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A secondary source is something about or based off of a period of time.

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If Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole figure involved in the assassination of President John F Kennedy (and hundreds of books have argued that he wasn't), then he presumably fired his rifle from the Texas School Book Depository, because of the line of sight it provided on the route of the presidential motorcade through Dallas.

The choice of a warehouse containing educational texts has proved prophetic. When Oswald fired, he unleashed a towering stack of books arguing about the events of that day.

President Trump may hope that his order to publish the last trove of classified government documents will finally silence the literature of JFK-speculation. In fact, history suggests that the new wave of paperwork will provoke another rush of publications, or revisions to existing ones.

In a torrent of commentary equalled only by biblical scholarship, all Kennedy books are a response to a single previous volume: The Report of the Warren Commission: The Assassination of President Kennedy. Published in September 1964, this investigation concluded that Oswald had acted alone, firing two bullets into Kennedy's head and neck.

Most publications have been sceptical of this finding. On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison (1988), a Louisiana lawyer, and L Fletcher Prouty's JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy (1992), featured key source material for Oliver Stone's movie JFK (1991), which suggested that the president was executed by a vast cabal of businessmen, gangsters, politicians, soldiers, Cuban dissidents and spooks.

Most contributions to the JFK book depository have fingered at least some of the figures in the Garrison-Prouty conspiracy theory. The most recurrent prime suspect has been Cuba, which had been infuriated by the Bay of Pigs operation - Kennedy's failed attempt to depose the Castro dictatorship through a CIA-run invasion by Cuban exiles. The communist island also features in Oswald's still-mysterious trip, weeks before the Kennedy shooting, to Mexico City, where he apparently hoped to secure a visa to defect to Cuba.

Don DeLillo, after extensive reading of the 26 supporting volumes to the Warren report, presented Oswald in his 1988 novel, Libra, as the stooge of a CIA attempt to promote war with Cuba. James Ellroy's American Tabloid (1995) begins with Castro's coup and ends with the Dallas assassination, which the novel attributes to a conspiracy involving the Cuban interests of the CIA and the mafia.

Who Really Killed Kennedy? (2013), by Dr Jerome R Corsi, also finds the mafia guilty, although with a little help from Richard Nixon and the French. Another work published to mark the 50th anniversary of JFK's death, The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ, by Roger Stone, a Trump associate, implicates President Lyndon Baines Johnson, in close association with mobsters and US intelligence.

In 1974, Charles McCarry's The Tears of Autumnsuggests that the killing was ordered by South Vietnam in retaliation for the assassination of its president, Ngo Dinh Diem, during a coup engineered by the CIA in 1963. As McCarry was a former CIA agent, readers suspected that the writer was fictionalising privileged knowledge, although he has always insisted in interviews that it was just his theory.

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Dallas Police Department photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald. Photograph: Reuters

But the most interesting of all the literary retorts to the Warren report is Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (1995), which used KGB material released in post-Soviet Russia to illuminate the formative period that Kennedy's presumed assassin spent in the USSR as a young man. However, despite this period deepening the mystery of Oswald's motives, the generally anarchistic Mailer eventually concludes: "Every insight we have gained of him suggests the solitary nature of his act." Mailer's sly comparison of the assassination with masturbation underlines his theory that the killer was driven by narcissistic egotism, rather than an external commission.

The prominence of Mexico and Cuba in the Kennedy books means that those countries are likely to be among the most frequently searched words in the latest archive release. And those of us who find The Tears of Autumn the most plausible explanation of the assassination will look with particular interest at any CIA documentation dealing with Diem's death.

These documents, though, are unlikely to be the last word. A quarter of a century ago, Gerald R Posner published a book - concluding that Oswald was a lone operator - that had perhaps the most falsely optimistic title in publishing history: Case Closed.
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The best books about the JFK assassination, from Norman Mailer to Don DeLillo

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If Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole figure involved in the assassination of President John F Kennedy (and hundreds of books have argued that he wasn't), then he presumably fired his rifle from the Texas School Book Depository, because of the line of sight it provided on the route of the presidential motorcade through Dallas.

