LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KTHV) - Friday marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Countless images have been preserved of that day, as it will forever be one of most importance in American history.
An Arkansas man helped capture the moments surrounding the assassination. Little Rock native, Willie Allen, covered Texas Politics for United Press International (UPI) in 1963 as a photographer and captured some of JFK's last moments before he was shot to death.
"I covered him that morning," Allen remembered. "The photograph I have of him in front of the Texas Hotel was his very last public speech that he made."
Moments after Allen captured President Kennedy through his lens, the entire perspective of America changed.
"As I was walking out the door to go the Trade Mart, the City Editor yelled and said, 'go down to the triple underpass, there's been a homicide,'" he said. "Our office was about three blocks from the triple underpass."
Allen ran to the grassy knoll at the underpass and took in the pandemonium and shock of onlookers.
"You could hear the sirens wailing and it was just a chaotic scene when I got there. There were policemen with machine guns and shotguns - the motorcade had already headed to Parkland Hospital."
His instinct led him to the Texas School Book Depository.
"There seemed to be a lot of people going in there. According to the time table that the paper later reconstructed, I was in the depository while Oswald was still in there."
Although Allen didn't run into Lee Harvey Oswald, he photographed the Depository and the surrounding areas for the coming days and his pictures were later confiscated by the FBI and CIA.
"All of the photographs from the sixth floor, where the boxes were stacked up by the window where he shot out of, the school book depository itself were all photographs that I did that were, I guess, in every publication in the world for a time there."
Later, Allen photographed Jim Tague, the Texas man who claimed he was grazed on the face by a concrete fragment from the shooting.
"Then the crack, crack of two rifle shots right after themselves," Tague recalled to THV11 earlier this year. "(A man) looked up at me and he said, 'you got blood on your cheek' and I reached up and I did. He said 'where were you standing?' and I said 'back over there between Main and Commerce.'"
Allen's life didn't slow down after the assassination. He then helped develop the legendary picture of Dallas Bar Owner Jack Ruby shooting the alleged killer, Oswald.
"The third exposure was Ruby stepping out and pulling the trigger and the fourth shot was Oswald lying on the ground and we saw that third exposure and we thought 'this an absolute historic photograph.'"
A couple of years later, Allen returned home to Little Rock and joined the Arkansas Gazette staff. Fifty years after JFK's death, Allen said he will never forget the bewilderment of the times.
"Just not knowing what would be next," he said. "(There's) just the monumental thing that a President of the United States could be assassinated."
