Kennedy was the fourth U.S. president to be assassinated. In 1865, President Andrew Johnson was sworn in at the Kirkwood House, a Washington hotel where he was living, after President Abraham Lincoln died. The Manhattan townhouse where President Chester Arthur took the oath in September 1881, on Lexington Avenue near 28th Street, has a plaque memorializing the event. Arthur was sworn in as president in the middle of the night when word arrived that President James Garfield had died more than two months after being shot at a Washington train station.
Twenty years later, President Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office in borrowed clothes at the Ansley Wilcox house in Buffalo, N.Y., eight days after President William McKinley had been shot at a World's Fair in that city. The site of Roosevelt's first inaugural, on Sept. 14, 1901, is now a National Historic Site and and is listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.
In 1963, Johnson and President Kennedy's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, wanted the oath of office to occur quickly, while Johnson was still in Dallas. Beyond the shock to Americans, Kennedy's assassination carried international implications. Coming a year after the Cuban missile crisis, the killing of a U.S. president offered instant geopolitical uncertainty for a superpower with a nuclear arsenal. In the hours after his death, it was unclear if the assassination was part of a wider conspiracy, be it one of Southern state opponents to civil rights or a communist plot. Would the Soviet Union sense an advantage to exploit? And how would the White House function amid the turmoil, given that Kennedy and Johnson had a complicated history, with agendas and staff members known to clash.
Texas Schoolbook Depository building, from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fateful shots, would have been demolished save for the intervention of county officials in the 1980s. And it took 30 years before Dealey Plaza received federal designation as a historic place. The Sixth Floor Museum now hosts more than 400,000 annual visitors, making it the state's second-most visited cultural attraction after the Alamo. Other sites that figured into the events of November 1963 - Parkland Memorial Hospital and the street corner where Oswald fatally shot a Dallas police officer - have markers. The Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, now operated as the Hilton Fort Worth, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Texas Historic Commission lists Love Field, which the Army formed as a pilot training site in 1917, as a state historic site but does not cite the events of 1963. The airport has also not been nominated to the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.
resident John F. Kennedy had been dead less than two hours when a federal judge in a brown polka dot dress was hustled aboard Air Force One to administer the oath of office to Lyndon Johnson. The slain president's stricken wife, her pink suit still bloodstained, stood at Johnson's side for the 28-second ceremony in Dallas.
Haste was in order, as the Secret Service wanted both presidents aloft and back to Washington for security reasons. Nine minutes after Johnson's oath, Air Force One was speeding to 41,000 feet at its maximum climb rate, since it was unclear if someone might fire at the Boeing 707. Johnson became the first, and thus far only, U.S. president to take the oath of office west of the Mississippi River.
These events occurred on Nov. 22, 1963 at Dallas Love Field, six miles north of the downtown plaza where Kennedy was shot, but you won't find any mention of it at the city-owned airport. No plaque, no photos, no narratives about the chaotic events that took place 53 years ago this month.
The airport's single acknowledgement of the transition from the Kennedy era to Johnson is a bronze plaque installed in the tarmac last year where Air Force One was parked, purchased by a local historian. That spot is an active taxiway and not visible to the public. (Last month, the airport also shut off a light in the tarmac designed to illuminate a window that overlooks the spot.)
While a large number of Americans shudder at the turbulent transition currently underway, the change in administrations that took place a half-century ago in Dallas was equally historic - as well as sudden and violent. Historians from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas had worked since 2009 to design an exhibit ahead of the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. They sought to portray the chaotic events of that day, as well as how the U.S. Constitution worked as designed
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/dallas-has-a-problem-with-jfk-s-assassination-1.440322
Twenty years later, President Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office in borrowed clothes at the Ansley Wilcox house in Buffalo, N.Y., eight days after President William McKinley had been shot at a World's Fair in that city. The site of Roosevelt's first inaugural, on Sept. 14, 1901, is now a National Historic Site and and is listed in the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.
In 1963, Johnson and President Kennedy's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, wanted the oath of office to occur quickly, while Johnson was still in Dallas. Beyond the shock to Americans, Kennedy's assassination carried international implications. Coming a year after the Cuban missile crisis, the killing of a U.S. president offered instant geopolitical uncertainty for a superpower with a nuclear arsenal. In the hours after his death, it was unclear if the assassination was part of a wider conspiracy, be it one of Southern state opponents to civil rights or a communist plot. Would the Soviet Union sense an advantage to exploit? And how would the White House function amid the turmoil, given that Kennedy and Johnson had a complicated history, with agendas and staff members known to clash.
Texas Schoolbook Depository building, from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fateful shots, would have been demolished save for the intervention of county officials in the 1980s. And it took 30 years before Dealey Plaza received federal designation as a historic place. The Sixth Floor Museum now hosts more than 400,000 annual visitors, making it the state's second-most visited cultural attraction after the Alamo. Other sites that figured into the events of November 1963 - Parkland Memorial Hospital and the street corner where Oswald fatally shot a Dallas police officer - have markers. The Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, now operated as the Hilton Fort Worth, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Texas Historic Commission lists Love Field, which the Army formed as a pilot training site in 1917, as a state historic site but does not cite the events of 1963. The airport has also not been nominated to the National Park Service's National Register of Historic Places.
resident John F. Kennedy had been dead less than two hours when a federal judge in a brown polka dot dress was hustled aboard Air Force One to administer the oath of office to Lyndon Johnson. The slain president's stricken wife, her pink suit still bloodstained, stood at Johnson's side for the 28-second ceremony in Dallas.
Haste was in order, as the Secret Service wanted both presidents aloft and back to Washington for security reasons. Nine minutes after Johnson's oath, Air Force One was speeding to 41,000 feet at its maximum climb rate, since it was unclear if someone might fire at the Boeing 707. Johnson became the first, and thus far only, U.S. president to take the oath of office west of the Mississippi River.
These events occurred on Nov. 22, 1963 at Dallas Love Field, six miles north of the downtown plaza where Kennedy was shot, but you won't find any mention of it at the city-owned airport. No plaque, no photos, no narratives about the chaotic events that took place 53 years ago this month.
The airport's single acknowledgement of the transition from the Kennedy era to Johnson is a bronze plaque installed in the tarmac last year where Air Force One was parked, purchased by a local historian. That spot is an active taxiway and not visible to the public. (Last month, the airport also shut off a light in the tarmac designed to illuminate a window that overlooks the spot.)
While a large number of Americans shudder at the turbulent transition currently underway, the change in administrations that took place a half-century ago in Dallas was equally historic - as well as sudden and violent. Historians from the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas had worked since 2009 to design an exhibit ahead of the 50th anniversary of JFK's assassination. They sought to portray the chaotic events of that day, as well as how the U.S. Constitution worked as designed
https://www.stripes.com/news/us/dallas-has-a-problem-with-jfk-s-assassination-1.440322
