ABOUT JOHN F. KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy, in full John Fitzgerald Kennedy, byname JFK (born May 29, 1917, Brookline, Massachusetts,
U.S.—died November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas), 35th president of the
United States (1961–63), who faced a number of foreign crises,
especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. (For a discussion of the history and nature of the presidency, see presidency of the United States of America.)
In the fall of 1941 Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and two years later was sent to the South Pacific. By the time he was discharged in 1945, his older brother, Joe, who their father had expected would be the first Kennedy to run for office, had been killed in the war, and the family’s political standard passed to John, who had planned to pursue an academic or journalistic career.
John Kennedy himself had barely escaped death in battle. Commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat, he was gravely injured when a Japanese destroyer sank it in the Solomon Islands. Marooned far behind enemy lines, he led his men back to safety and was awarded the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. He also returned to active command at his own request. (These events were later depicted in a Hollywood film, PT 109 [1963], that contributed to the Kennedy mystique.) However, the further injury to his back, which had bothered him since his teens, never really healed. Despite operations in 1944, 1954, and 1955, he was in pain for much of the rest of his life. He also suffered from Addison’s disease, though this affliction was publicly concealed. “At least one-half of the days he spent on this earth,” wrote his brother Robert, “were days of intense physical pain.” (After he became president, Kennedy combated the pain with injections of amphetamines—then thought to be harmless and used by more than a few celebrities for their energizing effect. According to some reports, both Kennedy and the first lady became heavily dependent on these injections through weekly use.) None of this prevented Kennedy from undertaking a strenuous life in politics. His family expected him to run for public office and to win.
Kennedy served three terms in the House of Representatives (1947–53) as a bread-and-butter liberal. He advocated better working conditions, more public housing, higher wages, lower prices, cheaper rents, and more Social Security for the aged. In foreign policy he was an early supporter of Cold War policies. He backed the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan but was sharply critical of the Truman administration’s record in Asia. He accused the State Department of trying to force Chiang Kai-shek into a coalition with Mao Zedong. “What our young men had saved,” he told the House on January 25, 1949, “our diplomats and our President have frittered away.”
His congressional district in Boston was a safe seat, but Kennedy was too ambitious to remain long in the House of Representatives. In 1952 he ran for the U.S. Senate against the popular incumbent, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. His mother and sisters Eunice, Patricia, and Jean held “Kennedy teas” across the state. Thousands of volunteers flocked to help, including his 27-year-old brother Robert, who managed the campaign. That fall the Republican presidential candidate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, carried Massachusetts by 208,000 votes; but Kennedy defeated Lodge by 70,000 votes. Less than a year later, on September 12, 1953, Kennedy enhanced his electoral appeal by marrying Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis). Twelve years younger than Kennedy and from a socially prominent family, the beautiful “Jackie” was the perfect complement to the handsome politician; they made a glamorous couple.
As a senator, Kennedy quickly won a reputation for responsiveness to requests from constituents, except on certain occasions when the national interest was at stake. In 1954 he was the only New England senator to approve an extension of President Eisenhower’s reciprocal-trade powers, and he vigorously backed the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, despite the fact that over a period of 20 years no Massachusetts senator or congressman had ever voted for it.
To the disappointment of liberal Democrats, Kennedy soft-pedaled the demagogic excesses of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, who in the early 1950s conducted witch-hunting campaigns against government workers accused of being communists. Kennedy’s father liked McCarthy, contributed to his campaign, and even entertained him in the family’s compound at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Kennedy himself disapproved of McCarthy, but, as he once observed, “Half my people in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero.” Yet, on the Senate vote over condemnation of McCarthy’s conduct (1954), Kennedy expected to vote against him. He prepared a speech explaining why, but he was absent on the day of the vote. Later, at a National Press Club Gridiron dinner, costumed reporters sang, “Where were you, John, where were you, John, when the Senate censured Joe?” Actually, John had been in a hospital, in critical condition after back surgery. For six months afterward he lay strapped to a board in his father’s house in Palm Beach, Florida. It was during this period that he worked on Profiles in Courage (1956), an account of eight great American political leaders who had defied popular opinion in matters of conscience, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. Although Kennedy was credited as the book’s author, it was later revealed that his assistant Theodore Sorensen had done much of the research and writing.
Back in the Senate, Kennedy led a fight against a proposal to abolish the electoral college, crusaded for labour reform, and became increasingly committed to civil rights legislation. As a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the late 1950s, he advocated extensive foreign aid to the emerging nations in Africa and Asia, and he surprised his colleagues by calling upon France to grant Algerian independence.
During these years his political outlook was moving leftward. Possibly because of their father’s dynamic personality, the sons of Joseph Kennedy matured slowly. Gradually John’s stature among Democrats grew, until he had inherited the legions that had once followed Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, the two-time presidential candidate who by appealing to idealism had transformed the Democratic Party and made Kennedy’s rise possible.