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A primary source is a piece of history or even an object from the time of history that it represents.

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John F Kennedy was the 35th president of the united states (Jan  1961-Nov 1963). John Fitzgerald Kennedy also known as JFK was assassinated in November of 1963. He was killed at Parkland Hospital while he was driving. Here is a link to an article I used.

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Table of Contents

1. John F. Kennedy's Early Life

2. JFK's Beginnings in Politics

3. Kennedy's Road to Presidency

4. Kennedy's Foreign Policy Challenges

5. Kennedy's Leadership at Home

6. JFK's Assassination

Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became one of the youngest U.S. presidents, as well as the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. Born into one of America's wealthiest families, he parlayed an elite education and a reputation as a military hero into a successful run for Congress in 1946 and for the Senate in 1952.

As president, Kennedy confronted mounting Cold War tensions in Cuba, Vietnam and elsewhere. He also led a renewed drive for public service and eventually provided federal support for the growing civil rights movement. His assassination on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, sent shockwaves around the world and turned the all-too-human Kennedy into a larger-than-life heroic figure. To this day, historians continue to rank him among the best-loved presidents in American history.

John F. Kennedy's Early Life

Born on May 29, 1917, in Brookline, Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy (known as Jack) was the second of nine children. His parents, Joseph and Rose Kennedy, hailed from two of Boston's most prominent Irish Catholic political families. Despite persistent health problems throughout his childhood and teenage years (he would later be diagnosed with a rare endocrine disorder called Addison's disease), Jack led a privileged youth. He attended private schools such as Canterbury and Choate and spent summers in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod. Joe Kennedy, a hugely successful businessman and an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934 and named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in 1937. As a student at Harvard University, Jack traveled in Europe as his father's secretary. His senior thesis about Britain's unpreparedness for war was later published as an acclaimed book, Why England Slept (1940).

Did you know? John F. Kennedy's Senate career got off to a rocky start when he refused to condemn Senator Joseph McCarthy, a personal friend of the Kennedy family whom the Senate voted to censure in 1954 for his relentless pursuit of suspected communists. In the end, though he planned to vote against McCarthy, Kennedy missed the vote when he was hospitalized after back surgery.

Jack joined the U.S. Navy in 1941 and two years later was sent to the South Pacific, where he was given command of a Patrol-Torpedo (PT) boat. In August 1943, a Japanese destroyer struck the craft, PT-109, in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy helped some of his marooned crew back to safety and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. His older brother, Joe Jr., was not so fortunate: He was killed in August 1944 when his Navy airplane exploded on a secret mission against a German rocket-launching site. A grieving Joe Sr. told Jack it was his duty to fulfill the destiny once intended for Joe Jr.-to become the first Catholic president of the United States.

JFK's Beginnings in Politics

Abandoning plans to be a journalist, Jack left the Navy by the end of 1944. Less than a year later, he returned to Boston, preparing a run for Congress in 1946. As a moderately conservative Democrat, and backed by his father's fortune, Jack won his party's nomination handily and carried the mostly working-class Eleventh District by nearly three to one over his Republican opponent in the general election. He entered the 80th Congress in January 1947, at the age of 29, and immediately attracted attention (as well as some criticism from older members of the Washington establishment) for his youthful appearance and relaxed, informal style.

Kennedy won reelection to the House of Representatives in 1948 and 1950, and in 1952 ran successfully for the Senate, defeating the popular Republican incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. On September 12, 1953, Kennedy married the beautiful socialite and journalist Jacqueline (Jackie) Lee Bouvier. Two years later, he was forced to undergo a painful operation on his back. While recovering from the surgery, Jack wrote another best-selling book, Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 1957. (The book was later revealed to be mostly the work of Kennedy's longtime aide, Theodore Sorenson.)

