Foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration
The foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration was the foreign policy of the United States from 1961 to 1963 while John F. Kennedy was president. Interactions with foreign nations during this period included diplomatic and military initiatives in Western Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, all conducted amid considerable Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Kennedy deployed a new generation of foreign policy experts, dubbed "the best and the brightest". In his inaugural address Kennedy encapsulated his Cold War stance: "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate". Kennedy's strategy of flexible response, managed by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, was aimed to reduce the possibility of war by miscalculation, his administration resulted in the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis and refrained from further escalation of the Berlin Crisis of 1961. Kennedy was committed to the rapid economic development of the impoverished newly organized nations in the Third World.
He used modernization theory as the model to follow, created the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, Food for Peace, the Agency for International Development. After the near escape from disaster in the Cuban Missile Crisis, he promoted disarmament and disengagement programs with Moscow, created the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In October, 1963, he signed into law the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, accepted by Moscow and London; the communist world under Soviet leadership split up in the Kennedy era, with the Soviet Union and China at swords point. The American strategy was to oppose China, fearing that it had the greater potential to win support in the Third World. Kennedy saw an opportunity to deal with Moscow on friendlier terms. On November 29, 1961, American officials declared that the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union distributed a distorted, editorialized version of the Kennedy interview, given to Izvestiya employee Alexei Adzhubey. According to U. S. officials, the omissions included Kennedy's charges that the Soviets had violated the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, as well as the moratorium on nuclear tests and his claim that the issue of divided Berlin stems from the Soviet refusal to agree to German reunification.
Adzhubey promised to publish the full text in Izvestiya and Kennedy publicly expressed his appreciation for that. In January 1961, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev declared his support for wars of national liberation. Kennedy interpreted this step as a direct threat to the "free world". On February 15, 1961, the President asked Soviets to avoid interfering with United Nations pacification of the Congo Crisis. Khrushchev proposed to amend the United Nations Charter by replacing the position of Secretary-General with a three-person executive called the Troyka. On September 25, 1961, Kennedy addressed the United Nations General Assembly, revealing his commitment to veto the Troyka plan. On February 27 of that year, in his letter to Khrushchev, the President offered an early summit meeting. Khrushchev agreed to meet in the Austrian capital Vienna; the subsequent Vienna summit was tainted by the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Khrushchev, tended to attribute the responsibility for the invasion not to Kennedy, but to his subordinates.
During his meeting with Khrushchev, Kennedy's main goal was to suggest a retraction from the Cold War. Nonetheless, he did not believe that it would be feasible to change something either in divided Europe or in the Far East. Subsequently, he spoke with general wording. However, Kennedy did take the novel step of emphasizing the importance of Allied access to West Berlin. Previous administrations had referred to "Berlin." The evidence suggests that Kennedy accepted the permanent division of Berlin into East and West and implied that an East Berlin border closure would not bring a US response as long as West Berlin was left alone. Since he was thinking about putting up a wall in Berlin, Khrushchev was encouraged to continue down this path; the U. S. State Department prepared several papers for Kennedy on. One of them, titled "Scope Paper", indicated that Khrushchev would "undoubtedly press hard his position on Berlin and a peace treaty with East Germany". In spring 1963, Kennedy started to seek a further conciliation with the Soviet Union.
In the summer of that year, he sought to wind down the confrontational mentality that dominated American–Soviet relations and to replace standard anticommunist rhetoric with a conciliatory one. Abstract: On 10 June 1963 Kennedy gave a speech that facilitated a major agreement with Moscow Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, it helped avoid a nuclear holocaust, since the nuclear confrontation was not a stable balance of terror, but rather a unstable situation, prone to accidents and escalating disaster. Presidential leadership played a decisive role. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy saw that only he could find the terms that would be accepted by Khrushchev nuclear war; the result was peace diplomacy that led to his collaboration with Khrushchev that succeeded in pulling the superpowers back from the brink. Khrushchev called it, "the best speech by any president since Roosevelt." The United States and the Soviet Union had retained firm leadership of their respective coalitions throughout the 1950s, but both blocs began to fracture during Kennedy's term.
President Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain's application to join the Common Market in January 1963 after appearing receptive to the idea just months earlier. De Gaulle pointed to the risk of a loss of cohesion in Common Market and the need to Maintain independence from the United St
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was NASA's second human spaceflight program. Conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, Gemini started in 1961 and concluded in 1966; the Gemini spacecraft carried a two-astronaut crew. Ten Gemini crews flew low Earth orbit missions during 1965 and 1966, putting the United States in the lead during the Cold War Space Race against the Soviet Union. Gemini's objective was the development of space travel techniques to support the Apollo mission to land astronauts on the Moon, it performed missions long enough for a trip to the Moon and back, perfected working outside the spacecraft with extra-vehicular activity, pioneered the orbital maneuvers necessary to achieve space rendezvous and docking. With these new techniques proven by Gemini, Apollo could pursue its prime mission without doing these fundamental exploratory operations. All Gemini flights were launched from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Kennedy Air Force Station in Florida, their launch vehicle was the Gemini -- a modified Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
Gemini was the first program to use the newly built Mission Control Center at the Houston Manned Spacecraft Center for flight control. The astronaut corps that supported Project Gemini included the "Mercury Seven", "The New Nine", the 1963 astronaut class. During the program, three astronauts died in air crashes during training, including both members of the prime crew for Gemini 9; this mission was flown by the backup crew, the only time a backup crew has replaced a prime crew on a mission in NASA's history to date. Gemini was robust enough that the United States Air Force planned to use it for the Manned Orbital Laboratory program, canceled. Gemini's chief designer, Jim Chamberlin made detailed plans for cislunar and lunar landing missions in late 1961, he believed that Gemini spacecraft could fly in lunar operations before Project Apollo, cost less. NASA's administration did not approve those plans. In 1969, McDonnell-Douglas proposed a "Big Gemini" that could have been used to shuttle up to 12 astronauts to the planned space stations in the Apollo Applications Project.
The only AAP project funded was Skylab – which used existing spacecraft and hardware – thereby eliminating the need for Big Gemini. The constellation for which the project was named is pronounced, the last syllable rhyming with eye. However, staff of the Manned Spacecraft Center, including the astronauts, tended to pronounce the name, rhyming with knee. NASA's public affairs office issued a statement in 1965 declaring "Jeh-mih-nee" to be the "official" pronunciation. Gus Grissom, acting as Houston capsule communicator when Ed White performed his spacewalk on Gemini 4, is heard on flight recordings pronouncing the spacecraft's call sign "Jeh-mih-nee 4", the NASA pronunciation is used in the movie First Man; the Apollo program was conceived in early 1960 as a three-man spacecraft to follow Project Mercury. Jim Chamberlin, the head of engineering at the Space Task Group, was assigned in February 1961 to start working on a bridge program between Mercury and Apollo, he presented two initial versions of a two-man spacecraft designated Mercury Mark II, at a NASA retreat at Wallops Island in March 1961.
Scale models were shown in July 1961 at the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation's offices in St. Louis. After Apollo was chartered to land men on the Moon by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961, it became evident to NASA officials that a follow-on to the Mercury program was required to develop certain spaceflight capabilities in support of Apollo. NASA approved the two-man program rechristened Project Gemini, in reference to the third constellation of the Zodiac with its twin stars Castor and Pollux, on December 7, 1961. McDonnell Aircraft was contracted to build it on December 22, 1961; the program was publicly announced on January 3, 1962, with these major objectives: To demonstrate endurance of humans and equipment in spaceflight for extended periods, at least eight days required for a Moon landing, to a maximum of two weeks To effect rendezvous and docking with another vehicle, to maneuver the combined spacecraft using the propulsion system of the target vehicle To demonstrate Extra-Vehicular Activity, or space-"walks" outside the protection of the spacecraft, to evaluate the astronauts' ability to perform tasks there To perfect techniques of atmospheric reentry and touchdown at a pre-selected location on land Canadian engineer Jim Chamberlin designed the Gemini capsule, which carried a crew of two.
He was the chief aerodynamicist on Avro Canada's Avro Arrow fighter interceptor program. Chamberlin joined NASA along with 25 senior Avro engineers after cancellation of the Arrow program, became head of the U. S. Space Task Group's engineering division in charge of Gemini; the prime contractor was McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the prime contractor for the Project Mercury capsule. Astronaut Gus Grissom was involved in the development and design of the Gemini spacecraft. What other Mercury astronauts dubbed "Gusmobile" was so designed around Grissom's 5'6" body that, when NASA discovered in 1963 that 14 of 16 astronauts would not fit in the spacecraft, the interior had to be redesigned. Grissom wrote in his posthumous 1968 book Gemini! that the realization of Project Mercury's end and the unlikelihood of his having another flight in that program prompted him to focus all of his efforts on the upcoming Gemini program. The Gemini program was managed by the Manned Spacecraft Center, located in Houston, under direction of the Office of Manned Space Flight, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.
