On April 6, 1961, President John F. Kennedy recorded a special message in the White House. Two days later, his audio recording, a presidential tribute that underscores the ambitions of MIT and the conviction that science and technology cannot be separate from society, was played during MIT's Centennial celebration. This video uses footage of the Centennial procession in April 1961 and images of Professor Walt Whitman Rostow, who Kennedy appointed as Deputy Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and former MIT President Jerome Wiesner, who served as Kennedy's Special Assistant for Science and Technology. View the 1961 Centennial Procession in its entirety at the From the Vault collection.