Nov. 22, 1963, was shaping up as a slow news day, according to early front pages of Atlanta’s two largest newspapers.
The Constitution and Journal informed readers of police finding “a 525-pound harvest of marijuana worth $52,500,″ Mayor Ivan Allen Jr.’s move to end liquor monopolies in Atlanta, the curing of leukemia in 70 percent of mice in a National Cancer Institute study and a robbery at the seemingly luckless Bank of Temple in west Georgia.
“Two men escaped with between $4,000 and $5,000,” Journal readers learned. “It was the third robbery of the bank in as many years.”
Shortly after 2 p.m., however, such items seemed trivial in the wake of news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot dead as his motorcade traveled through downtown Dallas, Texas.
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‘A burst of gunfire’
The Journal’s third extra edition headline, “Kennedy killed,” in all caps, left no doubt as to the day’s tragic events. Beneath the big type reserved for such news, the paper brought Atlantans the gruesome details gleaned throughout the afternoon.
“President Kennedy was assassinated … in a burst of gunfire,” United Press International reporter Merriman Smith wrote from Dallas. “The President, cradled in his wife’s arms, had been rushed in his blood-spattered limousine to Parkland Hospital and taken to an emergency room. An urgent call went out for neurosurgeons and blood.
“The President, 46 years old, was shot once in the head,” Smith’s report continued.
“Kennedy died less than an hour after the shot was fired.”
Georgia politicians react
Margaret Shannon, the Journal’s Washington correspondent, spoke with Georgia’s senators and representatives in the nation’s capital.
Sen. Herman Talmadge called the assassination “dastardly.” Rep. Charles Weltner of Atlanta learned of Kennedy’s shooting from a stranger.
“Welter said that he was on his way to his Capitol Hill office when a passing motorist noticed the congressional tag on his car and pulled alongside him to ask him if he had heard that the president had been wounded,” Shannon wrote. “The congressman said he has no radio in the car and could hardly believe what he was told.”
Back in Georgia, news of the president’s death was met with grief and horror — but also with the sort of copycat menacing that major tragedies can engender. Journal Political Editor Charles Pou reported that “minutes after (the president) was assassinated an anonymous man made what was construed as a threat on Gov. (Carl) Sanders’ life. He did so in a long-distance telephone call in Macon.”
Atlanta stunned
“Shock, disbelief fill city” headed the Journal’s roundup of Atlantans’ reaction to the violence in the late Nov. 22 extra edition.
“The news spread like an electric current down the streets, through office buildings, and wherever people were gathered,” the report stated. “‘Have you heard? Have you heard?’ they asked in hushed tones.”
Credit: Three Lions
Credit: Three Lions
Mayor Allen’s drive to put the brakes on the city’s liquor monopolies, worthy of front-page real estate in the Journal’s first edition, was forgotten. Stunned by the news of the shooting of the president, he found himself trying to comfort the citizens he served while dealing with his own emotions.
“(The mayor) in a choked voice and holding back tears dictated a statement expressing his prayerful hope that the President would survive the assassination attempt,” the Journal reported. “Later he wept at news of the President’s death.”
An unidentified woman, interviewed at the downtown public library, summed up the feelings of many Atlantans, and perhaps the nation as a whole, with a plaintive yet piercing question.
“God help us,” she said. “What are we coming to?”
Credit: National Archives
Credit: National Archives
Weekend whirlwind of developments
News continued pouring in furiously over the weekend. Saturday’s Constitution front showed a solemn Lyndon B. Johnson being sworn in as the nation’s 36th president aboard Air Force One with the newly widowed Jacqueline Kennedy at his side.
Readers also learned more about Lee Harvey Oswald, the man charged with the assassination.
“The 24-year-old onetime defector to Russia would be brought before a grand jury (the following week) on a charge of murder,” UPI quoted Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry as saying.
“Oswald, a (former) U.S. Marine and now a pro-Castro Marxist, denied he had anything to do with the crime,” the dispatch stated.
Those settling in with the Nov. 24 combined Sunday Journal-Constitution read of plans for Kennedy’s funeral cortege set to carry the president’s casket to the Capitol Rotunda. More details surrounding Oswald, his arrest and what police called “an airtight case” against the alleged gunman also made the front page.
“This case is clinched,” Dallas homicide chief Capt. Will Fritz told UPI.
Anyone watching television coverage of the Kennedy funeral procession quickly learned of the weekend’s second most shocking event: the fatal shooting of Oswald himself by Dallas club owner Jack Ruby as Oswald was being transferred to the city jail from Dallas Police Headquarters.
Credit: AP Photo/Dallas Times-Herald, Bob Jackson
Credit: AP Photo/Dallas Times-Herald, Bob Jackson
In a Monday special edition of the Constitution, another banner bore news of both the presidential funeral and the death of his alleged killer.
“Oswald, accused as the assassin of (the president), was himself shot and killed Sunday by a self-appointed executioner,” the report stated. Capt. Fritz pronounced the Kennedy assassination case “closed.”
Columnist Celestine Sibley’s account of services honoring Kennedy at Big Bethel AME Church in Atlanta in the Nov. 26 Constitution reminded readers that the fallen president had, in the eyes of many who struggled daily under segregation, not only been thought of as a famed politician but as a friend.
“He didn’t know much about us here in the South,” the Rev. H.I. Bearden told congregants, “but he cared and he tried to learn.”
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