Former People

This concise study posits that the Cold War defined the lives of John F. Kennedy, Nikita Khrushchev, and Lee Harvey Oswald. It also challenges longstanding interpretations of each of the three lives. Today, Khrushchev is a nearly forgotten historical figure, the arc of his colorful life neglected in Russia, rarely taught in American classrooms, and the subject of a relatively small number of monographs. While Kennedy remains a household name, the circumstances of his death have receded deeper into the past in mainstream discourse. Lee Harvey Oswald is almost universally assigned the role of the presidential assassin, as opposed to the alleged assassin. The Russian cultural expression "former people" (Бывшие люди) is a thematic concept used as a springboard to recover accurate accounts of the lives of the three influential figures. The intersection of the three lives comes into focus with the assassination of President Kennedy. The procedural flaws of the Warren Commission are examined along with the egregious shortcomings of the Warren Report, resulting in over a half-century of disinformation. At the more literal intersection of Houston and Elm Streets in Dallas, a turning point in modern history occurred on November 22, 1963. The significance of that event may be understood through the mosaic of three lives. James Norwood, Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley) taught in the humanities and the performing arts at the University of Minnesota from 1985-2011. Among the curricula he offered was a semester course on the JFK assassination. He has published articles on President Kennedy's Vietnam policy and the life of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of JFK, he delivered a lecture series at the University of Minnesota entitled "The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: An Event That Changed History."