Kennedy's Road to Presidency

After nearly earning his party's nomination for vice president (under Adlai Stevenson) in 1956, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president on January 2, 1960. He defeated a primary challenge from the more liberal Hubert Humphrey and chose the Senate majority leader, Lyndon Johnson of Texas, as his running mate. In the general election, Kennedy faced a difficult battle against his Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, a two-term vice president under the popular Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Offering a young, energetic alternative to Nixon and the status quo, Kennedy benefited from his performance (and telegenic appearance) in the first-ever televised presidential debates, watched by millions of viewers. In November's election, Kennedy won by a narrow margin-fewer than 120,000 out of some 70 million votes cast-becoming the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to be elected president of the United States.

With his beautiful young wife and their two small children (Caroline, born in 1957, and John Jr., born just weeks after the election), Kennedy lent an unmistakable aura of youth and glamour to the White House. In his inaugural address, given on January 20, 1961, the new president called on his fellow Americans to work together in the pursuit of progress and the elimination of poverty, but also in the battle to win the ongoing Cold War against communism around the world. Kennedy's famous closing words expressed the need for cooperation and sacrifice on the part of the American people: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."

Kennedy's Foreign Policy Challenges

An early crisis in the foreign affairs arena occurred in April 1961, when Kennedy approved the plan to send 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles in an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Intended to spur a rebellion that would overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro, the mission ended in failure, with nearly all of the exiles captured or killed.

That June, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna to discuss the city of Berlin, which had been divided after World War II between Allied and Soviet control. Two months later, East German troops began erecting a wall to divide the city. Kennedy sent an army convoy to reassure West Berliners of U.S. support, and would deliver one of his most famous speeches in West Berlin in June 1963.

Kennedy clashed again with Khrushchev in October 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis. After learning that the Soviet Union was constructing a number of nuclear and long-range missile sites in Cuba that could pose a threat to the continental United States, Kennedy announced a naval blockade of Cuba.

The tense standoff lasted nearly two weeks before Khrushchev agreed to dismantle Soviet missile sites in Cuba in return for America's promise not to invade the island and the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey and other sites close to Soviet borders. In July 1963, Kennedy won his greatest foreign affairs victory when Khrushchev agreed to join him and Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in signing a nuclear test ban treaty. In Southeast Asia, however, Kennedy's desire to curb the spread of communism led him to escalate U.S. involvement in the conflict in Vietnam, even as privately he expressed his dismay over the situation.

Kennedy's Leadership at Home

During his first year in office, Kennedy oversaw the launch of the Peace Corps, which would send young volunteers to underdeveloped countries all over the world. Otherwise, he was unable to achieve much of his proposed legislation during his lifetime, including two of his biggest priorities: income tax cuts and a civil rights bill. Slow to commit himself to the civil rights cause, events forced Kennedy into action, spurring him to send federal troops to support the desegregation of the University of Mississippi after riots there left two dead and many others injured. The following summer, Kennedy announced his intention to propose a comprehensive civil rights bill and endorsed the massive March on Washington that took place that August.

Kennedy held enormous popularity, both at home and abroad, and his family drew famous comparisons to King Arthur's court at Camelot. His brother Bobby served as his attorney general, while the youngest Kennedy son, Edward (Ted), was elected to Jack's former Senate seat in 1962. Jackie Kennedy became an international icon of style, beauty and sophistication, though stories of her husband's numerous marital infidelities (and his personal association with members of organized crime) would later emerge to complicate the Kennedys' idyllic image.

JFK's Assassination

On November 22, 1963, the president and his wife landed in Dallas; he had spoken in San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth the day before. From the airfield, the party then traveled in a motorcade to the Dallas Trade Mart, the site of Jack's next speaking engagement. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., as the motorcade passed through downtown Dallas, shots rang out. Bullets struck Kennedy twice, in the neck and head; he was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at a nearby hospital.

