We tell you who John F. Kennedy was and how he became president of the United States. Also, his political vision and how his murder was.
Who was John F. Kennedy?
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), also known as JFK by the initials of his name, was an American politician who served as president of the United States (1960-1963) and was murdered in the full exercise of his duties.
Kennedy faced different international crises related to the Cold War, such as the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban missile crisis (1962). Furthermore, due to his diplomacy policy, together with Nikita Khrushchev (leader of the Soviet Union), he began a new period in relations between the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc, known as the “era of détente.”
As president, Kennedy implemented a domestic policy program known as the “New Frontier” aimed at improve the quality of life of the population and guarantee the civil rights of American citizens. During his presidential campaign he promised to eradicate racial discrimination and establish health programs for the elderly. However, these measures faced strong opposition within Congress and the scope of the social reforms was moderate.
Kennedy was assassinated in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.. He was shot three times when he was in an open car with his wife and was wounded in the head and throat. His death was almost immediate and generated a deep social commotion.
Within hours, former Navy soldier Lee Harvey Oswald was found guilty and then solely responsible for the murder. However, the controversy over Kennedy's death led to the formation of a commission a decade later to investigate the assassination and the conclusion that it was the product of a conspiracy in which different US government agencies were involved.
See also: Détente in the Cold War (1962-1975)
The private life of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, United States. His family was wealthy, Catholic and of Irish origin.. His father, Joseph Kennedy, had made his fortune as a stock market banker, movie entrepreneur, and bootlegger during Prohibition.
Joseph also became involved in politics during the 1930s. John F. Kennedy's mother was Rose Fitzgerald and she came from Boston. Rose's father (John's maternal grandfather) had also been involved in politics in Boston, being a congressman for the Democratic Party and mayor of the city.
John was the second of Joseph and Rose's nine children. He was born with a spinal deformity and an adrenal deficiency. This caused him different health problems over the years. His primary studies were done in Brookline, at the Edward Devotion School and at the Dexter School.
In 1927, his family moved to New York. During his adolescence he was hospitalized on numerous occasions. and he had to finish some school years studying at home. He attended different private boys' schools and graduated from The Choate School in Connecticut in 1935.
In 1936 he entered Harvard University to study international relations and He obtained his university degree with honors in 1939. During his university years he traveled to Europe numerous times because his father was the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom. He traveled to many countries, which gave him a particular vision of politics, society and the international economy.
In 1941 he began his military service as a volunteer in the United States Navy. In the context of World War II, he was sent to Panama and then to the Pacific. For his heroism during the war he received different decorations: the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the Purple Heart, the Asia-Pacific Campaign Medal and the World War II Victory Medal.
At the end of the war, John F. Kennedy began his political career. In 1953 He married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier with whom he had four children. (although two of them died in childhood). Jacqueline was very popular as first lady during the Kennedy presidency and was recognized for promoting arts and culture. Her reform of the White House was highly publicized on television and she became an ideal woman of the “American way of life.”
The beginnings of John F. Kennedy's political career
The Kennedy family had directed the life of Joseph Kennedy Jr. (John's older brother) towards politics. However, Joseph Jr. died during World War II. At the end of the war, with the support of his family, John F. Kennedy followed in his brother's footsteps and decided to enter politics.
In 1946, with the help of his father's political influence and financial resources, Kennedy ran for the United States House of Representatives with the Democratic Party representing a Boston district. He won the elections and served as a congressman for six years. Then, in 1952 he obtained a seat in the Senate.
As a congressman he had a high rate of absenteeism from sessions due to his health problems and various trips (both official and personal). During this period he defended a strong anti-communism and at first supported the investigations of Senator Joseph McCarthy. However, as McCarthy's ideas became radicalized, Kennedy withdrew his support and criticized political persecutions, claiming that they were a danger to people's civil liberty.
In 1960, decided to run for the presidential elections. The political platform of his campaign revolved around the need to fight poverty and social unrest, which for him were the main causes of the expansion of communism. In relation to the Cold War, Kennedy maintained that international peace and security could be maintained by combining actions of military containment and diplomatic negotiation.
The presidency of John F. Kennedy
Kennedy won the 1960 elections, in which he competed against Republican candidate Richard Nixon. On January 20, 1961, inaugurated as the 35th President of the United States. In his first speech he pronounced two phrases that became very famous and that express two of the most important characteristics of his presidency.
Referring to the context of the Cold War, he said: “We will pay any price, bear any burden, face any difficulty, and oppose any enemy to ensure the survival and success of freedom.” Then, alluding to the need for North American citizens to participate politically and get involved in the country's affairs, he maintained: “Ask not what your country can do for you; “Ask what you can do for your country.”.
The international policy of John F. Kennedy
The construction of the Berlin Wall
John F. Kennedy became president in 1961 and immediately had to face the Berlin crisis that ended with the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev (leader of the Soviet Union) They met in Vienna to negotiate what to do with the citybut they could not reach an agreement.
Kennedy had three fundamental points (known as the “three essentials“) in which he did not want to give in: the presence of the powers (United Kingdom, France and the United States) in West Berlin, the guarantee of access to the city (which was in the middle of the German zone controlled by the Soviets) and the free West Berlin's choice of its political regime.
Kennedy and Khrushchev could not reach an agreement and, in turn, the situation led to more and more citizens of East Berlin fleeing towards the western part of the city. In this context, the German Democratic Republic (Eastern Germany) began to surprisingly build the Berlin Wall in the middle of the night, which definitively divided the city for more than thirty years.
The Cuban missile crisis
The second major conflict that Kennedy had to face was the Cuban missile crisis, which broke out in 1962. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed on the island and Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959, American interests were harmed and the government took a series of aggressive measures against the revolutionary regime.
