Lyndon Johnson appoints first African American cabinet member


Year
1966
Month Day
January 13

On January 13, 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints the first African American cabinet member, making Robert C. Weaver head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the agency that develops and implements national housing policy and enforces fair housing laws. In keeping with his vision for a Great Society, Johnson sought to improve race relations and eliminate urban blight. As many of the country’s African Americans lived in run-down inner-city areas, appointing Weaver was an attempt to show his African American constituency that he meant business on both counts.

Weaver’s expertise in social and economic issues concerning urban African Americans was well-known. Prior to his appointment as HUD secretary, he held key positions in several Democratic administrations. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt in the mid-to-late 1930s, he advised the secretary of the interior and served as a special assistant with the Housing Authority. In 1940, he was appointed to the National Defense Advisory Commission and worked to mobilize black workers during World War II. From 1955 to 1959, Weaver served as rent commissioner for the state of New York, then went on to serve as head of the Housing and Home Finance Agency under President John F. Kennedy.

As HUD’s senior administrator, Weaver expanded affordable housing programs and, in 1968, advocated for the passage of the Fair Housing Act, which prohibited discrimination against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin. Weaver and Johnson shared the goal of revitalizing America’s urban areas through improved housing, the creation of inner-city parks and support for African American-owned businesses.

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President Johnson asks for more funding for Vietnam War


Year
1967
Month Day
January 10

On January 10, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson asks Congress for more money to support the Vietnam War. Lyndon’s War, a war Johnson actually inherited from President John F. Kennedy, had achieved nothing by 1967. The North Vietnamese use of guerrilla warfare tactics resulted in approximately 14,000 American troops killed in action by early 1967. Hundreds of U.S. planes had been shot down, leaving Air Force personnel in enemy POW camps. Although the enemy also suffered heavy casualties, they did not show any signs of giving up.

Desperate for more military funding, Johnson proposed a six-percent surcharge tax on personal and corporate incomes. Johnson’s tax proposal, approved by Congress in March 1967, backfired with an American public tiring of the controversial war. Previously ambivalent Americans protested the government’s demand on their pocketbooks for a war that was beginning to appear impossible to win. As a result, Johnson’s popularity waned toward the end of 1967. By year’s end, a total of 19,560 troops had died in more than a decade of hostilities. The Viet Cong’s surprise Tet Offensive in January 1968 convinced the majority of the public and many U.S. political and military leaders that the war could not be won. Johnson realized support for his administration had disintegrated and decided not to run for re-election in 1968. His successor, Richard Nixon, although staunchly anti-communist, won the election largely based on promises to end the war.

READ MORE: How the Vietnam War Empowered the Hippie Movement

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John Quincy Adams’ son marries relative at the White House


Year
1828
Month Day
February 25

On February 25, 1828, John Adams, son of President John Quincy Adams, marries his first cousin and inadvertently follows a pattern of keeping marriages within the family.

John Adams’ grandfather, President John Adams, had married his third cousin, Abigail Smith. Intermarriage skipped a generation with John Quincy Adams, who married a non-relative. But, at 25 years old, John Quincy’s second-eldest son, John, married his first cousin on his mother’s side, 22-year-old Mary Catherine Hellen, in a private ceremony at the White House.

Exactly nine months and seven days after the wedding, Mary Catherine gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter named Mary Louisa, in the White House family quarters. Mary and John gave her the name Mary, after her mother, and the middle name Louisa after her paternal grandmother Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams.

In 1853, Mary Louisa Adams also married a family member–her second cousin, William Clarkson Johnson, the son of her first cousin, Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, and President John Adams’ great-grandson. Both bride and groom descended from President John Adams–the wedding constituted the first marriage between descendants of two presidents. While both Mary Louisa and her new husband were descendants of President John Adams, only Mary Louisa was directly related to President John Quincy Adams.

The Adams’ were not the only presidential family to intermarry. In 1905, Franklin Delano Roosevelt married Eleanor, his fifth cousin once removed. Eleanor did not have to change her name upon marrying, since her maiden name was also Roosevelt. Her father, Elliot, was the brother of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

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John Quincy Adams is born

Year
1767
Month Day
July 11

On July 11, 1767, John Quincy Adams, son of the second U.S. president, John Adams, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts.