C. Dr. George E. Mueller, Associate Administrator of NASA for Manned Space Flight, served as acting director of the Gemini progra
Report to the American People on Civil Rights
The Report to the American People on Civil Rights was a speech on civil rights, delivered on radio and television by United States President John F. Kennedy from the Oval Office on June 11, 1963 in which he proposed legislation that would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Expressing civil rights as a moral issue, Kennedy moved past his previous appeals to legality and asserted that the pursuit of racial equality was a just cause; the address signified a shift in his administration's policy towards strong support of the civil rights movement and played a significant role in shaping his legacy as a proponent of civil rights. President Kennedy was cautious in his support of civil rights and desegregation in the United States. Concerned that dramatic actions would alienate legislators in the segregated American South, he limited his activities on the issue and confined his justifying rhetoric to legal arguments; as his term continued, African-Americans became impatient with their lack of social progress and racial tensions escalated.
The rising militancy of the civil rights movement troubled white Americans and the deteriorating situation reflected negatively on the United States abroad. Kennedy came to conclude that he had to offer stronger support for civil rights, including the enactment of new legislation that would ensure desegregation in the commercial sector. On June 11, 1963, federal officials integrated the University of Alabama. Kennedy decided that it was an opportune moment to speak about civil rights, instructed Ted Sorenson to draft a speech that he could deliver on television that evening. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and his deputy, Burke Marshall, assisted Sorenson, who finished just before President Kennedy was due to begin speaking at 8:00 PM. From the onset of his term, President John F. Kennedy was silent on the issue of African-American civil rights in the United States, preferring executive action to legislative solutions, he was cautious not to distance the South, marked by substantial segregation and racial discrimination, by infringing upon states' rights.
He wanted to avoid upsetting members of Congress, as he was struggling to secure their support for most of his New Frontier domestic programs. However, Kennedy's position on civil rights had begun to evolve during the Freedom Rides of 1961, when African-Americans traveled along segregated bus routes in the South. Though he dispatched federal marshals to guard against the racial violence of the events, he publicly stressed that his actions were rooted in legality and not morality. Regardless, several activists encouraged the President to discuss the "moral issue" of civil rights in American society. According to aide Harris Wofford, Kennedy felt that he was the strongest supporter of civil rights who had held the presidency, he was irritated by such appeals. Wofford advised him, ``; the only effective time for such moral leadership is during an occasion of moral crisis. This is the time. Negro leaders feel sorely the absence of any such statement." Kennedy devoted a significant amount of his 1962 State of the Union Address to the topic of civil rights, but he confined his rhetoric to legal themes and conveyed that present legislation sufficed his administration's efforts to combat racial discrimination.
In September, James Meredith, a black man, enrolled at the University of Mississippi. Although Kennedy used federal troops to guarantee Meredith's safety and attendance, he publicly downplayed the violence that had occurred and made no changes to his legislative agenda. Despite being pleased that the federal government had protected Meredith, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was "deeply disappointed" in the President. Following the failure of the Albany Movement that year, many civil rights activists believed that Kennedy "was more concerned with quieting the ovement down than removing the practices it opposed."In 1963, an increasing number of white Americans, troubled by the rise of more militant black leaders like Malcolm X, feared that the Civil Rights Movement would take a violent turn. The depiction of racial violence in the media benefited the Soviet Union's Cold War propaganda and damaged the United States' image abroad, which concerned Kennedy, he determined that appropriate legislation would enable the administration to pursue suits through the court system and get the problem "out of the streets" and away from international spectators.
