President John F. Kennedy
On a bright November morning in 1963, the motorcade moved slowly through downtown Dallas. The sky was clear, the air crisp, and the crowds thick along the sidewalks. People leaned out of office windows, waved small flags, and craned for a glimpse of the young president whose face they knew from television. In the open limousine, John Fitzgerald Kennedy sat beside his wife, Jacqueline, her pink suit vivid against the black car. Texas Governor John Connally and his wife were in the front seat. The mood was festive; the trip was meant to mend political fences, to show unity in a state where factions of the Democratic Party were tearing at each other. The president smiled, waved, turned toward one cluster of onlookers and then another. A few minutes later, as the car rolled past the Texas School Book Depository, gunshots cracked through the warm air. Kennedy slumped. The motorcade surged toward Parkland Hospital. Before the hour was out, the man who had promised a New Frontier and asked Americans to ask what they could do for their country was dead at forty-six.
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