John Quincy Adams inherited his father’s passion for politics. He accompanied his father on diplomatic missions from the time he was 14 and entered the legal profession after completing his schooling. As a young man, he served as minister to a variety of countries, including Prussia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia and England. In 1803, he began his first term as a Republican in the Senate and afterward helped negotiate the Treaty of Ghent that ended the War of 1812. In 1817, President James Monroe appointed Quincy Adams secretary of state, a position he held until 1824, when he ran for president. In the subsequent presidential election, a tie between Quincy Adams and Democrat Andrew Jackson put the deciding vote in the House of Representatives. The House chose Adams, who went on to serve one term from 1825 to 1829.

Rather than retire after presiding at the pinnacle of American politics, Adams returned to Congress. He preferred legislative duties to the presidency, which he described as the four most miserable years of his life. Beginning in 1831, he served in the U.S. House of Representatives, chairing congressional committees on the economy, Indian affairs and foreign relations. He even found time to argue the controversial Amistad slavery case in the Supreme Court. His eloquent argument for returning the ship’s illegally transported cargo of Africans to Africa cemented his reputation as an abolitionist.

Quincy Adams suffered and survived a stroke in 1846. Two years later, on February 21, 1848, just after participating in a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives, Quincy Adams succumbed to a more massive and ultimately fatal stroke. He died two days later in a room in the Capitol building in which he had performed many years of public service.

READ MORE: 8 Founding Fathers and How They Helped Shape the Nation

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John F. Kennedy receives medals

Year
1944
Month Day
June 12

Lieutenant John F. Kennedy receives one of the Navy’s highest honor for gallantry for his heroic actions as a gunboat pilot during World War II on June 12, 1944. The future president also received a Purple Heart for wounds received during battle.

As a young man, Kennedy had desperately wanted to go into the Navy but was originally rejected because of chronic health problems, particularly a back injury he had sustained playing football while attending Harvard. In 1941, though, his politically connected father used his influence to get Jack into the service. In 1942, Kennedy volunteered for PT (motorized torpedo) boat duty in the Pacific.

READ MORE: The Navy Disaster That Earned JFK Two Medals for Heroism

In July 1943, according to the official Navy report, Kennedy and the crew of PT 109 were ordered into combat near the Solomon Islands. In the middle of the night on August 2, their boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and caught fire. Several of Kennedy’s shipmates were blown overboard into a sea of burning oil. Kennedy dove in to rescue three of the crew and in the process swallowed some of the toxic mixture. (Kennedy would later blame this for chronic stomach problems.) For 12 hours, Kennedy and his crew clung to the wrecked hull, before he ordered them to abandon ship. Kennedy and the other good swimmers placed the injured on a makeshift raft, and then took turns pushing and towing the raft four miles to safety on a nearby island.

For six days, Kennedy and his crew waited on the island for rescue. They survived by drinking coconut milk and rainwater until native islanders discovered the sailors and offered food and shelter. Every night, Kennedy tried to signal other U.S. Navy ships in the area. He also reportedly scrawled a message on a coconut husk and gestured to the islanders to take it to a nearby PT base at Rendova. On August 8, a Navy patrol boat picked up the haggard survivors.

On June 12, 1944, while he was in the hospital recuperating from back surgery, Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps medal for “courage, endurance and excellent leadership [that] contributed to the saving of several lives and was in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

READ MORE: JFK: His Life and Legacy 

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John F. Kennedy marries Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island

Year
1953
Month Day
September 12

Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy, the future 35th president of the United States, marries Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island on September 12, 1953. Seven years later, the couple would become the youngest president and first lady in American history.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy was born into a prominent New York family in 1929 and grew into an avid horsewoman and reader. In 1951, after graduating from George Washington University, Jackie, as she was called, took a tour of Europe. That fall, she returned to the U.S. to begin her first job as the Washington Times-Herald’s “Inquiring Camera Girl.” Shortly afterward, she met a young, handsome senator from Massachusetts named John Kennedy at a dinner party in Georgetown. They dated over the next two years, during which time Jackie mused at the idea that she might actually marry a man who was allergic to horses, something she never thought she would have considered. In 1953, the two were engaged, when Kennedy gave Jackie a 2.88-carat diamond-and-emerald ring from Van Cleef and Arpels.

