Kennedy was the nation's first Roman Catholic president. He was inaugurated in January 1961, succeeding Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He defeated the Republican candidate, Vice-President Richard M. Nixon, by little more than 100,000 votes. It was one of the closest elections in the nation's history. Although Kennedy and his vice-presidential running mate, Lyndon B. Johnson, got less than half of the more than 68 million votes cast, they won the Electoral College vote. Kennedy thus became the 14th minority president.

Because of the close vote, election results were challenged in many states. The official electoral vote was Kennedy 303, Nixon 219, and Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia 15.

President Kennedy's great-grandparents immigrated to the United States from Ireland in 1858. They settled in Boston, Mass. His gra

Mills, Judie. John F. Kennedy (Watts, 1988).

Although a mass of circumstantial evidence, including ballistics tests, pointed to Oswald as the slayer of President Kennedy, the 24-year-old professed Marxist and Castro sympathizer never came to trial. On Sunday, November 24, as he was being led across the basement of the City Hall for transfer to another prison, Jack Ruby (born Rubenstein), a Dallas nightclub owner, broke through a cordon of police and shot Oswald. The murder was committed in full view of television cameras as millions watched.

During his campaign for the 1960 Democratic nomination, Kennedy often began his speeches with this remark: "Thanks for not voting for me in 1956." That was the year he barely missed being nominated vice-president on the Democratic ticket. Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, who won the nomination, and Adlai E. Stevenson, the presidential nominee, were defeated in the election. Had Kennedy won the nomination and been defeated in the election, his chances for the presidency might have been lost.

A large and enthusiastic crowd greeted the presidential party when it arrived at the Dallas airport on the morning of November 22. Along the route of the motorcade into downtown Dallas the people stood 10 to 12 deep, applauding warmly. Next to the president in the big open limousine sat his wife. In front of them, on jump seats, were John B. Connally, the governor of Texas, and his wife, Nellie. The third car in the procession carried Vice-President and Mrs. Johnson. As the cars approached a triple underpass, Mrs. Connally turned around and said, "You can't say Dallas doesn't love you, Mr. President."

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