This story was originally published on November 22, 2023.
By Robert Tannenhauser
It was 61 years ago today that John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States was assassinated. Everyone who is old enough remembers to this day where they were and what they felt.
It was my sophomore year at Syracuse University, and I was at the library (for the first and last time) studying, or trying to, when we were jolted by the announcement: “The President has been shot.” Trying to process the information I rushed to join my friends and we sat glued to the TV as the updates came in. The blurring cascade of events: JFK dead, Oswald arrested, Oswald killed, Jack Ruby arrested, Johnson sworn in, and the reality that optimism for the future was gone. Little did I realize that the decade of assassinations was in its early stages, first Medgar Evers, then JFK, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and then Robert F, Kennedy, which I watched live while studying for a law school exam. It was a difficult decade, but in retrospect it does not seem as troubling to me as the current level of discord, hatred, extremism, and inability to compromise, or to simply agree to disagree in a civil manner, that we are experiencing now.
Send us your memories and thoughts in the comments. If you are too young to have experienced it, what have you learned, heard, and thought about JFK and the assassination?
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I was very young and have only vague recollections of the day. All the adults were agitated in a way I never had experienced before. My clearest memory growing up was my father saying that while he wouldn’t live to see it I would be alive when all the documents and classified reports were released. Of course every president who could release the final tranche of documents. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that each president has acted in violation of the laws that required the documents to be released. There must be a reason for that and I personally don’t buy the story that all that’s left is redundant documents that are meaningless. The intelligence community has made each president a “deal he can’t refuse” to hold back those documents. Maybe, one day we’ll see it all but I doubt it.
I was 17,in band class, announcement intercom, world stopped, everyone crying. That night no basketball game cancelled,, in my car 4 friends, alcohol stole from my house , cigars, all dirge music on radio, cursing the world,, soo young and innocent then!
The largest conspiracy the nation has ever seen, Every President since has been complicit. Every President has failed to unseal records related to this. Does any thinking person believe for 1 second the Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? This was coordinated at the highest levels why else are some records too sensitive to release, after 60 years?
I would remind people that the House Select Committee on Assassinations – formed in 1976 to look into the assassinations of JFK and MLK – issued its report in 1978. In that report, it states quite clearly that, “The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”
That was the OFFICIAL position of the committee that spent two years studying all available evidence, and hearing dozens of witnesses.
So, yes, there WAS a conspiracy behind the assassination of JFK. The question that remains is what people and/or agencies were involved. The answers to those questions may never be known. I personally believe that, for all its occasional silliness and frenetic motion, Oliver Stone’s “JFK” has probably come closest to the truth.
OPOD: That is the way it has gone down in history. The conspiracy theorists speculated on every aspect of the case but could never come up with anything.
What theory do you subscribe to?
LBJ all the way.
I was 20 years old, on my first job as a newspaper copywriter. We heard about the shooting but weren’t yet aware that JFK had died. We were shocked and upset, even more so when a few of the senior executives cheered at the news.
Whoa. Cheered. Why? This is all new.
I guess they were Nixon fans
I was a kid in Bucharest, Romania. My grandma just had a stroke and the paramedics were in our apartment when my father got the news on Voice of America (your tax money well spent). One could go to prison for listening to VOA back then.
Communist Romania was no joke (I was there in 1973).
Patrice Lumumba was assassinated on 17 January 1961
Most respectfully, Sir, I am questioning the accuracy of your recollection. I am wondering if you were ever once in the library.
I was 7. just a year older than Caroline, and I was shocked as I watched the funeral on TV with my parents and grandparents. The riderless horse haunts me still. My mother wept
I was utterly traumatized and had nightmares. For 2 or 3 years I couldn’t bear to have my parents go out in the evening because I thought they would be shot in a taxi. My mother spoke to a friend who was a psychiatrist. She said my reaction was not at all unusual for a “sensitive child” and to just not go out for the time being, and that it would pass. Eventually it did but it was an unthinkable catastrophe. I was 7; I didn’t know that parents could die.
