11/22/63
The Assassination of President Kennedy
Breakfast Remarks at Hotel Texas
President Kennedy wakes up and heads outside the hotel to greet a crowd of supporters. He then heads back inside the hotel to deliver breakfast remarks to the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.
Flight to Dallas
President Kennedy leaves Fort Worth from Carswell Air Force Base to take the 13-minute flight to Dallas.
The President Arrives in Dallas
The president and Mrs. Kennedy land at Love Field in Dallas and join Governor Connally and his wife, who are already seated in the limo they will ride through Dallas. President Kennedy has requested, weather permitting, that there be no roof on the car as they ride through the city. The Secret Service, reluctantly, honor the president's request.
The Texas School Book Depository
As the president's motorcade is finishing up the parade route, they enter Dealey Plaza and drive past the Texas School Book Depository, where a man named Lee Harvey Oswald has set up a sniper's perch through a sixth-floor window.
The First Shot
As the motorcade heads down Elm Street, the first shot is fired from the School Book Depository, striking the president and subsequently the governor. Neither injury from this shot is considered fatal.
The Third Shot
The second shot fired by Oswald misses, but the third shot deals the fatal injury to the president. Secret Service agents jump from the trail car to the president's limo to protect the First Lady, as they speed away to get the president to the hospital.
Parkland Memorial Hospital
The president is rushed to the hospital, where crowds of people gather, anxiously waiting for word on the president's condition. Doctors do all they can, but at roughly 12:50 p.m., their attempt to save the president ends.
1:00
A Catholic priest joins Mrs. Kennedy in the room with the president to administer the last rites, and at 1:00 p.m. CST, President John F. Kennedy is pronounced dead.
The Inauguration of Lyndon B. Johnson
At 2:38 p.m., after the president's body had been transported back to Air Force 1, Vice President Johnson is sworn in on the plane. Federal Judge Sarah Hughes administers the oath, becoming the first and only woman to administer the Oath of Office to the president.
The First Lady Arrives Back in Washington
Still wearing the same clothes, now stained with her husband's blood, the First Lady arrives back in D.C. at roughly 6:00 p.m. EST, and the president's casket is removed from the plane. Though she was offered a change of clothes, the First Lady refused. "I want them to see what they've done."
Sources
Arrival of the body of president John Kennedy in Washington airport (on board of Air Force One), in the ambulance behind the coffin are Jackie Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. (1963). Bridgeman Images. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.bridgemanimages.com/en-US/noartistknown/arrival-of-the-body-of-president-john-kennedy-in-washington-airport-on-board-of-air-force-one-in-the/nomedium/asset/1693276.
Crowds, including hospital staff, media, and police, stand outside the Parkland Hospital emergency room waiting for news about President John F. Kennedy. (1963). Dallas Public Library. Retrieved 2022.
Dallas Times Herald. [Hearse backing into the emergency entrance bay at Parkland Hospital], photograph, November 22, 1963; ( https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth184669/ : accessed December 10, 2022), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu ; crediting The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. President John F. Kennedy and Jackie entering Air Force One at Carswell Air Force Base. (1963). Retrieved from https://library.uta.edu/digitalgallery/img/10018835
Highsmith, C. M., photographer. (2014) The Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas, where Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumptive assassin of President John F. Kennedy, found a perch above the plaza on. United States Texas Dallas, 2014. -05-11. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2014632054/.
Kennedy outside of Hotel Texas on 11/22/63. (1963). Politico. Retrieved 2022, from https://www.politico.com/magazine/gallery/2013/11/suite-850-br-the-view-in-jfks-last-hotel-room-000152/?slide=0.
November 22, 1963: Death of the president. November 22, 1963: Death of the President | JFK Library. (n.d.). Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/jfk-in-history/november-22-1963-death-of-the-president
President Kennedy and the First Lady Greeting People at Love Field. (1963). U.S. Army. Retrieved from https://www.army.mil/article/115173/jfk_50th_anniversary_choosing_to_remember_the_dark_side_of_history_or_the_inspired_leadership.
Stoughton, C. (1963). Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President by federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes on Air Force One on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He's flanked by Jacqueline Kennedy (right) and wife Lady Bird Johnson (left). Time. Retrieved 2022, from https://time.com/5457324/lbj-swearing-in-sarah-hughes/.
The Abraham Zapruder film of the Kennedy Assassination. (1963). Retrieved 2022.