page_title: James Benjamin Parker
section_title: Shooting
hierarchical_section_title: James Benjamin Parker / McKinley assassination / Shooting
caption_attribution_description: Clipping of a wash drawing by T. Dart Walker depicting the assassination of President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz at Pan-American Exposition reception on September 6, 1901.
context_page_description: James Benjamin Parker was an African-American man most noted for attempting to stop Leon Czolgosz from assassinating President William McKinley.
context_section_description: There was, at the time, a general rule that anyone approaching the president must do so with their hands open and empty. However, the heat of the day meant this custom was not being enforced as many people were carrying handkerchiefs with which to wipe away perspiration. A long line of exposition attendees queued to meet the president. The man in front of Parker in the queue, Leon Czolgosz, used the heat to conceal a pistol underneath a handkerchief. As Czolgosz approached McKinley, he fired the weapon twice, hitting the president at point blank range. After the second shot, according to a later account by United States Secret Service special agent Samuel Ireland, Parker punched Czolgosz in the neck then tackled him to the ground. Parker was quickly joined by one of the soldiers and a Buffalo policeman in restraining Czolgosz who was badly pummeled by more soldiers, police, and bystanders before McKinley could order the beating to stop.
  An unnamed witness cited in a Los Angeles Times story said that "with one quick shift of his clenched fist, he [Parker] knocked the pistol from the assassin's hand. With another, he spun the man around like a top and with a third, he broke Czolgosz's nose. A fourth split the assassin's lip and knocked out several teeth."
  In Parker's own account of the event, given in a newspaper interview a few days later, he said,
  I heard the shots. I did what every citizen of this country should have done. I am told that I broke his nose—I wish it had been his neck. I am sorry I did not see him four seconds before. I don't say that I would have thrown myself before the bullets. But I do say that the life of the head of this country is worth more than that of an ordinary citizen and I should have caught the bullets in my body rather than the President should get them.
  In a separate interview given to the New York Journal, Parker remarked "just think, Father Abe freed me, and now I saved his successor from death, provided that bullet he got into the president don't kill him."
caption: Parker, left, grabs Czolgosz in a drawing by T. Dart Walker depicting the assassination.
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