In April 1961, Kennedy approved a military invasion of the Bay of Pigs (Cuba). The Cubans managed to derail the North American operation, but Fidel Castro sought the support of the Soviet Union to contain US policy and maintain the autonomy of revolutionary Cuba. Khrushchev negotiated with Castro the installation of medium-range missiles in Cuba (the United States had installed the same weapons in Turkey a few months earlier, with range to the Soviet Union).
In October 1962, North American spy planes detected the installation of the missiles and the Soviet presence in Cuba. Kennedy immediately ordered a military blockade of Cuba and a belt of naval units and aircraft surrounded the island.
It is recognized that this was one of the most critical moments of the Cold War since it was the situation that came closest to the United States and the Soviet Union entering into a direct military confrontation. However, The danger of a potential nuclear war led Kennedy and Khrushchev to begin secret negotiationss. Kennedy promised to remove the missiles deployed in Türkiye and respect Cuba's autonomy, and Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles from the island.
The new relations with the Soviet Bloc
After the missile crisis, the superpowers decided to improve their relations and the Cold War came into play. a new period known as “the era of détente”. The United States and the Soviet Union established a direct telephone line between the White House (American presidential seat) and the Kremlin (Soviet seat of government), known as “the red telephone.” In this way, the aim was to direct relations between East and West towards diplomacy and negotiation, and away from the danger of war.
During the “era of détente” competition for power and control of the world's economies manifested itself through competition for technological advances and the “space race.” Kennedy was the first president to prioritize the so-called “conquest of space”. In 1960, he decided to finance the Apollo Program, prepared by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), which had the objective of reaching the Moon (which was achieved nine years later, in 1969).
The fight against communism in Latin America
Kennedy maintained that the spread of communism was due to the poverty of the population, their lack of education and the corruption of political systems. To prevent the communist revolution from spreading throughout Latin America, in 1961 launched a program called the “Alliance for Progress”. It was a technical and economic assistance program aimed at “improving the quality of life of the inhabitants of the continent.”
Among the explicit objectives of the Alliance for Progress were establish democratic governments, eradicate illiteracy, stabilize prices, eliminate inflation and balance income redistribution. To achieve this, different economic and social planning measures were proposed, including a profound agrarian reform, the liberalization of markets, the modernization of infrastructure and the investment of private capital for the development of local industries.
In principle, the program was well received by different Latin American societies. However, it ended up failing as Kennedy's successors reoriented the fight against communism towards the formation of bilateral agreements with Latin American countries and the establishment of military pacts.
The domestic policy of John F. Kennedy
When the government took office in 1961, Kennedy promoted a domestic policy called the “New Frontier.” (which in English means “new frontier”), in which the State would invest in education, health and social welfare. He proposed specific aid measures for agriculture and state investments in education. In addition, it sought to promote the rehabilitation of degraded urban areas.
Another of the most important slogans of his presidential campaign had been the promise to end racial discrimination and implement specific policies to guarantee the civil rights of the black population. Although Kennedy supported equal rights in his speech, it is often criticized that his management of social segregation was rather moderate.
Beyond these criticisms, in 1963 Kennedy sent to Congress a civil rights law that prohibited all types of racial discrimination in public institutions. When Congress paralyzed the progress of the law, a massive march was held in Washington, in which Martin Luther King (black civil rights leader) gave his well-known “I have a dream” speech (which in English means “I have a dream”).
On the economic side, he managed to get certain budget measures approved aimed at reducing taxes and creating employment incentives. These measures contributed to boost North American GDP growthwhich between 1961 and 1965 reached 4.5% annually.
Kennedy's reform program was only partially realized for different reasons. In addition to the short duration of his presidency, Kennedy should have focused his work on international political problems. and, at the same time, his domestic policy management was limited by the opposition of the most conservative sectors of the population, and of the southern Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the Senate.
The assassination of John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in the midst of his presidential mandate.. Kennedy was in Dallas, Texas, in an open car that was transporting him from the airport to the place where he was to give a speech.
The car was in a long caravan of vehicles and, in addition to Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, John Connally (the governor of Texas) and his wife were traveling in it. In another car in the motorcade were Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife Lady Bird.
In the middle of the procession three shots were heard. President John F. Kennedy was wounded in the head and throat and died almost immediately. John Connally was wounded in the shoulder. The shots had been fired from the sixth floor window of a building that was a book depository. In a few hours Lee Harvey Oswald, who was considered the author of the crime, was arrested.
Oswald was a former Marine (United States Navy soldier) who had lived in the Soviet Union for two years and married a Russian woman.
There is a controversy over who was actually responsible for Kennedy's assassination. After Kennedy's death, Johnson assumed presidential duties and created a commission to investigate the assassination of Earl Warren (Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court), known as the “Warren Commission.” The commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had been solely responsible for the assassination and had acted from his own motives.
However, the skepticism of the population was general and popular opinion was that he had been assassinated for his progressive reforms on human rights and quality of life, for which Kennedy had most often faced strong hostility in Congress.
In the face of continued popular demand, Congress created the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1976 to conduct further investigations. After three years, the committee published a final report establishing that Kennedy's assassination was carried out with more than one firearm at a time and that it was the result of a criminal conspiracy in which different organs of the US government were involved.
References
- Fusi, J.P. (2020). “John F. Kennedy.” Ideas and power: 30 biographies of the 20th century. Turner.
- Manchester, William (2023). “John F. Kennedy.” Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
- Palmowski, J. (2000). “Kennedy, John F.” A dictionary of twentieth-century world history. Oxford University Press.
- Van Dijk, R., Gray, W.G., Savranskaya, S., Suri, J., & Zhai, Q. (Eds.). (2013). “Kennedy, John F.” Encyclopedia of the Cold War. Routledge.
