The Public Eye: Ellen Fitzpatrick - Letter To Jackie

Guest:Professor, Ellen Fitzpatrick
Book: Letter To Jackie

 
Within seven weeks of President Kennedy's death, Jacqueline Kennedy
received more than 800,000 condolence letters. Two years later, the
volume of correspondence would exceed 1.5 million letters. For the next
forty-six years, the letters would remain essentially untouched. Now
historian Ellen Fitzpatrick has selected approximately 250 of these
letters for inclusion in Letters to Jackie, a remarkable human
record that perfectly preserves the heart-wrenching grief and soul
searching of the nation in a time of crisis. Capturing the extraordinary
eloquence of so-called ordinary Americans across generations, regions,
race, political leanings, and religion—in messages written on elegant
stationery, scraps of paper, in pencil, type, ink smudged by tears, and
in barely legible handwriting—the letters capture what John F. Kennedy
meant to the country.