The week before Thanksgiving in 1963, the Friday-morning weather had some fog and a little drizzle; afternoon temperatures reached the 60s.
“It’s true,” I heard from a trembling freshman schoolmate in Latin class, seconds after laughing and saying how I’d heard a sophomore whose locker was next to mine, Cindy, telling her boyfriend John that the President had been shot.
I thought it was a stupid joke.
It was neither, of course.
Fifty years ago this month was a turning point in history and society, perhaps comparable to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. However, the assassination of the 35th U.S. President, liberal Democrat John F. Kennedy, was no foreign attack. The wound to the country was self-inflicted.
That month marked the last of the previous American culture, according to Charles Murray’s new book, “Coming Apart,” an otherwise simplistic condemnation of social change. (Murray seems to have cherry-picked data to arrive at his conclusion that subsequent low rates of marriage, higher numbers of unwed mothers and a declining work ethic were the main causes of an American decline – curiously, not racism, the Vietnam War, Watergate, sexism, economic inequality or other factors.)
But the week before Thanksgiving in 1963, when President Kennedy, 46, was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas, did deeply hurt an idealistic, even idyllic, moment in U.S. politics and culture, and the nation lost its innocence, if not its way.
Starting the afternoon of JFK’s assassination, television networks featured four days of sign-on to sign-off coverage of the assassination and its immediate aftermath, riveting the nation to the screens, from suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder live on TV to the funeral. Other news was overlooked. Also dying that day were authors C.S. Lewis (“The Chronicles of Narnia”), 64, and Aldous Huxley (“Brave New World”), 69. The Beatles second British LP, “With the Beatles,” was released that day.
On the Sunday after the murder, TV showed Kennedy’s flag-draped casket carried on a horse-drawn caisson to the U.S. Capitol, where it lay in state. Throughout the day and night, hundreds of thousands lined up to view the guarded casket. An estimated 250,000 people lined up 10 abreast for about 10 miles to pay their respect.
The state funeral was on that Monday, Nov. 25, and on Capitol Hill, both houses of Congress passed resolutions expressing their grief. In the Senate, U.S. Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, a Maine Republican, laid a rose on the desk Kennedy used when he’d been a Senator from Massachusetts.
For the somber ceremonies, the number of foreign leaders, from more than 90 countries, was the largest such gathering in decades, with 19 heads of state present – from French President Charles De Gaulle and Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie to King Baudouin of Belgium and Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal – plus hundreds of dignitaries, including Colombia’s former President Alberto Lleras Camargo and even Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan.
About 1 million people lined the route of the funeral procession between the Capitol, the White House, St. Matthew’s Cathedral and Arlington National Cemetery, where Kennedy was buried.
Days later, Thanksgiving was a mixed blessing. Anguish and anxiety continued, casting a pall on countless turkeys and pumpkin pies and so on. Before that year, Thanksgiving had seemed like a faith-filled day of gratitude. Afterward, it seemed to start a slow, sad decline to a commercial/corporate stunt, with Macy’s, JC Penney, Target and Walmart open so people could shop instead of giving thanks with family and friends.
Blessings were mixed throughout 1963, in fact. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union persisted, with real fear of nuclear war lingering after the Cuban Missile Crisis just a year earlier.
But the economy was strong, with average U.S. annual income a then-respectable $5,807 and inflation just 1.24 percent. American cars cost an average of $3,233, from the Volkswagen “Bug” at $1,269 to Chevrolet’s Corvette’s $4,257 price tag.
However, in Vietnam, U.S. Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor that September OK’d covert military raids in North Vietnam, and 20 days before JFK’s death, South Vietnam’s President Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in a CIA-backed coup.
Domestically, Civil Rights remained unresolved. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. the week before spoke at Ohio’s Oberlin College, where Malcolm X cancelled his appearance the day after Kennedy was killed. Both Malcolm and Dr. King would be assassinated in the next few years.
Coast to coast, “Life” magazine was still popular and kids were skateboarding and reading comic books – The Avengers, Spider-Man and Iron Man all debuted that year. In sports, the Chicago Bears (on the cover of Sport Illustrated the week of the assassination) that Sunday played the Steelers to a 17-17 tie en route to an NFL championship season, finishing 11-1-2 in the last year before the merger with the AFL.
Women’s fashion featured “up-do” hairstyles. Radio, jukeboxes and record stores featured “I’m Leaving It Up to You” by Dale & Grace, Billboard’s Number 1 that week, not toppled until Dec. 7, when the Singing Nun’s “Dominique” prevailed.
On television, CBS’ “The Beverly Hillbillies” led Nielsen Ratings’ Top 10, followed by NBC’s “Bonanza” and eight other CBS series, including “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Candid Camera,” “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “My Favorite Martian.” ABC’s top-rated show was “The Donna Reed Show,” at No. 16.
At the movies, “It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World” was the box-office leader, but Elvis Presley’s “Fun in Acapulco,” released the day before Thanksgiving, would draw crowds.
In Las Vegas, casinos on the strip closed out of respect for the Kennedys. From coast to coast, most businesses shut down, most through the whole weekend and Monday, in mourning. On Broadway was “Hello Dolly!” Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park,” “Funny Girl,” “What Makes Sammy Run?” and “West Side Story.” After more than 800 performances, “Camelot” closed that year.
It was a time of apprehension and simplicity, innocence and dread. Things seemed to get at once more complicated and more liberating, frequently much worse and only occasionally a bit better.
Most of the nation – the planet – was united in sorrow. Soon, divisions solidified and strengthened with conservative Barry Goldwater (interestingly, a friend of the progressive Kennedy) to oppose JFK successor Lyndon Johnson in 1964’s Presidential election.
Today, about 59 percent of Americans remain convinced that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy extending beyond Oswald, according to an Associated Press poll conducted in April. However, 10 years ago, that number was 75 percent.
In 1963, that Nov. 29 – the day after Thanksgiving – the Beatles’ single “I Want to Hold Your Hand” came out, and it would reach Number 1 on the record charts on Feb. 1, 1964.
But on that Thanksgiving itself – Nov. 28, 1963 – the high was only in the 50s, and the whole country seemed chillier.
Contact Bill at:
Bill.Knight@hotmail.com. His twice-weekly columns are archived at:
billknightcolumn.blogspot.com