biography of j f kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy, the 35 th U.S. president, negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and initiated the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated in 1963.

Quick Facts

U.s. navy service, u.s. congressman and senator, wife and children, 1960 presidential campaign, u.s. president, assassination and death, release of assassination documents, who was john f. kennedy.

John F. Kennedy served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming the 35 th American president in 1961. While in the White House, Kennedy 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. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. He was 46 years old.

FULL NAME: John Fitzgerald Kennedy BORN: May 29, 1917 DIED: November 22, 1963 BIRTHPLACE: Brookline, Massachusetts SPOUSE: Jaqueline Kennedy (1953-1963) CHILDREN: Caroline Kennedy , John F. Kennedy Jr. , and Patrick Kennedy ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Both the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys were wealthy and prominent Irish Catholic families in Boston. John’s paternal grandfather, P.J. Kennedy, was a wealthy banker and liquor trader, and his maternal grandfather, John E. Fitzgerald, nicknamed “Honey Fitz,” was a skilled politician who served as a congressman and as the mayor of Boston. Kennedy’s mother, Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald , was a Boston debutante, and his father, Joseph Kennedy Sr. , was a successful banker who made a fortune on the stock market after World War I. Joe Kennedy Sr. went on to a government career as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and as an ambassador to Great Britain.

John, nicknamed “Jack,” was the second oldest of a group of nine extraordinary siblings. His brothers and sisters include Special Olympics founder Eunice Kennedy Shriver, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy , and Ted Kennedy , one of the most powerful senators in American history. The Kennedy children remained close-knit and supportive of each other throughout their entire lives.

Joseph and Rose largely spurned the world of Boston socialites into which they had been born to focus instead on their children’s education. Joe Sr. in particular obsessed over every detail of his kids’ lives, a rarity for a father at that time. As a family friend noted, “Most fathers in those days simply weren’t that interested in what their children did. But Joe Kennedy knew what his kids were up to all the time.”

Joe Sr. had great expectations for his children, and he sought to instill in them a fierce competitive fire and the belief that winning was everything. He entered his children in swimming and sailing competitions and chided them for finishing in anything but first place. John’s sister, Eunice, later recalled, “I was 24 before I knew I didn’t have to win something every day.” John bought into his father’s philosophy that winning was everything. “He hates to lose at anything,” Eunice said. “That’s the only thing Jack gets really emotional about—when he loses.”

Despite his father’s constant reprimands, young Kennedy was a poor student and a mischievous boy. He attended a Catholic boys’ boarding school in Connecticut called Canterbury, where he excelled at English and history—the subjects he enjoyed—but nearly flunked Latin, in which he had no interest. Despite his poor grades, Kennedy continued on to Choate, an elite Connecticut preparatory school. Although he was obviously brilliant, evidenced by the extraordinary thoughtfulness and nuance of his work on the rare occasions when he applied himself, Kennedy remained at best a mediocre student, preferring sports, girls, and practical jokes to coursework.

His father wrote to him by way of encouragement, “If I didn’t really feel you had the goods, I would be most charitable in my attitude toward your failings... I am not expecting too much, and I will not be disappointed if you don’t turn out to be a real genius, but I think you can be a really worthwhile citizen with good judgment and understanding.” John was, in fact, very bookish in high school, reading ceaselessly but not the books his teachers assigned.

He was also chronically ill during his childhood and adolescence; he suffered from severe colds, the flu, scarlet fever, and even more severe, undiagnosed diseases that forced him to miss months of school at a time and occasionally brought him to the brink of death.

After graduating from Choate and spending one semester at Princeton University, Kennedy transferred to Harvard University in 1936. There, he repeated his by then well-established academic pattern, excelling occasionally in the classes he enjoyed but proving only an average student due to the omnipresent diversions of sports and women. Handsome, charming, and blessed with a radiant smile, Kennedy was incredibly popular with his Harvard classmates. His friend Lem Billings recalled, “Jack was more fun than anyone I’ve ever known, and I think most people who knew him felt the same way about him.” Kennedy was also an incorrigible womanizer. He wrote to Billings during his sophomore year, “I can now get tail as often and as free as I want, which is a step in the right direction.”

Nevertheless, as an upperclassman, Kennedy finally grew serious about his studies and began to realize his potential. His father had been appointed ambassador to Great Britain, and on an extended visit in 1939, John decided to research and write a senior thesis on why Britain was so unprepared to fight Germany in World War II . An incisive analysis of Britain’s failures to meet the Nazi challenge, the paper was so well-received that upon Kennedy’s graduation in 1940 it was published as a book, Why England Slept , selling more than 80,000 copies. Kennedy’s father sent him a cablegram in the aftermath of the book’s publication: “Two things I always knew about you one that you are smart two that you are a swell guy love dad.”

Shortly after graduating from Harvard, Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and was assigned to command a patrol torpedo boat in the South Pacific. On August 2, 1943, his boat, PT-109 , was rammed by a Japanese warship and split in two. Two sailors died, and Kennedy badly injured his back. Hauling another wounded sailor by the strap of his life vest, Kennedy led the survivors to a nearby island, where they were rescued six days later. The incident earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for “extremely heroic conduct” and a Purple Heart for the injuries he suffered.

However, Kennedy’s older brother, Joe Jr., who had also joined the Navy, wasn’t so fortunate. A pilot, he died when his plane blew up in August 1944. Handsome, athletic, intelligent, and ambitious, Joseph Kennedy Jr. had been pegged by his father as the one among his children who would some day become president of the United States. In the aftermath of Joe Jr.’s death, John took his family’s hopes and aspirations for his older brother upon himself.

Upon his discharge from the Navy, John worked briefly as a reporter for Hearst Newspapers. Then in 1946, at the age of 29, he decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from a working-class district of Boston, a seat being vacated by Democrat James Michael Curly. Bolstered by his status as a war hero, his family connections, and his father’s money, the young Democrat won the election handily.

However, after the glory and excitement of publishing his first book and serving in World War II, Kennedy found his work in Congress incredibly dull. Despite serving three terms, from 1946 to 1952, Kennedy remained frustrated by what he saw as stifling rules and procedures that prevented a young, inexperienced representative from making an impact. “We were just worms in the House,” he later recalled. “Nobody paid attention to us nationally.”

In 1952, seeking greater influence and a larger platform, Kennedy challenged Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Once again backed by his father’s vast financial resources, Kennedy hired his younger brother Robert as his campaign manager. Robert put together what one journalist called “the most methodical, the most scientific, the most thoroughly detailed, the most intricate, the most disciplined and smoothly working state-wide campaign in Massachusetts history—and possibly anywhere else.”

In an election year in which Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress, Kennedy nevertheless won a narrow victory, giving him considerable clout within the Democratic Party. According to one of his aides, the decisive factor in Kennedy’s victory was his personality: “He was the new kind of political figure that people were looking for that year, dignified and gentlemanly and well-educated and intelligent, without the air of superior condescension.”

Kennedy continued to suffer frequent illnesses during his career in the Senate. While recovering from one surgery, he wrote another book, profiling eight senators who had taken courageous but unpopular stances. Profiles in Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography, and Kennedy remains the only American president to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Otherwise, Kennedy’s eight-year Senate career was relatively undistinguished. Bored by the Massachusetts-specific issues on which he had to spend much of his time, Kennedy was more drawn to the international challenges posed by the Soviet Union’s growing nuclear arsenal and the Cold War battle for the hearts and minds of Third World nations.

Shortly after his Senate election, Kennedy met a beautiful young woman named Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party and, in his own words, “leaned across the asparagus and asked her for a date.” They were married on September 12, 1953, until John’s death a decade later.

The couple first expected to become parents in 1956, but Jackie delivered a stillborn girl they intended to name Arabella. John and Jackie then welcomed their daughter, Caroline , in November 1957 and their son John Jr. in November 1960. In August 1963, their son Patrick was born prematurely and died two days after his birth.

In 1956, Kennedy was very nearly selected as Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson’s running mate but was ultimately passed over for Estes Kefauver from Tennessee. Four years later, Kennedy decided to run for president himself.

In the 1960 Democratic primaries, Kennedy outmaneuvered his main opponent, Hubert Humphrey, with superior organization and financial resources. Selecting Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson as his running mate, Kennedy faced Vice President Richard Nixon in the general election. The election turned largely on a series of televised national debates in which Kennedy bested Nixon, an experienced and skilled debater, by appearing relaxed, healthy, and vigorous in contrast to his pallid and tense opponent.

On November 8, 1960, Kennedy defeated Nixon by a razor-thin margin to become the 35 th president of the United States of America. Kennedy’s election was historic in several respects. At the age of 43, he was the second youngest American president in history, second only to Theodore Roosevelt , who assumed the office at 42. He was also the first Catholic president and the first president born in the 20 th century.

Delivering his legendary inaugural address on January 20, 1961, Kennedy sought to inspire all Americans to more active citizenship. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he famously said. “Ask what you can do for your country.” During his brief tenure as president, Kennedy did much for America.

Foreign Affairs

Kennedy’s greatest accomplishments came in the arena of foreign affairs. Capitalizing on the spirit of activism he had helped to ignite, Kennedy created the Peace Corps by executive order in 1961. By the end of the century, over 170,000 Peace Corps volunteers would serve in 135 countries. Also in 1961, Kennedy created the Alliance for Progress to foster greater economic ties with Latin America, in hopes of alleviating poverty and thwarting the spread of communism in the region.

