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REPORTER: It started in July when the Democratic Party nominated Senator John F. Kennedy for president of the United States. And for vice president, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. The party united behind its candidates.
MATT PORTER: When the Democratic Party nominated. John F. Kennedy for president, Kennedy knew his party was taking a big chance embracing his candidacy over more established leaders.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I am fully aware of the fact that the Democratic Party, by nominating someone of my faith, has taken on what many regard as a new and hazardous risk-- new at least since 1928.
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MATT PORTER: Kennedy's convention address would be known as the New Frontier speech, a speech looking forward into a new decade, that described the 1960s as a turning point for the country, and the world.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Today, our concern must be with that future, for the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
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MATT PORTER: In the speech, Kennedy challenged his party and the country to think big, to go boldly into the second half of the 20th century.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles had been won, that there is no longer an American frontier. For the problems are not all solved, and the battles are not all won. And we stand, today, on the edge of a new frontier, the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and peril, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.
For courage, not complacency, is our need today, leadership, not salesmanship. And the only valid test of leadership is the ability to lead, and lead vigorously.
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MATT PORTER: How did the Democratic Party arrive in Los Angeles with a young Senator Kennedy knocking on the door? How did Kennedy win the nomination despite men withlonger political histories running against him? And when it was all said and done, how did a second-term senator unite the Democratic Party to take on a sitting vice president? We'llanswer all these questions, coming up on this episode of 60/20.
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RICHARD NIXON: While it is dangerous to see nothing wrong in America, it is just as wrong to refuse to recognize what is right about America.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Today, our concern must be with that future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do. It is time, in short, for a new generation of leadership.
MATT PORTER: 60 years ago, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon would face off in one of the closest elections in the nation's history. The election would leave lasting impacts on future races, right into today. In this episode, we'll look at the 1960 Democratic Convention and how Senator John F. Kennedy came out on top. We'll also look at the challenges JFK faced in uniting a fractured Democratic Party. This is 60/20.
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When we look at the results of the 1960 convention, we can't ignore what happened four years earlier in 1956 on the South Side of Chicago. Unlike conventions before it, the 1956convention was the first to be fully televised. It was the first chance for viewers across the nation, not just the delegates in Chicago, to watch the convention unfold. And it didn’t disappoint.
The presidential nominee, Adlai E. Stevenson, made an unusual decision. He allowed the delegates at the convention to select his vice presidential nominee. Several candidates vied for the spot, including Estes Kefauver, who failed to beat Stevenson for the nomination that year, and Senator John F. Kennedy.
Historian Fredrik Logevall says Stevenson's decision would spark a made-for-TV moment for the whole country to see.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: And an extraordinary battle takes place over a period of just a few hours. It's maybe-- from his announcement that he's going to throw it open to the ultimate selection of Kefauver by a hair's breadth, it's maybe 18, 20 hours. But it is an incredibly dramatic moment in which it, at one point, JFK is only a couple of dozen delegates away from being over the top-- that is to say, winning the vice presidential nomination-- before there's a sudden shift away from him and several states shift over to Kefauver.
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MATT PORTER: Kennedy loses the fight in 1956 with Kefauver, offer but Logevall says it was that national spotlight that inspired Kennedy to mount his own presidential run in 1960.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: But the person who benefits greatly from this in '56 is JFK himself, which is ironic. The '56 vice presidential battle was really the most exciting moment.
MATT PORTER: Logevall says, by losing to Kefauver, JFK also avoided being put on Stevenson's campaign, which he says was a sinking ship. Had Kennedy been appointed VP, Logevall says some party leaders may have blamed him and his Catholicism for costing Stevenson the election.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: So, in some ways, it's the best of all outcomes for Jack Kennedy. But that drama is captured on television, and I think it pays important dividends for him four years later.
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MATT PORTER: Fast forward, four years later, John F. Kennedy rides into Los Angeles as the de facto winner of the primaries. But unlike today, where the nominee needs to amass delegates through the primary elections, most delegates remained uncommitted heading into the convention.
TIM NAFTALI: One thing to keep in mind is that John Kennedy was not assured of a victory in Los Angeles, after these primaries. He would have to win delegates from states that that had not had primaries. And he would have to win a lot of support from people who had been fence-sitters all along.
