It’s the most notorious crime scene in modern American history. It reaches from the window of a non-descript warehouse building to the street below, and what happened there changed our country and all of our lives forever. It came without warning and lasted just a few seconds. But its impact horrified us, brought us to tears, and took away our innocence. The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, Texas preserves the place and tries to explain what happened on that sunny day in November when a young, vibrant president was gunned down on a street in the middle of an American city as cheering crowds watched.
President Kennedy was on a five city political trip to Texas, along with Vice President Johnson, who was from Texas, as he looked forward to his re-election in 1964. His motorcade from the airport was taking him to the Dallas Trade Mart where he was to give a speech. The Texas Book Depository stands on the corner of Houston and Elm Streets in an area called Dealey Plaza, named for the man who founded the city. Lee Harvey Oswald was a temporary worker there on November 22nd, 1963. He smuggled a mail order rifle he bought for just over $12 dollars into the building, saying it was curtain rods. He went to the sixth floor corner window where he had a perfect view of the presidential motorcade as it turned left from Houston Street onto Elm Street. The museum has walled off the corner in glass. It has recreated the cartons of text books Oswald used to hide behind. The window is propped open just as it was when the shots were fired. You can see exactly what Oswald saw. His target appears closer than I had imagined.
There are two simple white Xs in the center lane of Elm Street as it starts to curve to the right and heads under an overpass. The first X represents when the first of three shots were fired. Eyewitness accounts vary on whether it missed. Some witnesses said the second shot hit Kennedy in the throat. The disputed “Magic Bullet” theory also has that bullet hitting Texas Governor John Connelly who was sitting in the jump seat in front of the president. The second X marks the spot where the third and fatal shot blew the side of Kennedy’s head away. Traffic runs over the spots. Those marks are right in front of the Grassy Knoll where many have theorized a second gunman also fired at the president. There is a curved wall behind the Grassy Knoll that does offer a perfect view of the kill zone. You can also stand next to the concrete platform on the knoll where Abraham Zapruder stood with his movie camera and shot the twenty-six second film that shows the moment that changed America in an explosion of blood and brain matter.
People of my generation remember the day like no other. I’ve seen many pictures and videos of the scene. But it’s nothing like being there. Walking out to the X on the street and standing on the Grassy Knoll drops you back in time. You wonder how this monstrous thing could have happened on the completely normal looking street. Should it be blocked off? Should there be plaques commemorating what happened there? There is a display of a quote on the Grassy Knoll from the speech that Kennedy was to give at the luncheon that no one heard that day. You think about the “what ifs?” What if Kennedy had not asked for the bullet proof bubble top to be left off the car? What if the motorcade had taken a different route? What if Oswald missed?
The museum has a whole floor of displays, videos, and models explaining everything about the assassination. The history of the times, the Kennedy presidency, second by second eyewitness and news accounts, photographs, films, and artifacts of the day, and the terrible weekend that followed. Jack Ruby shooting Oswald on live television in the basement of the Dallas police station on Sunday and the presidential funeral on Monday. There is the history of the Warren Commission Report, and the investigations into all the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination that forever leaves what really happened that day troubling and unsettled.
The day and the place are seared in our memory. We should all take in the view from the sixth floor and think about the kind of country we want to be.
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