This article outlines the timeline of events before, during, and after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States.
Prelude
Events before 1963 (1956–1962) October 24, 1956: Lee Harvey Oswald drops out of high school and joins the U.S. Marine Corps, where he is trained as a sharpshooter.
October 31, 1959: Oswald defects to the Soviet Union and is sent to work at an electronics factory in Minsk.
November 8, 1960: John F. Kennedy wins the 1960 United States presidential election.
June 13, 1962: Oswald returns to the United States with his wife Marina and their child to live in Texas.
October 9, 1962: Oswald rents P.O. Box 2915 under his real name at the Dallas post office. He will maintain the rental until May 14, 1963.
November 6, 1962: Democrat John Connally is elected governor of Texas.
Events leading up to the assassination (1963)
January January 15: Connally takes the oath as governor of Texas. As governor, he will assist with planning for President Kennedy's trip to Texas and will serve as Kennedy's host.
February February 22: Ruth Paine meets the Oswalds at a party held at Everett Glover's house.
March March 13: Klein's Sporting Goods of Chicago receives a mail order in the amount of $21.45 ($19.95 plus $1.50 for postage and handing) for item C20-750, a World War II-surplus Italian 1891 Carcano Model 1938 rifle equipped with a 4× scope that was advertised in the February 1963 issue of American Rifleman. The name on the order slip is A. Hidell, an alias used by Oswald, and the delivery address is Oswald's Dallas post-office box. The rifle sent to Oswald bears serial number C2766.
March 17: Marina Oswald sends a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., asking to be granted an entrance visa to the USSR. Oswald is given notice in the latter part of March that he will be terminated from his job.
April April 6: Oswald works his last day at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
April 10: Oswald fires a bullet that narrowly misses retired general Edwin Walker, a strongly anticommunist right-wing advocate. The police determine that the shot was fired from a distance of less than 40 yards. The case remained unsolved until two weeks after Oswald's death when Marina Oswald informed the FBI that it may have been her husband who had fired the shot.
April 23: Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texas native, tells reporters in Dallas that President Kennedy may visit Texas sometime that summer. Johnson hopes that Kennedy's schedule would allow him to have a breakfast in Fort Worth, a luncheon in Dallas, an afternoon tea in San Antonio and dinner in Houston.
April 24: In the late evening, Oswald leaves Dallas by bus for his hometown of New Orleans, seeking better employment opportunities.
June June 5: President Kennedy, Johnson and Connally are together in a meeting in El Paso when they agree to a second presidential visit to Texas later that year.
June 6: Kennedy decides to embark on the Texas trip with three basic goals in mind: to raise more Democratic Party presidential campaign fund contributions, to begin his quest for reelection in November 1964 and, because the Kennedy-Johnson ticket had barely won Texas in 1960 (and had even lost in Dallas), to mend political fences among several leading Texas Democratic Party members who appear to be fighting politically against themselves.
June 24: Oswald applies for a U.S. passport in New Orleans, Louisiana, stating that he intends to depart from New Orleans during the period from October to December 1963 for proposed travel as a tourist for a duration of between three months and one year. The next day, he is issued U.S. Passport DO 92526, which will be valid for three years to all countries except Albania, Cuba and those portions of China, Korea and Vietnam that are under communist control.
September September 17: Jack Valenti sends an invitation to the White House asking whether President Kennedy would attend a dinner in Houston on November 21 honoring congressman Albert Thomas for his decision not to retire from Congress. The invitation is received at the White House on September 19, 1963. Oswald is issued a 15-day Mexican tourist card using the name "LEE, Harvey Oswald."
September 23: Ruth Paine drives Marina Oswald from New Orleans back to her home in Irving, Texas. Late that night, Lee Oswald also leaves New Orleans to travel to Mexico City hoping to somehow gain entrance to Cuba, a country to which travel has been banned by the United States.
September 24: At a press conference in Austin, Governor Connally announces that he will visit Washington, D.C., from October 2–4, 1963 and that he hopes to see President Kennedy. Connally says that has no plans to invite Kennedy to visit Texas but would be delighted if the president would agree to a visit.
The White House accepts the invitation to the Albert Thomas dinner in Houston and turns it into a two-day political trip encompassing the major cities of Texas. Although Kennedy had wanted to visit Texas at some point, he had not originally planned to go there in November.
September 25: White House sources, in an exclusive to The Dallas Morning News, announce that the president will visit Texas November 21–22, 1963 and that the tour will include Dallas.
September 26: The Dallas Morning News is the first newspaper to announce the Texas visit in an article covering the president's conservation tour in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
September 27: Lee Oswald arrives in Mexico City and registers at the Hotel del Comercio. He visits the Cuban consulate three times in an attempt to secure a visa to Cuba, as well as the Soviet embassy to obtain a visa, but is denied at both places.
