Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Conclusion)

Historical evaluations and legacy

The US Special Forces had a special bond with Kennedy. "It was President Kennedy who was responsible for the rebuilding of the Special Forces and giving us back our Green Beret," said Forrest Lindley, a writer for the US military newspaper Stars and Stripes who served with Special Forces in Vietnam.  This bond was shown at Kennedy's funeral. At the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Kennedy's death, General Michael D. Healy, the last commander of Special Forces in Vietnam, spoke at Arlington Cemetery. Later, a wreath in the form of the Green Beret would be placed on the grave, continuing a tradition that began the day of his funeral when a sergeant in charge of a detail of Special Forces men guarding the grave placed his beret on the coffin.   Kennedy was the first of six presidents to have served in the U.S. Navy, and one of the enduring legacies of his administration was the creation in 1961 of another Special Forces command, the Navy SEALs, which Kennedy enthusiastically supported.

Kennedy's civil rights proposals led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy's successor, took up the mantle and pushed the landmark Civil Rights Act through a bitterly divided Congress by invoking the slain president's memory.  President Johnson then signed the Act into law on July 2, 1964. This civil rights law ended what was known as the "Solid South" and certain provisions were modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1875, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant.

Kennedy's continuation of Presidents Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower's policies of giving economic and military aid to South Vietnam left the door open for President Johnson's escalation of the conflict.  At the time of Kennedy's death, no final policy decision had been made as to Vietnam, leading historians, cabinet members, and writers to continue to disagree on whether the Vietnam conflict would have escalated to the point it did had he survived.  His agreement to the NSAM 263 action of withdrawing 1,000 troops by the end of 1963, and his earlier 1963 speech at American University, suggests that he was ready to end the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War contributed greatly to a decade of national difficulties, amid violent disappointment on the political landscape.

Kennedy on a U.S. postage stamp, issue of 1967

Many of Kennedy's speeches (especially his inaugural address) are considered iconic; and despite his relatively short term in office, and the lack of major legislative changes coming to fruition during his term, Americans regularly vote him as one of the best presidents, in the same league as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some excerpts of Kennedy's inaugural address are engraved on a plaque at his grave at Arlington. In 2018 The Times published an audio recreation of the "watchmen on the walls of world freedom" speech he was scheduled to deliver at the Dallas Trade Mart on November 22, 1963.

He was posthumously awarded the Pacem in Terris Award (Latin: Peace on Earth). It was named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of goodwill to secure peace among all nations. Kennedy also posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. As of 2019, he has been the only Catholic U.S. President.

Throughout the English-speaking world, the given name Kennedy has sometimes been used in honor of President Kennedy, as well his brother Robert.

Effect of assassination

Television was the primary source that kept people informed of the events that surrounded Kennedy's assassination. In fact, television started to come of age before the assassination. On September 2, 1963, Kennedy helped inaugurate network television's first half-hour nightly evening newscast according to an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, Massachusetts

Newspapers were kept as souvenirs rather than sources of updated information.  In this sense his assassination was the first major TV news event of its kind. TV coverage united the nation, interpreting what went on, and creating memories of this space in time.  All three major U.S. television networks suspended their regular schedules and switched to all-news coverage from November 22 through November 26, 1963, being on the air for 70 hours, making it the longest uninterrupted news event on American TV until 9/11.

The assassination had an effect on many people, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Many vividly remember where they were when they first learned the news that Kennedy was assassinated, as with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, before it and the September 11 attacks after it. UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson II said of the assassination: "All of us. ... . Will bear the grief of his death until the day of ours." Many people have also spoken of the shocking news, compounded by the pall of uncertainty about the identity of the assassin(s), the possible instigators, and the causes of the killing, as an end to innocence, and in retrospect it has been coalesced with other changes of the tumultuous decade of the 1960s, especially the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, the death of President Kennedy, and the ensuing confusion surrounding the facts of his assassination, are of political and historical importance insofar as they marked a turning point and decline in the faith of the American people in the political establishment—a point made by commentators from Gore Vidal to Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and implied by Oliver Stone in several of his films, such as his landmark 1991 JFK.

