Kennedy
By Paul Zaidins
Election
- Democrat John F Kennedy versus Republican Richard Nixon
- Vice president was Lyndon B Johnson
- Seen as too young
- Nation weary of a Catholic president
- Was not very critical of McCarthy
- Had little experience in internal affairs
- Took advantage of new media more than Nixon
- Television appearances helped push him above Nixon in the vote
Cold War
- Authorized the Berlin Airdrop when the Soviet's cut off Berlin from the west
- USSR began construction of Berlin Wall in August 1961
- Authorized the Trade Expansion Act and the Kennedy Round tariff negotiations to help the new Common Market (now European Union)
- Charles de Gaule of France was suspicious of US and built up independent nuclear arsenal and vetoed British addition to Common Market
- Advocated for diversified military or flexible response against any level of Soviet threat in response to brushfire wars
- Kennedy ordered additional "military advisors" (troops) into Vietnam, but also sponsored coup against autocratic Diem government
- Attempted to preserve pro-American governments in South America with the Alliance for Progress
- Sent armed Cuban exhales back to Cuba to over throw Castro, but the forced were overwhelmed at the Bay of Pigs with out direct US help
- Bay of Pigs survivors eventually ransomed for humanitarian supplies
- Khrushchev began to send nuclear warheads to cuba has a deterrent to US missiles in Europe, especially Turkey
- US would blockade Cuba in response
- Soviet ships were sent to continue sending warheads into Cuba creating a possibility for war and the Cuban Missile Crisis
- Both parties would eventually give in to each others demands and remove warheads near each others' borders
- Anti-nuclear testing pact signed by US and USSR in late 1963
- Kennedy then began the policy of detente or relaxation in the Cold War
Civil Rights
- Mocked for reluctance to fulfill campaign promises for Civil Rights
- Freedom Riders formed from sit-in movement to end segregation on inter-state buses
- Joined with Martin Luther King Jr, but weary of his radical (communist) associates
- Helped to bring vote to the blacks through SNCC and Voter Education Project
- When James Meredith attempted to go to the University of Mississippi, Kennedy had to send 3,400 armed men to prevent violence
- Kennedy called for equal rights legislation, but would be assassinated before his bill passed
Assassination
- November 22, 1963
- Dallas, Texas
- Shot in head while riding in open-air limousine by Lee Harvey Oswald
- Oswald later killed on television by Jack Ruby
- Gigantic investigation headed on the matter by Chief Justice Warren
- Lyndon B Johnson sworn in as president