A steady stream of speeches and periodical profiles followed, with photographs of him and his wife appearing on many a magazine cover. Kennedy’s carefully calculated pursuit of the presidency years before the first primary established a practice that became the norm for candidates seeking the nation’s highest office. To transport him and his staff around the country, his father bought a 40-passenger Convair aircraft. His brothers Robert (“Bobby,” or “Bob”) and Edward (“Teddy,” or “Ted”) pitched in. After having graduated from Harvard University (1948) and from the University of Virginia Law School (1951), Bobby had embarked on a career as a Justice Department attorney and counsellor for congressional committees. Ted likewise had graduated from Harvard (1956) and from Virginia Law School (1959). Both men were astute campaigners.
In January 1960 John F. Kennedy formally announced his presidential candidacy. His chief rivals were the senators Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Kennedy knocked Humphrey out of the campaign and dealt the religious taboo against Roman Catholics a blow by winning the primary in Protestant West Virginia. He tackled the Catholic issue again, by avowing his belief in the separation of church and state in a televised speech before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas. Nominated on the first ballot, he balanced the Democratic ticket by choosing Johnson as his running mate. In his acceptance speech Kennedy declared, “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier.” Thereafter the phrase “New Frontier” was associated with his presidential programs.
Another phrase—“the Kennedy style”—encapsulated the candidate’s emerging identity. It was glamorous and elitist, an amalgam of his father’s wealth, John Kennedy’s charisma and easy wit, Jacqueline Kennedy’s beauty and fashion sense (the suits and pillbox hats she wore became widely popular), the charm of their children and relatives, and the erudition of the Harvard advisers who surrounded him (called the “best and brightest” by author David Halberstam).
Kennedy won the general election, narrowly defeating the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, by a margin of less than 120,000 out of some 70,000,000 votes cast. Many observers, then and since, believed vote fraud contributed to Kennedy’s victory, especially in the critical state of Illinois, where Joe Kennedy enlisted the help of the ever-powerful Richard J. Daley, mayor of Chicago. Nixon had defended the Eisenhower record; Kennedy, whose slogan had been “Let’s get this country moving again,” had deplored unemployment, the sluggish economy, the so-called missile gap (a presumed Soviet superiority over the United States in the number of nuclear-armed missiles), and the new communist government in Havana. A major factor in the campaign was a unique series of four televised debates between the two men; an estimated 85–120 million Americans watched one or more of the debates. Both men showed a firm grasp of the issues, but Kennedy’s poise in front of the camera, his tony Harvard accent, and his good looks (in contrast to Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow”) convinced many viewers that he had won the debate. As president, Kennedy continued to exploit the new medium, sparkling in precedent-setting televised weekly press conferences.
He was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency of the United States. His administration lasted 1,037 days. From the onset he was concerned with foreign affairs. In his memorable inaugural address, he called upon Americans “to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.” He declared:
The Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, thought he had taken the young president’s measure when the two leaders met in Vienna in June 1961. Khrushchev ordered a wall built between East and West Berlin and threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The president activated National Guard and reserve units, and Khrushchev backed down on his separate peace threat. Kennedy then made a dramatic visit to West Berlin, where he told a cheering crowd, “Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein [I am a] Berliner.’ ” In October 1962 a buildup of Soviet short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles was discovered in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be dismantled; he ordered a “quarantine” of Cuba—in effect, a blockade that would stop Soviet ships from reaching that island. For 13 days nuclear war seemed near; then the Soviet premier announced that the offensive weapons would be withdrawn. (See Cuban missile crisis.) Ten months later Kennedy scored his greatest foreign triumph when Khrushchev and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain joined him in signing the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Yet Kennedy’s commitment to combat the spread of communism led him to escalate American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, where he sent not just supplies and financial assistance, as President Eisenhower had, but 15,000 military advisers as well.
Because of his slender victory in 1960, Kennedy approached Congress warily, and with good reason; Congress was largely indifferent to his legislative program. It approved his Alliance for Progress (Alianza) in Latin America and his Peace Corps, which won the enthusiastic endorsement of thousands of college students. But his two most cherished projects, massive income tax cuts and a sweeping civil rights measure, were not passed until after his death. In May 1961 Kennedy committed the United States to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and, while he would not live to see this achievement either, his advocacy of the space program contributed to the successful launch of the first American manned spaceflights.
He was an immensely popular president, at home and abroad. At times he seemed to be everywhere at once, encouraging better physical fitness, improving the morale of government workers, bringing brilliant advisers to the White House, and beautifying Washington, D.C. His wife joined him as an advocate for American culture. Their two young children, Caroline Bouvier and John F., Jr., were familiar throughout the country. The charm and optimism of the Kennedy family seemed contagious, sparking the idealism of a generation for whom the Kennedy White House became, in journalist Theodore White’s famous analogy, Camelot—the magical court of Arthurian legend, which was celebrated in a popular Broadway musical of the early 1960s.
Joseph Kennedy, meanwhile, had been incapacitated in Hyannis Port by a stroke, but the other Kennedys were in and out of Washington. Robert Kennedy, as John’s attorney general, was the second most powerful man in the country. He advised the president on all matters of foreign and domestic policy, national security, and political affairs.
