Historical+Background

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND!!!! On January 20, 1961, **John Fitzgerald Kennedy** was sworn into office as the president of the United States. He was the youngest President elected into office, and the second youngest President only to Theodore Roosevelt.

After WWII, the two new super powers of the world, the United States and the Soviet Union, entered a cold war. It was only called a cold war because the two superpowers never actually fought each other directly. The United States had a step up on the Soviet Union in the way of nuclear weapons, but the Soviets shocked the U.S. with the detonation of their own atomic bomb in August, 1949. The first major Cold war incident that Kennedy was faced with was the Cuban Missile Crisis. He managed to negotiate with the Soviet Union, by threatening “a full retaliatory response” if they were to launch a missile “from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere” (Kennedy Cuban Missile Crisis Speech). He also set up a blockade around Cuba in order to stop more nuclear weapons from coming into Cuba. Because both the Soviet Union and the U.S. wanted to avoid WWIII, they decided on a compromise. The compromise was this: the Soviet Union would agree to withdraw all nuclear missiles from Cuba if the United States agreed to end the blockade, never invade Cuba again, and withdraw their own nuclear missiles from Turkey.

He may avoided one crisis, but later he began to send troops to **//Vietnam//**. Very soon though, he started to second-guess himself, and was seen on a CBS News interview saying, "In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win or lose it” (John F. Kennedy).

On November 21, 1963, President **Kennedy** visited Texas to “unite the feuding liberal and conservative wings of the Texas Democratic Party and hold the state for the Democrats in the upcoming 1964 presidential election” (ABC-CLIO). The very next day at 12:30 P.M., Kennedy, his wife, Governor **John Connally**, and his wife all paraded through the streets of Dallas.

Meanwhile, **Lee Harvey Oswald** was waiting patiently for Kennedy's motorcade on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald was born on October 18th, 1939. As a child, he lived with his mother and his two elder brothers. In school, young Lee was considered intelligent but had bad behavior and went to a detention center where he received psychiatric treatment. In 1956, Oswald became interested in politics and read books by **Karl Marx**. After this, he joined the young people's socialist league. At age sixteen, Lee left school and joined the Marines where he became an aviation electronics officer. During his time in the Marines, Oswald remained interested in politics and became a supporter of Fidel Castro and his revolution in Cuba.

In 1959, Oswald left the Marines and left the U.S. for Russia. He tried to become a citizen but when his application was denied, he attempted suicide. He was hospitalized for a week and afterwards Russia let him stay. In 1960, he met Marina Prusakova whom he married in Minsk. After getting bored with life in Russia, Oswald moved back to the U.S. with his family in 1962. In September 1963, two months before the assassination of President Kennedy, Marina moved to Dallas to have her second child. During this time, Oswald attempted to get permission from the Cuban Embassy to travel to Cuba but when it failed, he got a job at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas where he now waited on the 6th floor for President Kennedy to turn onto Elm Street.

The Decision