KAI-SHEK, CHIANG. See CHIANG KAI-SHEK.
KAISER, HENRY JOHN (1882–1967). Henry Kaiser began his career as a photographer in Lake Placid, New York, but moved to Spokane, Washington, in 1906 where he worked first as a salesman and then in highway construction. In 1914, he established his own construction company in Vancouver, British Columbia. As his company expanded on the west coast, Kaiser moved his base to Oakland, California, in 1921. In 1931, he joined the consortium that won the bid to build the Hoover Dam and later the Bonneville Dam and Grand Coulee Dam.
In 1940, Kaiser won a contract to build cargo ships for Great Britain, and following America’s entry into World War II, he established new yards to produce “liberty ships” for the United States. His company became famous for producing one-third of the nation’s wartime cargo vessels. In 1945, Kaiser established the Kaiser-Frazer Automobile Company that was successful for a time in the immediate postwar period. However, faced with competition from Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, the company ceased production in 1955. The Kaiser Steel Company and Kaiser Aluminum Company, however, continued to be successful. Equally successful was the Kaiser Health and Hospital Program that had began in 1938, with 1.5 million members by 1967. It was the country’s largest health insurance program. Kaiser retired to Hawaii in 1954 and devoted his time to developing the island of Oahu and sponsoring television programs.
KARLOFF, BORIS (1887–1969). Born William Henry Pratt in England, the future actor immigrated to Canada in 1909, and after working in a variety of jobs, he turned to theater, acting in 1910 and taking the stage name Boris Karloff. He entered the United States in 1913 and found work as a film extra in Hollywood. His first known significant part was in His Majesty, the American in 1919. After taking a break from films, Karloff appeared in The Forbidden Cargo (1925), Her Honor the Governor (1926), and The Bells (1926). He successfully made the transition to sound and in 1931 appeared in 16 movies, most notably as the monster in Frankenstein. Karloff played in many horror films, including The Old Dark House (1932), The Mask of Fu Man Chu (1932), The Mummy (1932), The Ghoul (made in England in 1933), The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), and he reprised his role as the monster in Frankenstein’s Bride (1935). He last appeared as the monster in Son of Frankenstein (1939). Karloff also appeared in The Body Snatcher in 1945. However, he had returned to the stage and had some success on Broadway and on tour in Arsenic and Old Lace in 1941. He only played minor film roles after 1945 but continued his successful stage career in The Linden Tree (1948), Peter Pan (1950), and The Lark (1955). Karloff returned to England in 1959, but he did appear in a number of television series and films, as well as in the movies in The Raven (1963), Targets (1968), and several low-budget foreign horror films. See also CINEMA.
KEFAUVER, (CARY) ESTES (1903–1963). Born in Madisonville, Tennessee, Estes Kefauver graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1924 and qualified as a lawyer at Yale in 1927. He practiced law in Chattanooga, Tennessee, before being elected to Congress as a Democrat in 1939 following the death of the incumbent. He served five terms and generally supported the New Deal, particularly the Tennessee Valley Authority. Kefauver was elected to the Senate in 1948, and in 1950 he achieved national prominence as chair of the Senate investigation into organized crime, whose hearings were sometimes televised. Hearings were also held in major cities across the country in 1950 and 1951. The committee concluded that organized crime in the shape of the “Mafia” was dominated by two “families,” one in Chicago and the other in New York City, both headed by Charles “Lucky” Luciano. Kefauver’s book, Crime in America (1951), was a best seller.
Kefauver decided to run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 but was defeated by Adlai Stevenson, who beat him again four years later. Stevenson chose Kefauver as his running mate in 1956, but they were defeated by the partnership of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. Kefauver returned to the Senate, where although he was not a supporter of integration, he was regarded as the most liberal southern voice. He was reelected in 1960 and died half way through his term.
KELLY, EDWARD JOSEPH (1876–1950). Edward Kelly was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. He left school early, studied civil engineering in night classes, and began working with the Metropolitan Sanitary District in 1894. In 1920, he became the chief engineer and in 1924 was made responsible for the redevelopment of the South Park, Illinois, lakefront area. Although he was not holding any elective office, Kelly, alongside wealthy businessman Patrick Nash, effectively ran the Democratic Party machine in Chicago. When Mayor Anton J. Cermak was killed during an assassination attempt on President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, Kelly was selected to succeed. He was elected in 1935 and reelected in 1939 and again in 1943.
