Kennedy memorial in Dallas for 1st time
Print Edition
Dallas marked the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination with its first official memorial yesterday, as the rest of the United States paused to remember the event that changed history.
At Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia where Kennedy is buried, family members laid a wreath at his grave, where Jackie Kennedy and two of their children also are buried.
At dawn, Attorney General Eric Holder made a gravesite visit to honor Kennedy, bowing his head and placing a Justice Department commemorative coin at the stone. Holder then walked a short path to the grave of Robert F. Kennedy, who had served as attorney general under his brother, bowed his head and left another coin.
In a late morning ceremony in Dallas, Kennedy was remembered with prayers, a speech by Mayor Mike Rawlings and military jets flying over the city’s Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot.
The ceremony started at 11:30am to coincide with the time that Kennedy’s motorcade had passed through packed downtown streets, 50 years ago.
During previous anniversaries, conspiracy theorists who claim that there was a plot to kill Kennedy usually took over Dealey Plaza, denouncing the official line that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone and fired three shots at Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.
“His death forever changed our city, as well as the world,” Rawlings said in a statement ahead of the anniversary. “We want to mark this tragic day by remembering a great president with the sense of dignity and history he deserves.”
Dallas was seen as a pariah city for years after the November 22, 1963, assassination, and avoided any commemoration. That stigma started to fade decades ago, and now, The Sixth Floor Museum in the former Texas School Book Depository is one of the city’s largest tourist attractions.
“Dallas came under a great deal of international criticism after the assassination. It was called the ‘City of Hate,’” said Stephen Fagin, associate curator of The Sixth Floor Museum.
In recent days, the city removed a large “X” — seen as tasteless by many — embedded into the pavement by an unknown person or people that marked the spot on Elm Street where Kennedy was shot in the head.
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