“Jack,” as Kennedy was called, and Jackie married on September 12, 1953, at St. Mary’s Church in Newport, Rhode Island. Jackie wore an ivory silk gown made by Ann Lowe, an African-American designer. The Catholic mass was attended by 750 guests and an additional 450 people joined the wedding reception at Hammersmith Farm. The couple danced to the Meyer Davis Orchestra’s version of “I Married an Angel.” Davis also performed at Jackie’s parents’ wedding and at Kennedy’s inaugural ball.

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John Adams moves into White House

Year
1800
Month Day
November 01

On November 1, 1800, President John Adams, in the last year of his only term as president, moved into the newly constructed President’s House, the original name for what is known today as the White House.

Adams had been living in temporary digs at Tunnicliffe’s City Hotel near the half-finished Capitol building since June 1800, when the federal government was moved from Philadelphia to the new capital city of Washington, D.C. In his biography of Adams, historian David McCullough recorded that when Adams first arrived in Washington, he wrote to his wife Abigail, at their home in Quincy, Massachusetts, that he was pleased with the new site for the federal government and had explored the soon-to-be President’s House with satisfaction.

Although workmen had rushed to finish plastering and painting walls before Adams returned to D.C. from a visit to Quincy in late October, construction remained unfinished when Adams rolled up in his carriage on November 1. However, the Adams’ furniture from their Philadelphia home was in place and a portrait of George Washington was already hanging in one room. The next day, Adams sent a note to Abigail, who would arrive in Washington later that month, saying that he hoped “none but honest and wise men [shall] ever rule under this roof.”

Although Adams was initially enthusiastic about the presidential mansion, he and Abigail soon found it to be cold and damp during the winter. Abigail, in a letter to a friend, wrote that the building was tolerable only so long as fires were lit in every room. She also noted that she had to hang their washing in an empty “audience room” (the current East Room).

John and Abigail Adams lived in what she called “the great castle” for only five months. Shortly after they moved in, Thomas Jefferson defeated Adams in his bid for re-election. Abigail was happy to leave Washington and departed in February 1801 for Quincy. As Jefferson was being sworn in on March 4, 1801, John Adams was already on his way back to Massachusetts, where he and Abigail lived out the rest of their days at their family farm.

READ MORE: White House: Architecture, Facts and Layout 

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Future President John F. Kennedy is born

Year
1917
Month Day
May 29

One of America’s best-loved presidents, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, is born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. He was the first American president to be born in the 20th century.

In 1935, Kennedy enrolled at Harvard University and received a degree in international affairs with honors in 1940. While there, he suffered a debilitating back injury that would have life-long repercussions. After college, Kennedy served on a Navy PT boat in World War II. In 1952, he won a seat in the House of Representatives and then served in the Senate for seven years beginning in 1953. Also in 1953, he married Jacqueline Bouvier. In subsequent years, Kennedy underwent several dangerous spinal operations; it was during his recuperation from one such operation that he wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning history Profiles in Courage. Unfortunately, the operations never succeeded in curing his persistent back pain and, for the rest of his life, Kennedy took a powerful combination of pain killers, muscle relaxants and sleeping pills, a fact he successfully hid from the public. The pain, however, did not prevent him from becoming a rising Democratic star in the Senate; he ran for the presidency in 1960.

READ MORE: How JFK Earned Two Medals in World War II

Kennedy’s support for liberal economic and social policies, such as civil rights and increased funding for education and public housing, in addition to his strong anti-communist stance, appealed to a broad cross-section of Americans during the presidential campaign. In addition to his political philosophy, Kennedy capitalized on his handsome features and charismatic personality to beat Republican candidate Richard Nixon to become the nation’s 35th president. In a televised debate, the well-groomed and relaxed Kennedy had appeared more presidential than a haggard-looking, unshaven, visibly nervous Nixon. Many observers believed this debate was critical to his success.

