John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963) served as President of the United States from January 20, 1961 until his assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. A Democrat from Massachusetts, he previously sat in the U.S. House of Representatives (1947–1953) and the U.S. Senate (1953–1960), and won the 1960 presidential election against Richard Nixon.

Kennedy's foreign policy is central to Cold War historiography. Early in his term, the Bay of Pigs invasion (April 1961), a CIA-backed operation against Fidel Castro's Cuba, failed and damaged U.S. credibility. He met Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at the Vienna Summit in June 1961, shortly before the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. His administration's most consequential confrontation was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, a 13-day standoff over Soviet medium-range ballistic missiles in Cuba that ended with a U.S. naval quarantine, a Soviet withdrawal of missiles, and a quiet U.S. removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

In arms control, Kennedy signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom in Moscow on August 5, 1963, prohibiting nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space, and underwater. He also established the Peace Corps by executive order in March 1961 and launched the Alliance for Progress with Latin America. His "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech was delivered in West Berlin on June 26, 1963.

Domestically, Kennedy proposed major civil rights legislation in June 1963 — later enacted as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 under President Lyndon B. Johnson — and committed the United States to landing a person on the Moon "before this decade is out" in a 1961 address to Congress. U.S. military advisers in South Vietnam expanded substantially during his presidency, laying groundwork for later escalation. He was succeeded by Vice President Johnson.