JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATED:

November 22, 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.