A Biography of John F Kennedy

Born May 29, 1917, Brookline, Massachusetts
Died November 22, 1963, Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Texas
Political party Democratic
Spouse Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy
Occupation Politician
Religion Roman Catholic

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also referred to as John F. Kennedy, JFK, John Kennedy or Jack Kennedy, was the 35th President of the United States. He served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Major events during his presidency include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the American Civil Rights Movement & early events of the Vietnam War.

Kennedy's leadership during the USS PT-109 incident in the Second World War in the South Pacific was a major turning point in his life. Kennedy represented the state of Massachusetts from 1947 to 1960, first as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, & then, in the U.S. Senate. Kennedy (Democrat) was elected president of the United States in the 1960 Presidential election, at age 43, against Richard Nixon (Republican) in one of the closest elections in American history. He was the first & to date only Roman Catholic to be elected U.S President. He is also the first person born in the 20th century to have served as president (LBJ was the first president born in the 20th century, chronologically). At age 43, Kennedy is the youngest person ever elected President of the United States, but he was not the youngest ever to serve as President (Theodore Roosevelt, while Vice President & at age 42, was elevated to the Presidency following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Roosevelt was subsequently elected to a full term as President in his own right when he was 46). Kennedy is the last Democrat from outside the South to be elected, & the last president to be elected while serving in the U.S. Senate.

John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, United States. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the crime, but was himself 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. For the public at large, the entire subject remains controversial & shrouded in mystery with multiple allegation theories. The assassination itself proved to be a defining moment in U.S. history due to its traumatic impact on the psyche of the nation & its ensuing political fallout; a historical fallout that influenced, & continues to influence, the temperament of American society. President Kennedy is now regarded as an icon of American hopes & aspirations to every new generation of Americans.

Early life & education
Kennedy was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, the second son of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. & Rose Fitzgerald; Rose, in turn, was the eldest child of John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, a prominent figure in Boston politics who was the city's mayor & a three-term member of Congress.

John F. Kennedy was baptized at St. Aidan's church in Brookline, Massachusetts, where his family worshiped, & where both he & his older brother Joseph Kennedy, Jr. were altar boys.

Kennedy lived in Brookline for his first ten years. John Kennedy attended Edward Devotion School, a public school, from kindergarten through the beginning of 3rd grade, then Noble & Greenough Lower School & its successor, 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 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, & was later the first Scout to become President. Kennedy spent summers with his family at their home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, purchased in 1929, & Christmas & 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 & 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 & 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 sailed on the SS Normandie on his first trip abroad with his parents & 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, then less than a week at LSE, he sailed back to America three weeks after he had arrived in London. In October 1935, Kennedy enrolled late & 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 & February 1936, recuperated at the Kennedy winter home in Palm Beach in March & April, spent May & June working as a ranch hand on a 40,000-acre cattle ranch outside Benson, Arizona, then July & 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, & spent ten weeks driving with a friend through France, Italy, Germany, Holland & England. In late June 1938, Kennedy sailed with his father & his brother Joe on the SS Normandie to spend July working with his father at the American embassy in London & August with his family at a villa near Cannes. From February through September 1939, Kennedy went on a major seven-month tour of Europe, the Soviet Union, the Balkans & the Middle East to gather background information for his senior thesis. He spent the last ten days of August in Czechoslovakia & 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, & 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 wrote his honors thesis, entitled "Appeasement in Munich" about the British dealings concerning the Munich Agreement. He initially intended for his thesis to be only for college use, but his father encouraged him to publish it in a book. He graduated cum laude from Harvard with a degree in international affairs in June 1940. His thesis was published in July 1940 as a book, entitled Why England Slept, & became a bestseller.

From September to December 1940, Kennedy was enrolled & audited classes at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In early 1941, Kennedy helped his father work on a memoir about his father's three years as ambassador. In May & June 1941, Kennedy traveled throughout South America.

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, he served in the office which supplied bulletins & 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 & Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Training Center before being assigned for duty in Panama & eventually the Pacific theater. He participated in various commands in the Pacific theater & earned the rank of lieutenant, commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat.

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. The commander of his PT boat squadron was future Attorney General John N. Mitchell. It was rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. Kennedy was thrown across the deck, injuring his already-troubled back. Still, Kennedy towed a wounded man three miles (5 km) in the ocean, arriving at an island where his crew was subsequently rescued. Kennedy said that he blacked out for periods of time during the life-threatening ordeal. For these actions, Kennedy received the Navy & Marine Corps Medal under the following citation:

“ For heroism; the rescue of three men following the ramming & sinking of his motor torpedo boat while attempting a torpedo attack on a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands area on the night of Aug 1–2, 1943. Lt. KENNEDY, Capt. of the boat, directed the rescue of the crew & personally rescued three men, one of whom was seriously injured. During the following six days, he succeeded in getting his crew ashore, & after swimming many hours attempting to secure aid & food, finally effected the rescue of the men. His courage, endurance & excellent leadership contributed to the saving of several lives & was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. ”

Kennedy's other decorations in World War II included the Purple Heart, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal & 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, & would be the subject of several magazine articles, books, comic books, TV specials & a feature length movie, making the PT-109 one of the most famous U.S. Navy ships of the war. Scale models & 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 & 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 interviewers how he became a war hero, Kennedy's grim reply was: "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.

Early political career
After World War II, Kennedy thought about being a journalist for a while before deciding to run for political office. Prior to the war, he hadn't really thought about being a politician primarily because his older brother, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., had been tabbed by the family as the future politician & , hopefully, the future President. Tragically, Joe was killed in World War II, making John next in line to fulfill his father's political ambitions. In 1946, 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 & 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 in the following two years, nearly dying (receiving the Catholic Church's "last rites" four times during his life), & was often absent from the Senate. During this period, he published Profiles in Courage, highlighting eight instances in which U.S. Senators risked their careers by standing by their personal beliefs. The book was awarded the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

In 1956, after Adlai Stevenson left the choice of a Vice Presidential nominee to the Democratic convention, Kennedy finished 2nd in that balloting to Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. Kennedy, however, got valuable public exposure from that episode. 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 & John McClellan & Mississippi Governor James Coleman were early supporters of Kennedy's presidential campaign. 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, during his first term as a congressman, when he was 30 years old, Kennedy had been diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. This & other medical disorders were kept from the press & public throughout Kennedy's lifetime.

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, & McCarthy dated Patricia Kennedy. In 1954, when the Senate was poised to condemn McCarthy, John Kennedy had a speech drafted calling for the censure of McCarthy, but never delivered it. When the Senate rendered its highly publicized decision to censure McCarthy on December 2, 1954, Senator Kennedy was hospitalized. Even though absent, Kennedy could have "paired" his vote against that of another senator, but chose not to; neither did he ever indicate then or 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.

United States presidential election, 1960

John & Jackie Kennedy campaigning in Appleton, Wisconsin in March 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 & Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon. Kennedy defeated Humphrey in Wisconsin & West Virginia, & Morse in Maryland & Oregon, although Morse's candidacy is often forgotten by historians. Kennedy also defeated token opposition (often write in candidates) in New Hampshire, Indiana & Nebraska. In West Virginia, Kennedy visited a coal mine, & talked to the mine workers to win their support; most people in that conservative, mostly Protestant state were deeply suspicious about Kennedy being a Catholic. Kennedy's victory in West Virginia bolstered his credentials as a candidate with broad appeal.

With Humphrey & 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 & 1956, was not officially running, but had broad grassroots support inside & 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 & 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 & whether both the Soviet space & missile programs had surpassed those of the U.S. To allay fears that his Catholicism would impact his decision-making, he said in a famous speech in Houston, Texas (to 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 & the Church does not speak for me." 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 & October, Kennedy debated Republican candidate Vice President Richard Nixon in the first televised U.S. presidential debates. During the debates, Nixon looked tense & uncomfortable, while Kennedy was composed, which led the television audience to deem Kennedy the winner, although radio listeners in general thought Nixon had won or the debate was a draw. Nixon did not wear make-up during the debate unlike Kennedy. The debates are considered a political landmark: the point at which the medium of television played an important role in politics. The televsion workings of the Democrats, of making Nixon's less energetic looks, as of him being in worse shape as of some things of him recoevering from, gave JFK a major advantage in the US presidential election.

Presidency (1961–1963)
John Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th President on January 20, 1961. In his inaugural address he spoke of the need for all Americans to be active citizens. He famously remarked, "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, & war itself." 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 & sacrifice which we ask of you."

Bay of Pigs Invasion
Prior to Kennedy's election to the Presidency, the Eisenhower Administration created a plan for the overthrow of the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba. Central to such a plan (structured & detailed by the CIA with minimal input from the State Department) was the arming of a counter-revolutionary insurgency composed of anti-Castro Cubans. U.S. trained Cuban insurgents were to invade Cuba & instigate an uprising among the Cuban people in hopes of achieving the goal of removing Castro from power. On April 17, 1961, Kennedy gave approval for 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, the CIA proceeded to allow the troops to go even though Kennedy did not authorize air support. By April 19, 1961, the Cuban government had captured or killed the invading exiles, & Kennedy was forced to negotiate for the release of the 1,189 survivors. The failure of the plan originated in a lack of dialogue among the military leadership, a result of which was the complete lack of naval support in the face of organised artillery troops on the island who easily incapacitated the exile force at the landing beaches. After 20 months, Cuba released the captured exiles in exchange for $53 million worth of food & 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. & untrusting, leading him to believe that another invasion such as that one would occur.