September 30: Lee Oswald purchases a bus ticket using the alias "Mr. H. O. Lee." The bus leaves Mexico City for Laredo, Texas at 8:30 a.m. on October 2.
October October 3: Oswald arrives in Dallas and spends the night at the YMCA.
October 4: Governor Connally meets with President Kennedy at the White House.
Oswald applies for a job at Padgett Printing but is not hired because of a poor recommendation provided by Robert Stovall, president of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall.
Oswald returns to stay at the Paines' residence in Irving for the weekend.
October 11: Kenneth O'Donnell sends a reply to Jack Valenti formally accepting his invitation for the president to speak at the dinner honoring Rep. Thomas.
October 15: Ruth Paine calls the Texas School Book Depository and arranges for a job interview for Oswald with building superintendent Roy Truly. Truly interviews Oswald later that day and hires him for $1.25 per hour as a temporary clerk filling customer book orders. Oswald starts work the following day. At about the same time, Paine had separated from her husband Michael.
October 20: Kenneth O'Donnell, special assistant and appointments secretary to President Kennedy, calls Jerry Bruno, the advance man for the Kennedy trips, and asks him to come to the White House to discuss the trip to Texas.
October 21: Bruno meets with O'Donnell and is told to contact Walter Jenkins, one of Vice President Lyndon Johnson's top administrative assistants, to solicit his input for the trip.
October 24: Bruno meets with Jenkins, who tells Bruno about the stops that Governor Connally has suggested. The first stop would be to fly to San Antonio on November 21 and drive in a motorcade to Brooks Air Force Base, then fly to Houston and drive in a motorcade to the Rice Hotel, where the Albert Thomas dinner was originally scheduled to take place, and stay overnight at the hotel. Then on the morning of November 22, the president would fly to Fort Worth to receive an honorary degree at Texas Christian University at 9:30 a.m. and then ride in a motorcade for the short distance to Dallas, where he would attend a luncheon at the annual meeting of the Dallas Citizens Council at the Statler Hilton Hotel. Finally, the president would attend a fundraising dinner in Austin before returning to Washington. Jenkins suggests that Bruno visit Texas, meet with Governor Connally and evaluate the sites himself, and also meet with Democratic Texas senator Ralph Yarborough, a bitter political enemy of Connally and Johnson, to avoid any trouble between the two parties on the trip.
United States ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson II delivers a contentious speech on United Nations Day at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium, where he is booed and heckled. After the speech, he is struck on the head with a picket sign and spit upon. Dallas police would later fear that similar demonstrations might occur when Kennedy visited Dallas. Several people, including Stevenson, warned Kennedy against coming to Dallas, but Kennedy ignored their advice.
October 28: Bruno flies to Austin to begin his evaluation of the stops being considered for the Kennedy visit on November 21–22.
October 29: Bruno meets with Henry Brown, president of the Texas AFL–CIO and a friend of Senator Ralph Yarborough, to obtain his input from labor leaders. He then has lunch with Governor Connally to review his itinerary, which includes an honorary degree from Texas Christian University; because Kennedy is Catholic, Bruno considers this event among the highlights of the trip. Connally informs Bruno that he has assigned different members of his staff to each stop on the itinerary and that they would be in charge of the visit. Bruno tells Connally that he welcomes his input and suggestions, but that the final decisions on the itinerary will be made by the White House.
Governor Connally announces that a "Texas welcome dinner" for Kennedy will be held in Austin on November 22. The governor says that the dinner will be a $100-per-plate event held at 7:30 p.m. at the Austin Municipal Auditorium as a climax to the president's Texas trip. It is sponsored by the state Democratic executive committee. No other plans have been completed except those for the November 21 Albert Thomas appreciation dinner in Houston.
October 30: Bruno and Johnson aide Clifton Carter visit the Texas cities that the president will visit. The San Antonio and Houston sites are checked and confirmed as acceptable, but when visiting Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Bruno is informed by school officials that the university does not intend to confer an honorary degree to the president and that they have only approved the use of their campus as the location for a speech. Bruno informs Connally of this development, and Connally says that he will meet with the university's board of regents the next night. Bruno travels to Dallas to evaluate the ballroom at the Statler Hilton Hotel where the luncheon is planned to take place on November 22. He is met there by J. Erik Jonsson, chairman of the Dallas Citizens Council (and an owner of Texas Instruments) and Robert B. Cullum, chairman of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and owner of the Tom Thumb Food Stores. Cullum informs Bruno that the ballroom at the Statler Hilton is now unavailable because organizers of a bottlers' convention had reserved it and would not surrender it. Jonsson and Cullum suggest the Dallas Trade Mart, but after visiting the site, Bruno dislikes the many catwalks that would be above the president, which, in light of the Stevenson incident that had just occurred a few days earlier, could present a security problem. He asks to be shown other available sites in Dallas.