Kelly immediately tackled the problems brought to the city by the Great Depression, making payments to public teachers and municipal workers, collecting outstanding taxes and rent, and cutting city debt by $1 billion by the time he left office in 1947. He was a committed supporter of the New Deal, and he helped to ensure Roosevelt’s unprecedented third nomination at the Democratic National Convention in 1940. In return, Chicago received generous federal funding through the Works Progress Administration and other agencies. By distributing this patronage, Kelly was able to build up an all-powerful party machine. He also attracted black voters by including African Americans in city government and supporting the election of Arthur W. Mitchell and later William L. Dawson to the U.S. House of Representatives. Kelly supported desegregated public schools and public housing. However, there was increasing criticism of such policies after the war and also of the corruption and association with organized crime within city government. In 1947, he chose not to seek reelection and instead headed an engineering and consulting firm until his death in 1950.
KELLY, EUGENE (GENE) CURRAN (1912–1996). Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, choreographer, dancer, singer, and film director Gene Kelly learned to dance at an early age, and after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh in 1933, he became an instructor at his family’s dance studio. He moved to New York City and worked as a choreographer in 1937 and first appeared on Broadway in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me. After working in a number of other productions, he got the leading role in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey in 1940. His Broadway success led him to Hollywood, where he starred with Judy Garland in For Me and My Gal in 1942 and Rita Hayworth in Cover Girl in 1944. After a brief stint in the Navy Air Service in 1944, he appeared in three films with Frank Sinatra, Anchors Away! (1945), Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), and On the Town (1949), which was unusual for its use of both outside locations and studio shooting. This reflected Kelly’s wish to distinguish himself from Fred Astaire and focus less on ballroom dancing. This was also evident in two films for which Kelly will always be remembered, An American in Paris (1951) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), which included the famous song and dance routine of the same name.
In 1951, Kelly was given a special Academy Award for his contribution to film in An American in Paris, marking the height of his career. Although he later received several lifetime achievement awards from various bodies, Kelly’s subsequent films were not of the same quality, in part because of the decline in popularity of musical films with audiences. His last significant film as singer-dancer was Brigadoon (1954). Thereafter he gravitated toward production and direction, most notably directing Hello Dolly! in 1969. See also CINEMA; MUSIC.
KENNAN, GEORGE FROST (1904– ). Diplomat and foreign policy specialist George F. Kennan was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After graduating from Princeton University in 1925, he joined the Foreign Service and filled a number of State Department posts, most significantly as a member of the first U.S. mission to the Soviet Union (USSR) from 1933 to 1936. His experience there shaped his views of the Soviet Union, and those views influenced U.S. postwar foreign policy during the Cold War. From Russia, Kennan went to Prague and Berlin, and during World War II he was a counselor in Lisbon before returning to Moscow in 1944. In July 1946, he sent the famous “long telegram” back to the State Department outlining the postwar situation with regard to the USSR and the West. A version of this was subsequently published under the pseudonym “X” in Foreign Affairs. According to Kennan, the Soviet Union was committed to a policy of expansion, but if met at every point with firm “containment,” the Communist state would collapse from its own inherent weaknesses. Although he stressed the use of economic power, the policy translated into the Truman Doctrine, and later the “domino theory” became one of military rivalry and confrontation known as the Cold War and spread from Europe across the rest of the globe.
After briefly serving as ambassador to the USSR in the 1950s, Kennan became professor of historical studies at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies where he authored a number of texts, including American Diplomacy 1900–1950 (1951), Soviet-American Relations, 1917–1941 (1956), and his own Memoirs, 1925–1950 (1968). Kennan subsequently claimed that his theories had been wrongly applied, and he argued against U.S. involvement in Vietnam on the grounds that the issue there was nationalism not communism and that the outcome was not a matter of U.S. national security.
