Lee Harvey Oswald's Assassination

The world changed forever on a sunny afternoon in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. On that fateful day, John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States at the time, was doing something he, as well as other politicians had done countless times before, which was ride in an open-top convertible down a parade route. Because of what was about to transpire, it would also be the last time a president was so accessible to the public, in a convertible. At 12:30pm Central Time, President Kennedy was shot in the back of the head and killed while riding with his wife Jackie, Governor Connally of Texas, and the governor's wife. The Asasin was later determined to be Lee Harvey Oswald, a strange man, who mental health was questionable. Although …show more content…
Because Oswald was murdered himself, by Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, there was little time to interegate Oswald about his motives for the shooting, therefore there is little documentation as to why President Kennedy was shot. "Before authorities were able to get answers as to why Oswald shot the president, he was killed by Jack Ruby, a Dallas night club owner. Oswald never confessed to killing the president" (McAdams n.p.). Lee Harvey Oswald not only never confessed to shooting the president, but he viahmetely dennied the fact that he was the one who killed President Kennedy. "Oswald claimed that he was merely a patsy because he had lived in the Soviet Union for a period of time" (McAdams n.p.). These are the words of a mentally unstable individual who is stating that the government is plotting against him just because he lived in the Soviet Union. Oswald was not only arrested for killing the President of the United States, but he also shot and killed a Texas police officer who was attempting to apprehend him in a Dallas suburb(Beck 498). This clearly shows that Lee Harvey Oswald was not menatly stable at the time of the assassination, as blatently murdered a Dallas police officer who only tried to speak with him. According to professor John McAdams, an expert on the assassinaiton of John F. Kennedy, Oswald had significant mental health issues, …show more content…
President Kennedy was riding in an open top limmosine, along with his wife Jackie, the Governor of Texas, and the First Lady of Texas. This transportation arrangement left the president a sitting duck for the bullet of Lee Harvey Oswald. The idea of the open-top limmosine was to portray to the American public that president of the United States was a common man, who wanted to seem accesible to the public. "After President Kennedy's Assassination, the Secret Service did not allow presidents to ride in open-top cars that were accessible" (Ford, n.p.). The reaction of the driver of the car in which the president was driving has also been questioned by many. It appears that he does not speed up after the initial shot was fired, and this allowed Oswald to fire two other shots, one of which killed President Kennedy. This has led many people to believe that there is a conspiracy behind the assassination. The many conspiriacy theories that people have thought up are the remote cause of the assassinaiton of President Kennedy. These thories range from the idea that the CIA ordered and carried out the killing out of anger over the Bay of Pigs or that Vice-President Johnson ordered the assassinaion, to the idea that Predient Kennedy was assassinated by KGB Agents working on behalf of the Soviet Union or Cuba. It has even been suggested that President

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