Memorials and eponyms

·         John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame memorial

·         John F. Kennedy International Airport, American airport in New York City; nation's busiest international gateway

·         John F. Kennedy School of Government, part of Harvard University

·         John F. Kennedy Space Center, U.S. government installation that manages and operates America's astronaut launch facilities in Merritt Island, Florida

·         USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67), U.S. Navy aircraft carrier ordered in April 1964, launched May 1967, decommissioned August 2007; nicknamed "Big John"

·         USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-79), U.S. Navy aircraft carrier that began construction in 2011, and is scheduled to be placed in commission in 2020

·         Kennedy half dollar, a fifty-cent coin first minted in 1964

Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Part XI)

Funeral

A Requiem Mass was celebrated for Kennedy at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle on November 25, 1963.  Afterwards, Kennedy was interred in a small plot, 20 by 30 ft., in Arlington National Cemetery. Over a period of three years (1964–1966), an estimated 16 million people visited his grave. On March 14, 1967, Kennedy's remains were disinterred and moved only a few feet away to a permanent burial plot and memorial. It was from this memorial that the graves of both Robert and Ted Kennedy were modeled.

The honor guard at Kennedy's graveside was the 37th Cadet Class of the Irish Army. Kennedy was greatly impressed by the Irish Cadets on his last official visit to Ireland, so much so that Jacqueline Kennedy requested the Irish Army to be the honor guard at her husband's funeral.

Jacqueline and their two deceased minor children were later interred in the same plot. Kennedy's brother Robert was buried nearby in June 1968. In August 2009, Ted was also buried near his two brothers. John F. Kennedy's grave is lit with an "Eternal Flame". Kennedy and William Howard Taft are the only two U.S. presidents buried at Arlington.   According to the JFK Library, "I Have a Rendezvous with Death", by Alan Seeger "was one of John F. Kennedy's favorite poems and he often asked his wife to recite it".

Personal life, family, and reputation

The Kennedy family in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1963

The Kennedy family is one of the most established political families in the United States, having produced a president, three senators, three ambassadors, and multiple other representatives and politicians, both at the federal and state level. While a Congressman, Kennedy embarked on a seven-week trip to India, Japan, Vietnam, and Israel in 1951, at which point he became close with his then 25-year-old brother Bobby, as well as his 27-year-old sister Pat. Because they were several years apart in age, the brothers had previously seen little of each other. This 25,000-mile (40,000 km) trip was the first extended time they had spent together and resulted in their becoming best friends.  Bobby would eventually play a major role in his brother's career, serving as his brother's Attorney General and presidential advisor.  Bobby would later run for president in 1968 before his assassination, while another Kennedy brother, Ted, ran for president in 1980.

Kennedy came in third (behind Martin Luther King Jr. and Mother Teresa) in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th century. Kennedy was a life member of the National Rifle Association.

Wife and children

The First Family in 1962

Kennedy met his future wife, Jacqueline Lee "Jackie" Bouvier (1929–1994), when he was a congressman. Charles L. Bartlett, a journalist, introduced the pair at a dinner party.  They were married a year after he was elected senator, on September 12, 1953.  After suffering a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956 (their daughter Arabella), their daughter Caroline was born in 1957 and is the only surviving member of JFK's immediate family. John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., nicknamed "John-John" by the press as a child, was born in late November 1960, 17 days after his father was elected. John Jr., a graduate of Brown University, died in 1999 when the small plane he was piloting crashed en route to Martha's Vineyard.  In 1963, months before JFK's assassination, Jackie gave birth to a son, Patrick. However, he died after 2 days due to complications from birth.

Popular image

Kennedy and his wife were younger in comparison to the presidents and first ladies who preceded them and both were popular in the media culture in ways more common to pop singers and movie stars than politicians, influencing fashion trends and becoming the subjects of numerous photo spreads in popular magazines. Although Eisenhower had allowed presidential press conferences to be filmed for television, Kennedy was the first president to ask for them to be broadcast live and made good use of the medium.   In 1961 the Radio-Television News Directors Association presented Kennedy with its highest honor, the Paul White Award, in recognition of his open relationship with the media.

Mrs. Kennedy brought new art and furniture to the White House, and directed its restoration. They invited a range of artists, writers and intellectuals to rounds of White House dinners, raising the profile of the arts in America. On the White House lawn, the Kennedys established a swimming pool and tree house, while Caroline attended a preschool along with 10 other children inside the home.

The president was closely tied to popular culture, emphasized by songs such as "Twisting at the White House". Vaughn Meader's First Family comedy album, which parodied the president, the first lady, their family, and the administration, sold about four million copies. On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sang "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" at a large party in Madison Square Garden, celebrating Kennedy's upcoming forty-fifth birthday.

"Camelot Era"

The term "Camelot" came to be used retrospectively as iconic of the Kennedy administration, and the charisma of Kennedy and his family. The term was first publicly used by his wife in a post-assassination Life magazine interview with Theodore H. White, in which she revealed his affection for the contemporary Broadway musical of the same name, particularly the closing lines of the title song:

Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot.  There'll be great presidents again ... but there will never be another Camelot.— Jacqueline Kennedy

Health

In 2002, Robert Dallek wrote an extensive history of Kennedy's health. Dallek was able to consult a collection of Kennedy-associated papers from the years 1955–1963, including X-rays and prescription records from the files of White House physician Dr. Janet Travell. According to Travell's records, during his presidential years Kennedy suffered from high fevers; stomach, colon, and prostate issues; abscesses; high cholesterol; and adrenal problems. Travell kept a "Medicine Administration Record," cataloguing Kennedy's medications: "injected and ingested corticosteroids for his adrenal insufficiency; procaine shots and ultrasound treatments and hot packs for his back; Lomotil, Metamucil, paregoric, phenobarbital, testosterone, and trasentine to control his diarrhea, abdominal discomfort, and weight loss; penicillin and other antibiotics for his urinary-tract infections and an abscess; and Tuinal to help him sleep."

Years after Kennedy's death, it was revealed that in September 1947, while Kennedy was 30 and in his first term in Congress, he was diagnosed by Sir Daniel Davis at The London Clinic with Addison's disease, a rare endocrine disorder. In 1966, Dr. Travell revealed that Kennedy also had hypothyroidism. The presence of two endocrine diseases raises the possibility that Kennedy had autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 2 (APS 2).

Kennedy also suffered from chronic and severe back pain, for which he had surgery and was written up in the American Medical Association's Archives of Surgery. Kennedy's condition may have had diplomatic repercussions, as he appears to have been taking a combination of drugs to treat severe back pain during the 1961 Vienna Summit with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The combination included hormones, animal organ cells, steroids, vitamins, enzymes, and amphetamines, and possible potential side effects included hyperactivity, hypertension, impaired judgment, nervousness, and mood swings.  Kennedy at one time was regularly seen by no fewer than three doctors, one of whom, Max Jacobson, was unknown to the other two, as his mode of treatment was controversial  and used for the most severe bouts of back pain.

Into late 1961, disagreements existed among Kennedy's doctors concerning his proper balance of medication and exercise. The president preferred the former, because he was short on time and desired immediate relief.  During that time, the president's physician, George Burkley, did set up some gym equipment in the White House basement, where Kennedy did stretching exercises for his back three times a week.  Details of these and other medical problems were not publicly disclosed during Kennedy's lifetime.  The President's primary White House physician, George Burkley, realized that treatments by Jacobson and Travell, including the excessive use of steroids and amphetamines, were medically inappropriate, and took effective action to remove the president from their care.  Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, a physician who reviewed Kennedy's medical records in his presidential archives, has opined that Kennedy's leadership (e.g. the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis and other events during 1963) improved greatly once the treatments of Jacobson had been discontinued and been replaced by a medically appropriate regimen under Burkley. Ghaemi concluded there was a "correlation; it is not causation; but it may not be coincidence either".

