960 campaign he telephoned
Coretta Scott King, wife of the jailed Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr., which perhaps drew some additional black support to his candidacy. John and Robert Kennedy's intervention secured the early release of King from jail.
[30]
In 1962,
James Meredith tried to enroll at the
University of Mississippi, but he was prevented from doing so by white students. Kennedy responded by sending some 400
federal marshals and 3,000 troops to ensure that Meredith could enroll in his first class. Kennedy also assigned federal marshals to protect
Freedom Riders.
As President, Kennedy initially believed the grassroots movement for civil rights would only anger many Southern whites and make it even more difficult to pass civil rights laws through Congress, which was dominated by Southern Democrats, and he distanced himself from it. As a result, many civil rights leaders viewed Kennedy as unsupportive of their efforts.
On
June 11,
1963, President Kennedy intervened when
Alabama Governor
George Wallace blocked the doorway to the
University of Alabama to stop two
African American students,
Vivian Malone and
James Hood, from enrolling. George Wallace moved aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General
Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama
National Guard. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television and radio.
[31] Kennedy proposed what would become the
Civil Rights Act of 1964.
[32][33]
Immigration
John F. Kennedy initially proposed an overhaul of American immigration policy that later was to become The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, sponsored by Kennedy's brother Senator
Edward Kennedy. It dramatically shifted the source of immigration from Northern and Western European countries towards immigration from Latin America and Asia and shifted the emphasis of selection of immigrants towards facilitating family reunification.
[34]
There is debate about how closely the legislation that resulted actually reflected John F. Kennedy's wishes. It is clear that he wanted to dismantle the selection of immigrants based on country of origin and saw this as an extension of his civil rights policies.
[35]
Space program
Kennedy was eager for the United States to lead the way in the
space race.
Sergei Khrushchev says Kennedy approached his father, Nikita, twice about a "joint venture" in space exploration—in June 1961 and autumn 1963. On the first occasion, Russia was far ahead of America in terms of space technology. Kennedy first made the goal for landing a man on the
Moon in speaking to a Joint Session of Congress on
May 25,
1961, saying
"First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him back safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."[36]
Kennedy later made a speech at
Rice University in September 12, 1962, in which he said
"No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space."
and
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."[37]
On the second approach to Khrushchev, the Russian was persuaded that cost-sharing was beneficial and American space technology was forging ahead. The U.S. had launched a
geostationary satellite and Kennedy had asked Congress to approve more than $25 billion for the
Apollo Project.
Khrushchev agreed to a joint venture in Autumn 1963, but Kennedy died before the agreement could be formalized. On
July 20,
1969, almost six years after JFK's death, Project Apollo's goal was finally realized when men landed on the Moon.
Cabinet
Supreme Court appointments
Kennedy appointed the following Justices to the
Supreme Court of the United States:
★ '
Byron Raymond White' — 1962
★ '
Arthur Joseph Goldberg' — 1962
Image, social life and family
John F. Kennedy with wife Jacqueline and children, 1962.
Kennedy and his wife "Jackie" were very young in comparison to earlier presidents and first ladies, and were both extraordinarily popular in ways more common to
pop singers and
movie stars than politicians, influencing fashion trends and becoming the subjects of numerous photo spreads in popular magazines. Jacqueline bought new
art and
furniture, and eventually restored all the rooms in the White House.
Outside the White House lawn the Kennedys established a preschool, swimming pool and tree house. Jacqueline allowed very few photographs of the children to be taken of them but when she was gone, the President would allow the White House photographer Cecil Stoughton to take pictures of the children. The resulting photos are probably the most famous of the children, and especially of John Jr., after he was photographed playing underneath the President’s desk.
The President was closely tied to popular culture. Things such as "Twisting at the White House" and "
Camelot" (the popular
Broadway play) were part of the JFK culture.
Vaughn Meader's "First Family" comedy album – an album parodying the President, First Lady, their family and administration – sold about 4 million copies. On
May 19,
1962,
Marilyn Monroe sang for the president at a large birthday party in
Madison Square Garden.
