A 20th Century Fault Line

In the court, in the State Department, in Littauer. At Band practice. Asleep in Japan.

"That's just it, of course everyone does know where they were," remarks Harvard sociologist David Ricsman, who himself was attending an anthropologist's conference in San Francisco.

Although it provokes a wide range of answers, the question "Where were you when John F. Kennedy was shot?" rarely draws even a moment's reflection. November 22, 1963 seems to have left an indelible mark on people here in the Harvard community.

"There's no question it was a fault line in 20th century history, nothing this side of it has been the same," comments Frankfurter Professor of Law Abram Chayes '43.

Hardened senseless acts of violence make it difficult for some to reconstruct the horrifying shock of Kennedy's assassination. But people remember reacting with a collective, convulsed cry of mourning: meetings were cancelled, courts adjourned and, where no formal recesses were called, work nevertheless ground to a halt.

"Everyone was stunned and kind of wandering around," Riesman recalls describing the San Francisco conference he was at. In Cambridge, like cities all over the country, groups clustered around televisions and radios to follow the latest news about the shooting.

Cambridge City Councilor Thomas Danehy remembers the day vividly: "I was working in my drugstore, it was about 1:30 when I heard the news. Within five minutes you couldn't put another body in the store because I had pulled out my portable TV--it was almost nightmarish."

Around the Square, students gathered at news-stands or in entryways and cried. The Memorial Church bells rang, and the flag at University Hall was lowered to half-mast. Officials announced the next day's classes and the Harvard-Yale football game were cancelled.

Sidney Verba '53, associate dean for undergraduate education, recalls a similar scene at the Stanford campus where he was working as a research fellow. After debate, officials there cancelled the Stanford-Berkeley game scheduled for the next day, and a huge bonfire, traditionally lit the night before the game, burned throughout the afternoon of the assassination.

Harvard professors and administrators who were scattered around the globe in 1963, today paint similar pictures of reaction to Kennedy's death.

Chayes, who was at a formal lunch hosted by the Venezuelan ambassador, learned of the assassination when the diplomat was called back to his embassy. Back at the State Department, Chayes, who was then Legal Advisor to the State Department, and coworkers gathered in his office to listen for news.

He recalls that a superior attempted unsuccessfully to carry out a scheduled meeting. "It just didn't work," says Chayes.

When the office learned that Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy's assassin, had travelled in the Soviet Union. Chayes' boss sent him to recover Oswald's passport files. "You felt like someone had taken your stomach out, but you had to keep going."

Chayes notes that the sense of loss was particularly sharp within the government because Kennedy fostered a camaraderie among offices. "He was able to animate an entire administration."

Public reaction was remarkably similar, even as far away as Madrid. Assistant Dean of the College John R. Marquand, who was traveling in Spain, remembers reading of the assassination in a Spanish newspaper. He recalls, "the Spanish were even more upset than I was," adding that Spaniards approached him to give their condolences.

Peace Corps workers in South America had a similar experience. Riesman recalls the accounts of Peace Corps volunteers after the assassination. Although many of the workers themselves disliked Kennedy because of his tough anticommunist line with Castro, the rural peasants came to them to mourn the death of Kennedy. "They had been fashionably cynical, and the peasants who worshipped Kennedy came to grieve."

University professor Edwin O. Reischauer then the American ambassador to Japan, received the news at three or four in the morning. Two hours later he was on Japanese television, "reassuring the Japanese people that nothing had changed. It was something mysterious. I think, that the whole world had this feeling of enthusiasm for this young American leader," says Reischauer.

John K. Fairbank, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History, Emeritus, said of Kennedy, "he had a style of idealism and practicality that would help our relations with other countries--he was seen potentially as a great world leader. The assassination of Kennedy was a real turning point where the U.S.A. started going downhill, where the world started going downhill."

Chayes describes the assassination as "a demonstration of the absurdist view of life." The sudden killing of a President graced with youth, education, and charm meant "nothing in the world can be stable," he comments.

Later would come the end of Camelot, the Kennedy Promise, the end of Ideology, on November 22, there was only shock. Chayes comments. "You were just numb at the time--I don't think you thought much of anything."

But Graham T. Allison '62 adds. "His life had a much greater impact on me than his death."