"American Tragedy: The Kennedy Assassination"
Uploaded by embryb on Dec 02, 2000
Where were you November 22, 1963? Any and every American old enough to mourn, to feel sorrow remember where they were and what they were doing when they received the news that President John F. Kennedy had been murdered. My mother was only three and she remembers the day. She was in the living room of her childhood home when a weeping neighbor called my Grandmother and broke the news. The telephone call was the beginning of a chain reaction that sent the entire house into uncontrollable sobbing. The event had that effect on the entire nation. Men and women, Democrats and Republicans, adults and children mourned the loss of their fallen leader.
President Johnson, the Warren Commission, and every fascinated watcher-on in the world would closely scrutinize that day and the following events. The facts of the day are still hotly contested even now. Politicians have made their careers on the case. Conspiracy theorists have had a field day writing books, accusing anyone and everyone of planing the assassination. This paper’s purpose is to inform you on the known facts of the event, including the reason for President Kennedy’s visit, the parade through down-town Dallas, and the emergency trip to the hospital. The Warren Commission’s report to the President will be summarized and many conspiracy theories will be established.
President and Mrs. Kennedy arrived in Dallas at 11:40AM CST on Friday, November 22, 1963. The couple had been in San Antonio, the first leg of a two day trip through the state, where they met with Vice-president Johnson and Texas Governor Connally. The Texas trip was planned in hopes of reviving the President’s popularity in Texas after it was hurt during the election of 1960. Until midmorning, cloudy skies had threatened to cancel the motorcade-style parade that was planned for the day. The motorcade would travel from Love Field, where the President’s plane had landed, through Dallas on a previously publicized route to the Trade Mart where a luncheon in honor of the President had been planned, (The Warren Commission, pg. 2). The motorcade consisted of the president’s car, followed by a car designate the “Presidential follow-up” which carried secret service members. Behind that was another open roofed car carrying Vice-president Lyndon Johnson and Texas Governor Connally and their wives. Following the vice-president’s car was another follow-up car and several cars and buses with dignitaries and press representatives.
The motorcade followed its...