🚀John F. Kennedy

35th President · 1961–1963

John F. Kennedy was the youngest president ever elected, the first Catholic to hold the office, and the fourth to be assassinated. In a presidency of barely 1,000 days, he guided the nation through the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War, founded the Peace Corps, and committed the United States to landing a man on the Moon before the end of the decade — a promise that was kept in July 1969.

Boston, Harvard, and PT-109

Kennedy was born into one of the wealthiest and most politically ambitious Irish-American families in the country. His father Joseph P. Kennedy had served as U.S. Ambassador to Britain and expected great things from his sons. After Harvard, John enlisted in the Navy during World War II and commanded a patrol torpedo boat in the Pacific. In August 1943, PT-109 was rammed by a Japanese destroyer in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy's leadership in saving his surviving crew — swimming miles with the injured, finding rescue — became the foundation of his later political image.

Congressman, Senator, President

Kennedy represented Boston in the U.S. House (1947–1953) and Massachusetts in the Senate (1953–1961). He won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957 for Profiles in Courage, and in 1960 he narrowly defeated Vice President Richard Nixon in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century. The first televised presidential debates, held in the fall of 1960, are widely believed to have tipped the race — viewers on television scored them for the handsome, tanned Kennedy, while radio listeners gave the edge to Nixon.

Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Kennedy inherited a CIA plan — developed under Eisenhower — to land Cuban exiles on the south coast of Cuba and topple Fidel Castro. The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 was a humiliating failure. Eighteen months later, in October 1962, U.S. surveillance aircraft discovered Soviet nuclear missiles being installed in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to nuclear war than any event before or since. For thirteen days, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev negotiated publicly and privately until the Soviets agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba and, secretly, the removal of American missiles from Turkey.

The Moon Pledge

Speaking to a joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961 — just weeks after the Bay of Pigs and just after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space — Kennedy committed the United States to "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before the decade ended. NASA's budget grew fivefold over the next three years. Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, with six months to spare.

Civil Rights and Vietnam

Kennedy was initially cautious on civil rights but grew more committed as the movement pressed forward. On June 11, 1963 — after a confrontation over integration of the University of Alabama — he delivered a televised address calling civil rights "a moral issue" and submitted the legislation that became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, signed after his death. He also began committing U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam, a commitment his successor Lyndon Johnson would dramatically escalate.

Dallas

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas, during a presidential motorcade through downtown. He was pronounced dead at Parkland Memorial Hospital at 1:00 p.m. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One two hours later, with Kennedy's widow Jacqueline standing beside him, still wearing her blood-stained pink suit. The accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby while in police custody.

Kennedy Trivia

• At 43, Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected president. Theodore Roosevelt was younger when he took office, but Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency; he was not elected to it.
• He founded the Peace Corps by executive order in March 1961.
• His inaugural address — "Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country" — is among the most quoted in American history.
• The Kennedy Space Center in Florida was renamed in his honor one week after his death.
• His brother Robert F. Kennedy was serving as U.S. Attorney General at the time of the assassination. Robert was himself assassinated in 1968.

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