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of the New York Times and in Time Magazine. He was often mistaken in Congress as a Senate page or an elevator operator. It was during this time period in which Kennedy met and fell in love with Jacqueline Bouvier. "Jackie", as she was known, came from a wealthy Catholic background as prestigious as the Kennedys.She attended Vassar College and the Sorbonne in Paris, France. She spoke French, Italian, and Spanish fluently.

They were wed on September 12,1953, at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Newport, Rhode Island. All seemed well, yet after three two-year terms as a Congressman, Kennedy became frustrated with House rules and customs and decided to run for Senate. In 1952, Kennedy ran for Senate against Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.Fifteen years older than Kennedy, Lodge was the incumbent of two terms in the Senate. JFK prevailed in the victory but was soon stricken with Addison's disease during his first year in the Senate and had to operate on a fifty-fifty chance for survival procedure (Gadney 52).

While recovering, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, a bestseller on examples of moral courage in the lives of eight senators who risked their careers for a great cause or a belief. Kennedy returned to Senate and participated in the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was also chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Labor.JFK believed strongly in education, equal job opportunity, and the civil rights movement. His biggest success came in the form of his Labor Reform Bill, which passed by a margin of 90 to 1 in Senate debate.

Kennedy's first child, Caroline, was born during this time. Due to his enormous success in Congress, the Democratic Party nominated him for the presidential ticket in 1960. Lyndon Johnson was chosen as the running mate with Kennedy to secure and build upon the democratic bases in the southern states while the Kennedys sought out the younger voters, the factory workers, and the liberals (Gadney 61). During the Kennedy Administration, a great deal of events was going on.Jackie had given birth to JFK, Jr.

, while all over the south, the civil rights movement was going in full force with incidents breaking out. Specific attention gathered around a black air force veteran, James Meredith, applied for admission to the University of Mississippi. In Cuba both the Bay of Pigs occurred, in which U.S.

supported rebels revolted in a poorly laid out plan of events that fell out beneath them, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in which the Soviet Republic were building missile silos in Cuba, 100 miles away from Florida. The blame for the failure of the operation falls directly in the lap of the Central Intelligence Agency and a young president and his advisors. The fall out from the invasion caused a rise in tension between the two great superpowers and ironically 34 years after the event, the person that the invasion meant to topple, Fidel Castro, is still in power. The Space Race was in full force with both Russia and the U.

S.in competition to reach the moon. U.S.

involvement in Vietnam was in the latter stages with plans to withdraw after the 1964 election. On a trip to Dallas to stir up support for the re-election, the President's autos were coming down Elm Street when three shots rang out. The first projectile entered at the base of Kennedy's neck and exited through the back of his head. The second bullet hit Texas Governor John Connally. Seconds later there was another shot and the back of the president's head was torn away.The "assassin" Lee Harvey Oswald with a mail-order rifle, fired from the Texas School Book Depository (Warren 5).

He then promptly and calmly exited the building approximately three minutes after the first shot was fired. He was picked up later at a Texas movie theatre with little resistance. Oswald had recently applied for a passport to Communist Russia, which led to a series of private meetings between Oswald and the Russian Government (Warren 614). Oswald protested his innocence.

President Johnson set up what quickly became known as the Warren Commission headed by Chief Justice Warren to find the motive behind the assassination; The Commission finds the lone, depressed, mentally unstable, anti-social nut kills an American president. On the Morning of November 22, 1963 at approximately 12:25 the presidential motorcade turned right from Houston St. on to Elm St. Their speed was approximately 11 miles per hour. President Kennedy had ordered the Secret Service to ride on the car boards on the car behind him.

He made this decision so that the public would be able to see him better and show that he trusted the public. At exactly 12:30 while Kennedy waved to the crowd a shot fired out.He was hit in his neck, a shot that was fired approximately five seconds after the first struck him in his head and tore a piece of his skull off. Governor Connally who rode in the same car in front of the president sustained wounds on his back, right side of his chest, right wrist and left thigh. Orders were then given for the limousine to speed up to the hospital. President Kennedy was pronounced dead at approximately 1:00 pm.

Now the question remained. What were the reasons for the president's assassination? The assassination plot could have been organized by one of many factions, such as the Cubans or the Russians, the Mob, someone upset with his civil rights policies, or maybe an inside job by a special agency.The plot was a deep and complex issue that involved many factions. More theories were offered when Oswald's ties to the CIA and his ties to Russian special agencies were exposed. Around October 1959, Oswald applied for Russian citizenship. While in Russia he went to the U.

S. Embassy in Moscow where he denounced the United States, Praised the Soviet Union, and stated that he wanted to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

He also made another very dramatic announcement: he stated that he had offered to give the Soviets radar secrets that he had learned in the Marines. He told them ominously that he "might know something of special interest," an obvious reference to the U-2 spy plane which he had observed while in the service (Melanson 13). It was later noted that Oswald was working under an operative program for the CIA and was a double agent against the KGB. After his assignment was completed he was given $435 by the state department to get home.

Whatever Oswald's reason for pulling one of the triggers against President Kennedy, it certainly involved a political agenda behind it. Other theories have evolved over time such as the Grassy Knoll theory.Witnesses say that a man in black was present and fired simultaneously with Oswald and doubled considerable connections and plotted revenge. On Nov.

24, 1963 as Oswald was being escorted from the city jail, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot Oswald with a single shot from a Colt .38 revolver. Ruby was arrested and stood trial in Dallas. He was found guilty and was sentenced to hang.He died in jail of cancer, on January 3,1968. Kennedy was the first President to be born in the twentieth century and was very much a man of his time.

He was restless, seeking, with a thirst of knowledge, and he had a feeling of deep commitment, not only to the people of the United States, but also to the peoples of the world. Many of the causes he fought for exist today because of what he did for the rights of minorities, the poor, the very old and the very young. He never took anything for granted and worked for everything he owned.Perhaps Kennedy summed up his life best in his own inaugural speech: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.".