Behind the glamorous facade, the Kennedys also suffered many personal tragedies. Jacqueline suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and gave birth to a stillborn daughter,
Arabella Kennedy, in 1956. The death of their newborn son,
Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, in August 1963, was a great loss. Since Kennedy's death, allegations have been made that Kennedy carried on numerous extramarital dalliances during his presidency with women such as
Hollywood actress
Marilyn Monroe and
socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer.
[38]
The
charisma of Kennedy and his family led to the figurative designation of "Camelot" for his administration, credited by his widow to his affection for the contemporary Broadway
musical of the same name. She gave an interview to
Theodore White, where she mentioned the musical ''Camelot'',
[39] and White later said that he had "found the headline".
He holds a record acknowledged by the ''
Guinness Book of World Records'' as the world's fastest speaker in public life, with a speed of 327 words in one minute in a speech given in December 1961.
[40]
In October 1951, during his third term as
Massachusetts 11th district congressman, the then 34-year-old Kennedy embarked on a seven-week Asian trip to
Israel,
India,
Vietnam and
Japan with his then 25-year-old brother
Robert (who had just graduated from
law school four months earlier) and his then 27-year-old sister
Patricia. Because of their eight-year separation in age, the two brothers had previously seen little of each other. This trip was the first extended time they had spent together and resulted in their becoming best friends in addition to being brothers. Robert was
campaign manager for Kennedy's successful 1952 Senate campaign and successful 1960 Presidential campaign. The two brothers worked closely together from 1957 to 1959 on the Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor and Management Field (
Senate Rackets Committee) when Robert was its chief counsel. During Kennedy's presidency, Robert served in his
Cabinet as
Attorney General and was his closest advisor.
Kennedy came third (behind Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Mother Teresa) in a
Gallup list of the most admired people of the twentieth century.
[41][42][43]
Assassination
Main articles: John F. Kennedy assassination
JFK, Jackie, and Connally in the Presidential limousine before the assassination
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas at 12:30pm
Central Standard Time on
November 22,
1963, while on a political trip through Texas. He was pronounced dead at 1:00pm.
Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested, in a theatre about 80 minutes after the assassination and was charged by Dallas police for the murder of Dallas policeman
J.D. Tippit, before eventually being charged for the murder of Kennedy. Oswald denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a
patsy, and was killed by
Jack Ruby before he could be
indicted or
tried.
On
November 29, 1963, President Johnson created the
Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice
Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination. It concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin, but this remains widely disputed by some scholars and eye witnesses of the assassination. Approximately 80% of the American people have consistently not believed the Commission's findings since the mid-1960s in many
Gallup Polls taken on the issue of Oswald's guilt or innocence, partly due to the findings in the
Zapruder film that many believe shows the fatal shot being fired from the front, allege many witnesses who ran towards the infamous grassy knoll area.
Burial
Kennedy's grave at Arlington National Cemetery.
On
March 14,
1967, Kennedy's body was moved to a permanent burial place and memorial at
Arlington National Cemetery. Kennedy is buried with his wife and their deceased minor children, and his brother, the late Senator
Robert Kennedy is also buried nearby. His grave is lit with an "
Eternal Flame". In the film ''
The Fog of War'', then Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara claims that he picked the location in the cemetery — a location which Jackie agreed was suitable. Kennedy and
William Howard Taft are the only two U.S. Presidents buried at Arlington.
Legacy
Kennedy's casket departs the White House.
became the primary source by which people were kept informed of events surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination. Newspapers were kept as souvenirs rather than sources of updated information. All three major U.S. television networks suspended their regular schedules and switched to all-news coverage from 22 November through 25 November 1963.
Kennedy's state funeral procession and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald were all broadcast live in America and in other places around the world. The
state funeral was the first of three in a span of 12 months: The other two were for
General Douglas MacArthur and
Herbert Hoover.
The assassination had an effect on many people, not only in the U.S. but also among the world population. Many vividly remember where they were when first learning of the news that Kennedy was assassinated, like with the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on
December 7,
1941 before it and the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001 after it. U.N. Ambassador
Adlai Stevenson said of the assassination, "all of us... will bear the grief of his death until the day of ours."
