Editor’s note: In memory of President John F. Kennedy, the Emerald is reprinting an editorial originally run Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, the day after his death.
“All this will not be accomplished in the life of this administration nor in the life of this planet, but let us begin.”
An anxious nation caught in the tensions of a cold war found encouragement in John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Inaugural Address on the first day of his administration. His words accurately captured the attitudes and aspirations of an enlightened society. His statements promised new direction for Americans in the 1960s. His outlook was not narrow; he was in every sense a cosmopolitan, a man with compassion for the citizens of the world. His statements were not idle campaign promises, but positive programs for effective free world leadership. John Kennedy’s concern for his fellow man was included in the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and civil rights legislation.
Under his leadership the free world stood firm against the aggression of international communism. He challenged the aggressor with the strength of the free world in Berlin and in Cuba. He sought to rekindle that spirit of the American Revolution which Americans have so often failed to see. He encouraged new democratic governments in Asia and in Latin America. On his world tours he told others about that unique spirit of the American Revolution which will not tolerate dictators and which strengthens the machinery of free, democratic government.
As a senior at Harvard and later as the United States senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy demonstrated that he could write about courage. His books, “Why England Slept” and “Profiles in Courage,” indicate that he might have been a prominent historian as well as a national leader. But, John F. Kennedy did more than write about courage; he fully demonstrated it on many occasions. His civil rights program is a case in point. John Kennedy recognized that some Americans are not yet free, a full one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation. At a crucial period he stood for the dignity of his fellow man. Political considerations were cast aside when the president drafted his civil rights legislation. He gambled his political fortune on legislation which sought equal rights and privileges for all Americans.
Americans will not soon forget John Kennedy’s human leadership, nor will they forget Friday’s great national tragedy. For students in the Pacific Northwest, it was vivid documentation for the statement that geographic proximity has no meaning in mass society. Geographic distances are of little concern in a moment of national tragedy. We must realize that the nation must move forward and that John Kennedy’s humanitarian goals for an enlightened future have not been fully realized, nor will they “in the life of this planet, but let us begin.”