Jimmie R. Hopkins Oral History

Object number2003.001.0001

Date01/08/2003

ClassificationsOral Histories

Oral history interview subject Jimmie R. Hopkins

Oral history interviewer Gary Mack (1946 - 2015)

Oral history interviewer Stephen Fagin

ObjectOral history

Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

MediumHi-8 videotape

DimensionsDuration: 95 Minutes

Terms

Collections

DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Jimmie R. Hopkins. Hopkins was a sergeant in the Dallas Police Reserves in 1963. After working motorcade crowd control, he was on dispatch duty when he took a call from the Texas Theatre box office reporting that a suspicious-looking man, later determined to be Lee Harvey Oswald, had entered without paying. His other assignments that weekend included guarding Oswald inside his cell, guarding Jack Ruby and guarding the entrances to both Dallas City Hall and Parkland Memorial Hospital's emergency room. Interview conducted at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza on January 8, 2003 by Gary Mack and Stephen Fagin. The interview is one hour and thirty-five minutes long.

Curatorial Commentary

Jimmie Ray "J.R." Hopkins passed away on February 1, 2008. Long before the Kennedy assassination, he served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and participated in the Normandy invasion on D-Day. In Dallas, he was a longtime employee of Braniff International Airways. Hopkins volunteered for the Dallas Police Reserves for a total of twenty-seven years. To date, the Museum has interviewed one other Dallas Police reservist from the time of the assassination, the late Jerry Kasten, who was working crowd control on Commerce Street when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in the basement of police headquarters. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator