November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy Is Assassinated

November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson becomes President.

With the 1964 Presidential election coming up, and the 1960 election having been close, Kennedy wanted to be sure of as many States as he could. And, with a split in the Democratic Party in the State of Texas, a State then with 25 Electoral Votes, he knew that was a State he had to hang onto.

He visited San Antonio and Houston the day before, settled for the night in Fort Worth, and made the short flight to Dallas the next morning. He rode in an open car, a 1961 Lincoln Continental limousine, with the protective "bubble top" removed, so the crowds along the motorcade route could see him.

He was in the back seat, with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, who was wearing a pink suit, complete with a pillbox hat. In the middle seat were the Governor of Texas, John Connally, and his wife, Nellie. In the front seat were 2 Secret Service Agents: William Greer, the driver, and Clint Hill.

In the car behind them sat Vice President Johnson, his wife Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, and Senator Ralph Yarborough. (Yarborough's wife, Opal, was not there.) Yarborough, a liberal, and Connally, more conservative on some issues, were seen as the reason behind the intra-State Party split. The other Senate seat for Texas, which Johnson had held until the 1960 election, had been won in a special election by a Republican, John Tower. He was not present.

There was concern that there might be trouble in Dallas: A month earlier, Adlai Stevenson, America's Ambassador to the United Nations, was hit with picket signs on a visit to the city. JFK told Jackie it was "real nut country."

But the reception for the Kennedys seemed to be wonderful. There was at least one Confederate flag along the route, but it was mostly American flags and signs of support, including a few for Jackie.

At 12:30 PM, Central Standard Time -- 1:30 Eastern -- as the limo went down Elm Street into Dealey Plaza, about to head under a highway and railroad underpass near Union Station, on its way to the Trade Mart where JFK was to attend a luncheon and deliver a speech, Nellie Connally turned to JFK, and said, "You can't say Dallas hasn't been kind to you today." And he said, "No, I suppose you can't."

(For the number of shots, I'm sticking to the official story, even though, like millions of Americans, I am not entirely convinced of it.)

At that moment, the kindness stopped. A shot rang out. It missed the car completely, and struck a curb, breaking off a piece of concrete that cut a bystander, James Tague, on his face. Tague was a 27-year-old car salesman, originally from Indiana, and later claimed that it was the second shot that wounded him. He published a book, claiming that Johnson was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK, so he could become President himself. He has not been the only person to suggest this, but it seems incredibly unlikely.

A second shot was fired. It hit Kennedy in the back, drilled through his body, and exited through his throat. Some witnesses said they heard him yell, "My God, I'm hit!" But the nature of his wounds calls his continued ability to speak into question. Connally, having turned around after hearing the first shot, was hit in the back by the same bullet. He yelled out, "My God, they're going to kill us all!"

This shot has been called "the magic bullet" by people who don't believe the lone-gunman theory that was later accepted by the Warren Commission. They have used "The Zapruder Film," a silent home movie recorded by Abraham Zapruder, a local clothing manufacturer, to back up their claim. But the wounds caused by that bullet can be accounted for by the varying positions, both horizontal and vertical, of the car's seats.

A third shot was fired. It struck Kennedy in the head, sending it back and to the left. This is the key for people who don't believe the lone-gunman theory: If the shot had come from behind, it would have caused Kennedy to fall forward. Therefore, it had to come from the front and to the right, probably fired from behind a white fence atop what became known as the "grassy knoll" at Dealey Plaza.

Dealey Plaza. The "grassy knoll" is roughly

in the center of the picture, with the white fence behind it.

(The Plaza was named for George Bannerman Dealey, the publisher of The Dallas Morning News from 1926 to his death in 1946.)

Greer sped off to the nearest hospital, which was Parkland Hospital, 4 miles to the northwest. There was nothing the doctors, led by Robert N. McClelland, could do. Father Oscar Huber, a priest at the hospital, gave him the last rites. It was the 4th time he had received them.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was pronounced dead at 1:00 PM -- 2:00 Eastern. NBC was the first network to announce his death to the public, with Frank McGee saying so at 2:35. Walter Cronkite of CBS followed, 3 minutes later.