In 1962 Ted Kennedy was elected to the president’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts. Their sister Eunice’s husband, Sargent Shriver, became director of the Peace Corps. Their sister Jean’s husband, Stephen Smith, was preparing to manage the Democratic Party’s 1964 presidential campaign. Another sister, Patricia, had married Peter Lawford, an English-born actor who served the family as an unofficial envoy to the entertainment world. All Americans knew who Rose, Jackie, Bobby, and Teddy were, and most could identify Bobby’s wife as Ethel and Teddy’s wife as Joan. But if the first family had become American royalty, its image of perfection would be tainted years later by allegations of marital infidelity by the president (most notably, an affair with motion-picture icon Marilyn Monroe) and of his association with members of organized crime.
Early life
The second of nine children, Kennedy was reared in a family that demanded intense physical and intellectual competition among the siblings—the family’s touch football games at their Hyannis Port retreat later became legendary—and was schooled in the religious teachings of the Roman Catholic church and the political precepts of the Democratic Party. His father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, had acquired a multimillion-dollar fortune in banking, bootlegging, shipbuilding, and the film industry, and as a skilled player of the stock market. His mother, Rose, was the daughter of John F. (“Honey Fitz”) Fitzgerald, onetime mayor of Boston. They established trust funds for their children that guaranteed lifelong financial independence. After serving as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Joseph Kennedy became the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and for six months in 1938 John served as his secretary, drawing on that experience to write his senior thesis at Harvard University (B.S., 1940) on Great Britain’s military unpreparedness. He then expanded that thesis into a best-selling book, Why England Slept (1940).In the fall of 1941 Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and two years later was sent to the South Pacific. By the time he was discharged in 1945, his older brother, Joe, who their father had expected would be the first Kennedy to run for office, had been killed in the war, and the family’s political standard passed to John, who had planned to pursue an academic or journalistic career.
John Kennedy himself had barely escaped death in battle. Commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat, he was gravely injured when a Japanese destroyer sank it in the Solomon Islands. Marooned far behind enemy lines, he led his men back to safety and was awarded the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. He also returned to active command at his own request. (These events were later depicted in a Hollywood film, PT 109 [1963], that contributed to the Kennedy mystique.) However, the further injury to his back, which had bothered him since his teens, never really healed. Despite operations in 1944, 1954, and 1955, he was in pain for much of the rest of his life. He also suffered from Addison’s disease, though this affliction was publicly concealed. “At least one-half of the days he spent on this earth,” wrote his brother Robert, “were days of intense physical pain.” (After he became president, Kennedy combated the pain with injections of amphetamines—then thought to be harmless and used by more than a few celebrities for their energizing effect. According to some reports, both Kennedy and the first lady became heavily dependent on these injections through weekly use.) None of this prevented Kennedy from undertaking a strenuous life in politics. His family expected him to run for public office and to win.
Congressman and senator
Kennedy did not disappoint his family; in fact, he never lost an election. His first opportunity came in 1946, when he ran for Congress. Although still physically weak from his war injuries, he campaigned aggressively, bypassing the Democratic organization in the Massachusetts 11th congressional district and depending instead upon his family, college friends, and fellow navy officers. In the Democratic primary he received nearly double the vote of his nearest opponent; in the November election he overwhelmed the Republican candidate. He was only 29.Kennedy served three terms in the House of Representatives (1947–53) as a bread-and-butter liberal. He advocated better working conditions, more public housing, higher wages, lower prices, cheaper rents, and more Social Security for the aged. In foreign policy he was an early supporter of Cold War policies. He backed the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan but was sharply critical of the Truman administration’s record in Asia. He accused the State Department of trying to force Chiang Kai-shek into a coalition with Mao Zedong. “What our young men had saved,” he told the House on January 25, 1949, “our diplomats and our President have frittered away.”
His congressional district in Boston was a safe seat, but Kennedy was too ambitious to remain long in the House of Representatives. In 1952 he ran for the U.S. Senate against the popular incumbent, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. His mother and sisters Eunice, Patricia, and Jean held “Kennedy teas” across the state. Thousands of volunteers flocked to help, including his 27-year-old brother Robert, who managed the campaign. That fall the Republican presidential candidate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, carried Massachusetts by 208,000 votes; but Kennedy defeated Lodge by 70,000 votes. Less than a year later, on September 12, 1953, Kennedy enhanced his electoral appeal by marrying Jacqueline Lee Bouvier (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis). Twelve years younger than Kennedy and from a socially prominent family, the beautiful “Jackie” was the perfect complement to the handsome politician; they made a glamorous couple.
As a senator, Kennedy quickly won a reputation for responsiveness to requests from constituents, except on certain occasions when the national interest was at stake. In 1954 he was the only New England senator to approve an extension of President Eisenhower’s reciprocal-trade powers, and he vigorously backed the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, despite the fact that over a period of 20 years no Massachusetts senator or congressman had ever voted for it.
