Tragedy in Dallas: JFK Assassinated 771feared it would make passage of the civil rights bill
more difficult. As in other areas, he was not a forceful
advocate of his own proposals.
Civil Rights March on Washingtonat
http://www.myhistorylab.com
Civil Rights Movementat
http://www.myhistorylab.com
Charles Sherrod, SNCC Memorandum
(1961)atwww.myhistorylab.com
Tragedy in Dallas: JFK Assassinated
Through it all, Kennedy retained his hold on public
opinion. In the fall of 1963 most observers believed he
would win a second term. Then, while visiting Dallas,
Texas, on November 22, he was shot in the head by an
assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and died almost instantly.
Kennedy’s assassination precipitated an extra-
ordinary series of events. Oswald had fired on the
ReadtheDocumentWatchtheVideoWatchtheVideopresident with a rifle from an upper story of a ware-
house. No one saw him pull the trigger. He was
apprehended largely because he panicked and killed
a policeman across town later in the day. He denied
his guilt, but a mass of evidence connected him with
the assassination of the president. Before he could
be brought to trial, however, he was himself mur-
dered by Jack Ruby, the owner of a Dallas night-
club. The incident took place in full view of
television cameras, while Oswald was being trans-
ferred from one place of detention to another.
Each day brought new revelations. Oswald had
defected briefly to the Soviet Union in 1959, then
had returned to the United States and formed a pro-
Castro organization in New Orleans. Many con-
cluded that some nefarious conspiracy lay at the root
of the tragedy. Oswald, the argument ran, was a
pawn—either of communists or anticommunists (the
conspiracy theories lost none of their appeal for being
contradictory)—whose murder was designed toJFK and Jacqueline Kennedy ride in a motorcade with Texas Governor John Connolly and his wife in Dallas, November 22, 1963. Several minutes
later, Kennedy was shot and killed; Connolly was wounded.