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President John F. Kennedy's Death Announcement
Lyndon Baines Johnson, thirty-sixth U.S. President Announces Kennedy Death
On the assassination of President Kennedy
"All who love freedom will mourn his death." (Washington, D.C., November 23, 1963)
At 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-car motorcade through the streets of Dallas, Texas. He was pronounced dead 30 minutes later. Just after 2:09 p.m., Vice President Lyndon Johnson took the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One. The oath was administered by Texas Judge Sarah T. Hughes and witnessed by some 30 people, including Jacqueline Kennedy, who was still wearing clothes stained with her husband's blood. The next day, November 23, President Johnson issued his first proclamation, declaring November 25 to be a day of national mourning for the slain president. On that Monday, hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets of Washington, D.C., to watch a horse-drawn caisson bear Kennedy's body from the Capitol Rotunda to St. Matthew's Catholic Cathedral for a requiem mass. The solemn procession then continued on to Arlington National Cemetery, where leaders of ninety-two nations gathered for the state funeral. Kennedy was buried with full military honors on a slope below Arlington House, where an eternal flame was lit by his widow to forever mark the grave.
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Medal History
