Posted on 11/21/2003 4:54:38 PM PST by Pedantic_Lady
WASHINGTON — Not long after that terrible day in Dallas — no one knows exactly when — a brown paper box arrived at the National Archives. The return address was on O Street, the Georgetown home of Jacqueline Kennedy’s mother. Packed inside was the pink Chanel suit first glimpsed Nov. 22, 1963, when the first lady joined JFK at a Fort Worth breakfast, and which, covered in his blood, she still wore the next morning to escort the slain president’s casket into the White House.
THERE IN THE Archives, the suit remains. Stored in a custom-designed corrugated board box, it rests on a gray steel shelf in a secured area of a suburban warehouse. It has never been cleaned. The wool skirt and jacket lie flat, with a suggestion of human form created by acid-free tissue paper folded inside the sleeves.
Only recently was a deed of gift obtained from the Kennedys’ sole surviving child, Caroline. But one hundred years will have to pass before the suit can again come before the American public. This condition is consistent with Mrs. Kennedy’s determination to balance her obligations to history with her family’s privacy. Archivists’ interests, moreover, are not only the past and present, but the future.
“Once it can be displayed it will really bring the ’60s to the present — whatever that present is,” said Steven Tilley, who oversees the Archives’ JFK Assassination Records Collection.
The Archives also has JFK’s jacket, shirt and tie — exhibits in the Warren Commission investigation of the shooting. But aside from the Brooks Brothers overcoat Abraham Lincoln wore to Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865 — the lining embroidered with an American eagle and the words “One Country/One Destiny” — perhaps no clothing in American history carries the iconic power of that pink suit.
Even out of sight, it is an indelible image in public memory. The first lady made sure of that. She purposefully bore the horror and brutality of the president’s murder for a shattered nation to see. Had she changed or shielded her appearance, Americans’ experience of the assassination would have been fundamentally altered.
“Everybody remembers the pink suit,” Tilley said. Mrs. Kennedy brought nothing new to Texas, her press secretary, Pamela Turnure, recalled in Carl Sferrazza Anthony’s book, “As We Remember Her.” She took two suits, a cocktail dress and a day dress already in her wardrobe. Her clothes stole the show on foreign trips; on a domestic political trip, Turnure said, she didn’t want to deflect attention from the president.
A VISION IN PINK
The morning of Nov. 22, a crowd gathered at the president’s Fort Worth hotel. “Where’s Jackie?” admirers shouted when JFK appeared. “Mrs. Kennedy is organizing herself,” the president replied. “It takes longer. But of course she looks better than we do after she does it.”
Two-thousand Texans roared their approval when a vision in pink — JFK had picked the suit — finally walked into the Chamber of Commerce breakfast. Then it was on to Dallas. At 12:30 p.m., shots were fired at the motorcade, which then sped to Parkland Hospital. The Secret Service hurried Lady Bird Johnson out of her limousine, but not before she glanced over her shoulder. She described the scene to the Warren Commission: “I ... saw, in the president’s car, a bundle of pink, just like a drift of blossoms, lying on the back seat. I think it was Mrs. Kennedy lying over the President’s body.”
In her autobiography, Lady Bird recalled the scene aboard Air Force One while accompanying the casket to Washington: “Mrs. Kennedy’s dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked, it was caked with blood — her husband’s blood. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights — that immaculate woman exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood.”
FIRST LADY UNWAVERING
Mrs. Kennedy repeatedly rebuffed suggestions, beginning in the chaos outside Parkland’s trauma room, that she change clothes. In “The Death of a President,” William Manchester chronicled how tensions on Air Force One grew with “the feeling that something must be done about her appearance.” Mrs. Johnson tried; so, later, did Mrs. Kennedy’s own mother, Janet Auchincloss.
But she didn’t waver. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith had admired the first lady’s “excellent sense of theater” during a triumphant 1962 visit to India. What the fashion industry dubbed “the Jackie look,” the first lady saw as her “state wardrobe.” Through elegantly simple lines and a dazzling rainbow of strong solid colors — ice blue, leaf green, lemon yellow — she conveyed the youth, grace and style of President Kennedy’s New Frontier. Pink ran throughout, from a shell pink sequined chiffon evening gown to what Galbraith called a “radioactive pink” rajah-style coat.
With the president dead, that sense of theater turned to a new and determined purpose. “Keeping that clothing on was completely consistent with her realization that clothing is a medium of expression, and she wanted to say something to the world,” said Wake Forest University art Professor David Lubin, author of “Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images.”
‘WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO JACK’
Mrs. Johnson never forgot the essence of that message, or the fierceness in the 34-year-old widow’s voice as she refused all entreaties to change her clothes. “I want them to see what they have done to Jack,” she said.
