What If JFK Was Not Killed?

Positive and negative scenarios

Some historians suggest that the only certain impact if John F. Kennedy lived beyond November 22, 1963, would have been a delay in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawing segregation, which was stalled in Congress when Kennedy was alive. The national desire to make meaning out of the tragedy of JFK’s assassination led President Lyndon Johnson to link social justice, and civil rights, outlawing segregation and eliminating poverty to the unfinished legacy of the the martyred Kennedy. (This is part of a mini-course.)

Novelist Stephen King in “11/22/1963” makes the case that traveling back in time and preventing JFK's assassination would have extended Jim Crow segregation well beyond his second term, which would have ended in 1969. That’s the paradox or justification for considering JFK the martyr for a great cause.

Yet more detailed analysis suggests if Kennedy lived,