Puzzle Pieces: How Historians Work, Episode 1: “Today is the 60th Anniversary of the Backyard Photographs in the JFK Assassination”

Audibly Speaking: Listening to History

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This is your host on “Audibly Speaking,” Rick Reiman. Today, March 31, 2023, is the 60th anniversary of the taking of the famous backyard photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald, holding the rifle he would later use to kill President Kennedy and the pistol he would use to murder Officer J.D. Tippit forty-five minutes after that awful act in American history. This is a classic case of how historians untangle facts from allegations, and how the facts in the JFK assassination are imagined away and replaced by the will-of-the-wisp of “What-Ifs.” Let this year, the 60th anniversary of that dark day be the year we start listening to most historians, rather then the inhabitants of “Dallas in Wonderland,” with their absurd conspiracy theories. Thanks for listening–and please share this with others if you like it!

Oswald in the back of his house on Neely Street in Oak Cliff, March 31, 1963. Picture taken by his wife, Marina Oswald.

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