Rare images of Dallas history to be digitized through Sixth Floor Museum project

The Bob Jackson Collection spans nearly two decades and includes photographs from the JFK assassination weekend.

The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza has received a $200,000-plus federal grant to preserve and digitize more than 20,000 photographs and related materials from Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Bob Jackson.

The two-year Museums for America grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services will fund research, cataloging, and digitization of the Bob Jackson Collection, which documents Dallas history from 1960 to 1978.

The collection includes Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Jack Ruby shooting alleged presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald inside the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters on Nov. 24, 1963. The museum also has the photograph's original camera negative and the 35 mm Nikon camera Jackson used to capture the image.

Jackson, a Dallas Times Herald photographer, recently donated the collection to the museum. It includes photographs, negatives, slides, prints, publications, equipment, and other materials and represents the museum's most significant photography donation to date.

The collection documents the weekend of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, including events at Dallas Love Field, along the motorcade route, at Parkland Memorial Hospital, and at Dallas Police Headquarters, but its scope extends well beyond Kennedy's assassination.

Jackson's photographs also chronicle Dallas life, news, and culture throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including school integration, political visits, local personalities, celebrities, current events, and charity events such as Neiman Marcus Fortnight and the Crystal Charity Ball.

“As an institution dedicated to the history and legacy of President John F. Kennedy, The Sixth Floor Museum could not be more honored to accept this transformative grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an agency leading access and learning accessibility across the United States to better serve regional communities,” Museum CEO Nicola Longford said.

The grant will support the Bob Jackson Collection Preservation and Access Project, a two-year initiative that calls for two full-time cataloging and photographic preservation specialists.

The work will include creating a comprehensive inventory, conducting contextual and copyright research, mapping detailed metadata, placing materials in archival housing, and cataloging and digitizing photographs. The project is expected to result in a substantial number of new photographs being published online for public learning and research.

“Through this important work made possible by the Museums for America fund, we are given the opportunity to share important historical artifacts with not only local patrons and visitors, but also a national and international audience still learning about one of the most notable stories in American history. Officially digitizing and preserving the collection broadens access, protects the original material, and creates important new access for researchers and scholars—a central part of our mission and responsibility as stewards of history and culture,” Longford said.

Several photographs from the collection are already on display in the museum's special exhibition, “On Assignment: Dallas Times Herald 1963,” which runs through March 28, 2027.

The exhibition follows the experiences of Dallas Times Herald journalists Keith Shelton, Darwin Payne, Vivian Castleberry, and Jim Lehrer, along with photojournalists Eamon Kennedy and Jackson, during the weekend of Kennedy's assassination.

The Sixth Floor Museum is located in the former Texas School Book Depository building at 411 Elm St. in downtown Dallas.