ANGEL IS AIRBORNE: The flight home from Dallas after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Retweeted by David Fahrenthold: https://twitter.com/Fahrenthold

The most dramatic flight of Air Force One in history—the story of being aboard with JFK’s body, his widow, and his unexpected successor:

Link to tweet

ANGEL IS AIRBORNE

The flight home from Dallas after John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Lyndon Johnson became president.

By Garrett M. Graff

INTRODUCTION

“And thank God, Mr. President, you came out of Dallas alive.”

The joke was prepared, the words typed, ready to place on the Vice President’s lectern in Austin, Texas, later that evening. Lyndon Johnson was planning to close his speech on November 22, 1963, with a punch line about how John F. Kennedy had survived the city of hate.

Fears for Kennedy in Dallas had been widespread. The place was filled with extremists who thought JFK was soft on Communism and the United Nations was a red front. Just a few weeks earlier, Adlai Stevenson had been physically assaulted during a speech there; in 1961, one of Bobby Kennedy’s speeches in Dallas had been interrupted by circling cars full of noisy protesters; and in 1960, images of a crowd jostling and jeering Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson as they crossed a Dallas street had horrified the nation.

In the days leading up to the Kennedy visit, homemade posters bearing the President’s face circulated with the headline “Wanted for Treason.” That morning at their hotel suite in Fort Worth, after seeing a full-page ad in the Dallas Morning News accusing him of being a Communist lover, JFK said to his wife, Jackie, “We’re heading into nut country today.”

[Mortos]

1. What a fascinating read

I was transfixed. Great piece of writing.