Ultimately, the death of President Kennedy and the ensuing confusion surrounding the facts of his assassination are of political and historical importance insofar as they marked a decline in the faith of the American people in the political establishment — a point made by commentators from
Gore Vidal to
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
Coupled with the murder of his own brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., and that of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the five tumultuous years from 1963 to 1968 signaled a growing disillusionment within the well of hope for political and social change which so defined the lives of those who lived through the 1960s. Kennedy's continuation of previous presidents
Truman's and
Eisenhower's policy of giving economic and military aid to the
Vietnam War preceded President Johnson's escalation of a conflict which contributed to a decade of national difficulties and disappointment on the political landscape. The
Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon's administration is widely recognized as being the final stroke in this process of diminishing trust in the government, which didn't deserve it as much as was commonly ascribed to it previously by the average person--following many revelations of wrongdoing, chicanery, and other illegal activities by the
CIA and other federal intelligence-gathering agencies in the U.S., especially with its
foreign policy, in the 1970s by the
Church Committee.
Official Presidential portrait
Many of Kennedy's speeches (especially his inaugural address) are considered iconic; and despite his relatively short term in office and lack of major legislative changes during his term, Americans regularly vote him as one of the best presidents, in the same league as
Abraham Lincoln,
George Washington and
Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some excerpts of Kennedy's inaugural address are engraved on a plaque at his grave at Arlington.
He was posthumously awarded the
Pacem in Terris Award. It was named after a
1963 encyclical letter by
Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of goodwill to secure peace among all nations.
Pacem in Terris is
Latin for 'Peace on Earth.'
President Kennedy is the only president to have predeceased both his mother and father. He is also the only president to have predeceased his grandparent. His grandmother,
Mary Josephine Hannon Fitzgerald, died in
1964, just 8.5 months after his assassination.
Memorials
★ New York International Airport (formerly known as Idlewild Airport) was renamed
John F. Kennedy International Airport on
December 24,
1963. Today, the airport is widely referred to as "JFK."
★ The
John F. Kennedy Expressway, a major expressway in
Chicago, was renamed for Kennedy by unanimous vote of Chicago City Council a few days after the president's assassination.
★
Kennedy Blvd (
State Road 60) in
Tampa, Florida was renamed for Kennedy in 1964 by unanimous vote of the Tampa City Council. Kennedy visited Tampa on
November 18,
1963 only four days before his assassination. His motorcade drove five miles (8 km) down Grand Central Avenue to the heart of the business district.
★ On November 26, 1963, the
Interstate 65 bridge, spanning the
Ohio River between
Louisville, Kentucky and
Jeffersonville, Indiana, was named the
John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge.
★ The North Padre Island Causeway, connecting
Padre Island to the
Texas mainland, was renamed the John F. Kennedy Causeway,
★
NASA's Launch Operations Center at
Cape Canaveral was renamed the
John F. Kennedy Space Center. Cape Canaveral itself was likewise renamed Cape Kennedy, but a referendum passed by Florida voters in
1973 reverted it to its original name.
★ A Kennedy memorial was established in
Runnymede,
England, where the
Magna Carta was signed.
★ A stretch of
Interstate 95 in
Maryland, running from the
Baltimore Beltway to the State Line, where it becomes the
Delaware Turnpike, had been dedicated by President Kennedy on
November 14,
1963, eight days before his assassination. It was soon renamed the
John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway.
★ The U.S. Navy
aircraft carrier ''
USS John F. Kennedy'' was named on
April 30,
1964, and served until
March 23,
2007.
Kennedy has appeared on the U.S. half-dollar coin since 1964
★ The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library opened in 1979 as Kennedy's official
presidential library.
★
John F. Kennedy University opened in
Pleasant Hill, California, in 1964 as a school for adult education.
★ The
John F. Kennedy National Historic Site preserves his home in Brookline.
★ At Harvard University:
★ The
Harvard Institute of Politics serves as a living memorial which promotes public service in his name.
★ The School of Government is known as the
John F. Kennedy School of Government.
★ The
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts opened in 1971 in
Washington, D.C. as a living memorial to him.
