When John F. Kennedy entered the presidential limousine at Love Field in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, he began his ride into history. That journey continues even today and we call it the Kennedy legacy. This course will explore the Presidency, assassination, and lasting legacy of President John F. Kennedy. Students will learn how JFK’s life, administration, and tragic death have influenced the general public, the media, and each of the nine U.S. presidents who followed. Understanding the Kennedy legacy and being able to identify elements of his legacy within the context of modern politics helps understand many of the vexing problems that developed over the last half century as well as many of the challenges that confront us today. November 22, 1963 was so powerful a moment that in the fifty years since the assassination, every U.S. President that followed JFK has used Kennedy’s words and actions in an effort to craft their own political image. Why does Kennedy’s influence persist, and will it continue? What are the effects? We’ll address these questions and more as we explore The Kennedy Half Century. Follow on Twitter: @JFKclass.
Oswald
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From the course by University of Virginia
The Kennedy Half Century
268 ratings
Meet the Instructors
Professor Larry J. SabatoRobert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics
Director, UVA Center for Politics
[MUSIC]
50 years later, there's still no clear resolution to the question of
whether President Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin or by conspiracy.
And when I say clear, I mean that the American public does not
believe the Warren Commission Report's conclusion
that one person alone conducted the assassination.
Maybe Lee Harvey Oswald committed the crime of the century
without any help.
50 years later, though, some things still don't add up.
And it's unlikely this murder will ever be solved
to the satisfaction of many, if not most, Americans.
Unless we get full disclosure from the federal government, and we all see
the tens of thousands of pages of
unreleased documents relating to the Kennedy Administration.
This class will not answer the question of the assassination definitively.
I don't presume to know for certain what happened on November 22, 1963.
And we're long past the point when all the
mysteries of that day can be cleared up easily.
But what is still possible, after the passage of 50 years,
is to present the evidence that most acknowledge to be true.
And from there to offer the
most reasonable explanations that can be mustered.
And also, I think to eliminate the least plausible
hypotheses, and there are quite a few of those.
Naturally, not all the questions in this
incredibly untidy murder can be answered fully.
There are leftover paradoxes galore. First, let's consider Lee Harvey Oswald.
An understanding of him is essential to
unraveling the events that unfolded on November 22nd.
He was born on October 18, 1939 in New Orleans, Louisianna.
He endured a tumultuous childhood.
His father died of a heart attack before Lee was born.
As Lee's brother Robert once commented, there mother made
it quite clear on numerous occasions that her children were
a burden to her. At one point, Oswald's mother, Marguerite,
decided that she could no longer work and rear the children at the same time.
And so, she placed Lee and his two brothers in an orphanage.
In 1944, she moved the family to Dallas
and married for a third time the next year.
The marriage quickly fell apart, and Marguerite returned to New Orleans.
A few years later, she took Lee to New York City.
The Warren Commission noted that over the year and a half
Lee Harvey Oswald lived in New York, he refused to attend school.
He had emotional and psychological problems of a seemingly serious nature.
And he was sent to Youth House,
a public treatment facility for juvenile delinquents.
When he continued to get in trouble at school, a Yew York
court recommended that he receive additional psychotherapy.
But, before that could even happen, Marguerite Oswald abruptly
moved the family back to New Orleans in 1954.
So you can get a sense of how disruptive Oswald's life was.
How unhappy his childhood was.
Oswald soon dropped out of school and worked a series of odd jobs.
And during this period,
the Warren Commission reported that he started to read Communist literature.
Oswald briefly returned to school when his mother moved to Fort Worth, Texas.
But he left for good and joined the Marine Corp in October, 1956.
He was actually underage at the time.
Oswald had a checkered career in the Marines, to say the least.
Two months after he enlisted, his ability to shoot a gun accurately was
measured and he did achieve a high score.
Two points over the score required for the sharpshooter qualification.
In 1957, he received radar and aircraft surveillance training before receiving
a transfer to a Marine airbase in Japan close to Tokyo.
Oswald worked in a radar unit that kept track
of the U2 spy flights that the United States
sent over the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
Though, Oswald really didn't have direct access to the plane itself.
He had barely gotten settled in Japan when he learned
he was being sent to the Philippines for additional training.
Upset by the news, Oswald shot himself in the arm with a 22 caliber pistol.
He was sent to the Philippines anyway and
court-martialed for the possession of an illegal firearm.
Oswald's military career went further down hill after that.
In June 1958, he poured a drink over the head of
a sergeant whom he blamed for assigning him extra kitchen duties.
And this lead to a second court-martial.
Oswald was then transferred to a Marine base located in California.
All the while he was growing more and more interested in Communism.
In California,
Oswald immersed himself in the Russian language by reading Russian books and
blaring Russian records which, needless to say, bothered some of the other Marines.
In August 1959, Oswald applied for a hardship discharge, claiming that
his mother had injured herself at work and needed his support.
