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Background
One thousand days in office, and Kennedy was worried that the backlash from the Civil Rights issue would cost him the South. He would need Texas again, absolutely, and by more than the 46,000 vote margin he’d squeaked by with in ’60. A trip was called for, to meet with rich Texas donors, and straighten out, if he could, the conservative-liberal split in the state’s Democratic Party. The plan was to fly to Texas, make a half dozen appearances, and end the visit, on the night of November 22nd, in Austin, at a $100 a plate dinner for the State Democratic Executive Committee.
On the afternoon of the 22nd, at approximately half past noon, as President Kennedy rode in an open limousine in Dallas, three shots rang out from a nearby building. One struck the president in the upper back and exited from his neck; another entered the rear of his head, exiting and shattering the right side of his skull. He was, effectively, dead at that moment, although death was not pronounced until an hour later – by which time 68% of all Americans had heard the news: the President had been assassinated.
This ticket to the “Texas Welcome Dinner in Honor of President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson,” to be held at 7:30 PM at the Municipal Auditorium in Austin would, of course, never be used. That night, at 7:30 in fact, just as the gala should have been starting, Bethesda Naval Hospital pathologists in Maryland were probing President Kennedy’s brain for bullet fragments, and in Dallas, a young man, suspected of murder, was paraded past a crowd of newsmen in City Hall. “Did you shoot the President?” a reporter asked Lee Harvey Oswald. “I didn’t shoot anybody,” he lied. “No, sir.”
On the afternoon of the 22nd, at approximately half past noon, as President Kennedy rode in an open limousine in Dallas, three shots rang out from a nearby building. One struck the president in the upper back and exited from his neck; another entered the rear of his head, exiting and shattering the right side of his skull. He was, effectively, dead at that moment, although death was not pronounced until an hour later – by which time 68% of all Americans had heard the news: the President had been assassinated.
This ticket to the “Texas Welcome Dinner in Honor of President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson,” to be held at 7:30 PM at the Municipal Auditorium in Austin would, of course, never be used. That night, at 7:30 in fact, just as the gala should have been starting, Bethesda Naval Hospital pathologists in Maryland were probing President Kennedy’s brain for bullet fragments, and in Dallas, a young man, suspected of murder, was paraded past a crowd of newsmen in City Hall. “Did you shoot the President?” a reporter asked Lee Harvey Oswald. “I didn’t shoot anybody,” he lied. “No, sir.”
Unused Ticket to “The State Democratic Executive Committee Texas Welcome Dinner in Honor of President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson,” 1 page, duodecimo, Municipal Auditorium, Austin, November 22, 1963, 7:30 p.m. Ticket No. D 1486, admitting one, optional dress. Very rare.
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