A photographer's story: Bob Jackson and the Kennedy Assassination

MANITOU SPRINGS - The work of a Colorado photographer is being featured at a museum that recognizes the Kennedy Assassination. Bob Jackson was a 29-year-old photographer for the Dallas Times Herald during that fateful weekend in November 1963 when President Kennedy was murdered and the man responsible, Lee Harvey Oswald, was killed on live television.

The Sixth Floor Museum, which is located inside the School Book Depository at Dallas' Dealey Plaza, will highlight "A Photographer's Story: Bob Jackson and the Kennedy Assassination" through next summer.

Jackson's iconic image of nightclub owner Jack Ruby shooting Oswald is one of the most enduring photographs in American history and won him the Pulitzer Prize. Jackson estimates taking the photo 6/10ths of a second after Ruby pulled the trigger in the basement of the Dallas City Jail.

"I'm ready, I'm waiting and they said here he comes," Jackson said in a recent interview at his Manitou Springs home. "I was in the best spot. I thought, I want to be looking right at 'em when they came out of the crowd.'"

"All of a sudden, I'm aware that somebody's stepping out from my right really fast, you know two steps. He fired and I fired."

Jackson knew he'd have one, maybe two, chances at a photograph since it took the flash for his 35mm camera four to five seconds to recycle. He positioned himself at the left rear fender of an unmarked police car and pre-focused at the spot where he thought Oswald would come into the clear. The action came right toward him.

"I mean, I couldn't have planned it any better," he said. "Talking about it, you know, it seems in slow motion, but it was really very quick."

It was an opportunity for redemption for Jackson, a second chance to make a lasting impression for the photographer who 48 hours earlier had been nine cars behind Kennedy in the presidential motorcade when Oswald fired the shots from the Book Depository. Jackson had just taken the film out of his camera to give to a colleague and had not yet reloaded when he heard the shots. He was directly in front of the building where Oswald was located.

"I looked up in the direction the sounds came from," he said. "There was a rifle resting on the ledge and I could see him draw it in. Didn't see the person, just saw the rifle being drawn in and I said, 'There's a rifle.' I'm sitting there with an empty camera and thinking I better reload my camera."

Then, he decided to get out of the car and stay at the grassy knoll rather than going with the motorcade to the hospital where he could have taken images of the president going into the emergency room.

"So, I thought, 'I have really screwed up,'" Jackson said.

Jackson worked the Sunday shift in those days and was assigned to photograph the transport of Oswald from the Dallas City Jail to the County Jail. Despite the wishes of the city's lead detective who wanted to make the transfer in private, the department caved to pressure from the media to move Oswald in front of the cameras.

That morning, Jackson had to fight his assignment desk editor that day who wanted to send him to a different assignment as the transfer of Oswald was more than an hour and a half late.

"I said, 'You must be kidding,'" he said. "'There's no way we're going to leave here. You know, there's just no way.'"

Jackson says he knew who Ruby was from visits the nightclub owner had made to the paper to promote one of his strippers, but he didn't see him in the basement before the shooting. Further, he says, despite everyone continuing to ask him whether there was a conspiracy behind the assassination, he responds simply.

"I saw Oswald acted alone. Nobody's ever proved there was a conspiracy. Don't you think after 45 years, somebody on their death bed would have spilled the beans if there was some sort of big plot because people can't keep a secret that long? That's just my feeling," he said.

Winning his industry's highest honor at such a young age put an awful lot of pressure on the photographer who would work for the Colorado Springs Gazette for more than two decades later in his career. He describes it as good pressure.

"You can't live off one picture," he said, now focused on taking pictures of his grandkids. "What that did for me was it puts pressure on you to do the best job you can on any assignment you go on. It keeps you motivated."

For more on the Sixth Floor Museum's exhibit: A Photographer's Story: Bob Jackson and the Kennedy Assassination, visit http://www.jfk.org/go/exhibits/a-photographers-story/introduction-page.