“It all began so beautifully,” Lady Bird remembered. “After a drizzle in the morning, the sun came out bright and beautiful. We were going into Dallas.” It was November 22, 1963, and President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy were visiting Texas. They were there, in the home state of Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, to try to heal a rift in the Democratic Party. The white supremacists who made up the base of the party’s southern wing loathed the Kennedy administration’s support for Black rights.
I was only 4, but I will never forget this being on the television for what seemed all day and all night. It is probably the only thing I really remember from age 4, but it truly affected me and it still does. We have to take seriously the calls for violence against judges, politicians, poll workers and others.
“I want them to see what they’ve done to Jack”…..Jackie was right about the brutal photos of President Kennedy’s death….and the ‘caked blood’ on her suit…and we REALLY need in the next 11 months to ‘see to it’ that we help US voters to SEE what is at stake in this presidential election! and there should be no ignorance about the price we will pay if Trump and those white supremicists win!
I remember the events as if yesterday. But this recounting of the hatred against Kennedy was a startling reminder of how the civil rights issue divided our country and lingers to this day.
The memory is seared into the brains and lives of those who were alive at that time. Yes, JFK was a young man, but Jacqueline Kennedy was only 34 years old on that day and publicly led this country through an excruciating time of national grief and mourning with unprecedented poise and grace.
I was 14 and in the ninth grade in Manhattan, NY. I will never forget the day and the ride home on the crosstown bus from my high school Julia Richman. People were openly weeping on the streets of New York. No one was home when I arrived to our new apartment on the Upper West Side. I wasn’t sure what to do, so i wandered down to the street and entered a museum on the corner of Riverside Drive and 103rd Street. There was an exhibit of psychedelic art, with music in each room. A strange way to spend the late afternoon in November, 1963. Lady Bird’s memories were very poignant and have affected me deeply. I hope we are wiser now and will work on turning the tide of history. Happy Thanksgiving, 🍁 Heather and Buddy and to all in this vital community.
Still so fresh. Still causes me to tear up, my throat to tighten. I was 14 years old. John Kennedy was my first political campaign. Then came MLK, Robert Kennedy and many others. Our violent country that continues to kill, and kill and kill.
Thank you. I was 10, in fifth grade, when Kennedy was killed. I remember it vividly, and then later on my entire elementary school filing somberly into the auditorium to watch the funeral procession together on a television someone had brought in. But I am white, raised in a predominantly white small rural town, and I had no sense of the civil rights struggle going on, no idea of the reason Kennedy was in Dallas. It’s taken me all these decades since, and listening to smart historians like you, to understand the causes and the contexts for the history I experienced as a child.
You bring a tear to my eyes. I was 10 and in a catholic school. A nun went from class to class reporting that the president had been shot and to stand and pray. I remember so well. I remember the lonely walk home from school that day. Then sitting in front of the family TV with my sister and crying uncontrollably. Mother came upstairs and tried to say something lighthearted but it didn’t work. Then Walter Cronkite looked at the wall clock or maybe his watch and pronounced the president dead. And my days of innocence ended at that moment and I realized that the world I had been born into was a cruel one. And it has only become more cruel as the decades have passed.
I was in 1st grade in our one room school in Ontario. Our Teacher Mrs Lee broke the news to us. I still remember the incredible amount of sadness that even we as young Canadians felt about his assassination. We mourned with the USA.
Like so many others, I remember the day with crystal clarity too. I was at boarding school in New Hampshire, and one of my friends give us the news in the hallway upstairs just outside my room. It didn't seem possible. It shouldn't happen in the US! Kennedy represented a better way, and no one really knew Johnson at my school. We were plunged into uncertainty and unbearable sadness as the campus came together to watch the news. Still, after all these years, I still have the dream of a better America. Reading about this tragic event makes me more determined than ever to join others to work for a better county, now and next year.
Many of us at Penn walked dazed and weeping in the streets that day and the next, and then the assassin was murdered while in police custody, on live tv. That day began the long painful downfall into the chaos of Viet Nam and the end of feeling safe when on the streets. The catafalque, Jaackie's removal her ring to place it on her dead husband's finger, all haunted us and still do haunt us to some extent.
I was a college freshman sitting in a world history class when someone stuck his head in the door and said, “Kennedy just got shot!” The entire class was in a stupor. There was a history professor named Kennedy and that created some initial confusion! But as we learned from our professor, Dr. Eugene Huck, it was President Kennedy. He quickly dismissed class! Many students and teachers crowded into the student lounge to watch the proceedings on television! That day is embedded in my memory forever!
I was only 4, but I will never forget this being on the television for what seemed all day and all night. It is probably the only thing I really remember from age 4, but it truly affected me and it still does. We have to take seriously the calls for violence against judges, politicians, poll workers and others.
