Saluting a Slain President

Four U.S. presidents have been assassinated while in office. The most recent occurred in Dallas, Texas, on this day in 1963.

The assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was among the most emotionally powerful historical events of recent times.

Marshall Fleming, like many other artists, was deeply moved by the President's murder, which inspired him to create a tribute to Kennedy and the three other assassinated American presidents, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Marshall B. Fleming, born 1916, Kennedy Caisson, about 1964–90, carved and painted wood, leather, wire, metal, printed paper, paperboard, cloth, pen, and pencil, 20 3/8 x 54 1/2 x 15 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and Marshall B. Fleming and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.