Dallas City Wire

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas is launching an exhibition examining the assassination of President John F. Kennedy from the perspective of children. The exhibition, titled "Colorful Memories: November 22 Through a Child’s Eyes," will be displayed from March 26, 2025, to January 4, 2026. The museum, dedicated to John F. Kennedy's life and his assassination, presents this exhibition within an interactive setting designed to evoke a midcentury American classroom.

Among the highlights of the exhibition are a series of drawings by first-grade students from Prescott, Arizona, created in response to the assassination in 1963, and a documentary film entitled "A Child’s Eyes: November 22, 1963."

Following the assassination, filmmaker and writer Richard Snodgrass embarked on a project to explore how children perceived and processed the tragedy. On November 22, 1963, as news of the assassination rippled across the nation, many schools released students early, allowing them to process events with their families. With televisions becoming more common in homes, many children learned of the assassination through ongoing media coverage on CBS, ABC, and NBC. Snodgrass, a prize-winning documentarian known for tackling contemporary issues, collaborated with a first-grade class at the Sacred Heart School in Prescott, Arizona. He captured their perspectives in a short film and preserved their illustrated memories.

"The Sixth Floor Museum is a repository for information about the assassination, including the myriad responses from the local, national, and international communities," stated Museum CEO Nicola Longford. She emphasized the museum's commitment to recording first-person accounts of the Kennedy assassination and the 1960s through its Oral History Project. "With this exhibition, the Museum continues to give a voice to the people who bore witness to that momentous period of history."

The exhibition includes over 30 crayon-on-paper drawings by the first-graders, illustrating moments such as President and First Lady arriving at Love Field in Dallas, the Texas School Book Depository—the site of the alleged sniper—and American flags at half-mast. These pieces show the lasting impact of the visual moments introduced to children via newscasts and print media.

The artworks featured are part of a recent acquisition of 70 drawings donated to the museum by the family of the project’s art director, Hank Richter. The donation also includes the short film, "A Child’s Eyes: November 22, 1963."