John F. Kennedy

I

Test Ban Treaty

Kennedy's prospects in foreign affairs improved in 1963. During a successful European tour he was warmly received in West Berlin, where he pledged continuing support for West Germany. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin,” he declared. “And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’.” In June he delivered an innovative foreign policy speech calling for an end to the Cold War. The two superpowers agreed to establish a “hot line” between Moscow and Washington, D.C., to facilitate communication in times of crisis. On August 5, 1963, the United States signed a limited nuclear test ban treaty with the United Kingdom and the USSR. The treaty outlawed nuclear explosions in the atmosphere or underwater, but allowed them underground. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the treaty was an important step that Kennedy called “a historic landmark in man’s age-old pursuit of peace”. He considered it the greatest single achievement of his administration.

V

Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

On November 22, 1963, President and Mrs Kennedy were in Dallas, Texas, trying to win support in a state that Kennedy had barely carried at the 1960 election. On his way to lunch in downtown Dallas, Kennedy and his wife sat in an open convertible at the head of a motorcade. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was two cars behind the president, and the Texas governor John B. Connally and his wife were sitting with the Kennedys. The large crowds were enthusiastic.

As the motorcade approached an underpass, three shots were fired in rapid succession. One bullet passed through the president’s neck and struck Governor Connally in the back. A second bullet struck the president in the head; a third one missed the motorcade. Kennedy’s car sped to Parkland Hospital, where at 1pm he was pronounced dead. He had never regained consciousness.

Less than two hours after the shooting, aboard the presidential plane at Dallas airport, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th president of the United States.

A

Lee Harvey Oswald: The Assassin

The bullets that killed Kennedy were fired from a sixth-storey window of the nearby warehouse of the Texas School Book Depository. That afternoon, Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US marine who was employed in the warehouse, was arrested in a Dallas cinema and charged with the murder. Two days later, as the suspect was being transferred, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby sprang out from a group of reporters and, as millions watched on television, fired a revolver into Oswald’s left side. Oswald died in the same hospital to which the president had been taken.

B

National Mourning for President Kennedy

On November 24 Kennedy’s body was carried on a horsedrawn carriage from the White House to the Rotunda of the Capitol. Hundreds of thousands of people filed past the coffin of the assassinated president. A state funeral was held the next day. Representatives of 92 nations attended. As many as 1 million people were believed to have lined the streets of Washington as the funeral procession made its way to Arlington National Cemetery. The grave is marked by an eternal flame.

C

The Warren Commission

Five days after the funeral, President Johnson appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren as chairman of a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s death. The findings of the commission were announced nearly a year later on September 27, 1964. The investigators found no evidence of conspiracy in the assassination. Their report concluded that “the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald”. Although numerous conspiracy theories have been expounded, concerning variously the Mafia, Cuban exiles, the FBI, or the CIA, it is now widely accepted by historians and other experts that the Commission’s conclusions were correct.