Cooper Lewis ‘26, Copy Editor
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy stepped off Air Force One at Dallas Love Field airport in Dallas, Texas. When that exact aircraft left just a few hours later, however, there was a new president, and the nation was forever changed.
By the fall of 1963, Kennedy was preparing for his next presidential campaign that following year. Despite not formally announcing his presidency, it was clear to all, even himself, that he would be running again. By the end of September, the president had traveled west, speaking in nine different states in less than a week. The trip was meant to put a spotlight on natural resources and conservation efforts, as well as education, national security, and world peace. A month later, Kennedy addressed democratic gatherings in Boston and Philadelphia, signifying the importance of winning the primarily republican states of Florida and Texas. Kennedy planned to swing through Texas next, followed by his wife, Jacqueline, in her first public appearance since the death of their son Patrick that August prior.
After a successful first stop in San Antonio on Nov. 21, the president and his wife landed in Fort Worth and spent the next morning addressing a large crowd outside the Texas Hotel where they had stayed. Afterward, Kennedy spoke at breakfast, focusing on military preparedness. When that concluded, Kennedy and his entourage left for Dallas. After a thirteen-minute flight to Love Field, the Kennedies disembarked and immediately made their way towards a large crowd of onlookers, Mrs. Kennedy even receiving a bouquet of roses from them. After spending several minutes shaking hands, they were ushered towards their motorcade.
The group left the airport and began their ten-mile route that would end at the Trade Mart, where the president was scheduled to speak at a lunch. Crowds of thousands of excited people lined the streets to see the handsome, young president and his beautiful wife pass by. Around 12:30 p.m., the motorcade turned off Main Street and onto Dealey Plaza. While passing the Texas School Book Depository, shots rang out. There were three in rapid succession. Before anyone could make out what had just occurred, the president slumped over in his seat, blood gushing from a severe head wound. What had happened? Nobody saw. As singer-songwriter Bob Dylan would later put in his song “Murder Most Foul,” a ballad depicting the assassination, “thousands were watching and no one saw a thing.” The motorcade was hastily driven off towards Parkland Memorial Hospital, where the young president was pronounced dead at 1:00 p.m.. He was 46.
Immediately after the shots rang out from the School Book Depository, police were dispatched and made their way to the location the shots came from. At a window on the sixth floor, they recovered the supposed weapon, but no shooter. Who were they? Where had they gone? For now, these questions were unanswered. Fortunately not for long, as just a mere hour after the assassination, a man by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested just a few blocks away in connection to the assassination. Oswald would never get a trial, as two days later on Nov. 24, he would be shot and killed by Jack Ruby, a Texas native, while in the basement of the Dallas Police Department, leaving many questions unanswered.
The assassination as a whole seemed suspicious in the eyes of many Americans—some things merely did not add up. Factors such as a large tree blocking the supposed window Oswald took the shot from, or that in the time it took the three fatal shots to ring out, even the best gunman the government had to offer could not get off one, meaning there was no way Oswald had acted alone. Over the years, the evidence was stacked, and many who were there that day came out and told their stories. On top of this, public distrust of the government began to skyrocket. Many found the conclusion reached by the Warren Commission—a group put together to investigate the assassination—to be distrustful and sketchy. But did the assassination lay the groundwork for distrust in the government that we see today? To many, yes. Within days after the assassination, people rushed to the scene to investigate and uncover any and all details. Soon, thousands of conspiracies were developed, and the American people fed into them.
Social scientists have been able to prove through tests that people do not necessarily wait for facts, they merely go with what their gut tells them, something that was very common in the months and years after the assassination occurred. The conflicting information on the assassination did not help the matter either, as it has gotten to the point where people simply do not know what to believe. “Americans’ trust in institutions and leaders has occasionally returned toward the heights it reached in the two decades before Kennedy’s death, primarily in periods of apparent peace and prosperity during the Reagan and Clinton presidencies,” the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said. “But the default mode seems to be distrust. To an unnerving extent, America is still living in the wake of the murder of John F. Kennedy.” It is entirely believable that Kennedy’s assassination helped pave the way for an alternative media ecosystem and fake news that is entirely present in today’s world. Did it prove how easily people will feed into what they read and what’s exposed to them? In 1964, within a month of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was in fact the lone gunman, many believe this is the moment in our nation’s history where government distrust was first born within the American public, something that would last for the next 60 years.
Lyon Life 