Jfk Leadership and Diversity

In the year 1960 John F Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States. People did not know it at the time, but President Kennedy would become one of the most influential leaders of our country when it came to managing diversity. President Kennedy’s claim to fame was his assassination on November 22, 1963, as well as a few other scandals or missteps but this paper will mainly focus on his civil rights achievements and his management of diversity in a time where diversity was frowned upon by a lot of America.

There is not a lot of information about Kennedy’s background that can suggest why he chose to be such a proponent of civil rights during his presidency. Kennedy was born to a wealthy Irish-American family in Boston and later moved to New York because they felt that the other wealthy families didn’t hold them in high esteem due to their Irish ancestry. Perhaps this could be one of the reasons Kennedy felt the need to champion civil rights as president. One of the other reasons could have been his time spent fighting overseas in World War II. Perhaps the biggest contribution to his role in managing diversity in the nation could be his Catholic background. Kennedy was the first and only Catholic president of the United States and with a look at Catholic theology it could be considered a very big factor for why JFK chose to fight for equality in America.

Before Kennedy took office discrimination and segregation was pretty rampant throughout the country according to historylearningsite.co.uk “The 1960 report by the Civil Rights Commission made it very plain in clear statistics just how bad discrimination had affected the African American community.

57% of African American housing was judged to be unacceptable

African American life expectancy was 7 years less than whites

African American infant mortality was twice as great as whites

African Americans found it all but impossible to get mortgages from mortgage lenders.”

As you can see, before...