On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his wife rode in a motorcade. In the car with them was the governor of Texas, John Connally and his wife. As they were driving down the streets of Dallas, people cheered and waved at them, all hoping to shake the president's hand. All of a sudden, gunshots rang out. Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin, was waiting on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. As the motorcade was driving by, Oswald fired three shots. Two of them hit President Kennedy in the head and neck. One hit Governor Connally, who survived.
A few hours after being rushed to the hospital, Kennedy was pronounced dead.
Oswald was taken to jail by Dallas police, but when they were moving him to a different location, he was shot and killed by a man named Jack Ruby. Now that he was dead, it was harder to find out if he had acted alone, or planned the assassination in a group.
Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States. While he was president, he created a special commission to investigate the assassination. The leader of this commission was Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. At the end of the investigation, the committee had found no evidence that Oswald had acted with others, so they said that he acted alone. However, we may never know the full story of the assassination because Oswald cannot speak for himself.
Because there were many oddities regarding JFK's assassination, this event has bolstered the creation of many conspiracy theories. Although I wouldn't go so far as to adamantly believe any specific one, I will say poor judgement and lack of communication considerably aided Oswald's success at assassinating JFK. The secret service chose a route for the motorcade that had considerable amounts of turns, which would make the pace slow and the president vulnerable to attacks. The route also passed under 20,000 windows, which the secret service decided not to inspect. This is especially ironic considering Oswald, who was under active surveillance by the FBI in Dallas due to his violent past, worked in a building whose window overlooked the route.
ReplyDeleteThe assassination of JFK was a big factor into the Civil Rights movement. He supported MLK and his movements down south and also became the first president to ever pass a law that granted civil rights to the african-americans in America. Linden B. Johnson took over as vice president after Kennedy's assassination. Johnson was a not-very well known Texas man who did not have much of a role behind Kennedy. No one had many ideas as to how he was going to treat the Civil Rights movement.
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