We are still in nut country.
“I want them to see what they’ve done to Jack”…..Jackie was right about the brutal photos of President Kennedy’s death….and the ‘caked blood’ on her suit…and we REALLY need in the next 11 months to ‘see to it’ that we help US voters to SEE what is at stake in this presidential election! and there should be no ignorance about the price we will pay if Trump and those white supremicists win!
I remember the events as if yesterday. But this recounting of the hatred against Kennedy was a startling reminder of how the civil rights issue divided our country and lingers to this day.
The memory is seared into the brains and lives of those who were alive at that time. Yes, JFK was a young man, but Jacqueline Kennedy was only 34 years old on that day and publicly led this country through an excruciating time of national grief and mourning with unprecedented poise and grace.
I was 14 and in the ninth grade in Manhattan, NY. I will never forget the day and the ride home on the crosstown bus from my high school Julia Richman. People were openly weeping on the streets of New York. No one was home when I arrived to our new apartment on the Upper West Side. I wasn’t sure what to do, so i wandered down to the street and entered a museum on the corner of Riverside Drive and 103rd Street. There was an exhibit of psychedelic art, with music in each room. A strange way to spend the late afternoon in November, 1963. Lady Bird’s memories were very poignant and have affected me deeply. I hope we are wiser now and will work on turning the tide of history. Happy Thanksgiving, 🍁 Heather and Buddy and to all in this vital community.
Still so fresh. Still causes me to tear up, my throat to tighten. I was 14 years old. John Kennedy was my first political campaign. Then came MLK, Robert Kennedy and many others. Our violent country that continues to kill, and kill and kill.
No one old enough to remember can forget the exact moment when they heard the news of John Kennedy’s murder. It is burned so deeply into our memories.
And he did not die in vain, unless we forget what he stood for, and the impetus his death gave to the cause of equal rights.
The ugliness of White Supremacy has never been more apparent than in the last seven years. We cannot afford to forget.
Happy Thanksgiving to all, and let’s give thanks to the sacrifice that John Kennedy (and millions more) made to secure the America we live in today!
Thank you. I was 10, in fifth grade, when Kennedy was killed. I remember it vividly, and then later on my entire elementary school filing somberly into the auditorium to watch the funeral procession together on a television someone had brought in. But I am white, raised in a predominantly white small rural town, and I had no sense of the civil rights struggle going on, no idea of the reason Kennedy was in Dallas. It’s taken me all these decades since, and listening to smart historians like you, to understand the causes and the contexts for the history I experienced as a child.
Thank you.
You bring a tear to my eyes. I was 10 and in a catholic school. A nun went from class to class reporting that the president had been shot and to stand and pray. I remember so well. I remember the lonely walk home from school that day. Then sitting in front of the family TV with my sister and crying uncontrollably. Mother came upstairs and tried to say something lighthearted but it didn’t work. Then Walter Cronkite looked at the wall clock or maybe his watch and pronounced the president dead. And my days of innocence ended at that moment and I realized that the world I had been born into was a cruel one. And it has only become more cruel as the decades have passed.
I was in 1st grade in our one room school in Ontario. Our Teacher Mrs Lee broke the news to us. I still remember the incredible amount of sadness that even we as young Canadians felt about his assassination. We mourned with the USA.
Like so many others, I remember the day with crystal clarity too. I was at boarding school in New Hampshire, and one of my friends give us the news in the hallway upstairs just outside my room. It didn't seem possible. It shouldn't happen in the US! Kennedy represented a better way, and no one really knew Johnson at my school. We were plunged into uncertainty and unbearable sadness as the campus came together to watch the news. Still, after all these years, I still have the dream of a better America. Reading about this tragic event makes me more determined than ever to join others to work for a better county, now and next year.
I really do wonder sometimes how America would have turned out had JFK not been assassinated. That is a scenario that really does defy my imagination.
Many of us at Penn walked dazed and weeping in the streets that day and the next, and then the assassin was murdered while in police custody, on live tv. That day began the long painful downfall into the chaos of Viet Nam and the end of feeling safe when on the streets. The catafalque, Jaackie's removal her ring to place it on her dead husband's finger, all haunted us and still do haunt us to some extent.
Does this level of stoic dignity still exist? Now there is Marjorie...
I was a college freshman sitting in a world history class when someone stuck his head in the door and said, “Kennedy just got shot!” The entire class was in a stupor. There was a history professor named Kennedy and that created some initial confusion! But as we learned from our professor, Dr. Eugene Huck, it was President Kennedy. He quickly dismissed class! Many students and teachers crowded into the student lounge to watch the proceedings on television! That day is embedded in my memory forever!