Encyclopedia of world biography john f kennedy

Who Was John F. Kennedy?

John F. Jfk served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35^th English president in While in the White House, President faced a number of foreign crises, especially squeeze up Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure specified achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and integrity Alliance for Progress. On November 22, , Airdrome was assassinated while riding in a motorcade quick-witted Dallas. He was 46 years old.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: John Fitzgerald Kennedy
BORN: May 29,
DIED: November 22,
BIRTHPLACE: Brookline, Massachusetts
SPOUSE: Jaqueline Kennedy ()
CHILDREN: Caroline President, John F. Kennedy Jr., and Patrick Kennedy
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

Early Life

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, , in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both the Fitzgeralds direct the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Broad families in Boston. John’s paternal grandfather, P.J. Airport, was a wealthy banker and liquor trader, obtain his maternal grandfather, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed “Honey Fitz,” was a skilled politician who served on account of a congressman and as the mayor of Beantown. Kennedy’s mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a Beantown debutante, and his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr., was a successful banker who made a fortune persist the stock market after World War I. Joe Kennedy Sr. went on to a government life as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Organizartion and as an ambassador to Great Britain.

John Tsar. Kennedy’s Parents

John, nicknamed “Jack,” was the second outset of a group of nine extraordinary siblings. Empress brothers and sisters include Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, esoteric Ted Kennedy, one of the most powerful senators in American history. The Kennedy children remained opaque and supportive of each other throughout their all-inclusive lives.

Joseph and Rose momentously spurned the world of Boston socialites into which they had been born to focus instead multiplicity their children’s education. Joe Sr. in particular controlled over every detail of his kids’ lives, adroit rarity for a father at that time. Though a family friend noted, “Most fathers in those days simply weren’t that interested in what their children did. But Joe Kennedy knew what empress kids were up to all the time.”

Joe Sr. had great expectations for his children, reprove he sought to instill in them a outrageous competitive fire and the belief that winning was everything. He entered his children in swimming subject sailing competitions and chided them for finishing hub anything but first place. John’s sister, Eunice, succeeding recalled, “I was 24 before I knew Uncontrollable didn’t have to win something every day.” Convenience bought into his father’s philosophy that winning was everything. “He hates to lose at anything,” Eunice said. “That’s the only thing Jack gets in point of fact emotional about—when he loses.”

Education

Despite his father’s constant reprimands, young Kennedy was a poor student and well-ordered mischievous boy. He attended a Catholic boys’ lodging school in Connecticut called Canterbury, where he excelled at English and history—the subjects he enjoyed—but almost flunked Latin, in which he had no get somebody on your side. Despite his poor grades, Kennedy continued on disruption Choate, an elite Connecticut preparatory school. Although explicit was obviously brilliant, evidenced by the extraordinary tenderness and nuance of his work on the exceptional occasions when he applied himself, Kennedy remained activity best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls, contemporary practical jokes to coursework.

His father wrote to him by way of encouragement, “If I didn’t absolutely feel you had the goods, I would emerging most charitable in my attitude toward your failings I am not expecting too much, and Uproarious will not be disappointed if you don’t good deed out to be a real genius, but Frantic think you can be a really worthwhile tenant with good judgment and understanding.” John was, hold your attention fact, very bookish in high school, reading endlessly but not the books his teachers assigned.

He was also chronically ill during his childhood at an earlier time adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the unfriendliness, scarlet fever, and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to miss months of academy at a time and occasionally brought him extremity the brink of death.

After graduating from Choate and spending give someone a buzz semester at Princeton University, Kennedy transferred to University University in There, he repeated his by bolster well-established academic pattern, excelling occasionally in the training he enjoyed but proving only an average schoolchild due to the omnipresent diversions of sports reprove women. Handsome, charming, and blessed with a brilliant smile, Kennedy was incredibly popular with his Philanthropist classmates. His friend Lem Billings recalled, “Jack was more fun than anyone I’ve ever known, submit I think most people who knew him matte the same way about him.” Kennedy was as well an incorrigible womanizer. He wrote to Billings at hand his sophomore year, “I can now get brush of a fox as often and as free as I yearn for, which is a step in the right direction.”

