FLOTUS: First Ladies of the United States

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Part II

Life following the assassination (1963–1975)

Mourning period and later public appearances

Don't let it be forgotten, that once there was a spot, for one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot.

There'll be great presidents again ... but there will never be another Camelot.—Jackie describing the years of her husband's presidency for Life

On November 29, 1963—a week after her husband's assassination—Kennedy was interviewed in Hyannis Port by Theodore H. White of Life magazine. In that session, she compared the Kennedy years in the White House to King Arthur's mythical Camelot, commenting that the President often played the title song of Lerner and Loewe's musical recording before retreating to bed. She also quoted Queen Guinevere from the musical, trying to express how the loss felt. The era of the Kennedy administration has subsequently been referred to as the "Camelot Era", although historians have later argued that the comparison is not appropriate, with Robert Dallek stating that Kennedy's "effort to lionize [her husband] must have provided a therapeutic shield against immobilizing grief."

Kennedy and her children remained in the White House for two weeks following the assassination. Wanting to "do something nice for Jackie", President Johnson offered an ambassadorship to France to her, aware of her heritage and fondness for the country's culture, but she turned the offer down, as well as follow-up offers of ambassadorships to Mexico and the United Kingdom. At her request, Johnson renamed the Florida Space Center the John F. Kennedy Space Center a week after the assassination. Kennedy later publicly praised Johnson for his kindness to her.

Kennedy spent 1964 in mourning and made few public appearances. In the winter following the assassination, she and the children stayed at Averell Harriman's home in Georgetown. On January 14, 1964, Kennedy made a televised appearance from the office of the Attorney General; thanking the public for the "hundreds of thousands of messages" she had received since the assassination, and said she had been sustained by America's affection for her late husband. She purchased a house for herself and her children in Georgetown but sold it later in 1964 and bought a 15th-floor penthouse apartment for $250,000 at 1040 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in the hopes of having more privacy.

In the following years, Kennedy attended selected memorial dedications to her late husband. She also oversaw the establishment of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, which is the repository for official papers of the Kennedy Administration. Designed by architect I.M. Pei, it is situated next to the University of Massachusetts campus in Boston.

Despite having commissioned William Manchester's authorized account of President Kennedy's death, The Death of a President, Kennedy was subject to significant media attention in 1966–1967 when she and Robert Kennedy tried to block its publication. They sued publishers Harper & Row in December 1966; the suit was settled the following year when Manchester removed passages that detailed President Kennedy's private life. White viewed the ordeal as validation of the measures the Kennedy family, Jacqueline in particular, was prepared to take to preserve John's public image.

During the Vietnam War in November 1967, Life magazine dubbed Kennedy "America's unofficial roving ambassador" when she and David Ormsby-Gore, former British ambassador to the United States during the Kennedy administration, traveled to Cambodia, where they visited the religious complex of Angkor Wat with Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk. According to historian Milton Osborne, her visit was "the start of the repair to Cambodian-US relations, which had been at a very low ebb". She also attended the funeral services of Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia, in April 1968, despite her initial reluctance due to the crowds and reminders of President Kennedy's death.