On
November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand
days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an
assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas,
Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was
the youngest to die.
Of Irish
descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29,
1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In
1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese
destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors
through perilous waters to safety.
Back
from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the
Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married
Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while
recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in
Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.
In 1956
Kennedy almost gained the Democratic nomination for Vice
President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for
President. Millions watched his television debates with the
Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow
margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman
Catholic President.
His
Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: "Ask
not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for
your country." As President, he set out to redeem his
campaign pledge to get America moving again. His economic
programs launched the country on its longest sustained
expansion since World War II; before his death, he laid plans
for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and
poverty.
Responding
to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the
cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights
legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of
the national culture and the central role of the arts in a
vital society.
He
wished America to resume its old mission as the first nation
dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance
for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism
to the aid of developing nations. But the hard reality of the
Communist challenge remained.
Shortly
after his inauguration, Kennedy permitted a band of Cuban
exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland.
The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro was a
failure. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its
campaign against West Berlin. Kennedy replied by reinforcing
the Berlin garrison and increasing the Nation's military
strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by
this reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall,
relaxed its pressure in central Europe.
Instead,
the Russians now sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba.
When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October
1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons
bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of
nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the
missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis
evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear
blackmail.
Kennedy
now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping
the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race--a
contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The
months after the Cuban crisis showed significant progress
toward his goal of "a world of law and free choice,
banishing the world of war and coercion." His
administration thus saw the beginning of new hope for both the
equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.
-
John
F Kennedy