By Sarah Becker ©2017 Born in 1917—100 years ago—President John F. Kennedy (D-MA) died in his prime. On November 22, 1963 an assassin shot Kennedy dead. He died of a wound in the brain caused by a rifle bullet. Kennedy was the fourth U.S. President to succumb to such wounds. For Kennedy, the past was prologue. It included wealth: he received a $1 million trust fund from his father in 1938. Also education: Kennedy studied at the London School of Economics in 1935, and graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1940. His first book, While England Slept, was published in 1940 at age 23. He took his first political step in 1946. Kennedy represented Massachusetts 11th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1947 to 1953, elected to the US Senate in 1952, and passed over as a Vice Presidential nominee in 1956. On August 24, 1960 candidate Kennedy launched the southern leg of his Presidential campaign from Alexandria, Virginia. The Alexandria Gazette reported: “With presidential candidate Kennedy in the fore…politicos…will stage what promises to be the largest political rally ever held in the city of Alexandria. The rally sponsors…hope that spacious George Washington High School stadium, which seats 14,000 persons, will be jam-packed to a standing room only condition.” “The affair will launch the Democrats’ national campaign in the south…The oratory, to which all else was a prelude, indicated the issues which will be most stressed…these bore down on the experience of [his opponent] Richard M. Nixon, the matter of foreign policy and the Communist threat. It avoided the grating problems of [a divided] political party…the [Democrat] Party platform on civil rights and sociological issues.” Virginia Dixiecrats “deplored the Democratic Party’s reckless disregard for constitutionality; principles in the Civil Rights Plank and inflationary Federal spending.” “The…
Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, was a child of the Civil War; a pacifist who led his country into WWI, a domestic reformer who failed to fully implement the post-war League of Nations. Tommy was born December 28, 1856 in Staunton, Virginia, the Scotch-Irish son of Presbyterian minister Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Janet Woodrow Wilson. He remembered the family’s black servants; secession and the Civil War, Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ prison trek, Reconstruction and its 1877 end. The Civil War, Woodrow said, is “but a memory of a short day.” Yet it was Wilson who segregated the federal government in 1913. His Texas-born Postmaster General, former US Congressman Albert S. Burleson disliked “racial mingling in federal offices, particularly in the case of black supervisors overseeing white clerks.” Despite W.E.B. DuBois’ Presidential endorsement, Wilson “had made no promises to negroes.” The problem was different when dealing with his daughters, two of whom were suffragists. The social tensions, some dating from the 19th century, were many. “Woodrow Wilson may well have witnessed more dramatic changes in national and global affairs than any other president since Washington,” Carter Smith wrote. “He entered Presidential office as a highly regarded reformer.” Wilson served as Governor of New Jersey from 1910 until 1913. Woodrow Wilson was first inaugurated President on March 4, 1913. In his speech he said: “There has been a change of government…What does the change mean?…No one can mistake the purpose for which the Nation now seeks to use the Democratic Party. It seeks to use it to interpret change.” “We have itemized [what] ought to be altered,” Wilson’s 1913 speech continued. “Here are some of the chief items: A tariff which cuts us off from our proper part in the commerce of the world…; a banking and currency system…
For those of you who read us every month, you know that each month I visit a different area in our region as a road trip. However, each December I always write about our hometown, Old Town Alexandria. With the recent closing of the Robinson Terminal loading docks and the coal-fired power plant in north Alexandria, there has been a lot of activity as to what to do with the development of the waterfront. There is no doubt that change is coming, but for now, I am going to talk about December in Old Town Alexandria and the town itself. The first settlement was established in 1695, a half mile down the Potomac River at the mouth of Hunting Creek. The ground was not well suited as a harbor as the shoreline was very shallow, so the settlement was re-established at its present site where the channel came closer to shore. Oronoco and Duke streets extended into deep water, but between the two lay an arc of swampy flatland backed by bluffs. Beginning in 1759 the filling in of this marsh and flatland began and a wharf was eventually constructed. This was the beginning of Alexandria’s future as one of America’s leading seaports. Soon warehouses were built to store all of he commerce that was coming to, and leaving Alexandria. These same warehouses standing today make up the shops and restaurants of Old Town. By the end of the 18th century, Alexandria was among the ten busiest ports in America and had been designated an official port of entry. The town derives its Scottish heritage from Scottish merchants John Alexander, William Ramsay and John Carlyle. The celebration of that heritage continues today with the annual Scottish Christmas Walk Weekend and parade, which is held the first Saturday of every December. …