Kennedy What if John F.

KENNEDY

WHAT if JOHN F. KENNEDY HAD NOT BEEN ASSASSINATED?

On November 21, 1963, while the Civil Rights Bill was still mired in congressional committees, President John F. Kennedy left Washington, D.C. For a trip to Texas. This trip was supposed to be a major political triumph for President Kennedy, for at this time, his popularity with the American people was at an all-time high. Upon arriving in Houston, San Antonio and Fort Worth, Kennedy was greeted by huge crowds and upon arriving in Dallas on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, President Kennedy, his wife Jacqueline Kennedy and John Connally, the governor of Texas, rode through the downtown streets of Dallas, where the crowds were friendly and extremely excited to catch a glimpse of the ever-popular President and his beautiful wife.

As the motorcade was leaving the central part of the city and was just passing the School Book Repository Building, three shots rang out from a window of the building. Two of these hit Kennedy and one struck Connally. Moments later, both men were rushed to the hospital, where President Kennedy died from his wounds without regaining consciousness.

Many have often wondered what would have happened if President Kennedy had not been killed on that dark day in November of 1963. Had he survived the shooting, it is very clear that American history would be very different than it is today, due to several important political and social events that were occurring at that time in 1963. First of all, the United States and the Soviet Union were greatly divided over the issue of nuclear proliferation. On July 2, 1963, Soviet premier Khrushchev agreed to sign a treaty which would have banned all nuclear testing and the development of more powerful atomic weapons.

Kennedy, somewhat surprised by this move, quickly accepted Khrushchev's offer and negotiations began on August 5, 1963 which included representatives from the U.S., Great Britain and the Soviet Union. However, due to Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on November 22, these negotiations stalled, especially when France and China refused to become parties to the new non-nuclear proliferation treaty. Thus, if Kennedy had survived, it is clear that this treaty might have served as the foundation for a very early movement against nuclear proliferation and might have signaled the end of the "Cold War" some twenty-seven years before it finally did end in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Second, in 1963, many American civil rights leaders, especially Martin Luther King, Jr., wished to speed up the progress of desegregation in the U.S. which led to a number of important demonstrations. In June of 1963, President Kennedy was convinced that the American public was demanding some type of action by Congress to end desegregation in America. As a result, Kennedy sent to Congress a civil rights bill that included provisions designed to expedite the registration of black voters, to guarantee equal access to all public accommodations, to allow the U.S. Attorney General (Robert Kennedy) to institute lawsuits to desegregate the schools and to withhold federal funds from state or local programs in which racial discrimination was evident.