A version of this post was initially published on May 6th 2024. It has since been updated to reflect some inaccurate reporting.
A portion of this piece originally appeared in my visual arts final/dream journal. It’s the last thing I’ll turn in for my undergraduate degree. I wanted to share it here.
A lot of people remember where they were when Jack Kennedy died. It was November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. It was one of those moments. A shared cultural moment where everything changed. It’s one of those things you remember. It was the first time a president had been assassinated in fifty years.
The funny thing is a lot of people remember watching Kennedy die on television.
This didn’t happen. Kennedy’s assassination wasn’t broadcast on television. Once Kennedy was shot, many reporters who were on the scene in Dallas immediately issued emergency broadcasts. One such broadcast from CBS News features the voice of Walter Cronkite and a graphic on the CBS News logo. Cronkite, ever the professional, says “Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy's motorcade in downtown Dallas…The first reports say the president, Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting.” A later report, commemorating the shooting fifty years later would have Bob Huffaker, a Former KRLD radio reporter remark that November 22, 1963, was the day that the news went live. Later that day, Cronkite, with his face this time, would announce the death of President John F. Kennedy. Perhaps when people say they remember seeing the death of Kennedy on TV, they remember this, instead.
The only actual video footage of the Kennedy assassination was done by a man named Abraham Zapruder, who just happened to be recording the motorcade. Zapruder’s footage would become integral to the eventual investigation into Kennedy’s death. Life magazine would publish stills from Zapruder’s film a year later. Perhaps when people say they remember the death of Kennedy on TV, they remember seeing the stills in Life magazine.
Officially, the man who killed John F. Kennedy was a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was assassinated by Jack Ruby on November 24th, 1963. So technically speaking, we don’t know who killed John F. Kennedy. The official report concluded that it was Oswald. But the question still remains. Ruby’s assassination of Oswald was televised. It happened live, actually. Jack Ruby holds the world record for the “First Murder Done on Live Television.” A rather morbid factoid. Perhaps when people say that they remember the death of Kennedy, live on TV, they are actually remembering the death of Oswald, live on TV.
John F. Kennedy’s assassination would be the first of four high-profile assassinations in the 1960s. Malcolm X would be killed two years later, in 1965, followed by the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and Jack’s brother, Bobby Kennedy in 1968. The younger Kennedy had been running for president at the time. He was assassinated moments after giving his acceptance speech after winning the California Primary.
People talk a lot about “what killed the ‘60s?” Many would argue the American War in Vietnam; the death of Sharon Tate, her friends, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca; or the breakup of The Beatles. Few would argue the death of Jack Kennedy. Perhaps this is because it happens so early into the decade. There were still seven years of free loving to occur. Perhaps the death of Kennedy is less a beginning of an end, and more so an omen for what was to come. It was not a sign of the death of something, but instead a premonition. Something rotting in the state of America. Kennedy and his family changed American politics and changed how American politics were constructed. They were heralded as perfect American royalty. Photos and official portraits of Jack and his family depict them as angelic beings. In Kennedy’s official presidential portrait by Aaron Shikler, he looks fatigued and resigned, his head is looking down, and his arms are crossed. “Heavy is the head that wears the crown.” He looks like a boy king (he was forty-six when he died).
No, I think the death of Kennedy – both Kennedys, Bobby even more so, is about the death of a dream, of some sort of potential. Their deaths leave open too many questions. Questions about the real perpetrators but also questions about the men themselves. What ifs. What would Jack Kennedy have done in Vietnam? Would he have escalated it the way his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson did? Would he have pushed for the same domestic social programs? Could it have been Kennedy’s Great Society instead? Likewise, Robert F. Kennedy as a president is unchallenged, a full fantasy. Bobby was close friends with and allies to the Civil Rights movement and student socialist movements. What could he have done as president? He was going to be president! He had won California! Johnson wasn’t planning on running again! I’m fascinated by the death of Bobby Kennedy. I’m not sure why. I think it breaks my heart. I think it makes me sad. I think I like the dream more than the reality.
These cultural dreams — cultural fantasies — hold more water than the truth does. It is nice to sit in them and to observe them and wonder what they could be like. But in truth, they don’t do much. They are still just dreams.
The Zapruder film stills were not published for over a year, not the next day.
Two other presidents were assassinated between Lincoln and Kennedy. James Garfield was shot in a Washington DC train station in July 1881 and died two months later. And William McKinley was shot by a radical in Buffalo, NY in September, 1901.