Dallas 1963

by Bill Minutaglio

  Her “Bombingham Tea” might show the world that here, in Dallas, there is nothing as evil, nothing as mad, as what happens in other places.

  Air Force One touches down in San Antonio at 1:30 p.m. local time, on the twenty-first. Waiting for the president and First Lady are Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, along with other dignitaries. Texas Governor John Connally has hustled into the receiving line, having only just arrived himself. People were beginning to wonder if Connally would even show. The Texas governor is a Democrat, but a very conservative one, and he’s made no secret of his disagreement with the Kennedy administration’s views on civil rights.

  Connally is not happy about Kennedy’s visit to his state. The conservative governor is far more popular in Texas than the president, and he doesn’t want to be dragged down by an association with Kennedy. Many of his allies are sympathetic. Earlier in the week, when he’d finished a speech before a lobbying group in Austin, the emcee had excused Connally from the rest of the program. Referring to Kennedy’s upcoming visit, the man said, “You may get back to your preparation for the Irish wake to be held here next Friday.”27

  Now, Connally has no choice but to be hospitable to the president. As he explained it to the Dallas Citizens Council, the governor is like a captain of a ship, and the admiral is asking for permission to come aboard. You can’t tell the president not to come.

  In San Antonio, Jackie steps out of Air Force One ahead of her husband. She is greeted by hot, humid weather along with boisterous cheers. She is dressed in a white wool bouclé suit and a knitted black beret. She waves to the assembled crowd as she accepts a dozen yellow roses.

  A motorcade leads Jack and Jackie from the airport to Brooks Air Force Base, where the president will dedicate an aerospace medical center. This is the first presidential visit to San Antonio in fifteen years, and over 125,000 people jam the streets to cheer the First Couple. San Antonio schools have declared a holiday to allow children and their families the chance to see the president. In Dallas, no such arrangements have been made. Schools will remain in session.

  The crowds are exuberant. San Antonio, bolstered by Mexican American voters, favored JFK over Nixon in 1960. Now people are turning out to claim their reward. Cries of “Viva Jackie!” can be heard along the parade route as the presidential limousine glides by.

  In Dallas, final security arrangements are being discussed at police headquarters. Secret Service Agents Winston Lawson and Forrest Sorrels are meeting with Police Chief Jesse Curry and his top command.

  Everything seems to be in order. Three hundred fifty uniformed officers from the Dallas Police Department—a third of the entire force—will be on hand at Love Field, the Trade Mart, and the motorcade. They will be supplemented by dozens more officers from the Sheriff’s Department and the Department of Public Safety. Each officer has been fully briefed about presidential security. Dallas police have also tested all radios and walkie-talkies, making sure to install fresh batteries in each unit.

  A debate arises about the proper level of motorcycle protection around the president. The police envision surrounding the limousine with eight motorcycles. Agent Lawson interjects that JFK does not like motorcycles directly alongside his car because of the loud noise they make. They also interfere with the crowd’s view of him. After some discussion, everyone agrees to have four motorcycles accompany the president. Two will be on each side of the limousine, just behind the rear fender.

  The meeting is interrupted by an important call for Chief Curry. It has to do with a flyer circulating around Dallas. A copy of the flyer is quickly located and brought to the meeting.

  The officials examining the handbill are gravely concerned. Curry has been boasting to the Secret Service that his men have infiltrated Dallas’s extremist groups, but the cops are forced to admit that they have no idea who is responsible for the handbill. Curry promises an immediate investigation. As the meeting breaks up, everyone understands that while the security team has planned as well as it can, there are still threats to the president, and no one is quite certain what direction they will come from, or when or how they will strike.

  As if by political and poetic fate, Kennedy’s presidential opponent Richard Nixon is in Dallas to attend the annual convention of the American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages. The former vice president is appearing on behalf of Pepsi-Cola, one of the corporate clients his law firm represents. Pepsi has also brought in actress Joan Crawford—she and Nixon arrived on the same company jet.