★ Hundreds of schools across the U.S. were named in Kennedy's honor. The first school in the
United States named after had been the
Kennedy Middle School, in
Cupertino, California, while he was alive. In the week after Kennedy's death, the first schools renamed for him were the Kennedy Elementary School in
Butte, Montana and the John F. Kennedy Middle School on Long Island in
Bethpage, New York.
[44]
★ Philadelphia Municipal Stadium was renamed
John F. Kennedy Stadium in 1964.
★ Kennedy was posthumously awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963.
★ Since
1964, Kennedy's portrait has appeared on the
United States half dollar coin, replacing
Benjamin Franklin.
★
Yad Kennedy, a memorial to the U.S. president, was established on a crest in the
Jerusalem Forest, on the southwest outskirts of
Jerusalem near
Aminadav.
★ One of the
Solomon Islands is named
Kennedy Island.
★ The city of
Evansville, Indiana observed John F. Kennedy Day on
November 22,
2003 to mark the 40th anniversary of his death.
★ One of the five residential towers at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst is named Kennedy Tower in his honor.
★ In
February 2007, Kennedy's name, along with his wife's, was included on a list taken aboard the Japanese ''
Kaguya'' spacecraft to the
Moon, as part of
The Planetary Society's Messages From Earth project.
★ The U.S. Army's
John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School is named after the late president because of his support for the Army Rangers and
Green Berets.
★ The park in Eyre Square, Galway City, Ireland is called John F. Kennedy Park, after his visit in 1963.
★ One suggestion that was rejected was that the State of
West Virginia be renamed in Kennedy's honor.
[45]. Emile J. Hodel, editor of the ''Post-Herald'' of
Beckley, West Virginia, wrote an editorial asking, "Why not change the name of West Virginia to Kennedy? Or perhaps Kennediana? What greater respect could the man receive than the renaming of the state he said he held most dear, after his home state of Massachusetts, in his honor?"
[46]
Criticism
The Civil Rights Act which he sent to Congress in June 1963 was, in large part, conceived by his brother, Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy, and it was signed into law by his successor to the Presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1964.
Kennedy dated actress
Gene Tierney, who was separated from her then husband fashion designer
Oleg Cassini in 1946. In her book ''Self-portrait'' Ms. Tierney recalls how over an informal brunch ''Jack'' stated that he could never marry her because of her pending divorce, if he was to be the first elected Catholic President (moreover, she was also a Protestant). Subsequently, Tierney folded her napkin and left the cafe. Mr. Cassini was hired as the exclusive designer for the First Lady after the election.
Seymour Hersh's ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1998) presents a critical analysis of the Kennedy administration, stating that Kennedy "was probably one of the unhealthiest men ever to sit in the Oval Office". Robert Dallek's ''An Unfinished Life'' (2003) is a more traditional biography, but it contains many details about Kennedy's health issues.
Noam Chomsky, in his book ''Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and U.S. Political Culture'' (1993),
[47] presents a thesis on the Kennedy administration in opposition to the one that lingers in the memory of many Americans.
See also
Family
★
Caroline Kennedy
★
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
★
John F. Kennedy, Jr.
