Malcolm Summers Oral History

Assassination eyewitness Malcolm Summers (1924-2004) can be seen falling to the ground in the Zapruder film just after the fatal shot as Mrs. Kennedy begins to climb onto the trunk of the limousine. He provided a brief statement to the Dallas County Sheriff's Department the day after the assassination recalling that, after the shots were fired, he joined others rushing up the grassy knoll, "not realizing what had happened" but assuming that "they had somebody trapped up there." His initial account differs from his later recollections since Summers did not describe in his sheriff's department statement encountering an armed official who advised him to leave the area. His 11-23-1963 statement indicates that he remained on the north side of Elm near the railroad tracks for "15 or 20 minutes" before walking back to his vehicle. In subsequent interviews, including this 2002 oral history, he describes encountering a well-dressed man with "a gun under his coat" who told Summers, "You better not come up here. You could get shot." Rather than remaining in the area for fifteen or twenty minutes, Summers said that he "immediately turned around and went back over to the Postal Annex." Although he appeared in a few assassination documentaries in the late 1980s and 1990s and is mentioned in various books, Malcolm Summers is not among the more recognized eyewitnesses in Dealey Plaza. Interestingly, despite his proximity to the limousine at the moment of the fatal shot and his presence in the Zapruder film, researchers have been more focused on his recollections after the shots were fired, particularly his alleged encounter with the unidentified armed official. Mr. Summers passed away on October 8, 2004. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator