Biography of John Kennedy | One of the most remembered American politicians of the second half of the 20th century.

Never enlightened murder of the young US President cut short the beginning of a period of renewal and hope.
Character fascinating and contradictory, John F. Kennedy is one of the most remembered American politicians of the second half of the 20th century. After becoming the first Catholic who entered the United States presidency, he promoted a policy of reforms designed to recover the primacy global, put in doubt for their country by Soviet space successes. His political projects were truncated by his murder in 1963, an assassination whose mobile never have been fully clarified and which has resulted in multiple guesses. The premature death of the President (whose family has been surrounded by an aura of inevitability, because several of its members died in tragic circumstances) contributed to give your figure a mythical character.

John Kennedy
The American history of the Kennedy clan dates back to 1848, when an Irishman named Patrick Kennedy of the United States came to the promising land and was established as a Cooper. One of his grandsons, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, took over more than half a century after the discreet heritage gathered by his grandfather and his father and built with one of the largest fortunes in North America.

A powerful clan

Since childhood, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, familiarly called Joe, showed a great aptitude for business and a strong desire to thrive. Married to Rose, a young enterprising daughter of John Fitzgerald, former Mayor of Boston, began to knead his heritage in this city, cementing the administration of housing, speculation in stock market and the film industry. Joe was cunning, cold and extremely intelligent for matters of money; as he had helped Roosevelt during his presidential campaign, he got during the dry law a special permit importation of spirits for "therapeutic purposes"; when its warehouses were full, the law was repealed and Joe could dispense all liquor purchased low-priced as if it were gold. At the outset of the economic crisis of 1929, it was the few who left afloat, and could even earn some profits.
One of his sons, named John Fitzgerald as his maternal grandfather, he was born on May 29, 1917 in Brookline (Massachusetts). John was the second brother of a long offspring consisting of Joe, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice, Pat, Jean, Bobby and Teddy. In order to prepare them since the earliest childhood to become true Kennedy, the father was commissioned to promote all of them a firm discipline and a healthy spirit of competition: "I don't care what you do in life, but you do what you do, be the best in the world." If you have itching stone, be the best stonemasons of the world."
For John, it was soon clear that he had nothing to cope with his brother Joe, a muscular, intelligent boy, bright verb and great personal magnetism. On the contrary, he was rather shy, introverted and weakling. While he was studying at the Canterbury School in Connecticut and then at Harvard University, the shadow of Joe, "the favorite", planned continuously on the consciousness of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. At the same time that his brother harvested academic success in Great Britain, he contracted hepatitis and was forced to interrupt his studies during long periods of time. Eventually recover, but despite their efforts to highlight, never got too many successes in the classroom. At Harvard he only received outstanding ratings in the final stage of his career and only in economics and political science. Sport managed to interest you more than these intellectual disciplines and in no time he was attracted by the political race, which seemed to be intended for his older brother.
In 1932, when Franklin D. Roosevelt was presented to the presidential elections, his father resolved his campaign decided to try his luck in his political career. It got to be Chairman of the federal Committee of the Merchant Navy, and later, in 1937, he was appointed Ambassador in Great Britain. That descendant of immigrants, fervent Catholic and always ambitious, had made a huge fortune and now also triumphed in the scope of the policy. His two eldest sons accompanied him to Europe as Adjutant and John was able to travel to the USSR, Turkey, Poland, South America and other regions, whose situation promptly informed the Patriarch of the family.
It was as a result of this tour when John began to be seriously interested in politics. Back to the United States he turned in his studies and attained their academic qualifications to improve considerably. He became interested in the various conflicts that would lead to the second war world, and especially by the attitude of Great Britain regarding Europe. The subject of his thesis, emerged from all those notes Why England slept (why England slept), title taken from the speeches of Churchill and earned him a graduation magna cum laude in June 1940. Later he published the book which summarized this research, and came to sell 80,000 copies.

