Biden Honors JFK’s Legacy on 60th Anniversary of Assassination

‘I was in college and had just left class, joining other students glued to the news in silence,' the president recalls the day of JFK’s death.

(L-R) Secretary of State Antony Blinken looks on as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting about countering the flow of fentanyl into the United States, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, on Nov. 21, 2023. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

President Joe Biden on Wednesday reflected on the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, calling it a “defining moment of deep trauma and loss that shocked the soul of our nation.”

“In life and in death, President Kennedy changed the way we saw ourselves—a country full of youthful hopes and ambition, steeled with the seasoned strength of a people who’ve overcome profound loss by turning pain into unyielding purpose,” President Biden wrote in a statement. “He called us to take history into our own hands, and to never quit striving to build an America that lives up to its highest ideals.”

President Biden also remembered the day he learned about the assassination of the 35th president of the United States while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963.

“Millions of Americans still remember exactly where we were when it happened. I was in college and had just left class, joining other students glued to the news in silence along with the entire country,” he said.

“The weeks and months that followed awakened a generation. President Kennedy had been a war hero, senator, and statesman.”

He said President Kennedy established the nation’s compass on many of the 20th century’s most important issues, from civil rights to voting rights to equal pay for women, and he led calmly through the Cold War’s most dangerous moments.

“And at the dawn of a new decade, he called us forward to a new frontier, propelling us to the moon and beyond. He inspired a nation to see public service as a calling,” he said.

President Biden also praised the Kennedy family for their ability to bear great loss.

“We saw that most clearly with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, whose grace and resilience still hold the hearts of the American people,” he said.

“His brother, Robert, was one of my greatest political heroes; and Teddy was one of my closest friends. His daughter, Caroline, remains a dear friend as well.”

A time of increasing mistrust in the federal government also began with the assassination of JFK. There have been hundreds of documentaries and almost 2,000 books published about the assassination, and most of them pinned the assassination on a large plot.

Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had embraced Marxism and defected to the Soviet Union for a period, was accused of assassinating President Kennedy. Mr. Oswald was shot and killed by nightclub owner Jack Ruby as he was being moved from Dallas Police headquarters to the county jail two days after the assassination, sparking conspiracy theories for decades.

Many Americans still believe that Mr. Oswald was part of a larger plot to assassinate the president. The most recent Gallup poll, conducted Oct. 2–23, found that 65 percent of U.S. adults rejected the theory that President Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman.

On the 60th anniversary of the assassination, JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has launched a petition demanding that the Biden administration release all remaining government records related to the historic tragedy.

President Biden and former President Donald Trump released thousands of documents related to President Kennedy’s death. According to the National Archives, 99 percent of the Kennedy assassination files have been released to date.

President Biden, however, agreed to continue delaying disclosure of some records, stating that it is “necessary to protect against identifiable harms to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, and the conduct of foreign relations that are of such gravity that they outweigh the public interest in disclosure.”

Mr. Kennedy, also known by his initials as RFK Jr., is an independent presidential candidate. He was nine years old when his uncle, President Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and 14 years old when his father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated while running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968.

“The 1992 Kennedy Records Assassination Act mandated the release of all records related to the JFK assassination by 2017. Trump refused to do it. Biden refused to do it. What is so embarrassing that they’re afraid to show the American public 60 years later?” RFK Jr. asked in a statement on his website.

“Trust in government is at an all-time low. Releasing the full, unredacted historical records will help to restore that trust,” he said.