On October 5, 1960, Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy, was photographed seated at a table set for tea during a gathering for women journalists. The photograph was made by Warren K. Leffler for the U.S. News & World Report Magazine Photograph Collection and is held by the Library of Congress.
The event took place during the final month of the closely contested 1960 presidential campaign, in which Kennedy faced Vice President Richard Nixon. Pregnant with her second child and advised by her doctors to remain at home, Mrs. Kennedy nonetheless remained active in the campaign through interviews, taped advertisements, correspondence, and her weekly nationally distributed “Campaign Wife” newspaper column.
The tea illustrates a campaign style that joined political outreach with the social conventions of the era. Kennedy campaign organizations frequently used “Kennedy teas” and related events to reach women voters, while Jacqueline Kennedy’s own public role emphasized her identity as a wife and mother alongside her education and prior work in journalism and photography.
Rather than treating the image as proof of the conversation or outcome of this particular event, it is strongest as a visual record of Jacqueline Kennedy’s carefully managed public presence during the campaign: seated beside a formal tea service, she appears in a setting that blended domestic symbolism, press access, and presidential politics.