KENNEDY, JOSEPH PATRICK (1888–1969). The father of future president John F. Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy was educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard University. In 1912, he began working as a state bank examiner and by 1914 had become president of a bank founded by his father. In 1914, he married Rose Fitzgerald, daughter of one of the first Irish Catholic Americans to be mayor of Boston. In 1917, Kennedy became assistant general manager of the Bethlehem Steel shipyards in Quincy, Massachusetts, and after the war he became manager of an investment banking company. From 1926 until 1930, he was part of a syndicate that bought a chain of movie theaters in the northeast and was also involved in the merger that created RKO Pictures. By the 1930s, he was a multimillionaire.
Kennedy made significant financial contributions to the election campaign of Franklin D. Roosevelt and held a number of positions under the New Deal. From 1934 to 1935, he was chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission and in 1937 chair of the U.S. Maritime Commission. In 1936, he published I’m for Roosevelt, spelling out why businessmen should support Roosevelt. Kennedy was appointed ambassador to Great Britain in 1938 but increasingly seemed to support appeasement and seemed openly anti-Semitic. He also suggested that democracy would disappear in Great Britain, and he returned home in 1940. In the 1950s, Kennedy was a supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy and other conservatives. He transferred his political ambitions to his sons, and when Joseph Sr. was killed during World War II, the focus passed to John. While his great wealth helped secure the election of John F. Kennedy as president in 1960, his previous support for right-wingers was something of a handicap. Nonetheless, he will be remembered for creating a political dynasty.
KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD (1883–1946). British economist John Maynard Keynes was one of the most influential figures in the history of economic theory and had a considerable impact on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Educated at Eton College and Cambridge University, Keynes worked for the British Treasury, was editor of the prestigious Economic Journal, and was present at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1918. His highly critical study of the peace settlement, particularly the reparations imposed on Germany, was published as The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919. In the 1920s, he taught at Cambridge University and published several significant works, including Treatise of Probability (1921), Tract of Monetary Reform (1923), and Treatise on Money (1930). His major work, however, was The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), which offers a damning critique of laissez faire economics and calls for government intervention to regulate the economy, particularly through investment and spending. Keynes wrote to Roosevelt on several occasions and visited the United States in 1934, when he met the president. However, while some of the principles expounded by Keynes were evident in the New Deal, Roosevelt was by no means a total convert. It was only during World War II that Keynesian economics were finally accepted. Keynes worked for the British Treasury during the war, and in 1940 he wrote How to Pay for the War. He was also present at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and 1945. His influence on modern-day economics is still heavily debated.
KEYSERLING, LEON H. (1908–1987). A key figure in shaping housing policy in the 1930s, Leon Keyserling was born in South Carolina. He graduated from Columbia University in 1928 and obtained his law degree from Harvard in 1931. He briefly taught economics at Columbia University before joining the legal staff of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) in 1933. However, he left the AAA and became secretary and assistant to Senator Robert F. Wagner until 1937. Through Wagner, Keyserling had considerable input into the drafting of aspects of the National Industrial Recovery Act, National Housing Acts, and National Labor Relations Act. Keyserling became counsel to the U.S. Housing Authority and then the Federal Public Housing Authority between 1937 and 1946. He also contributed to the writing of the Democratic Party’s platform in 1936, 1940, and 1944 and helped draft the Employment Act (1946) and Housing Act (1949). In 1946, he became a member and vice chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and he was chair from 1950 until 1953, when he left public service. He founded the Conference on Economic Progress in 1953 and was its director until 1972.
KINSEY REPORT. Named after its author, the head of Indiana University’s Institute of Sex Research, Alfred C. Kinsey, the Kinsey Report (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male) was published in 1948. It caused some controversy by showing that adultery, premarital sex, and homosexuality were much more prevalent than widely thought. Kinsey’s second book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), was equally controversial because of the evidence he produced showing that a high proportion of women also engaged in premarital sex and adultery. Critics, however, questioned Kinsey’s methods and findings.
