Kennedy Assassination Essays (1733 words) - Texas, United States

Kennedy Assassination Kennedy Assassination "President Kennedy was dead. I stopped by a giant live oak tree on the vast front lawn of Parkland Hospital and cried." As this reporter said, people everywhere were distraught when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated. News reporters from other countries flew in, called up, and sent letters back to tell the people in their country what had happened and to give advice to the Dallas Police Station. Everyone everywhere was upset by this tragic loss. People were sent home from work, kids sent home from school, and an entire nation with one question, who? The only answer that was given and is still the accepted answer is that, Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin in the murder of President John F. Kennedy. The events surrounding President Kennedy's death are still under speculation, but this is known for sure: President Kennedy landed in Love Field, Dallas along with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy at about 11:35 a.m. They left the airport in the motorcade along with Governor Collany and followed by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Claudia "Lady Bird" Taylor. At approximately 12:30 p.m., both President Kennedy and Governor Collany were shot. Lee Harvey Oswald left the Texas Book Depository just three minutes later. By 1:00 p.m., just an hour and a half after Kennedy arrived in Texas, he was announced dead. After the assassination, Oswald got onto a city bus, but once the bus got stuck in traffic, Oswald got off. He then took a taxi to within 4 blocks of his house, but did not go directly to his house. Oswald grabbed a different coat, a handgun, and left without saying a word to his housemaid, who was watching the assassination details on television. He then began walking around Dallas. A police officer named J.T. Tippet saw a man that fit the description of the assassin, so he stopped to ask Oswald some questions. Oswald panicked and shot Officer Tippet and then fled the area. He then entered a cinema where police finally arrested him. The public was outraged that President Kennedy was murdered and wanted an explanation. President Lyndon B. Johnson set up the Warren Commission lead by Earl Warren to head investigation. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin in the murder of John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald had a major role in the assassination of President Kennedy, no matter how it is looked upon. Oswald moved twenty-two times as a child and went to eleven different schools, causing him not to have many close friends. A psychologist at a New York City Youth Home concluded "...Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self involved and conflicted mother." Oswald joined the Marine Corps Basic Training on October 26, 1956 and was released form active duty in September 1959. During his time there, Oswald once attempted to shoot himself. He again attempted suicide on October 21, 1959. Just ten days later, he tried to renounce his U.S. citizenship and moved to Minsk, Russia in the following January. He decided to return to America in February 1962. Oswald ordered the Mannlicher Carcano rifle in March 1963. On April 10, 1963, Oswald attempted to kill General Edwin Walker. He had left a note for his new wife, Marrina, tell her what to do if he was killed or imprisoned. This shooting demonstrated Oswald's lack of compassion for human life. It seemed like no problem nailing Oswald as the assassin. Witnesses saw a gunman in the window on the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository; those witnesses matched Lee Harvey Oswald to the person in the window. The bullets found in the limo and on the stretcher were from the 6.5-Millimeter Mannlicher Carcano rifle, which Oswald owned and was found in the Book Depository. Three used cartridges were also found in the Book Depository. It seemed as though the Warren Commission had their man nailed. But there were a few pieces of evidence that made people begin to wonder. The angle of the bullets caused a lot of controversy. After the assassination, the first official autopsy on the human body took place on President Kennedy. There were two autopsies on President Kennedy, one in Bethesda Naval Hospital, and another in Parkland Hospital in Dallas. In Bethesda, the doctors said that the bullets had entered President Kennedy's body in this upper portion of the neck, and emerged out of