Analyzing JFK’s Inaugural Address
President Kennedy’s inaugural speech addressed not only the American people, but also people throughout the world – including newly independent nations, old allies, and the Soviet Union. In this lesson plan, challenge your students to consider how the speech might have resonated with some of these audiences.
1. Provide students with a timeline of Cold War and civil rights events (doc) that occurred from January 1959 to January 20, 1961. Discuss the historical significance of these events.
2. Divide students into groups of 3-4.
3. Provide each group with one of three profiles of a fictional individual responding to the speech: (a) a young civil rights activist (doc), (b) a Soviet diplomat (doc), or (c) a Cuban exile (doc).
4. Ask students to analyze the inaugural address and answer the questions associated with their individual.
5. Have students share their group’s response with the entire class.
6. For homework, have students write a letter to President Kennedy as the fictional individual and voice their reactions to the inaugural address.
Sources:
Clarke, Thurston. Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech that Changed America. Henry Holt and Company, 2004.
Hershberg, Jim. Introduction. “’A Typical Pragmatist’: The Soviet Embassy Profiles John F. Kennedy, 1960.” Cold War International History Project Bulletin 4 (Fall 1994), 64-67. (Soviet document provided by Vladislav M. Zubok, National Security Archive, translated by Benjamin Aldrich-Moody.) Or online: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/topics/pubs/ACF1B9.pdf; scroll through to page 64.
Hill, Kenneth L. Cold War Chronology: Soviet-American Relations, 1945-1991. Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1993.
Sorensen, Theodore C. Kennedy. Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965.
Tofel, Richard J. Sounding the Trumpet: The Making of John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address. Ian R. Dee, Publisher, 2005.