KNOX, FRANK (WILLIAM FRANKLIN) (1874–1944). Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Frank Knox attended Alma College in Michigan from 1893 until 1898, when he joined Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. After working as a reporter in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Knox established his own newspaper in 1902, which he sold in 1912 and took over the Manchester Leader in New Hampshire. During World War I, he served in the military and then resumed his newspaper career. In 1927, William Randolph Hearst hired him to run his newspapers in Boston, and the following year Knox became general manager of Hearst’s newspapers. He left in 1930 to become the successful publisher/part owner of the Chicago Daily News.
As a Republican, albeit a progressive who had supported Theodore Roosevelt, Knox was a critic of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. In 1936, he ran as Alf Landon’s vice presidential partner on the losing ticket. Knox was, however, in favor of supporting Great Britain after 1939, and in 1940 Roosevelt appointed him secretary of the navy. In that role he oversaw the wartime expansion of the force. He provided leadership after the disaster of Pearl Harbor and replaced Admiral Husband Kimmel with Chester W. Nimitz. Knox died following a series of heart attacks in 1944.
KNUDSEN, WILLIAM (1879–1948). Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, William Knudsen came to the United States in 1900. He worked for a time for a bicycle manufacturer in Buffalo, New York, and then switched to producing parts for the Ford Motor Company, where he eventually became production manager in 1918. He left Ford in 1921 and in 1923 joined General Motors (GM). From 1937 to 1940, he was president of GM. In 1940, Knudsen left GM to join the National Defense Advisory Commission to assist in war planning, and in 1941 with Sidney Hillman, he became codirector of the Office of Production Management. When the office was replaced by the War Production Board under Donald Nelson, Knudsen became director of war production in the War Department, and although he was a civilian, he received a commission. He remained in post until 1945 when he returned to GM.
KOREAN WAR. Formerly occupied by Japan, it was agreed at the Potsdam Conference in 1945 that Korea would be divided along the 38th parallel between North Korea, under the occupation of the Soviet Union (USSR), and South, under U.S. control. In 1948, it was decided that Korea would be under the trusteeship of the USSR, the United States, and Great Britain for five years. However, in May 1948 a government in the South, the Republic of Korea, was established by Syngman Rhee, backed by the United States. Shortly afterward the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea was established in the North under Kim Il Sung.
On 25 June 1950 the North Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th parallel in an attempt to unify the country and quickly occupied most of the South including the capital, Seoul. On 27 June 1950, with the Soviet delegates absent, the United Nations (UN) Security Council approved police action in response to the North’s aggression. Although ostensibly a UN force, the U.S. military constituted more than half of the combat troops, and President Harry S. Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur as commander of the UN forces.
On 15 September 1950, MacArthur launched a remarkable counteroffensive with an amphibious landing behind the North Korean lines at Inchon. The UN forces quickly liberated Seoul and most of the territory up to the 38th parallel. Encouraged by MacArthur, President Truman announced that the goal was to unite Korea under a democratic government. The invasion of the North began in October 1950. When MacArthur’s troops pushed toward the northern frontier with communist China, the Chinese responded by invading in turn and pushing UN forces back. When MacArthur publicly advocated all-out war with China and the use of atomic weapons in 1951, he was brought home and replaced with General Matthew Ridgway. By March 1951, the war had come to a stalemate, with the two armies facing one another just north of the 38th parallel. Peace talks began in July but dragged on until 1953 with disagreements about both the repatriation of Korean and Chinese prisoners of war and the location of the boundary between North and South. The final agreement was signed on 27 July 1953. More than 4 million people died in the conflict, including 36,940 Americans.
KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES (323 U.S. 214 1944). The case of Fred Korematsu was one of the key cases relating to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Korematsu was born in Oakland, California, and he was arrested and convicted for evading internment in 1942. He appealed against the conviction, and eventually his case was heard in the Supreme Court, which ruled on 18 December 1944 in a 6–3 majority decision that internment was justified during the war emergency. The dissenting justices were Frank Murphy, Owen J. Roberts, and Robert Jackson. Murphy argued that the internment was legalized racism. In 1983, a California court overturned Korematsu’s convictions. He died in 2005. See also ENDO V. UNITED STATES; HIRABAYASHI V. UNITED STATES.