LBJ NAILS THE COFFIN SHUT

At 2:38 p.m., Friday, November 22, 1963, a somber Lyndon Baines Johnson raised his right hand like a reluctant volunteer and was sworn in as president of the United States aboard Air Force One, the plane taking him and JFK’s body from Dallas to Washington, D.C.¹ Jacqueline Kennedy, wife of the slain president, stood by Johnson’s side watching Judge Sarah Hughes administer the oath of office and the orderly transfer of power in midst of an unfolding trauma.² It also meant that LBJ inherited the unfinished work of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a bequest that resembled a vial of nitroglycerine. Five