In reality, Marguerite Oswald was fine. At the same time, he applied
for a passport, listing Switzerland, Finland, England, France, Germany,
Russia, Cuba and the Dominican Republic as the places he intended to visit.
Both applications were approved.
Oswald told the passport office he planned on attending Albert Schweitzer college in
Switzerland and Turku University in Finland, but
Oswald could not have been more insincere.
He had no intention of enrolling in Schweitzer.
This was his way of getting to Europe so he could defect to the Soviet Union.
In September 1959, Oswald was convinced that
Communism was the wave of the future and
that the Soviets might recognize his great talents
and put him in charge of something important.
On September 20, he boarded a freighter bound for France.
From there he traveled to England and on to Helsinki, Finland.
On October 12th, Oswald applied for a
tourist visa at the local Soviet Consulate.
His application was approved two days later, and he left for Moscow.
Oswald rather melodramatically, and this was a common theme in his life.
Attempted suicide shortly after receiving negative news from
the Soviets that they weren't going to grant his request.
On October 21, 1959, Oswald's actions, that suicide,
had all the markings of a genuine try.
Which lends credence to those who say Oswald was
not put up to the defection by the US Government.
Oswald could easily have succeeded in killing himself had an intourist guide,
basically a Soviet minder assigned to Oswald, not found
him lying in a pool of his own blood.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital where
he received blood transfusions and also a psychiatric evaluation.
He was diagnosed by two Russian psychiatrists as mentally unstable.
The CIA claims that it first became aware of Oswald when he tried to
renounce his citizenship at the US Embassy in Moscow on October 31st, 1959.
Oswald explained that he'd been a radar operator for the Marines,
and that he planned on sharing what he knew with Soviet officials.
When the consul informed the ex-Marine that he needed to wait a few days
before he could fill out the necessary paperwork, Oswald left in a huff and
never came back.
Embassy staff immediately cabled the CIA at Langley about that incident.
The news didn't stay confidential for long.
The following day, The Washington Post ran
a story entitled Ex-Marine Asks Soviet Citizenship.
And it quoted Oswald as saying that he would, quote,
never return to the United States for any reason, unquote.
As it developed, Oswald did not formally defect, since he
never filled out the paperwork to renounce his American citizenship.
Instead, he was granted temporary residence in
the USSR, with guaranteed employment and housing.
This temporary assignment became more permanent with time.
Did Oswald cooperate with or work for the Soviet authorities during
his time in the USSR?
Here again, there are too many details to
cover in this class about the Kennedy legacy.
We include many of them in The Kennedy Half Century, so I
encourage you to take a look at the book's section on that.
Oswald did become convinced that the Soviets had perverted
the teachings of Karl Marx as he had read them.
So he began searching for a way
to get back to the United States, the nation he had so loudly denounced a
couple of years earlier, this back and fourth and 180 degree turn.
So typical of Oswald's troubled life.
He contacted the US embassy in Moscow and explained that his decision to defect had
just been a big mistake. He also encouraged his new Soviet wife
Marina, who was related to a senior KGB agent, to apply for a visa.
Lee and Marina's applications were approved in little
over a year by both American and Soviet officials.
It's odd isn't it, that all of this back and forth, in
and out of the Soviet Union by an ex-Marine was relatively simple.
The State Department,
in fact, helpfully provided him with a loan to cover his travel expenses.
And in June 1962, the Oswald family arrived back in the United States.
The Oswalds settled in the Dallas Fort
Worth area where Lee's mother and brother lived.
When he arrived, by the way, he said to his brother, where are the reporters?
He was very interested in publicity.
In March 1963, Oswald purchased the rifle that
he would eventually use to assassinate President Kennedy.
And he did it by mail order, which was legal at the time.
He also got a small revolver pistol.
It wasn't known until after the assassination
of President Kennedy, but the Warren Commission
concluded that Oswald had also attempted to
kill retired US Major General Edwin Walker in
Dallas on April 10, 1963. Months before the Kennedy assassination.
Walker was an outspoken segregationist and
anti-Communist and, frankly, a right wing nut.
But the bullet struck the window frame and
Walker's only injury was bullet fragments in his arm.
Oswald failed in his attempt to kill Walker.
Oswald returned to New Orleans on April 24th,
1963, shortly after that attempt to kill General Walker.
Later that year, he turned up in
downtown New Orleans handing out pro-Castro leaflets.
This is one of the more puzzling
and controversial aspects of Oswald's crazy quilt history.
Again, I'll have to refer you to the book to read more details.
It's uncertain
when Oswald left New Orleans.
But it was sometime in September when he, or was it someone who looked like Oswald?
Purchased a bus ticket for the Mexican border.
The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had visited Mexico City.
And while there, he went to the Cuban and Soviet consulates.
But questions regarding whether someone posing
as Oswald had appeared at the embassies
were serious enough to be investigated, way in
the 1970s, by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
That House committee concluded that it was Oswald who made the trip.
But again, there are contrary indications.
