Editor's Note: 1.5 million letters were sent to Jacqueline Kennedy after JFK's assassination in 1963. Author Ellen Fitzpatrick's new book, "Letters to Jackie,” highlights 250 of those condolences. It is published by Ecco and goes on sale at bookstores March 2, 2010.
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/02/25/letters.cover.art.jpg caption=""Letters to Jackie" is a first-ever compilation of condolences received by Jacqueline Kennedy after President John F. Kennedy's assassination."]
By Ronni Berke, CNN
(CNN) – The 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy was an act of violence that shocked the collective American conscience, sparking an outpouring of grief that transcended racial and economic lines.
That grief has now been cataloged by historian Ellen Fitzpatrick in a new book, "Letters to Jackie," a first-ever compilation of some of the 1.5 million condolence letters the first lady received after Kennedy's death.
Most of the letters were originally destroyed by the National Archives, which felt it would not have enough room to store them. Fitzpatrick combed through more than 15,000 of the remaining letters at the JFK Presidential Library and Museum in Boston, to choose 250 for the book.
"The letters that were most compelling to me were ones that encapsulated some sense of Kennedy as a president, or it was someone who had something very powerful to say about the day of the assassination … or someone who talked about an experience with grief in their own life," said Fitzpatrick.
There was also great diversity among the letter writers.
"I am but a humble postman," wrote Henry Gonzales. "Please try to find it in your heart that we Texans of Mexican origin love all of you."
Henry Gonzales emigrated from Mexico to Texas with his parents at the age of two. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he joined the U.S. Postal Service. (Photo scan courtesy the JFK Presidential Library and Museum)
Martha Ross, the 74-year-old daughter of a slave, wrote: "I am a colord lady but he seam clost to me as my own and he was apart of all Americains..."
Martha Ross was a sharecropper and daughter of a slave, born in Georgia, who settled in New Haven. Although she had no formal education, she taught her great-grandson to read using the Bible. Ross died in 1981. (Photo scan courtesy the JFK Presidential Library and Museum)
Her great-grandson, Winston Lucky, said he remembers as a boy watching her grieve.
"She took the death of the president really hard," he said. "She was crazy about the president. She thought he was a great man and that he was going to do great things for the African-American community."
The book also contains letters written by children, like eight-year-old Kevin Radell.
"I know you should forgive your enemies, but it is hard to forgive Lee Oswald," he wrote.
Kevin Radell, an eight-year-old when he wrote his letter, comes from a family of artists in rural Michigan. On the day of Kennedy's assassination, his mother was "distraught and crying," he says. "At first it was shock and being scared, especially when you see your own family emoting that way." Kevin is now an investment banker and fine art adviser in New York. (Photo scan courtesy the JFK Presidential Library and Museum)
Today, Radell remembers the period as a "terrifying time." Kennedy, he says, "was such a protector of the nation and such a leader and we all loved him."
Some letters were strikingly prescient. One, signed simply by "A Negro Who beleave in God," blessed the first family, and added: "In the next Forty to Forty-five Year A Negro from Louisiana will be come President of the United States."
For Fitzpatrick, the letters show not only the raw emotion of the time, but the way that Kennedy "had incorporated this message of hope, of vitality, of change, of possibility," with his young family.
"It was a sense of here was a couple, a family who had everything. They were sitting on top of the world. And in an instant it was gone." That is what made the death so devastating, she said.
"It was a loss of innocence, it was a terrible encounter with irrational violence of the kind that I think Americans today are much more used, to, unfortunately."