John Fitzgerald Kennedy also known by his initials as JFK and often referred by his nickname as Jack, was the 35th president of the United States of America. He was the youngest person to assume the presidency by election and the youngest president at the end of his tenure that is from 1961 until his assassination in 1963.[1] In this article, we inform our readers how the assassination took place.
“After conducting some 25,000 interviews and running down tens of thousands of investigative leads, the FBI found that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. The Warren Commission, which spent nearly a year carefully studying the assassination, agreed.”[2]
On November 21, 1963, President John F. Kennedy with his wife Jacqueline Kennedy took a fundraising trip to five cities for two days. While in Texas, Kennedy and his wife with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife Nellie Connally were in a convertible vehicle where JFK was shot by former United States Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald shot Kennedy from a nearby Texas School Book Depository. Kennedy was rushed to hospital where he was officially declared dead within 30 minutes of the shooting that was at 1:00 PM.
“Schieffer was working the Star-Telegram’s overnight police beat. He wasn’t assigned to cover the crime of the century. As a junior reporter, he was stuck in the newsroom answering phones.
“I picked up the phone and a woman said, ‘Is there anybody there who can give me a ride to Dallas?’ and I almost hung up the phone,” Schieffer recalled. “And I said, ‘Lady, you know, we’re not running a taxi service here. And besides, the president’s been shot.’ And she says, ‘Yes, I heard it on the radio. I think my son is the one they’ve arrested.'”
It was Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother.”[3]
The trip was also likely intended as an attempt to help bring together a feuding Democratic Party in a state that was vital to Kennedy’s chances for reelection in 1964.[4] “Although Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a liberal icon, had been confronted by highly agitated protesters a month earlier during a visit to Dallas—a city with a right-leaning press and the locus of much anti-Kennedy feeling—the president was warmly welcomed at his first two stops, San Antonio and Houston, as well as at Fort Worth, where the presidential party spent the night of November 21.”[5]
After the assassination, Oswald returned home to retrieve a pistol; he shot lone Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit shortly afterwards.[6] “Around 70 minutes after Kennedy and Connally were shot, Oswald was apprehended by the Dallas Police Department and charged under Texas state law with the murders of Kennedy and Tippit. At 11:21 a.m. on November 24, 1963, as live television cameras covered Oswald’s being moved through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, he was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Like Kennedy, Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald’s murder, though the decision was overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial.”[7]
“John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963. Almost 30 years later, Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) collection. The resulting Collection consists of more than 5 million pages of assassination-related records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artefacts (approximately 2,000 cubic feet of records). Most of the records are open for research.”[8]
[1] "John F. Kennedy". whitehousehistory.org. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association. [2] JFK Assassination — FBI [3] Bob Schieffer recalls driving with Lee Harvey Oswald's mother to police station after JFK assassination - CBS News [4] Assassination of John F. Kennedy | Summary, Facts, Aftermath, & Conspiracy | Britannica [5] Ibid. [6] Assassination of John F. Kennedy - Wikipedia [7] Ibid. [8] The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection | National Archives
