cover image Assassination and Commemoration: JFK, Dallas, and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Assassination and Commemoration: JFK, Dallas, and the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

Stephen Fagin. Univ. of Oklahoma, $29.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8061-4358-3

Half a century after J.F.K. was assassinated in Dealey Plaza, the city of Dallas still struggles with being branded as having some responsibility. The evolution of the city’s responses to this sentiment is well-documented in this interesting, if somewhat dry, account of the path from the fatal shots to the creation of a museum on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, which Lee Harvey Oswald ostensibly used as his sniper’s nest. Fagin begins by describing the poisonous atmosphere in the right-wing-leaning city even before the fatal day, before detailing radically different plans for the building. Many wanted it torn down, while others thought that it would make the perfect location for a living memorial that honored the president’s life, while focusing on his murder—a view that eventually prevailed. Fagin makes the case that the museum’s value only increases as more and more of those who remember where they were when they heard the sad news pass away every year. While some of the author’s observations are a bit overblown, this stands as a useful study of a city’s response to trauma. 16 b&w and 35 color illus. (July)