To the disappointment of liberal Democrats, Kennedy soft-pedaled the demagogic excesses of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin, who in the early 1950s conducted witch-hunting campaigns against government workers accused of being communists. Kennedy’s father liked McCarthy, contributed to his campaign, and even entertained him in the family’s compound at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Kennedy himself disapproved of McCarthy, but, as he once observed, “Half my people in Massachusetts look on McCarthy as a hero.” Yet, on the Senate vote over condemnation of McCarthy’s conduct (1954), Kennedy expected to vote against him. He prepared a speech explaining why, but he was absent on the day of the vote. Later, at a National Press Club Gridiron dinner, costumed reporters sang, “Where were you, John, where were you, John, when the Senate censured Joe?” Actually, John had been in a hospital, in critical condition after back surgery. For six months afterward he lay strapped to a board in his father’s house in Palm Beach, Florida. It was during this period that he worked on Profiles in Courage (1956), an account of eight great American political leaders who had defied popular opinion in matters of conscience, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. Although Kennedy was credited as the book’s author, it was later revealed that his assistant Theodore Sorensen had done much of the research and writing.
Back in the Senate, Kennedy led a fight against a proposal to abolish the electoral college, crusaded for labour reform, and became increasingly committed to civil rights legislation. As a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the late 1950s, he advocated extensive foreign aid to the emerging nations in Africa and Asia, and he surprised his colleagues by calling upon France to grant Algerian independence.
During these years his political outlook was moving leftward. Possibly because of their father’s dynamic personality, the sons of Joseph Kennedy matured slowly. Gradually John’s stature among Democrats grew, until he had inherited the legions that had once followed Governor Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, the two-time presidential candidate who by appealing to idealism had transformed the Democratic Party and made Kennedy’s rise possible.
A steady stream of speeches and periodical profiles followed, with photographs of him and his wife appearing on many a magazine cover. Kennedy’s carefully calculated pursuit of the presidency years before the first primary established a practice that became the norm for candidates seeking the nation’s highest office. To transport him and his staff around the country, his father bought a 40-passenger Convair aircraft. His brothers Robert (“Bobby,” or “Bob”) and Edward (“Teddy,” or “Ted”) pitched in. After having graduated from Harvard University (1948) and from the University of Virginia Law School (1951), Bobby had embarked on a career as a Justice Department attorney and counsellor for congressional committees. Ted likewise had graduated from Harvard (1956) and from Virginia Law School (1959). Both men were astute campaigners.
In January 1960 John F. Kennedy formally announced his presidential candidacy. His chief rivals were the senators Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Kennedy knocked Humphrey out of the campaign and dealt the religious taboo against Roman Catholics a blow by winning the primary in Protestant West Virginia. He tackled the Catholic issue again, by avowing his belief in the separation of church and state in a televised speech before a group of Protestant ministers in Houston, Texas. Nominated on the first ballot, he balanced the Democratic ticket by choosing Johnson as his running mate. In his acceptance speech Kennedy declared, “We stand today on the edge of a New Frontier.” Thereafter the phrase “New Frontier” was associated with his presidential programs.
Another phrase—“the Kennedy style”—encapsulated the candidate’s emerging identity. It was glamorous and elitist, an amalgam of his father’s wealth, John Kennedy’s charisma and easy wit, Jacqueline Kennedy’s beauty and fashion sense (the suits and pillbox hats she wore became widely popular), the charm of their children and relatives, and the erudition of the Harvard advisers who surrounded him (called the “best and brightest” by author David Halberstam).
Kennedy won the general election, narrowly defeating the Republican candidate, Vice President Richard M. Nixon, by a margin of less than 120,000 out of some 70,000,000 votes cast. Many observers, then and since, believed vote fraud contributed to Kennedy’s victory, especially in the critical state of Illinois, where Joe Kennedy enlisted the help of the ever-powerful Richard J. Daley, mayor of Chicago. Nixon had defended the Eisenhower record; Kennedy, whose slogan had been “Let’s get this country moving again,” had deplored unemployment, the sluggish economy, the so-called missile gap (a presumed Soviet superiority over the United States in the number of nuclear-armed missiles), and the new communist government in Havana. A major factor in the campaign was a unique series of four televised debates between the two men; an estimated 85–120 million Americans watched one or more of the debates. Both men showed a firm grasp of the issues, but Kennedy’s poise in front of the camera, his tony Harvard accent, and his good looks (in contrast to Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow”) convinced many viewers that he had won the debate. As president, Kennedy continued to exploit the new medium, sparkling in precedent-setting televised weekly press conferences.
He was the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic ever elected to the presidency of the United States. His administration lasted 1,037 days. From the onset he was concerned with foreign affairs. In his memorable inaugural address, he called upon Americans “to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.” He declared:
In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it.…The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.The administration’s first brush with foreign affairs was a disaster. In the last year of the Eisenhower presidency, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had equipped and trained a brigade of anticommunist Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously advised the new president that this force, once ashore, would spark a general uprising against the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. But the Bay of Pigs invasion was a fiasco; every man on the beachhead was either killed or captured. Kennedy assumed “sole responsibility” for the setback. Privately he told his father that he would never again accept a Joint Chiefs recommendation without first challenging it.
The Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, thought he had taken the young president’s measure when the two leaders met in Vienna in June 1961. Khrushchev ordered a wall built between East and West Berlin and threatened to sign a separate peace treaty with East Germany. The president activated National Guard and reserve units, and Khrushchev backed down on his separate peace threat. Kennedy then made a dramatic visit to West Berlin, where he told a cheering crowd, “Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein [I am a] Berliner.’ ” In October 1962 a buildup of Soviet short- and intermediate-range nuclear missiles was discovered in Cuba. Kennedy demanded that the missiles be dismantled; he ordered a “quarantine” of Cuba—in effect, a blockade that would stop Soviet ships from reaching that island. For 13 days nuclear war seemed near; then the Soviet premier announced that the offensive weapons would be withdrawn. (See Cuban missile crisis.) Ten months later Kennedy scored his greatest foreign triumph when Khrushchev and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain joined him in signing the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. Yet Kennedy’s commitment to combat the spread of communism led him to escalate American involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, where he sent not just supplies and financial assistance, as President Eisenhower had, but 15,000 military advisers as well.
Because of his slender victory in 1960, Kennedy approached Congress warily, and with good reason; Congress was largely indifferent to his legislative program. It approved his Alliance for Progress (Alianza) in Latin America and his Peace Corps, which won the enthusiastic endorsement of thousands of college students. But his two most cherished projects, massive income tax cuts and a sweeping civil rights measure, were not passed until after his death. In May 1961 Kennedy committed the United States to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade, and, while he would not live to see this achievement either, his advocacy of the space program contributed to the successful launch of the first American manned spaceflights.
He was an immensely popular president, at home and abroad. At times he seemed to be everywhere at once, encouraging better physical fitness, improving the morale of government workers, bringing brilliant advisers to the White House, and beautifying Washington, D.C. His wife joined him as an advocate for American culture. Their two young children, Caroline Bouvier and John F., Jr., were familiar throughout the country. The charm and optimism of the Kennedy family seemed contagious, sparking the idealism of a generation for whom the Kennedy White House became, in journalist Theodore White’s famous analogy, Camelot—the magical court of Arthurian legend, which was celebrated in a popular Broadway musical of the early 1960s.
Joseph Kennedy, meanwhile, had been incapacitated in Hyannis Port by a stroke, but the other Kennedys were in and out of Washington. Robert Kennedy, as John’s attorney general, was the second most powerful man in the country. He advised the president on all matters of foreign and domestic policy, national security, and political affairs.
In 1962 Ted Kennedy was elected to the president’s former Senate seat in Massachusetts. Their sister Eunice’s husband, Sargent Shriver, became director of the Peace Corps. Their sister Jean’s husband, Stephen Smith, was preparing to manage the Democratic Party’s 1964 presidential campaign. Another sister, Patricia, had married Peter Lawford, an English-born actor who served the family as an unofficial envoy to the entertainment world. All Americans knew who Rose, Jackie, Bobby, and Teddy were, and most could identify Bobby’s wife as Ethel and Teddy’s wife as Joan. But if the first family had become American royalty, its image of perfection would be tainted years later by allegations of marital infidelity by the president (most notably, an affair with motion-picture icon Marilyn Monroe) and of his association with members of organized crime.
ABOUT TAJ MAHAL
Taj Mahal, also spelled Tadj Mahall, mausoleum complex in Agra, western Uttar Pradesh state, northern India, on the southern bank of the Yamuna (Jumna) River.
In its harmonious proportions and its fluid incorporation of decorative
elements, the Taj Mahal is distinguished as the finest example of Mughal architecture, a blend of Indian, Persian, and Islamic styles. One of the most beautiful structural compositions in the world, the Taj Mahal was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1983.It was built by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahān (reigned 1628–58) to immortalize his wife Mumtāz Maḥal
(“Chosen One of the Palace”). The name Taj Mahal is a derivation of her
name. She died in childbirth in 1631, after having been the emperor’s
inseparable companion since their marriage in 1612. The plans for the
complex have been attributed to various architects of the period, though
the chief architect was probably Ustad Aḥmad Lahawrī, an Indian of
Persian descent. The five principal elements of the complex—main
gateway, garden, mosque, jawab
(literally “answer”; a building mirroring the mosque), and mausoleum
(including its four minarets)—were conceived and designed as a unified
entity according to the tenets of Mughal building practice, which
allowed no subsequent addition or alteration. Building commenced about
1632. More than 20,000 workers were employed from India, Persia, the
Ottoman Empire, and Europe to complete the mausoleum itself by about
1638–39; the adjunct buildings were finished by 1643, and decoration
work continued until at least 1647. In total, construction of the
42-acre (17-hectare) complex spanned 22 years.
Resting in the middle of a wide plinth 23 feet (7 metres) high, the mausoleum proper is of white marble that reflects hues according to the intensity of sunlight or moonlight. It has four nearly identical facades, each with a wide central arch rising to 108 feet (33 metres) and chamfered (slanted) corners incorporating smaller arches. The majestic central dome, which reaches a height of 240 feet (73 metres) at the tip of its finial, is surrounded by four lesser domes. The acoustics inside the main dome cause the single note of a flute to reverberate five times. The interior of the mausoleum is organized around an octagonal marble chamber ornamented with low-relief carvings and semiprecious stones (pietra dura); therein are the cenotaphs of Mumtāz Maḥal and Shah Jahān. These false tombs are enclosed by a finely wrought filigree marble screen. Beneath the tombs, at garden level, lie the true sarcophagi. Standing gracefully apart from the central building, at each of the four corners of the square plinth, are elegant minarets.
