Kennedy was president for only about a thousand days. His death was a terrible shock for people around the world. Many saw it happen on TV. A short time before his death, Kennedy was happy and smiling. Then in a few seconds, the US lost a fine young president.
After Kennedy’s death, Lyndon B. Johnson became president. He went on with Kennedy’s work for equal rights. In 1964, there was an important new law which gave black Americans the same rights as white Americans at work, in schools, restaurants and hotels, and on buses. Many black Americans started going to university, and some got good jobs in law and government. On 20 January 2009, Barack Obama became America’s first African-American president.
Others from the Kennedy family became famous too. Kennedy’s sister Jean became US Ambassador to Ireland. Kennedy’s brother Robert was a US senator, and US Attorney General from 1961 to 1964. His youngest brother, Edward (Ted), was a US senator for forty-seven years.
After Kennedy’s death, many people admired Jackie’s quiet courage. In 1968, she married Aristotle Onassis, a Greek businessman. After he died in 1975, she returned to America and got a job in New York, where she died in 1994. One of the gardens at the White House is called the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.
Barack Obama and Caroline Kennedy
Caroline Kennedy is Kennedy and Jackie’s only living child. She is a writer and lawyer, and in 2013 she became US ambassador to Japan. Caroline and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, have three children – Rose, John (Jack), and Tatiana. People think that Caroline’s older daughter, Rose, looks very like her famous grandmother, Jackie. Kennedy’s son, John, was killed in an accident in July 1999 with his wife and his wife’s sister. He was flying a small plane which crashed into the sea.
Things did not always go well for Kennedy. Sometimes he had terrible problems because of his back and other illnesses, but he never felt sorry for himself. He made some mistakes, like the Bay of Pigs, but he did his best to learn from them. There were other problems too. He liked women, and women liked him. After he married, he had some relationships with other women. Sometimes this made things very difficult for his government.
But people remember the good things about Kennedy more than the problems. He was a strong, intelligent leader with a lot of courage. He kept the US out of nuclear war, and he tried his best to bring peace to the world. people remember John F. Kennedy not because he was good-looking or charming, or because he was a war hero or won a Pulitzer Prize. They remember him because he was a great president who believed in a better future for the world.
