Be part of the audience which on 20 January 1961 heard John Fitzgerald Kennedy pronounce his memorable “Ask not". The JFK Presidential Library announced in a press release on January 13, 2011 that it will be digitizing all JFK archival material it possesses: from letters and school report cards to recordings of speeches, meetings and phone conversations on the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, civil rights and the space race.
JFK Speeches
The JFK Library holds 9,000 hours of audio recordings, 7.5 million feet of motion picture film and 1,200 hours of video recordings. Among JFK speeches that can be accessed online are:
City Upon the Hill, 9 January 1961
In his address to a Joint Convention of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Boston, President-Elect John F Kennedy recalled John Winthrop who, faced with the task of building a new government 131 years earlier, said: “We must always consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill – the eyes of all people are upon us.”
Inaugural Address (“Ask Not”), 20 January 1961
In his inaugural address to the nation, John F Kennedy said the famous words: “My fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
JFK Speech on the Space Race, 25 May 1961
Declaring himself fully behind the space race with the Soviets, JFK proclaimed before a crowd of 35,000 in the football stadium of Rice University, Houston, Texas that “this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
UN speech (“Peace Race”), 25 September 1961
The President addressed the United Nations General Assembly, one week after the death of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, urging for cooperation against the threat of nuclear war:
“..a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war -- or war will put an end to mankind.
It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race - to advance together, step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved.”
Independence Day Speech, 4 July 1962 (“Trumpet Call”)
On Independence Day John F Kennedy likens reading the almost illegible lines of the yellowing and fading parchment of the Declaration of Independence to a “trumpet call” for the Declaration “unleashed a revolution in human affairs.”
TV Address During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 22 October 1962
In the tense days of autumn 1962 when the world was closest as it ever had been to a nuclear disaster, President Kennedy addressed the nation on television spelling out the nuclear threat in clear terms:
“Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nation's security to constitute maximum peril.”
TV Address on Civil Rights, 11 June 1963
In a heartfelt TV address to the nation John F Kennedy spoke of civil rights on the occasion of police brutality against peaceful black protesters in Alabama:
“This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. ... And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”
“Ich bin ein Berliner”: JFK Speech at Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin
Speaking to a crowd of some 120,000 Berliners, John F Kennedy declared “Ich bin ein Berliner” and praised Berliners on their tenacity, two years after the East German authorities began building the infamous Berlin Wall: “There are many people in the world who really don’t understand (or say they don’t) what is the great issue between the Free World and the Communist World,” President Kennedy said: “Let them come to Berlin.”
JFK speeches are accessible online at the JFK Presidential Library. The online archive contains description of speech, physical description, running time, media type, and a full transcript.
Lito Apostolakou - Lito is a historian with an interest in digital archives and online historical resources. She is the author of blog Palimpsest.