★
Kennedy family
★
Robert F. Kennedy
★
Ted Kennedy
★
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr
★
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr
★
Rose Kennedy
★
Eunice Kennedy Shriver
★
Jean Kennedy Smith
★
William Kennedy Smith
★
Ethel Kennedy
★
Rosemary Kennedy
★
Patricia Kennedy Lawford
Transportation
★
John F. Kennedy International Airport
History of
★
United States presidential election, 1960
★
History of the United States (1945–1964)
★
State funeral of John F. Kennedy
★
Jesuit Ivy
Political policy
★
Peace Corps
★
Kennedy Doctrine
Staff
★
Evelyn Lincoln, personal secretary to the President
Assassination
★
John F. Kennedy assassination
★
Nellie Connally
★
John Connally
★
Zapruder film, photographer of the primary film of assassination
★
Orville Nix, photographer of the second film of assassination
★
Kennedy assassination theories
★
Robert F. Kennedy assassination
★
Kennedy Curse
★
List of assassinated American politicians
Memorials/legacy
★
John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame at Arlington National Cemetery
★
John F. Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede, England
★
John F. Kennedy Memorial near
Jerusalem
★
Kennedy Memorial Trust
★
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Memorial in
Dallas
★
Kennedy half dollar
★
Five cents John Kennedy postage stamp
★
List of people on stamps of Ireland
★
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
★
John F. Kennedy Library in Boston
★
John F. Kennedy Federal Office Building in Boston
★
Historical rankings of United States Presidents
Coincidences/trivia
★
Coincidence theory
★ "
Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy" retort by Senator
Lloyd Bentsen, 1988 VP debate
★
G.I. Joe figure as ''PT-109'' commander
★
JFK Reloaded a
video game
Kennedy in fiction and song
'Cartoons and comic books':
★ In the
South Park episode Weight Gain 4000, Kennedy's assassination is
parodied when schoolteacher
Mr. Garrison goes into the Book Depository in an attempt to shoot
Kathie Lee Gifford during a motorcade.
★ In an episode of ''
The Simpsons'',
Homer Simpson and Abraham Lincoln sneak up on Lee Harvey Oswald and, in so doing, prevent the assassination of President Kennedy.
★ In "
Superman" No. 170 and
Action Comics Nos. 285 and 309 published by
DC Comics, President Kennedy appears as himself within fictional comic story lines.
★ On the cartoon show
Clone High, one of the main characters, "
JFK", is a young, aggressive, hyper macho clone of Kennedy's who seems to very much look up to his forefather and namesake. Like Kennedy, he was outgoing, charismatic, a ladies man and athletic. Unfortunately, the clone only recognized those particular aspects of Kennedy's personality, and when told that Kennedy was a caring leader who inspired a generation of young people, the clone responded "I thought he was a macho womanizing stud who
conquered the moon".
★ Kennedy's ghost appears in the comic book ''
Hellblazer'', in "Damnation's Flame", where he accompanies protagonist
John Constantine across a Hellish version of America.
★ Kennedy's assassination is parodied in the cartoon
Robot Chicken, when a
mongoose is shown to shoot President Kennedy and, in doing so, frames Lee Harvey Oswald.
★ In an episode of ''
Family Guy'', Lee Harvey Oswald is seen in the infamous book store window where he states, "Oh my god, that man on the grassy knoll is going to shoot President Kennedy!" He then takes up a rifle, looks through the scope, and utters the words: "C'mon Lee, time to become an American hero..."
★ In the episode of ''
Sealab 2021'' titled "Craptastic Voyage", Captain Shanks yells out "Ich bin ein Berliner" when the miniaturized Deep Diver crashes into the language center of his brain, prompting JFK to appear and say "That's my line, tumourface!" He is then almost destroyed by Shanks when the Deep Diver runs into the testosterone center of Shanks's brain.
'Films and television productions':
★ In the 1986 episode "
Profile in Silver" in
The New Twilight Zone series, a future distantly-related descendant goes back to Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas to observe the murder.
★ In the 1997 episode "
Tikka to Ride" of the British comedy series
Red Dwarf, the main characters accidentally foil the Kennedy assassination, causing severe problems with their own timeline. They return, and after several failed attempts to correct the timeline, enlist the help of Kennedy, who survives to become his own second gunman. Kennedy dresses as a police officer, a reference to the
Badge man photograph, and shoots from the "Grassy Knoll." This was a highly controversial episode.
★ At the end of the 1996 film ''
The Rock'', the main character Stanley Goodspeed discovers a roll of
microfilm, and - when he examines it - asks his girlfriend 'You wanna know who killed JFK?'. He does not give the answer to this question.
★ In the 2002 film ''
Timequest'', a time-traveler arrives back in time and thwarts John F. Kennedy's assassination.
★ An early story for the film ''
Star Trek II'' featured the crew of the ''
USS Enterprise'' going back in time to save President Kennedy.
★ On the
soap opera "
Passions",
Rebecca Hotchkiss revealed to her daughter
Gwen Winthrop on December 28, 2006, that her mother had slept with
John F. Kennedy during his marriage to
Jacqueline.
