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This is a curation of information about JFK.

The pink notes are for general knowledge

The purple ones are biographies

The blue notes are about his assassination

The green notes are "others".

The other yellow note is a fun article that I'm not sure is appropriate.

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The Kennedy family is known for their political activity and for being well known.
Look at this tree and use the internet to write down 5 interesting facts about the family.

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I added a picture so that the students are able to visually see who they are learning about.

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Along with the other biography - the students can compare and contrast the two.

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Table of Contents

1. John F. Kennedy's Early Life

2. JFK's Beginnings in Politics

3. Kennedy's Road to Presidency

4. Kennedy's Foreign Policy Challenges

5. Kennedy's Leadership at Home

6. JFK's Assassination

Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became one of the youngest U.S. presidents, as well as the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. Born into one of America's wealthiest families, he parlayed an elite education and a reputation as a military hero into a successful run for Congress in 1946 and for the Senate in 1952.

As president, Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. He also led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement. His assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, sent shockwaves around the world and turned the all-too-human Kennedy into a larger-than-life heroic figure. To this day, historians continue to rank him among the best-loved presidents in American history.

John F. Kennedy's Early Life

Born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy (known as Jack) was the second of nine children. His parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy, hailed from two of Boston's most prominent Irish Catholic political families. Despite persistent health problems throughout his childhood and teenage years (he would later be diagnosed with a rare endocrine disorder called Addison's disease), Jack led a privileged youth. He attended private schools such as Canterbury and Choate and spent summers in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod. Joe Kennedy, a hugely successful businessman and an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934 and named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in 1937. As a student at Harvard University, Jack traveled in Europe as his father's secretary. His senior thesis about Britain's unpreparedness for war was later published as an acclaimed book, Why England Slept (1940).

Did you know? John F. Kennedy's Senate career got off to a rocky start when he refused to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy, a personal friend of the Kennedy family whom the Senate voted to censure in 1954 for his relentless pursuit of suspected communists. In the end, though he planned to vote against McCarthy, Kennedy missed the vote when he was hospitalized after back surgery.

Jack joined the U.S. Navy in 1941 and two years later was sent to the South Pacific, where he was given command of a Patrol-Torpedo (PT) boat. In August 1943, a Japanese destroyer struck the craft, PT-109, in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy helped some of his marooned crew back to safety and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. His older brother, Joe Jr., was not so fortunate: He was killed in August 1944 when his Navy airplane exploded on a secret mission against a German rocket-launching site. A grieving Joe Sr. told Jack it was his duty to fulfill the destiny once intended for Joe Jr.-to become the first Catholic president of the United States.

JFK's Beginnings in Politics

Abandoning plans to be a journalist, Jack left the Navy by the end of 1944. Less than a year later, he returned to Boston, preparing a run for Congress in 1946. As a moderately conservative Democrat, and backed by his father's fortune, Jack won his party's nomination handily and carried the mostly working-class Eleventh District by nearly three to one over his Republican opponent in the general election. He entered the 80th Congress in January 1947, at the age of 29, and immediately attracted attention (as well as some criticism from older members of the Washington establishment) for his youthful appearance and relaxed, informal style.

Kennedy won reelection to the House of Representatives in 1948 and 1950, and in 1952 ran successfully for the Senate, defeating the popular Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. On September 12, 1953, Kennedy married the beautiful socialite and journalist Jacqueline (Jackie) Lee Bouvier. Two years later, he was forced to undergo a painful operation on his back. While recovering from the surgery, Jack wrote another best-selling book, Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. (The book was later revealed to be mostly the work of Kennedy's longtime aide, Theodore Sorenson.)

Kennedy's Road to Presidency

After nearly earning his party's nomination for vice president (under Adlai Stevenson) in 1956, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president on January 2, 1960. He defeated a primary challenge from the more liberal Hubert Humphrey and chose the Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, as his running mate. In the general election, Kennedy faced a difficult battle against his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, a two-term vice president under the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Offering a young, energetic alternative to Nixon and the status quo, Kennedy benefited from his performance (and telegenic appearance) in the first-ever televised presidential debates, watched by millions of viewers. In November's election, Kennedy won by a narrow margin-fewer than 120,000 out of some 70 million votes cast-becoming the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to be elected president of the United States.

With his beautiful young wife and their two small children (Caroline, born in 1957, and John Jr., born just weeks after the election), Kennedy lent an unmistakable aura of youth and glamour to the White House. In his inaugural address, given on January 20, 1961, the new president called on his fellow Americans to work together in the pursuit of progress and the elimination of poverty, but also in the battle to win the ongoing Cold War against communism around the world. Kennedy's famous closing words expressed the need for cooperation and sacrifice on the part of the American people: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Kennedy's Foreign Policy Challenges

An early crisis in the foreign affairs arena occurred in April 1961, when Kennedy approved the plan to send 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles in an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Intended to spur a rebellion that would overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro, the mission ended in failure, with nearly all of the exiles captured or killed.

That June, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss the city of Berlin, which had been divided after World War II between Allied and Soviet control. Two months later, East German troops began erecting a wall to divide the city. Kennedy sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners of U.S. support, and would deliver one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin in June 1963.

Kennedy clashed again with Khrushchev in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. After learning that the Soviet Union was constructing a number of nuclear and long-range missile sites in Cuba that could pose a threat to the continental United States, Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba.