In February, after receiving a report from the Civil Rights Commission on racial discrimination, Kennedy sent a message to Congress calling for a civil rights bill on the 28th. In addition to the suggested economical and diplomatic benefits, he justified his legislation's measures to remove institutional racism because "above all, is wrong." This marked the first time. Regardless, the proposal garnered a flat response. Civil rights leaders were disappointed in the bill as it focused on voting rights, critics believed a bolder proposal was needed to end discrimination for African-Americans; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference concluded that the Kennedy administration would need to be forced to confront racial problems. To do so, the Conference organized a series of demonstrations in April in Birmingham, viewed by activists as one of the most segregated cities in the United States, designed to create a crisis that would require the President's involvement; the violent crackdown against de
State funeral of John F. Kennedy
The state funeral of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, took place in Washington, D. C. during the three days that followed his assassination on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. The body of President Kennedy was brought back to Washington soon after his death and was placed in the East Room of the White House for 24 hours. On the Sunday after the assassination, his flag-draped coffin was carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the U. S. Capitol to lie in state. Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket. Representatives from over 90 countries attended the state funeral on Monday, November 25. After the Requiem Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, the late president was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. After John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, his body was flown back to Washington, taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital for the autopsy. At the same time, military authorities began making arrangements for a state funeral.
Army Major General Philip C. Wehle, the commanding general of the Military District of Washington, retired Army Colonel Paul C. Miller, chief of ceremonies and special events at the MDW, planned the funeral, they headed to the White House and worked with the president's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver director of the Peace Corps, Ralph Dungan, an aide to the president. Because Kennedy had no funeral plan in place, much of the planning rested with the CG MDW. House Speaker John W. McCormack said that the president's body would be brought back to the White House to lie in the East Room the following day and taken to the Capitol to lie in state in the rotunda all day Sunday; the day after the assassination, the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, issued Presidential Proclamation 3561, declaring Monday to be a national day of mourning, only essential emergency workers to be at their posts, he read the proclamation over a nationwide radio and television broadcast at 4:45 p.m. from the Fish Room at the White House.
Several elements of the state funeral paid tribute to Kennedy's service in the Navy during World War II. They included a member of the Navy bearing the presidential flag, the playing of the Navy Hymn, "Eternal Father, Strong to Save," and the Naval Academy Glee Club performing at the White House; the hymn" Oh God of Loveliness" was played. After the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital, Kennedy's body was prepared for burial by embalmers from Gawler's Funeral Home in Washington, who performed the embalming and cosmetic restoration procedures at Bethesda. Kennedy's body was put in a new mahogany casket in place of the bronze casket used to transport the body from Dallas; the bronze casket had been damaged in transit, was disposed of by the Air Force in the Atlantic Ocean so that it would not "fall into the hands of sensation seekers". President Kennedy's body was returned to the White House at about 4:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 23. The motorcade bearing the remains was met at the White House gate by a U.
S. Marine Corps honor guard; the pallbearers bore the casket to the East Room where, 18 years earlier, the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt, nearly one hundred years earlier, the body of Abraham Lincoln had lain. Kennedy's casket was placed on a catafalque used for the funerals of the Unknown Soldiers from the Korean War and World War II at Arlington. Jacqueline Kennedy declared that the casket would be kept closed for the funeral; the shot to Kennedy's head left a gaping wound, religious leaders said that a closed casket minimized morbid concentration on the body. Mrs. Kennedy, still wearing the blood-stained raspberry-colored suit she wore in Dallas, had not left the side of her husband's body since his death. Only after the casket was placed in the East Room, draped with black crepe, did she retire to her private quarters. Kennedy's body lay in repose in the East Room for 24 hours, attended by an honor guard including troops from the 3rd Infantry and from the Army's Special Forces; the Special Forces troops had been brought hurriedly from Fort Bragg in North Carolina, at the request of U.
S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, aware of his brother's particular interest in them. Mrs. Kennedy requested two Catholic priests to remain with the body until the official funeral. A call was made to The Catholic University of America, Msgr. Robert Paul Mohan and Fr. Gilbert Hartke, two prominent Washington, D. C. priests, were dispatched for the task. A Mass took place in the East Room at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 23. After the Mass, other family members and other government officials came at specified times to pay their respects to President Kennedy; this included former U. S. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower; the other surviving former U. S. president at the time, Herbert Hoover, was too ill to attend the state funeral, was represented by his sons, Herbert Hoover Jr. who attended the funeral, Allan Hoover, who went to the services in the rotunda. In Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, crowds stood in the rain, keeping a vigil and paying quiet respects, it rained all day in Washington.
