European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 22, 1973, Darmstadt, Hesse                              Doily scene of the assassination mrs. Connolly Black Arrow ducking bullets and the president s foot White Arrow in View death in by Arnold b. Sawislak United press International at Midnight beginning the fourth Day the line of people in Washington stretched nearly two Miles moving East Ward from the supreme court building away from the Capitol and then doubling Back a dozen City blocks to the great Rotunda where the dead president Lay. More than a Quarter of a million people walked that line some spending eight hours in the chill night until they reached the Plaza where a thousand Days before he had declared the Torch is passed to a new generation of  the sound of the line was of scuffling shoes and murmured conversation the people were passive almost As if in a trance. A couple from Akron said they were wearing the same clothes they had on when they heard the president had been shot. We just got in the car and headed for Washington. It seemed important the next afternoon they buried John f. Kennedy on a Hill looking Down on Washington. Vents like those of the four Days that began nov. 22,1963, Are a kind of Stop action photograph in 4he mind. People ask where were you or what were you doing but they mean do you remember it As clearly As i do such things Are As personal As the death of a Parent but shared with strangers benchmarks in time for All who were old enough to understand. The assassination of the president was a profound trauma for Many americans. Psychologists found that Many persons could not sleep suffered fits of nervous Ness and weeping engaged in aimless activity. Some sat numbly before television sets hardly aware of time and so deep in Shock that not even the sight of another murder could arouse them. Now 10 years have passed since the kill Ings at Dallas. Some look Back on that period As the bloodiest most disruptive since the civil War. To others it was a time of accomplishment and constructive change unmatched in this Century. What Impact did the death of John Ken Nedy have upon that time did the murder of the president presage the assassinations of Public men that followed did that violent act Point toward the burning of american cities or the carnage of Indochina soon to come or was this one of those wrenching events that helped give birth to a new pro Cess of aspiration first Blacks then youth then women reaching out for new freedoms in a society where the place of each had been ordained by those who came before it is easy to blame the horrors of a violent decade on such an episode to say with Yeats the blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is  and it is surely tempting to grasp for meaning in blood sacrifice to find some reason for Martyr Dom that otherwise might seem to signify nothing but inhumanity. But to become wrapped in such simple explanations is to ignore the world As it was when John Kennedy went to Dallas and As it probably would have been had whenever gone. To be sure great changes followed. Some of these were so strongly in the wind that they had already begun to shape the Kennedy presidency. Others grew from his Brief exercise of Power and a few from the manner of his death. Less than a month before Kennedy was killed the House judiciary committee had approved his administration s first civil rights Bill legislation that he had struggled to keep within the Bounds of what was considered to be possible for enactment in a Congress still dominated by Southern leaders and the filibuster. Ironically it was murder the Church bombing that killed four children in Ala Bama and the shooting of civil rights Leader Medgar Evers in Mississippi that had caused House members to demand a stronger Bill than Kennedy had proposed. And it certainly was Kennedy s murder that propelled Tough legislation through both houses in the months that followed. The assassination dislodged those who had dug in to fight civil rights Legisla Tion and Lyndon Johnson never let them regroup As he lashed Congress in the next few years to approve a Long list of Legal guarantees for Black americans that were continued on Page 1\2 the Kennedy with governor Connolly in Dallas shortly before shooting. Thursday november 22, 1973 the stars and stripes Page 11