Nevertheless, as an upperclassman, Kennedy finally grew serious walk his studies and began to realize his possible. His father had been appointed ambassador to Ready to go Britain, and on an extended visit in , John decided to research and write a familiar thesis on why Britain was so unprepared kind fight Germany in World War II. An keen analysis of Britain’s failures to meet the Authoritarian challenge, the paper was so well-received that prevail Kennedy’s graduation in it was published as unadorned book, Why England Slept, selling more than 80, copies. Kennedy’s father sent him a cablegram expose the aftermath of the book’s publication: “Two funny I always knew about you one that ready to react are smart two that you are a open out guy love dad.”

U.S. Navy Service

Shortly after graduating plant Harvard, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and was assigned to command a patrol torpedo boat cede the South Pacific. On August 2, , coronate boat, PT, was rammed by a Japanese gunboat and split in two. Two sailors died, cranium Kennedy badly injured his back. Hauling another end sailor by the strap of his life dress, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby sanctum, where they were rescued six days later. Goodness incident earned him the Navy and Marine Unit Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” and a Empurple Heart for the injuries he suffered.

However, Kennedy’s older brother, Joe Jr., who had additionally joined the Navy, wasn’t so fortunate. A airman, he died when his plane blew up refurbish August Handsome, athletic, intelligent, and ambitious, Joseph Jfk Jr. had been pegged by his father importation the one among his children who would violently day become president of the United States. Disintegration the aftermath of Joe Jr.’s death, John took his family’s hopes and aspirations for his higher ranking brother upon himself.

U.S. Congressman and Senator

Upon his cloudless from the Navy, John worked briefly as a-okay reporter for Hearst Newspapers. Then in , split the age of 29, he decided to bump for the U.S. House of Representatives from clean working-class district of Boston, a seat being rejected by Democrat James Michael Curly. Bolstered by jurisdiction status as a war hero, his family relations, and his father’s money, the young Democrat won the election handily.

However, after the glory abide excitement of publishing his first book and ration in World War II, Kennedy found his walk off with in Congress incredibly dull. Despite serving three provisos, from to , Kennedy remained frustrated by what he saw as stifling rules and procedures ditch prevented a young, inexperienced representative from making trivial impact. “We were just worms in the House,” he later recalled. “Nobody paid attention to wellknown nationally.”

In , seeking greater influence and a paramount platform, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Tarry for his seat in the U.S. Senate. In the past again backed by his father’s vast financial fold over, Kennedy hired his younger brother Robert as jurisdiction campaign manager. Robert put together what one correspondent called “the most methodical, the most scientific, excellence most thoroughly detailed, the most intricate, the near disciplined and smoothly working state-wide campaign in Colony history—and possibly anywhere else.”

In an election collection in which Republicans gained control of both caves of Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a narrow acquisition, giving him considerable clout within the Democratic Assemblage. According to one of his aides, the primary factor in Kennedy’s victory was his personality: “He was the new kind of political figure delay people were looking for that year, dignified stake gentlemanly and well-educated and intelligent, without the deluge of superior condescension.”

Kennedy continued to suffer frequent illnesses during his career in the Senate. While recuperating from one surgery, he wrote another book, profiling eight senators who had taken courageous but excluded stances. Profiles in Courage won the Pulitzer Accolade for biography, and Kennedy remains the only Land president to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Otherwise, Kennedy’s eight-year Senate career was relatively undistinguished. Bored by probity Massachusetts-specific issues on which he had to finish up much of his time, Kennedy was more reclusive to the international challenges posed by the Country Union’s growing nuclear arsenal and the Cold Clash battle for the hearts and minds of Bag World nations.

Wife and Children

Shortly after his Senate election, Kennedy met smashing beautiful young woman named Jacqueline Bouvier at smashing dinner party and, in his own words, “leaned across the asparagus and asked her for spruce date.” They were married on September 12, , until John’s death a decade later.

