The shocking assassination and murder of John F. Kennedy has occurred 59 years ago. This was only the fourth American president who had been killed in this century. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (known as Jackie) was the wife of John F. Kennedy for 10 years. She sat alongside the 35th president of the United States. As a sign to her husband’s murderer, the former First Lady wore this famous suit for the whole day. Express.co.uk examines the story and what happened to that suit on that fateful date.
As the President’s open-top motorcade made its way through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, the former US marine Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the Texas School Book Depository, where he was working at the time.
Oswald’s bullets tore through the President’s body who then slumped lifelessly towards his wife, Jackie who was sitting next to him in the limousine.
She then proceeded to wrap her arms around him and – as the motorcade headed for the hospital – asked “Jack, Jack, can you hear me? I love you”, according to a 1963 interview with the New York Daily News.
JFK passed away at Parkland Memorial Hospital half an hour later.
The Kennedys had just lost Patrick their preterm son months earlier, making it a difficult year. Jackie chose to travel with JFK, which was a rare choice.
Jackie’s pink suit was splattered with her husband’s blood which she famously refused to take off the entire day in what became a symbolic message.
The former First Lady deliberately chose to continue wearing the pink CoCo Chanel skirt suit because she said she had wanted the assassin to see what they had done to the President, known fondly as “Jack”.
In her diary, the former First Lady from 1963 to 1969, Lady Bird Johnson, wrote: “I looked at her. Mrs. Kennedy was covered in blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked, it was caked with blood – her husband’s blood. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights – that immaculate woman, exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood.”
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She continued: “I asked her if I couldn’t get someone in to help her change and she said, ‘Oh, no. Perhaps later I’ll ask [secretary] Mary Gallagher but not right now.’ And then with almost an element of fierceness – if a person that gentle, that dignified, can be said to have such a quality – she said, ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack’.”
Jackie then had to be pictured on Air Force One at Lyndon B Johnson’s inauguration. After being photographed, Jackie later admitted she was sorry she wasn’t covered more blood.
The former President Kennedy, who died when he was just 46, had reportedly asked her to wear the outfit and matching pillbox hat as it was one of his favourite of her garments with his last words to her being that she looked “smashing”.
Jackie’s suit, stockings, shoes, and handbag are now preserved in the National Archives but the location of her hat and gloves are unknown.
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With the suit and her accessories not being displayed, this will continue to be the case for at least 100 years.
The Kennedys’ daughter, Caroline, officially donated the pieces to the Archive in 2003. But, Caroline requested the suit remain private storage until she specifies in the deed.
Caroline did this in order to prevent any “undignified or sensational use of the materials (such as a public display) or any other use which would tend in any way to dishonor the memory of the late President or cause unnecessary grief or suffering to members of his family”.
Jackie married Aristotle Onassis, a shipping magnate, five years after President Kennedy’s passing. Jackie, who died in 1994, was buried in Arlington, Virginia, next to her former president.