1963 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.
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.
