On Friday, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy
was shot as he rode in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas,
Texas; he died shortly thereafter. The thirty-fifth president was
forty-six years old and had served less than three years in office.
During that short time, Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, became immensely popular both at home and abroad. President John F. Kennedy, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front. U.S. Navy photograph, 1961. Prints & Photographs Division.For the next several days, stunned Americans gathered around their
television sets as regular programming yielded to nonstop coverage of
the assassination and funeral. From their living rooms they watched Mrs.
Kennedy, still wearing her blood-stained suit, return to Washington
with the president’s body. The President’s Car, Carrying the Wounded President John F. Kennedy, Speeds Toward Parkland Hospital. United Press International, Nov. 23, 1963. New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Prints & Photographs DivisionMany witnessed the November 24 murder of Kennedy’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Viewers also followed the saddled, but riderless, horse in the funeral
cortege from the White House to the U.S. Capitol, where Kennedy lay in
state. They saw the president’s young son step forward on his third
birthday to salute as his father’s coffin was borne to Arlington
National Cemetery. Robert E. Lee’s Onetime Home, Arlington House, looms above the Kennedy Family Gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery. Carol M. Highsmith, photographer, [between 1980 and 2006]. Highsmith (Carol M.) Archive. Prints & Photographs DivisionTelevision played a significant role in Americans’ collective
mourning. For the first time, the majority of citizens witnessed the
ceremonies surrounding the death of a beloved leader, creating a shared
experience of the tragedy. Even now, television programming maintains
public memory of the assassination by transmitting vivid images from
those difficult days to successive generations. Despite the intimate experience of events surrounding the death of
John F. Kennedy, the nation failed to achieve closure. Oswald never
confessed, and the facts of the case remain mysterious. The Warren Commission’s conclusion
that Oswald acted alone failed to satisfy the public. In 1976, the
House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Assassinations reopened
the investigation of the murder. The Committee reported that Lee Harvey
Oswald probably was part of a conspiracy that may have involved
organized crime. Interest in the assassination remains acute. Congress enacted the
President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act on
October 26, 1992. Signed by President George H. W. Bush, the legislation
opened most government records to the public and facilitated use by
designating the National Archives and Records Administration sole repository of government files pertaining to the assassination.
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