Fifty years is a long time, but still only the blink of an eye in the measure of eras, only one small thread in the enormous tapestry of history. We see this event, this assassination, as the beginning of our modern, cynical, chaotic era, and most who remember the day--indeed, that entire waking nightmare weekend--remember not just the news but where they were, what they were doing, who they were at that time, fitting themselves into the larger context of national history.
It happened on Friday. By the time Monday morning arrived to a bleak new world, we had suffered the shock of assassination, the agony of a young widow, been stunned at another murder on live television, and had in the course of it all become newly educated on the protocol of personal, communal, and national mourning. Our world shut down for one day at the end of it in tribute, honor, and respect--and something more; a desire simply to pause and reflect before the world--as we suspected it might--got even crazier.
The newspapers (shown here from three different Springfield, Massachusetts, papers) are yellowed and fragile with age, but their images and words are still overwhelming.
