Legend has it that John F. Kennedy first proposed the Peace Corps at U-M.
The truth is more complex, and a lot more interesting.
Ann Arbor author and historian James Tobin relives Oct. 14, 1960, and the days that followed, in an essay about U-M’s role in the birth of the service organization.
Of the 2 a.m. presidential speech on the steps of the Michigan Union, Tobin writes: “He might have given the students a quick greeting and a standard pitch for votes. No one knows why he chose, instead, to ask them a question that would launch the signature program of his administration and ignite the idealism of a generation.”
To read the entire essay go to michigantoday.umich.edu/2008/jan/jfk.php.