That has never been fully resolved to reasonable people's satisfaction.
Assuming Oswald went, he arrived in Mexico City on September 27th,
where he apparently applied for a visa at the Cuban embassy.
Claiming he wanted to visit Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union.
The Cuban embassy officials insisted Oswald would need Soviet approval.
But he was unable to get prop cooperation from the
Soviet embassy, because of course,
they recognized immediately Oswald's mental imbalance.
On October 2nd, 1963,
Oswald left Mexico City by bus and arrived in Dallas the next day.
On October 16th, Oswald started a new job at The Texas School Book Depository.
This job, by the way, was simply suggested by the person
who was taking in his wife, Marina Oswald to live with her.
Marina had at that point two small children.
In the days just before President and
Mrs. Kennedy's visit to Dallas, several newspapers
and TV printed and aired the details
of the planned route of the President's motorcade.
It would make a hairpin turn from Houston Street onto Elm Street, traveling
just beneath the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.
Oswald was initially arrested
for the murder of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippett, who was killed
on a Dallas street approximately 45 minutes after President Kennedy was shot.
Oswald would later be charged with the assassination of President
Kennedy as well, but he didn't confess to either murder.
Two days later, while Oswald was being transferred from police
headquarters to the county jail, Oswald was shot and killed by
Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
This was the first televised murder in American history.
And it's one of the few undisputed parts of
the Kennedy assassination story, because it was nationally televised.
Take a look at this footage of Oswald's assassination as
it was captured as millions of Americans were watching live.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
I remember myself sitting in our TV den
with my dad watching the transfer of Oswald.
We had been glued to the TV, as
almost all Americans were, since Friday, November 22nd.
And when the shooting occurred we were just dumbfounded.
And my father's first remark was, they've killed Oswald.
I think that's what most
Americans said.
It just didn't make sense to most people that the assassin could
be so easily wiped out just a couple of days after President Kennedy's killing.
that is really the source of much of
the public belief about conspiracy in the assassination.
In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in
assassinating Kennedy, firing three bullets.
Marina told the Warren Commission that she believed Lee Oswald shot JFK.
But she later recanted without any specific
evidence being presented to support her charge.
In time, Marina Oswald-Porter, she remarried, not only changed her story, but
began insisting on payment for interviews. She indicated to some of
the people trying to interview her that she
was very flexible about what she would say.
Depending on what they wanted, and what the prices for the interviews would be.
Another Oswald who frequently changed her story and
demanded money for interviews was Lee's mother, Marguerite.
On the day of the assassination, she called the Fort
Worth Star Telegram newspaper looking for a ride into Dallas.
CBS's Bob Schieffer
was then a cut reporter for the Star Telegram, and he
just happened to pick up the phone when Marguerite Oswald called.
Not wanting to miss the opportunity for a great story,
Schieffer and a colleague drove her all the way to Dallas.
Of course, he interviewed her the whole way,
and he got some incredible statements out of her.
In the years that followed, Schieffer says that
Marguerite occasionally contacted him to see if CBS
would pay her for an interview, but CBS consistently refused.
Exposure to the truth about Oswald's very unusual mother and upbringing and life
make it easier to understand why Oswald may have undertaken the assassination.
Although the word lie presumes a underlying rationality that
might not have existed in this deeply troubled individual.
In it's final conclusion,
the Warren Commission said one
bullet apparently missed Kennedy's limousine entirely.
Another struck Kennedy in the back of his neck, and another struck him in the head.
That was the fatal bullet.
Despite forensic and ballistic evidence supporting the
theory of Oswald as the lone gunman,
most of the US public, then and now, according to our poll for the book.
Three quarters of all American's believe
that there was a conspiracy to kill the president.
That Oswald may have been involved, or
was involved, but that others participated as well.
We conducted one of the most extensive public polls ever about a historical
figure and found that most Americans just don't believe Oswald acted alone.
As I said, three-quarters of Americans believe there was a conspiracy.
There are more details in The Kennedy Half Century about that poll.
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations
concluded that Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy.
But the House Committee claimed that audio
recordings by the Dallas police department established a
very high probability that two gunmen fired
at President John F Kennedy in Dealey Plaza.
So for this book, we conducted a new landmark study of this evidence.
We were surprised by the findings, and I think you will be, too.
You need to go to the book for the details because it's a complicated study.
A very precise scientific study of hard evidence, not another theory.
The last thing the Kennedy Assassination needs is another theory.
Two official government investigations. Two different conclusions.
The Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
So which one is right?
What's your opinion?
Go to the polling feature for this class now, and register your opinion.
Sadly, the world is still waiting for a
definitive answer, even 50 years after the assassination.
The Kennedy Half Century provides
a lot of new details and analysis about the assassination.
But when you look at these two competing governmental commissions,
the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassination.
The fact that they have competing conclusions
has fostered numerous conspiracy theories over these decades.
In our next segment, we're going to discuss
some of the most credible theories about conspiracy
in the Kennedy assassination.
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