The Woman in the Headscarf Finally Has a Name
Transport back to that unfortunate day in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy traveled through the city in a motorcade that would soon become one of the most examined moments in American history.
For more than six decades, one woman seen clearly along that route remained unidentified. Now we know her name: Joan Jackson, 94, who recently sat down with CBS News Texas and shared what she remembers from that day.
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A Face From the Motorcade Finally Identified
Joan Jackson, the woman in a headscarf seen in historic footage of President John F. Kennedy's Dallas motorcade, has been identified 62 years later.
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Jackson had been standing along the motorcade route wearing a headscarf and holding her friend’s three-year-old son. She never knew how visible she was in the surviving film. Decades later, her daughter contacted Stephen Fagin, head of curatorial affairs at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, and told him her mother was the woman in the footage.
That call connected one more name to a piece of history that has been replayed countless times without anyone knowing exactly who she was. Fagin later interviewed Jackson for the museum’s oral-history project, preserving her memories of watching Kennedy and the First Lady pass through Dallas before the assassination.
Jackson recalled how beautiful the scene initially felt and how extraordinary it seemed simply to see the presidential motorcade in person. Then came the shock that permanently changed what those memories meant.
The story becomes even more tangible because Jackson still has the headscarf she wore that day. CBS News Texas reports that the scarf is being preserved for display as part of the Sixth Floor Museum’s effort to connect living memories to the historical record.
It is a small identification in the scale of everything written, filmed and debated about Nov. 22, 1963 — but that is exactly why it lands. A woman who spent 62 years as an unnamed face in the footage is no longer anonymous. She is Joan Jackson, and her own memory is now part of the archive too.
Watch Joan Jackson Recall JFK’s Dallas Motorcade 62 Years Later
CBS News Texas speaks with Joan Jackson about seeing President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas and how she was finally identified in the historic footage.
Source: CBS News Texas and The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.
