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".
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