November 22:

1963 : John F. Kennedy assassinated

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.

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