Caroline Kennedy helped bring the memory of her mother, former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, back to life at a forum held at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum on Monday.
About 700 people gathered to listen to Kennedy speak about the New York Times’ bestselling novel “Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.”
The auditorium intended to house the forum filled to capacity by 4:30 p.m., despite not starting until 5:30 p.m. The overflow guests were directed to an annex auditorium in another part of the library, where they watched the forum via video feed.
Kennedy spoke at length about Jacqueline, her mother’s, oral history interview, which was a series of interviews conducted by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1964, after former President John F. Kennedy’s death.
“It wasn’t easy, but she felt she was doing it for my father’s sake, and for history’s,” Kennedy said.
The interviews were held on deposit at the JFK Presidential Library for 47 years after they were made. They were published in an eight-disc collection with accompanying transcripts on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s presidency in Sept. 2011.
“The underlying goal of the oral history project was…to keep stories fresh,” Kennedy said. “To me, the most important value is that they make history come alive.”
Kennedy said that her mother gave almost no interviews during her life.
She selected three of her favorite excerpts from the interviews to play for the audience, which included Jacqueline speaking about JFK’s reading habits, her reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis and her endeavors to restore the White House.
After Kennedy spoke, JFK’s presidential historian Michael Beschloss and Richard Donahue, vice chairman of the JFK Library Foundation, reflected on the legacy of Jacqueline Kennedy. The moderator was Ted Widmer, the director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.
The trio discussed what the interviews revealed about Jacqueline and her relationship with her husband. Beschloss and Donahue were asked to speculate on whether they thought Jacqueline was a feminist.
“I’d say she was an unwitting feminist,” Beschloss said.
Donahue said that he also thought she was a feminist.
“There’s no question that she was a feminist when she was undertaking the renovation [of the White House],” Donahue said. “I would not dismiss her on any account, but certainly not on her wishy-washyness.”
The forum also addressed the chronic back pain that JFK suffered from during his political life.
“He was stoic,” Beschloss said. “When he was president…you never saw it.”
They also spoke about the original purpose of the oral history interview, which was created to preserve history and memories behind JFK’s presidency.
Because of this, they said, Schlesinger asked fewer questions about Jacqueline and her life, a fact that is also somewhat reflective of the time and the woman’s role in home life 47 years ago.
However, some of Jacqueline’s opinions were exposed in the interviews.
“Lyndon Johnson doesn’t fare well in the recordings,” Widmer said.
Beschloss agreed, saying that Jacqueline’s opinion of Johnson as represented in the tapes was a ‘snapshot in time,’ indicative of how she said she felt briefly, not necessarily always.
“Some of the more fascinating opinions she didn’t always keep in the years after,” he said, but that she was a woman beyond her times.
“If you study her life, she always broke the mold,” he added.
After the forum, the majority of the audiences from both rooms lined up to have Caroline Kennedy sign their copies of the new book.
Tina Cassidy, sat in the ‘satellite’ room, said that she enjoyed the forum.
“I think it was really interesting to hear Caroline talk about her mother,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy has written a book about Jacqueline Kennedy’s life during the year 1975 that will be released in March. She also noted that the audience was overwhelming a more senior crowd.
“It’s disappointing that there weren’t more young people,” she said.
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