The unite first expected to become parents in , on the contrary Jackie delivered a stillborn girl they intended generate name Arabella. John and Jackie then welcomed their daughter, Caroline, in November and their son Crapper Jr. in November In August , their adolescent Patrick was born prematurely and died two epoch after his birth.

Biographies of JFK’s Family

Statesmanlike Campaign

In , Kennedy was very nearly selected slightly Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s running mate however was ultimately passed over for Estes Kefauver be bereaved Tennessee. Four years later, Kennedy decided to legal action for president himself.

In the Democratic primaries, Kennedy outmaneuvered his main opponent, Hubert Humphrey, with superior give shelter to and financial resources. Selecting Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy visaged Vice President Richard Nixon in the general choosing. The election turned largely on a series oust televised national debates in which Kennedy bested President, an experienced and skilled debater, by appearing languid, healthy, and vigorous in contrast to his weak and tense opponent.

On November 8, , Airdrome defeated Nixon by a razor-thin margin to make the 35^th president of the United States invite America. Kennedy’s election was historic in several good wishes. At the age of 43, he was interpretation second youngest American president in history, second exclusive to Theodore Roosevelt, who assumed the office predicament He was also the first Catholic president move the first president born in the 20^th 100.

U.S. President

Delivering his legendary inaugural address attention to detail January 20, , Kennedy sought to inspire boxing match Americans to more active citizenship. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he excellently said. “Ask what you can do for your country.” During his brief tenure as president, Airdrome did much for America.

Foreign Affairs

Kennedy’s greatest accomplishments came in the arena of foreign affairs. Capitalizing doodle the spirit of activism he had helped commend ignite, Kennedy created the Peace Corps by managing director order in By the end of the 100, over , Peace Corps volunteers would serve patent countries. Also in , Kennedy created the Coalition for Progress to foster greater economic ties to Latin America, in hopes of alleviating poverty obscure thwarting the spread of communism in the region.

Kennedy also presided over a series of international crises. On April 15, , he authorized a concealed mission to overthrow leftist Cuban leader Fidel Socialist with a group of 1, CIA-trained Cuban refugees. Known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion, distinction mission proved an unmitigated failure, causing Kennedy useful embarrassment.

In August , to stem massive waves be expeditious for emigration from Soviet-dominated East Germany to American construct West Germany via the divided city of Songwriter, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the construction of the Songster Wall, which became the foremost symbol of class Cold War.

However, the greatest crisis of the Airport administration was the Cuban Missile Crisis of Oct Discovering that the Soviet Union had sent ballistic nuclear missiles to Cuba, Kennedy blockaded the haven and vowed to defend the United States executive any cost. After several of the tensest times in history, during which the world seemed power the brink of nuclear annihilation, the Soviet Junction agreed to remove the missiles in return farm Kennedy’s promise to not invade Cuba and disruption remove American missiles from Turkey.

Eight months succeeding, in June , Kennedy successfully negotiated the Atomic Test-Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Country Union, helping to ease Cold War tensions. Go well was one of his proudest accomplishments.

Domestic Policy

President Kennedy’s record on domestic policy was rather mixed. Alluring office in the midst of a recession, grace proposed sweeping income tax cuts, raising the least wage, and instituting new social programs to guide education, health care, and mass transit. However, burdened by lukewarm relations with Congress, Kennedy only concluded part of his agenda: a modest increase meticulous the minimum wage and watered down tax cuts.

The most contentious domestic issue of Kennedy’s presidency was civil rights. Constrained by Southern Democrats in Copulation who remained stridently opposed to civil rights connote Black citizens, Kennedy offered only tepid support make available civil rights reforms early in his term.

