[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 169 (Monday, December 2, 2013)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1764-E1766]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  ``REMEMBERING PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY'' INSPIRATION TO MILLIONS, 
AMERICAN HERO, ENDURING SYMBOL OF THE GREATEST GENERATION, AND THE 35TH 
                     PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 2, 2013

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, in the life of this nation there have 
been a few events of such consequence and moment that they have a 
transformative impact on the people of the country. For my parents' 
generation the death of President Franklin Roosevelt was such an 
occasion.
  The explosion of the Shuttle Challenger in 1986 left a traumatic and 
indelible impression on my children's generation. The morning of 
September 11, 2001 is a day no living American will forget.
  For my generation, however, the assassination of President John F. 
Kennedy on November 22, 1963 is the moment that lives with us forever. 
For on that day, my generation lost its leader, its hero, its champion. 
And its innocence.
  None of us can forget where we were and how we felt when we learned 
the terrible news. I was a young schoolgirl when my teacher, wiping 
away tears, announced to the class that President Kennedy had been shot 
in Dallas, Texas and was dead. I was stunned and shocked and sad and 
heartbroken. I cried all the way home. When I got there I went to my 
room and prayed.
  A half century later, I still remember that day as if it were 
yesterday. And every year on this day for the last 50 years, I always 
pause to remember the man who inspired me to devote my life to public 
service and who, along with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, taught me 
by their example that the greatest calling in life is the call to serve 
others.
  And I still say a prayer for President Kennedy each November 22 but 
they have not been prayers of lamentation for many years. They are 
prayers of thanks to the Lord for his infinite wisdom and grace in 
blessing our country with a captain as perfectly suited to lead our 
ship of state during the epochal time that was the 1960s as was Abraham 
Lincoln to the 1860s.
  The year 1963 is one of the most momentous in the life of our nation. 
It was in August, 50 years ago, that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, 
Jr. challenged and inspired a nation by sharing his dream about its 
future at the largest peaceful demonstration in American history.
  The year 1963 also marked the centennial of the Gettysburg Address, 
which redefined and reenobled the meaning of the American experience 
and is the only other American speech that can stand with Dr. King's 
and not suffer in the comparison.
  At Gettysburg, President Lincoln delivered the words that consoled 
and helped to heal and reunite a divided nation. He reminded us

[[Page E1765]]

that just 87 years before, in 1776, America had given birth to 
something new in the world, self-government, and he made us understand 
that in the life of nations, ours was still a young country with an 
unfinished democracy and an uncertain future.
  He then paid tribute ``to those who died so the nation might live'' 
and challenged the living to dedicate themselves to the ``great task'' 
remaining before them, which was not just to ensure the survival of the 
union, but for us to honor those who ``gave the last full measure of 
devotion'' by giving the nation a ``new birth of freedom.''
  One hundred years later, in August 1963, Dr. King reminded us that 
the great work of democracy which had been so nobly advanced a century 
before remained unfinished but expressed the confidence that his and 
future generations of Americans, would like their forbears, rededicate 
themselves to the proposition that all people are created equal and 
resolve to continue the task of perfecting our democracy until 
``justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty 
stream.''
  And in those heady days there was little doubt we would become the 
country foretold by Dr. King because America in that year and at that 
time was powerful and prosperous and confident and optimistic.
  And no one better symbolized the nation's vitality and sense of 
purpose and unlimited possibility than the man it had elected to lead 
them, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
  John Kennedy personified the pioneering, trailblazing, independent, 
courageous, and can-do spirit for which America is justly celebrated 
around the world. He was the youngest person and the first Catholic 
elected President and the first person born in the 20th century to hold 
the office.
  A junior officer who served heroically during World War II, the 
greatest conflict in world history, John Kennedy was the leading member 
of what has been called the ``Greatest Generation'' and the first of 
the seven of its members elevated to the presidency, the most of any 
generation ever.
  A naval officer, congressman, senator, and author of the Pulitzer 
Prize winning ``Profiles in Courage,'' John Kennedy was both a man of 
action and a man of ideas. He was pragmatic and compassionate; tough-
minded and tender-hearted, determined but not dogmatic. He was, in 
short and in sum, a man with great charisma and great character.
  Most of all, John Kennedy was a man who never stopped thinking about 
tomorrow or working to realize the full promise of America. And he 
understood that we all had a place in that future and a role to play in 
bringing it about. That is why he proclaimed in his stirring inaugural 
address: ``Ask not, my fellow Americans, what your country can do for 
you; ask what you can do for your country.''
  John Kennedy believed there was nothing America could not achieve 
once it set its mind to it. In September 1961, President Kennedy came 
to my home city of Houston, Texas and committed America to send a man 
to the moon and to bring him safely home before the end of the decade. 
Asked why we should go to the moon, President Kennedy said:

       We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other 
     things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

  To anyone who might doubt America's ability to make good on this 
commitment, President Kennedy said, ``this country of the United States 
was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind 
them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so 
will space.''
  President Kennedy knew first-hand the horrors of war so he worked for 
peace. What kind of peace? He told us in the commencement address he 
delivered at American University in April of the momentous year of 
1963:

       Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American 
     weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of 
     the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of 
     peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind 
     that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build 
     a better life for their children--not merely peace for 
     Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace 
     in our time but peace in all time.

