Sociolinguistic Artifacts

This film clip showed First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy speaking to a Texas Latino audience on November 21, 1963. Three years earlier in the 1960 Presidential campaign, a young Jack Kennedy and his political team recognized the potential of the Latino voters in the Republican held state of Texas. They decided to utilize Jacqueline Kennedy’s fluency in Spanish and a few months before the vote, she spoke to a Texas Latino crowd, persuading them to support her husband. It worked and Kennedy won the race by carrying Texas. Returning to Texas in 1963, President Kennedy allowed his wife to once again take the stage and speak Spanish, the first time a sitting United States President had honored a Hispanic group. The next day, JFK was assassinated in Dallas Texas.