In that suit she stood at Lyndon B. Johnson’s side as he took the oath of office on Air Force One, “a silhouette from another world,” as Manchester put it. At Andrews Air Force Base, a proposal was made to exit the plane on the starboard side to avoid news photographers. She rejected it. One of the last pictures of her in the suit is in the East Room. Her shoulders hang heavily. Smeared blood covers a leg, and her gaze is fixed on the casket being lowered onto the catafalque.
At every sight of her, the nation’s grief deepened. In the private quarters of the White House, sometime around dawn on Nov. 23, she finally shed her bloodied clothing.
It’s hard to imagine, with her acute appreciation of history, that Mrs. Kennedy made no provision for the pink suit. Her maid later told Manchester that, while Mrs. Kennedy bathed, she “packed the clothes and hid the bag.” But there is no known record in the Archives explaining who later sent the box or why. There is only the return address, and in it, one small clue: an old postal zone used before zip codes, which began that July. So archivists speculate that it came to them not long after Nov. 22, 1963.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
Was this based on political disagreement or his religious affiliation?
There was a huge wave of revulsion against the US as a whole by the press at the time, blaming the country for JFK's death.
I'm not sure I understand this. The press "blamed the country"? How?
She was trying to retrieve a part of his head, not to be grotesque, but I have seen that reported in many books. There is indeed a part lying on the trunk. It may sound crazy, but you just don't know what you'll do in a situation like that. I'm sure people don't always act rationally.
She was trying to get the secret service man from the back of the car up to the President.
After reading this I searched the web for jfk assassination video to see if I agreed with you. The part about Jackie climbing out to pick up bone/brain off the trunk just never made sense to me (even considering the circumstances). Anyway, I found some excellent vidcaps from the Zapruder film. The website was made an anti-Bush wacko but the caps are good so I'll just link to the videos themselves (they use the divx codec):
2. Close up Kennedy and Connally
The close up is very graphic (sickening, actually) but shows some interesting things. JFK was shot in the throat just as he emerged from behind the street sign. His arms come up to his throat in an automatic reaction. Connally must have been hit by the same shot because he jumps and turns to look back. You can see that he says "Ouch".
Jackie grabs on to JFK's left arm and appears to say something to Connally. She then realizes that JFK is hurt, too, and curves around in front of him to see what's wrong. That's when the horrible head shot impacts. Jackie's face was only a few inches away at the time. Startled, her right hand flies up to the back of JFK's neck as he slumps over. She then, without turning to look at the trunk, starts to climb over the seat, even pushing off of JFK's head with her left hand. When she's halfway over the seat the Secret Service agent runs up, stops her, and tells her to get back into the car as they speed off.
You know what I think? Do you care? Anyway, it looks to me like Jackie was, understandably, panicked from having her husband shot right in front of her. I think she was tring to climb out of the car to get away. She never looked back at the trunk until she was already climbing out. If she was going to retrieve a bone fragment, wouldn't she have had to see it first?
We'll never know who Jackie was referring to when she said "they".
However, in the context of today's liberal thought processes, "they" means the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
Leni
I always believed that she married him because he was so rich and she thought he could protect her and her kids. By marrying him, she got the kids out of the country and away from all the other Kennedy kids.
you are the first one I have ever heard to propose that theory. And you know what? I think I agree with you. Your explanation makes sense. I can see no "bone fragment" she is supposedly chasing and she doesn't appear to be helping the Secret Serviceman.
I think you're onto something!
I remember reading that on the night Bobby was shot, in the waiting room, she was screaming "They're killing Kennedys and my children may be next."
I have no doubt she married him to get out of this country.
I'm not one of those people who is fascinated by the JFK assassination (and all the associated conspiracy theories), so I hadn't watched the Zapruder film in any detail until tonight. When I found that vidcap I watched it several times to get an idea of what happened. It's horrific footage, especially on the first viewing. After several times you can concentrate more on the details. It sure looks to me like Jackie, having just watched JFK getting shot for a second time, tried to get out of the car.
I want to say that I'm not trying to debunk any myths or say anything bad about Jackie. The footage is shocking enough sitting here 40 years later. Can you imagine how confusing and bewildering it must have been sitting just a few inches away?
One other thing, I don't know how anyone can say that JFK and Connally were not hit by the same bullet. Both of them react automatically at the same instant. JFK's elbows and Connally's left arm flap up simultaneously. These weren't conscious actions. I can't see anything in the footage that suggests multiple shooters. However, I can only see two shots when supposedly three were fired. Do you know when the third shot was supposedly fired? Was it before or after the two clear shots (or in between)?
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