President John F. Kennedy in Houston and resources from the Houston Area Digital Archives

Rice Hotel Sam Houston Coliseum Rice University Stadium NASA Manned Spacecraft Center

1960 John F. Kennedy made a campaign stop in Houston in September of He appeared at a Democratic Party rally at the Sam Houston Coliseum and gave a speech for the Ministers Association of Greater Houston at the Rice Hotel.

1962

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

On the same day that JFK gave his famous speech at Rice, he also visited the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center, now known as the Johnson Space Center.

1963 President Kennedy attended the LULAC banquet in Houston at the Rice Hotel along with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Lady Bird Johnson. John J. Herrera, a past national president of LULAC, wrote to President Kennedy personally and urged him to attend the banquet as an “opportunity…to meet with the Latin Americans of Mexican descent of Texas, who have always held [you] in high esteem.”

“Mrs. Kennedy’s speech in Spanish was received with wild cheers and applause.... John F. Kennedy [was the] first U.S. president ever to Become an honorary member of LULAC or to even attend a LULAC Function.” --LULAC News, November-December, 1963

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Resources Educator and Student Resources Featured Collections pages President John F. Kennedy in Houston NASA Timelines When Camelot Came to Houston Celebrating the life of John J. Herrera Digital archival material PhotographsPhotographs at the Houston Area Digital Archives Oral histories Oral histories at the Houston Area Digital Archives John J. Herrera PapersJohn J. Herrera Papers at the Portal to Texas History Special Collections Libraries Houston Metropolitan Research Center African American Library at the Gregory School Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research Houston Metropolitan Research Center African American Library at the Gregory School Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research