  President Kennedy led our nation safely through two of the most 
perilous events of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and 
the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Thanks to his cool resolve, 
calm restraint, steely determination, and clear thinking, nuclear war 
was averted and America's freedom, and that of our allies, was secured. 
Like Lincoln, President Kennedy knew the value and cost of freedom and 
the sacrifices required to win and keep it:

       Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, 
     that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any 
     hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to 
     assure the survival and the success of liberty.

  President Kennedy was the first president to see first-hand the 
Berlin Wall when he traveled behind the Iron Curtain to that divided 
city in 1963 and gave hope to the besieged people of West Berlin by 
pledging America's unwavering support and aid in its struggle to remain 
free:

       You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is 
     part of the main. So let me ask you, as I close, to lift your 
     eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, 
     beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your 
     country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, 
     beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond 
     yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.
       Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all 
     are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to 
     that day when this city will be joined as one and this 
     country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and 
     hopeful globe. . . . All free men, wherever they may live, 
     are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take 
     pride in the words ``Ich bin ein Berliner!''

  Above all, John Kennedy was a man of consistent and tremendous moral 
courage. To him, freedom was indivisible, the birthright of every 
person on earth. John Kennedy, like Abraham and Martin, understood that 
``when one man is enslaved, all are not free.''
  And nothing better illuminates this great quality of this remarkable 
leader than the speech he delivered to the nation the evening of June 
11, 1963, committing the federal government to the cause of civil 
rights, in full support of the Civil Rights Movement and to the 
eradication of racial segregation and discrimination.
  In that landmark address, President Kennedy informed the nation that 
he had ordered troops to enforce a federal court decree directing that 
two highly qualified African American students be enrolled at the 
University of Alabama notwithstanding Governor Wallace's vow to block 
their admission by standing in the schoolhouse door.
  President Kennedy saw clearly and connected the events and 
circumstances facing Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to the challenges 
confronting Dr. King in 1963, stating:

       It ought to be possible for every American to enjoy the 
     privileges of being American without regard to his race or 
     his color. But this is not the case.
       We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as 
     old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American 
     Constitution.
       The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to 
     be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we 
     are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be 
     treated.
       One hundred years of delay have passed since President 
     Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, 
     are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of 
     injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic 
     oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its 
     boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are 
     free.
       We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we 
     cherish our freedom here at home, but are we to say to the 
     world, and much more importantly, to each other that this is 
     the land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no 
     second-class citizens except Negroes; that we have no class 
     or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race except with 
     respect to Negroes?
       Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its 
     promise.

  The following week, President Kennedy sent to Congress legislation 
making good on this promise. Although he did not live to see its 
enactment, that legislation--brilliantly shepherded to passage by 
President Lyndon Johnson--transformed America. Along with the passage 
of the Voting Rights Act the following year, America made more progress 
in backing up its boasts and fulfilling its hopes than any time since 
the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and ratification of the 
Civil War Amendments. It is no exaggeration to say that these actions 
constituted another ``new birth of freedom'' foretold and predicted by 
Abraham Lincoln and Dr. King.
  Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are two of 
the towering figures in American history. And so is John Fitzgerald 
Kennedy. Taken together, the lives of these three giants teach us at 
least three important lessons when it comes to the question of race: 
Words have power. Actions matter. Moral courage is indispensable.
  Many persons have one of these qualities but much rarer are those who 
possess two, let alone all three in the abundance and to the degree 
possessed by Abraham, Martin, and John. Is it any wonder then that we 
still revere them after all these years and still miss them so much?
  The 1968 folk classic, ``Abraham, Martin, and John,'' by Dion and the 
Belmonts still sums up the feelings of countless millions, here in 
America and around the world:

       Has anybody here seen my old friends?
       Can you tell me where they've gone?
       They freed a lot of people,
       but, it seems the good they die young.
       You know, I just looked around and they were gone.
       Abraham, Martin, and John.

  They may be gone but they will never be forgotten. Their works--the 
glow from their fire--truly lit the world.

[[Page E1766]]

  So on this day I am remembering President Kennedy. His flame glows 
eternally in Arlington Cemetery and in the hearts of untold millions 
the world over, including that little schoolgirl he inspired long ago 
and who is now the Member of Congress from the Eighteenth Congressional 
District of Texas.
  God bless President John Kennedy. I ask that a moment of silence be 
observed in memory of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of 
the United States.

                          ____________________