America's Main Street

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan joined the new administration of President John F. Kennedy as a political appointee in 1961, he was one of the youthful and idealistic Whiz Kids that Kennedy had attracted to his administration. Moynihan already had established a reputation as a politically inclined intellectual and a student of urban issues. He had worked almost four years as an assistant to Governor Averell Harriman of New York, and he had taught two years at Syracuse University, researching the sociology of urban life. But he was not an insider within the Kennedy circle, and his first assignment was as special assistant to Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg. To Goldberg, Kennedy assigned the task of improving Pennsylvania Avenue’s dilapidated image, a condition that Kennedy noticed during his inaugural parade from the Capitol to the White House, a route every president since Thomas Jefferson has taken following the ceremonial oath of office. For that task, Goldberg called in his head of research, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Thanks to Urban Land Magazine