Volume 12 , Issue 47

This Day In History - November 22

1963 -- 47 years ago, president John F Kennedy was assassinated in downtown Dallas Texas. 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 as the Kennedys and Connallys waved at the large, enthusiastic crowds along the parade route.

As Kennedy's 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.

Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Lee Harvey Oswald (born in New Orleans in 1939) 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, 1963, Oswald was brought to the basement of the dallas police headquarters on his way to a secure county jail, when Jack Ruby (Jacob Rubenstein) emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded Oswald with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.

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.

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.

Was it a lone gunman of Lee Harvey Oswald? OR ... Was it a conspiracy? Will we ever know for sure?   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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