This site focuses on an abrupt change in U.S. policy toward Cuba in 1963. The site includes an audio file of a conversation (3.5 minutes) between Kennedy and his national Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, that took place 17 days before Kennedy was assassinated. Kennedy and Bundy discussed taking a softer approach toward Fidel Castro and Cuba, and Kennedy agreed to have secret talks with Castro under the right circumstances. Castro claimed to be open to the idea as well.

The site includes several other supporting items, including eight recently declassified top-secret documents and memoranda supporting and setting up talks between Kennedy and Castro.

The documents indicate that Kennedy saw little advantage in continuing the hard line stance of the U.S. against Castro and Cuba, and believed that a softer approach held strategic value in normalizing relations between the two countries. The papers make it equally clear that Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, retracted Kennedy's offer.

This site offers three CIA briefing papers and a transcript of a message from Castro to Kennedy. A mini-scorecard allows visitors to track the key figures in the talks. This site allows researchers, students, and teachers access to previously unavailable material, and would be a useful resource for Cold War studies.

This website serves as an accompaniment to and location to showcase the PBS American Experience documentary Freedom Riders, which originally aired in May 2011. The Freedom Riders were young white and African American individuals who rode busses and trains in the South during 1961 as a form of peaceful protest against the Jim Crow laws. At the time, they met with threats, violence, and incarceration.

Follow along with an interactive timeline and an interactive map. Each leg of the journey is summarized with a couple of sentences of text, and cities where major events took place can be selected for a quick overview. You can also read brief biographies of key figures—riders, politicians, movement leaders, and more—or information on the issues of the day from Jim Crow laws to Vietnam War protests.

View short film clips or the entire documentary here. The full documentary transcript is also available for download. The Teachers' Domain, although it sounds appealing, contains only the same film clips. The difference is that in this section the video clips are all marked as being for 6th through 12th grade.

Finally, the most "teacher-targeted" material on the site is a downloadable teacher's guide for use when viewing the documentary.

On order of an Act of Congress signed into law in 1992, the National Archives has gathered federally-created material relating to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy—including declassified material from every relevant presidential commission, congressional investigation, and executive-branch agency—and placed it in a single collection, supplemented with materials donated by local governments, presidential libraries, institutions, and private individuals.

While original records are not available online, this site presents a searchable database and extensive finding aids and includes full texts of the reports issued by the Warren Commission, published in 1964, and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations.

This is a well-designed site that will be of most value to scholars of the assassination who plan to conduct research at the Archives.