John F. Kennedy, hours before becoming the Democratic nominee for president in 1960, sent a personal telegram to Russell Long  requesting that the influential Louisiana senator join him on the convention platform. Having Long by his side when officially claiming the nomination was only fitting considering Kennedy never would have been nominated -- much less elected -- without Louisiana's help.

In the years leading to the golden age of Camelot, a small but fervently pro-Kennedy group of Louisiana powerbrokers helped curry support for the Catholic senator from Massachusetts. That support came to a head in the fall of 1959, with the group ushering Kennedy across southern Louisiana in a series of quasi-campaign stops nearly 80 days before announcing his run for president.

From the outset, it was clear Kennedy's Catholicism could be an issue in his quest for the White House. The decision was made to travel to the testing grounds of south Louisiana, one of the largest Catholic enclaves he could find. That 1959 visit helped Kennedy win the state and, ultimately, the presidency by securing a tidal wave of Louisianian votes.

The friendship between Kennedy and Louisiana's top Democrats began during the 1956 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Camille Gravel, Judge Edmund Reggie, Philip Des Marais and the rest of Louisiana's delegates spent the week seated just across the aisle from the Massachusetts squad.

Under orders from then-Gov. Earl Long, Louisiana's delegates were supposed to support Tennessee Sen. Estes Kefauver's run for vice-president on the Democratic ticket alongside presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson. Few, however, were excited about Kefauver's prospects.

"(The delegates) are thinking, this is another losing ticket. They're not going to beat (Republicans Dwight D.) Eisenhower and (Richard) Nixon, a great war general and a war hero," explained Leo Honeycutt, who is currently writing two books on Kennedy's connections to Louisiana. "And besides, Adlai Stevenson had already run against (Eisenhower) in 1952, so they trotted him out there again in 1956. They realized there had to be some kind of change."

That change came in the shape of young, charismatic Kennedy. He and his assistant/adviser Theodore Sorenson "made a couple of visits -- at least three -- to Mr. Gravel's suite in the Palmer House Hotel," recalled Des Marais, a Louisiana political organizer, in an oral history interview March 9, 1966.

Whatever happened in those meetings was impressive, and a handful of the delegates "had rather a bitter fight" convincing everyone that Louisiana should pull for Kennedy in the vice-presidential nomination, according to Gravel's own testimony in an oral history interview May 23, 1967.

We "really did battle with our own governor," Gravel said, explaining the delegates "felt so strongly about Sen. Kennedy that they were willing to incur to some extent the political wrath of Earl Long."

Louisiana's support wasn't enough that year, and Kennedy fell short of the nomination, claiming 589 votes to Kefauver's 755-1/2. But the seed of friendship between Kennedy and the Louisiana team had already taken root, and the senator appreciated the support he'd received from the southern delegates.

A few nights after the Aug. 17, 1956 vote that kept Kennedy out of the running, Gravel, Des Marais, Reggie and Gov. Earl Long's wife and committeewoman Blanche Long collectively decided Kennedy posed the best option for Democrats to nab the presidency in 1960, according to Des Marais. They would do everything in their power to help him get elected.

In the next few years, the small group informally became Kennedy's cheerleaders in Louisiana. They visited together when Kennedy traveled to New Orleans to speak in support of the Democratic ticket in 1956, and Gravel returned that visit in 1957 or 1958.

The Louisiana group also extended invitations a number of times for Kennedy to speak at various engagements in the state, but it wasn't until March 1, 1959 that Kennedy agreed to it.

Kennedy had invited Gravel, Des Marais and Reggie to his home that afternoon and by the end of that meeting he'd made clear his plans to visit Louisiana.

"'You just tell me what you want me to do,'" Des Marais recalled him saying. "'Put that on our calendar. We're going to Louisiana in the middle of October.'"

Kennedy's trip south would be a short one, but it was jam-packed with enough speeches, appearances and meals to make anyone's head spin.

"What we did was try to get him as much exposure as we could in the day and a half he was going to be in Louisiana," Gravel said.

In mid October of 1959, Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline visited Judge Edmund Reggie in Crowley, Reggie's hometown, attending the International Rice Festival, a parade and a dinner in Kennedy's honor. JFK wearing rice hat, flanked by Edwin Edwards. (Reggie Family Archives Photo)

The official purpose of the trip was "a political 'fact finding' tour of Louisiana," according to The Times-Picayune's Oct. 15, 1959 morning edition, but even then the press widely acknowledged that Kennedy was expected to run for president in 1960.

After months of planning, Kennedy touched down in Baton Rouge, incidentally flying aboard his family's plane, the Caroline, for its maiden voyage. He spoke at the State Capitol in front of a "tremendous sellout crowd," according to Des Marais, and afterwards flew to New Orleans for a Democratic fundraising dinner at the Roosevelt Hotel that night.

Meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy arrived in New Orleans on a commercial flight.

"This was also very important from our standpoint," Des Marais said, highlighting the point that Jackie Kennedy would take the trouble to fly this far south. "We'd never had any wives accompanying anyone to Louisiana before for some reason."

Not yet the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy didn't receive the fanfare or the security team that might later have accompanied her at the airport, but she did have one visitor awaiting her arrival.

