Yaolee Chen

History 359 Final Essay

Robert McCoy

John F Kennedy

Innocent Kennedy born from a wealthy family; and on the time of the beginning of the American Counter Culture, he was unfortunately elected to be the 35^th president of the United State. John F Kennedy was born into an Irish-American family with aspirations resembling those of the British gentry. Overcoming limitations of health and doubts about his personal ambitions, he achieved the presidency by battling simultaneously on several fronts. At the age of forty-three, he became the youngest man to reach the White House via the electoral college. Traditionally, the Americans hated the blacks and the Roman Catholics. But, as Elvis Presley led the protest music against the American tradition had proceeded in the 1950s, a great vote of the Martin Luther King Jr. followers from the South blew him into the sky that he won the vote by accident. The blacks had to shade their own bloods for the achievement of the civil rights movement in his administration.

Like a baby that was to be taken a shower, the blacks lunched on the first step with caution shortly before Kennedy’s administration. Eisenhower was like a lovely mommy, upholding the baby with the federal protection. Eisenhower’s domestic policy at home, on economy, he predominance of business executives in his cabinet lent a conservative tone to his administration, while his concern for a balanced budget at a time when defense expenditures were rising rapidly, as well as his commitment to limiting the role of the government in the economy, kept Eisenhower from expanding the social welfare programs begun by his Democratic predecessors. Eisenhower avoided talking about the nuclear weapon because it wasted the money. On the Civil Rights Movement, although personally unenthusiastic about desegregation, he sent federal troops to Little Rock, Ark. to enforce a court-ordered school desegregation decision (Sep., 1957). His administration supported the civil-rights legislation that passed Congress (1957), (1960); and he prohibited discriminatory practices in the District of Columbia and in federal facilities such as navy yards and hospitals.

John F Kennedy on the other hand, his sudden martyrdom on November 22, 1963, by suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald quickly became the inspiration for President Johnson’s Great Society program of social reforms, especially major civil rights legislation. Before Johnson’s Great Society, John F. Kennedy gave no federal protection to the black civil rights movement. Kennedy was like a careless babysitter, who threw the baby into the water and forced the baby to take a shower--- so did the followers of Martin Luther King Jr. grew without number. First of all, he gave the blacks no federal protection. Regardless the hostile from the southern whites, the black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, kept preaching the gospels of hate. Some blacks shaded their bloods to gain the admission to the university, and there were 4 black girls that were killed by the white southerners without the local government to apologize. Kennedy would not regulate the federal protection for the blacks because, as I had said, he was hired and he did just not care about what he had promised to the Luther’s followers in the time of his election. Or maybe he was too young that he did not take his own word seriously. The Southern Blacks were double troubled by his promises about the Civil Rights Movement till Johnson’s Great Society that the law passed the legal procedure to protect the rights of the blacks.

The domestic policy of Kennedy was but an ideology that he did nothing to protect the blacks. His counseling to the Martin Luther King Jr. and his promises to the blacks created the bitterness in the black societies. No legal law to protect the safeties for the blacks. Kennedy also wasted money on the decoration in the White House. He was so far away from the reality of the American daily life. While Eisenhower was like a lovely mommy led the baby into the water with cares unavoidably, John F Kennedy actively threw the baby into the water: and by which action of Kennedy, the baby protested and cried for help.