DALLAS — Four men who took some of the most iconic pictures surrounding the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas were reunited Tuesday at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
As young men, the four were photographers for the Dallas Times Herald. Each was assigned to a different leg of the president's visit.
Eamon Kennedy's photograph of a tearful young girl praying captured the feeling of a country that had just lost a president. "I think the picture ran on the front page of virtually every newspaper in the world," he said.
William Allen's picture shows the confusion and chaos moments after President Kennedy was gunned down as Dallas police take in vagrant men for questioning.
"Here are these three guys, with about three policemen around them, taking him to the county courthouse, so obviously, I have got to photograph... I didn't know what it was," Allen said.
Bob Jackson was sent to the police station to capture a photograph of Kennedy's accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, as he was being moved to the county jail. Then a man named Jack Ruby moved toward Oswald as he was being escorted to a waiting car.
"Ruby fired, and then I guess I fired at the right time," Jackson recalled. "Then it was bedlam."
Two hours after snapping the picture, his bosses would clear him to head to the darkroom, where he would see this print for the first time.
"I remember holding it up to the light, the wet film — it looked good, and I let out some sort of yell," Jackson said.
His photo, which showed Ruby with gun in hand and Oswald reacting to the fatal wound, would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
Jackson and his colleagues bore witness to one of the most historic moments in U.S. history. Their work will help preserve that history for generations to follow.
