[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

pistol at his hip, and a rifle -- the rifle that allegedly killed JFK -- held in his left hand,
Marxist literature in his right hand. Oswald appeared cocky, aggressive, and
dangerous.He resembled, perhaps consciously if the photograph is authentic, popular
perceptions of the black-hatted gunslinger of the old West or the social outcast, mass
murderer of modern times. David M. Lubin, who researched images associated with
President Kennedy, said the photograph of Oswald evoked popular representations of
gunslingers from the early 1960’s, such as the TV western Have Gun Will Travel, as well
as the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War. 25 Later critics of the Warren Commission
who advanced various conspiracy theories about the assassination argued that the image
must be a fake. They would seize on Oswald’s statement in police custody that someone
had superimposed his head on another person’s body. Some photographic experts said
the shadows in the photograph did not align properly. Oswald’s wife, however, testified
that her husband asked her to take the photograph several months before the
assassination. To the Warren Commissioners, the photograph was a graphic illustration
of Oswald's complicity – even though it provided no direct evidence that Oswald used the
rifle to kill Kennedy.
The two differing interpretations of the photograph – real or fake – reflect the
debate in American cultural over Lee Harvey Oswald. To the Warren Commission and
its defenders, the image evokes Oswald as “lone-nut” assassin: he stands alone in his
backyard, dressed in black – a color associated with evil, holding not only the rifle that
allegedly killed Kennedy and the pistol that killed officer J.D. Tippet, but also reading
25 Lubin, 218-219.
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