Assassinations

During the social upheaval of the 1960s, the assassinations of key public figures exemplified the tumultuousness of the era.

President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, is commonly regarded as a moment that singularly marked the nation’s loss of innocence during the 1960s. As the youngest man elected president, Kennedy embodied a national optimism that, amid the decade’s political and cultural struggles, increasingly diminished following his death. During a campaign trip, Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas governor John Connally. Within hours of the shooting, police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, who claimed that evidence linking him to the murder weapon was fabricated. While being transported by police, Oswald was murdered two days later, further complicating his allegations of a conspiracy. Television provided an important chronicle of the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination, which was famously captured on film by Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder. Through the emerging technology of television, millions of Americans watched live as Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby and later shared in the images of national grief broadcast during Kennedy’s funeral.

The fact that Oswald never went on trial augmented both doubts about his guilt and suspicions of a conspiracy. Following Kennedy’s assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Warren Commission, chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, to review the events in Dallas. The commission published its findings on September 24, 1964, having concluded that Oswald acted alone and that all shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository. According to the singlebullet theory, developed by commission member Arlen Specter, one bullet caused both Kennedy’s and Connally’s nonfatal wounds, while a second bullet was responsible for the president’s fatal injuries. Derisively nicknamed the “magic bullet theory” by its critics, Specter’s analysis and the commission’s overall findings ultimately failed to resolve the ambiguity surrounding the assassination. As Americans grew increasingly distrustful of governmental authority, suspicions that the Soviet Union, Cuba, or the CIA somehow were involved became part of a popular folklore that also nostalgically elevated Kennedy and his family to iconic stature.

As the decade progressed, such feelings of disquiet and disillusionment intensified in the wake of other notable assassinations. As African Americans battled for racial equality, two key figures of the movement, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., were killed in incidents that both inspired conspiracy theories. Amid ongoing tensions with the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X was shot on Feb-

President John F. Kennedy in the Dallas, Texas, motorcade prior to his assassination, November 22, 1963 (Library of Congress)

Ruary 21, 1965, during a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan. Previously informed that he was marked for assassination, Malcolm X was shot first from among the crowd and then multiple times as two unidentified men charged the stage in the disturbance that followed. Witnesses later identified the two men as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, who were both arrested along with Talmadge Hayer. Hayer subsequently confessed to shooting Malcolm, though he maintained that the others were not involved.

The events surrounding King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, were equally perplexing. While touring the South in support of striking black workers, King presciently addressed leaders with his famed “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech before being shot on the balcony of the Lorraine motel the next day. Following King’s assassination, riots erupted in 60 U. S. cities, and President Johnson declared a National Day of Mourning. Two months later, police arrested escaped convict James Earl Ray and charged him with King’s murder. Ray confessed on March 10, 1969, though he recanted three days later. Nonetheless, to avoid facing the death penalty, Ray eventually pled guilty, even while claiming that he was not “personally responsible” for shooting King. Ray’s statements fueled suspicions of a larger plot to assassinate the civil rights leader that also gained credence from ongoing uncertainty about the direction from which the bullets originated.

On the night of King’s assassination, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy urged racial reconciliation during an impromptu speech in Indianapolis, a historical moment made even more poignant by Kennedy’s own assassination on June 5, 1968. After winning the California Democratic primary, Kennedy addressed supporters in Los Angeles’s Ambassador Hotel. As he exited through the hotel kitchen, Kennedy was shot by Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan and later buried near his brother in Arlington National Cemetery. Following Kennedy’s assassination, the mandate of the Secret Service was altered to include the protection of presidential candidates, a measure whose necessity was reinforced by the attempted assassination of Democratic candidate George Wallace in 1972. While campaigning for the Democratic nomination, the one-time Alabama governor and ardent segregationist was shot and critically wounded in Laurel, Maryland, by Arthur H. Bremer. While Bremer was convicted of the shooting and sentenced to 53 years in prison, Wallace’s injuries left his legs paralyzed, and he eventually failed to win the nomination.

As a hub of national disillusionment and conspiracy theories, these prominent assassinations embodied the social upheaval of the era and comprised a critical legacy of their time.

Further reading: James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003); Mark Kur-lansky, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004); Michael L. Kurtz, JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2006).

—Hillary S. Kativa

Atomic bomb See Volume VIII.