the country is really swept away by jfk and jackie in a way that the country has never been swept away before by anybody in office. jack is at the forefront, and he brings with him his beautiful wife and his amazing family. the kennedys have two young children, 3-year-old caroline, and baby, john jr. no one could remember seeing children in the white house. there were suddenly playthings around. there are animals, there are toys strewn on the floor. it s a beautiful and welcoming image. if it s not presumptuous, mrs. kennedy, what about your role as a mother and a wife? yes, i think it doesn t
the first man into space, and after the bay of pigs fiasco, jack cannot afford for america to be left behind. the united states was engaged in a space race with the russian. we weren t trying to just beat the soviets militarily. we were trying to beat them to new frontiers. this is the kennedy approach to life which is win at all the costs. it is not good enough to come in second. and that was what they were told by their father from the time they were little children. as jack projects the superiority of his country around the world, back at home a desperate struggle for civil rights is tearing america apart. if you re african-american in the united states in the 60s, you re not living in a democracy. you re living under an apartheid dictatorship based on race. we re still seeing intense violence. lynching is still the reality.
in vienna, they went off into their meeting, which was five hours long and a complete disaster. the soviet leader makes an impossible demand. he wants kennedy to surrender the western sector of berlin. khrushchev just bullies kennedy. there was nothing kennedy could say to him except, i give up on west berlin, that would have made khrushchev happy. khrushchev was determine to put kennedy s feet to the fire. despite his best efforts, jack is humiliated. he leaves the summit having achieved nothing. kennedy s first meetings with journalists after vienna, there was no spin. he was dejected. he didn t hide it. i will tell you now, it was a very sober two days. no spectacular progress was either achieved or pretended. and two months later khrushchev built the berlin
i, john fitzgerald kennedy, do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the office of the president of the united states. for the family, having a kennedy in the white house is the inauguration of their ambition. jack is cheered on by his family. the president s brothers, his sisters, his mother, rose, his wife, jackie, and the patriarch himself, joseph p. kennedy. joe kennedy, who had been the behind-the-scenes strategist, architect, stood up and doffed his top hat to kennedy. waving to his father. and it was a great moment that showed his paternal pride. let every nation know whether
if you were bralack, you couldn t vote. you couldn t buy property. you couldn t go certain places. i said i m sorry, our management does not allow us to serve niggers in here. while jfk is looking at the moon and stars, you see real hypocrisy and contradiction. how can the united states be a democracy if its citizens are killing, are hurting, are hospitalizing its other citizens? but in the spring of 1961, john f. kennedy and his brother, robert, didn t care that much about civil rights. jack and bobby kennedy grew up rich and privileged. they never saw any african-americans other than people who waited on tables. so they didn t get the just terrible, terrible prejudice of southern whites against blacks. they were worried about russia. they were worried about the cold war, about the big game as they