The Kennedy Half-Century (88 page)

1963. Not everyone at Dallas’s Love Field was friendly to the Kennedys. Among those waiting for the presidential couple on November 22 were sign-carrying protestors, including one urging people to VOTE WHITE.

1963. The casual security in Dallas on November 22 is demonstrated by this photo of the presidential car, slowed to a crawl by traffic and crowds. President Kennedy waves to people riding in a sidelined bus on Main Street, just blocks from Dealey Plaza.

1963. This revealing, little-seen photograph shows the Kennedys and the Connallys riding in the presidential car through Dallas. President Kennedy is squeezed in the back seat; Governor Connally is sitting on the jump seat about a half foot lower and slightly to the left of JFK. This positioning is critical in understanding the eventual bullet trajectories.

1963. In another infrequently seen photograph, the president is a minute or less away from disaster. Kennedy adjusts his hair in the region of the head where the bullet will hit as his limousine turns right onto Houston Street. Looming in the background is the Texas School Book Depository. Note the open window on the sixth floor where boxes are visible. This is the sniper’s nest.

This is the famous Polaroid picture of JFK’s final moment, taken by Mary Moorman. President Kennedy has already been shot through the back and neck, and in an instant, the fatal bullet will strike his skull. This photo also captures the grassy knoll area. Some claim that behind the picket fence, shaded by trees, is a shooter called “Badge Man,” because, in blow-ups, the outline of a man with a badge can be discerned. On the right-hand side, standing on the concrete ledge, is Abraham Zapruder and his assistant. Zapruder is taking the only filmed sequence of the actual assassination.

1963. Seconds after the shooting in Dealey Plaza, Secret Service agent Clint Hill gets his footing on the presidential limousine. He will soon push Mrs. Kennedy back into her seat and cover her and the mortally wounded president for the short ride to Parkland Hospital. Mrs. Kennedy was apparently attempting to retrieve a portion of her husband’s skull or brain that had fallen on the trunk after the fatal bullet struck JFK’s head.

1963. A Dallas photojournalist captured two African American men, Bonnie Ray Williams and Harold Norman, peering out of a fifth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository moments after the assassination. The boxes from the sniper’s nest are visible in the sixth-floor window above their heads. Norman reported hearing the sound of shells hitting the floor above his head.

1963. Some three hours after the assassination, photographer Jerry Cabluck of the
Fort Worth Star Telegram
took this shot of Dealey Plaza from a rented helicopter. Police cars and officers are on and near the grassy knoll, just below and to the right of the Depository.

1963. At Parkland Hospital, with the president having been taken to Trauma Room One, police and federal agents surround the presidential limousine. Almost unbelievably, two agents appear to be wiping down the blood in the car, which is a crime scene. (Note the bucket on the ground near the motorcycle policeman’s left foot.) Blood splatter patterns were used even in the 1960s to help determine bullet trajectories.

2012. Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the physicians who tended to President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963, holding his shirt from that day, still stained with President Kennedy’s blood.