1963 was as busy a month as any for President Kennedy. He had some significant dates in his diary and he had some housekeeping to attend to. In the latter category fell his appointment with Governor John Connolly of Texas. The two men needed to discuss the President’s visit to Dallas some five months later. In the former category, Kennedy delivered his “Peace Speech’ in which he addressed nuclear weapons and atmospheric test bans and urged the world to “cherish our children’s future”. But there were domestic problems too as the Kennedy administration confronted one of the great seismic struggles of twentieth century American politics, that of civil rights.
At home, the media natives were getting restless; the Washington Post made the wry observation that “Ireland is the only country the President will visit that has what can be described as a firmly–established and durable Government” while in a reference to the race riots in the South, Senator Hugh Scott said “I’d rather see him go to Birmingham (Alabama) than Berlin just now”.2 The spring of 1963 saw Birmingham inflamed with racial tension as the civil rights movement, spearheaded by Dr Martin Luther King Jr, sought to overthrow the bastions of racial segregation.
“It would be difficult to dream up a more unjustified and time-wasting trip than the one on which President Kennedy is scheduled to embark”, trumpeted an indignant New York Herald, before adding, “In Rome Mr. Kennedy will find neither a Pope nor an established Government; in London he will find a Prime Minister with other things on his mind. In Germany, too, he will find something in the nature of a ‘lame duck’ Government.” This grave assessment of the international situation was capped by a side–swipe at the other “explanation of the trip – the sentimental call of Dublin and the Kennedy ancestral town of New Ross; but surely his Irish friends would understand that urgent Congressional and racial problems required his continued presence in Washington at the moment.”3
And yet, the man who was always interested in history and global politics, the man who started life as a journalist and had visited Europe on the cusp and in the aftermath of World War II, wanted to go to. He not only wanted to go, he felt entitled to a little something for himself. John Fitzgerald Kennedy wanted to visit the land of his forebears. He wanted to go home.
CHAPTER ONE The Kennedys: From Poverty to Power
Ireland in the 1840s was a country on its knees. It was a time that robbed a nation of a generation. The exodus that took place saw the kernel of the Kennedy clan take hold on the shores of Boston. Here was a family forced together by the horrors of history. John F. Kennedy’s great–grandparents fled the greatest disaster that this island ever witnessed – The Great Famine. Caused by the blight of the potato crop in 1845, this killed a million Irish men, women and children in the course of five years, an eighth of the island’s total population, while another million fled the plights of starvation and disease.
It is hard to put this catastrophe into context as there is a distinct lack of contemporary reference, or indeed deference, to this tragic episode. Yet it was our Holocaust, it was the wind that sent our people like feathers from a pillow to all corners of the globe and particularly to Britain, Australia and the relatively youthful USA. Boston especially was a natural fit for the Irish. Like an exaggerated Dublin, the leafy city was as near to Ireland as a homesick peasant was going to get.
Among those who fled was John F. Kennedy’s great–grandfather Patrick Kennedy, who left New Ross, County Wexford, in 1848 for Liverpool from where he sailed to Boston. The fact that the third son of a Wexford farmer managed to cobble together enough money to pay for his voyage was an achievement in itself. While most of those on board that boat to Boston were fleeing poverty and almost certain death, Patrick saw his move to America as a search for something better. Like so many others of his generation, he would never see his parents or his brother and sister again.4
Either during the voyage or more probably when he arrived in Boston, Patrick met a fellow Wexford woman, Bridget Murphy.The two married in Boston, had four children and Patrick supported the family through his work as a cooper, making barrels and casks. It was in Boston that four families – the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, the Murphys and the Coxs – would mix, work and intermarry. It was here too that the upwardly mobile next generation would endeavour to shed their links with the old country. To this second generation, Ireland would represent a past without promise, a land of impoverished indignity and political impotence.
The Land of Opportunity was a harsh one for immigrants of all nationalities, but the Irish were on the lower rungs of society in 19th–century America and the attitude to them was ugly. Job adverts frequently read “No Irish need apply” and they could only find accommodation in ghettos, nicknamed “Paddyville” or “Mick Alley”, despite the fact that by 1850, a third of the population of Boston was Irish. They were seen as filthy, hard–drinking Catholics, under the thumb of the Pope. They also spoke in an accent no one could understand but their own people. Most Irishmen found work as manual labourers, and the paltry salaries meant they had to live in slum conditions. The only way to survive was to work long, back–breaking hours, and although the shops stocked plenty of food, unlike those back in Ireland, the Irish couldn’t afford to buy much of it. Like many of his fellow immigrants, Patrick Kennedy died prematurely after just ten years of this new life.
Alone, with four children to raise, Bridget embodied what would become the Kennedy work ethic. She worked as a shop assistant, took in lodgers and cleaned houses. When she had saved up enough money, Bridget bought the shop she worked in, expanded the business and started selling groceries and alcohol. She was going to raise her family’s standard of living through sheer determination and grit, even if it killed her, as it had her husband.
Patrick Joseph Kennedy (John F. Kennedy’s grandfather) was just one year old when his father died. Given that three in ten children living in American cities perished before the age of one in the mid–19th century, and the fatherless were more vulnerable than most, it was a miracle that he survived at all. Known to all as PJ, he left school at fourteen and worked on the Boston docks. Like his mother, he was a good saver and with some financial help from Bridget, PJ bought his own saloon in East Boston. By the time he hit thirty, PJ owned three such saloons and ran a side business importing whiskey.
The Kennedy coat of arms and family tree. Down the left side are the names of Kennedy ancestors, beginning with Lorcan, King of Munster. At the top of the chart is an excerpt of a poem by Giolla that dates back to 1420.
Patrick J. Kennedy, paternal grandfather of JFK.
Around Boston, PJ Kennedy was seen as a fixer, somebody who could get things done, a good guy who was always ready to do a favour for you. He dispensed advice across the bar in his saloons, helping men to find jobs and mothers to get medical help for sick babies. He had an ability to listen, as well as an eloquence that won him friends wherever he went, so when he decided to run for public office in 1884, he had plenty of people willing to vote for him. He was a perfect fit for the offices he was about to win, first in the Massachusetts State Legislature and later in the State Senate. The brief generational journey from a devastated port in Wexford to the state political ladder was not typical – not unless you were a Kennedy – but he was setting a pattern for the generations to come.
With his professional
