President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Riding with President Kennedy are first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, right, Nellie Connally, second from left, and her husband, Texas Gov. John Connally, far left. The 60th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination, marked on Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2023, finds his family, and the country, at a moment many would not have imagined in JFK’s lifetime. (Jim Altgens/AP)
By The Editorial Board | Chicago Tribune
Sixty years ago today, Americans of all stripes were shocked when Walter Cronkite told them, wiping away tears, that John F. Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas.
It verges on trite to say everything changed after that. It also happens to be true. As Stephen Sondheim famously wrote in a song lyric, “Something Just Broke.”
But, that truth has taken on new forms as time has passed. The legacy of JFK has evolved as has its lessons for America.
For the first few decades after the tragedy, the narrative was one of before and after. For many, JFK’s death marked the loss of the country’s innocence, as manifested in the turbulent 1960s, the sexual revolution and a litany of cultural changes.
Where were you when you found out? Virtually every American old enough to remember could tell you.
JFK in those early decades was put on a pedestal. He was seen as inspirational (“Ask not what your country can do for you,” “We choose to go to the moon”) and a symbol of a nation on the rise — of a younger, vigorous, forward-looking country.
In more recent times, the legacy has morphed into something more complicated and in some respects worrisome.
The theorizing rampant on the internet — a technological advancement JFK no doubt would find mind-boggling — in some ways has its origins in the still-raging debate over who was responsible for the assassination.
Read more here.
Related: “Resident pens revealing book on the Kennedys”
