...John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly known by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until he was assassinated in November 1963. After military service as commander of Motor Torpedo Boats PT-109 and PT-59 during World War II in the South Pacific, Kennedy represented Massachusetts's 11th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 as a Democrat. Thereafter, he served in the U.S. Senate from 1953 until 1960. Kennedy defeated vice president and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. At age 43, he was the youngest to have been elected to the office,[2][a] the second-youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president.[3] To date, Kennedy has been the only Roman Catholic president and the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize.[4] Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race—by initiating Project Apollo (which would culminate in the moon landing), the building of the Berlin Wall, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested that afternoon and charged with the crime that night. Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald two days later...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly Author(s): Richard Ned Lebow Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 431-458 Published by: The Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2150497 Accessed: 10/11/2008 23:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aps. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly Author(s): Richard Ned Lebow Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 431-458 Published by: The Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2150497 Accessed: 10/11/2008 23:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aps. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought the world closer than it had ever been to nuclear war. This makes the crisis one of the most essential events in international affairs history, demonstrating a great example of the realist perspectives and other important aspects of international relations. Primarily, the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis can be readily attributed to the realist perspective. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba, which was a thwarted attempt by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with assistance from United States armed forces, to oust the corrupt government of Fidel Castro. This failed operation had sent the US back into a defensive position. In former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s remarks to Kennedy he stated, “The failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do (Absher, 10).” However, not only was the US more alert; so was Cuba. Cuba had evidence that the US would try to invade once more. Thus, Castro and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev conceived the plan to strategically place nuclear missiles in Cuba to protect themselves from the US. The realist perspective, among other things, involves the pursuit of power and, more importantly, a balance of power. The Soviet Union felt that a successful American invasion of Cuba would be extremely detrimental to the global communist movement. From the Soviet perspective this...
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...these powers- such as the power of persuasion, may not be as profound as those portrayed in the media, we all acquire them. Let’s take John Fitzgerald Kennedy as an example. John F. Kennedy or “Jack”, his nickname, was an ordinary individual who made himself extraordinary. Although those who were not sentient at the time may not know him, one thing for certain is that Kennedy’s journey played an important role in the U.S History. On May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, America was yet to know that their future president was born. Being raised by a wealthy family with an active political background meant that Kennedy had no trouble being educated in elite schools such as Canterbury, Choate, Princeton and Harvard...
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...things happen and why it is important to learn about them. Although we do not have an exact answer down to an exact science, we have come to notice that past events have or may have happened has an impact on future events. Ever since the 1950’s all the way through 1990’s, numerous events have happened. Many of those events were social, economic and political related. Almost of all of these events throughout the 1950’s through the 1990’s have impacted how our world is today. Throughout the past five decades and all the historical events that have taken place has had some kind of effect on the way our world is today and future events that has yet to happen. The Korean War – 1950’s During the 1950’s significant social, economic and political events had occurred. The biggest events that happen during this time were the Korean War. The Korean War began on the early morning of June 25, 1950 and ended on July 27, 1953. The two major parties of this war were North Korea and South Korea. The Korean War started because South Korea refused to hold elections based on the wants and demands of North Korea. In the early morning hours of June 25, 1950, is when North Korea started invading South...
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...LESSON 28 - The Great Society Objectives: Identify how President Kennedy impacted American foreign policy Identify how President Kennedy brought about social change Identify how President Johnson and the Supreme Court enacted policy A New President, a New Direction As Eisenhower's second term ended, many Americans were restless. Soviet advances made many Americans feel as if the United States was losing the Cold War. Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy defeated Republican Richard Nixon, the serving Vice President, in an extremely close election. Kennedy won in 1960 because he had a well-organized campaign organization. He benefited from the first televised presidential election debates in the nation's history, in which he...
