KENNEDY DEAD!
The final edition of the Newark Star-Ledger for Saturday, November 23, 1963 used its largest typeface to announce what the entire world already knew, that President John F. Kennedy had been killed and Lyndon Johnson sworn in as President of the United States. The same headline was repeated by newspapers around the country. By the time the Ledger-Star went to press the late President’s body had been returned to Washington, disembarked at Andrews Air Force Base accompanied by his blood-spattered widow, an event shown on live television. Indeed for all of that Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, television showed little else but the events surrounding the assassination of the President.
Despite the intense media crush which surrounded the events of the Kennedy assassination, facts emerged slowly, and rumors of others being involved besides the suspect in custody, Lee Harvey Oswald, abounded. When Oswald was shot and silenced the rumors intensified. On the same Saturday that the Newark Star-Ledger announced the President’s death, Dan Rather, then a CBS correspondent in Dallas, reported the existence of the Zapruder film, and having seen it, its content including the violent motion of the Presidents head backwards when impacted by one of the shots.
Eyewitness interviews revealed reports of shots coming from multiple directions, but no other suspects were announced and by Saturday the Dallas Police were announcing their certainty that Oswald was the sole assassin. There was at the time no federal statute making it a crime to assassinate the President, the murder was a local case, the jurisdiction in which it would be tried was Dallas. Eventually two men would be tried in connection with the Kennedy assassination, Jack Ruby, convicted for murdering Oswald, and Clayton Shaw, acquitted in New Orleans of conspiracy. For over five decades the assassination has been tried in the court of public opinion, and the jury has yet to reach a verdict.
One week following the assassination, in response to the rumors and conflicting statements of so many, Lyndon Johnson established the Warren Commission to answer all the questions regarding Kennedy’s murder. Its 888 page report released in September 1964 has been analyzed and dissected by conspiracy theorists, Attorney General Ramsey Clark in 1968, the Rockefeller Commission in 1975, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978-79. The result of the HSCA was that Oswald fired the fatal shot, but that another gunmen fired at the President from behind a picket fence, and missed. Eyewitnesses at the scene in 1963 had informed Dallas Police, FBI agents, and Secret Service agents of a gunshot from the picket fence, but their reports were dismissed.
Since the assassination, the murder and President Kennedy himself have become divisive subjects among Americans. Many dismiss JFK as nothing more than a womanizer, his presidency as inconsequential, his political skills simply being his father’s money. Others cite his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis as evidence of his presidential skills and abilities. Some believe Oswald acted alone, others think the President was killed by conspirators. Fiction, innuendo, prejudice, and time have obscured the facts of Kennedy’s life as well as his death. None of that was known when the Newark Star-Ledger went to press that Saturday in November, unable to do anything but express its shock that Kennedy was dead.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“The Vancouver Daily World” entry, City of Vancouver Archives, online
“Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific 1941-1942”, by Ian W. Toll, 2012
“Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino”, by Emily Leider, 2003
“America First: The Battle against Intervention 1940-1941”, by Wayne S. Cole, 1953
“The Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters”, by John Toland, 1972
“Dewey Defeats Truman”, by Tim Jones, The Chicago Tribune, online
“Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon”, by Sarah Loff, NASA, online
“How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed”, by Adm. Hyman T. Rickover USN (ret), 1976
“Decade of Disillusionment: The Kennedy-Johnson Years”, by Jim F. Heath, 1976