Authorities arrested 24-old Lee Harvey Oswald, known to have Communist sympathies, for the killing. But he was shot and fatally wounded two days later by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby while being led to jail. Almost immediately, alternative theories of Kennedy's assassination emerged-including conspiracies allegedly run by the KGB, the Mafia and the U.S. military-industrial complex, among others. A presidential commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren concluded that Oswald had acted alone, but speculation and debate over the assassination have persisted.

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John F. Kennedy - Facts, Presidency & Assassination

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Elected in 1960 as the 35th president of the United States, 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became the youngest man and the first Roman Catholic to hold that office. Learn about his personal and political life and his assassination in 1963.

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Here is an image of Kennedy with his newborn daughter and his wife Jackie.

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Here is a biography about JFK

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Learn about the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis during President Kennedy's tenure Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

John F. Kennedy, in full John Fitzgerald Kennedy, byname JFK, (born May 29, 1917, Brookline, Massachusetts, U.S.-died November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas), 35th president of the United States (1961-63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially in Cuba and Berlin, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas.

What was John F. Kennedy's family like?

What were John F. Kennedy's parents' names?

When was John F. Kennedy born and when did he die?

What were John F. Kennedy's jobs?

What was John F. Kennedy famous for?

Early life

The second of nine children, Kennedy was reared in a family that demanded intense physical and intellectual competition among the siblings-the family's touch football games at their Hyannis Port retreat later became legendary-and was schooled in the religious teachings of the Roman Catholic church and the political precepts of the Democratic Party. His father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, had acquired a multimillion-dollar fortune in banking, bootlegging, shipbuilding, and the film industry, and as a skilled player of the stock market. His mother, Rose, was the daughter of John F. ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, onetime mayor of Boston. They established trust funds for their children that guaranteed lifelong financial independence. After serving as the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Joseph Kennedy became the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, and for six months in 1938 John served as his secretary, drawing on that experience to write his senior thesis at Harvard University (B.S., 1940) on Great Britain's military unpreparedness. He then expanded that thesis into a best-selling book, Why England Slept (1940).

In the fall of 1941 Kennedy joined the U.S. Navy and two years later was sent to the South Pacific. By the time he was discharged in 1945, his older brother, Joe, who their father had expected would be the first Kennedy to run for office, had been killed in the war, and the family's political standard passed to John, who had planned to pursue an academic or journalistic career.

John F. Kennedy: PT-109 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

John Kennedy himself had barely escaped death in battle. Commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat, he was gravely injured when a Japanese destroyer sank it in the Solomon Islands. Marooned far behind enemy lines, he led his men back to safety and was awarded the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. He also returned to active command at his own request. (These events were later depicted in a Hollywood film, PT 109 [1963], that contributed to the Kennedy mystique.) However, the further injury to his back, which had bothered him since his teens, never really healed. Despite operations in 1944, 1954, and 1955, he was in pain for much of the rest of his life. He also suffered from Addison disease, though this affliction was publicly concealed. "At least one-half of the days he spent on this earth," wrote his brother Robert, "were days of intense physical pain." (After he became president, Kennedy combated the pain with injections of amphetamines-then thought to be harmless and used by more than a few celebrities for their energizing effect. According to some reports, both Kennedy and the first lady became heavily dependent on these injections through weekly use.) None of this prevented Kennedy from undertaking a strenuous life in politics. His family expected him to run for public office and to win.

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born

May 29, 1917
Brookline, Massachusetts

died

November 22, 1963 (aged 46)
Dallas, Texas

title / office

political affiliation

notable works

role in

awards and honors

notable family members

did you know?

John F. Kennedy is the only U.S. president to receive a Purple Heart.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is John F. Kennedy's nephew by marriage.

John F. Kennedy suffered from chronic back pain due to his uneven legs.

Kennedy was stranded at sea for six days during World War II.

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John F. Kennedy, 35th president of the United States (1961-63), who faced a number of foreign crises, especially the Cuban missile crisis, but managed to secure such achievements as the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the Alliance for Progress. He was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas.