Leah Camera
November 29, 2006
Mass Media, per. 1
JFK Unit Essay
The Shot That Killed a Nation
There are moments in American history when everything stops, everything balances, waiting for the cue to begin again. America held its breath and watched Armstrong’s first steps on the moon, we clung onto every word of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and we froze to watch the September 11th attacks; each event changing lives and changing history. But none were as powerful as the stinging moment when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. It put an entire nation in mourning, an entire nation in shock, the heart of a nation died. But what, and who could kill an entire nation?
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) died on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, that much is known. He was in the middle of a motorcade parade when he was shot twice, wounding his neck, and then killing him with a shot to the head. Ironically, despite the fact that hundreds of people surrounded the parade, no one can officially report the happenings of JFK’s death. In fact; because of this, scores of conspiracy theories and accusations have come up in the search for truth. Several arrests were made and reputations trashed because America needed to blame someone. Possibly, because it remains unsolved, the moment of JFK’s death remains a hanging moment in time; it is shrouded in mystery, deceit and worst of all, politics.
The most commonly believed and best known explanation is that a man named Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated JFK. Lee Harvey Oswald was disturbed and lonely as a child, and drifted towards Marxist beliefs. By the time he was 18, after being discharged from the military, he moved to Russia. He lived in Russia six years, finally returning to America with a Russian wife. Continually searching for a way to shine, a way to be noticed, Oswald began to think of killing the President, and JFK’s visit to Dallas provided him with an opportunity to do...