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Assassination: Newseum exhibits document the
havoc after JFKs murder

No Events Were Found.

2013-09-20

By Mary Eloise H. Leake

On Nov. 22, 1963, a marathon began: Accounts of the Kennedy
assassination, which became the first example of modern media coverage.
Along with my classmates at Columbia College, a womens institution in
Columbia, S.C., I heard the news that the president had been shot while I
was in class.
Immediately we all went to the TV room that our freshman dorm shared
with a dorm of upperclassmen. For the next four days, that room was
packed as we watched the chaos that ravaged our nation.
On the small screen we viewed the parade in Dallas when President John
F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie in an open convertible turned into
Dealey Plaza. We spotted his sudden collapse.
We joined the vigil outside Parkland Memorial Hospital. We wept as
Walter Cronkite struggled to announce Kennedys death. We followed the
conflicting search for the assassin(s) and Lee Harvey Oswalds capture. We
observed a grim Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in as president. We gasped
when Jack Ruby shot Oswald as the police were moving him to a more
secure place.
Later we accompanied Kennedys funeral procession and glimpsed John
Jr. on his third birthday salute his fathers casket. Only 15 weeks after
the couple buried their infant son, Patrick, we saw Jackie light the eternal
flame at her husbands grave at Arlington Cemetery.
All in the space of four days almost around the clock.
Jonathan Thompson, public relations manager of the Newseum, says that
type of intense wall-to-wall broadcast did not happen again until the 9/11
terrorist attack.
The Newseum, which moved into its current headquarters in Washington,
D.C., five years ago, salutes five centuries of news history with up-tothe-nano-second technology, significant artifacts and interactive exhibits.
One of the capitals media hotspots, its mission is to support the five
freedoms of the First Amendment.
The Newseum is commemorating the 50th anniversary of Kennedys
assassination by showcasing two compelling exhibits and an extraordinary
16-minute documentary film.
The exhibit JFK: Creating Camelot presents more than 70 newly
restored pictures public and private taken by Kennedys personal
photographer, Jacques Lowe. Featuring the charismatic youthful
president, Jackie and their children, Caroline and John Jr., these images
provide insight into his presidency and disclose the unscripted side of
their White House lives. Most have not been on view before.
Ironically, Lowes 40,000 Kennedy negatives were stored in the World
Trade Center and were destroyed on 9/11. His contact sheets were in
another studio, and they enabled restorers to painstakingly rescue some of
the visual legacy.
Augmented by excerpts from radio, TV, newspapers and the Zapruder
home movie, JFK: Three Shots Were Fired, the exhibits display some
never-before-seen artifacts on loan from the National Archives, such as:
The gun of Clint Hill, the first Secret Service agent to jump onto the
presidential limo, and the longsleeve brown shirt Lee Harvey Oswald was
wearing when he was arrested plus his wallet and ID Cards and family
photos. Also included is the Zapruder 8mm movie camera that captured
the definitive 26 seconds seared into the nations collective memory.

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On the Newseums panoramic 100-foot-wide screen, JFK: A Thousand

Days, an original documentary film, chronicles the appeal of the man, his
early life and his presidencys significant moments via TV footage and
interviews. While the establishment of the Peace Corps and the start of the
space race were crowd pleasers, Kennedy faced many challenges such as
the Bay of Pigs, the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,
George Wallaces stand in the door at the University of Alabama, the
Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Caught up in the shocking murder of a bright and vigorous president, I
was young and idealistic.
But to my parents generation, Kennedy was controversial. He had
detractors in every corner of the United States, and many lived in the
South. Angry, they blamed his stand on civil rights as causing the demise
of a way of life. And amid the tentacles of Cold War and Vietnam War
issues, others found his foreign policy appalling. While the assassination
devastated the entire country, some Americans grieved the national blow
more than the death of the man.
The multiplicity of assassination conspiracy theories still rampant 50
years later speaks to the diversity of organizations and/or people who were
said to want Kennedy out of office: the KGB, the Mafia, Fidel Castro,
anti-Castro groups, Israelis, Vietnam War proponents, the CIA, the FBI,
the Secret Service, U.S. military-industrial complex, Federal Reserve Bank,
John Birch Society, Ku Klux Klan, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon,
New Orleans consortium, and yes, even UFOs ...
The Newseums trio of historic exhibits about the iconic 35th president,
the first true TV politician, will remain on display at 555 Pennsylvania Ave.
NW (across the street from the National Gallery of Art) through Jan. 5,
2014.
Mary Eloise Leake is Longleafs perpetual information source about
museums and their fascinating exhibits
More from Newseum
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