Personal tragedies

Kennedy and his family have experienced a number of personal tragedies. His older brother Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. was killed in action in 1944 at age 29, when his plane exploded over the English Channel during a first attack execution of Operation Aphrodite during World War II.  Kennedy's younger sister Rose Marie "Rosemary" Kennedy was born in 1918 with intellectual disabilities and underwent a prefrontal lobotomy at age 23, leaving her incapacitated for the rest of her life, until her death in 2005. His younger sister Kathleen Agnes "Kick" Kennedy died in a plane crash en route to France in 1948. His wife Jacqueline Kennedy suffered a miscarriage in 1955 and a stillbirth in 1956: a daughter informally named Arabella.  A son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died two days after birth in August 1963.

Affairs, extramarital relationships and friendships

Kennedy was single in the 1940s when he had affairs with Danish journalist Inga Arvad and actress Gene Tierney.  Before and after he assumed the presidency, Kennedy reportedly had affairs with a number of women, including Marilyn Monroe, Gunilla von Post, Judith Campbell, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Marlene Dietrich, Mimi Alford, and his wife's press secretary, Pamela Turnure.

The extent of Kennedy's relationship with Monroe is not fully known, although it has been reported that they spent a weekend together in March 1962 while he was staying at Bing Crosby's house. Furthermore, people at the White House switchboard noted that Monroe had called Kennedy during 1962.  J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI director, received reports about Kennedy's indiscretions.

Kennedy inspired affection and loyalty from the members of his team and his supporters.  According to Reeves, this included "the logistics of Kennedy's liaisons ... [which] required secrecy and devotion rare in the annals of the energetic service demanded by successful politicians."  Kennedy believed that his friendly relationship with members of the press would help protect him from public revelations about his sex life.

Lem Billings was a close and long-time friend of Kennedy and the Kennedy family. Billings had his own room in which to stay at several of John F. Kennedy's residences. Though there has never been any proof of homosexual activity between them, Kennedy would often, and even when married, share a bedroom with his lifelong friend.

Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Part X)

Immigration

During the 1960 campaign, Kennedy proposed an overhaul of American immigration and naturalization laws to ban discrimination based on national origin. He saw this proposal as an extension of his planned civil rights agenda as president.  These reforms later became law through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which dramatically shifted the source of immigration from Northern and Western European countries towards immigration from Latin America and Asia. The policy change also shifted the emphasis in the selection of immigrants in favor of family reunification. The late-president's brother, Senator Edward Kennedy helped steer the legislation through the Senate.

Native American relations

Construction of the Kinzua Dam flooded 10,000 acres (4,047 ha) of Seneca nation land that they had occupied under the Treaty of 1794, and forced 600 Seneca to relocate to Salamanca, New York. Kennedy was asked by the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene and to halt the project, but he declined, citing a critical need for flood control. He expressed concern about the plight of the Seneca, and directed government agencies to assist in obtaining more land, damages, and assistance to help mitigate their displacement.

Space policy

The Apollo program was conceived early in 1960, during the Eisenhower administration, as a follow-up to Project Mercury, to be used as a shuttle to an Earth-orbital space station, flights around the Moon, or landing on it. While NASA went ahead with planning for Apollo, funding for the program was far from certain, given Eisenhower's ambivalent attitude to manned spaceflight.  As senator, Kennedy had been opposed to the space program and wanted to terminate it.

In constructing his Presidential administration, Kennedy elected to retain Eisenhower's last science advisor Jerome Wiesner as head of the President's Science Advisory Committee. Wiesner was strongly opposed to manned space exploration,  having issued a report highly critical of Project Mercury.  Kennedy was turned down by seventeen candidates for NASA administrator before the post was accepted by James E. Webb, an experienced Washington insider who served President Truman as budget director and undersecretary of state. Webb proved to be adept at obtaining the support of Congress, the President, and the American people.  Kennedy also persuaded Congress to amend the National Aeronautics and Space Act to allow him to delegate his chairmanship of the National Aeronautics and Space Council to the Vice President,  both because of the knowledge of the space program Johnson gained in the Senate working for the creation of NASA, and to help keep the politically savvy Johnson occupied.

