John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, known widely as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, he came of age in a family already tied closely to public life. He became the youngest person elected president, at 43, and the first Catholic president. A Democrat from Massachusetts, he had represented the state in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate before winning the presidency in 1960.

Kennedy was shaped early by ambition, politics, and the expectations of a large and prominent family. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was a businessman and politician who encouraged political discussion at the dinner table and demanded high academic achievement. His mother, Rose Kennedy, was a philanthropist and socialite. All four of his grandparents were children of Irish immigrants, and both sides of the family had links to Boston politics. His maternal grandfather and namesake, John F. Fitzgerald, had been a U.S. congressman and two-term mayor of Boston, and Kennedy’s first exposure to politics came in 1922 when he toured Boston wards with Fitzgerald during a gubernatorial campaign.

After attending Choate and studying at Harvard University, Kennedy graduated in 1940 and joined the U.S. Naval Reserve the following year. During World War II, he commanded PT boats in the Pacific theater. His survival after the sinking of PT-109, and his rescue of fellow sailors, made him a war hero and earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, though the experience left him with serious injuries. After a brief period in journalism, he entered elected office, representing a working-class Boston district in the House from 1947 to 1953. He then served as junior senator from Massachusetts from 1953 to 1960. While in the Senate, he published Profiles in Courage, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign gained momentum after the first televised presidential debates in American history. He narrowly defeated Republican Richard Nixon, then the incumbent vice president. His presidency took place at the height of the Cold War, and much of his foreign policy centered on the Soviet Union and Cuba. He authorized the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and Operation Mongoose, faced the Cuban Missile Crisis after Soviet missile bases were discovered in Cuba, and in 1963 signed the first nuclear weapons treaty. He also sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners after the Berlin Wall was erected and later delivered one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin.

At home and abroad, Kennedy presided over the creation of the Peace Corps, the Alliance for Progress with Latin America, and the continuation of the Apollo program with the goal of landing a man on the Moon before 1970. He supported the civil rights movement, though he was only somewhat successful in passing his New Frontier domestic policies during his lifetime. After his death, Congress enacted many of his proposals, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Revenue Act of 1964.

Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the assassination, then shot and killed by Jack Ruby two days later. The FBI and the Warren Commission both concluded that Oswald had acted alone, though conspiracy theories have persisted. Kennedy’s words still attract readers because they come from a life lived under pressure: war, illness, politics, and nuclear danger. A line such as “Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try” fits the public image of a leader who asked for action in a tense age.