The youngest man elected to be President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was also the youngest to die in office. Born in Massachusetts in 1917. Kennedy graduated from Harvard in 1940 and entered the Navy where he was a WWII hero during an attack on his PT boat. After the war, he became a Democratic congressman near Boston, and in 1953 Kennedy advanced to the Senate. In 1955, while recovering from a back injury, Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in history Seventy million Americans watched the Great Debates between Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1960. Kennedy won the presidential race by a narrow margin. In his inaugural address Kennedy famously stated, "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." In response to urgent demands from many groups, Kennedy made moves to support the cause of civil rights during the early 60s. In November of 1963, after hardly 1,000 days in office, John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullet while riding in a motorcade in Texas.