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Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.
- Overview
- The assassination
- The capture and death of Oswald
On November 21, 1963, the day before his assassination, U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy—accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and U.S. Vice Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson—undertook a two-day five-city trip to Texas. The president was warmly welcomed at his first two stops, San Antonio and Houston, as well as at Fort Worth, where the presidential party spent the night. On the morning of November 22, Kennedy and his party flew to Dallas. At Dallas’s Love Field airport, the president and the first lady boarded an open limousine to ride with Democrat Texas Gov. John B. Connally, Jr., and his wife to the president’s next stop, the Trade Mart, where the president was scheduled to deliver a speech. At 12:30 PM, President Kennedy was struck by two shots apparently fired from an open window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. He was rushed to nearby Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 1:00 PM. His accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested at 1:50 PM.
Why was U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy in Texas on November 22, 1963?
Pres. John F. Kennedy believed that his Republican opponent in the 1964 U.S. presidential election would be Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Kennedy was convinced that he could bury Goldwater under an avalanche of votes. One obstacle to his success was a feud in Vice Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson’s home state of Texas between Gov. John B. Connally, Jr., and Sen. Ralph Yarborough, both Democrats. To present a show of unity, Kennedy decided to tour the state with both men. Kennedy began the tour—with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Johnson—on November 21, 1963, in San Antonio, with visits to Houston and Forth Worth that same day. The next day they flew to Dallas. While Kennedy was riding in an open limousine in downtown Dallas on his way to give a speech, he was shot and killed. (Connally was also gravely wounded; however, he recovered.) Although Kennedy did not survive to see the presidential election of 1964, his prediction was correct: Goldwater did, in fact, run for president.
Who assassinated U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy?
Twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald was the accused murderer of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy. Oswald was a former U.S. Marine who embraced Marxism and defected, for a time, to the Soviet Union. Oswald never stood trial for the murder. On Sunday, November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner with connections to the criminal underworld, in the basement of Dallas City Hall.
A special President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, better known as the Warren Commission because it was headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, investigated the assassination from November 1963 to September 1964. Its report concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby “was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy.” However, in March 1979, after a two-year investigation, a special House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that a second assassin may also have fired a shot and that there may have been a conspiracy. The evidence remains highly debatable.
On November 21, 1963, President Kennedy—accompanied by his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Vice President Johnson—undertook a two-day, five-city fund-raising trip to Texas. The trip was also likely intended as an attempt to help bring together a feuding Democratic Party in a state that was vital to Kennedy’s chances for reelection in 1964. Although Adlai Stevenson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a liberal icon, had been confronted by highly agitated protesters a month earlier during a visit to Dallas—a city with a right-leaning press and the locus of much anti-Kennedy feeling—the president was warmly welcomed at his first two stops, San Antonio and Houston, as well as at Fort Worth, where the presidential party spent the night of November 21.
The next morning, after making a speech in a parking lot in front of the hotel in which he had stayed and then speaking again at a Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Kennedy and his party made a short flight to Dallas Love Field airport. (After Dallas, the final stop on the trip was scheduled to be Austin.) At the airport the president and first lady shook hands with members of a hospitable crowd before boarding the backseat of a customized open convertible to ride with Democratic Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife (who sat in jump seats in front of the Kennedys) to the president’s next stop, the Trade Mart, where Kennedy was scheduled to deliver another speech. An estimated 200,000 people lined the roughly 10-mile (16-km) route to the Trade Mart.
Over the next hour, as a shocked country and world learned of Kennedy’s death, the drama of the pursuit and capture of his alleged assailant unfolded. Bullet casings were found near a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building overlooking the plaza; a rifle (later proved to have been owned by Oswald) was discovered elsewhere on the sixth floor. An accounting of the building’s employees indicated that only two were missing: one was a man who had stepped outside to watch the motorcade and was barred by police from reentering the building, and the other was Oswald, who had been working there for about a month. Oswald had been seen on the sixth floor about a half hour before the shooting and had also been encountered in the building by its superintendent and a policeman just after the shooting. Law enforcement circulated a description of him. Meanwhile, Oswald made his way to the boardinghouse where he had been staying. Some 15 minutes after leaving the boardinghouse, he was confronted by a Dallas policeman, J.D. Tippit, who is thought to have believed that Oswald matched the description. Oswald shot and killed Tippit with a .38 revolver in the presence of a number of witnesses and was later seen entering the Texas Theatre, where at 1:50 pm he was apprehended by police.
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As those events unfolded, Johnson, fearing that the assassination of the president was just the first step in a much broader effort by the Soviets or other enemies of the United States to destabilize the American government, sought to effect a quick transition of executive authority and to seek safety by leaving Dallas by plane. At 2:38 pm, before takeoff, with Kennedy’s corpse aboard, Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One. Jacqueline Kennedy, still wearing blood-spattered clothes, stood at his side.
Apr 23, 2024 · Lee Harvey Oswald (born October 18, 1939, New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.—died November 24, 1963, Dallas, Texas) was the accused assassin of U.S. Pres. John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He himself was fatally shot two days later by Jack Ruby (1911–67) in the Dallas County Jail.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Nov 19, 2018 · Former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department just over an hour after the shooting for possible involvement in the John F. Kennedy assassination and the murder of...
Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by former U.S. Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.
Lee Harvey Oswald is pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital, never having regained consciousness. A funeral procession brings the body of President Kennedy from the White House to the U.S....
Less than an hour earlier, police had arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, a recently hired employee at the Texas School Book Depository. He was being held for the assassination of President Kennedy and the fatal shooting, shortly afterward, of Patrolman J. D. Tippit on a Dallas street.
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