An Essential Resource in a Time of Grief

On November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was fatally shot. Late that evening, Roy P. Basler, director of the Library’s Reference Department, received a call at home from White House Special Assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger. Explaining he was making a request on behalf of the president’s widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, Schlesinger asked Basler, a Lincoln specialist, for help in obtaining details about the lying-in-repose of President Lincoln in the East Room of the White House in 1865. Though in shock, Mrs. Kennedy was looking for a historical precedent of a state funeral that would honor a beloved fallen leader and console a grief-stricken nation. Basler promised assistance, either from his personal books or from the collections of the Library. He also gave Schlesinger the home phone number of David C. Mearns, chief of the Manuscript Division, another Lincoln specialist, on the chance that he also might be able to give an immediate answer without needing to take a trip to the Library.

But the two librarians soon realized that they needed to consult the nineteenth-century newspapers and magazines most likely to contain the necessary details. Mearns volunteered to make the trip to the Library, asking that he be authorized to take with him James I. Robertson, Jr., executive director of the US Civil War Centennial Commission, and James O. Sutton, head of the Library’s Newspaper and Periodicals Division. The three men met at the Library’s Annex shortly before 11 p.m. There had not been time to request light service in the stacks, so they searched the collections with flashlights. After the trio located excellent photographs in Leslie’s Weekly and marked precise accounts in several newspapers, Mearns called Schlesinger with the results. The requested information was delivered to the Northwest Gate of the White House that night. According to his account in the David C. Mearns Papers in the Manuscript Division, Mearns “reached home about half past one.”

The immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination began a remarkable four days, not only in the lives of individual Americans, but also in the life of the Library of Congress. On confirmation of the president’s death on November 22, the Library had closed at 3:15 p.m., leaving only a staff of two reference librarians on duty. The next day, Saturday, November 23, Acting Librarian Robert C. Gooch reopened the exhibit areas in the Main Building from 9 a.m. until 10 p.m., their normal hours. Sixteen staff members provided emergency service, answering questions, mostly from radio and television reporters or from out-of-town newspapers.

120. The funeral procession for John F. Kennedy crossed Memorial Bridge on the way to Arlington National Cemetery.