★ The spitting scene in the
Seinfeld sitcom
The Boyfriend, Part 1 was a reference to the John F. Kennedy assassination and the
magic bullet theory, as dramatized in the movie
JFK -- "that was one magic loogey."
'Songs':
★ Several popular songs deal with Kennedy and his assassination. These include:
★
★ "PT-109" by
Jimmy Dean in 1962 became a Top 10 single and was written in honor of President Kennedy.
★
★ "Crucifixion" and "That was the President" by
Phil Ochs.
★
★ "
1963." by
New Order. The song is loosely a fantasy about JFK having his wife killed so he could be with Marilyn Monroe.
★
★ "
Abraham, Martin and John" by
Dion, a memorial to Kennedy, his brother Robert, Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King.
★
★ "What the World Needs Now/
Abraham, Martin and John" is an audio montage assembled by
Tom Clay with the two songs in the title combined with radio soundbites from the Kennedy Assassinations, and
Martin Luther King's mountaintop speech.
★
★ "Foreign Policy" by
The Buckinghams released in 1968 has a portion of a speech made by JFK on the flip side of "Susan".
★
★ "The Day John Kennedy Died" by
Lou Reed, in which Reed lists some things he dreamed he forgot.
★
★ "
Brain of J." by
Pearl Jam.
★
★ "
Sympathy for the Devil" by
the Rolling Stones contains the line "I shouted out, 'Who killed the Kennedys?' when after all, it was you and me."
★
★ "
We Didn't Start the Fire" by
Billy Joel, which lists 20th century events.
★
★ "
Family Snapshot" by
Peter Gabriel is an account of the assassination from the perspective of Oswald.
★
★ "
Civil War" by
Guns N' Roses contains the line "In my first memories, they shot Kennedy."
★
★ Rock singer
Marilyn Manson referenced John F. Kennedy numerous times in his work:
★
★
★ "
Valentine's Day" containing the line "[S]he was the color of TV. Her mouth curled under like a metal snake. Although Holy Wood was sad, they'd remember this as Valentine's day" which refers to JFK's wife Jackie and the grief that the country felt for the loss of their president on Valentine's day.
★
★
★ The music video for "
Coma White" generated controversy as it featured a reenactment of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Manson said the video used the Kennedy assassination "as a metaphor for America's obsession and worship of violence." "My statement was always intended to make people think of how they view and sometimes participate in these events." Further, the video, "is in no way a mockery. In fact, it is a tribute to men like Jesus Christ and JFK who have died at the hands of mankind's unquenchable thirst for violence."
★
★
★ "
Posthuman" opens with the line, "She's got eyes like Zapruder, a mouth like heroin, she wants me to be perfect like Kennedy" ("Zapruder" being a reference to the
Zapruder film). The song also contains a reference to Kennedy's wife: "In all of her dreams, she's a saint like Jackie-O."
★
★
★ "
Lamb of God" alludes to the martyrdom of JFK with the line, "The camera will make you god, that's how Jack became sainted."
★
★
★ The title of the song "
King Kill 33" is a reference to JFK conspiracy theorist
James Shelby Downard.
★
★
★ The album artwork for
Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) includes an autopsy report for John F. Kennedy. The enhanced CD also contains a video of Manson's artistic interpretation of the JFK autopsy.
★
★ The song "Bullet" by "
The Misfits" is about the assassination of Kennedy as well as a fictitious account of his wife's slip into despondency following the assassination
Kennedy portrayed in film and television
Film:
★ ''
PT 109'' (1963): played by
Cliff Robertson
★ ''
JFK'' (1991): about the assassination; played by
Steve Reed
★ ''
Malcolm X'' (1992): played by Steve Reed
★ ''
Ruby'' (1992): played by
Gérard David and
Kevin Wiggins
★ ''
Forrest Gump'' (1994): played by
Jed Gillin
★ ''
Thirteen Days'' (2000): played by
Bruce Greenwood
★ ''
Timequest'' (2002): played by
Victor Slezak
★ ''
Bubba Ho-tep'' (2002): played by
Ossie Davis
★ '' (2004): through use of historical archive footage, he is the Republican candidate for President of the Confederacy in 1960, winning against Democrat Richard Nixon. He ran on a platform of the possible
abolition of
slavery and on
women's suffrage, but was still assassinated.
