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A Dictionary of American History
Contents:
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald (b. Brookline, Mass., 29 May 1917; d. Dallas, Tex., 22 November 1963) As a navy officer, Kennedy was decorated for heroism in the Solomon Islands campaign. He was Mass. congressman (1947–52) and US senator (1953–60). He lost a bid to be Democratic vice-presidential candidate in 1956, but won nomination for president in 1960 over Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. Elected president in the closest race since 1884, he took 49.7 percent of the ballots and outpolled Richard Nixon by just 118,574 votes. He became the first Catholic and youngest man chosen as chief executive. He blundered into the Bay of Pigs invasion, but performed admirably in the Berlin Wall and Cuban missile crisis. He initiated US military involvement in the Vietnam War, then approved a military coup that toppled Vietnam’s civilian leaders and destabilized its politics. He initiated the Kennedy round of GATT, and on 24 January 1963 proposed domestic cuts in income tax of $13.6 billion that were enacted as the Tax Reduction Act (1964). Aside from the Apollo Project and the Peace Corps, Congress balked at enacting his other proposals before Communist sympathizer Lee Harvey Oswald shot him.
Contents:
Chicago: Thomas L. Purvis, "Kennedy, John Fitzgerald," A Dictionary of American History in A Dictionary of American History (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Reference, 1995), Original Sources, accessed December 21, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=R17Q31WUJNPLSL8.
MLA: Purvis, Thomas L. "Kennedy, John Fitzgerald." A Dictionary of American History, in A Dictionary of American History, Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell Reference, 1995, Original Sources. 21 Dec. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=R17Q31WUJNPLSL8.
Harvard: Purvis, TL, 'Kennedy, John Fitzgerald' in A Dictionary of American History. cited in 1995, A Dictionary of American History, Blackwell Reference, Cambridge, Mass.. Original Sources, retrieved 21 December 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=R17Q31WUJNPLSL8.
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