After being told of JFK's death, Johnson ordered that he be taken back to Air Force One, which was sitting on the tarmac at Love Field, Dallas' main airport at the time. Sarah T. Hughes, whom JFK had appointed a federal Judge on LBJ's recommendation, administered the Oath of Office at 2:39 (3:39 Eastern). She remains the only woman ever to swear a President into office.

Johnson insisted on having the swearing-in photographed, and that Jackie be by his side, to show the peaceful transfer of power. Cecil W. Stoughton, then the official White House photographer, would win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his picture. There is no film of it, although there is a very scratchy audio recording.

Most versions of this photo are in black & white.

This one is probably colorized.

At 1:50 (2:50), Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested at the Texas Theatre. He had been identified as the shooter from the nearby Texas School Book Depository, and had also killed a Dallas police officer, Patrolman J.D. Tippit.

Someone once wrote up a series of "Lincoln-Kennedy Coincidences," some of them erroneous or misleading. (Kennedy did have a secretary named Evelyn Lincoln, who did warn him not to go to Dallas, but Lincoln did not have a secretary named Kennedy, and no one warned him against going to Ford's Theatre.) To me, the most interesting one is that John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in a theater, and was caught in a storehouse (for tobacco on a farm); while Oswald shot Kennedy from the window of a storehouse, and was arrested in a theater. And no one seems to bring up the fact that the car that Kennedy was riding in was a Lincoln.

The murder sent the world into mourning. Everything else, including sports, became secondary to laying the fallen President to rest, and bringing his killer to justice.

Within 48 hours of the assassination, Oswald, 24 years old -- born on October 18, 1939, the same day as Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Mike Ditka -- would be also be murdered. Those who believe he acted alone, and those who believe he couldn't have, each have evidence to back up their theory, but neither has enough information to make it conclusive. There was no trial. We may never know for sure whether he did it alone, or at all.

What we do know is that the assassination of John F. Kennedy still haunts this country. His generation, who grew up in the Great Depression and fought in World War II, never got over it. Their children, who were inspired to public service by JFK, were emotionally scarred for life as well.

The fact that all of Johnson's subsequent achievements as President have been clouded by his failure in the Vietnam War makes it all worse: There is the belief that Kennedy would have handled Vietnam better, and we would have been spared the worst of that war, and spared the Presidency of Richard Nixon, and Watergate, and so many other things.

But we'll never know. The events of November 22, 1963 insured that.

With the Vice Presidency vacant, the next man in the line of succession was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John McCormack, like Kennedy a Bostonian. He was 73 years old, and looked older. Next was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, Carl Hayden of Arizona. And he was 86. Next was the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk.

John W. McCormack

This potential succession situation led to the proposal, and by 1967 the ratification, of what became the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, allowing for the replacement of the Vice President for the remainder of the Presidential term, and also for a Presidential inability to serve short of death.

Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald, died in prison in 1967. Abraham Zapruder died in 1970. President Lyndon Johnson died in 1973. Father Oscar Huber died in 1975. Agent William Greer, the driver, died in 1985. So did Judge Sarah Hughes. Governor John Connally died in 1993. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy died in 1994. Senator Ralph Yarborough died in 1996. Nellie Connally died in 2006. Claudia "Lady Bird" Johnson, the new First Lady, died in 2007. Photographer Cecil Stoughton died in 2008. James Tague, the 3rd wounded man, died in 2014. Dr. Robert McClelland died in 2019. Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent who kept Jackie in the car, was the last living person in the car. As of November 22, 2022, he is still alive.

The Lincoln Continental limousine is now in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, outside Detroit. So is the chair in which Abraham Lincoln was sitting in, in Ford's Theatre in Washington, when he was assassinated.

Within 5 years, his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, would also be assassinated. These murders were mentioned as part of the actions claimed by the Devil, played by Mick Jagger, in The Rolling Stones' 1968 song "Sympathy for the Devil." 

*

November 22, 1963 was a Friday. This was also the day that A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records, a.k.a. The Phil Spector Christmas Album, was released. I have a separate entry for that. Also that day, With the Beatles was released in Britain, later repackaged in the U.S. was Meet the Beatles.

