DP1 TOK: November 2013

KENNEDY ASSASSINATION: EVIDENCE IN HISTORY

http://jfk-assassination-as-it-happened.blogspot.com/ How do we know the truth in history? Is history just a collection of facts, or is it about the interpretation of those facts? How do we know which evidence is reliable and which is not? When historians write about an historical event what do we need to know about the historian? Does the intended audience of the historians report/book/film make a difference to what we are told? A SUMMARY OF THE EVENT AND ITS AFTERMATH: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was assassinated on November 22nd 1963 while riding in an open top limousine with his wife Jacqueline and Governor Connolly of Texas and his wife. The event took place at about 12:30pm in Dallas, Texas, while President Kennedy was visiting the city. He was on his way to make a speech at the Trade Mart when he was shot twice (the number of bullets/shots is the subject of some conjecture), one of which was fatal, striking him in the head. The President died at Parkland hospital, Dallas about 30 minutes later. Shortly afterwards, Vice President Lyndon B Johnson, was sworn in as the 36th President. The man arrested as a suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was taken to the Dallas Police Station. He was interrogated but reportedly did not confess. On Sunday November 24th he was being transferred from the police station to the jail when a man stepped out of the crowd and shot Oswald at point blank range. Oswald died shortly afterwards from his wounds. His assailant, Jack Ruby, died in 1965 from cancer while awaiting trial. Ruby denied that he ever knew Oswald and claimed that he killed Oswald because he was angry about the killing of the president. Consequently no-one ever went to trail for the murder of the President. President Johnson set up a commission of inquiry, under the chairmanship of Chief Justice Earl Warren, which concluded in September 1964 that Oswald had probably been the assassin as far as the evidence showed. However many conspiracy theories claim that there was one more than one gunman and different groups were responsible for the assassination including the CIA, the Mafia, the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro and others. Other government inquiries came to the same conclusion as the Warren Commission, that Oswald had acted alone. However in 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald was probably part of a conspiracy and that another gunman had fired at least one other shot; this other gunman was located in an area called the grassy knoll; Oswald had been located in a building called the Texas Book Depository. Throughout the past 50 years many books and articles as well as movies have been made on the topic of the Kennedy assassination. The best known movie is the controversial JFK directed by Oliver Stone. On the Trail of the Assassins (1988) by Jim Garrison is one of the best known books dealing with the idea of a conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination.

To this date the Kennedy assassination is surrounded in controversy, with no overall agreement among historians about whether Oswald acted alone or whether there was a conspiracy. If there had been a conspiracy the questions are: who was involved and why? The consequences of confirmation of a conspiracy to kill the president, rather than one person acting alone, would be extremely significant. YOUTUBE SOURCES: 1. BREAKING NEWS REPORTS, November 22nd 1963 : NBC, ABC, CBS (Walter Cronkite) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiFwRRfScKc

2. SHOCKING: Unreleased video of JFK assassination http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-LA0ypFXig

3.

Badge Man Grassy Knoll

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtOCJplSLf8