Mayor Mike Rawlings speaks in Dallas on the 50th anniversary John F Kennedy's assassination. Photograph: Larry W Smith/EPA
In this sombre Texas city, there was silence where 50 years ago there was gunfire. Instead of screams, bells pealed across Dealey Plaza. And there was order and reflection in place of chaos and panic.
The sky was grey, but this was Dallas's moment of clarity: a day when a demonised city faced its past in front of the world, hoping that by paying tribute to John F Kennedy's life, it will no longer be defined by his death.
Sleeked by drizzle and shivering in the cold, thousands gathered outside the Texas school book depository, from whose sixth floor 50 years earlier Lee Harvey Oswald fired the three shots that killed the 35th president of the United States.
At 12.30pm, the time when Kennedy was struck as his motorcade passed along Elm Street, a short period of quiet was observed, broken by the ringing of bells followed by a rendition of of America the Beautiful by the US naval academy men's glee club.
The half-hour ceremony, called The 50th, was Dallas's first major public commemoration of the killing. It featured prayers, hymns and speeches and was a tribute to Kennedy's life rather than a reprise of his murder. But in a location that resonates so vividly of death, even half a century later and even for people who were not born or have ever visited the US, little needed to be said about the 22 November 1963.
The ceremony addressed the consequences, not the conspiracies. The mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, told the crowd that the US had been forced to "grow up" on the day Kennedy died. He called the murdered president an "idealist without illusions who helped build a more just and equal world".
A moment's pause for Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings. Photograph: LM Otero/AP
Rawlings unveiled a monument on the grassy knoll that is inscribed with the last words of a speech that Kennedy never got to deliver to local businesspeople at the Dallas Trade Mart:
We in this country, in this generation, are - by destiny rather than choice - the watchmen on the walls of world freedom.
We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of 'peace on earth, good will toward men.'
That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength.
For as was written long ago: 'except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain'.
Access to Dealey Plaza was tightly controlled: 5,000 tickets distributed through a lottery, and Dallas police conducted background checks on the winners and restricted access in and around the plaza. The weather forced the cancellation of a performance from the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and an air force flypast, though the conditions suited the subdued tone of the occasion.
The stage was backed with a large banner showing Kennedy's profile. A big screen played archive footage of Kennedy's career and a giant image of him hung at the eastern end of the plaza. The US and Texas flags flew at half mast.
Onlookers began assembling hours ahead of the start. Mark Monse, 59, said he had come to the site of the assassination "just to see where it took place ... I think this [ceremony] is appropriate, far more so than the cottage industry that has developed with 500 books in 50 years and all the conspiracy theorists."
A Dallas police honor guard. Photograph: Zuma/Rex Features
Emil Gosselin had travelled from Vermont "to show my support for the president". The 61-year-old remembers being at school when the janitor walked in and told him what had happened. "It was like the world stopped," he said.
Brad Glazier, 60, came from Delaware to attend the ceremony and a conference held by a group of Coalition on Political Assassinations - they prefer to be called "assassination researchers" rather than conspiracy theorists. Glazier was watching a puppet show in elementary school when the principal broke the news. He wore a yellow T-shirt with the conference's logo, a coin with an image of Kennedy's bleeding head, and a slogan calling for more archive material to be released: "50 years in denial is enough. Free the files. Find the truth".
While Dallas has grown dramatically over the past 50 years, Dealey Plaza has changed little. It is part traffic artery, part historical relic, part morbid circus. Only about 300 yards away from the stretch of grass at its centre stands the building from where Oswald took aim the president's motorcade, according to the Warren Commission - though on any typical day, people hawking books, pamphlets and DVDs on the grassy knoll are keen to tell you otherwise. Threatened with demolition in the 1970s, the depository is now a museum dedicated to the assassination.
Unable to conduct their own ceremonies on the plaza, as they have done annually since the murder, groups of conspiracy theorists - they prefer to be called "assassination researchers" - met nearby. One group of about 50 people marched through through the crowd on Main Street chanting "no more lies". But the ceremony passed off without incident.
Earlier, at Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, where President Obama paid his own tribute earlier this week, attorney general Eric Holder paid his respects at Kennedy's recently refurbished grave. A British cavalry officer stood guard, bagpipes played and a flame burned steadily, as it has for the last half-century. About an hour later, Jean Kennedy Smith, 85, the last surviving Kennedy sibling, laid a wreath at her brother's grave, joined by about 10 members of the Kennedy family.
A vintage plate with JFK's inaugural address. Photograph: Damian Dovarganes/AP
In Dallas, about 90 minutes after the ballot-winners, dignitaries and news cameras had left Dealey Plaza, a few protestors marched through - but the place seemed to be returning to normal. Hucksters and hustlers were back, telling anyone who cared to listen the truth about what really happened, and why.
And by Monday the barriers, scaffolding and journalists will have departed, leaving a few tourists, a lot of commuters, and a city getting on with going forward.
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