Lee Harvey Oswald was a former Marine and Marxist who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy.
Background
Lee Harvey Oswald was born on October 18, 1939, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Robert E. Lee Oswald, an insurance premium collector, and of Marguerite Claverie. Two months before Oswald was born, his father died of a heart attack. He was raised by a mother who alternately neglected and overprotected him. He grew up to be an unstable, violence-prone malcontent. Although Oswald was intelligent, he had dyslexia, a reading problem. In 1945 his mother married Edwin A. Ekdahl, an electrical engineer; they were divorced in 1948. In 1952, Oswald and his mother moved to New York City to live with her son by her first marriage, John Pic, Jr. , who was in the U. S. Coast Guard. After Oswald threatened Pic's wife with a knife, he and his mother, who always defended his behavior, however aberrant, moved out.
Education
Because of his mother's frequent moves, by age ten Oswald had attended six schools. Because he was repeatedly truant, school officials sent him to the New York City Youth House, where he was judged in need of psychiatric treatment. Released from Youth House, Oswald was placed on probation for truancy by the Juvenile Court. While in New York, Oswald read Communist literature and talked of joining the Communist party. At sixteen, unable to join the Marines, he refused to seek the counseling of the Big Brothers as required by his probation officer. He and his mother thereupon moved to New Orleans.
Career
When he turned seventeen, Oswald enlisted in the Marines even though still in the tenth grade. After a year's service, hazing by fellow Marines for being a loner led Oswald to wound himself with a . 22-caliber derringer he had bought from a mail-order firm. He was convicted in summary courts-martial for failing to register a weapon and for using profanity to a noncommissioned officer. For the first offense Oswald was sentenced to twenty days at hard labor, loss of pay, and demotion to private. The second offense cost him more pay and twenty-eight days at hard labor. As a trainee he qualified for the sharpshooter rating, the second highest of the ranks, but he fell to marksman, the lowest qualifying rating. He never held a rank higher than private first class.
While stationed in Japan, Oswald studied Russian and enjoyed being called "Oswaldovitch. " On September 11, 1959, he received a hardship discharge so that he could care for his mother. He stayed with her in Fort Worth and then left for Europe on September 20. He visited France, England, and Finland, and in mid-October went to Moscow, where, on October 31, he told Richard E. Snyder, the United States consul, that he wanted to renounce his citizenship. After attempting suicide, he turned in his passport to the American embassy and became a stateless person. The Soviet government thereupon sent him to Minsk, where he worked as a metalworker at the Belorussian Radio and Television Plant.
On April 30, 1961, Oswald married Marina Alexandrovna Medvedeva. In June 1962 they traveled to the United States with their infant daughter, and settled in Fort Worth, Texas. They often fought, and separated for a brief time. Early in 1963, Oswald began to behave erratically and became secretive. That March the family moved to Dallas, where he built a tiny private office in their apartment. Under the alias of A. Hidell, he purchased a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle by mail and equipped it with a telescopic sight. On April 10 he used it in a failed attempt to assassinate Major General Edwin A. Walker, an outspoken rightist. He was never apprehended for this crime; it was only later ballistic evidence that connected this assassination attempt to Oswald. Two weeks later the Oswalds moved to New Orleans, where he organized a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and was arrested for fighting with three anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
On September 23, Oswald arranged for his wife, who was pregnant, to move with Ruth Paine, a Quaker friend, to Irving, about ten miles from Dallas. Two days later he went to Mexico City in an unsuccessful attempt to arrange a trip to the Soviet Union via Cuba. To avoid being traced by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had been attempting to question him following his trip to Mexico City, Oswald moved to Dallas and took the alias O. H. Lee. Wesley Frazier, the brother of Ruth Paine's neighbor Linnie Mae Randal, worked at the Texas School Book Depository and helped Oswald, at Marina's urging, find a job there. Shortly afterward his second daughter was born. On November 21, 1963, Oswald visited the Paines' home with Frazier, and the next day went to work with his rifle wrapped in paper.
At 12:30 p. m. , November 22, 1963, from a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, he shot and killed President John F. Kennedy and wounded Governor John B. Connally. Oswald fled the depository. At approximately 1:15 p. m. he shot and killed Dallas Patrolman J. D. Tippit and ducked into the Texas Theater, where he was captured by the police. On November 24, as Dallas Police were transferring Oswald from the city jail to the Dallas County jail, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator, shot and killed him.
Achievements
Connections
On April 30, 1961, Oswald married Marina Alexandrovna Medvedeva. They had two daughters.