President John F. Kennedy, ten months into his 1,000 days in office, speaks to a crowd of 30,000 on Oct. 12, 1961, at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.
N.C. Dept. of Natural and Cultural Resources
PEMBROKE – The University of North Carolina at Pembroke is scheduled to host a panel discussion on “The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, 60 Years Later” on Oct. 24.
The program, which will be held in the main reading room of the Livermore Library, is set to begin at 4 p.m.
The event is free and open to the public.
Scheduled panelists include UNC-Pembroke faculty members Richard Vela, Misti Harper and Ryan Anderson.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade in downtown Dallas.
The Warren Commission reached the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated Kennedy and that he acted alone. Two days later, Oswald was shot and killed by Jack Ruby.
Over the years, “what followed was a flood of alternate theories embodied in researched arguments, films and novels,” a news release said. “The panel will explore the impact and aftermath of these events.”
Panelist Vela was a sophomore at the University of Dallas at the time of the assassination, and he had planned to see the president as he left the Trade Mart. This month at a conference in New Orleans, Vela presented a paper on the JFK assassination.
Anderson serves as a professor in the UNC-Pembroke Department of History.
Harper is an assistant professor of African-American history, whose scholarship and teaching center on the agency of Black Americans in their own economic, political and social liberation.