President Kennedy was the youngest man ever elected to the office. His youth, intelligence and worldliness—along with his beautiful, stylish and much-admired wife–charmed Americans and Europeans alike. His children, Caroline and John Jr., were often photographed cavorting around the White House grounds with their pets or playing under their father’s desk in the Oval Office. Kennedy’s brother, Bobby, also young and enthusiastic, served as his attorney general and closest advisor. The American public increasingly saw the Kennedy family as a kind of American royalty and the press portrayed Kennedy’s administration as a sort of modern-day Camelot, with the president himself as King Arthur presiding over an ideal society.

READ MORE: 10 Things You May Not Know About John F. Kennedy 

As president, Kennedy combined a fervent stance against communism with a liberal domestic agenda. He was a strong proponent of civil rights as well as a Cold War hawk. He authorized covert operations to remove Fidel Castro from power and, in 1962, challenged the Soviet Union to remove nuclear missiles installed on Cuba. The resulting Cuban Missile Crisis was a frighteningly tense showdown between JFK and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that brought the two nuclear superpowers to the brink of war. JFK also sought peaceful means of fighting communism—he established the Peace Corps and funded scientific research programs to fight poverty and illness and provide aid to developing nations. By encouraging American youth to donate their time and energy to international aid, JFK hoped to provide positive democratic role models to developing nations. In a 1961 speech, Kennedy advocated for a vigorous U.S. space program and vowed to send an American to the moon by the close of the 1960s.

In 1963, Kennedy was assassinated while driving through Dallas, Texas, in a convertible. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy in the head from the second story of a book depository. Texas Governor John Connally and Jackie Kennedy were also in the car. Connally was hit in the back, chest, wrist and thigh, but eventually made a full recovery. Jackie was uninjured.

A bystander named Abraham Zapruder happened to capture the shooting on his 8mm home-movie camera. Zapruder’s film provided graphic visuals of JFK’s death and has been endlessly analyzed for evidence of a potential conspiracy. In 1964, the federally appointed Warren Commission investigated the assassination and concluded that Oswald acted alone. Some scholars, investigators and amateur sleuths, however, still insist Kennedy’s death was a coup d’etat committed by hard-line U.S. anti-communists who feared Kennedy would pull out the U.S. advisors he had sent to Vietnam in 1962 and act soft on the communist threat from the USSR. Another conspiracy theory involves a concerted effort by organized crime, the Pentagon, and the CIA to murder the president; this view was adapted by Oliver Stone into the 1991 film JFK.

Kennedy is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where an eternal flame burns in his memory.

READ MORE: Assassination of John F. Kennedy 

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John Adams is born

Year
1735
Month Day
October 30

On October 30, 1735, John Adams, the son of a farmer and a descendant of Plymouth Rock pilgrims, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts. He enrolled in Harvard University at 16 and went on to teach school and study law before becoming America’s second president.

Adams did not fight in the Revolutionary War, but was instrumental in crafting the foundation of the American government. In 1776, he anonymously published Thoughts on Government, which proposed the three-tiered system upon which the United States government is modeled: a bicameral legislature, independent judiciary and strong executive. In 1783, Adams brokered the peace treaty with Britain that ended the American Revolution. Fellow founding father Thomas Jefferson once referred to Adams as “the colossus of independence.” The two men developed a deep friendship during the Revolutionary era and both served in George Washington’s first cabinet–Adams as vice president and Jefferson as secretary of state.

READ MORE: How the First 10 U.S. Presidents Helped Shape the Role of the Nation’s Top Office

Adams, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and James Madison articulated the basis of the Federalist policy— featuring above all a strong centralized government and favoring an economy based on manufacturing–that dominated the Washington and Adams presidencies. Jefferson, a Republican, favored stronger states’ rights and a primarily agricultural economy. Following Washington’s retirement in 1796, Jefferson and Adams ran against each other for the presidency. Adams won and, due to a procedure that gave the next highest vote-getter the vice-presidency, Jefferson became his adversary’s vice president. In personality as well as politics, the obstinate and hot-tempered Adams clashed with the genteel, diplomatic Thomas Jefferson and the two grew increasingly alienated during Adams’ presidency.

