Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was a significant figure in American history, primarily known for being accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Born into a troubled family in New Orleans, Oswald experienced loneliness and neglect during his childhood, which shaped his personality and worldview. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at age seventeen, where he developed an interest in communism, eventually defecting to the Soviet Union. After a few years abroad, he returned to the U.S. with his Russian wife and worked in various jobs, including at the Texas School Book Depository, where he allegedly carried out the assassination.
Oswald's motives have been the subject of speculation, with some interpreting his actions as politically motivated and others suggesting a more personal rationale. Following President Kennedy's assassination, Oswald was arrested but was killed two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, a event that fueled conspiracy theories about the assassination. Official investigations, including the Warren Commission, concluded that Oswald acted alone, though later inquiries questioned this finding. The assassination not only shocked the nation but also had lasting effects on American politics, civil rights, and public trust in government institutions.
Subject Terms
Lee Harvey Oswald
- Born: October 18, 1939
- Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
- Died: November 24, 1963
- Place of death: Dallas, Texas
American assassin
Cause of notoriety: Considered by the Warren Commission to be the lone assassin of President John F. Kennedy, Oswald was arrested for allegedly murdering Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit as well as the Kennedy assassination.
Active: November 22, 1963
Locale: Dallas, Texas
Early Life
The childhood of Lee Harvey Oswald (AHZ-wahld) was characterized by loneliness. Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, was a self-absorbed woman who neglected her children. Oswald’s father, Robert Oswald, died of a heart attack two months before Oswald was born. As a young child, Oswald spent a brief time in an orphanage with his older brothers. Oswald had one full-blooded brother, Robert, and a half brother, John Pic. Oswald’s brothers both joined the military at a young age, which left him to be raised exclusively by his mother. He spent much of his childhood alone watching television, reading books, and attending a variety of schools from New Orleans to New York City.
In New York, Oswald was picked up by police at the Bronx Zoo and given a truancy hearing. A psychological evaluation found that Oswald was above average in intelligence but demonstrated a passive-aggressive personality with a great deal of hostility toward his mother and society because he was deprived of affection. He also appeared to have delusions of grandeur that were somewhat detached from reality, such as fantasizing about having power over people. As a teenager, Oswald supposedly was handed Marxist literature by someone on the street during the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg trial; he thus began to develop an interest in communism and a hatred for capitalism.
Career
Oswald joined the Marines when he was seventeen. As a Marine, he began teaching himself the Russian language. He was stationed at a U.S. airbase in Atsugi, Japan, where he worked as a radar operator on the U-2 spy plane project. Oswald became resentful about reprimands from military superiors, and he applied for an honorable discharge. After his discharge, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union with the promise of turning over military secrets. After the Soviets granted him a six-day visa, Oswald applied for citizenship to the Soviet Union but was denied; he subsequently attempted suicide by slitting his wrist. Because the Soviet Union sensed an international controversy, Oswald was admitted with a work visa and given employment at a radio factory in Minsk. He lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 to 1962 and was supplied with a stipend and a nice apartment by the Soviet government. He dated many Russian women and ultimately married Marina Pruskova in 1961.
Oswald eventually became disillusioned by the communist system in the Soviet Union because the party elites maintained all of the advantages. He also was disappointed to find that the brand of communism practiced in Russia had abandoned Marxist principles. Oswald returned with his wife and daughter, June, to the United States in 1962.
From June, 1962, to November, 1963, Oswald worked for a commercial photography business, a coffee company, and, finally, the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. In March, 1963, Oswald purchased a rifle and a revolver from a mail-order company. In April, he allegedly attempted to assassinate General Edwin Walker, a right-wing extremist. Because of his interest in Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Oswald started a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans. In August, Oswald was arrested twice in disturbances with anti-Castro Cubans and later appeared on radio talk shows to express his Marxist views. In September, Oswald took a bus trip to Mexico City, where he visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in an attempt to obtain a visa to enter Cuba. After he was denied entrance into Cuba, Oswald returned to his family in Texas and obtained employment at the Book Depository.
The Assassination
On November 22, 1963, Oswald allegedly shot three times with his rifle at President Kennedy’s motorcade from the sixth floor of the Book Depository; his third shot struck Kennedy in the head and killed him. Oswald fled the depository and fatally shot Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit in an attempt to escape arrest. Oswald was eventually arrested in a Texas theater. While in custody, Oswald claimed that he was a “patsy.”
Less than forty-eight hours after his arrest, Oswald was murdered by a Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, who shot Oswald in the basement of the Dallas city jail. The murder of Oswald by Ruby was aired live on national television and caused a majority of Americans to believe that the assassination of Kennedy involved a conspiracy. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone in the assassination, portraying him as a disconnected Marxist with few friends. However, in 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy. The select committee recommended that the Justice Department reopen the investigation, but as of 2006, it had not done so.
Impact
The Kennedy assassination significantly affected the American people, who lost a young and popular president. However, the assassination created momentum for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Kennedy had supported civil rights for African Americans, but he was unable to get legislation passed in Congress because of Republicans and southern Democrats who opposed civil rights. The assassination also exposed flaws in the Secret Service’s methods of protecting the president and led to major changes in presidential security. Finally, the Kennedy assassination created an environment for conspiracy theories and political alienation among the American public as well as a lack of trust in government, arising from the inconclusive results of the investigations by the Warren Commission as opposed to the House.
Bibliography
Clarke, James W. American Assassins: The Darker Side of Politics. 1982. Rev. ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990. Clarke develops a typology for analyzing political assassins throughout American history.
Mailer, Norman. Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1995. Mailer examines the life of Oswald in an attempt to understand Oswald and also to understand who killed Kennedy.
Posner, Gerald. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. New York: Random House, 1993. Posner makes the argument that Oswald acted alone in the assassination of Kennedy.
Warren Commission. The Official Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doublesay, 1964. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of Oswald and presents compelling evidence that Oswald acted alone in the assassination.