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
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