On November 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while driving past Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas. Kennedy had been sitting in the car with his wife Jacqueline, Texan governor John Connally, and Connally’s wife Nellie when the assassination occurred. The Kennedys’ car had just turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza when gunfire broke out. John F. Kennedy, who had been sitting in the backseat of the car with Jackie, was immediately struck down with bullets to both the head and the neck. Connally, who was sitting in the front, was shot in the chest. Jackie and Nellie remained unharmed. By 1:00 p.m., Kennedy had been pronounced dead. Following his death, Jackie gave her first-hand accounts on the president’s …show more content…
Kennedy’s accomplishments and effectiveness as a president while he was in office. While Kennedy accomplished several achievements of importance during his presidency, such as his involvement in the defusing of the 1961 Berlin crisis, Cuban Missile crisis, and his advocation of civil rights, he also had his fair share of misfalls as well. His actions in the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam War were examples of this. During the Vietnam War, Kennedy “had personal responsibility for the November 2, 1963, overthrow and murder of his friend Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam. Diem's fall is considered to be the turning point in converting a Vietnamese war into an American one with the eventual loss of 58,000 American lives and many more thousands of Vietnamese lives” (Hersch 9). In the Bay of Pigs, his actions led to However, literature written following Kennedy’s assassination did not reflect this overall mixed record, and instead reflected one reminiscent of his fabricated Camelot image. Books such as Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger’s Kennedy and Kennedy speechwriter Theodore Sorensen’s A Thousand Days demonstrated this skewed notion. In both their works, Kennedy’s effectiveness as a president is exaggerated, and his mistakes in office and his personal life are brushed off. In Sorensen's A Thousand Days, he even states that Kennedy’s presidency is second to none out of all the presidents during the twentieth-century. He also covers up the fact that JFK was suffering from Addison’s Disease (M. White 240). Sorensen’s statements shows that Kennedy’s portrayal in their works is closer to one reflective of his Camelot image than that of his true