JFK's Massachusetts Roots

Fifty years ago this week, President John F. Kennedy, a son of Massachusetts, was assassinated. All this month, WBUR has been looking back at his presidency, listening to his speeches, and exploring his connections to this state.

We're going to begin our program today looking the late president's Massachusetts political roots. Although Kennedy came from a family with a deep history in the Bay State, Kennedy himself spent most of his early years in New York, and in a boarding school in Connecticut. So by the time he made his first run for Congress in Massachusetts, he had to fend off charges of being a political outsider, even a carpet-bagger.

In spite of that, he became a Massachusetts Congressman, Senator, and then of course, President. And just days before his inauguration, he returned to Boston, and before a packed State House, declared himself "a man from Massachusetts."

Thurston Clarke, Kennedy historian.

Jack Beatty, historian and On Point news analyst.