I was almost 20 yo, my son was sleeping peacefully in his crib, my husband was at work. The apt was so quiet. I turned on the radio and the announcer was saying President Kennedy had just been shot. How utterly shocking !!! It was JFK for whom i cast my first vote and i felt so very proud of my country. I called my husband, he just heard it too. I remember clearly when the Warren Commission came out with their report, i was getting into the car, my husband was driving me to the hospital about to have my second baby. I listened to the findings and knew in my heart it wasn’t true. Just like that i knew. 57 years later,
11/22/2020 my 4th grandchild was born on that exact same date, a powerful number and once again i was in the hospital maternity ward !
Nice story but you could not vote until you were 21 in 1963.
The day of John Kennedy’s assassination is seared in my memory as a mother of two young children. Little did I dream that day marked the birth of the “Deep State” with a Warren Commission whitewash and subsequent assassinations of Malcolm X, Dr. King and Robert Kennedy. The involvement of the CIA is still kept secret by the Assassination Records office which 60 years later has not released all the documents. A tragic day for Peace and Democracy – November 22, 1963.
I was a young Army Officer in Germany when JFK was elected and nobody in the Officer’s Mess could believe that he had defeated Nixon. We had only heard the debate on radio and I guess the video on TV made the difference. When he was assassinated, I was at work in NYC.
I hadn’t voted for him and didn’t like his policies, but I was nonetheless saddened by his demise. Then we got Johnson, and the downward slide began.
I’ve been listening to Rob Reiner’s newest podcast about the assassination called “Who Shot JFK?”
Aside from the fact that it’s a tad slow to take off and that he and co-host Soledad O’Brien speak like 1st grade teachers to a pack of children — the information he imparts is terrific. The second in the series finally gets to the meat of the CIA and mafia issue and that the murder was finally ruled a “conspiracy” but not named by whom. I’m anxious to listen to the rest of the series.
If you want to be enlightened about this sad day in American history tune into his podcast at your favorite supplier of podcasts or Spotify.
I in my junior year in high school. The loud speaker came on as we were moving from the 6th to the 7th period in the day, asking us to hurry to class. We sat through the whole class – mine was geometry – moving from the fact that he was shot to that he was dead. The teacher was clearly not a fan of JFK’s, and at the end of the class with most of us in tears, he reminded us that we had our exam on Monday. Of course, there was no school on Monday, as we were all clued to the TV. I was in Europe when RFK was shot. It felt as if it would never end.
I was in the 5th grade at Nettelhorst School in Chicago. We were lined up, waiting to come in from lunch when one of the boys in the 6th grade came through the line, announcing that the president had been shot. In Social Studies class, our teacher, Mr. Blustain, who had been teaching us about Banana Republic coups that week, stated that there had been a coup and the junta behind it would blame a patsy several hours before Oswald was captured.
President Trump is going to release all the sealed records. What could be in there that still scares the CIA?
No, there is no conspiracy theory. Despite 61 years of investigation and guesswork NOBODY has proven that anyone other than Oswald assassinated Kennedy.
Don’t you think there would have been a deathbed confession after all these years? All these theories about a conspiracy have been nothing but conjecture. People just can’t accept the fact that a nobody like Oswald could commit this crime against a larger than life person like Kennedy.
Kennedy is generally regarded as a great president today because, IMO, his presidency was the last gasp of innocence for the country. In many ways he was sitting on top of a volcano ready to explode and it exploded just after he was assassinated. There were many societal changes that erupted just after he died, ie civil rights, women’s rights, opposition to Vietnam War, baby boomers coming of age and rebelling, explosion of drug use.
All this chaos was likely inevitable but was largely contained while Kennedy was in office. Had he survived his presidency might have been marred by the societal chaos that LBJ is remembered for.
I was in the 5th grade. It was a Friday after lunch. When teachers wanted to communicate with each other they sent notes between classrooms using students to deliver the folded messages. There seemed to be a awful lot of these messages going back and forth. Finally the teacher asked her delivery student if he had been unfolding the messages and reading them. He said he had. She asked if he was upset. He said no. Then she told the class.
Wait. Am I reading this right? D.A. Bragg, Mayor Adams, Gov. Hochul and bail reform didn’t have anything to do with President Kennedy’s assassination?
I’ve always believed the theory that Lyndon Johnson was somehow involved. Some of you may enjoy the book, “A Texan Looks at Lydon”.