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MATT PORTER: Only 38% of the convention delegates would be distributed through the 17 primaries, and Kennedy would only run in 10 of them. Historian Tim Naftali says that meant the race was still wide open as Democrats arrived in California.
TIM NAFTALI: The majority were in play in Los Angeles. So John Kennedy had done better than anyone else in the primary system. He'd done better than anybody else in the primaries, but that did not-- first of all, it didn't give him a majority on the first ballot.
MATT PORTER: Kennedy faced some roadblocks just before the convention. Former president Harry Truman, who supported Senator Stuart Symington, would abruptly resign as a delegate for the 1960 convention. Truman criticized the Kennedy campaign for the work it did leading up to the convention to try and secure delegates. He argued Kennedy's electoral engineering made the convention itself a, quote, "prearranged affair."
HARRY TRUMAN: I've always believed that the Democratic Party should stand for an open convention and to resist any bandwagon thwarts or stifles the free and deliberative process of this great instrument of democracy. The Democratic Party must never be allowed to become a party of privilege, where a man of modest means, or no means at all, cannot rise to a service in the nation.
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MATT PORTER: In his speech, Truman would echo future criticisms of today's system that often favors candidates who can raise the most money and outlast opponents in the primary elections.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think there is also power in what Truman is saying. I think it certainly does anticipate, to some extent, where we are today. And you could certainly make good arguments about the situation as it confronts us in 2020.
MATT PORTER: In another blow, JFK's main primary opponent, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, would endorse Adlai Stevenson for president. JFK did have a significant delegate lead heading into the convention, but not an insurmountable one.
TIM NAFTALI: So the primaries were important for making Kennedy more of a national figure. They were very important for signaling that Kennedy was the winner to people who were worried that a Catholic couldn't draw Protestant votes. But the primaries did not assure John F. Kennedy of the first ballot victory that he ultimately would get in Los Angeles.
MATT PORTER: Naftali said JFK's primary success did give him a strong electability argument over his opponents.
TIM NAFTALI: So only John Kennedy could say, look, I've been out there. I have met voters in 1960. I have a sense of what they want, and I won. I beat Hubert Humphrey twice. I beatWayne Morse twice. Nobody contested me in a couple of states, three states. I'm the only one that the rank-and-file Democrats have actually voted for, this year.
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MATT PORTER: But the person JFK would have to worry about most hadn't been involved in the primary elections at all.
TIM NAFTALI: The other element of this story, which makes it more difficult to understand in the current context is that the greatest challenger to John Kennedy's ambitions to be the nominee in the summer of 1960 hadn't run in a single primary.
MATT PORTER: Kennedy would need 761 delegate votes to win on the first ballot. If he failed on the first ballot, his committed delegates could choose to vote for anyone they wished.Lyndon B. Johnson had an enormous influence in the Democratic Party as Senate Majority Leader from Texas, representing the Southern Coalition. His biggest ally was House SpeakerSam Rayburn, who could influence many of the party delegates on the second or third ballots.
TIM NAFTALI: To give you a sense of this man's background, he had been in the House since 1913. He had been Speaker, off and on, for over 30 years. He was a huge backer of LyndonJohnson.
MATT PORTER: Logevall says the Kennedy campaign had been furiously courting delegates before the convention to secure enough votes to win on the first ballot.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: The Kennedy forces, in 1960, knew this very well. The Kennedy forces were very confident about what they had racked up, but they felt pretty certain that JackKennedy needed to win on the first ballot. Because once it went to a second ballot, all kinds of things opened up. And I think that was one reason why these conventions had a kind of drama that they now lack.
MATT PORTER: During the convention, Kennedy and Johnson held an informal debate with the Texas delegation. With the race still uncertain, Naftali says it would play a role in influencing final delegate votes.
TIM NAFTALI: There was so much in play in Los Angeles that small things mattered. John F. Kennedy's strengths were his ability to communicate, his style, his energy, his posture, his hair. Excuse me for being superficial, but there is-- you know, the Kennedy style shaped politics.
Johnson didn't have that. Johnson had a style. He certainly had a personal style and he certainly had a lot of energy, and it was very well suited to the Congressional cloakroom. But it was not as good and not as effective in a public debate.