Kennedy also presided over a series of international crises. On April 15, 1961, he authorized a covert mission to overthrow leftist Cuban leader Fidel Castro with a group of 1,500 CIA-trained Cuban refugees. Known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion , the mission proved an unmitigated failure, causing Kennedy great embarrassment.

In August 1961, to stem massive waves of emigration from Soviet-dominated East Germany to American ally West Germany via the divided city of Berlin, Nikita Khrushchev ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall , which became the foremost symbol of the Cold War.

However, the greatest crisis of the Kennedy administration was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Discovering that the Soviet Union had sent ballistic nuclear missiles to Cuba, Kennedy blockaded the island and vowed to defend the United States at any cost. After several of the tensest days in history, during which the world seemed on the brink of nuclear annihilation, the Soviet Union agreed to remove the missiles in return for Kennedy’s promise to not invade Cuba and to remove American missiles from Turkey.

Eight months later, in June 1963, Kennedy successfully negotiated the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with Great Britain and the Soviet Union, helping to ease Cold War tensions. It was one of his proudest accomplishments.

Domestic Policy

President Kennedy’s record on domestic policy was rather mixed. Taking office in the midst of a recession, he proposed sweeping income tax cuts, raising the minimum wage, and instituting new social programs to improve education, health care, and mass transit. However, hampered by lukewarm relations with Congress, Kennedy only achieved part of his agenda: a modest increase in the minimum wage and watered down tax cuts.

The most contentious domestic issue of Kennedy’s presidency was civil rights . Constrained by Southern Democrats in Congress who remained stridently opposed to civil rights for Black citizens, Kennedy offered only tepid support for civil rights reforms early in his term.

Nevertheless, in September 1962, Kennedy sent his brother Attorney General Robert Kennedy to Mississippi to use the National Guard and federal marshals to escort and defend civil rights activist James Meredith as he became the first Black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi on October 1, 1962.

Near the end of 1963, in the wake of the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. ’s “I Have a Dream” speech , Kennedy finally sent a civil rights bill to Congress. One of the last acts of his presidency and his life, Kennedy’s bill eventually passed as the landmark Civil Rights Act in 1964.

On November 21, 1963, President Kennedy flew to Fort Worth, Texas, for a campaign appearance. The next day, November 22, Kennedy, along with his wife and Texas governor John Connally, rode through cheering crowds in downtown Dallas in a Lincoln Continental convertible. From an upstairs window of the Texas School Book Depository building, a 24-year-old warehouse worker named Lee Harvey Oswald , a former Marine with Soviet sympathies, fired upon the car, hitting the president twice. Kennedy died at Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital shortly thereafter at age 46.

A Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby assassinated Oswald days later while he was being transferred between jails. The death of President Kennedy was an unspeakable national tragedy, and to this date, many people remember with unsettling vividness the exact moment they learned of his death. While conspiracy theories have swirled ever since Kennedy’s assassination, the official version of events remains the most plausible: Oswald acted alone.

For few former presidents is the dichotomy between public and scholarly opinion so vast. To the American public, as well as his first historians, Kennedy is a hero—a visionary politician who, if not for his untimely death, might have averted the political and social turmoil of the late 1960s. In public-opinion polls, Kennedy consistently ranks with Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln as among the most beloved American presidents of all time. Critiquing this outpouring of adoration, many more recent Kennedy scholars have derided Kennedy’s womanizing and lack of personal morals and argued that, as a leader, he was more style than substance.

In the end, no one can ever truly know what type of president Kennedy would have become had he finished out his first term or been reelected. Nor can we say how the course of history might have been different had he lived into old age. As historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote , it was “as if Lincoln had been killed six months after Gettysburg or Franklin Roosevelt at the end of 1935 or Truman before the Marshall Plan.”

The most enduring image of Kennedy’s presidency, and of his whole life, is that of Camelot , the idyllic castle of the legendary King Arthur . As his wife, Jackie Kennedy, said after his death, “There’ll be great presidents again, and the Johnsons are wonderful—they’ve been wonderful to me—but there’ll never be another Camelot again.”

On October 26, 2017, President Donald Trump ordered the release of 2,800 records related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The move came at the expiration of a 25-year waiting period signed into law in 1992, which allowed the declassification of the documents provided that doing so wouldn’t hurt intelligence, military operations, or foreign relations.

Trump’s release of the documents came on the final day he was legally allowed to do so. However, he didn’t release all of the documents, as officials from the FBI, CIA, and other agencies had successfully lobbied for the chance to review particularly sensitive material for an additional 180 days.

• For time and the world, do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past, or the present, are certain to miss the future.
• Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
• We need men who can dream of things that never were and not ask why.
• If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
• Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.
• A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles, and dangers, and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality.
• The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high—to permit the customary passions of political debate. We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future... For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
• If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
• The cost of freedom is always high—and Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose and that is the path of surrender or submission.
• We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
• The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.
• Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
• Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
• [O]ur most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

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John F. Kennedy

By: History.com Editors

Updated: November 13, 2023 | Original: October 29, 2009

Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became one of the youngest U.S. presidents, as well as the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. Born into one of America’s wealthiest families, he parlayed an elite education and a reputation as a military hero into a successful run for Congress in 1946 and for the Senate in 1952. 

As president, Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. He also led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement. His assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, sent shockwaves around the world and turned the all-too-human Kennedy into a larger-than-life heroic figure. To this day, historians continue to rank him among the best-loved presidents in American history.

John F. Kennedy’s Early Life

Born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy (known as Jack) was the second of nine children. His parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy, hailed from two of Boston’s most prominent Irish Catholic political families. Despite persistent health problems throughout his childhood and teenage years (he would later be diagnosed with a rare endocrine disorder called Addison’s disease), Jack led a privileged youth. He attended private schools such as Canterbury and Choate and spent summers in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod.

Joe Kennedy, a hugely successful businessman and an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt , was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934 and named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in 1937. As a student at Harvard University, Jack traveled in Europe as his father’s secretary. His senior thesis about Britain’s unpreparedness for war was later published as an acclaimed book, Why England Slept (1940).

Watch the three-episode documentary event, Kennedy . Available to stream now.

Did you know? John F. Kennedy's Senate career got off to a rocky start when he refused to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy, a personal friend of the Kennedy family whom the Senate voted to censure in 1954 for his relentless pursuit of suspected communists. In the end, though he planned to vote against McCarthy, Kennedy missed the vote when he was hospitalized after back surgery.

Jack joined the U.S. Navy in 1941 and two years later was sent to the South Pacific, where he was given command of a Patrol-Torpedo (PT) boat. In August 1943, a Japanese destroyer struck the craft, PT-109, in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy helped some of his marooned crew back to safety and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. His older brother, Joe Jr., was not so fortunate: He was killed in August 1944 when his Navy airplane exploded on a secret mission against a German rocket-launching site. A grieving Joe Sr. told Jack it was his duty to fulfill the destiny once intended for Joe Jr.—to become the first Catholic president of the United States.

JFK’s Beginnings in Politics

Abandoning plans to be a journalist, Jack left the Navy by the end of 1944. Less than a year later, he returned to Boston, preparing a run for Congress in 1946. As a moderately conservative Democrat, and backed by his father’s fortune, Jack won his party’s nomination handily and carried the mostly working-class Eleventh District by nearly three to one over his Republican opponent in the general election. He entered the 80th Congress in January 1947, at the age of 29, and immediately attracted attention (as well as some criticism from older members of the Washington establishment) for his youthful appearance and relaxed, informal style.

Kennedy won reelection to the House of Representatives in 1948 and 1950, and in 1952 ran successfully for the Senate, defeating the popular Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. On September 12, 1953, Kennedy married the beautiful socialite and journalist Jacqueline (Jackie) Lee Bouvier. Two years later, he was forced to undergo a painful operation on his back. While recovering from the surgery, Jack wrote another best-selling book, Profiles in Courage , which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. (The book was later revealed to be mostly the work of Kennedy’s longtime aide, Theodore Sorenson.)

Kennedy’s Road to Presidency

After nearly earning his party’s nomination for vice president (under Adlai Stevenson) in 1956, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president on January 2, 1960. He defeated a primary challenge from the more liberal Hubert Humphrey and chose the Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, as his running mate. In the general election, Kennedy faced a difficult battle against his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, a two-term vice president under the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower . 

Offering a young, energetic alternative to Nixon and the status quo, Kennedy benefited from his performance (and telegenic appearance) in the first-ever televised presidential debates, watched by millions of viewers. In November’s election, Kennedy won by a narrow margin—fewer than 120,000 out of some 70 million votes cast—becoming the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to be elected president of the United States.

With his beautiful young wife and their two small children (Caroline, born in 1957, and John Jr., born just weeks after the election), Kennedy lent an unmistakable aura of youth and glamour to the White House . In his inaugural address, given on January 20, 1961, the new president called on his fellow Americans to work together in the pursuit of progress and the elimination of poverty, but also in the battle to win the ongoing Cold War against communism around the world. Kennedy’s famous closing words expressed the need for cooperation and sacrifice on the part of the American people: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

Kennedy’s Foreign Policy Challenges

An early crisis in the foreign affairs arena occurred in April 1961, when Kennedy approved the plan to send 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles in an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Intended to spur a rebellion that would overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro , the mission ended in failure, with nearly all of the exiles captured or killed. 

That June, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss the city of Berlin, which had been divided after World War II between Allied and Soviet control. Two months later, East German troops began erecting a wall to divide the city. Kennedy sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners of U.S. support, and would deliver one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin in June 1963.

Kennedy clashed again with Khrushchev in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis . After learning that the Soviet Union was constructing a number of nuclear and long-range missile sites in Cuba that could pose a threat to the continental United States, Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba. 

The tense standoff lasted nearly two weeks before Khrushchev agreed to dismantle Soviet missile sites in Cuba in return for America’s promise not to invade the island and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and other sites close to Soviet borders. In July 1963, Kennedy won his greatest foreign affairs victory when Khrushchev agreed to join him and Britain’s Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in signing a nuclear test ban treaty. In Southeast Asia, however, Kennedy’s desire to curb the spread of communism led him to escalate U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, even as privately he expressed his dismay over the situation.

Kennedy’s Leadership at Home

During his first year in office, Kennedy oversaw the launch of the Peace Corps, which would send young volunteers to underdeveloped countries all over the world. Otherwise, he was unable to achieve much of his proposed legislation during his lifetime, including two of his biggest priorities: income tax cuts and a civil rights bill. Slow to commit himself to the civil rights cause, events forced Kennedy into action, spurring him to send federal troops to support the desegregation of the University of Mississippi after riots there left two dead and many others injured. The following summer, Kennedy announced his intention to propose a comprehensive civil rights bill and endorsed the massive March on Washington that took place that August.

Kennedy held enormous popularity, both at home and abroad, and his family drew famous comparisons to King Arthur’s court at Camelot. His brother Bobby served as his attorney general, while the youngest Kennedy son, Edward (Ted), was elected to Jack’s former Senate seat in 1962. Jackie Kennedy became an international icon of style, beauty and sophistication, though stories of her husband’s numerous marital infidelities (and his personal association with members of organized crime) would later emerge to complicate the Kennedys’ idyllic image.

JFK’s Assassination

On November 22, 1963, the president and his wife landed in Dallas; he had spoken in San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth the day before. From the airfield, the party then traveled in a motorcade to the Dallas Trade Mart, the site of Jack’s next speaking engagement. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., as the motorcade passed through downtown Dallas, shots rang out . Bullets struck Kennedy twice, in the neck and head; he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital.

Authorities arrested 24-old Lee Harvey Oswald, known to have Communist sympathies, for the killing. But he was shot and fatally wounded two days later by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being led to jail. Almost immediately, alternative theories of Kennedy’s assassination emerged—including conspiracies allegedly run by the KGB , the Mafia and the U.S. military-industrial complex, among others. A presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald had acted alone, but speculation and debate over the assassination have persisted.

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John F. Kennedy

The 35th President of the United States

The biography for President Kennedy and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States (1961-1963), the youngest man elected to the office. On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest President to die.

On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.

Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to safety.

Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in 1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history.

In 1956 Kennedy almost gained the Democratic nomination for Vice President, and four years later was a first-ballot nominee for President. Millions watched his television debates with the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Winning by a narrow margin in the popular vote, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic President.

His Inaugural Address offered the memorable injunction: “Ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country.” As President, he set out to redeem his campaign pledge to get America moving again. His economic programs launched the country on its longest sustained expansion since World War II; before his death, he laid plans for a massive assault on persisting pockets of privation and poverty.

Responding to ever more urgent demands, he took vigorous action in the cause of equal rights, calling for new civil rights legislation. His vision of America extended to the quality of the national culture and the central role of the arts in a vital society.

He wished America to resume its old mission as the first nation dedicated to the revolution of human rights. With the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps, he brought American idealism to the aid of developing nations. But the hard reality of the Communist challenge remained.

Shortly after his inauguration, Kennedy permitted a band of Cuban exiles, already armed and trained, to invade their homeland. The attempt to overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro was a failure. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union renewed its campaign against West Berlin. Kennedy replied by reinforcing the Berlin garrison and increasing the Nation’s military strength, including new efforts in outer space. Confronted by this reaction, Moscow, after the erection of the Berlin Wall, relaxed its pressure in central Europe.

Instead, the Russians now sought to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. When this was discovered by air reconnaissance in October 1962, Kennedy imposed a quarantine on all offensive weapons bound for Cuba. While the world trembled on the brink of nuclear war, the Russians backed down and agreed to take the missiles away. The American response to the Cuban crisis evidently persuaded Moscow of the futility of nuclear blackmail.

Kennedy now contended that both sides had a vital interest in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and slowing the arms race–a contention which led to the test ban treaty of 1963. The months after the Cuban crisis showed significant progress toward his goal of “a world of law and free choice, banishing the world of war and coercion.” His administration thus saw the beginning of new hope for both the equal rights of Americans and the peace of the world.

For more information about President Kennedy, please visit the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Learn more about John F. Kennedy’s spouse, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy .

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Biography of John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the U.S.

His term was cut short by his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas

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John F. Kennedy (May 29, 1917–Nov. 22, 1963), the first U.S. president born in the 20th century, was born to a wealthy, politically connected family . Elected as the 35th president in 1960, he took office on Jan. 20, 1961, but his life and legacy were cut short when he was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Though he served as president for less than three years, his brief term coincided with the height of the Cold War, and his tenure was marked by some of the biggest crises and challenges of the 20th century.

Fast Facts: John F. Kennedy

• Known For : First U.S. president born in the 20th century, known for the fiasco of The Bay of Pigs early in his term, his highly praised response to the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as his assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.
• Also Known As : JFK
• Born : May 29, 1917 in Brookline, Massachusetts
• Parents : Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Rose Fitzgerald
• Died : Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas
• Education : Harvard University (BA, 1940), Stanford University Graduate School of Business (1940–1941)
• Published Works : Profiles in Courage
• Awards and Honors : Navy and Marine Corps Medal, Purple Heart, Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, Pulitzer Prize for Biography (1957)
• Spouse : Jacqueline L. Bouvier (m. Sept. 12, 1953–Nov. 22, 1963)
• Children : Caroline, John F. Kennedy, Jr.
• Notable Quote : "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."

Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was sickly as a child and continued to have health problems for the rest of his life. He attended private schools including Choate and Harvard (1936–1940), where he majored in political science. An active and accomplished undergraduate, Kennedy graduated cum laude.

Kennedy's father was the indomitable Joseph Kennedy. Among other ventures, he was the head of the SEC and the ambassador to Great Britain. His mother was a Boston socialite named Rose Fitzgerald. He had nine siblings including Robert Kennedy, who he appointed as the U.S. attorney general. Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 . In addition, his brother Edward Kennedy was a senator from Massachusetts who served from 1962 until his death in 2009.

Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier, a wealthy socialite and photographer, on Sept. 12, 1953. Together they had two children:  Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr. Another son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died on Aug. 9, 1963, two days after his birth.

Military Career

Kennedy was originally turned down by both the Army and Navy because of his back pain and other medical problems. He didn’t give up, and with the help of his father’s political contacts, he was accepted into the Navy in 1941. He made it through the Navy Officer Candidate School but then failed another physical. Determined not to spend his military career sitting behind a desk, he again called upon his father's contacts. With their help, he managed to get into a new PT boat training program.

After completing the program, Kennedy served in the Navy during World War II and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He was given command of PT-109 . When the boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer, he and his crew were thrown into the water. He was able to swim four hours to save himself and a fellow crewman, but he aggravated his back in the process. He received the Purple Heart and the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his military service and was hailed for his heroism.

House of Representatives

Kennedy worked for a time as a journalist before running for the House of Representatives. Now considered a Navy war hero, Kennedy was elected to the House in November 1946. This class also included another former Navy man whose career arc would eventually intersect with Kennedy’s— Richard M. Nixon . Kennedy served three terms in the House—he was reelected in 1948 and 1950—where he gained a reputation as a somewhat conservative Democrat.

He did show himself to be an independent thinker, not always following the party line, such as in his opposition to the Taft-Hartley Act, an anti-union bill that passed both the House and Senate overwhelmingly during the 1947-1948 session. As a freshman member of the minority party in the House and not a member of any of the committees of jurisdiction, there was little else Kennedy could do other than speak against the bill, which he did.

U.S. Senate

Kennedy was later elected to the U.S. Senate—defeating Henry Cabot Lodge II, who would later become the Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate on the 1960 ticket alongside Nixon—where he served from 1953 to 1961. Again, he did not always vote with the Democratic majority.

Kennedy had more impact in the Senate than in the House. For example, in late spring 1953, he gave three speeches on the Senate floor outlining his New England economic plan, which he said would be good for New England and the nation as a whole. In the speeches, Kennedy called for a diversified economic base for New England and the U.S., with job training and technical assistance for the workers and relief from harmful tax provisions for the firms.

In other areas, Kennedy:

• Distinguished himself as a national figure in the debate and vote on building the St. Lawrence Seaway ;
• Used his position on the Senate Labor Committee to push for an increase in the minimum wage and to protect union rights in an environment where Congress was trying to strip unions of any power to bargain effectively;
• Joined the Foreign Relations Committee in 1957, where he supported Algerian independence from France and sponsored an amendment that would provide aid to Russian satellite nations;
• Introduced an amendment to the National Defense Education Act to eliminate the requirement that aid recipients sign a loyalty oath.

During his time in the Senate, Kennedy also authored "Profiles in Courage," which won a Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957, although there was some question about its true authorship.

Election of 1960

In 1960, Kennedy was nominated to run for the presidency against Nixon, who was by then Dwight D. Eisenhower 's vice president. During Kennedy's nominating speech, he set forward his ideas of a "New Frontier." Nixon made the mistake of meeting Kennedy in debates—the first televised presidential debates in U.S. history—during which Kennedy came off as young and vital.

During the campaign, both candidates worked to win support from the growing suburban population. Kennedy sought to pull together key elements of Franklin D. Roosevelt 's coalition of the 1930s—urban minorities, ethnic voting blocs, and organized labor—win back conservative Catholics who had deserted the Democrats to vote for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and hold his own in the south. Nixon emphasized the record of the Eisenhower years and promised to keep the federal government from dominating the free market economy and the lives of Americans.

At the time, some sectors expressed concern that a Catholic president, which Kennedy would be, would be beholden to the Pope in Rome. Kennedy confronted the issue in a speech before the Greater-Houston Ministerial Association, in which he said: "I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute; where no Catholic prelate would tell the President—should he be Catholic—how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote."

The anti-catholic feeling remained strong among some sectors of the populace, but Kennedy won by the smallest margin of popular votes since 1888, 118,574 votes. However, he received 303 electoral votes .

Events and Accomplishments

Domestic policy: Kennedy had a tough time getting many of his domestic programs through Congress. However, he did get an increased minimum wage, better Social Security benefits, and an urban renewal package passed. He created the Peace Corps, and his goal to get to the moon by the end of the 1960s found overwhelming support.

On the Civil Rights front, Kennedy initially did not challenge Southern Democrats. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that only by breaking unjust laws and accepting the consequences could African-Americans show the true nature of their treatment. The press reported daily on the atrocities occurring due to nonviolent protest and civil disobedience. Kennedy used executive orders and personal appeals to aid the movement. His legislative programs, however, would not pass until after his death.

Foreign affairs: Kennedy's foreign policy began in failure with the Bay of Pigs debacle of 1961. A small force of Cuban exiles was to lead a revolt in Cuba but was captured instead. America's reputation was seriously harmed. Kennedy's confrontation with Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev in June 1961 led to the construction of the Berlin Wall . Further, Khrushchev began building nuclear missile bases in Cuba. Kennedy ordered a "quarantine" of Cuba in response. He warned that any attack from Cuba would be seen as an act of war by the USSR. This standoff led to the dismantling of the missile silos in exchange for promises that the U.S. would not invade Cuba. Kennedy also agreed to a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 with Great Britain and the USSR.

Two other important events during his term were the Alliance for Progress (the U.S. provided aid to Latin America) and the problems in Southeast Asia. North Vietnam was sending troops through Laos to fight in South Vietnam. The South's leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, was ineffective. America increased its military advisers from 2,000 to 16,000 during this time. Diem was overthrown but new leadership was no better. When Kennedy was killed, Vietnam was approaching a boiling point.

Assassination

Kennedy's three years in office were somewhat turbulent, but by 1963 he was still popular and thinking about running for a second term. Kennedy and his advisers felt that Texas was a state that could provide crucial electoral votes, and they made plans for Kennedy and Jackie to visit the state, with stops planned for San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin. On Nov. 22, 1963, after addressing the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, Kennedy and the first lady boarded a plane for a brief flight to Dallas, arriving just before noon accompanied by about 30 members of the Secret Service.

They were met by a 1961 Lincoln Continental convertible limousine that would take them on a 10-mile parade route within the city of Dallas, ending at the Trade Mart, where Kennedy was scheduled to deliver a luncheon address. He never made it. Thousands lined the streets, but just before 12:30 p.m., the presidential motorcade turned right from Main Street onto Houston Street and entered Dealey Plaza.

After passing the Texas School Book Depository, at the corner of Houston and Elm, shots suddenly rang out. One shot hit Kennedy’s throat, and as he reached up with both hands toward the injury, another shot struck his head, mortally wounding him.

Kennedy's apparent assassin,  Lee Harvey Oswald , was killed by Jack Ruby before standing trial. The Warren Commission was called to investigate Kennedy's death and found that Oswald had acted alone to kill Kennedy. Many argued, however, that there was more than one gunman, a theory upheld by a 1979 House Committee investigation. The FBI and a 1982 study disagreed. Speculation continues to this day.

Kennedy was important more for his iconic reputation than his legislative actions. His many inspiring speeches are often quoted. His youthful vigor and fashionable first lady was hailed as American royalty; his time in office was termed "Camelot." His assassination has taken on a mythic quality, leading many to posit about possible conspiracies involving everyone from  Lyndon Johnson  to the Mafia. His moral leadership of Civil Rights was an important part of the movement's eventual success.

• “ Campaign of 1960 .”  JFK Library.
• “ Details You Didn't Know About the Death of JFK's Son, Patrick. .”  IrishCentral.com , 4 Nov. 2018.
• “ John F. Kennedy. ”  Biography.com , A&E Networks Television, 14 Jan. 2019.
• “ John F. Kennedy. ”  The White House , The United States Government.
• “ JFK's Assassination Aided by His Bad Back, Records Show. ”  fox8.Com , 22 Nov. 2017.
• “ JFK in Congress. ”  National Archives and Records Administration , National Archives and Records Administration.
• “ John F. Kennedy: Life Before the Presidency. ”  Miller Center , 22 Apr. 2018.
• 10 Things to Know About John F. Kennedy
• John F. Kennedy Printables
• The Aftermath of John F. Kennedy's Assassination
• Biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States
• Biography of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, First Lady
• Biography of Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States
• Lyndon Johnson's Great Society
• Why Did Lee Harvey Oswald Kill JFK?
• The Education of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
• The U.S. Presidents and Their Era
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• Vietnam War Timeline 1847-1982
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• Robert Kennedy Assassination

Biography Online

John F Kennedy Biography

Born on May 1917, John F. Kennedy came from an illustrious political family; his father Joseph Kennedy was a leading member of the Democratic Party, and Joseph encouraged John F. Kennedy in his political ambitions after the war.

John graduated from Harvard after completing a thesis on “Appeasement in Munich.” His thesis was later converted into a successful book:  Why England Slept  (1940).

On Jack Paar Tonight Show

Before America joined the war, John joined the Navy and saw action throughout the Pacific theatre. In August 1943, his boat was rammed by Japanese destroyer Amagiri . John F Kennedy was later decorated for his outstanding bravery in rescuing a fellow crewman; he was also awarded the Purple Heart for an incident later in the war. Afterwards, Kennedy was modest about his actions, saying he felt a bit embarrassed as it resulted from a botched military action.

In 1946, he won a seat in Boston for the US House of Representatives, and in 1952 got himself elected to the US Senate, defeating the incumbent Republican.

In 1956, he was nearly chosen to be the Vice Presidential candidate for Adlai Stevenson. The national exposure raised his profile, and in 1960 he was selected to be the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.

In 1960, in a very tight election, John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated the much-fancied Republican, Richard Nixon. It was a memorable election with many millions glued to the TV in the pre-election hustings. John F. Kennedy came across very well on TV and looked more relaxed and professional on camera.

During his inauguration, JFK gave a memorable speech, where he famously encouraged citizens to help the nation become strong again.

“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

He also called for greater internationalism.

“We will make clear that America’s enduring concern is for both peace and freedom; that we are anxious to live in harmony with the Russian people; that we seek no conquests, no satellites, no riches; that we seek only the day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

One of his early acts was to establish the Peace Corps – a volunteer programme run by the US government, it allowed young Americans to travel abroad and serve in developing countries. Kennedy hoped it would change foreign perceptions of Americans and give Americans a greater sense of international solidarity.

In 1961, after pressure from the CIA, Kennedy reluctantly ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. It was mostly led by Cuban exiles with minimal US support. They hope to overthrow the Communist Fidel Castro. However, the invasion was a failure leading to embarrassing negotiations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Despite been reluctant to go along with the policy, he accepted his responsibilty for its failure.

In 1962, figures in the US Department of Defense and Joint Chief of Staff proposed ‘Operation Northwoods’ which involved the CIA planning ‘false flag’ operations to stage attacks on US targets and claim Cuba was responsible – to create an opportunity to start a war against Cuba. Kennedy rejected the proposals but his reluctance to fully commit to removing Castro led to resentment amongst some CIA officers and Cuban exiles who felt Kennedy was insufficiently committed to removing Castro.

Cuban Missile Crisis

In 1962, the world came extraordinarily close to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Soviet Union moved missiles to Cuba, which was seen as very provocative (despite the US have nuclear weapons in NATO ally Turkey. Many in the American military were keen on a pre-emptive airstrike on the missile bases, but Kennedy chose a more cautious diplomatic approach.

Kennedy found a way to offer Khrushchev a way out without losing face. After several days of tense negotiation, an agreement was reached where the Soviet Union would remove missiles from Cuba in return for a US promise not to invade Cuba. The US also secretly removed weapons from Turkey to pacify the Soviets. His careful handling of the situation was widely praised. It led to the establishment of a direct Moscow-Washington hotline and for a few years, tensions between the Cold War antagonists were reduced.

During his brief presidency, John F. Kennedy oversaw an escalation of US involvement in Vietnam, which included sending 16,000 military advisers to the country. Later, Kennedy’s Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara said Kennedy considered pulling out of Vietnam in 1963 and believes that if Kennedy had survived, American involvement would have ended. Tapes showed that Kennedy’s former Vice-President, Lyndon Johnson later criticised Kennedy’s opinion that America should withdraw.

Civil rights

Meeting with leaders of March on Washington August 1963

Kennedy was a supporter of civil rights, but when elected in 1960, American society was deeply divided with entrenched opposition to the end of segregation and racism. Kennedy was torn between the need to retain the support of white southern democrat voters and a wish to promote civil rights. He supported voter registration drives, appointed African Americans to positions within his administration and promoted Thurgood Marshall to the Second Circuit court of Appeals in New York.

However, this was insufficient to tackle the much larger injustices. During the 1960s, the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King became disappointed with JFK’s apparent non-committal stance, instead, they took non-violent direct action to highlight the injustice of segregation and civil rights leaders. This often led to shocking images – shown on tv, of police brutality against civil rights activists.  A turning point was 3 May 1963, where police in Birmingham unleased shocking brutality on protestors. This galvanised Kennedy to take more direct action sending federal marshals to the south in order to prevent racial violence getting out of hand. On 11 June 1963, Kennedy made a televised address to the nation where he spoke clearly in favour of the need to pass civil rights legislation

“The heart of the question is — whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities. Whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated… One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free….” – J.F. Kennedy

Although he did not live to see his promise enacted, it was a turning point in his presidency with a clear commitment made. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed racial segregation.

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

JFK’s handwriting

In June 1963, Kennedy made a memorable speech in West Berlin to a crowd of up to 450,000. He criticised the Soviets for their divisive wall and stated:

“Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in… All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”

His speech was very well received by people living in West Berlin, who felt surrounded by the Berlin Wall and Communist East Germany. The Soviet authorities were less enamoured of his speech which they felt was confrontational.

Assassination

John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and put on trial for his murder. However, before he could reach trial, Lee Harvey Oswald was himself killed by Jack Ruby. Lee Harvey Oswald always pleaded his innocence and many believe the assassination was a wider conspiracy. His death left a large void in American politics that was never adequately filled. Though Johnson did enact civil rights legislation and a form of welfare state, which many see as something Kennedy was keen to do. His brother Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968 whilst seeking the democratic presidential nomination.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ John F. Kennedy Biography ”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net , Last updated 25 March 2020. Originally published 11 Feb 2013.

The Kennedy Half-Century

The Kennedy Half-Century at Amazon

Quotes by J F Kennedy

“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”

John F. Kennedy, Amherst College, Oct 26, 1963 – Source JFK Library, Boston, Mass.

“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

John F. Kennedy, Inaugural address, January 20, 1961

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”

“I believe in an America where the rights that I have described are enjoyed by all, regardless of their race or their creed or their national origin – where every citizen is free to think and speak as he pleases and write and worship as he pleases – and where every citizen is free to vote as he pleases, without instructions from anyone, his employer, the union leader or his clergyman.”

October 31, 1960. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Inaugural Address (1961)

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John F. Kennedy: Life in Brief

John F. Kennedy was born into a rich, politically connected Boston family of Irish-Catholics. He and his eight siblings enjoyed a privileged childhood of elite private schools, sailboats, servants, and summer homes. During his childhood and youth, “Jack” Kennedy suffered frequent serious illnesses. Nevertheless, he strove to make his own way, writing a best-selling book while still in college at Harvard University and volunteering for hazardous combat duty in the Pacific during World War II. Kennedy's wartime service made him a hero. After a short stint as a journalist, Kennedy entered politics, serving in the US House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953 and the US Senate from 1953 to 1961.

Kennedy was the youngest person elected US president and the first Roman Catholic to serve in that office. For many observers, his presidency came to represent the ascendance of youthful idealism in the aftermath of World War II. The promise of this energetic and telegenic leader was not to be fulfilled, as he was assassinated near the end of his third year in office. For many Americans, the public murder of President Kennedy remains one of the most traumatic events in memory; countless Americans can remember exactly where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been shot. His shocking death stood at the forefront of a period of political and social instability in the country and the world.

Marc J. Selverstone

Associate Professor of History Miller Center, University of Virginia

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John f. kennedy presidency page, john f. kennedy essays, life in brief (current essay), life before the presidency, campaigns and elections, domestic affairs, foreign affairs, death of a president, family life, the american franchise, impact and legacy.

Presidential Libraries

JFK Biography

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, a few miles outside of Boston. His parents were Joseph Kennedy, a successful businessman, and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. He was the second of nine children. While Jack grew up with every material advantage, he suffered from a series of medical ailments but learned to underplay the effects of his illnesses.

President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy pose for a portrait with their children, Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, Jr., on a porch in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. August 4, 1962. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum Local Identifier: ST-C22-1-62

World War II changed Kennedy in many ways. He joined the Navy and served in the Pacific, where his PT boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer. He never forgot his own war experience and the bravery of his Navy crew.

After the war, JFK decided to run for office. In 1946 he won election as congressman for Massachusetts and served for six years. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1952. In 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier, and their daughter, Caroline, was born in 1957, and their son, John Jr., was born in 1960.

At 43 years old, he became the youngest man elected President of the United States, defeating Richard Nixon in 1960.

One of his first actions after taking office was creating the Peace Corps, which today still sends volunteers on two-year missions to live and work with people around the globe.

The Cuban Missile Crisis in late 1962 threatened the world with possible nuclear war. The United States confronted the Soviet Union over the placement of nuclear weapons on Cuba, and in secret negotiations, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles.

Kennedy challenged the U.S. to be the first country to send a man to the moon by the end of the 1960s. The United States reached President Kennedy’s goal on July 20, 1969, when the crew of Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface.

At home, Kennedy urged an end to racial segregation and asked Congress for a civil rights bill. Before the bill could get through Congress, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.

People remember John F. Kennedy as a President who was young and energetic. But he is also remembered as a leader who made a difference. His words and actions made people want to help others and serve their country.

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Congressman John Fitzgerald Kennedy (circa 1946-47) in his Congressional Office.

Courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston

A portrait of JFK, in full

Brett Milano

Harvard Correspondent

New biography aims to chronicle a complex life amid a pivotal time for a nation

One of the revelations about John F. Kennedy in Fredrik Logevall’s new biography, “JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917‒1956,” is that the man was an excellent letter-writer and diarist. The Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School and professor of history makes effective use of the collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, part of which has become available only recently.

“He always had a knack for the English language, even if he was an indifferent student in prep school and in his first years at Harvard,” Logevall says. “His teachers, frustrated by his lack of application overall, were always impressed by his way with words. It is an interesting contrast with his older brother, Joe Jr., the family’s supposed golden child, whose writings had a more dutiful, less imaginative quality.”

The first of a two-volume set, “JFK” aims to give the clearest picture yet available of the 35th president set against the historical, political, and cultural context of a pivotal age. The book begins with great-grandfather Patrick Kennedy’s arrival in Boston during the Irish potato famine and runs through Jack’s childhood, studies at Harvard, and military duty, and finally his rise in politics in 1956, when he almost became the Democrats’ vice presidential pick. Logevall spoke with the Gazette recently about the man and the book.

Fredrik Logevall

GAZETTE: There have certainly been many books written about JFK. What were you able to find that hadn’t been found before?

LOGEVALL: You’re quite right. There are a lot of excellent books out there on various aspects of his life and career, and especially the presidency — one thinks, for example, about the many studies of the Cuban missile crisis, Civil Rights, the Bay of Pigs disaster, the marriage with Jackie, and the assassination in Dallas. But we don’t have many true biographies, even one that is a full-scale examination of the entire life and that looks closely at his early life, in particular his teens and 20s, which I believe were key years for him (as they are for most of us). Mine is a “life and times” biography that places Kennedy in his own context, that of a rising American power in world affairs. I guess the conceit of the book is that I can tell two stories together: the story of John F. Kennedy’s rise and the story of America’s rise. I believe we can better understand the first half of the so-called American Century through the lens of Kennedy’s life.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. (from left), Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and John F. Kennedy in Southampton, England, July 2, 1938.

Courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

GAZETTE: What did you find that people have missed about JFK in the past?

LOGEVALL: One thing that people have underplayed is the degree to which he was a serious student of democracy and world affairs at an earlier point than we imagine. We tend to think of him as a callow playboy, not serious about public policy or his career until quite late, until he runs for Congress in 1946, and maybe not even then. But you can look at the papers he wrote as an undergraduate at Harvard, some of which are available, and you can look at his senior thesis which became a best-selling book [“Why England Slept”] and see a young man already thinking deeply and in sustained fashion about important issues. A second finding is that the young Jack Kennedy was in important respects his own master. Though his father was a towering force in his life and those of his eight siblings, Jack proved willing and able, to a degree I did not expect, to chart his own course. The Harvard years are interesting in this regard: In 1939‒40, as World War II began and debate raged in the U.S. about how to respond, Jack showed himself willing in a way his older brother, Joe Jr., never was to separate himself from his father. Long before Pearl Harbor, Jack had become an interventionist while his father adhered throughout to a staunch isolationist position. Later, during his political campaigns, Jack always kept the key decision-making role for himself, notwithstanding the common misconception that his father called the shots. [gz_soundcloud title=”John F. Kennedy recording for public speaking class at Harvard, 1937″ track_id=”321147626″ playlists=”” height=”350″ show_artwork=”false”] [/gz_soundcloud]

GAZETTE:   Another family relationship we learn more about is with his brother Bobby, and how this became increasingly important.

LOGEVALL:  Yes, the age difference between the two brothers was such — 8½ years — that in the early years, when Jack was at prep school and then at Harvard, they weren’t particularly close. But what we see especially in 1951, when they traveled together along with their sister Patricia on an extended tour of the Middle East and Asia, is that they developed a strong bond. Bobby admired his brother to no end, and Jack could now see Bobby’s intelligence and loyalty and good cheer. Then in 1952 Bobby, all of 26 at the time, came aboard to take charge of Jack’s floundering Senate campaign against Henry Cabot Lodge and helped to turn the thing around. Jack could now see just how important Bobby could be to his career, could see the powerful combination of doggedness, shrewdness, and ruthlessness that his brother possessed.

The Kennedy family at Hyannisport, Mass., 1931. Robert (from left), John, Eunice, Jean (on lap of) Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (behind) Patricia, Kathleen, Joseph, Rosemary.

Photo by Richard Sears, courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

GAZETTE: He was quite a complex character. He did have his playboy side, but some of his war actions can be called heroic.

LOGEVALL:  Yeah, I think that is right. There is a seriousness of purpose which you see in his letters home from the South Pacific, and more dramatically in the actions he took to help save his crew after his boat, the PT-109, was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Was there heroism there? I believe so, even if he deserves no accolades for allowing his boat to be rammed. The efforts he made in the succeeding days to try to save his crew were really quite extraordinary. We might note here as well that he came back from the war, as many of the servicemen did, with a seriousness of purpose evinced to some degree before but deepened as a result of seeing combat. He was convinced that the U.S. would need to play a leading role in world affairs, even as he also had a skepticism about the use of the military’s power that he would carry with him for the rest of his days.

GAZETTE: His coming out against Joseph McCarthy seems to be a bit of a political turning point.

LOGEVALL: Well, he never fully came out in stark opposition, which was a problem. The relationship with McCarthy was complicated, partly because of family ties. He never felt the kind of personal connection to McCarthy that Joe Sr. felt and that Bobby felt. And there were a lot of aspects of McCarthy’s political persona that he found off-putting — the disdain for senatorial good manners, the disregard for facts, for reasoning from evidence. That said, liberals at the time had good reason to be frustrated by JFK’s reluctance to really condemn McCarthy. Even in 1954, when McCarthy’s influence was in decline and the Senate held a censure vote, JFK, recovering in the hospital following a serious surgery, did not instruct his aide Ted Sorensen to register his position on the vote. He could have done so, but he didn’t, and that caused a lot of grief for him with liberals later on. He preferred to sidestep the issue, aware that there were an awful lot of Irish Catholic voters in Massachusetts who still backed McCarthy. He didn’t want to get on their bad side.

A page in Kennedy’s diary from fall 1951. The first part reads: “Oct. 3 — Paris — I talked with General Eisenhower Biddle and MacArthur at SHAEF Headquarters. Eisenhower looking very fit — seemed disturbed at news of last few days.” Lt. Kennedy on board PT 109, July 1943.

Photo by Joel Benjamin (left), courtesy of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

GAZETTE: The book deals a lot with the influence of World War II on his character development. Do you think he took a lot from other aspects of American life at the time, including popular culture?

LOGEVALL: To a degree, certainly. When he returned from the war and was figuring out what he wanted to do, he had a fascinating stint as a journalist. He showed good reporting instincts and could have made it a career. In this period he also liked to pal around in Hollywood, where his father had been a movie mogul in the 1920s and still had connections. Jack dated actresses like Gene Tierney and liked to be on the set, liked to go to movies. Popular music I think interested him less, and until Jackie came along he evinced little interest in art. He did like poetry, and he memorized a lot of it starting already in prep school at Choate. But the Hollywood connection is interesting to me, and probably plays some role in his later skill at using images and film to advance his political career. He was among the first politicians to see that images matter, that the right use of film can make a powerful difference. Television was a huge emerging thing as his career builds, and he had that savvy understanding of the medium and how he could use it to his advantage, kind of like FDR used radio so effectively.

GAZETTE: Many of the reviews I’ve read have focused on his womanizing, which we already knew about. Do you think that’s ultimately that important a part of his character?

LOGEVALL:  Yes, the womanizing is an important part of who he is. His father led by example, carrying on with innumerable women in the 1920s and 1930s, and the older kids knew very well what was going on. Joe Sr. made clear he expected his sons to follow his ways. But I can’t have it both ways: If I’m going to argue that JFK was able to resist his father’s pressure and be his own man when it came to politics and career choices, I have to maintain that he could have broken with him on this issue too. Here he was his father’s son, with a tendency to see women as objects to be conquered. But there are paradoxes here, among them the fact that his administration took important progressive steps, establishing, for example, the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, with Eleanor Roosevelt as chair. In 1962, at the urging of the commission, Kennedy ordered federal agencies to cease sex discrimination in hiring.

Sen. John Kennedy and his then-fiancée Jacqueline Bouvier in Hyannis Port, Mass.

Photo courtesy of Harvard Fine Arts Library, Digital Images & Slides Collection

GAZETTE: In the second volume you’ll have to unravel the mystery around the assassination. Do you have a sense of how you will approach that?

LOGEVALL: There is certainly a fascination, and it shows few signs of fading. It is a vexing issue to any biographer of JFK, and it has spawned a whole cottage industry of its own. I haven’t yet written Volume 2 so I haven’t fully decided how I will proceed on this. But certainly I will talk about Lee Harvey Oswald’s background, about what led him to take this action, and will give the reader a full sense of how it all culminated in this terrible moment. And I think I will owe the reader my assessment of what I believe happened. So I will provide it. I don’t think I will get heavily into the deliberations of the Warren Commission or the various conspiracy theories that have sprouted up over the years. That’s another book, not to mention a potential morass.

GAZETTE: What do you think happened?

LOGEVALL: My reading of the evidence we have indicates pretty clearly to me that Oswald was the lone gunman. Claims to the contrary all come up short. Oswald’s associations and meetings in the weeks leading up to the assassination are worthy of investigation, however, and have been examined in recent studies. I will delve into that material and be interested to see what I find.

Interview was lightly edited for clarity and length.

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Culture History

John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Born into a prominent political family, Kennedy brought a youthful and charismatic presence to the presidency. He faced challenges such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights Movement during his tenure. Kennedy is also remembered for inspiring the nation with his vision of progress, as seen in initiatives like the Peace Corps and the commitment to space exploration. His untimely death in Dallas, Texas, in 1963 had a profound impact on the nation and marked the end of an era.

Kennedy hailed from a family deeply entrenched in politics and public service. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., was a successful businessman, diplomat, and influential figure in the Democratic Party. From an early age, JFK was exposed to the world of politics, and the Kennedy family’s commitment to public service became a guiding principle in his life.

After completing his education at the Choate School and later at Princeton University, Kennedy entered Harvard in 1936. His time at Harvard was marked by a focus on international affairs and government, reflecting his burgeoning interest in public service. However, his academic journey was interrupted by World War II.

Kennedy’s military service during World War II significantly shaped his character and future political career. He enlisted in the United States Navy and became a lieutenant, commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat in the Pacific theater. In August 1943, tragedy struck when his PT boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Despite severe injuries, Kennedy displayed courage and leadership, helping his crew to safety. His actions earned him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism and laid the foundation for his political narrative.

Following the war, Kennedy delved into politics, seeking a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1946. His charismatic and articulate campaign style, combined with the enduring respect garnered from his wartime service, propelled him to victory. As a congressman, he demonstrated a commitment to social justice and international issues.

In 1952, Kennedy set his sights on the U.S. Senate and won a hard-fought battle. His tenure in the Senate, marked by his advocacy for civil rights, foreign policy, and healthcare, quickly gained him national attention. It was during this time that he authored “Profiles in Courage,” a book that celebrated political leaders who demonstrated courage in the face of public opinion.

Kennedy’s ascent to the presidency began with his decision to run for the Democratic nomination in 1960. The primary race was challenging, with strong contenders like Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. However, JFK’s charisma, vision, and effective use of television in the first-ever televised presidential debates helped secure him the nomination.

The presidential campaign of 1960 was a closely contested battle against the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon. Kennedy’s youth, energy, and eloquence contrasted sharply with Nixon’s more experienced but less telegenic presence. In a historic moment, Kennedy became the first Roman Catholic to be elected President of the United States, winning by a narrow margin.

As president, JFK brought a sense of youthful vigor to the White House, often referred to as the “Camelot” era, inspired by the mythical Arthurian legend. His inaugural address in 1961 famously implored Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country,” setting the tone for his presidency.

Kennedy faced numerous challenges during his presidency, both domestic and international. One of his early domestic initiatives was the establishment of the Peace Corps in 1961, a program aimed at promoting peace and friendship by sending American volunteers to work in developing countries. This initiative reflected Kennedy’s commitment to fostering global understanding and cooperation.

Civil rights emerged as a defining issue during Kennedy’s presidency. The struggle for racial equality and the push for desegregation gained momentum, particularly in the southern United States. Kennedy faced a delicate balancing act, navigating the demands of civil rights leaders while attempting to maintain support from Southern Democrats. Despite initial caution, Kennedy’s administration took steps to address racial injustice, and he later delivered a televised speech advocating for civil rights legislation.

Internationally, Kennedy confronted the escalating tensions of the Cold War. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government led by Fidel Castro, proved to be a major setback for Kennedy. The subsequent Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, during which the United States and the Soviet Union came perilously close to nuclear conflict, marked a pivotal moment in Kennedy’s presidency. His measured response, a naval blockade of Cuba and diplomatic negotiations, averted a nuclear catastrophe and highlighted the importance of diplomatic solutions in times of crisis.

Kennedy’s commitment to space exploration became a defining feature of his presidency. In 1961, he declared the ambitious goal of landing an American on the moon before the end of the decade. This vision materialized with the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, after Kennedy’s death, fulfilling his dream of American astronauts walking on the lunar surface.

Despite his achievements, Kennedy’s presidency was tragically cut short on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, when he was assassinated while riding in a motorcade. The shock and grief that swept the nation were immeasurable. The investigation into Kennedy’s assassination, led by the Warren Commission, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but conspiracy theories have persisted over the years.

John F. Kennedy’s legacy endures, encapsulating both the promise of a new era and the tragedy of unrealized potential. His contributions to civil rights, the space program, and crisis management during the Cold War continue to shape American history. Kennedy’s enduring charisma, eloquence, and the mystique of the “Camelot” era have cemented his place as one of the most iconic figures in American politics. The untimely end of his presidency has only served to heighten the fascination with the man and the era he represented, leaving an indelible mark on the nation’s collective memory.

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U.S. Presidents

John f. kennedy.

35th president of the United States

John F. Kennedy, the second oldest of nine children, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts , on May 29, 1917. His father hoped that one of his children would one day become president. As a child, Kennedy had many childhood illnesses and once almost died from scarlet fever. But he grew up to be athletic and competitive, playing football for Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He injured his spine in college and never fully recovered from the injury.

In 1943, a Japanese warship destroyed a boat Kennedy commanded while serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Kennedy swam with the surviving crew members to safety several miles away, carrying one injured sailor by pulling the man’s life jacket strap by his teeth. When asked later how he became a hero, Kennedy replied: "It was easy—they sank my boat." Now a decorated World War II officer, Kennedy took up his father’s presidential hopes after his older brother, Joseph, died in combat.

Before being elected president, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in the House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953, soon after he became a senator. In 1960, he was elected president of the United States by the narrowest popular voting margin in history, becoming the youngest person and the only Catholic to ever be elected president.

COLD WAR CONFLICTS

The Cold War—a period of tensions mostly between the United States and the former Soviet Union, now called Russia —dominated much of Kennedy’s presidency. First, the U.S. government secretly tried to overthrow the island of Cuba’s new leader and Soviet Union ally, Fidel Castro, in a failed mission known as the Bay of Pigs. Then the Soviet Union built a wall in Germany , dividing East Berlin, which was under control of communist Soviet Union, and West Berlin, which was supported by the democratic West. This angered Germans on both sides of the wall and citizens of nearby countries. Kennedy visited West Berlin and vowed U.S. support to the people there, stating: " Ich bin ein Berliner, " or "I am a Berliner" in German.

Cold War tensions cooled off in 1963 after the two nations signed a treaty, but the conflict would last until around 1990.

FIGHTING FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Another issue Kennedy dealt with during his presidency was civil rights, or the idea that all U.S. citizens should have the same basic rights regardless of the color of their skin, and their religion. Kennedy wanted to pass more laws that would guarantee equal rights for all citizens.

Before Kennedy became president, the Supreme Court passed a ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education that schools had to desegregate, or allow white and black children to attend the same school. Kennedy publicly supported the ruling and even sent military troops to the southern states to make sure African-American kids were getting safely to school.

Near the end of Kennedy’s time in office in 1963, more than 200,000 people took part in a March on Washington during the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln ’s Emancipation Proclamation speech. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. , delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the gathering.

DEATH IN DALLAS

Kennedy had only been president for a little less than three years when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963, while touring Dallas, Texas , in a presidential motorcade. Gunman Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the death but was killed himself before he could be put on trial.

More than a hundred nations sent representatives to Kennedy’s funeral in Washington, D.C. Although he was only president for a short time, his calls for peace, justice, and national service—JFK famously said "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" when he first became president in 1961—inspired action among countless citizens during his lifetime and continue to influence others today.

• Kennedy supposedly wrote his own spy book, but he never released it.

• During stressful meetings, Kennedy liked to doodle sailboats.

• JFK donated his entire presidential salary to charity.

From the Nat Geo Kids books Our Country's Presidents by Ann Bausum and Weird But True Know-It-All: U.S. Presidents by Brianna Dumont, revised for digital by Avery Hurt

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 10 Siblings: All About His Brothers and Sisters

R FK Jr. has six brothers and four sisters: Kathleen, Joseph II, David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his 10 brothers and sisters are the largest branch of the Kennedy family tree.

Their parents, Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy , were married in June 1950 and welcomed 11 children between the years of 1951 and 1968: Kathleen, Joseph II, Robert Jr., David, Courtney, Michael, Kerry, Christopher, Max, Douglas and Rory. The children grew up in the spotlight as the nation watched their family face triumphs (such as their uncle John F. Kennedy becoming president in 1960) and tragedies — including the assassinations of their uncle and father .

The highs and lows have continued for RFK Jr. and his siblings over the decades. They’ve had success as journalists, lawyers, businessmen, activists and politicians, with RFK Jr. even embarking on a presidential campaign in 2023 like his father before him.

“Everyone [in the family] loves him and recognizes his talent,” RFK Jr.’s youngest brother Doug told PEOPLE about his older brother’s presidential ambitions in April 2023. However, he added that “not everyone agrees with his positions” — referencing RFK Jr.’s various controversies over the years.

Related: A Timeline of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Controversies

But in addition to their achievements, RFK Jr. and his siblings have also had their struggles. There have been failed marriages and substance abuse problems — as well as untimely deaths, including the loss of two of RFK Jr.'s younger brothers (David from a drug overdose in 1984 and Michael after a fatal skiing accident in 1997). Those devastating incidents and others added weight to the theory that there was a “Kennedy curse” plaguing the family.

“Generally, they did not believe in the curse,” J. Randy Taraborrelli, author of The Kennedy Heirs , told PEOPLE of the family in May 2019. “But when things got rough for them, I think they slipped into wondering if maybe there really was some kind of curse.”

However, it was the family matriarch — Ethel, who celebrated her 95th birthday in 2023 — who helped RFK Jr. and his siblings cope in the face of tragedy.

“We feel like we ought to be able to write our own scripts to our lives, and sometimes we feel disappointed in God when life rewrites the plot,” RFK Jr. recalled his mother once telling him in his 2018 book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family . “The key is acceptance and gratitude. We need to practice wanting what we’ve got, not what we wish we had.”

From his childhood with his 10 siblings to their relationship as adults, here is everything to know about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his brothers and sisters.

The Kennedy siblings spent their childhood in Virginia and Massachusetts

RFK Jr. and his 10 siblings split their childhood between their family’s homes in McLean, Virginia and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

Robert Sr. and his wife Ethel purchased the Virginia home, known as Hickory Hill, from his brother John and his wife Jackie Kennedy in 1956, according to Architectural Digest . At the time, the Kennedys had five young children — Kathleen, Joseph II, David, Robert Jr. and Courtney — but Ethel would go on to raise all 11 children at the Virginia home, even after her husband’s death in 1968.

“After Bobby’s assassination she did not retire from life,” John Douglas, one of Robert Sr.'s assistant attorney generals and a close family friend, told Architectural Digest . “The family’s houses remained centers for her children. Continuity is very important to the Kennedys.”

Summers for RFK Jr. and his siblings were spent at the Kennedy family compound in Cape Cod. In his memoir American Values , RFK Jr. described how he, his brothers and sisters, and many cousins spent their summers being “raised communally” while practicing athletic training, horseback riding, sailing, fishing and more.

“Hyannis Port was a magical paradise for me,” RFK Jr. wrote about his childhood summers in American Values . “Here, surrounded by my family, I could indulge my obsession with the natural world.”

They attended their father’s presidential campaign announcement in 1968

When Robert Sr. announced his candidacy for the presidency on March 16, 1968, the eldest 10 Kennedy children (who ranged in age from just shy of 1 year old to 16) were present in the audience of the Senate Caucus Room. Their mother, Ethel, was pregnant with the 11th and youngest sibling — Rory — at the time.