Flanking the mausoleum near the northwestern and northeastern edges of the garden, respectively, are two symmetrically identical buildings—the mosque, which faces east, and its jawab, which faces west and provides aesthetic balance. Built of red Sikri sandstone with marble-necked domes and architraves, they contrast in both colour and texture with the mausoleum’s white marble.
The garden is set out along classical Mughal lines—a square quartered by long watercourses (pools)—with walking paths, fountains, and ornamental trees. Enclosed by the walls and structures of the complex, it provides a striking approach to the mausoleum, which can be seen reflected in the garden’s central pools.
he southern end of the complex is graced by a wide red sandstone gateway with a recessed central arch two stories high. White marble paneling around the arch is inlaid with black Qurʾānic lettering and floral designs. The main arch is flanked by two pairs of smaller arches. Crowning the northern and southern facades of the gateway are matching rows of white chattris (chhattris; cupola-like structures), 11 to each facade, accompanied by thin ornamental minarets that rise to some 98 feet (30 metres). At the four corners of the structure are octagonal towers capped with larger chattris.
Two notable decorative features are repeated throughout the complex: pietra dura and Arabic calligraphy. As embodied in the Mughal craft, pietra dura (Italian: “hard stone”) incorporates the inlay of semiprecious stones of various colours, including lapis lazuli, jade, crystal, turquoise, and amethyst, in highly formalized and intertwining geometric and floral designs. The colours serve to moderate the dazzling expanse of the white Makrana marble. Under the direction of Amānat Khan al-Shīrāzī, Qurʾānic verses were inscribed across numerous sections of the Taj Mahal in calligraphy, central to Islamic artistic tradition. One of the inscriptions in the sandstone gateway is known as Daybreak (89:28–30) and invites the faithful to enter paradise. Calligraphy also encircles the soaring arched entrances to the mausoleum proper. To ensure a uniform appearance from the vantage point of the terrace, the lettering increases in size according to its relative height and distance from the viewer.
A tradition relates that Shah Jahān originally intended to build another mausoleum across the river to house his own remains, and the two structures were to be connected by a bridge. He was deposed by his son Aurangzeb, however, and imprisoned for the rest of his life in Agra Fort, on the right bank of the Yamuna River 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the Taj Mahal.
Over the centuries the Taj Mahal has been subject to neglect and decay. A major restoration was carried out at the beginning of the 20th century under the direction of Lord Curzon, then the British viceroy of India. More recently, air pollution caused by emissions from foundries and other nearby factories and exhaust from motor vehicles has damaged the mausoleum, notably its marble facade. A number of steps have been taken to reduce the threat to the monument, among them the closing of some foundries and the installation of pollution-control equipment at others, the creation of a parkland buffer zone around the complex, and the banning of nearby vehicular traffic. Night viewing of the Taj Mahal was banned from 1984 to 2004, because it was feared that the monument would be a target of Sikh militants. A restoration and research program for the Taj Mahal was initiated in 1998. Progress in improving environmental conditions around the monument, however, has been slow.
The Taj Mahal has increasingly come to be seen as an Indian cultural symbol. Some Hindu nationalist groups have attempted to diminish the importance of the Muslim influence in accounting for the origins and design of the Taj Mahal.
Resting in the middle of a wide plinth 23 feet (7 metres) high, the mausoleum proper is of white marble that reflects hues according to the intensity of sunlight or moonlight. It has four nearly identical facades, each with a wide central arch rising to 108 feet (33 metres) and chamfered (slanted) corners incorporating smaller arches. The majestic central dome, which reaches a height of 240 feet (73 metres) at the tip of its finial, is surrounded by four lesser domes. The acoustics inside the main dome cause the single note of a flute to reverberate five times. The interior of the mausoleum is organized around an octagonal marble chamber ornamented with low-relief carvings and semiprecious stones (pietra dura); therein are the cenotaphs of Mumtāz Maḥal and Shah Jahān. These false tombs are enclosed by a finely wrought filigree marble screen. Beneath the tombs, at garden level, lie the true sarcophagi. Standing gracefully apart from the central building, at each of the four corners of the square plinth, are elegant minarets.
Flanking the mausoleum near the northwestern and northeastern edges of the garden, respectively, are two symmetrically identical buildings—the mosque, which faces east, and its jawab, which faces west and provides aesthetic balance. Built of red Sikri sandstone with marble-necked domes and architraves, they contrast in both colour and texture with the mausoleum’s white marble.
The garden is set out along classical Mughal lines—a square quartered by long watercourses (pools)—with walking paths, fountains, and ornamental trees. Enclosed by the walls and structures of the complex, it provides a striking approach to the mausoleum, which can be seen reflected in the garden’s central pools.
he southern end of the complex is graced by a wide red sandstone gateway with a recessed central arch two stories high. White marble paneling around the arch is inlaid with black Qurʾānic lettering and floral designs. The main arch is flanked by two pairs of smaller arches. Crowning the northern and southern facades of the gateway are matching rows of white chattris (chhattris; cupola-like structures), 11 to each facade, accompanied by thin ornamental minarets that rise to some 98 feet (30 metres). At the four corners of the structure are octagonal towers capped with larger chattris.
