John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the
United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an
open-top convertible.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her
husband on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas Governor
John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of
downtown Dallas on November 22. Sitting in a Lincoln convertible, the Kennedys
and Connallys waved at the large and enthusiastic crowds gathered along the
parade route. As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building
at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three shots from the sixth
floor, fatally wounding President Kennedy and seriously injuring Governor
Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas’ Parkland
Hospital. He was 46.
Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was three cars behind
President Kennedy in the motorcade, was sworn in as the 36th president of the
United States at 2:39 p.m. He took the presidential oath of office aboard Air
Force One as it sat on the runway at Dallas Love Field airport. The swearing in
was witnessed by some 30 people, including Jacqueline Kennedy, who was still
wearing clothes stained with her husband’s blood. Seven minutes later, the
presidential jet took off for Washington.
The next day, November 23, President Johnson issued his
first proclamation, declaring November 25 to be a day of national mourning for
the slain president. On that Monday, hundreds of thousands of people lined the
streets of Washington to watch a horse-drawn caisson bear Kennedy’s body from
the Capitol Rotunda to St. Matthew’s Catholic Cathedral for a requiem Mass. The
solemn procession then continued on to Arlington National Cemetery, where
leaders of 99 nations gathered for the state funeral. Kennedy was buried with full
military honors on a slope below Arlington House, where an eternal flame was
lit by his widow to forever mark the grave.
Lee Harvey Oswald, born in New Orleans in 1939, joined
the U.S. Marines in 1956. He was discharged in 1959 and nine days later left
for the Soviet Union, where he tried unsuccessfully to become a citizen. He
worked in Minsk and married a Soviet woman and in 1962 was allowed to return to
the United States with his wife and infant daughter. In early 1963, he bought a
.38 revolver and rifle with a telescopic sight by mail order, and on April 10
in Dallas he allegedly shot at and missed former U.S. Army general Edwin
Walker, a figure known for his extreme right-wing views. Later that month,
Oswald went to New Orleans and founded a branch of the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee, a pro-Castro organization. In September 1963, he went to Mexico
City, where investigators allege that he attempted to secure a visa to travel
to Cuba or return to the USSR. In October, he returned to Dallas and took a job
at the Texas School Book Depository Building.
Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald killed
a policeman who questioned him on the street near his rooming house in Dallas.
Thirty minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police
responding to reports of a suspect. He was formally arraigned on November 23
for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit.
On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of
the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd
of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness
his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd
and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby,
who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the
motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged
with first-degree murder.
Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein,
operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to
organized crime. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and
many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy.
In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds
that his great grief over Kennedy’s murder had caused him to suffer
“psychomotor epilepsy” and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found Ruby
guilty of “murder with malice” and sentenced him to die.
In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the
decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that
Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January
1967, while awaiting a new trial, to be held in Wichita Falls, Ruby died of
lung cancer in a Dallas hospital.
 |
| Kennedy's Son Salute |
The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded
that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic
or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm
conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the
event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a
preliminary report that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a
conspiracy” that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The
committee’s findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be
widely disputed.
0 comments:
Post a Comment