“Kennedy Slain on Dallas Street”

Where were you and what were you doing the day Kennedy was shot? This ques­tion shows that the as­sas­si­na­tion of the 35th Pres­i­dent of the United States on a Dal­las street while rid­ing in a con­vert­ible car in De­cem­ber 1963 with his wife Jacque­line was an epoch-mark­ing event that shocked Amer­ica and pro­duced news­pa­pers head­lines, doc­u­men­taries and films for years to come. New data is still emerg­ing. Con­spir­acy the­o­ries have never died. But a US pres­i­dent would never again ride in an open-air un-pro­tected car in the streets of a hos­tile city or any other city for that mat­ter.

Being the youngest US pres­i­dent ever elected, at 43, and com­ing from a suc­cess­ful and promi­nent Mass­a­chu­setts fam­ily of Irish ori­gin, Kennedy im­me­di­ately con­veyed an image of en­ergy and pro­gres­sive­ness. De­spite his very short pres­i­dency of less than three years, his man­date was very event­ful. Para­mount was the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis, com­ing after the failed in­va­sion of the is­land at the Bay of Pigs, which took the world to the brink of nu­clear dis­as­ter and has been de­bated pro­fusely in the past few weeks in case lessons can be learned in the pre­sent-day threat to use nu­clear weapons by the new mad-man of the world, pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin. One of the lessons is to be firm in the face of threats with­out avoid­ing any tough, even dan­ger­ous, mea­sures – like the block­ade of the is­land he or­dered – while ac­tively ex­plor­ing diplo­matic chan­nels to leave the door for peace al­ways open and ready for ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He was the man who set the stage for the con­quest of outer space by de­clar­ing the goal of send­ing men to the moon and – most im­por­tantly – bring­ing them home again. He would not live long enough to see it but it was a gi­gan­tic achieve­ment for the pres­tige of his na­tion.

Notwith­stand­ing im­por­tant re­forms in the fields of the econ­omy, pulling the US out of a se­ri­ous re­ces­sion, civil rights for African Amer­i­cans and equal­ity by abol­ish­ing the wage dis­par­ity based on sex, al­though this goal was slow to be­come a re­al­ity, he was the pres­i­dent that sank the US deeper into the Viet­nam war and al­lowed for the use of in­creas­ingly more lethal weapons such as na­palm and other dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals that be­came a norm for years.

As an anti-Com­mu­nist cru­sader, he left his mark not only in Cuba but also in Ger­many with his sup­port for a be­sieged West Berlin and his visit to West Ger­many in which he fa­mously pro­claimed: “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

But per­haps his most fa­mous mes­sage was the one given the day of his in­au­gu­ra­tion as pres­i­dent in Jan­u­ary 1961: “Ask not what your coun­try can do for you, ask what you can do for your coun­try.”

BREAK­ING NEWS Front pages through his­tory

The Dal­las Morn­ing News, Dal­las, Texas