Kennedy
Winn Hermanski
Election of Kennedy
Election of 1960:
NECK AND NECK
Democrat: John F Kennedy (303 Electoral Votes, 23 States, 32,220,984 popular vote, 49.7 percent of the votes)
Republican: Richard Nixon (219 Electoral Votes, 26 states, 34,108,157, 49.6 percent of the votes"
New frontier:
NECK AND NECK
Democrat: John F Kennedy (303 Electoral Votes, 23 States, 32,220,984 popular vote, 49.7 percent of the votes)
Republican: Richard Nixon (219 Electoral Votes, 26 states, 34,108,157, 49.6 percent of the votes"
New frontier:
- term used in Kennedy's presidential speech
- Said the '60s were a new frontier for space, science, problems of peace/war/ignorance/prejudice and questions regarding poverty and wealth.
- Created a new patriotic attitude
- Addressed issues with more peace than aggression
Cold War
Flexible Response:
- Massive retaliation in place beforehand
- Meant to attack military rather than civilians
- Created options other than nuclear as a response to attacks
Kennedy on Vietnam
- increased the number of advisers (troops) in South Vietnam
- created a coup against Diem in 1963
- Sent so many troops that a smooth transition into leaving the war seemed impossible
Kennedy on Cuba:
- Tried to cool the waters with the Alliance for Progress
- Called the Marshall Plan for Latin America
- He didn't interfere in the uprising at the Bay of Pigs
- The revolutionaries were ransomed for millions of dollars of US drugs and supplies
- JFK admitted he made a mistake
- Soviet ships began approaching a patrol line
- If they cross, we would be forced to attack, declaring war
- Soviets had missiles placed in Cuba, aimed at the US (Cuban Missile Crisis)
- Khrushchev agreed to take missiles out of Cuba and avoid Nuclear War.
Kennedy on the Berlin Crisis:
- Khrushchev meets with Kennedy and threatens to cut off Western access Berlin and create a treaty with East Germany
- Kennedy refuses to give in and USSR responds by building a wall dividing Berlin
- "Wall of Shame" looked like a concentration camp
Kennedy on Civil Rights
- Campaigned to black voters, but didn't follow through on promises
- Political concerns kept him from acting
- After riots, sit-ins and attacks on politicians, he was forced to join the movement
- Voter Education Project created to register blacks in the south
- MLK and JFK had a strong relationship
- He attempted to desegregate universities
- Ole Miss students attacked an black air force vet for enrolling
- 400 marshals and 3000 troops sent by JFK to allow him to enroll
- Addressed the nation on June 11, 1963 about finding a solution
- Address made in an attempt to curb violence
Assassination of JFK
- November 22, 1963 Dallas, Texas
- Drives down the road in a limo with an open top
- Dies within seconds, shot by a rifleman in the School Book Depository
- The assailant makes a run for it and is later captured in a movie theater
- Assassin captured and revealed as Lee Harvey Oswald
- Oswald defected to the USSR after serving in the US army
- He is said to be a communist
- Oswald is shot down as well while swarmed by news crews on the way downtown
- LBJ is sworn into office on Air Force One and takes over as president
- There are several conspiracies surrounding the death of JFK