Cuban Missile Crisis
Kennedy's Cabinet meets during the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 29, 1962.
Meeting Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.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. They were shown to Kennedy on October 16, 1962. America would soon be posed with a serious nuclear threat. Here Kennedy faced a dilemma: if the U.S. attacked the sites, it might lead to nuclear war with the U.S.S.R.. However, if the U.S. did nothing, it would endure the perpetual threat of nuclear weapons within its region—in such close proximity that if the weapons were launched pre-emptively, the U.S. might have been unable to retaliate. Another fear was that the U.S. would appear to the world as weak in its own hemisphere. Many military officials & cabinet members pressed for an air assault on the missile sites, but Kennedy ordered a naval blockade in which the U.S. Navy inspected all ships. He began negotiations with the Soviets & ordered the Soviets to remove all "defensive" material that was being built off the Cuban island. Without doing so, the Soviet & Cuban peoples would face naval blockades. A week later, he & Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached an agreement. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles while the U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba — as long as U.N. inspections were allowed for verification; Kennedy also secretly promised to remove U.S. ballistic Jupiter missiles from Turkey within six months, although these missiles were already slated for removal. Following this incident, which brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since, Kennedy was more cautious in confronting the Soviet Union.

During the course of The Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was often visited by Max Jacobson for injections of medication. Dr. Jacobson was known as "Dr. Feelgood" to his clients: some of his most famous clients were Andy Warhol, Anthony Quinn & Tennessee Williams. Dr. Jacobson was introduced to President Kennedy during the 1960 campaign & was asked to help the President's medical ailments, which included colitis, urinary-tract infections & Addison's Disease. Max Jacobson had established a general practice on the Upper East Side catering to writers, musicians & entertainers who nicknamed him "Miracle Max" or "Dr. Feelgood" for the "vitamin injection" treatments that made them happy & gave them seemingly limitless energy. Jacobson's panacea was 30 to 50 milligrams of amphetamines - the mood-elevating neural energizers also known as speed - mixed with multivitamins, steroids, enzymes, hormones, & solubilized placenta, bone marrow, & animal organ cells. This "vitamin injection" which Kennedy craved for during stressful times was also known to give one an elevated sense of confidence & invincibility.

Latin America & 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 & sought greater human rights standards in the region. He worked closely with Puerto Rican Governor Luis Muñoz Marín 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 & 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, & military support for the unstable French-installed South Vietnamese government, which included sending 16,000 military advisors & U.S. Special Forces to the area. Kennedy also agreed to the use of free-fire zones,napalm, defoliants & 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 & 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. In 1963, South Vietnamese generals overthrew the Diem government, arresting Diem & later killing him (though the exact circumstances of his death remain unclear). 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 & possibly been re-elected in 1964. Fueling this speculation are statements made by Kennedy's & Johnson's Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara that Kennedy was strongly considering pulling out of Vietnam after the 1964 election. Additional evidence is Kennedy's National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) #263 on October 11 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.

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.

West Berlin Speech

Kennedy meeting with West Berlin governing mayor Willy Brandt, March 1961Under simultaneous & opposing pressures from the Allies & the Soviets, Germany was divided. The Berlin Wall separated West & East Berlin, the latter being under the control of the Soviets. On June 26, 1963, Kennedy visited West Berlin & 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 & 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."

Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
Troubled by the long-term dangers of radioactive contamination & 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 & the Soviet Union were the initial signatories to the treaty. Kennedy signed the treaty into law in August 1963.

Ireland
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 & 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, & 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

Domestic policy
Kennedy called his domestic program the "New Frontier". It ambitiously promised federal funding for education, medical care for the elderly, & 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, & 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, & executed on March 15, 1963).

Civil rights
Kennedy during the State of the Union Address, January 14, 1963.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, & other public places remained. Kennedy supported racial integration & civil rights, & 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 & Robert Kennedy's intervention secured the early release of King from jail.

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 & 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 & make it even more difficult to pass civil rights laws through Congress, which was dominated by Southern Democrats, & 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 & James Hood, from enrolling. George Wallace moved aside after being confronted by federal marshals, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach & the Alabama National Guard. That evening Kennedy gave his famous civil rights address on national television & radio. Kennedy proposed what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Space program

"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 & returning him 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; & none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish."

Kennedy later made a speech at Rice University in September 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 & do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

On the second approach to Khrushchev, the Russian was persuaded that cost-sharing was beneficial & American space technology was forging ahead. The U.S. had launched a geostationary satellite & Kennedy had asked Congress to approve more than $22 billion for the Apollo Project, which had the goal of landing an American man on the Moon before the end of the decade. Khrushchev agreed to a joint venture in Autumn 1963, but Kennedy died in November before the agreement could be formalized. On July 20, 1969, almost six years after Kennedy's death, the Project Apollo's goal was realized when Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin became the first men to land on the Moon.

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