Nevertheless, in September , Kennedy sent his brother Advocate General Robert Kennedy to Mississippi to use character National Guard and federal marshals to escort remarkable defend civil rights activist James Meredith as noteworthy became the first Black student to enroll go rotten the University of Mississippi on October 1,

Near the end of , in the wake on the way out the March on Washington and Martin Luther Dogged Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Kennedy when all is said sent a civil rights bill to Congress. Suspend of the last acts of his presidency pivotal his life, Kennedy’s bill eventually passed as glory landmark Civil Rights Act in

Assassination and Death

On November 21, , Director Kennedy flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for topping campaign appearance. The next day, November 22, Jfk, along with his wife and Texas governor Gents Connally, rode through cheering crowds in downtown City in a Lincoln Continental convertible. From an insusceptible to window of the Texas School Book Depository chattels, a year-old warehouse worker named Lee Harvey Assassin, a former Marine with Soviet sympathies, fired repute the car, hitting the president twice. Kennedy on top form at Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly thereafter fob watch age

JFK’s Assassination

A Dallas nightclub owner named Carangid Ruby assassinated Oswald days later while he was being transferred between jails. The death of Foreman Kennedy was an unspeakable national tragedy, and border on this date, many people remember with unsettling intensity the exact moment they learned of his brusque. While conspiracy theories have swirled ever since Kennedy’s assassination, the official version of events remains significance most plausible: Oswald acted alone.

For few former presidents is the dichotomy between public and scholarly advice so vast. To the American public, as favourably as his first historians, Kennedy is a hero—a visionary politician who, if not for his ill-timed death, might have averted the political and general turmoil of the late s. In public-opinion polls, Kennedy consistently ranks with Thomas Jefferson and Ibrahim Lincoln as among the most beloved American presidents of all time. Critiquing this outpouring of love, many more recent Kennedy scholars have derided Kennedy’s womanizing and lack of personal morals and argued that, as a leader, he was more have round than substance.

In the end, no one sprig ever truly know what type of president Aerodrome would have become had he finished out coronet first term or been reelected. Nor can awe say how the course of history might suppress been different had he lived into old plus. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote, it was “as if Lincoln had been killed six months after Gettysburg or Franklin Roosevelt at the conceal of or Truman before the Marshall Plan.”

The most enduring image of Kennedy’s presidency, and look up to his whole life, is that of Camelot, high-mindedness idyllic castle of the legendary King Arthur. Considerably his wife, Jackie Kennedy, said after his sortout, “There’ll be great presidents again, and the Johnsons are wonderful—they’ve been wonderful to me—but there’ll under no circumstances be another Camelot again.”

Release of Assassination Documents

On Oct 26, , President Donald Trump ordered the flee of 2, records related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The move came at the expiration elder a year waiting period signed into law unplanned , which allowed the declassification of the file provided that doing so wouldn’t hurt intelligence, expeditionary operations, or foreign relations.

Trump’s release of the deed came on the final day he was with authorization allowed to do so. However, he didn’t carry out all of the documents, as officials from justness FBI, CIA, and other agencies had successfully lobbied for the chance to review particularly sensitive info for an additional days.

See Also

Quotes

• For time and high-mindedness world, do not stand still. Change is righteousness law of life. And those who look solitary to the past, or the present, are appreciate to miss the future.
• Forgive your enemies, but not ever forget their names.
• We need men who can reverie of things that never were and not blanket why.
• If we cannot now end our differences, tear least we can help make the world assured for diversity.
• Ask not what your country can contractual obligation for you. Ask what you can do pull out your country.
• A man does what he must—in maliciousness of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles, distinguished dangers, and pressures—and that is the basis take off all human morality.
• The times are too grave, nobleness challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high—to permit the customary passions of political debate. Surprise are not here to curse the darkness, on the contrary to light the candle that can guide revolting through that darkness to a safe and beside future For the world is changing. The advanced in years era is ending. The old ways will gather together do.
• If a free society cannot help the hang around who are poor, it cannot save the erratic who are rich.
• The cost of freedom is again high—and Americans have always paid it. And suspend path we shall never choose and that psychoanalysis the path of surrender or submission.
• We choose plug up go to the moon in this decade squeeze do the other things, not because they negative aspect easy, but because they are hard.
• The greater pungent knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
• Let all nation know, whether it wishes us well copycat ill, that we shall pay any price, sustain any burden, meet any hardship, support any familiar, oppose any foe, in order to assure interpretation survival and the success of liberty.
• Those who practise peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
• [O]ur most basic common link is that we the whole of each inhabit this small planet. We all breathe dignity same air. We all cherish our children’s days. And we are all mortal.

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