Two notable decorative features are repeated throughout the complex: pietra dura and Arabic calligraphy. As embodied in the Mughal craft, pietra dura (Italian: “hard stone”) incorporates the inlay of semiprecious stones of various colours, including lapis lazuli, jade, crystal, turquoise, and amethyst, in highly formalized and intertwining geometric and floral designs. The colours serve to moderate the dazzling expanse of the white Makrana marble. Under the direction of Amānat Khan al-Shīrāzī, Qurʾānic verses were inscribed across numerous sections of the Taj Mahal in calligraphy, central to Islamic artistic tradition. One of the inscriptions in the sandstone gateway is known as Daybreak (89:28–30) and invites the faithful to enter paradise. Calligraphy also encircles the soaring arched entrances to the mausoleum proper. To ensure a uniform appearance from the vantage point of the terrace, the lettering increases in size according to its relative height and distance from the viewer.
A tradition relates that Shah Jahān originally intended to build another mausoleum across the river to house his own remains, and the two structures were to be connected by a bridge. He was deposed by his son Aurangzeb, however, and imprisoned for the rest of his life in Agra Fort, on the right bank of the Yamuna River 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the Taj Mahal.
Over the centuries the Taj Mahal has been subject to neglect and decay. A major restoration was carried out at the beginning of the 20th century under the direction of Lord Curzon, then the British viceroy of India. More recently, air pollution caused by emissions from foundries and other nearby factories and exhaust from motor vehicles has damaged the mausoleum, notably its marble facade. A number of steps have been taken to reduce the threat to the monument, among them the closing of some foundries and the installation of pollution-control equipment at others, the creation of a parkland buffer zone around the complex, and the banning of nearby vehicular traffic. Night viewing of the Taj Mahal was banned from 1984 to 2004, because it was feared that the monument would be a target of Sikh militants. A restoration and research program for the Taj Mahal was initiated in 1998. Progress in improving environmental conditions around the monument, however, has been slow.
The Taj Mahal has increasingly come to be seen as an Indian cultural symbol. Some Hindu nationalist groups have attempted to diminish the importance of the Muslim influence in accounting for the origins and design of the Taj Mahal.
Timeline of Indian Freedom Struggle
Year
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Indian Freedom Struggle: Important Events
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1857
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Mutiny against the British
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1885
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Indian National Congress is founded by A.O. Hume
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1905
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Partition of Bengal announced
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1906
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Muslim League was founded at Decca on 31st December.
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1908
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Khudiram Bose was executed on 30th April.
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1908
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Tilak was sentenced to six years on charges of sedition on 22nd July.
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1909
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Minto-Morley Reforms of Indian Councils Act - 21st May.
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1911
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Delhi durbar held. Partition of Bengal is cancelled.
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1912
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New Delhi established as the new capital of India
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1912
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A Bomb was thrown on Lord Hardinge on his state entry into Delhi on 23rd December.
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1914
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The Ghadar Party was formed at San Francisco on 1st November
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1914
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Tilak was released from jail on 16th June.
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1914
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Outbreak of the 1st World War 4th August
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1914
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Komagatamaru ship reaches Budge Budge (Calcutta port) on 29the September.
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1915
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Mahatma Gandhi arrived in India on 9th Jan
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1915
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Gopal Krishna Gokhale died on 19th February.
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1916
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Tilak founded Indian Home Rule League with its headquarters at Poona on 28th April.
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1916
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Annie Besant started another Home Rule League on 25th September.
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1917
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Mahatma Gandhi launches the Champaran campaign in Bihar to focus attention on the grievances of indigo planters in April
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1917
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The Secretary of State for India, Montague, declares that the goal of the British government in India is introduction of Responsible Government on 20th August.
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1918
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Beginning of trade union movement in India.
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1919
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Rowlatt Bill introduced on Feb 16, 1919.
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1919
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The Jallianwala Bagh tragedy took place on 13th April in Amritsar.
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1919
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The House of Commons passes the Montague Chelmsford Reforms or the Government of India Act, 1919 on 5th December. The new reforms under this Act came into operation in 1921.
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1920
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First meeting of the All India Trade Union Congress, (under Narain Malhar Joshi).
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1920
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The Indian National Congress (INC) adopts the Non-Co-operation Resolution in December.
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1920-22
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Mahatma Gandhi suspends Non-Co-operation Movement on Feb 12 after the violent incidents at Chauri Chaura.
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1922
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Moplah rebellion on the Malabar coast in August.
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1923
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Swaraj Party was formed by Motilal Nehru and others on 1st January.
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1924
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The Communist Party of India starts its activities at Kanpur.
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1925
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The Kakori Train Conspiracy case in August
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1927
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The British Prime Minister appoints Simon Commission to suggest future constitutional reforms in India.
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1928
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Simon Commission arrives in Bombay on Feb 3. An all-India hartal is called. Lala Lajpat Rai assaulted by police at Lahore.
