Tyler Cacace

5/24/21
Modern World History C
Mr. Sokoloff
Oral History Project

What would happen if the president of the United States had been assassinated,
how would America react, how would other countries around the whole world react?
When President John F. Kennedy was killed, the whole country of America reacted in a
way and everyone was affected. During my oral history interview, my grandmother
stated that it made people aware of what was going on in the country. I am going to
relate my grandmothers topic to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria/Hungary. I am going to use comparison to relate The John F. Kennedy
assassination to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria/Hungary. the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy was a sad time in the country of America,
and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria/Hungary led to The Great
War. To compare the two assassinations, we can talk about how JFK was loved by the
whole US so it was surprising and terrible for the country .On the other hand, the
Archduke’s killing was during high tensions and he was not beloved by all of the people
in his country.
When I had first started this project about three weeks ago, I was confused and
was not sure about what I was going to do for my interview. It took me some time to
actually think about what I should do. Eventually I decided to interview my grandmother
about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I had about a 15 minute
conversation with her about her reactions, who she think did it and how she feels
looking back at the assassination. Just like anyone and everyone else, she was super
surprised and upset about how and why this just happened. I went on to transcribe our
whole interview and highlight the super important parts where you should listen and also
read about it. After my interview was finished and set, I had a decision to make. I
needed to pick a topic from earlier than 2001 and not based in America to relate to the
assassination of John F. Kennedy. I immediately thought to myself that I should use a
different assassination of a similar leader. That led me to relating it to the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria/Hungary. That was the leading factor into the
start of The Great War, which is also known as World War One. After I decided my topic
I went on to gather websites and sources to help me learn more about the topic. I used
noodletools to create notecards on the sources I needed to use. I went on to find good
sources that I thought were reliable to create my notecards. Before I went on to find
these reliable sources, I had to do a little bit of research beforehand. The best option
right at the beginning was Wikipedia. I would then go to Wikipedia and find out some
information about both assassinations. After researching a little bit, I went back into
noodletools to put in all this important information that I had found into a source. There
was a problem though, I only had the sourcing, I now needed to create a notecard for
each of the sources I have and then go from there to create good notecards. I would
quote whatever I had found on the website and then would put it right into noodletools
and write some sections about what I wanted to talk about. I went on to find all different
kinds of sources and different websites, but not all of them were reliable. That is when I
put in some of the lateral reading skills I have learned into my project. I just spent time
researching, trying to find the most accurate sources, and the sources that I thought
were going to help me the most.
When I was planning my interview I was not sure what exactly I was going to do
for the interview. I went to my grandmother before the interview even started and I
asked her, what do you think about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and how do
you remember it as a high student around my age? As the interview began, we began
to just have a normal conversation like we would on any other night. This time, however,
it was going to be recorded. We started off by talking about how she remembers it. She
stated that she remembered being at school and all of a sudden everyone had heard
about it. “Everyone was so shocked because why would someone kill the president,”1
she told me. She was along with everyone else on this, she just did not know why this
had happened. Nobody else really knew either. She talked about how Kennedy was a
great president and that most of the country actually was loving what he had been
doing. She talks about who may have killed him, and who might have been behind the
killing. She also talks about how watching on TV and how sad it was seeing the video of
him being killed.2 When she talked about how and why he was killed, like everyone else
at the time, she was confused. Then she began to go on about who she thought killed.
She said that looking back, to this day, it was the mafia that had killed him. She talks
about how the mafia basically had gotten him elected and they were mad at him for not
giving enough in return.3 This assassination was a horrible act and it definetly was not
even the first one that had happened.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria/Hungary was also a
huge assassination at the time of it’s happening. This one had happened in 1914, vs the
Kennedy assassination that happened in 1963. Right before this assassination had
happened, there was so much tension in Europe between all the countries, people knew
war was going to break out but were not sure when it was going to happen. The
assassination had happened and then war broke out 10 days later. Everyone knew that
this was the leading factor to the start of the Great War. Everywhere there were signs,

1
Jackie Cacace, interview by the author, East Haven, Connecticut, United States, May 2021.
2
Cacace, interview by the author.
3
Cacace, interview by the author.
newspaper articles and people talking about how this was going to lead to war.4 After
this killing had happened, everyone began to get even more confused, because people
wanted to know what was going to happen next. Another smaller headline on that
newspaper says, “Gigantic Murder Plot is Feared.”5 People did not know what was
going to even happen next. The only thing though, many people had said after this had
happened, they were not even surprised that it had happened because there were
already attempts to murder him.6 Another story is that the Archduke even told some of
his friends that he was going to be murdered sooner than later. He also killed a
forbidden white stag, which Austrian hunters say that whoever kills that rare stag, will
die within a year.7 This all points in favor that he was going to be murdered sooner than
later, John F. Kennedy on the other hand, was a complete surprise to everyone around
the country and the world. Nobody knew Kennedy was going to be assassinated.
As my research began, I began to ask my parents about what I should do for this
project, because I really had no idea what I was going to do. I decided I was going to
interview my grandmother about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Before I had to do the interview, I needed some background information. I went and
found my sources and read up about this. Looking back, after the interview had
concluded, I realized that I enjoyed doing this interview and researching about this topic,
it was a very interesting and also strong one. One thing I really enjoyed though, was
transcribing the interview. I really liked listening to myself and my grandmother talk and
actually writing it down. By transcribing everything and writing it all down, it really helped
make the interview stronger. After my interview had been completed, I had to decide
what historical topic to relate it to that is outside of the US. I began to think and began
researching other assassinations that had happened. I found the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria/Hungary and immediately thought, I could easily
compare this to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I visited the wikipedia site about
it before anything and gathered enough background information to go even further
about it. I went on to find a good newspaper article about it and the article made
predictions about what was going to happen in the future. I also needed to find a
website article about it, I then found an article from the Smithsonian magazine to talk
about how the Archduke’s death was not surprising vs Kennedy’s who was really
surprising.