Commander in the second world war

Since the second world war, the optimistic life of the Kennedy suffered a strong turnaround. The isolationist position of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and his lack of cooperation with the British Government forced him to leave the Embassy. Their sympathies by general Franco were well known for, and back to Boston a deserved reputation of anti-Semite earned by their animosity toward many European Jewish refugees in their homeland.
At the beginning of the second world war, his brother Joe enlisted in the aviation and he wanted to join the Navy, which had to overcome medical barriers arising from an injury on his back which had suffered from child. It was twenty-five when he received the appointment of Commander of a torpedo boat operating in the Pacific.

A young Kennedy in Navy uniform
The two officers and 10 soldiers under his command shared with him many successes fighting the Japanese. But on August 2, 1943, while he was serving a mission for which had offered voluntary, a Japanese destroyer approached them in the middle of the night and departed the patrol boat in half. Several crew members died in the crash. The survivors remained adrift for fifteen hours and John behaved commendably dragging down to the coast to one of his soldiers wounded in the legs. Although there is who has attributed the accident to a recklessness of John, the truth is that the young Commander Kennedy was considered a war hero.
Convalescence was long. His back injury had worsened and John thought that his battered appearance was not for too many dreams of political glory. However, destiny came out to meet: his brother Joe died on 12 August 1944 in a plane crash, as he tried to destroy V-1 and V-2 flying bombs German bases. The Patriarch turned their eyes toward him and decided it to occupy the vacancy of Joe in the fight to conquer the Presidency of the United States.
In 1945, when John was working as a correspondent in the «Empire» Hearst and had already covered several international conferences, Joseph Patrick Kennedy expressed his desire that it took the position that Joe and is devoted to politics. John had to learn how to master his shyness and his shyness to become a professional politician. Shake the hands of strangers, smile to journalists and have always on the lips a more or less ingenious phrase for them began to be your daily bread. His wide smile, his aspect of child and their melancholy eyes soon found adherents in the heart of the Democratic Party and among voters, fascinated by his youth and his image of bright and honored University. After an exhaustive campaign that was always supported economic and doctrinally by his family, John Kennedy managed to turn in Deputy of the Democratic Party by Boston in the House of representatives in 1946 and held his seat in the elections of 1948 and 1950.

A brilliant political career

John quickly was a landmark on the American political scene. Its legislative action, however, was discreet. It was characterized, first, by a retroactive Roosevelt Government disapproval and the presentation of several projects of social content, rejected in the majority of cases. The highlight of this first phase of his political life was its free support to all international aid: the loan granted to Great Britain, aid to Greece and Turkey, the Marshall Plan and other related measures. In 1949 it surprised with a hostile speech US policy carried out in China, which, he said, the United States had lost the possibility of getting a non-Communist China. The critical tone in official policy and anti-Communist cruelty showing resembled that, a year later, would employ the Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.

Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention of 1958
In April 1952, at age thirty-five, his father urged him presented to Senator for the State of Massachusetts. New clan embarked on a frantic activity: was played the position to Henry Cabot Lodge, who held it since 1935. They ran rivers of ink and dollars. His images sheathed State. Television broadcast every night "Coffee in the Kennedy House", where it was the union and the force of the clan, peace and the elegance of the home. Held banquets in Palm Beach and Hyannis Port, two strengths of Florida; millions of custom Christmas cards saturated the post; and their works of charity (especially grants to centers of mentally deficient, in one of which his sister Rosemary was hospitalized) did not let in the newspapers.
One of those banquets invited the reporter for a newspaper in Washington that he had met a year earlier: Jacqueline Lee Bouvier. Jacqueline soon fall in love with the aspirant Senator and his family, because he combined perfectly its beauty with their language knowledge (spoke several languages), and the charm of its French origins with the dowry of his father, famous New York financial. The wedding was held in Boston on September 12, 1953; thousand two hundred guests, who were queued to greet Jack and Jackie was attended by. Jacqueline Kennedy became from that day in one of the best advantages of the future President.

John Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier's wedding
In October 1954, John Kennedy was forced to move away from political life. Old ailment of the back, which had already been spoken, escalated, and the use of crutches (hidden in the car during their campaigns) became increasingly necessary. It had to be operated to join their disoriented vertebrae. After the operation, it detained in Hyannis Port with considerable historical documentation of the files of the Senate, and devoted his time to writing a new book, profiles in courage. The work contained eight portraits of American political characters of the 19th century and was released a year later with success of public and critics. In 1957 he would get the Pulitzer Prize for this work. But his illness not referred, and in February 1955, it must undergo a new intervention, after which it was able to recover. He returned to public life willing to present their candidacy for the Vice-Presidency of the Democratic Party. However, he was defeated by Estes Kefauver.
The overwhelming victory of Eisenhower not terrified Democrats, who saw Kennedy the candidate for the presidential election of 1960. His absence from Washington benefited from it in a sense, since in December 1954, when the Senate condemned McCarthy, not was forced to appear before the censors. According to his later collaborator Robert Sorensen, Kennedy did not approve of the mccarthyist mentality, but also not adhering to the Liberals. His brother Bob had formed part of the Commission chaired by McCarthy as legal adviser, and he himself had composed it. In spite of this, no one seemed to hear Eleanor Roosevelt asked loud if Liberals could give their vote to a man who had not even condemned McCarthy.

Kennedy in election campaign
But the Liberals, and even non-Liberals, gave it. In 1960 the clan intensified its activity, but the final triumph was a personal conquest of Kennedy. In recent years he had made new and influential friendships and was surrounded by effective collaborators, recovered mostly from Harvard. He had just published his third book, the strategy of peace, and had had time to delve into all subjects of worrisome news from your country susceptible to reform. The core of his electoral campaign crystallized around the idea of a new era that had initiate America, the so-called "new frontier", which evoked the spirit of pioneer of the conquest of the West. Its mere presence, Kennedy began to infuse hope of renewal to a country tired of stuck since Roosevelt's New Deal administration. Neat, slightly disheveled, he walked his young image the world, alongside a Jackie in State and with his daughter for three years, Caroline. With its slogan "Kennedy is in change," he swept the primaries and, albeit by tiny margin, 8 November achieved victory over Nixon.

In the Presidency

When the 21 January 1961 she took office, no one doubted that Kennedy would put into effect its motto. One of his first actions was to recommend the release of the black leader Martin Luther King, who was serving a sentence to hard labour in Georgia. Later, his performance in favour of racial integration was checked hesitant, but despite the rejection that was his project of law on civil rights in Congress (in general all his project found in Congress a strong opposition), left its mark among blacks, who came to compare it with the mythical President Abraham Lincoln.

Kennedy in a speech on the
civil rights (June 11, 1963)
In the thousand thirty-seven days ruled, Kennedy left the imprint of the change. Just installed in the oval office, escorted by Dean Rusk as Secretary of State and his brother Bob as attorney general, his innovative measures occurred. Federal aid to the education system, the impulse given to culture and the arts and, above all, the revival of the economy, which led to a marked growth of consumption and private investment (which, in turn, allowed to catch the country regarding the Soviet Union aerospace) were just some of their most famous innovations.
Its program, Liberal, was based primarily on economic recovery, the improvement of the Administration, the diversification of the means of defence and the establishment of a partnership for the development of the American continent. This last objective is reflected in the formation of a common front with the countries of Central and South America, called Alliance for progress, based on the following points: 1) support to the democracies against dictatorships; (2) long-term loans concessions; (3) export stabilization; (4) programmes of agrarian reform; (5) private investment incentives; (6) support technical and information exchange and students; 7) arms control, and 8) strengthening of the Organization of American States. To carry out this policy, Kennedy summoned the leaders of the hemisphere inviting them to formally join the Alliance. They were all dazzled by that young full of illusions and ideas of regeneration and reform. But one did not go to the appointment: Fidel Castro, who was head of the Cuban Government since 1959.
With Eisenhower as President, the CIA had already prepared a plan of invasion of the island of Cuba, at the time that China in Guatemala anti-Communist guerrillas. The ineptitude of the American rulers had closed doors to the official Cuban, pushing it to radicalize his revolution. The United States had done nothing to help Cuba in its need for economic progress, and when Kennedy came to power it was already too late.
The President refused to accept the plan of attack of the CIA on several occasions, but finished by yielding to pressure from the military. The operation began in April 1961, but resistance of the Cuban people and Castro troops became landing at the Bay of pigs in a resounding failure. Kennedy and his administration took a hard hit and Castro announced that Cuba had become a Socialist Republic; the invasion was, therefore, completely opposite of the desired effect.
With respect to the USSR, Kennedy tried to a certain approach that was visualized in June 1961 in the interview with Nikita Kruschev which took place in Vienna. But the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion, the erection of the Berlin wall and, above all, the discovery of a missile base with nuclear charge in Cuba installed by the Soviets broke off the negotiations.