MATT PORTER: Here's a quick exchange of that debate with LBJ.
LYNDON JOHNSON: But the one thing that you must take home with you, if you take nothing else, the person you select as your president-- his judgment, responsibilities he’s shouldered, the weight he's carried, the burdens he knows-- the decision he makes may well determine whether you live as free men or whether you die as slaves. And I want to thank you for your courtesy, for your indulgence, and from the bottom of a grateful heart express to you the hope that you will use only one measuring stick when you select your nominee, and that is select the man that you believe is best for your country.
AUDIENCE: LBJ!
LYNDON JOHNSON: And if you select--
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JOHN F. KENNEDY: I appreciate what Senator Johnson had to say. He made some general references to, perhaps, the shortcomings of other presidential candidates. But as he was not specific, I assume he was talking about some of the other candidates and not about me.
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I have found it extremely beneficial serving in the Senate with Senator Johnson as leader. I think if I emerge successfully in this convention, it will be the result of watching SenatorJohnson proceed around the Senate for the last eight years. I have learned the lesson well, Lyndon, and I hope it may benefit me in the next 24 hours. So I come to you, today, full of admiration for Senator Johnson, full of affection for him, strongly in support of him for Majority Leader. And I'm confident that, in that position, we're all going to be able to work together. Thank you.
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TIM NAFTALI: And by basically accepting this opportunity to be together on the same space, Kennedy was able to highlight his strengths against Johnson. And if there was an opportunity for Johnson to develop momentum-- because it was a momentum play, at that point. I mean, he could do all the work in the back rooms but, in the end, he had to start getting delegates.
With Kennedy doing so well in this one-on-one encounter, it just stunted the growth of LBJ's support. I mean, it took the air out of any boom that he might have had.
MATT PORTER: Ultimately, Kennedy received enough votes to win on the first ballot when the last state, Wyoming, voted.
TENO RONCALIO: Mr. Chairman, Wyoming's vote will make a majority for Senator Kennedy.
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MATT PORTER: JFK would ultimately end up with 806 votes to Johnson's 409. Historians said Johnson ended up paying a huge price by choosing not to challenge Kennedy in any of the primaries.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think Johnson paid a price for having sat things out. He waited too long. It was not going to work to, all of the sudden, now, hope for this to materialize for him.
MATT PORTER: With Kennedy securing the nomination, the next stage of the convention would be selecting a running mate. When we come back, we'll show you how Kennedy’s greatest opponent would become his greatest asset.
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JAMIE RICHARDSON: Are you listening to our podcast and wondering if there's more to the story? Of course there is! If you want to learn more about what you've heard today, we have links to resources from the JFK Library's archives, including photos, films, and primary source documents. We also have oral history interviews from some of the key members ofKennedy's campaign. Visit jfklibrary.org/6020 to get started.
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MATT PORTER: When JFK won the nomination for president and avoided a brokered convention, rumors immediately swirled around who he would pick for vice president. LiberalDemocrats and Labor supported candidates like Hubert Humphrey. But historians say the Kennedy campaign also needed to win more conservative voters in the South.
The ideal candidate would be a Southern Democrat like Lyndon B. Johnson. Tensions between Kennedy and Johnson were on edge by the time both arrived in LA. Logevall says Johnson was disappointed after losing to Kennedy, who had only been in the Senate a short time.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think that Johnson thought of Kennedy as an upstart, as a whippersnapper, somebody who had benefited greatly from the resources that his father had provided, so maybe not a huge amount of respect, in some ways.
MATT PORTER: Journalist Peter Lisagor said in his oral history at the JFK Library that he had spent some time with Johnson before the convention. He said LBJ grew frustrated withKennedy's momentum headed into the convention and, in frustration, called the Boston native the, quote, "little scrawny fellow with rickets," end quote. And on the Kennedy side, things were equally as tense.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: There were some suspicions about Johnson on the part of the Kennedy camp. Robert Kennedy, in particular, had, I think it's fair to say, a deep animus againstLyndon Johnson.
