John+F.+Kennedy


 * by Moussa, Grade 5**

John Fitzgerald’s story is one of the world’s greatest and most horrible stories ever. His great beginning was when he won the presidential election, overcoming all the odds. His bitter end was when he was assassinated.

When J.F.K. won the election in 1960, it was as if a new era had begun because J.F.K. was an Irish Catholic, and in the United States there is a lot of discrimination against Irish Catholic people. That’s why people all over the world liked the idea of J.F.K., because people thought if he could become president, then discrimination against Irish Catholics was over.

In the 1960’s the United States was having trouble with Cuba. The U.S. was trying to take control of Cuba and it’s resources. But Fidel Castro didn’t want to let them take over. So the U.S. sent 1,300 Cuban exiles back to Cuba to overthrow the government. The exiles didn’t even put up a fight with the Cuban soldiers. This attempt failed. It was called the Bay of Pigs.

After the Bay of Pigs Nikita Khruschev, the leader of the Soviet Union, thought of the idea of building missile launching sites in Cuba. He wanted to do this because the Soviet Union and the United States were having problems. After this, Khruschev sent a treaty to the United States saying that if the U.S. would leave Cuba alone, the U.S.S.R. would dismantle the missiles and leave.

The next election was coming up and J.F.K. was going to a lot of places and meeting people. One of the first places he had to go was Texas, because he was starting to lose Democrats in the South. When he made it to Dallas, his campaign was going well. A lot of people came to see him, including J.F.K.’s assassin. The date was November 22, 1963. John F. Kennedy was shot that day, by a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald shot Kennedy from the sixth floor of a Book Depository with a carcano rifle. After J.F.K. was shot a C.I.A. agent took his car to the hospital. Kennedy died in a Dallas hospital that night, and that was the end of J.F.K.’s life.

After Kennedy died it was like the world stopped spinning because people stayed inside and stopped going to work. People were angry. From his election to president to trouble with Cuba; from a good campaign in Texas to his assassination as president, this was the story of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s life.