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...Contents: Introduction ……………………………………………………………………..……..3 John F. Kennedy – the background and the path to success……………………….......3 Leadership capabilities of John F. Kennedy..…………………………………….……5 1. Leadership strengths……………………………………………….………………5 2. Leadership weaknesses.……………………………………………………………6 3. Emotional intelligence .……………………………………………………………7 Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………….…7 References ………………………………………………………………………....…..8 1. Introduction This work’s aim is to show leadership capabilities of great man – John F. Kennedy. He was the 35th President of U.S.A., the youngest and very modern. After his tragic death, his legend is still alive and his influence on American life and politics was seen for a long time. This paper will provide analysis of how Kennedy’s leadership style and present how successful leader he was. 2. John F. Kennedy – the background and the path to success John F. Kennedy’s way to Presidency started in 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts, where he was born as the second son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. The Kennedy family was reach, Joseph Kennedy was successful businessman, Rose’s father, John Fitzgerald, was the mayor of Boston.(Ratma, 2002) Both Joseph and Rose expected from their children to achieve a lot, especially from sons. Parents believed that all citizens should serve their country and being politician is the most honorable way of doing that. They pay attention to...
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...order to judge whether John F. Kennedy lacked a clear policy in Vietnam we have to compare the policies of Dwight Eisenhower’s in Vietnam and John F. Kennedys policies and how it contradicted with their ideologies. The view by some historians is that The Dwight Eisenhower foreign policy was popularly known as the “New Look”. This policy aimed to maintain the American financial economy while Eisenhower was planning the Cold war and continue the containment of communism regime. Also, the “New look” policy relied heavily on nuclear weapons to stop communism. Therefore the policy was been...
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...iTHE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS Module prepared for CIAO By Richard Ned Lebow August 2000 The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is generally regarded as the most serious military confrontation of the Cold War. American destroyers deployed along a picket line to intercept Soviet ships transporting missiles and nuclear warheads to Cuba while American air, ground and naval forces prepared for air strikes against Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba and a follow-up invasion. The Strategic Air Command was put on an unprecedented state of alert – “DEFCON II,” only one step away from “war is imminent.” On Saturday morning,October 27, President Kennedy and his advisors were pessimistic about their ability to preserve the peace. Robert Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General of the U.S., had “the feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling.”1 In Moscow, the tension was “phenomenal.” On Sunday morning, General Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev and his advisors worried “that Kennedy intended to declare war, to launch an attack” against the Soviet Union.2 That same day, the two leaders reached an accommodation that, in retrospect, turned out to be one of the key turning points of the Cold War. 1 OVERVIEW The “Caribbean crisis,” as it was known in the former Soviet Union, was attributed to the Kennedy administration’s unwillingness to accept the status quo in Cuba. Unalterably...
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...1 NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND THE ESCALATION OF THE COLD WAR, 1945-1962 David Holloway, Stanford University Nuclear weapons are so central to the history of the Cold War that it can be difficult to disentangle the two. Did nuclear weapons cause the Cold War? Did they contribute to its escalation? Did they help to keep the Cold War “cold?” We should ask also how the Cold War shaped the development of atomic energy. Was the nuclear arms race a product of Cold War tension rather than its cause? The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War The nuclear age began before the Cold War. During World War II, three countries decided to build the atomic bomb: Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Britain put its own work aside and joined the Manhattan Project as a junior partner in 1943. The Soviet effort was small before August 1945. The British and American projects were driven by the fear of a German atomic bomb, but Germany decided in 1942 not to make a serious effort to build the bomb. In an extraordinary display of scientific and industrial might, the United States made two bombs ready for use by August 1945. Germany was defeated by then, but President Truman decided to use the bomb against Japan. The decision to use the atomic bomb has been a matter of intense controversy. Did Truman decide to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order, as he claimed, to end the war with Japan without further loss of American lives? Or did he drop the bombs in order to intimidate the Soviet...
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...American Civil Rights Background Timeline of events / Personalities 1860: Abraham Lincoln elected US president. * Made the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, a law which would see the release of all slaves in America. * Belief that the slaves should be freed was a key factor in sparking the American civil war. 1861: The American Civil War begins at fort Sumter. * Fought between the United States of America, who opposed slavery, and the Confederate States of America, a new nation established by seven slave states in the south. * Not the only reason for the civil war, slavery was a key issue being fought over. 1865: The 13th amendment is passed, permanently outlawing slavery. * Shortly after the surrender of all confederate forces, ending the civil war. 1866: The civil rights act is passed by Congress. * The first to define US citizenship as well as state that all citizens were protected by the law. * It is expected that the act was passed, despite being vetoed repeatedly by President Andrew Johnson, in order to protect the rights of African-Americans. 1870: The 15th amendment is passed, giving the black man the right to vote. 1875: A bi-racial senate and House of Representatives passes the civil rights act. * Designed to protect all Americans in their access to accommodations and facilities such as restaurants. * Never enforced and was deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme court in 1883 1896: The Supreme Court introduces...
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... BERNATH LECTURE The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms* The Cold War is not what it once was. Not only has the conflict itself been written about in the past tense for more than a decade, but historians’ certainties about the character of the conflict have also begun to blur. The concerns brought on by trends of the past decade – such trifles as globalization, weapons proliferation, and ethnic warfare – have made even old strategy buffs question the degree to which the Cold War ought to be put at the center of the history of the late twentieth century. In this article I will try to show how some people within our field are attempting to meet such queries by reconceptualizing the Cold War as part of contemporary international history. My emphasis will be on issues connecting the Cold War – defined as a political conflict between two power blocs – and some areas of investigation that in my opinion hold much promise for reformulating our views of that conflict, blithely summed up as ideology, technology, and the Third World. I have called this lecture “Three (Possible) Paradigms” not just to avoid making too presumptuous an impression on the audience but also to indicate that my use of the term “paradigm” is slightly different from the one most people have taken over from Thomas Kuhn’s work on scientific revolutions. In the history of science, a paradigm has come to mean a comprehensive explanation, a kind of scientific “level”...
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...The Magnificent Seven, the 1960 remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai – a movie itself indebted to the American western – by John Sturges is a prime example of this trend. A group of American outlaws (in Kurosawa’s original version the men were rōnin, masterless samurai who were likewise treading their lives outside of the respectable social order) come to help a Mexican village that is being periodically raided by a group of bandits. The men agree to defend the village despite the poor pay and being hopelessly outnumbered, and in the end most of them will get killed when doing so. However, at least initially it is not a question of honour or “doing the right thing” for the seven gunfighters. They all have divergent, mostly selfish reasons for taking up the job, but eventually come to appreciate each other, if not the villagers they are defending. The Magnificent Seven...
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...Civil rights Movement Truman Harry Truman is not a name usually associated with America's Civil Rights movement if only because the main 'points' happened after his presidency - Montgomery, Little Rock, Birmingham, the careers of Martin Luther Kingand Stokely Carmichael. However, some very important civil rights issues were covered in his presidency. Truman’s ancestors had owned slaves. His first recollection of African Americans was a household servants within his family - and he did not come from a prosperous family. While he was dating his future wife Bess, she claimed that he told her that he felt that one person was as good as any other as long as they were not black. He also criticised the Chinese in America, the Jews - to whom he referred to as "Kikes" and the Italians in America who he called "wops". Hence, Truman’s background produced what one would have expected and the young Truman would have had the same views as most other youths in Independence. When he got involved in politics at an early age, he did what any aspiring politician did in the South, he paid $10 to join the KKK. Public office changed Truman. Why? Did he feel that America could not claim to be the democratic capital of the world while African Americans were treated thus? Or were his motives political? The African American population was big enough to have some political clout. Was he out to fish for their votes with his adoption of the civil rights cause? Truman and civil rights legislation: Before...
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