In addition, the pilot episode of the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was being filmed, on the 31st birthday of its star, Robert Vaughn, when the cast and crew received word of the assassination, at which point they stopped, resuming on Tuesday the 26th, after the funeral. The show premiered on NBC on September 22, 1964.

British authors Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis also died on November 22, 1963. Hardly anyone in America noticed.

One more weird thing: Hugh Millen was born that day. Millen played 10 seasons in the NFL, mostly as a backup quarterback. In 1987, he played for the Los Angeles Rams, who represent the city where Kennedy was nominated for President, and where Bobby was assassinated in 1968.

In 1991 and 1992, Millen played for the New England Patriots, who represent the Kennedys' hometown, Boston. In 1993, he played for the Dallas Cowboys, who represent the city where Kennedy died. And the last team to cut him, in 1996, was the New Orleans Saints, who represent the city that was home to one of the major theories about a conspiracy as to Kennedy's assassination.

Also born that day: English soccer defender and manager Tony Mowbray; Brian Robbins, who played Eric Mardian on the ABC sitcom Head of the Class before becoming a major executive at Paramount Pictures; and Kennedy Polamalu, a Samoan whose parents named him for the President, and who went on to become a coach in both college and pro football -- including pulling off the rare feat of having been the offensive coordinator at both Los Angeles arch-rivals, USC (where he was a running back) and UCLA. He is the uncle of Pittsburgh Steelers Hall of Fame safety Troy Polamalu.

The memorials to Kennedy came quickly after his death. Many schools that had previously been named after towns, or other people, were renamed for him, including Central High School in Paterson, New Jersey. Also named for him in New Jersey were high schools in the Iselin section of Woodbridge and in Willingboro. (The latter has since been closed.)

John F. Kennedy High Schools also opened in the Marble Hill section of The Bronx, making him the most recent President to be honored with a high school named for him in New York City; Cheektowaga, New York, a suburb of Buffalo; Glenmont, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Los Angeles, Fremont and La Palma, California; Burien, Washington.

Statues of him stand outside the Massachusetts State House in Boston, the Puerto Rico Capitol in San Juan. Memorials to him were dedicated in Montreal, Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras), London, Barcelona, Jerusalem, Melbourne, and West Berlin: The square in front of their City Hall, where he told a crowd of 500,000, "Ich bin ein Berliner," was named John-F-Kennedy-Platz.

In 1960, while his campaign motorcade came down Broad Street in Newark, New Jersey, my father, then 17 years old and having just started college, shook hands with Kennedy. Roughly across Broad Street from that spot, at the southern tip of Military Park, stands a column topped by a bust of Kennedy. Another bust was dedicated at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Both were dedicated in 1965.

The aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy (CVN-67) was in service from 1968 to 2007, in service longer than its namesake lived. A replacement carrier (CVN-79) was launched in 2019, but has not yet entered official service. (UPDATE: It is currently scheduled to do so in March 2027.)

Since 1964, his portrait has appeared on the U.S. half-dollar (50-cent) coin. Idlewild Airport in New York, Philadelphia Municipal Stadium, and the Delaware and Maryland sections of Interstate 95, which he had dedicated just a few days before his death, were renamed for him.

Interstate 190, connecting O'Hare International Airport to Chicago, is named the John F. Kennedy Expressway. A bridge of Interstate 65 over the Ohio River, connecting Louisville, Kentucky with Indiana, was named the John F. Kennedy Memorial Bridge. U.S. Route 75 in Omaha, Nebraska was named the Kennedy Freeway. And the Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was named for him. From 1964 to 1973, the cape itself was named Cape Kennedy. A bridge connecting Miami and Miami Beach was named the John F. Kennedy Causeway.

In 1979, his Presidential Library opened on the Boston campus of the University of Massachusetts, at Columbia Point. In 1982, the stop on Boston's subway Red Line, serving the campus and the Library, was renamed "JFK/UMass." Kennedy is the only President between Herbert Hoover and George H.W. Bush who is not buried at his Presidential Library. (UPDATE: Jimmy Carter decided to be buried in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, not at his Library in Atlanta.)

