The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Harvard releases early Kennedy recording
Archivists believe it is the earliest audio of the young JFK.
The forceful voice of the 20-year-old Harvard student punches through the crackling audio, his thick Boston accent coming to life. He is only a sophomore, but his distinct speaking style is already clear, even before he finishes the first line: “My name is John F. Kennedy.”
The 1-minute, 28-second recording foreshadows much about Kennedy: his commanding rhetoric, his passion for politics and a seriousness unmatched by other classmates. The 1937 audio, released by Harvard this week, is thought to be the earliest recording of Kennedy, whose graceful cadence, soaring prose and unflagging optimism carried him to the White House and inspired generations.
But on that day, Kennedy was just another first-year Harvard student (he transferred there after one year at Princeton) finishing an assignment for English F, a required course. He discusses the recent decision by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to nominate Hugo Black as an associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Black had been confirmed to the bench, but rumors about his membership in the Ku Klux Klan continued to hound him.
“I’d like to take it from the angle of what’s going to happen to Mr. Black, if anything can happen,” Kennedy says. “We all know the circumstances surrounding Mr. Black’s appointment to the Supreme Court.”
The speech starts off strong. He speaks clearly and with vigor. But after about 25 seconds, Kennedy loses his momentum. He gets nervous or distracted. He trips over a word, utters an “uh” as he tries to recover. He stammers and hesitates through the rest of the recording.
In short, it will not be remembered as one of his finest speeches. But still, compared with other Harvard students, Kennedy stands apart. The students chose their own topics, and many explored less serious issues: book collecting, sourdough bread and how to find a wife.
“That is what struck us,” Megan Sniffin-Marinoff, the university archivist at Harvard, said in an interview. “At this point, he was probably thinking of government as a major.” Still, for all his oratory promise, Kennedy’s performance in the class was unremarkable. He received a C+, the course average.
Harvard became aware of the Kennedy recording several years ago, when a collection belonging to Professor Frederick Clifton Packard Jr., who taught English F, was donated. Packard started recording his students in the 1920s to help them improve their public speaking, perhaps for radio. His materials included boxes and boxes of double-sided aluminum discs.
The professor first recorded students on wire recordings and then switched to aluminum discs. The discs were an improvement but were fragile, and recorded low-quality audio. He later switched to acetate discs.
Audio engineers were able to recover the Kennedy audio, convert it to a digital file and clean up some of the scratchiness. What is left is an early glimpse into the budding public speaking talent of the 35th president of the United States. (The earliest recording held by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston is from 1940.)
“He sounds a little bit more forceful” than other students, Sniffin-Marinoff said. “A little bit more determined, maybe based on the topic of what he was speaking about.”
The recording of Kennedy does not last long enough to hear him complete his argument. But his speech was probably much longer, researchers believe, based on a 1945 syllabus for the class. It outlines that students were to deliver five major speeches a year, each 5 to 15 minutes in length, experimenting with various styles like expository and argumentative.
Harvard researchers and archivists have explored only a small fraction of the professor’s discs. Students were recorded in English F and then again their senior year, so a later Kennedy recording is believed to be somewhere in the trove. His older brother, Joseph Kennedy Jr., is also thought to be heard on the discs.