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1928
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Nehru Report recommends principles for the new Constitution of India. All parties conference considers the Nehru Report, Aug 28-31, 1928.
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1928
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Lala Lajpat Rai died on 17th November due to injuries.
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1929
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Sarda Act passed: prohibs marriage of girls below 14 and boys below 18 years of age.
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1929
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All Parties Muslim Conference formulates the 'Fourteen Points' under the leadership of Jinnah on 9th March.
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1929
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Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwari Dutt throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assen on 8th April.
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1929
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Lord Irwin's announced that the goal of British policy in India was the grant of the Dominion status on 31st October.
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1929
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The Lahore session of the INC adopts the goal of complete independence (poorna swarajya) for India; Jawaharlal Nehru hoists the tricolour on the banks of the Ravi at Lahore on 31st December.
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1930
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First Independence Day observed on 26th January.
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1930
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The Working Committee of the INC meets at Sabarmati and passes the Civil Disobedience resolution on 14th February.
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1930
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Mahatma Gandhi launches the Civil Disobedience movement with his epic Dandi Mar (Mar 12 to Apr 6). First phase of the Civil Disobedience movement: Mar 12, 1930 to Mar 5, 1931.
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1930
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First Round Table Conference begins in London to consider the report of the Simon Commission on 30th November.
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1931
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On 5th March, the Gandhi lrwin pact was signed and the Civil Disobedience movement was suspended.
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1931
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Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Rajguru were executed on 23rd March.
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1931
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Second Round Table Conference took place on 7th September.
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1931
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Gandhiji returns from London after the deadlock in llnd RTC on 28th December. Launches Civil Disobedience Movement. The INC declared illegal.
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1932
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Gandhiji was arrested and imprisoned without trial on 4th January.
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1932
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British Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald announced the infamous "Communal Award" on 16th August.
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1932
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Gandhiji in jail, begins his epic "fast unto death" against the Communal Award on 20th September and ends the fast on 26th of the same month after the Poona Pact.
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1932
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The Third Round Table Conference begins in London (Nov 17 to Dec 24)
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1933
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Gandhiji released from prison as he begins fast for self-purification on 9th May. INC suspends Civil Disobedience movement but authorizes Satyagraha by individuals.
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1934
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Gandhiji withdraws from active politics and devotes himself to constructive programmes (1934-39).
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1935
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The Government of India Act 1935 was passed on 4th August
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1937
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Elections held in India under the Act of 1935 (Feb 1937). The INC contests election and forms ministries in several provinces (Jul 1937).
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1938
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Haripura session of INC was held on 19th February. Subhash Chandra Boss was elected Congress president on the 20th of February.
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1939
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Tripuri session of the INC was conducted from the 10th to the 12th of March.
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1939
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Subhash Chandra Bose resigns as the president of the INC in April.
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1939
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Second World War (Sep 1). Great Britain declares war on Germany on 3rd September; the Viceroy declares that India too is at war.
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1939
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Between 27th October to 5th November, the Congress ministries in the provinces resign in protest against the war policy of the British government.
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1939
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The Muslim League observes the resignation of the Congress ministries as ‘Deliverance Day’ on 22nd December.
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1940
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Lahore session of ihe Muslim League passes the Pakistan Resolution in March
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1940
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Viceroy Linlithgow announces-August Offer on 10th of August.
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1940
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Congress Working Committee rejects the 'August Offer' between 18th to the 22nd of August.
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1940
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Congress launches Individual Satyagraha movement on 17th October.
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1941
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Subhash Chandra Bose escapes from India on 17 January; arrives in Berlin (Mar 28).
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1942
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Churchill announces the Cripps Mission on 11th of March
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1942
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The INC meets in Bombay; adopts 'Quit India' resolution on 7th & 8th August.
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1942
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Gandhiji and other Congress leaders were arrested on 9th August
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1942
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Quit India movement begins on 11th of August; the Great Aug Uprising.
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1942
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Subhash Chandra Bose established the Indian National Army 'Azad Hind Fauj' on 1st September.
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1943
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Subhash Chandra Bose proclaims the formation of the Provisonal Government of Free India on 21st October.
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1943
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Karachi session of the Muslim League adopts the slogan Divide arc in December.
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1944
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Wavell calls Simla Conference in a bid to form the Executive Council at Indian political leaders on 25th January.
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1946
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Mutiny of the Indian naval ratings in Bombay.
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1946
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Cabinet Mission arrives in New Delhi (Mar 14);British Prime Minister Attlee announces Cabinet Mission ro propose new solution to the Indian deadlock on 15th March; ; issues proposal (May 16).
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1946
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Jawaharlal Nehru takes over as Congress president on 6th July.
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1946
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Wavell invites Nehru to form an interim government on 6th August; Interim Government takes office (Sep 2).
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1946
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First session of the Constituent Assembly of India starts on 9th December. Muslim League boycotts it.
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1947
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On 20th February, British Prime Minister Attlee declares that the British government would leave India not later than Jun 1948.
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1947
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Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy and Governor General of India, sworn in on 24th March
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1947
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Mountbatten Plan was made on 3rd June for the partition of India and the announcement was made on June 4th that transfer to power will take place on August 15th
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