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MATT PORTER: The Kennedy campaign was split on making the offer to Johnson for vice president when the news broke that Kennedy may consider the conservative Democrat for the ticket. Tim Naftali says the left wing of the party rebelled.
TIM NAFTALI: Liberal and Labor circles around Kennedy, they exploded. This was a betrayal, a betrayal of a sense that they had already taken over the party. The idea that the presidential nominee felt he had to bring this symbol of the old Democratic Party, Lyndon Johnson, on board, seemed a travesty.
MATT PORTER: Naftali says political calculations were made when offering Johnson the post.
TIM NAFTALI: It made excellent political sense for John Kennedy to bring Lyndon Johnson on board, especially as his running mate, especially after the Democratic Party passed the most liberal civil rights plank in its platform, in history. There was a groundswell of opposition among Southern delegations to the platform. And the Kennedys understood that they needed to rally support in the South.
MATT PORTER: Naftali says Kennedy was playing political chess with an offer he didn't expect Johnson to accept.
TIM NAFTALI: I believe that part of the reason for the initiative was that they assumed LBJ wouldn't take the job. But by offering it to LBJ, you would have sent a signal to Southern delegations that you wanted LBJ, but LBJ preferred the power of being Senate Majority Leader.
MATT PORTER: Even after the offer was made and accepted, Robert F. Kennedy still tried to convince Johnson to reconsider.
TIM NAFTALI: And there is no doubt that his brother, the campaign manager, Robert F. Kennedy, went back to LBJ after the opportunity was offered to him and tried to convince him not to take it. Or, actually, he had already taken it, so tried to convince him to renounce his acceptance of the offer.
MATT PORTER: Naftali says it's unlikely that RFK would have made the overture without his brother's blessing. He says, somewhere along the line, Kennedy told his brother to stand down and kept Johnson on the ticket.
TIM NAFTALI: I think, then, John F. Kennedy changed his mind and decided, I'm stuck. I can't. I am going to lose a significant part of this party and lose the election if I force Lyndon off the ticket. You know, John F. Kennedy would ultimately say that Bobby had missed a change in tactics. You know, he sort of distanced himself, a little bit, from RFK's effort.
And Johnson, for his own purposes, decided to believe that and always blamed RFK for being the one who tried to push him off the ticket. I'm not really sure he totally believed that, because he would later see the two brothers in action. But certainly, at the time, LBJ was happy to assume that the younger Kennedy had overstepped his mandate.
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MATT PORTER: Kennedy campaign advisor and, later, White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger later described the process in his oral history. He said he remembered someone telling him, because of the back and forth, no one would really know how the Johnson decision came about.
While the pick certainly would help President Kennedy with Southern Democrats, many liberals in the North were upset. James Farmer, who helped found the Congress of Racial Equality, said in his oral history that he was extremely disappointed in the choice.
JAMES FARMER: Johnson was so unacceptable to civil rights organizations, and unacceptable to me personally, because his record in voting against civil rights legislation was all too clear and emphatic around lines. I was extremely disappointed. My position then was that this was a sock that was tossed to the South, and that this indicated that the administration was going to go slow on civil rights. That was my feeling at the time.
MATT PORTER: The choice also inspired strong feelings across the aisle. Senator Barry Goldwater said in his oral history that it was an unholy marriage, and it made him nauseated.Today, experts like David Axelrod look at the Johnson pick as a political one over personal preference.
DAVID AXELROD: And so I don't think the decisions, today, on a vice presidential candidate are as linear as that decision was, as mathematically driven as that decision was. And, you know, I don't think, at the end of the day, I don't think people vote for a presidential candidate on the basis of who their vice presidential candidate is.
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MATT PORTER: Axelrod says few vice presidents since have had the same type of electoral impact a Johnson did.
DAVID AXELROD: There were no vice presidential debates in 1960. Now, the vice presidential candidates debate. That's an important thing. So you want to make sure that that person, when they're sitting on a stage, can do well in a debate with the vice presidential candidate on the other side. Those kinds of factors, it seems to me, are more important now than where an individual candidate comes from.
MATT PORTER: With the ticket solidified, John F. Kennedy would leave the convention ready to unite the Democratic Party. Coming up next, we'll talk about how exactly he planned todo just that.