As president, Adams lobbied for and signed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which many observers, including Jefferson, feared would give Adams despotic powers. In Jefferson’s opinion, the acts threatened to compromise the constitutional right to free speech and severely limited the definition of citizenship. In the election of 1800, Jefferson again ran against Adams and, under the guise of a pseudonym or using ghost writers, published vicious denouncements of Adams’ policies and character in the press. Jefferson won and though Adams retired to Quincy, Massachusetts, to write his memoirs, the bitterness between the two former friends endured.

Throughout his political career, Adams was steadfastly supported—and sometimes challenged–by his wife, Abigail. The couple’s correspondence, which has been preserved, thoroughly catalogued and published, provides insight into their private lives and early American culture. When Abigail learned that Jefferson was behind the newspaper attacks against her husband, she too felt betrayed. Nevertheless, it was she who initiated contact between the sworn political enemies when she wrote a letter of condolence to Jefferson upon the death of his daughter in 1812. After that, Adams and Jefferson resumed their long-halted correspondence and repaired their friendship.

Adams lived to see his son, John Quincy Adams, become president in 1825. A year later, he and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, July 4, 1826, only hours apart.

READ MORE: Two Presidents Died on the Same July 4

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Jimmy Carter speaks about a national “crisis in confidence”

Year
1979
Month Day
July 15

On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter addresses the nation via live television to discuss the nation’s energy crisis and accompanying recession.

Carter prefaced his talk about energy policy with an explanation of why he believed the American economy remained in crisis. He recounted a meeting he had hosted at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland, with leaders in the fields of business, labor, education, politics and religion. Although the energy crisis and recession were the main topics of conversation, Carter heard from the attendees that Americans were also suffering from a deeper moral and spiritual crisis. This lack of “moral and spiritual confidence,” he concluded, was at the core of America’s inability to hoist itself out of its economic troubles. He also admitted that part of the problem was his failure to provide strong leadership on many issues, particularly energy and oil consumption.

In 1979, America could still feel the effects of OPEC’s (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) 1973 cuts in oil production. Carter quoted one of the Camp David meeting participants as saying that America’s “neck is stretched over the fence and OPEC has a knife.” In addition, inflation had reached an all-time high during Carter’s term. Americans saw the federal government as a bloated bureaucracy that had become stagnant and was failing to serve the people. Politics, Carter said, was full of corruption, inefficiency and evasiveness; he claimed these problems grew out of a deeper, “fundamental threat to American democracy.” He was not referring to challenges to civil liberties or the country’s political structure or military prowess, however, but to what he called a “crisis of confidence” that led to domestic turmoil and “the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”

At a time when Europeans and the Japanese began out-producing the U.S. in energy-efficient automobiles and some other advanced technologies, Carter said that Americans had lost faith in being the world’s leader in “progress.” He claimed that Americans obsession with self-indulgence and material goods had trumped spiritualism and community values. Carter, who after the presidency would teach Sunday School, tried to rally the public to have faith in the future of America. After restoring faith in itself, the nation would be able to march on to the “the battlefield of energy [where] we can win for our nation a new confidence, and we can seize control again of our common destiny.”

Carter then launched into his energy policy plans, which included the implementation of mandatory conservation efforts for individuals and businesses and deep cuts in the nation’s dependence on foreign oil through import quotas. He also pledged a “massive commitment of funds and resources” to develop alternative fuel sources including coal, plant products and solar power. He outlined the creation of a “solar bank” that he said would eventually supply 20 percent of the nation’s energy. To jumpstart this program, Carter asked Congress to form an “energy mobilization board” modeled after the War Production Board of World War II, and asked the legislature to enact a “windfall profits tax” immediately to fight inflation and unemployment.

Carter ended by asking for input from average citizens to help him devise an energy agenda for the 1980s. Carter, a liberal president, was heading into a presidential campaign just as a tide of conservatism was rising, led by presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan, who went on to win the 1980 campaign.

READ MORE: Jimmy Carter: His Life and Legacy

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