On Sunday afternoon about 300,000 people watched a horse-drawn caisson, which had borne the body of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Unknown Soldier, carry Kennedy's flag-covered casket down the White House drive, past parallel rows of soldiers bearing the flags of the 50 states of the Union along Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Rotunda to lie in state. The
Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is a volunteer program run by the United States government. Its official mission is to provide social and economic development abroad through technical assistance, while promoting mutual understanding between Americans and populations served. Peace Corps Volunteers are American citizens with a college degree, who work abroad for a period of two years after three months of training. Volunteers work with governments, non-profit organizations, non-government organizations, entrepreneurs in education, information technology and the environment. After 24 months of service, volunteers can request an extension of service; the program was established by Executive Order 10924, issued by President John F. Kennedy on March 1, 1961 and authorized by Congress on September 21, 1961 with passage of the Peace Corps Act; the act declares the program's purpose as follows: To promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.
Since its inception, more than 235,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps and served in 141 countries. The Peace Corps shows "the willingness of Americans to work at the grassroots level in order to help underdeveloped countries meet their needs"; the Peace Corps has affected the way people of other countries view Americans, how Americans view other countries, how Americans view their own country. Following the end of World War II, various members of the United States Congress proposed bills to establish volunteer organizations in developing countries. In December 1951 Representative John F. Kennedy suggested to a group that "young college graduates would find a full life in bringing technical advice and assistance to the underprivileged and backward Middle East... In that calling, these men would follow the constructive work done by the religious missionaries in these countries over the past 100 years." In 1952 Senator Brien McMahon proposed an "army" of young Americans to act as "missionaries of democracy".
Funded nonreligious organizations began sending volunteers overseas during the 1950s. While Kennedy is credited with the creation of the Peace Corps as president, the first initiative came from Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr. who introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps in 1957—three years before Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, would raise the idea during a campaign speech at the University of Michigan. In his autobiography The Education of a Public Man, Humphrey wrote, There were three bills of particular emotional importance to me: the Peace Corps, a disarmament agency, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; the President, asked me to introduce legislation for all three. I introduced the first Peace Corps bill in 1957, it did not meet with much enthusiasm. Some traditional diplomats quaked at the thought of thousands of young Americans scattered across their world. Many senators, including liberal ones, thought it an unworkable idea. Now, with a young president urging its passage, it became possible and we pushed it through the Senate.
It is fashionable now to suggest that Peace Corps Volunteers gained as much or more, from their experience as the countries they worked. That may be true, they made them better. Only in 1959, did the idea receive serious attention in Washington when Congressman Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin proposed a "Point Four Youth Corps". In 1960, he and Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon introduced identical measures calling for a nongovernmental study of the idea's "advisability and practicability". Both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed the study, the latter writing the Reuss proposal into the pending Mutual Security legislation. In this form it became law in June 1960. In August the Mutual Security Appropriations Act was enacted, making available US$10,000 for the study, in November ICA contracted with Maurice Albertson, Andrew E. Rice, Pauline E. Birky of Colorado State University Research Foundation for the study. John F. Kennedy was the first to announce the idea for such an organization during the 1960 presidential campaign, on October 14, 1960, at a late-night speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on the steps of the Michigan Union.
He dubbed the proposed organization the "Peace Corps." A brass marker commemorates the place. In the weeks after the 1960 election, the study group at Colorado State University released their feasibility a few days before Kennedy's Presidential Inauguration in January 1961. Critics opposed the program. Kennedy's opponent, Richard M. Nixon, predicted it would become a "cult of escapism" and "a haven for draft dodgers."Others doubted whether recent graduates had the necessary skills and maturity for such a task. The idea was popular among students and Kennedy pursued it, asking respected academics such as Max Millikan and Chester Bowles to help him outline the organization and its goals. During his inaugural address, Kennedy again promised to create the program: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country". President Kennedy in a speech at the White House on June 22, 1962, "Remarks to Student Volunteers Participating in Operation Crossroads Africa", acknowledged that Operation Crossroads for Africa was the basis for the development of the Peace Corps.
"This group and this effort were the progenitors of
Timeline of the John F. Kennedy assassination
This article considers the detailed timeline of events before and after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. October 24, 1956: Lee Harvey Oswald drops out of high school and joins the U. S. Marine Corps, where he is trained as a sharpshooter. October 31, 1959: Oswald defects to the Soviet Union, is sent to work at an electronics factory in Minsk. November 8, 1960: John F. Kennedy wins the 1960 United States presidential election. June 13, 1962: Oswald returns to the United States with his wife Marina and their child to live in Texas. November 6, 1962: John Connally elected Governor of Texas. January 15, 1963: Connally is sworn in as Governor of Texas; as the Governor of Texas he will serve as host for President Kennedy's trip to Texas. February 22, 1963: Ruth Paine meets the Oswalds at a party given at Everett Glover's house. March 12, 1963: An order for a rifle with a mounted scope is sent to Klein's Sporting Goods from someone named "A. Hidell" to be delivered to a P.
