Brief scene of oath of office, portion of speech in which he said “never let us negotiate out of fear, but never let us fear to negotiate”. President Kennedy and Jackie shown riding in open car in inaugural parade.
In State of Union Address on January 30, 1961 Kennedy remarked “life in 1961 will not be easy. Wishing it, predicting it, even asking for it, will not make it so. There will be further setbacks before the tide is turned. But turn it we must”. Kennedy remarks on Laos.
Brief scenes of Laos and it’s leaders, and Fidel Castro. Kennedy signing executive order establishing the Peace Corp and explaining it’s purpose. President Kennedy with Dwight Eisenhower. American rocket lifting off, Kennedy and Alan Shepard. Kennedy throws out first baseball of 1961 season in Washington DC. Kennedy at his birthday function.
President Kennedy meets with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Shows crowd yelling “we want Jackie” as President Kennedy and Jackie appears. People fleeing East Berlin through barb wire fences, jumping from windows of building on the border, East German border guard escaping to West Berlin. President Kennedy remarks after the Soviet Union exploded an atomic bomb in 1961 while pretending to negotiate a nuclear test treaty.
Brief scene of Dag Hammarskjold boarding plane, plane crash site, while at United Nations, UN, and remarks by Kennedy. Images of exterior of United Nations Building in New York City, and Kennedy addressing the UN in regards to nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Kennedy with different world leaders and at different functions. Images of Jackie Kennedy and children. Kennedy addresses AFL-CIO about the Common Market. Jackie Kennedy addresses the Venezuelan crowd in Spanish, visits Colombia.
Excerpts from State of Union address January 11, 1962. Yet our basic goal remains the same: a peaceful world community of free and independent states--free to choose their own future and their own system, so long as it does not threaten the freedom of others. Some may choose forms and ways that we would not choose for ourselves--but it is not for us that they are choosing. We can welcome diversity--the Communists cannot. For we offer a world of choice--they offer the world of coercion. And the way of the past shows clearly that freedom, not coercion, is the wave of the future. At times our goal has been obscured by crisis or endangered by conflict--but it draws sustenance from five basic sources of strength: the moral and physical strength of the United States; the united strength of the Atlantic Community; the regional strength of our Hemispheric relations; the creative strength of our efforts in the new and developing nations; and the peace-keeping strength of the United Nations. But arms alone are not enough to keep the peace--it must be kept by men. Our instrument and our hope is the United Nations--and I see little merit in the impatience of those who would abandon this imperfect world instrument because they dislike our imperfect world. For the troubles of a world organization merely reflect the troubles of the world itself. And if the organization is weakened, these troubles can only increase. We may not always agree with every detailed action taken by every officer of the United Nations, or with every voting majority. But as an institution, it should have in the future, as it has had in the past since its inception, no stronger or more faithful member than the United States of America. |