Kennedy signed the order of naval blockade against Cuba
The temple of Kennedy was evident when the Soviet leader demanded the dismantling of those bases; for several agonizing months, it was feared that the conflict would trigger a nuclear war, but Khrushchev ended up yielding and the so-called missile crisis ended up constituting an undoubted success for the US President.
Despite everything, then there would be a definitive understanding between the two superpowers, in 1963 with the signing of the Moscow Treaty on the control and reduction of nuclear testing in the atmosphere. As for the Alliance for progress, intended in principle to promote the emergence and consolidation of democratic regimes in the American hemisphere, it did not prevent the expansion of militarism or the support of the United States dictatorial governments that supported the positions of Washington. It should not be forgotten that the first foray of the CIA in Viet Nam was carried out under his rule. If its purposes were undeniably democratic, they were not so much the means of achieving them. The main architect of the politician had been someone so little credibility as his father. In this regard Truman, going to a fearful of Catholicism of Kennedy, said: 'I do not fear the Pope, but the Pope'.

Kennedy and Jacqueline moments before the assassination
In 1963, Kennedy began to prepare the ground for the next election and began a tour of several cities of the country. On November 22, 1963 followed by Vice President Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy and his wife, came into Dallas. It was part of his campaign in the country most reluctant area overlooking his re-election in 1964. When he toured the streets in an open car, a few shots rang above the cheers and took his life. Shortly after he died in the hospital, triggering dismay around the world.
According to Warren, the author of the assassination report was Lee Harvey Oswald, who shot with a repeating rifle scope rifle from the top of a building. However, survived serious doubts about the accuracy of this version, and since then they have been identified as guilty from the mafia to the Ku Klux Klan racist society, through the trust oil and arms races and the own CIA. The enigma is still open and probably will never be resolved.

The funeral of Kennedy

Chronology of John Kennedy


1917Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29.
1936He entered Harvard University to pursue the career of law.
1937Join his father, who has been named Ambassador, to Britain and travels to various countries. It starts to be interested in politics.
1940 He graduated in political science with a thesis why England slept, about the attitude of Great Britain against Hitler's warmongering.
1942-43He joined the Navy and participated in the second world war as a commander of torpedo boat. Injured in a battle with the Japanese, it is decorated as a war hero.
1944Dies his brother Joe in a North American aviation action.
1945He worked as a correspondent and enter political life.
1946-52 He was elected Deputy of the Democratic Party by Boston in the House of representatives. He keeps his seat in the elections of 1948 and 1950
1952He was elected Senator for the State of Massachusetts.
1953He married Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, better known as future first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.
1957Gets the Pulitzer Prize for his book profiles in courage.
1960Win the presidential election against Richard Nixon.
1961It is invested as President of United States. It fails the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of pigs. He created the Alliance for progress, to promote democracy and economic development of all countries of the American continent.
1962Missile crisis: Kennedy imposed the blockade of Cuba. The Soviets are removed from the island.
1963UN says his desire to put an end to the cold war. Signing of the Moscow Treaty limiting nuclear testing. It is assassinated in Dallas on November 22.

