First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Family at John F. Kennedy’s Funeral

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy stands on the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral with her two young children by her side, as John F. Kennedy, Jr. salutes his father’s casket. She wears a long veil over her face. The choice of a veil was unusual; by 1963, mourning veils had fallen completely out of fashion. Like the mourning drapery she reinstated at the White House, she may have called upon the power of tradition—with the veil that tied her to the seven veiled widows of the nineteenth and early twentieth century that came before her.

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy stands on the steps of St. Matthew’s Cathedral with her two young children by her side, as John F. Kennedy, Jr. salutes his father’s casket. She wears a long veil over her face. The choice of a veil was unusual; by 1963, mourning veils had fallen completely out of fashion. Like the mourning drapery she reinstated at the White House, she may have called upon the power of tradition—with the veil that tied her to the seven veiled widows of the nineteenth and early twentieth century that came before her.