"Arriving a few minutes before Mrs. Kennedy at Moisant (Airport) was Teamster boss James Hoffa, arch enemy of her husband," wrote The Times-Picayune reporter B.L. Krebs. "Mrs. Kennedy brushed by Hoffa without a glance."

The interaction wasn't by chance. As Krebs noted, Hoffa had been an enemy of the family since Robert Kennedy had taken an active role in the McLellan Committee, which led investigations into and ultimately regulated labor unions' internal affairs. The committee actions also resulted in the first major case against Hoffa for his role in organized crime.

"Hoffa was just sending a signal ... he was sending a signal to Kennedy, 'I can get this close to your wife,'" Honeycutt said. "It's a veiled threat."

The event that night at the Roosevelt was "a very gala affair" with Al Hirt's band performing, and the always well-dressed Jackie Kennedy appeared in "a black satin cocktail dress with shoes and handbag to match," according to Krebs.

At a $50-a-plate fund-raising dinner at the Roosevelt hotel Oct. 15, 1959, a photo was taken showing, from left, Ralph N. Jackson, Sen. John F. Kennedy, Sen. Russell B. Long and National committeeman Camille F. Gravel Jr.

The dinner was a hit, and Des Marais noted Kennedy "had probably shaken hands with practically every one of the 1,000 (people) who paid" the $100 per plate. His speech that night touched on both national and international policy, in some ways sounding more the campaign speech than a bid to raise money for his party.

Following the dinner, the Kennedys were invited into the hotel's International Suite, where local performers, including "the two girls that play the piano at Pat O'Brien's," entertained a small crowd. The group partied late, heading to bed at about 2 a.m., but managed to wake early Saturday for a meeting with a group of the state's African American Democratic party leaders.

Late night or no, Kennedy didn't slow down. From the meeting in New Orleans, he flew to Oakbourne Country Club in Lafayette for a quick lunch and speech before driving to Crowley, where he and Jackie served as guests of honor at the International Rice Festival. A motorcade of 16 white Cadillacs drove Kennedy and his entourage into the heavily crowded town, packed with what was then the festival's largest crowd ever of roughly 125,000 people.

With the program ready to begin at the podium in the center of Crowley, Kennedy asked his wife to say a few words in French to the gathered crowd of Cajuns. She at first resisted, but Edmund Reggie, who had accompanied the couple throughout the weekend, introduced her anyway at Kennedy's request, according to Honeycutt.

"So she gets up there and, in French, she recounts a story about how when she was a little girl, her father had told her that Louisiana was way down south, but it ... was a little part of France, and she had been in love with it ever since," says Honeycutt. "Well, what do you think? I mean, the house comes down."

Kennedy followed his wife with his own speech -- in English -- about various political issues, including the rising tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, but he hardly needed to speak. Following Jackie's story, the crowd was already sold.

In mid October of 1959, Sen. John F. Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline visited Judge Edmund Reggie in Crowley, Reggie's hometown, attending the International Rice Festival, a parade and a dinner in Kennedy's honor. Jackie stands to the side as speeches are made. (Reggie Family Archives Photo)

"It was a real spectacle and we had a real star and it was a really good production. It really was," Gravel said. "It was a very successful production that went on. At every stage it just did us some good."

The pair had another quick engagement that evening at the Pioneer Club in Lake Charles, but the Kennedys managed to be airborne on the Caroline by 10 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 16, 1959.

"We were plowing the fertile field," Gravel said of the trip. No one involved had any illusions as to what the purpose of the trip was: Kennedy was beginning to define his presidential campaign. Every detail was planned to put the senator in positions and cities that would be the most helpful to him landing votes the following year.

"We weren't trying to break any new ground in areas where it was real tough. Therefore, when he went to New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Crowley and Lake Charles, he was doing a pretty good job of covering the southern part of the state where she could be expected to develop the most strength," Gravel said.

Nearly 80 days later, Kennedy officially announced that he was running for president.

The campaign was a tough one and religion did become an issue, which frames the reason Kennedy unofficially kicked off his campaign in Louisiana.

Even during the 1956 election, Des Marais noted Kennedy's religion could be a boon in south Louisiana.

"From the standpoint of the Louisiana delegation (choosing Kennedy) was very logical because Louisiana has about a 33 percent Catholic population," Des Marais said. "The Catholic population includes the part of the population that is in the highest segment of the voter group."

If nothing else, there is one clear point in the 1960 presidential election: it was close. Kennedy won with 34,220,984 votes. Nixon lost with 34,108,157, a difference of just 112,827 votes.

Specifically in Louisiana, Kennedy earned a staggering 407,339 votes, while Nixon managed 230,980 votes.

Ultimately, Kennedy's 1959 trip to Louisiana wasn't an official campaign stop, but it had all the trappings of one. The only thing missing was an official announcement.

"It certainly was one of the most spectacular political tours I've seen in terms of somebody who was not a candidate," said Des Marais. "It convinced me. If I ever had any doubts that Kennedy should be the nominee, or any of us had ever, by that time that convinced us that, as far as Louisiana was concerned, any other candidate would be totally unsatisfactory by comparison."

Editor's note: This story has been changed to reflect that Jacqueline Kennedy that was not born in Nova Scotia. NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune regrets the error.