In Kennedy's January 1961 State of the Union address, he had suggested international cooperation in space. Khrushchev declined, as the Soviets did not wish to reveal the status of their rocketry and space capabilities.  Early in his presidency, Kennedy was poised to dismantle the manned space program but postponed any decision out of deference to Johnson, who had been a strong supporter of the space program in the Senate.  Kennedy's advisors speculated that a Moon flight would be prohibitively expensive, and he was considering plans to dismantle the Apollo program due to its cost.

However, this quickly changed on April 12, 1961, when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to fly in space, reinforcing American fears about being left behind in a technological competition with the Soviet Union.  Kennedy now became eager for the U.S. to take the lead in the Space Race, for reasons of national security and prestige. On April 20, he sent a memo to Johnson, asking him to look into the status of America's space program, and into programs that could offer NASA the opportunity to catch up.  After consulting with Wernher von Braun, Johnson responded approximately one week later, concluding that "we are neither making maximum effort nor achieving results necessary if this country is to reach a position of leadership".  His memo concluded that a manned Moon landing was far enough in the future that it was likely the United States would achieve it first.  Kennedy's advisor Ted Sorensen advised him to support the Moon landing, and on May 25, Kennedy announced the goal in a speech titled "Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs":

... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.

After Congress authorized the funding, Webb began reorganizing NASA, increasing its staffing level, and building two new centers: a Launch Operations Center for the large Moon rocket northwest of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and a Manned Spacecraft Center on land donated through Rice University in Houston, Texas. Kennedy took the latter occasion as an opportunity to deliver another speech at Rice to promote the space effort on September 12, 1962, in which he said:

No nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. ... 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.

On November 21, 1962, in a cabinet meeting with NASA administrator Webb and other officials, Kennedy explained that the Moon shot was important for reasons of international prestige, and that the expense was justified.n Johnson assured him that lessons learned from the space program had military value as well. Costs for the Apollo program were expected to reach $40 billion (equivalent to $331.31 billion in 2018).

In a September 1963 speech before the United Nations, Kennedy urged cooperation between the Soviets and Americans in space, specifically recommending that Apollo be switched to "a joint expedition to the Moon".  Khrushchev again declined, and the Soviets did not commit to a manned Moon mission until 1964. On July 20, 1969, almost six years after Kennedy's death, Apollo 11 landed the first manned spacecraft on the Moon.

Assassination

Dallas

President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 pm Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963. He was in Texas on a political trip to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party between liberals Ralph Yarborough and Don Yarborough (no relation) and conservative John Connally.  Traveling in a presidential motorcade through downtown Dallas, he was shot once in the back, the bullet exiting via his throat, and once in the head.

Kennedy was taken to Parkland Hospital for emergency medical treatment, where he was pronounced dead 30 minutes later. He was 46 years old and had been in office for 1,036 days. Lee Harvey Oswald, an order filler at the Texas School Book Depository from which the shots were fired, was arrested for the murder of police officer J.D. Tippit and was subsequently charged with Kennedy's assassination. He denied shooting anyone, claiming he was a patsy, and was shot by Jack Ruby on November 24, before he could be prosecuted. Ruby was arrested and convicted for the murder of Oswald. Ruby successfully appealed his conviction and death sentence but became ill and died of cancer on January 3, 1967, while the date for his new trial was being set.

President Johnson quickly issued an executive order to create the Warren Commission—chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren—to investigate the assassination. The commission concluded that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and that Oswald was not part of any conspiracy.  The results of this investigation are disputed by many.  The assassination proved to be a pivotal moment in U.S. history because of its impact on the nation, and the ensuing political repercussions. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, while 74% thought that there had been a cover-up.  A Gallup Poll in November 2013 showed 61% believed in a conspiracy, and only 30% thought that Oswald did it alone.  In 1979 the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that it believed "that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or the extent of the conspiracy."  In 2002 historian Carl M. Brauer concluded that the public's "fascination with the assassination may indicate a psychological denial of Kennedy's death, a mass wish ... to undo it".

