These photos of JFK's assassination taken just before, during, and after the event provide a new perspective on this historic tragedy.
November 25.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
November 23.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
Kennedy, largely obscured by the car's rearview mirror, can be seen with his fist clenched in front of his throat while agents standing on the car behind the limousine look back toward the Texas School Book Depository, the entrance of which is visible just behind the tree.James William "Ike" Altgens/Associated Press/Wikimedia
This was the bullet that was found on the stretcher that had carried Governor Connally at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
According to proponents of the single-bullet theory, this one bullet caused seven different wounds in both Governor Connally and President Kennedy while following a trajectory that opponents of the theory believe to be impossible.National Archives and Records Administration
November 24.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
November 23.Dallas Police Department/Wikimedia Commons
November 24.Ira Jefferson "Jack" Beers Jr./The Dallas Morning News/Wikimedia Commons
Washington, D.C. November 24.Abbie Rowe/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
November 24.National Archives and Records Administration
August 1964.Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
November 23.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
November 24.Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images
From here, the body of President Kennedy was taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an immediate autopsy./AFP/Getty Images
November 24.Shel Hershorn/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, countless writers spilled untold amounts of ink in an effort to grapple with a tragedy that had rattled the United States of America to its core.
Many of these writers delivered sweeping statements on the historic weight of this catastrophe or relayed the thoughts and words of the insiders sitting in America's highest corridors of power.
And yet, of everything written in the aftermath of the assassination of JFK, the piece that remains the most well-remembered today is the one that set its sights seemingly much lower — but, in truth, much higher.
Rather than wax tragic about the state of the nation or interview those closest to the president, legendary New York journalist Jimmy Breslin instead spoke with Clifton Pollard, the man tasked with digging Kennedy's grave, and delivered an affecting account of a lowly laborer who'd suddenly found himself in the middle of a historic moment.
In focusing on such an ostensibly unremarkable corner of such an immense episode in American history, Breslin both found an unexpected angle that no other writer was taking and provided the average reader with an emotional entry point into an event that was simply too upsetting to confront head on.
So memorable and moving was Breslin's approach that not only does his piece live on 54 years later, but it's also inspired what's since been called "the gravedigger school of news writing."
Proponents of this approach are always on the lookout for their "gravedigger," the unassuming corner of a story that proves all the more weighty because of just how peripheral it may seem at first.
And as for the Kennedy assassination itself, Breslin certainly didn't find that episode's only "gravedigger." On the contrary, the assassination — from the hours before the shooting to the arrest and murder of the suspect to the president's funeral — is filled with little moments, people, places, and things that illustrate the event's gravitas in ways that a straightforward document of the actual shooting itself (such as, say, the Zapruder film) just can't.
The seldom-seen Kennedy assassination photos above are certainly proof of that.
After seeing these photos the JFK assassination, learn a little about what's inside the secret Kennedy assassination files set to be released by the U.S. government this October. Then, have a look at some of the most incredible John F. Kennedy photos ever taken.
