Nine American Presidents - Andrew Jackson in 1835, Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 Harry S. Truman in 1950, John F. Kennedy in 1963, Richard Nixon in 1974, Gerald Ford twice in 1975, and Ronald Reagan in 1981 - have been the targets of assassination. Attempts have also been made on the lives of one President-elect (Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933) and three Presidential candidates (Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and George Wallace in 1972). In addition, eight governors, seven U.S. Senators, nine U.S. Congressmen, eleven mayors, 17 state legislators, and eleven judges have been violently attacked. No other country with a population of over 50 million has had as high a number of political assassinations or attempted assassinations. Political violence reached a new peak during the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. Attacks were made on four of six Presidents (one successfully, one nearly so). Among those murdered were three U.S. ambassadors, a Presidential aspirant (Robert Kennedy in l968), a neo-Nazi (George Lincoln Rockwell), a rock star (John Lennon), and three black leaders (Malcolm X, Medgar Evars, and Martin Luther King).