O. Box, rented by Oswald. March 13, 1963: Order received by Klein's Sporting Goods from A. Hidell P. O. Box 2915 Dallas, TX for an Italian Carbine 6.5 W/4X Scope. Total cost is $21.45 for rifle with serial number C2766. Oswald is given notice in the latter part of March. April 6, 1963: Oswald works his last day at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. April 10, 1963: Someone fires a bullet that just misses retired General Edwin Walker, an advocate of far right politics and anti-communist; the police determine. The case remained unsolved until two weeks after the death of Lee Oswald when Marina Oswald admitted to the FBI it may have been her husband who fired the shot. April 11, 1963: U. S. Rep. Albert Richard Thomas announced his retirement from Congress due to health reasons. April 23, 1963: Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas native, tells reporters in Dallas that President Kennedy may visit Texas sometime this summer. LBJ hopes Kennedy's schedule would allow him to have a breakfast in Fort Worth, a luncheon in Dallas, an afternoon tea in San Antonio and dinner in Houston.
June 5, 1963: President Kennedy, Vice President Johnson, Governor Connally were together in a meeting in El Paso when they agreed to a second presidential visit to the state of Texas that year. June 6, 1963: Rep. Albert Thomas announced he is reconsidering his decision to retire and may still run again for reelection based on the advice of Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy decided to embark on the trip with three basic goals in mind: he wanted to help raise more Democratic Party presidential campaign fund contributions. June 24, 1963: Oswald applies for a US passport in New Orleans, Louisiana stating he intended to depart from New Orleans during the period from October to December 1963 for proposed travel as a tourist for 3 months to one year's duration; the next day he was issued US Passport DO 92526, valid for three years to all countries except Albania and those portions of China and Vietnam that were under communist control. September 17, 1963: Jack Valenti sends an invitation to the White House asking if President Kennedy would attend an Appreciation Dinner in Houston on November 21, 1963 honoring Albert Thomas for his decision not to retire from Congress.
The invitation is received at the White House on September 19, 1963. Lee Oswald is issued a 15 day Mexican tourist card using Harvey Oswald. September 20, 1963: President Kennedy addresses the United Nations General Assembly and offers the Soviet Union a joint expedition to the Moon; the proposal is controversial with many members of Congress and raises fresh questions about how much money should be appropriated to the NASA budget. September 21, 1963: Rep. Albert Thomas, a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and Chairman of its Subcommittee of Independent Offices, reviewing the Kennedy Administration's record $5.3 billion 1964 NASA budget proposal, sends a letter to the President asking for clarification of his U. N. speech regarding a joint Soviet-US moon landing. He wonders. Thomas had played an instrumental role in the location of the Manned Spacecraft Center, now known as the Johnson Space Center in his home district of Houston, Texas. September 23, 1963: President Kennedy responds to Congressman Albert Thomas letter requesting clarification of the goals of the U.
S. Space Program by writing him a "Dear Al" letter explaining his position. Ruth Paine drives Marina Oswald from New Orleans back to her home in Texas. Late that night Lee Oswald leaves New Orleans to travel to Mexico City in the hopes of somehow gaining entrance to Cuba where travel has been banned from the United States. September 24–28, 1963: President Kennedy embarks on an eleven-state conservation tour which include visits to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, Utah, Oregon and Nevada. September 24, 1963: At a press conference in Austin, Governor Connally announces he will visit Was
A Nation of Immigrants
A Nation of Immigrants is a 1958 book on American immigration by U. S. Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts; the book was written by Kennedy in 1958, while he was still a senator. It was written as part of the Anti-Defamation League's series entitled the One Nation Library. Subsequently, after gaining the presidency, he called on Congress to undertake a full reevaluation of immigration law. In August 1963, excerpts of the 1958 pamphlet were published in the New York Times Magazine, he was assassinated before completing the revision, but the book was posthumously published in 1964 with an introduction by his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. In 2008, the book was re-issued by the Anti-Defamation League; the book contains a short history of immigration to the in Colonial America onwards, an analysis of the importance of immigration in the country's history, proposals to liberalize immigration law. Amazon.com's book reviews and description Barnes & Noble's editorial reviews and overview OnTheIssues.org's book review and excerpts