TV:
★ '' The Missiles of October'' (1974, TV): played by
William Devane
★ ''The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover'' (1977): played by
William Jordan
★ ''Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye'' (1977, TV): played by
Paul Rudd
★ ''Young Joe, the Forgotten Kennedy'' (1977, TV): played by
Sam Chew, Jr.
★ ''King'' (1978, TV): played by William Jordan
★ ''Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy'' (1981, TV): played by
James Franciscus
★ ''Blood Feud'' (1983, TV): played by
Sam Groom
★ ''Kennedy'' (1983, TV): played by
Martin Sheen
★ ''Prince Jack'' (1985, TV): played by
Robert Hogan
★ ''Robert Kennedy & His Times'' (1985, TV): played by
Cliff De Young
★ ''J. Edgar Hoover'' (1987, TV): played by
Art Hindle
★ ''LBJ: The Early Years'' (1987, TV): played by
Charles Frank
★ ''Onassis: The Richest Man in the World'' (1988, TV): played by
David Gillum
★ ''The Kennedys of Massachusetts'' (1990, TV): played by
Steven Weber
★ ''A Woman Named Jackie'' (1991, TV): played by
Stephen Collins
★ ''Sinatra'' (1992, TV): played by
James F. Kelly
★ ''J.F.K.: Reckless Youth'' (1993, TV): played by
Patrick Dempsey
★ ''
Norma Jean & Marilyn'' (1996, TV): played by
Perry Stephens
★ ''
Red Dwarf:
Tikka to Ride'' (1997, TV): played by
Michael Shannon
★ ''The Rat Pack'' (1998, TV): played by
William L. Petersen
★ ''Bonanno: A Godfather's Story'' (1999, TV): played by
Matt Norklun
★ ''Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis'' (2000, TV): played by
Tim Matheson, who at the time was also playing a fictional vice-president on the series ''
The West Wing''
★ ''How to Marry a Billionaire: A Christmas Tale'' (2000, TV): played by
Dabney Coleman
★ ''Jackie, Ethel, Joan: The Women of Camelot'' (2001, TV): played by
Daniel Hugh Kelly
★ ''Power and Beauty'' (2002, TV): played by
Kevin Anderson
★ ''RFK'' (2002, TV): played by
Martin Donovan
★ ''America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story'' (2003, TV): played by
Randy Triggs
★ ''Days That Shook the World'' episode ''JFK'' (2003, TV): played by
Karl J. Morris
References
Primary sources
★ Goldzwig, Steven R. and Dionisopoulos, George N., eds. ''In a Perilous Hour: The Public Address of John F. Kennedy'', text and analysis of key speeches (1995)
Secondary sources
★ Brauer, Carl. ''John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction'' (1977)
★ Burner, David. ''John F. Kennedy and a New Generation'' (1988)
★
★ Collier, Peter & Horowitz, David. ''The Kennedys'' (1984)
★ Cottrell, John. ''Assassination! The World Stood Still'' (1964)
★ Freedman, Lawrence. ''Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam'' (2000)
★ Fursenko, Aleksandr and Timothy Naftali. ''One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964'' (1997)
★ Giglio, James. ''The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1991), standard scholarly overview of policies
★ Harper, Paul, and Joann P. Krieg eds. ''John F. Kennedy: The Promise Revisited'' (1988), scholarly articles on presidency
★ Harris, Seymour E. ''The Economics of the Political Parties, with Special Attention to Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy'' (1962)
★ Heath, Jim F. ''Decade of Disillusionment: The Kennedy–Johnson Years'' (1976), general survey of decade
★ Hersh, Seymour. ''The Dark Side of Camelot'' (1997), highly negative assessment
★ House Select Committee on Assassinations. ''Final Assassinations Report'' (1979)
★ Kunz, Diane B. ''The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations during the 1960s'' (1994)
★ O'Brien, Michael. ''John F. Kennedy: A Biography'' (2005), the most detailed biography
★ Parmet, Herbert. ''Jack: The Struggles of John F. Kennedy'' (1980)
★ Parmet, Herbert. ''JFK: The Presidency of John F. Kennedy'' (1983)
★ Piper, Michael Collins. ''Final Judgment'' (2004: sixth edition). American Free Press
★ Reeves, Richard. ''President Kennedy: Profile of Power'' (1993), balanced assessment of policies
★ Reeves, Thomas. ''A Question of Character: A Life of John F. Kennedy'' (1991) hostile assessment of his character flaws
★ Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House'' (1965), by a close advisor
★ Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. ''Robert Kennedy And His Times'' (2002)
★
Smith, Jean Edward. ''Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years''. Air University Review (March–April 1967)
[2]
★ Smith, Jean Edward. ''The Defense of Berlin'', Baltimore. Johns Hopkins Press (1963)
★ Smith, Jean Edward. ''The Wall as Watershed'', Arlington, Virginia. Institute for Defense Analysis (1966)
★ Smith, Jean Edward. "The Bay of Pigs: The Unanswered Questions". ''The Nation'', pp. 360–363 (
April 13,
1964)
★ Sorensen, Theodore. ''Kennedy'' (1966), by a close advisor
★ Walsh, Kenneth T. ''Air Force One: A History of the Presidents and Their Planes'' (2003)
Other sources
1. American Experience: John F. Kennedy, PBS. Retrieved on 2007-2-25.
2. http://post369.columbus.oh.us/scouting.d/fact.sheets.d/02-531.html
3. Why England Slept ; Jean Edward Smith, "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years", ''Air University Review'', (Mar.–Apr., 1967). http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html
4. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=24144268
5. http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq60-2.htm
6. Hove, Duane (2003) ''American Warriors: Five Presidents in the Pacific Theater of World War II Bard Street Press ISBN 1-57249-307-0
7. http://www.americanwarriorsfivepresidents.com/
8. Ted Chamberlain (July 11, 2002) ''JFK's PT-109 Found, U.S. Navy Confirms'' (National Geographic News).
9. Jean Edward Smith, "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years", ''Air University Review'', (Mar.–Apr., 1967), http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html
10. T. Reeves, ''A Question of Character'', p. 140.
11. Online NewsHour with Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez and physician Jeffrey Kelman, Pres. Kennedy's Health Secrets, ''The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer transcript'', November 18, 2002
12. O'Brien (2005) 274-79, 394-99.
13. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/jfkhoustonministers.html
14. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/K/htmlK/kennedy-nixon/kennedy-nixon.htm
15. Jean Edward Smith, "Kennedy and Defense: The Formative Years", ''Air University Review'', (Mar.–Apr., 1967). http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1967/mar-apr/smith.html
16. http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/jfk-inaug.htm
17. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times
18. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times
19. Jean Edward Smith, "Bay of Pigs: The Unanswered Questions", ''The Nation'', April 13, 1964
20. http://www.dontquoteme.com/search/quote_display.jsp?quoteID=5580&gameID=2
21. LeFeber, "America, Russia and the Cold War", p. 233).
22. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/vn28.pdf
23. Joseph Ellis, "Making Vietnam History ", ''Reviews in American History'' 28.4 (2000) 625–629
24. The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara
25. Jean Edward Smith, ''The Defense of Berlin'', Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1963; Jean Edward Smith, ''The Wall as Watershed'', Arlington, Virginia: Institute for Defense Analysis, 1966.
26. New York Times, March 14, 2003, http://readthese.blogspot.com/2003_12_15_readthese_archive.html
27. "The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq", Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978; Peter and Marion Sluglett, "Iraq Since 1958" London, I.B. Taurus, 1990
28. Regarding the CIA's "Health Alteration Committee's work in Iraq, see U.S. Senate's Church Committee Interim Report on Assassination, page 181, Note 1
29. New York Times March 14, 2003 "A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making", free archived article at: http://readthese.blogspot.com/2003_12_15_readthese_archive.html
30. http://www.lib.lsu.edu/hum/mlk/srs216.html
31. http://www.americanrhetoric.c 
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