| Assassination of John F. Kennedy | |
|---|---|
 President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas governor John Connally with his wife, Nellie, in the presidential limousine, minutes before the assassination. | |
| Location | Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, U.S. |
| Date | November 22, 1963 12:30 p.m. (CST) |
| Target | John F. Kennedy |
| Weapons | 6.5×52mm Italian Carcano M91/38 (bolt-action rifle) |
| Deaths | John F. Kennedy J. D. Tippit |
| Injured | John Connally James Tague |
| Perpetrator | Lee Harvey Oswald |
| Charges | Murder with malice (2 counts, murdered before trial) |
On Friday, November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. CST in Dallas, Texas, while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former US Marine. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally was also wounded in the attack but recovered. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the presidency upon Kennedy's death.
Around 70 minutes after Kennedy and Connally were shot, Oswald was arrested by the Dallas Police Department and charged under Texas state law with the murders of Kennedy and Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit. At 11:21 a.m. on November 24, 1963, as live television cameras covered Oswald being moved through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, he was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Like Kennedy, Oswald was also taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though the decision was later overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial.
After a 10-month investigation, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald assassinated Kennedy, that Oswald had acted entirely alone, and that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald. Four years later, New Orleans DA Jim Garrison brought the only trial for Kennedy's murder against businessman Clay Shaw; he was acquitted. Subsequent federal investigations—such as the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee—agreed with the Warren Commission's general findings. In its 1979 report, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that Kennedy was likely "assassinated as a result of a conspiracy" based on a now-debunked police Dictabelt recording. The HSCA did not identify possible conspirators, but concluded that there was "a high probability that two gunmen fired at [the] President". The U.S. Justice Department concluded active investigations and stated that there was no "persuasive evidence" of a conspiracy. However, Kennedy's assassination is still the subject of widespread debate and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories and alternative scenarios. Polls have found that a majority of Americans believe there was a conspiracy.
The assassination was the first of four major assassinations during the 1960s in the United States, coming two years before the assassination of Malcolm X in 1965, and five years before the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Kennedy's brother Robert in 1968. Kennedy was the fourth U.S. president to be assassinated, and the most recent to have died in office.