Presidency of John Kennedy

A President for change

The election of Kennedy as President of the United States was the sign of the will of the country to cope with the new phase of the Soviet competition with new ideas and young energy. At the beginning of the sixties, to the climate of lit debates and criticism of society joined upset generalized towards the policy of Eisenhower. After eight years of Republican rule and despite new formulas and electoral promises, formulated after the second world war methods revealed insufficient. Society demanded new stimuli to the Soviet challenge with imagination. The Democratic candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy benefited of this national requirement.

John Kennedy
In the Kennedy Presidential action can not miss the recognition of a series of circumstances: his condition of Catholic background, privileged cultural and social background, as well as being embraced by a group of brilliant intellectuals whom he called to the White House to collaborate on your project. The ideological source of Kennedy has sought in the book The Affluent Society, sociologist and economist John Kenneth Galbraith. This work, the Rockefeller Report Group research product and built from surveys on the topics of politics and American life, put on notice about the dangers to which it was subject to the survival of democracy in the United States. The ideological impetus of this moderate left weighed mightily in the decisions of Kennedy. Accused of left-wing sympathies did you assume attitudes of conciliation with respect to the Soviet Union, Kennedy strove during his mandate to develop a line of hardness in foreign policy, expressed in some unfortunate actions, as the Bay pigs.
Kennedy came to the White House after an election campaign that was intended to express the will of renewal demanded by society and regain the initiative against the USSR. The country seemed weary of boring prosperity of the era Eisenhower and impotent attended the spectacular rise of the Soviet Union from Khrushchev, who in 1958 had placed the first artificial satellite into orbit: its propagandistic effect had caused a strong impact on American public opinion. It seemed necessary to find a challenge that brought with it a new response, and Kennedy was the man who embodied this response; not only with regard to the Soviet Union, but also for all the challenges of technological and social developments put on American democracy. In that sense, and dating back to the heroic traditions of the pioneers of the United States, Kennedy spoke, in his speech's candidacy at the Convention in Los Angeles, on July 15, 1960, on the need to create "a new frontier", do not sleep on our laurels obtained successes and, on the other hand, accept the challenge of the times.

Kennedy and Jacqueline in the election campaign of 1960
The new President took a role of face to the world in which popularity became its main ally. Especially in Europe, Kennedy represented the figure of a different leader, the image of a new time; a sort of King with a type of contemporary cut. The programs of the new President seemed to want to turn to the politics of the Republicans, who did shift the weight of their actions in political relations with the peoples. The policy of Kennedy argued for economic and cultural relations. Kennedy leaned on the formula of global responsibilities to defend the interests of the United States in the world.
Nothing else taking possession of his office, Kennedy formed a competent team and his utmost confidence, composed by his brother Robert Kennedy as Secretary of Justice (Attorney General), Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense and Dean Rusk in the Secretary of State. His political program was based on the economic recovery, the overall improvement of the U.S. Administration, the diversification of the means of Defense, and the establishment of a partnership for the development of the American continent, the latter which he called Alliance for progress program. In addition, he proposed a wide range of social reforms was entrusted to his brother Robert, while he was engaged, almost completely, on multiple Foreign Affairs where the United States had very specific interests.

Foreign policy

His first important government action affected the American continent. Kennedy, in order to move to any political initiative of the Cuban Communist leader Fidel Castro, modeled a new American policy with respect to its continental neighbors: the Alliance for progress. This program, which included a financial assistance of more than 46,000 million dollars, was rooted in a number of points: support to the democracies against dictatorships, the granting of long-term loans, the stabilization of prices in the export, the agrarian reform programmes, arms control, supports research and the strengthening of the OAS (Organization of American States) as a body endowed with political mechanisms and decision-making. All but the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in power since January 1959, accepted the program of the young American President.
In the international arena, the capabilities of the new President were tested in relations with the Soviet Union's Nikita Kruschev. In January 1961, the Soviets put released crew members of a plane downed American spy while it flew over Soviet airspace; This seemed to lead to a new phase of relaxation. Kennedy tried to consolidate the situation and show his desire for peace, creating a body of peace organization founded for the global fraternity.

Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev
But the purposes of the President came down after the great Bay of pigs fiasco. A large number of Cuban exiles in Miami, trained to consciousness by the CIA, tried to invade Cuba from Bay of pigs on April 14, 1961 and were quickly defeated. Although it was a plan designed by the previous administration of President Eisenhower, Kennedy, after initially resisted the plan, ended up giving the go-ahead. Kennedy and his administration suffered a hard blow. Fidel Castro responded by declaring the Socialist Republic of Cuba and further strengthening its position on the island.
From the month of April of the same year, Kennedy turned his attention to Southeast Asia, where Communists were threatening to take over the control of Laos. To avoid this, Kennedy took over, with the acquiescence of the SEATO, of anti-communist military defense in all Indo-China, and supplied with all kinds of war the pro-American Lao Government, while it was sent to the first "military advisers" (euphemism to designate the contingents). Its firm commitment to implement the Geneva Accords resulted in a high effective fire in the area and a subsequent interview in Vienna, in the month of June, with the Soviet leader, which agreed to maintain a neutral stance with respect to Laos.
Kennedy and Khrushchev, however, could not reach any agreement on the problem of Berlin. When it was the shameful wall that separated both sectors, one pro-American Western and one Eastern under the Soviet umbrella raised, Kennedy did not hesitate to send well armed contingent to secure the land route towards the western sector and reaffirm the rights of passage. Meanwhile, they returned to problems in Southeast Asia; the conflict zone ranged from Laos to Viet Nam in the South, a country occupied by the pro-American regime of Diem. Kennedy tried to stop Communist forces of the Vietcong in Viet Nam in the South with new counter-insurgency measures. In a clear tactical error, sent more material of war and "military advisers" to reach, at the end of November 1963, the number of 16,000 men, thing that ultimately would lead to the long war in Viet Nam.

The missile crisis

In the fall of 1962, Kennedy had to confront the most important crisis throughout his presidential term, the discovery of a series of secret stations ramps of Soviet missiles of medium range on the island of Cuba. Was the Soviet Union looking for a calculated risk operation which put pressure on the United States so that they withdraw their nuclear missiles in Turkey, in return for doing the same with the Cubans?

Kennedy with General Curtis LeMay and pilots
He discovered the missile launch ramps,
visible in photos of the planes spy U2
If this was the case, the discovery of the operation disrupted the initial plans of the Soviets. President Kennedy reacted to planning a pre-emptive air strike and a massive landing of troops; Finally, he opted for the naval and air blockade of Cuba. This is intended to cut Soviet installation on the island and urged the dismantling.
The temple of Kennedy was precisely highlighted when it demanded sharp so the Soviet leader the dismantling of the bases. After a few months in which was feared seriously by the outbreak of a nuclear conflict between the world's two top powers, Nikita Kruschev relented to us pressure and ordered the demolition of the ramps of missiles.
The happy outcome of the second Cuban crisis was an undoubted success for U.S. President and a loss of prestige to Khrushchev: the Soviet withdrawal undermined the image of the leader. But while the United States seemed to have won the pulse, Kennedy agreed to withdraw obsolete U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey and pledged not to try a new invasion of Cuba.
The crisis had demonstrated the real danger of a policy challenges, by very controlled that it might seem. After the missile crisis, Moscow and Washington seemed to reach a tacit understanding that nullified the spirit of open confrontation, replacing it with a policy of relaxation in which the elaboration of a language of symbols was a challenge for the future.

