Today, an estimated 4 out of every 10 students in the 5th grade will not even finish high school--and that is a waste we cannot afford.
John F. Kennedy
The Public Record
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years, and the first Catholic president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency.
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In addition, there is no reason why one million young Americans, out of school and out of work, should all remain unwanted and often untrained on our city streets when their energies can be put to good use.
As the idealism of our youth has served world peace, so can it serve the domestic tranquility.
Second, we need to strengthen our Nation by safeguarding its health.
Our working men and women, instead of being forced to beg for help from public charity once they are old and ill, should start contributing now to their own retirement health program through the Social Security System.
Moreover, all our miracles of medical research will count for little if we cannot reverse the growing nationwide shortage of doctors, dentists, and nurses, and the widespread shortages of nursing homes and modern urban hospital facilities.
Finally, and of deep concern, I believe that the abandonment of the mentally ill and the mentally retarded to the grim mercy of custodial institutions too often inflicts on them and on their families a needless cruelty which this Nation…
The incidence of mental retardation in this country is three times as high as that of Sweden, for example--and that figure can and must be reduced.
Third, we need to strengthen our Nation by protecting the basic rights of its citizens.
The right to competent counsel must be assured to every man accused of crime in Federal court, regardless of his means.
And the most precious and powerful right in the world, the right to vote in a free American election, must not be denied to any citizen on grounds of his race or color.
I wish that all qualified Americans permitted to vote were willing to vote, but surely in this centennial year of Emancipation all those who are willing to vote should always be permitted.