The Assassination of JFK

At exactly 12:30 p.m., on November 22, 1963, President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. America and the world were stunned. The fallout of these events would have political, historical, and social implications that are still relevant today; however, those fatal shots were just the beginning of the story. In this post, take a glimpse at what happened after JFK was assassinated.

At the sound of the first shot, three shots were fired at the president’s convertible Lincoln Continental. Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was sitting on the bumper of the follow-up vehicle, left his spot and dashed for the presidential limousine, intending to protect the president with his own body. Still, two more shots rang out before he could get there, the third and final shot presumed to have fractured the president’s skull after striking the president’s wife. Agent Hill was eventually able to grab hold of the car’s back and pull Jackie Kennedy back into the back seat just as the car sped away.

Jackie talked to her husband in an interview on the way to Parkland Hospital, saying things like “Jack, can you hear me?” and “I love you, Jack” for his part agent. Hill would later say that if he had been stationed on the president’s bumper rather than the one behind him, he would have arrived in time to save JFK.

As Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at the motorcade from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, he descended a nearby stairwell. He met his supervisor and a Dallas police officer in a second-floor lunchroom ninety seconds later. Although there was no reason to be suspicious of him, Oswald was allowed to leave three minutes after the shooting. When Oswald left the building, he boarded a city bus, but the chaotic aftermath of the assassination had caused traffic, so he quickly got off and hailed a taxi, which he rode to his rooming house in the nearby Oak Cliff neighborhood. The building’s housekeeper noticed him going into his room and emerging just a few moments later, wearing a jacket.

FBI Head, J Edgar Hoover, was the person in charge. “I have bad news for you, he said flatly. The president has been fired.” Bobby tried to find out how severe the injury was, but Hoover would only say that he thought it was fatal and that he would call him until he had more details, then he hung up.

The limo arrived at Parkland Hospital at 8:00 p.m., and President Kennedy was rushed into trauma room number one chief resident Ronald James, where the team performed a tracheotomy, massaged the president’s chest, and put an IV into his shoulder but it was too late minutes later.

When JFK was pronounced dead, his body was placed in a hastily acquired coffin and loaded onto a gurney. When Jackie and the president’s entourage attempted to take the body with them, they were confronted by Dallas County Medical Examiner Earl Rose. Earl Rose insisted that an autopsy be performed in the county where the shooting occurred technically a different county. 

On the other hand, Jackie Kennedy tried to leave and would not leave without her husband’s body. Rose refused to budge, and the situation became tense. According to some sources, the Secret Service also drew its arms to push Rose out of the way. Whatever the truth is, the casket was whisked away to a Love Field airport, loaded into Air Force One, and flew out of the jurisdiction shortly.

Who was JFK’s Assassin?

In the year 1939, Lee Harvey Oswald was born in New Orleans. Two months before he was born, his father died of a heart attack. After spending time in orphanages as a child, he moved to New York with his mother when he was 12 years old, where he was sent to a youth detention facility for truancy. At this period, he developed an interest in Socialism. After returning to New Orleans, Oswald enlisted in the Marines in 1956, earning a sharpshooter qualification and learning about Marxism.

Since receiving an early honorable discharge from the Marines in 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald was a defector to the Soviet Union for two and a half years.

Oswald would obtain a rifle with a telescopic scope and a.38 revolvers via mail a year back. In the same year, he reportedly threatened to assassinate retired US Major General Edwin A. Walker, a vocal opponent of Communism. On a trip to Mexico City in 1963, Oswald was refused entry to Cuba and the Soviet Union. He relocated to Dallas and began working at the Texas School Book Depository.

What happened to JFK’s Assassin?

Oswald was led to the county jail from Dallas Police Headquarters on Sunday morning, November 24, in front of the public. “The Dallas police were highly concerned about their prisoner’s safety,” said KRLD radio correspondent Bob Huffaker, who was there. “We knew Oswald was the 20th century’s most despised suspect.”

Jack Ruby used a small-caliber revolver to shoot Oswald in the stomach. Oswald died at Parkland Hospital, the same hospital where John F. Kennedy had died two days before.

On November 26, Jack Ruby was charged with the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald and sentenced to death by electric chair. The decision was reversed on appeal, but Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism caused by lung cancer in 1967, precluding a new hearing.

JFK’s Funeral

On the same day, President John F. Kennedy’s flag-draped coffin was transported from the White House to the Capitol on a caisson pulled by six grey horses and one black horse without a pilot. The escort and other ritual features were modeled after Abraham Lincoln’s funeral at Mrs. Kennedy’s behest.

The president was reposed in Arlington National Cemetery on November 25, 1963. Heads of state and officials from over 100 nations attended the funeral, with millions more watching on tv. Following that, Mrs. Kennedy and her husband’s brothers, Robert and Edward, lit an everlasting flame at the gravesite.

The salute to his father was offered by little John F. Kennedy Jr., who was celebrating his third birthday. Also, their daughter Caroline standing next to her mother at the president’s bier and Jacqueline Kennedy’s exceptional grace and composure were perhaps the most memorable photographs of the day.