JFK assassination: Dallas marks its darkest day with sober ceremony
In this sombre Texas city, there was silence where 50 years ago there
was gunfire. Instead of screams, bells pealed across Dealey Plaza. And
there was order and reflection in place of chaos and panic.
The sky was grey, but this was Dallas’s moment of clarity: a day when a demonised city faced its past in front of the world, hoping that by paying tribute to John F Kennedy’s life, it will no longer be defined by his death.
Sleeked by drizzle and shivering in the cold, thousands gathered outside the Texas school book depository, from whose sixth floor 50 years earlier Lee Harvey Oswald fired the three shots that killed the 35th president of the United States.
At 12.30pm, the time when Kennedy was struck as his motorcade passed along Elm Street, a short period of quiet was observed, broken by the ringing of bells followed by a rendition of of America the Beautiful by the US naval academy men’s glee club.
The half-hour ceremony, called The 50th, was Dallas’s first major public commemoration of the killing. It featured prayers, hymns and speeches and was a tribute to Kennedy’s life rather than a reprise of his murder. Later, in the evening, a candlelit vigil was held at the location where a police officer, JD Tippit, was fatally shot by Oswald.
At a location that resonates so vividly of death, even half a century later and even for people who were not born or have ever visited the US, little needed to be said 22 November 1963.
The ceremony addressed the consequences, not the conspiracies. The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, told the crowd that the US had been forced to “grow up” on the day Kennedy died. He called the murdered president an “idealist without illusions who helped build a more just and equal world”.
The sky was grey, but this was Dallas’s moment of clarity: a day when a demonised city faced its past in front of the world, hoping that by paying tribute to John F Kennedy’s life, it will no longer be defined by his death.
Sleeked by drizzle and shivering in the cold, thousands gathered outside the Texas school book depository, from whose sixth floor 50 years earlier Lee Harvey Oswald fired the three shots that killed the 35th president of the United States.
At 12.30pm, the time when Kennedy was struck as his motorcade passed along Elm Street, a short period of quiet was observed, broken by the ringing of bells followed by a rendition of of America the Beautiful by the US naval academy men’s glee club.
The half-hour ceremony, called The 50th, was Dallas’s first major public commemoration of the killing. It featured prayers, hymns and speeches and was a tribute to Kennedy’s life rather than a reprise of his murder. Later, in the evening, a candlelit vigil was held at the location where a police officer, JD Tippit, was fatally shot by Oswald.
At a location that resonates so vividly of death, even half a century later and even for people who were not born or have ever visited the US, little needed to be said 22 November 1963.
The ceremony addressed the consequences, not the conspiracies. The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, told the crowd that the US had been forced to “grow up” on the day Kennedy died. He called the murdered president an “idealist without illusions who helped build a more just and equal world”.
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