So it was early afternoon and I was in Mr. Goldner’s 9th grade science class at Traphagen JHS in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Anyone who had this terrific teacher remembers him vividly. His classroom was all business. “No communication in any form, shape, or matter for any purpose whatsoever.” He taught science way off the textbook page. The Coriolis Effect, layers of the atmosphere, etc. We had to keep a lab notebook; it was part of your grade. The intercom buzzed, he answered it. He left the room and said he’d be right back. This was unusual. He never left class. About 20 minutes later he came back, in a daze. The sunlight from the high windows flashed across the tears streaming down his face. Then we learned the awful truth that changed our country.
Patrice Lumumba before Evers
I was 8 years old and was running to recess after just finishing lunch in the cafeteria (I lived in California). I remember the principal coming over the PA system and announcing that President Kennedy had been shot; I was scared and numb.
My age exactly and the same PA announcement and the same reaction as mine. I remember it as if it was yesterday. We were released early before the school buses arrived. I walked home in a driving rain, arriving before my mother returned from work. An indelible memory. An incredible moment.
I was a 15 year-old sophomore at the Academy of Mount St. Ursula all-girls Catholic high school in the Bronx run by the Ursuline nuns. On that afternoon (I think it was a Friday) the whole school was in the auditorium (about 150 students) watching a gritty black & white film called Edge of the City starring Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes as interracial friends and longshoremen. (Only years later did I realize how progressive this order of nuns was. Frankly and sadly, I can’t imagine this film being shown in many high schools today given the current climate of our country.) The principal suddenly interrupted the film, came on stage and told us the president had been shot. 150 teenage girls started crying hysterically and we all dropped to our knees in prayer. It was such a powerful communal experience and is seared in my memory. to this day.
I was a pharmacist at Drug Centre Pharmacy on Burnside Avenue in the Bronx. I was eating a shrimp salad sandwich from a Luncheonette down the street when the news came in on the radio. As clear as if it were yesterday.
I was 11 years old – in 6th grade, in my home room for lunch. I remember feeling that something had happened, as teachers were not acting normally . Then we all boarded busses and went home. Rumors on the buss were that JFK got shot. I remember telling my parents when returning home. They didn’t know about it. What made this particularly personal, was that just a month before, my Dad took me to hear JFK speak at the University of Maine ,Orono campus on a beautiful fall day – set up on their athletic field. We were in the bleachers. I remember the overwhelming sadness of everybody for a long while after that.
I was seven years old in my first year of attending The Little Red School House. I remember I was standing just inside the door to the classroom (second grade, or as the school phrases it, the Sevens) when the news broke. They sent us home within half an hour
And the opening line is so correct – you can’t ever forget where you were when you heard the news.
I was in high school gym class when it was announced on speaker that the President has been shot. Horrible I just couldn’t believe it.
I was on escalator in Bloomingdales, and a woman in front of me said to me the President was shot. And I thought poor lady a little demented. And I got home and say Walter Cronkite crying as he reported JFK was dead, for the next 3-4 days we all sat in front of the tv watching the coverage…….
Nov 22, 1963 was a Friday. I remember seeing my nuns and lay teachers cry, I had never seen that before. They led us from the classrooms to church to pray. I did not realize the significance of that day but even as a young grade schooler I knew something changed forever. Thanksgiving was subdued yet we we were mindful of the need to still give thanks.
I was living in Mountain View, CA (south of San Francisco) then and attending nearby Foothill Junior College. I was in the large library when a librarian said something out loud like Can I have your attention. That was very unusual. Then he said loudly JFK had been killed. I don’t recall what happened immediately next. A little while later, I returned to the house where I was staying. I and others there spent most of the next days glued to the TV.. I now recall I had sometime before bought 2 tix to a Joan Baez concert on November 23 or 24 at the college. It was not cancelled. I was a big fan of her then and still am. The concert was a very somber event.
I also recall seeing Oswald shot live on tv. That was shocking..
There has been speculation that someone else shot JFK. Some others associated with the killing and JFK were mysteriously killed after his assignation. I recall reading that in several places.
I was in elementary school – we were sent home early – It was the first time I saw my mother cry –