President John F. Kennedy (JFK) is assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Shortly after, Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the murder, and is killed two days after his arrest. For the ensuing decades, there is much controversy and conspiracy theories generated by historians, journalists, and the general American public around the case and the potential involvement of covert government operations.

The assassination threatens the growing momentum of the civil rights movement, as JFK was a public supporter of racial equality and had proposed a civil rights bill to Congress that year. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law.