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Frances Bronson and Barbara Young Oral History

Frances Bronson and Barbara Young Oral History

Object number1996.055.0015
Date08/14/1996
ClassificationsOral Histories
Oral history interview subject Frances Bronson
Oral history interview subject Barbara Young
Oral history interviewer Bob Porter
ObjectOral history
Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
MediumHi-8 videotape
Dimensions43 Minutes
DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Frances Bronson and Barbara Young. Interviewed with her daughter, Barbara Young, Mrs. Bronson was an eyewitness to the Kennedy assassination. Her late husband, Charles Bronson, was filming the presidential parade in Dealey Plaza and caught the fatal headshot on film from a block away. Interview conducted at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on August 14, 1996 by Bob Porter. The interview is forty-three minutes long.
Curatorial Commentary
Frances Bronson passed away on February 24, 2010. Her oral history, alongside her husband's home movie, was featured in the Museum's exhibit, "Filming Kennedy: Home Movies from Dallas" (November 2007 - October 2008). - Stephen Fagin, Curator

The existence of Charles Bronson's home movie and still photos of the assassination - he used two cameras that day - was unknown to the general public until 1978 when an FBI document was declassified.  Dallas Morning News reporter Earl Golz received a copy of the report from a conspiracy researcher and soon located Mr. Bronson, who was willing to show him his pictures.  Mr. Bronson turned his films in for processing two days after the assassination and viewed them with an FBI agent on Monday, November 25, 1963.  The agent did not notice anything significant at the time, but subsequent studies by the House Select Committee on Assassinations and later studies gained insight into how events transpired in Dealey Plaza.

Visible movement in two sixth floor windows just six minutes before the motorcade arrived in Dealey Plaza suggested two conspirators but was found to be not people but just typical graininess of home movie film.  The sequence showing the assassination revealed that no agents were standing inside the follow-up car at the time of the shooting - contradicting a theory that a Secret Service agent in the car behind the president stood up and accidentally fired the fatal shot.  - Gary Mack, Curator

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