RFK Jr., who was 14 at the time, recalled details from the historic day in his memoir American Values .

“My nine brothers and sisters and I paraded behind my parents into the Senate Caucus Room and sat down in a long row of stiff chairs behind my mother, then pregnant with Rory, soon to be her 11th,” he wrote.

While watching their father announce his candidacy for president, RFK Jr. recalled that he spoke in a “soft voice” and that his “hands were trembling” as he spoke to the “tepid and skeptical” crowd. But what stood out the most to RFK Jr. from that day was “the anger his announcement provoked,” he wrote.

Their father was assassinated in 1968

On June 5, 1968, Robert Sr. was shot after winning the California presidential primary and addressing his supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds and died the following day, June 6, 1968 — leaving behind his pregnant wife, Ethel, and his 10 children.

The tragedy came nearly five years after Robert Sr.’s older brother John was assassinated while traveling in his presidential motorcade in downtown Dallas. But RFK Jr. said their mother Ethel provided him and his siblings with valuable perspective in the aftermath of those devastating events.

“My family had a lot of tragedies, and many American families do,” RFK Jr. told CBS News 50 years after his father’s death. “My mother always said this after my dad died — ‘Everybody takes their licks’ — and that there’s kids in Watts, in Harlem, and in Bed-Stuy who have lost their parents."

He added, “They don’t have the support system that we had in our family.”

The Kennedy siblings have become divided in the years following their father’s death, though, over the issue of his assassin’s parole.

When Sirhan Bushara Sirhan, Robert Sr.'s convicted murderer, was granted parole in August 2021 (after serving 53 years of his life sentence), both Douglas and RFK Jr. spoke in favor of his release.

“I’m overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr. Sirhan face-to-face ... And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love,” Douglas said at the parole hearing.

However, six of Robert Sr.’s children were “devastated” by the decision to grant Sirhan parole, they shared in a statement. The siblings — Joe, Courtney, Christopher, Kerry, Max and Rory — revealed that they were “in disbelief that this man would be recommended for release.”

“We adamantly oppose the parole and release of Sirhan Sirhan and are shocked by a ruling that we believe ignores the standards for parole of a confessed, first-degree murderer in the state of California,” they continued, adding that the decision had “inflicted enormous additional pain” on their family.

Many of the siblings followed their father’s footsteps into law, politics and public service

RFK Jr. and several of his brothers and sisters pursued similar career paths as their late father, who was an accomplished lawyer, politician and human rights advocate at the time of his death in 1968.

Five of the siblings — Kathleen, RFK Jr., Michael, Kerry and Max — graduated from law school, with three of them (RFK Jr., Michael and Max) attending their father’s alma mater, the University of Virginia Law School. The Kennedy family history at UVA doesn’t stop there, however: Their uncle, Ted Kennedy , also attended UVA Law School.

In addition to his law career, Robert Sr. was also a champion for civil rights while he was alive — and several of his children have carried on those causes, as well. Kerry, in particular, has dedicated the bulk of her career to being a human rights activist: She is the president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights , a non-profit dedicated to causes including mass incarceration, gender-based violence and racial injustice, as well as the chair of the Amnesty International Leadership Council.

But the Kennedy family is best known for their deep political roots, and several of Robert Sr.'s children have pursued public office. Kathleen, the eldest sibling, became the first Kennedy to ever lose an election when she ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. House of Representatives seat in Maryland in 1986, according to Vanity Fair . However, she became the first female lieutenant governor of Maryland in 1995, and held the position until 2003.

Her younger brother, Joe, represented Massachusetts for five terms as a member of the House of Representatives from 1987 to 1999. Joe also attempted a run for governor in Massachusetts in 1997 — and was considered the frontrunner — before a cheating scandal involving his younger brother Michael forced him to abandon his campaign, per The Washington Post .

RFK Jr. launched his own presidential campaign in 2023 — first as a Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden and then as an Independent — 55 years after his father sought the same office.

They all together have 34 children

The Kennedy family tree is extensive, and Robert Sr. and Ethel’s branch is one of the largest — thanks to their 11 children. With the exception of David, all of their children went on to have kids of their own, resulting in 34 grandchildren for Ethel.

Kathleen and her husband David Townsend have four daughters: Meaghan , Maeve , Kate and Kerry. Joe has twin sons, Matt and Joe, with his first wife, Sheila Rauch. (The couple divorced in 1991.) RFK Jr. has six children: A son, Robert F. Kennedy III, and a daughter, Kick, with his first wife Emily Black; and four children (sons Conor, Finn and Aidan and a daughter Kyra) with his second wife Mary Richardson. Courtney had one child, a daughter named Saoirse , with her second husband Paul Hill. Michael had three children with his wife Vicki Gifford: A son, Michael Jr., and two daughters, Kyle and Rory.

Related: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 6 Children: Everything to Know

Continuing down the line, Kerry has three daughters with her ex-husband Andrew Cuomo: twins Cara and Mariah, and Michaela. (Kerry and Cuomo divorced in 2005.) Christopher and his wife Sheila Berner have four children together, a son, Christopher Jr., and three daughters, Katherine, Sarah and Clare.  Max and his wife Victoria Strauss have three children: a son, Maxwell Jr., and two daughters, Caroline and Noah. Doug has five children with his wife Molly Stark: Riley, Mary, Rowen, George and Anthony. Rory, the youngest, has three children with her husband Mark Bailey: Georgia, Bridget and Zachary.

The extra-large family will often gather at the Kennedy family estate in Cape Cod, with one such get-together captured on Instagram in July 2019. The supersized family portrait was shared by Kerry on July 4, with the caption, “Happy Fourth of July from our family (and friends) to yours!”

In March 2024, over a dozen Kennedy family members joined President Biden at the White House to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Kerry shared a group photo on X, which included her daughter Mariah, sister Rory nephew Joe. However, RFK Jr. was noticeably absent from the festivities.

Two of RFK Jr.’s brothers died

Two of RFK Jr.’s six brothers died tragic deaths. David, the fourth child of Robert Sr. and Ethel, died in April 1984 of a drug overdose in a Palm Beach, Florida hotel room. He was just 28 years old at the time.

David struggled with drug and alcohol addiction in the years since his father’s death in 1968, which he witnessed on television alone in a Los Angeles hotel room when he was 13.

“All the others are tough. They are different soil than David,” Robert Driscoll, an artist and friend of David’s, told PEOPLE about the Kennedy siblings in 1984. “They handled their father’s death. But it hit David harder. He suffered too much.”

Michael, the sixth of the 11 siblings, was killed in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, on New Year’s Eve in 1997. He was 39 years old and left behind three children.

The siblings have experienced tragedies within their own families

The deaths of their father, uncle and two of their brothers aren’t the only tragedies these siblings have endured over the years: Both Kathleen and Courtney have experienced the devastating loss of a child.

In August 2019, Saoirse Kennedy Hill — Courtney’s only child — was found dead at the Kennedy family compound in Massachusetts from an accidental overdose . She was 22 years old.

“Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse. Her life was filled with hope, promise, and love,” the family said in a statement to PEOPLE. “She cared deeply about friends and family, especially her mother Courtney, her father Paul, her stepmother Stephanie, and her grandmother Ethel.”

They added, “We will love her and miss her forever.”

In April 2020, Maeve Kennedy Townsend McKean — the second daughter of Kathleen — and her 8-year-old son Gideon died in a canoeing accident in the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The mother and son had set out in a canoe to retrieve a ball that had gone into the water, when they were overtaken by high winds and large waves and reported missing . Maeve’s body was found four days later, on April 6, and Gideon’s was discovered on April 8.

“My heart is crushed, yet we shall try to summon the grace of God and what strength we have to honor the hope, energy and passion that Maeve and Gideon set forth into the world,” Kathleen said in a statement following the drowning deaths.

Many of RFK Jr.’s siblings disagree with his conspiracy theories and politics

RFK Jr. has frequently been at odds with his siblings over his controversial statements, conspiracy theories and politics.

Kerry, in particular, has been outspoken against her older brother’s statements over the years. In January 2022, when RFK Jr. compared anti-vaccine advocates to Anne Frank, Kerry responded on Instagram by calling her brother’s “hateful rhetoric” both “sickening and destructive.” Then, when RFK Jr. claimed in July 2023 that COVID-19 spared Jewish and Chinese people , Kerry denounced his remarks on X (formerly Twitter), calling them “deplorable and untruthful.”  She has also made it clear that Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the advocacy organization she has led since 1988, does not approve of his harmful views.

“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues,” she said in a statement in April 2023.

Four of RFK Jr.'s siblings — Rory, Kerry, Joe and Kathleen — went as far as to call his presidential campaign “dangerous” in a statement released in October 2023.

“Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision or judgment,” the statement continued. “We denounce his candidacy and believe it to be perilous for our country.”

However, RFK Jr. has no issue with his siblings’ stance towards him and his beliefs, acknowledging in April 2023 that they “just plain disagree” on certain issues.

“My whole family including myself have long personal relationships with President Biden ... and many of them just plain disagree with me on issues like censorship and war and public health,” he said at the time. “They are entitled to their beliefs ... and I love them back.”

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