The tense standoff lasted nearly two weeks before Khrushchev agreed to dismantle Soviet missile sites in Cuba in return for America's promise not to invade the island and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and other sites close to Soviet borders. In July 1963, Kennedy won his greatest foreign affairs victory when Khrushchev agreed to join him and Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in signing a nuclear test ban treaty. In Southeast Asia, however, Kennedy's desire to curb the spread of communism led him to escalate U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, even as privately he expressed his dismay over the situation.

Kennedy's Leadership at Home

During his first year in office, Kennedy oversaw the launch of the Peace Corps, which would send young volunteers to underdeveloped countries all over the world. Otherwise, he was unable to achieve much of his proposed legislation during his lifetime, including two of his biggest priorities: income tax cuts and a civil rights bill. Slow to commit himself to the civil rights cause, events forced Kennedy into action, spurring him to send federal troops to support the desegregation of the University of Mississippi after riots there left two dead and many others injured. The following summer, Kennedy announced his intention to propose a comprehensive civil rights bill and endorsed the massive March on Washington that took place that August.

Kennedy held enormous popularity, both at home and abroad, and his family drew famous comparisons to King Arthur's court at Camelot. His brother Bobby served as his attorney general, while the youngest Kennedy son, Edward (Ted), was elected to Jack's former Senate seat in 1962. Jackie Kennedy became an international icon of style, beauty and sophistication, though stories of her husband's numerous marital infidelities (and his personal association with members of organized crime) would later emerge to complicate the Kennedys' idyllic image.

JFK's Assassination

On November 22, 1963, the president and his wife landed in Dallas; he had spoken in San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth the day before. From the airfield, the party then traveled in a motorcade to the Dallas Trade Mart, the site of Jack's next speaking engagement. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., as the motorcade passed through downtown Dallas, shots rang out. Bullets struck Kennedy twice, in the neck and head; he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital.

Authorities arrested 24-old Lee Harvey Oswald, known to have Communist sympathies, for the killing. But he was shot and fatally wounded two days later by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being led to jail. Almost immediately, alternative theories of Kennedy's assassination emerged-including conspiracies allegedly run by the KGB, the Mafia and the U.S. military-industrial complex, among others. A presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald had acted alone, but speculation and debate over the assassination have persisted.

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John F. Kennedy - Facts, Presidency & Assassination

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Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to hold that office. Learn about his personal and political life and his assassination in 1963.

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"Life of John F. Kennedy"  - another biography

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"Life of John F. Kennedy"  - another biography

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Along with the other biography - the students can compare and contrast the two.

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Life of John F. Kennedy - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum

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The students will choose one of the following activities activities:
A. Summarize the speech
B. Choose three major themes from the speech and elaborate on why you connected / didn't connect to them
C. Compare this speech to another inauguration speech

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Full text transcript and audio mp3 and video excerpt of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address

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The class can use these pictures, and other ones that they find online, to create a pictured time-line of JFK's life.

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Intimate Look at JFK as Leader, Husband, Father

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This slideshow of photos by the Kennedy family photographer, Jacques Lowe, provides an intimate look at JFK as a father, husband and young leader.

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The assassination of JFK was a major moment in US history.
In class, the students can research other assignations of world leaders (such as Rabin) and write a page about it.

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36. In Washington, dignitaries from more than 100 countries arrived for Kennedy's funeral. At the time, it was the largest gathering of its kind on U.S. soil.

37. An unexpected 250,000 people paid their respects to the former president as he lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

38. Tens of thousands were turned away, some having waited throughout a near-freezing night in a line that stretched for more than 2 miles.

39. Jackie Kennedy modeled her husband's funeral ceremonies after Abraham Lincoln's.

40. With help from Bobby Kennedy and Robert McNamara, Jackie chose the burial site at Arlington National Cemetery.

41. Jackie requested an eternal flame be put by the grave.

42. Although she would remarry, today she is buried next to the president.

43. Two of the Kennedys' children, an infant son and daughter, are also buried with their parents.

44. The funeral day, Nov. 25, was also John Jr.'s third birthday.

45. Caroline would turn 6 two days later.

46. A taxi driver reported that the funeral crowds were oddly quiet: "... you could hear a pin drop."

47. An Irish military guard paid its respects graveside, following commands shouted in Gaelic.

48. After the funeral, Jackie Kennedy met privately with three heads of state: Charles de Gaulle of France, Eamon de Valera of Ireland and Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.

49. Near midnight that night, she and Bobby Kennedy paid an unplanned visit to Kennedy's grave.

50. The first two letters that Lyndon Johnson wrote as president were to Caroline and John Jr.
Go to aarp.org/JFK to learn more about the JFK centennial and the Kennedy presidency . Betsy Towner is a freelance writer.

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50 Facts You May Not Know About the JFK Assassination

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36. In Washington, dignitaries from more than 100 countries arrived for Kennedy's funeral. At the time, it was the largest gathering of its kind on U.S. soil. 37. An unexpected 250,000 people paid their respects to the former president as he lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. 38.

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What we know (and don't!) about the assaination

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What we know (and don't!) about the assaination

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The students can take notes while they watch

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An interesting article about the affair that could possibly be used with high school students.

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The Scandalous True Story Of Marilyn Monroe & JFK

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Forget everything you've heard about the ''affair'' between one of America's most beloved Presidents and America's most iconic sex symbol. The most scandalous thing about them....is that there may not be a scandal at all. By Marijane Gray for Immortal Marilyn.