Life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (Part IX)

Kennedy's Report to the American People on Civil Rights, June 11, 1963

On June 11, 1963, President Kennedy intervened when Alabama Governor George Wallace blocked the doorway to the University of Alabama to stop two African American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, from attending. Wallace moved aside only after being confronted by Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and the Alabama U.S. National Guard, which had just been federalized by order of the president. That evening Kennedy gave his famous Report to the American People on Civil Rights on national television and radio, launching his initiative for civil rights legislation—to provide equal access to public schools and other facilities, and greater protection of voting rights.

His proposals became part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The day ended with the murder of a NAACP leader, Medgar Evers, in front of his home in Mississippi.  As the president had predicted, the day after his TV speech, and in reaction to it, House Majority leader Carl Albert called to advise him that his two-year signature effort in Congress to combat poverty in Appalachia (Area Redevelopment Administration) had been defeated, primarily by the votes of Southern Democrats and Republicans.  When Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. complimented Kennedy on his remarks, Kennedy bitterly replied, "Yes, and look at what happened to area development the very next day in the House." He then added, "But of course, I had to give that speech, and I'm glad that I did."  On June 16, The New York Times published an editorial which argued that while the president had initially "moved too slowly and with little evidence of deep moral commitment" in regards to civil rights he "now demonstrate[d] a genuine sense of urgency about eradicating racial discrimination from our national life".

Earlier, Kennedy had signed the executive order creating the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women on December 14, 1961. Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt led the commission. The Commission statistics revealed that women were also experiencing discrimination; its final report, documenting legal and cultural barriers, was issued in October 1963. Further, on June 10, 1963, Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which amended the Fair Labor Standards Act and abolished wage disparity based on sex.

Over a hundred thousand, predominantly African Americans gathered in Washington for the civil rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Kennedy feared the March would have a negative effect on the prospects for the civil rights bills in Congress, and declined an invitation to speak. He turned over some of the details of the government's involvement to the Dept. of Justice, which channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the six sponsors of the March, including the N.A.A.C.P. and Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

To ensure a peaceful demonstration, the organizers and the president personally edited speeches which were inflammatory and agreed the March would be held on a Wednesday and would be over at 4:00 pm. Thousands of troops were placed on standby. Kennedy watched King's speech on TV and was very impressed. The March was considered a "triumph of managed protest", and not one arrest relating to the demonstration occurred. Afterwards, the March leaders accepted an invitation to the White House to meet with Kennedy and photos were taken. Kennedy felt that the March was a victory for him as well and bolstered the chances for his civil rights bill.

Nevertheless, the struggle was far from over. Three weeks later on Sunday, September 15, a bomb exploded at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; by the end of the day, four African American children had died in the explosion, and two other children were shot to death in the aftermath.  Due to this resurgent violence, the civil rights legislation underwent some drastic amendments that critically endangered any prospects for passage of the bill, to the outrage of the president. Kennedy called the congressional leaders to the White House and by the following day the original bill, without the additions, had enough votes to get it out of the House committee.  Gaining Republican support, Senator Everett Dirksen promised the legislation would be brought to a vote preventing a Senate filibuster.  The legislation was enacted by Kennedy's successor President Lyndon B. Johnson, prompted by Kennedy's memory, after his assassination in November, enforcing voting rights, public accommodations, employment, education, and the administration of justice.

Civil liberties

In February 1962, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who was suspicious of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and viewed him as an upstart troublemaker, presented the Kennedy Administration with allegations that some of King's close confidants and advisers were communists. Concerned by these allegations, the FBI deployed agents to monitor King in the following months.  Robert Kennedy and the president also both warned King to discontinue the suspect associations. After the associations continued, Robert Kennedy issued a written directive authorizing the FBI to wiretap King and other leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King's civil rights organization, in October 1963.

Although Kennedy only gave written approval for limited wiretapping of King's phones "on a trial basis, for a month or so", Hoover extended the clearance so his men were "unshackled" to look for evidence in any areas of King's life they deemed worthy.  The wiretapping continued through June 1966 and was revealed in 1968.