In reference to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963: Why was this an actual turning point and not just another event in history?no

Personally, I think it was just another event in history
and I think that this point of view will come to dominate as we get farther in time from
the event.  I think that recent historians have been emotionally connected to the JFK
years and so they give the assassination more attention than it
warrants.

However, if I had to make an argument saying that
it was a turning point, I would say that it led to two major things -- the escalation of
the Vietnam War and the civil rights advances of the 1960s.  I would say that his death
led to these things because it put Lyndon Johnson in the White
House.

I would argue that Johnson escalated the war where
JFK would not have.  I would argue that Johnson's personality was much less flexible
than JFK's and that he was much more likely to do something like using the Gulf of
Tonkin incident to increase US troop strength.

Then I would
argue that LBJ got the civil rights bills of 1964 and '65  through Congress when JFK
would not have been able to.  LBJ was a great legislative tacitician and knew how to get
bills through.  He also could use JFK's name as a way to get support -- the idea that
they had to push these things through to honor JFK.