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JAMIE RICHARDSON: Are you enjoying the 60/20 podcast? This podcast is just one of the many initiatives, programs, and resources supported by the John F. Kennedy LibraryFoundation. The JFK Library Foundation is a nonprofit that provides financial support, staffing, and creative resources for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Learn more about the JFK Library and the Foundation at jfklibrary.org.
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MATT PORTER: The Democratic Party had been out of the White House for eight years when the 1960 election arrived. They saw the election as an opportunity because PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower, who had immense bipartisan appeal, was term-limited and could not run again.
TIM NAFTALI: The Democratic Party was hungry to win back the presidency. Many Americans had served under Dwight Eisenhower. So, for many, he was the commander, and that gave him a hold on the American imagination that was unusual.
MATT PORTER: In his speech at the convention, that night, JFK made his pitch to all Democrats, including his primary opponents, to come together as one.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: And I am grateful, finally, that I can rely in the coming months on many others, on a distinguished running mate, who brings unity and strength to our platform and our ticket, Lyndon Johnson.
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On one of the most articulate spokesmen of modern times, Adlai Stevenson.
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On a great fighter, on a great fighter for our needs as the nation and a people, Stuart Symington.
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On my traveling companion in Wisconsin and West Virginia, Senator Hubert Humphrey.
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On Paul Butler, our devoted and courageous chairman.
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And on that fighting campaigner whose support I now welcome, President Harry Truman.
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I feel a lot safer with all of them on my side.
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MATT PORTER: While nominating Johnson did a lot to bring along moderates and conservatives in the party, JFK would not be able to win without another key coalition.
TIM NAFTALI: To take back the White House, you needed to reconstruct the Roosevelt Coalition. You had to pull back together the coalition of Catholics, Protestants, African-Americans, Jewish Americans, a coalition that had been created by Roosevelt as a result and throughout the Depression.
MATT PORTER: Eleanor Roosevelt was still alive, and considered the leader of the Roosevelt Coalition. She was suspicious of President Kennedy, partly due to what she considered the sins of his father.
TIM NAFTALI: Joseph P. Kennedy was the antithesis of that. He had argued for America to leave Europe alone. He was an isolationist. Rooseveltians-- not all, as we shall see-- but Rooseveltians like Eleanor Roosevelt never forgave Joseph P. Kennedy for the views that he had had in 1940.
MATT PORTER: While JFK had the full-throated support of FDR, Jr., he needed to also win the confidence of his mother.
BARBARA PERRY: She was really the embodiment of the New Deal and the era of the New Deal, since her husband had left this earth in 1945. So from that point on, and certainly up to1960 when then-Senator Kennedy was dealing with her, she was a major power broker.
MATT PORTER: Barbara Perry is the Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and has studied the relationship between the former First Lady andPresident Kennedy. Besides Eleanor Roosevelt's concerns about Joseph P. Kennedy, the father, Roosevelt had other concerns about Senator John F. Kennedy.
BARBARA PERRY: The Kennedy family had been friends with Joe McCarthy, and she thought that then-Senator John F. Kennedy was not in opposition, or in clearly public opposition, to McCarthy and his ways of fighting the Communists. And Mrs. Roosevelt was quite the civil libertarian, and she thought that McCarthy was just a horrible scourge on this country. So she differed with him on that.
And then-Senator Kennedy was also quite moderate on civil rights so that he wouldn't put off the wing of the party, the Southern segregationists, and she found herself at odds with John F.Kennedy, the senator, in the 1950s on that. And then I think, too, she just, as many people did, thought that Jack Kennedy was too young and too inexperienced.
MATT PORTER: About one month after the convention, Kennedy had arranged an opportunity to visit Eleanor Roosevelt at Hyde Park. Perry likened the event to an international summit.
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BARBARA PERRY: It had almost all of the tension and drama of an international summit meeting. And it certainly had the importance of that where, instead of two countries trying to come together to make peace and move forward and reason together, you had the clash of the two titans in the Democratic Party because, now, with the nomination in hand, SenatorKennedy was a power broker as well and needing the endorsements of the other power brokers.
MATT PORTER: Roosevelt had been at the convention, but was so disappointed with the result, Perry said, she refused to speak to Kennedy at that time.
BARBARA PERRY: So this meeting in August of 1960 at Hyde Park is just all-important for Senator Kennedy to try to win over Eleanor Roosevelt and get her support as one of the three major, national power brokers in the party, along with Truman and Stevenson, and to try to get her on board, see if she will endorse him, if she will campaign for him, particularly in NewYork, but also around the country.
MATT PORTER: The meeting would be successful, with Kennedy emerging with a smiling Eleanor Roosevelt. She would later write an endorsement in her regular column, "My Day,"days later. She would also record the following campaign ad endorsing Kennedy.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT: John F. Kennedy came to visit me at Hyde Park. We talked together, and I learned that he was truly interested in carrying on many of the things which my husband had just begun. Mr. Kennedy is a strong and determined person who, as president, will provide the leadership for greater Social Security benefits, which the social welfare of a civilized nation demands. I urge you, study Mr. Kennedy's programs, to look at his very remarkable record in Congress, and I think you will join me in voting for John F. Kennedy for president.
MATT PORTER: Perry said Roosevelt's endorsement would not just unite New Dealers. She was a popular and trusted figure for many across the country.
BARBARA PERRY: I should point out that when they started asking people in the polls, in the late '40s, who is the most admired woman, in your view, Eleanor Roosevelt came at the top of the list from 1948 until 1962. She was America's most admired woman.
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In 1962, by the way, she was displaced by Jacqueline Kennedy. But to imagine how they had-- admiration people had for her. So Senator Kennedy knew if he could get her on board, it would mean a lot of votes in what he thought was going to be a very narrow, popular vote victory, should he win. And it turned out to be the case.
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MATT PORTER: Returning to his acceptance speech on the final night of the convention, then-Senator Kennedy would outline his plan for America that he called the New Frontier.Exhausted after his four-day convention battle, some including Kennedy's own aides, said the delivery was not the senator's best. However, over time, it's aspirational message would be something professional political advisors say other candidates continue to draw from today.
Amy Dacey, who served as the CEO for the Democratic National Committee, including overseeing the 2016 Democratic Convention, agrees.
AMY DACEY: Whether it was President Obama with hope and change, you know, there always has to be an aspirational looking-forward tone to any candidate that's running for office.So I think those speeches have to speak to a wide, differing group of audiences, but I think every person has to see themselves in that speech in some way. So that aspirational NewFrontier, it's so important.
And it'll be very interesting to see, in 2020, how we'll be talking about that with the challenges the country is facing, right now. And so what tone are both candidates going to have going into the general election cycle, and how are they going to talk about those things?
MATT PORTER: While important business still takes place, she says conventions since Kennedy have become more about the message.
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AMY DACEY: What it has turned into is definitely a media event. And candidates have use this, obviously, to get a lot of attention about the messaging that they will use. And there’s always been-- this has been a long primary campaign, but this is the time when people are really paying attention to the general election campaign. And so candidates use that national platform to talk about the issues that they care about.
MATT PORTER: And so, in front of 52,000 people in Chicago and an estimated TV audience of 35 million, Kennedy made his pitch, calling America to join him into the New Frontier.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: For the harsh facts of the matter are that we stand at this frontier at a turning point of history. Can a nation organize and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we the nerve and the will, can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only no breakthroughs in weapons of destruction, but also a race for mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tides, the far side of space, and the inside of men's minds? That is the question of the New Frontier.
As we face the coming great challenge, we, too, shall wait upon the Lord and ask that he renew our strength. Then shall we be equal to the task. Then we shall not be weary. Then we shall prevail.
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MATT PORTER: Thank you for listening to this episode of 60/20 along with Jamie Richardson and myself. 60/20 is made possible with help from our co-producer Rick King. Thank you to our research assistants, Megan McKee and Cassie Marando. Special thanks to our Foundation colleagues, in particular, Meaghan Hohl and Executive Director Rachel Flor. Our music is composed by Blue.Sessions and artwork by Brian Kang.
We also thank all of our guests for lending their voices and expertise to this podcast. And, of course, none of this would be possible without the work of archivists and other staff at the JFK Library and Museum, who make much of the material discussed here available to all online and to visiting researchers. Thank you. Have a great week.
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