John

Fitzgerald
Kennedy

EARLY LIFE
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29th 1917
at Brookline (Massachusetts). His father Joseph
Kennedy was an ambitious politician, who became from
son of a pubkeeper to a millionaire. He married the
daughter of the mayor of Boston, Rose Fitzgerald. John
F. was their second son.
Kennedy studied at Harvard and after he had finished,
he also had to serve in the war. As lieutenant of the PT
109 he once was shipwrecked, but he survived and
because of his heroism he saved the lives of his crew.

PRESIDENT OF USA

In 1952 he became senator of Massachusetts. In

1956 he almost became running mate of Adlai
Stevenson, but lost to Estes Kefauver of Tennessee:
anyway, they lost the elections. In 1958 he won
reelection in Massachusetts by 875,000 votes, the
largest majority in the state's history.
He was elected for president in November 1960,
after a less than easy election contest. He defeated
Richard Nixon and became the youngest (43) to be
elected to the White House in American history 'till
then. In contrast to Al Smith in 1928 (first Catholic
presidential candidate) Kennedy was elected
despite of being Catholic.
The 35th, first Catholic, president ended his
inaugural address on January 20th in 1961 with the
following words:

"My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what

America will do for you, but what together we can

do for the freedom of man" .

THE CUBAN MISSILE

CRISES
During his presidency he passed two crises which
had to do with Cuba. The first in April 1961, at the Bay
of Pigs, was an assault on Cuba. It was a plan developed
by the CIA under the Eisenhower Administration.
Castro's troops quickly defeated the landing attempt. It
was a failure for the Kennedy Administration, which can
be explained by poor advice he had received from the
military, the CIA, and from many liberals.
The Cuba crisis in 1962 is a much more complicated
crisis, caused by placing of intermediate range
missiles in Cuba by the Russians. When Kennedy
found out, the world was close to nuclear war in
October 1962, because Kennedy's military
consultants recommended an immediate air strike.
But Kennedy's brother, the military and attorney
general Robert Kennedy disagreed, because the US
would act like Japan with Pearl Harbor and loose its
faith. The president instituted a naval blockade
against Russian ships and demanded removal of the

missiles. After about a week the Russians agreed

and Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba.

CIVIL RIGHTS
Throughout JFK's presidency, civil rights advocates
struggled to effect change in the racially segregated
South, where whites controlled state governments and
denied African-Americans basic rights. Although
Kennedy opposed segregation and had shown some
support for the civil rights movement , he did not make
civil rights a major priority of his presidency until his
last months as commander-in-chief.Kennedy had to deal
with a lot of resistance and most of his bills were
rejected. He had plans to improve the social policy, but
only under his successor Johnson most of Kennedy's
ideas were accepted by Congress.

DEATH
On 22 November 1963 Kennedy visited Dallas with his
wife Jackie. He was shot during a riding tour in an open
limousine and died after about half an hour. According
to the official Warren-report, Lee Harvey Oswald killed
the president, but there is serious doubt about this
because of many strange things. For example the dying
of many witnesses, the killing of Oswald and the
problem of how one bullet could have killed the
president and also hit the Governor of Texas: the
problem of the miracle bullet.
The sad fact is that John F. Kennedy was just forty six
years old and left a wife and two children.