Attractive dinner plate from President Kennedy's last Official Dinner, only four days prior to his assassination Dinner plate, 10.5" diameter. Navy blue bordered in gilt, with the U.S. presidential seal in gilt in the center in a 2.75" white circle edged in gilt. Encircling the presidential seal are, in gilt, the coats of arms of 14 member states represented in the Inter American Press Association which held its 19th Annual Assembly at the Hotel Americana in Miami, Florida, November 16-22, 1963. Imprinted on the cream white underside, in olive green, "Syracuse / China / 93Ù G U.S.A." Syracuse China is today still one of the world's leading suppliers of commercial china for the foodservice industry. Fine condition.
This plate was produced especially for the "Dinner of the Inter American Press Association in honor of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy" held at the Hotel Americana in Miami Beach on November18, 1963. It was to be President Kennedy's last official dinner. He did make an appearance at a testimonial dinner for Congressman Albert Thomas in Houston on November 21, 1963. President Kennedy was scheduled to speak at a Democratic fundraising dinner in Austin on Friday evening, November 22nd.
In his November 18th address (copy included), President Kennedy spoke of Cuba and the future of the western hemisphere. In part, "Castroism, which a few years ago commanded the allegiance of thousands in almost every country, today has far fewer followers scattered across the continent. Experience in China, the Soviet Union, and in Cuba itself has revealed that the promises of abundance under tyranny are false. We ourselves can prove that democratic progress is the surest answer to the promises of the totalitarians.
"These are the many fronts of the Alliance for Progress. The conduct of those fronts, the steady conquest of the surely yielding enemies of misery and hopelessness, hunger, and injustice is the central task for the Americas in our time. But no sense of confidence, of optimism in the future of the hemisphere as a whole, can conceal our feelings at the self-inflicted exile of Cuba from the society of American Republics. The genuine Cuban revolution, because it was against the tyranny and corruption of the past, had the support of many whose aims and concepts were democratic. But that hope for freedom and progress was destroyed. The goals proclaimed in the Sierra Maestra were betrayed in Havana.