W. Willard Wirtz was the last surviving member of Kennedy's Cabinet, serving him and Johnson as Secretary of Labor from 1962 to 1969. He lived until 2010.

JFK remains the most recent President to represent Massachusetts, although Governor Michael Dukakis and Senator John Kerry have since been nominated for the office, and each has lost the general election.

*

On that Friday, for the 1st time in their 17-year history, the NBA's New York Knicks postponed a game. They were supposed to play the Detroit Pistons at the old Madison Square Garden. Indeed, there would be no games in the NBA that night, nor in the NHL. All were postponed. And, of course, it was after the baseball season, so there were no MLB games to postpone. The Los Angeles Dodgers had completed their 4-game World Series sweep over the Yankees on October 6 at Dodger Stadium.

The Knicks-Pistons game was pushed back to the following night, and the Knicks won, 108-99. Their next postponement would be on November 9, 1965, the day of the great blackout.

The 1963 Army-Navy Game had been scheduled for Saturday, November 23. It was postponed for 2 weeks, until December 7. With eventual Heisman Trophy winner, and eventual Dallas Cowboys quarterback, Roger Staubach leading them, Navy won, 21-15 at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia. The following year, the huge 105,000-seat horseshoe in South Philadelphia was renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium.

Most college games were postponed. But 1 game, scheduled for that night, went ahead as planned. As you might guess, it was in the South: North Carolina State beat Wake Forest, 42-0 at Riddick Stadium in Raleigh, North Carolina. Attendance: 15,200, out of a capacity of 23,000. The Nebraska-Oklahoma rivalry, set for the 23rd, went on as scheduled at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. Nebraska won 29-20.

JFK's alma mater, Harvard, was supposed to play arch-rival Yale at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut on November 23. It was postponed until the following week, and Yale won, 20-6.

You might expect the rivalry game between Texas and Texas A&M, the 2 biggest college football teams in the State where the assassination took place, to be postponed. In fact, neither team was scheduled for November 23. Each team's next game was against the other, and was already set for the 28th, Thanksgiving Day. Texas, then ranked Number 1 in the country, held off a great upset effort by the Aggies, scoring 12 points in the 4th quarter to win 15-13. The Longhorns went on to beat Number 2 Navy in the Cotton Bowl -- in Dallas, on January 1, 1964 -- and won the National Championship.

The Iron Bowl was also scheduled for November 30, not the 23rd. At Legion Field in Birmingham, Number 9 Auburn beat Number 6 Alabama, 10-8.

In my home State of New Jersey, Rutgers was supposed to play Columbia University of New York City on the 23rd, at Rutgers Stadium in Piscataway. It was postponed to the 28th, and Columbia won, 35-28. Only 5,000 people came out to the 23,000-seat stadium. Not surprising: Not only was it a holiday, with pretty much anybody who wanted to see a football game that day watching their hometown high school team, but the country was still very depressed, and neither team was any good: Rutgers came in at 3-5, Columbia at 3-4-1.

The other big college team in New Jersey, Princeton, was supposed to host Dartmouth at Palmer Stadium, in a game that would decide the Ivy League title. That one was postponed to the 30th, and, before a crowd of 35,000, Dartmouth won, 22-21.

Notre Dame, with no official connection to the nation's 1st Catholic President, but unofficially accepted as the nation's leading Catholic university, was supposed to visit the University of Iowa on the 23rd. That game was canceled outright, and never played.

East Brunswick High School, my alma mater, was supposed to play football on the Saturday, against neighboring Sayreville. The game was postponed, and, for the 1st time in the then-new school's 3-year football history, a game was played on Thanksgiving. E.B. won, 13-12.

When the announcement that JFK was dead reached us at 2:35 PM Eastern Time on November 22, it was a Friday afternoon, and decisions had to be made to play or postpone the following Sunday's professional football games. The AFL chose to postpone their games until the week after the close of the regular season, while the NFL chose to play as scheduled. Since November 24 turned out to be another significant day, I have an entry for that day, including those games.