4
The Evening Herald, "Assassination May Lead to War," The Evening Herald (Klamath Falls, Oregon,
United States), June 29, 1914, 2,405 edition, [Page #1 ], accessed May 19, 2021,
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/687502699337137378/.
5
The Evening Herald, "Assassination May Lead," [Page #1].
6
Mike Dash, "Curses! Archduke Franz Ferdinand and His Astounding Death Car," Smithsonianmag.org,
last modified April 22, 2013, accessed May 25, 2021,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/curses-archduke-franz-ferdinand-and-his-astounding-death-car-
27381052/.
7
Dash, "Curses! Archduke," Smithsonianmag.org.
 My grandmother’s story is a great example of a good source to figure out the
information that I need. This source is that good, because the things my grandmother
said, you are not going to find on a website. She talks about how they kept showing the
video of Kennedy being killed over and over on TV, she talks about how sad and
traumatizing that actually was. She also talks about who she actually thinks killed the
president. She says Lee Harvey Oswald may have killed him, but who could he have
possibly been working for. Those are the things that we will actually never find out
because he was later killed. There are things like this that you just won’t find on any
other website because it was her perception of it, her view of what exactly was going
on. She also has her own opinion about what she thinks is the correct answer, like she
thinks that the mafia was behind the killing, but there are other people that say that the
government may have killed him or Oswald was working alone. Nobody will really ever
know the true answers but people have their own opinions.
The newspaper article is another very good and interesting source because not
all newspapers are the same. This newspaper article was from Oregon, one day after
the Archduke was assassinated and it read that the assassination may lead to war.
These newspaper articles are allowed to make any predictions for the future they want.
That is why it is different from every other one because they can just make their own
predictions. The newspaper actually predicted what was going to happen correctly, they
said that there was going to be a war that was going to break out and they were right.
That’s why I chose this article because the prediction it had back in 1914 was definitely
the correct prediction of what had happened.
The Smithsonian article about the Archduke is also another good source that I
used when writing. I thought this one was very good because the man that is writing this
article gives his opinion on why the Archduke is dead. He does not go on and talk about
everything you see on Wikipedia or other websites that are just overviews of what is
going on. This article may not be as credible though because the man that wrote it gave
his opinion and why he thought that the Archduke was killed.
When I first started this project and the day after the interview finished. I thought
to myself that maybe the interview might not be the best in the world, but I definitely
knew that it was going to be easy for me to relate it to another topic. These two
assassination definetely relate to each other in a sense, but did I do a great job at
connecting these. I thought I did a good job connecting these because they really relate
to each other in a sense. It was definitely easy for me to compare them to each other
and how they were similar assassinations. In my essay, I am not really arguing anything.
What I am actually doing is just making a comparison and introducing both topics. This
topic was also pretty easy to find information on, it was not the hardest thing to do,
because the overview of everything was what I was looking for.
I thought overall that this was a very fun and interesting project, I got to learn lots
of things that I did not know about my grandmother’s experiences. There are some
things she told me that I really had no idea about because we have never talked about
the Kennedy assassination before. Nothing about it really ever came up in our family
conversations either. I enjoyed actually putting all this into words and then explaining my
thoughts about everything. I also enjoyed learning about the assassination of Archduke
Ferdinand and how that basically started WWI. This was not really similar to my
interview because in the interview, I asked my grandmother questions about what I
wanted to know. The difference is that I had to do research about the Archduke and I
had to ultimately teach it to myself. The things I would change if I were to do this again
may be that I would really pick an easier topic to do this on. I feel like this is a very hard
topic to do research about because it is hard to find information about. I feel like the
interview was lacking some historical details that could have easily helped me in my
essay. This topic really is interesting though, I would definitely spend more time on the
interview if I were to ever do this again.
I feel like I could of found another newspaper article about the assassination of
the Archduke explaining of why this might have started WWI because the one I used
only stated that a war might start. I also feel like I could have done a follow up interview
with my grandmother possibly trying to get more historical details about how the
situation was and how she felt personally. Overall though, I felt that I did a decent job
and this project and I definitely enjoyed it!