  Seventy-five hundred conventioneers are gathered at Market Hall, the complex that houses the Trade Mart where President Kennedy’s luncheon is to be held tomorrow. Nixon’s role is to be seen and be sociable. He attends the Pepsi-Cola reception and shakes hands with many of the company’s 810 delegates. He also finds time to chat with newsmen in his suite at the Baker Hotel. Nixon appears uncharacteristically relaxed. When asked about Kennedy’s upcoming visit, Nixon jabs at the president, pointing out that the trip is completely political, no matter what the administration claims. Nixon also swings at LBJ, predicting that he will be dropped from the Kennedy ticket: “Lyndon was chosen in 1960 because he could help the ticket in the South. Now he is becoming a political liability in the South, just as he is in the North.”

  Nixon ends his talk with a statesman-like appeal:

  “I hope President Kennedy will receive a courteous reception in Dallas. Just because you may disagree with his views is no excuse for discourtesy towards the President of the United States.”28

  After just two hours in San Antonio the presidential party flies to Houston, where another motorcade winds its way through the city.

  Jackie has changed into a black cut-velvet suit, a double strand of pearls, and diamond earrings. In the Grand Ballroom of the Rice Hotel, she makes a short speech to the League of United Latin American Citizens, and she delivers it in nearly flawless Spanish—something she has been practicing for days back in Washington.

  “I am very happy to be in the great state of Texas,” she says, “and I am especially pleased to be with you who are part of the noble Spanish tradition which has contributed so much to Texas.” Her husband beams proudly at the sustained applause for his wife.

  Late in the evening, the presidential party flies out of Houston, arriving in Fort Worth after 11 p.m. A light rain is falling. The forecast calls for clouds and rain in Dallas all day tomorrow. The weather is appropriate, many people think, considering the reception some people fear the president is going to receive there.

  The idea of John F. Kennedy visiting the city that reviles him is leading to nervous jokes. Even Vice President Johnson, who is scheduled to introduce Kennedy at a dinner in Austin—the stop after Dallas—has gotten in on the act.

  Johnson plans to end his Austin speech with:

  “And thank God, Mr. President, that you came out of Dallas alive.”29

  In Washington, Senator Hubert Humphrey is also thinking about Dallas as he gives a speech to the National Association for Mental Health.

  Humphrey, a devout liberal, tells his audience that whole communities “can be afflicted with emotional instability, frustrations, and irrational behavior… that emotional instability that afflicts a significant but small minority in our midst that some call the extreme right, some the Birchers… They still see the world in total black or white… They are still substituting dogma for creative thought. They are still angry, fearful, deeply and fundamentally disturbed by the world around them.”

  Humphrey proceeds to warn the audience:

  “The act of an emotionally unstable person or irresponsible citizen can strike down a great leader.”30

  NOVEMBER 22

  There are twenty-five hundred people clutching invitations to have lunch at noon today with President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The invitation list—coordinated by the White House, by Governor John Connally, and by the Dallas Citizens Committee—sets aside one hundred seats for black residents, and mos
t of those are handed to Rhett James for distribution as he sees fit.1

  Juanita Craft is one of the people getting a treasured ticket to see the president and First Lady. Back in February, she and James saw President Kennedy and the First Lady in the White House. Now they will help host them in Dallas.

  The black leadership in the city often remains splintered—there are people who fear Martin Luther King, those who idolize him, and many who remain suspicious of LBJ and John Connally. But there is almost a uniform feeling that Kennedy really does hold the promise of something better. Craft is hearing it from her close white friends in Dallas, too. The affection for Kennedy is almost tangible at times—except when it seems to be sucked inside the drowning pool created by a handful of misguided souls in the city.

  It is also what Stanley Marcus knows, and what Rhett James knows. That a handful of men in Dallas have stolen the microphone, they have screamed louder, spent more money to be heard—they have bullied from the altar, the airwaves, the editorial pages of the newspaper. And they have done the very thing that they always swore they would never do: They have warped the very image of the city. And they have, without really understanding it, turned their city into an object of suspicion and derision.

