Pre-Dallas America

From USA Today:

"JFK: The moments before the moment everything changed"

Almost all Americans over 55 remember when they learned John F. Kennedy had been shot. And almost all Americans, regardless of age, know something about that moment 50 years ago, when everything seemed to change. But what about the minute before that — 12:29 p.m. CT, Nov. 22, 1963 — the one before everything changed? It's a moment when Lyndon Johnson, once master of the Senate, has so little power as vice president that he can't even get an ally appointed as a federal judge in Texas. Hillary Rodham is a teenage Republican, and Rick Perry is a young Democrat. In Congress, a federal income tax cut is opposed by … conservatives. No one is burning his draft card or her bra. If you're going to San Francisco, you don't wear flowers in your hair. International travelers still fly into New York's Idlewild Airport. Space shots take place at the Cape Canaveral Launch Operations Center. The concert hall to be built on the bank of the Potomac River in Washington will be called the National Cultural Center. Eventually, some people will look back on the assassination as a portent, the point at which everything started to go wrong. For others — many of them JFK's admirers — the future spinning out from this day will be emancipating and exhilarating. That future, for better and worse, includes war abroad against communism and a war on poverty at home; landmark civil rights legislation; Medicare and Medicaid; a youth counterculture with its own music, styles, drugs and ideas; movements for consumer protection, gay rights, historic preservation and Black Power; the sexual revolution; environmentalism and feminism; urban race riots and political assassinations. At 12:29 on Nov. 22, America is a nation of slightly more than 190 million people. California is about to pass New York as the most populous state, but the Census Bureau says it hasn't yet. The richest nation in history is getting richer by the day. Despite recession worries at the beginning of the year, the economy has now expanded for 34 consecutive months, the longest peacetime expansion in history. America is minting millionaires at a rate of 5,000 a day. In four years, the poverty rate has dropped from 22.4% to 19%. A woman's place is still in the home; the National Organization for Women will not be formed for another three years. But the Nov. 22 issue of Time magazine reports: "Nobody is more noisily dissatisfied these days than that symbol of stability — the 40ish housewife with teen-age children and a reasonably successful husband." New England is terrorized by what the newspapers call "the Boston Strangler." So far there have been 10 victims; tomorrow, JoAnn Graff, 23, of Lawrence, Mass., will become No.11. Already this year, the first CVS drugstore has opened in Lowell, Mass. Coke has introduced its first diet cola, Tab, and Kodak has unveiled the Instamatic camera. The Beatles have released their first album, Please Please Me. Barbie has a new friend, Midge. Bob Dylan, a Greenwich Village folk singer, has a hit called Blowin' in the Wind. It belongs to a new genre: the protest song. For the first time, front seat belts are standard on all new car models. The Mona Lisa is on her first visit to America. In Hollywood, jockeying is fierce for an invitation to the Kennedys' White House luncheon honoring the film industry. Hopeful stars save the date: Dec. 10. Today, 1,339 visitors have toured the White House. But President Kennedy is in Texas, flying from Fort Worth to Dallas. At this moment, former vice president Richard Nixon is landing in New York after a flight from Dallas. Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the likely Republican presidential nominee in 1964, is flying to Indiana for his mother-in-law's funeral. In the absence of the vice president and the president pro-tem, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts presides over the Senate. His wife, Joan, is having her hair done for their wedding anniversary party tonight at their home in Georgetown. Attorney General Robert Kennedy is sitting by his swimming pool at home in Virginia, having a working lunch with Manhattan U.S. Attorney Robert Morgenthau. At this point, America has not heard of Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby, or Sirhan Sirhan or James Earl Ray. There are no hippies, yippies or Trekkies, and very little gay pride.

No one is wearing a miniskirt or an Afro. Malawi is still Nyasaland, and Zimbabwe is Southern Rhodesia. Muhammad Ali is still Cassius Clay. Leopard skin — some of it real — is a leading hat, coat and accessory fur. The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland is not on fire. VW buses are not painted with peace symbols. No one wears a Nehru jacket, not even Nehru. (The Indian prime minister's signature garment is an achkan.) Bell-bottoms are popular only with sailors Immortals like Che Guevara, Gus Grissom, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Jim Morrison and Walt Disney are still alive, as is Jim Crow. The "V" sign still means victory, and the noun "happening" and the exclamation "Far out!" have yet to enter the vernacular. The best known acid is hydrochloric.

12:21 p.m.

Harwood and Main streets

The motorcade approaches the route's biggest crowd. For 12 blocks, people have lined up eight or nine deep on the sidewalk, while others lean out of office windows above. The future is hard to see, but it's coming. Jane Fonda, just named by The Harvard Lampoon as the year's worst actress, is six years from her first Oscar nomination and nine years from a visit to wartime North Vietnam that will earn her the nickname "Hanoi Jane." John Kerry, a sophomore at Yale, is five years from piloting a Swift Boat in South Vietnam. John McCain, already a Navy pilot, is four years from being shot down over North Vietnam. Ralph Nader, who has been teaching government at the University of Hartford, is headed to Washington. There he will publish Unsafe at Any Speed, his indictment of the auto industry.

12:29 p.m.

Main and Houston streets

For a block, the motorcade heads directly toward the Book Depository. Then it makes a wide left and moves through Dealey Plaza, heading downhill toward an underpass and the safety of the highway beyond. By now, across the land, those with roles in the great tragedy about to begin have taken their places. Years later, they will remember and recount. In New York City, Stephen Baldwin, 7, is descending in an elevator with his mother. In Dallas, Jacqueline Kennedy is wilting in her pink wool suit. She sees the underpass ahead and thinks, she'll later say, how nice the shade will feel. But she, like most Americans this day, has no idea what really lies ahead. The Hertz clock on the Book Depository says 12:30. The Baldwins' elevator stops at 10. A man gets on. He has bad news ...

^ This was interesting because it reminds people of what the atmosphere was like in 1963 before JFK was shot (even a few hours before.) No one knows for sure what would have happened if JFK wasn't shot or if he was shot and had lived. I have watched and read numerous alternative histories in which it says there was no Vietnam War (as JFK brought back his advisors) thus there was no need for counter-culture (ie the hippies, etc) since JFK represented a change from the old generation to the new without needing to "shock" it into happening. There are also those that say had JFK lived he may not have been very popular and things like the Civil Rights Movement, Medicare, etc wouldn't have happened or would have taken years longer to do. Regardless, it's "good" to see the timeline as it pertained to regular people as well as historical/famous people. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/18/jfk-assassination-the-moments-before/3634611/