Kennedy and Willy Brandt (March 13, 1961)
The year 1963 meant for Kennedy the culmination of their success in international politics. Kennedy bathed in crowds on a triumphal tour of several European countries; in West Berlin, he was received as a hero. In June he gave a speech at the UN in which championed the wishes of ending the cold war, at the time established with Moscow by the famous red telephone hotline between the two leaders. A month later, the United States, the USSR and Great Britain signed the first treaty for the limitation of nuclear tests. The only fact that clouded his foreign policy was the resurgence of hostilities in Viet Nam in the South, where it had already installed a real army of occupation that held to a totally corrupt government.

Internal politics

Due to the little force which had in Congress, Kennedy had serious problems to carry out its program of economic stimulus, reforms tax and aid to education and well-being, always hampered by the conservative Republican majority. During the first two years of his administration, Kennedy had to give priority to the threat of inflation. To do so, did not hesitate to use his power to persuade industry and powerful unions that it maintained prices and wages within recommended guidelines (as did in 1962, when forced steel companies, in a television appearance to the country, to remove a projected price increase), as a fundamental part to develop its policy of liberalizing trade and protect the dollar.
Kennedy was able to bring forward several laws: to increase the minimum wage, to encourage public works and urban development programmes and to reduce taxes. It also increased the distribution of food to the most needy and subsidized public schools in a country where surrendered, and even an almost divine worship is paid to private education. It however failed in the politics of civil rights, not so much by its intentions but by what it took to take a position consistent on the issue, as it dealt with remind you, in March 1963, a disappointed Martin Luther King, who accused the President to establish symbolic measures on racial matters, thinking more about elections than in the specific problems of minorities. Even so, Kennedy carried out serious attempts to achieve the full integration of blacks in the country's educational system, which threatened even with the dispatch of federal troops if not met the laws of integration, work in which specially emphasized his brother Robert Kennedy. Most of his bills were not even enacted until the year 1964, already with Lyndon B. Johnson as President.

The murder

On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was killed in Dallas (Texas) in during his second day of visit to the city in full re-election campaign. The presidential retinue, headed for the center of the city, ran to pass slow down a wide Avenue when the Convertible car (a cabriolet Lincoln) carrying the President, his wife Jacqueline and the Governor of Texas, John Connally, took a curve next to a park.
At that time, 12: 30 in the morning, three shots (apparently made from the fifth floor of a House which dominated the official retinue travel) reached the Kennedy and Connally. Both were immediately transferred to Parkland Memorial Hospital; While Connally got to recover, Kennedy died 30 minutes after the attack: a bullet had shattered her brain.
Ninety-eight minutes later, at the same airport in Dallas, Lyndon Johnson was appointed thirty sixth President of the United States. Shortly after the assassination, police arrested a suspect: an ex-marine named Lee Harvey Oswald, who worked at the store from which had opened fire on the presidential Entourage.

Lyndon Johnson swears like new
President on Air Force One
The mystery of the death of Kennedy had done nothing but start. President Johnson created a Commission of inquiry, headed by the President of the federal hearing Earl Warren, to clarify responsibility for the attack. The hypotheses were multiplied. Who wanted dead President? From agents of the KGB until the Cuban mafia in Miami, passing through the official thesis that argues that Oswald acted independently, the different theories left revealed that the Kennedy administration had detractors.
According to the Warren report, was only responsible for the assassination Oswald; He had a history of mental instability and was known for his pro-Soviet and Castro ideology. Oswald was arrested a few hours after the crime, in a movie theater next to the site of the incident, and two days later was killed by the owner of a night bar, Jack Ruby, who also later died in strange circumstances.

Lee Harvey Oswald to the press
Despite the opinion of the Warren Commission, the riddles and questions around the murder gave rise to all kinds of conjectures that even at the CIA and the same Government as possible involved. In a further investigation of the case commissioned by Congress, came to the conclusion that it was possible that the assassination would have involved more than one person, which would reinforce several statements of eyewitnesses to the fact, silenced in tragic moments, who heard several gunshots coming from different places.
Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas
Biographies of historical figures and personalities