  Maybe the president’s mere presence in Dallas will be the final balm, the ultimate palliative, something to cleanse away all the acidity: the awful way that some people associated Edwin Walker’s segregationist armada with everyone in Dallas… the way people outside Texas remembered Reverend Criswell’s racist rants and his endless, anti-Catholic diatribes, the way people thought the hedonistic rich men idled away their time spewing racism, the way the lunatic rich men like Hunt saw communists in every corner of the nation, the way Dealey had mocked the president as a weakling, a little girl bowing and scraping to Russia.

  Craft knows one thing: She is going to have lunch with the president in a city where just two years ago she couldn’t always sit alongside white men and white women and be served a meal.

  Dawn arrives in Dallas with heavy clouds and a steady drizzle. An updated forecast judges that a cool front sweeping in from the west may clear the skies later in the day. In homes across the city, people are stepping outside into the wet dim light to claim newspapers from their lawns. All of the state’s papers are reporting on the Democrats’ public feuding. The Morning News has pounced on the story with glee. Its banner headline reads: STORM OF POLITICAL CONTROVERSY SWIRLS AROUND KENNEDY ON VISIT. Inside the paper is more bad news for the Democrats: NIXON PREDICTS JFK MAY DROP JOHNSON.

  On its editorial page, however, the News has opted for a conciliatory message to Kennedy: “Dallas sheds its sharp cleavages of partisanship at noon today in extending the hand of fellowship to the President of the United States and his attractive wife… Dallas hopes, Mr. President, that your brief interlude here will be pleasant.”

  On page 14 is Bernard Weissman’s full-page, black-bordered advertisement proclaiming: WELCOME MR. KENNEDY TO DALLAS:

  MR. KENNEDY, despite contentions on the part of your administration, the State Department, the Mayor of Dallas, the Dallas City Council, and members of your party, we free-thinking and America-thinking citizens of Dallas still have, through a Constitution largely ignored by you, the right to address our grievances, to question you, to disagree with you, and to criticize you.

  In asserting this constitutional right, we wish to ask you publicly the following questions—indeed, questions of paramount importance and interest to all free peoples everywhere—which we trust you will answer… in public, without sophistry.

  These questions are:

  WHY is Latin America turning either anti-American or Communistic, or both, despite increased U.S. foreign aid, State Department policy, and your own Ivy-Tower pronouncements?

  WHY do you say we have built a “wall of freedom” around Cuba when there is no freedom in Cuba today? Because of your policy, thousands of Cubans have been imprisoned, are starving and being persecuted—with thousands already murdered and thousands more awaiting execution and, in addition, the entire population of almost 7,000,000 Cubans are living in slavery.

  WHY have you approved the sale of wheat and corn to our enemies when you know the Communist soldiers “travel on their stomachs” just as ours do? Communist soldiers are daily wounding and/or killing American soldiers in South Viet Nam.

  WHY did you host, salute and entertain Tito—Moscow’s Trojan Horse—just a short time after our sworn enemy, Khrushchev, embraced the Yugoslav dictator as a great hero and leader of Communism?

  WHY have you urged greater aid, comfort, recognition, and understanding for Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, and other Communist countries, while turning your back on the pleas of Hungarian, East German, Cuban and other anti-Communist freedom fighters?

  WHY did Cambodia kick the U.S. out of its country after we poured nearly 400 Million Dollars of aid into its ultra-leftist government?

  WHY has Gus Hall, head of the U.S. Communist Party praised almost every one of your policies and announced that the party will endorse and support your re-election in 1964?

  WHY have you banned the showing at U.S. military bases of the film “Operation Abolition”—the movie by the House Committee on Un-American Activities exposing Communism in America?

  WHY have you ordered or permitted your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers, and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?

  WHY are you in favor of the U.S. continuing to give economic aid to Argentina, in spite of that fact that Argentina has just seized almost 400 Million Dollars of American private property?

  WHY has the Foreign Policy of the United States degenerated to the point that the C.I.A. is arranging coups and having staunch Anti-Communist Allies of the U.S. bloodily exterminated?

  WHY have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the “Spirit of Moscow”?

  MR. KENNEDY, as citizens of these United States of America, we DEMAND answers to these questions, and we want them NOW.

  The organization identified as responsible for the advertisement is “The American Fact-Finding Committee, an unaffiliated and non-partisan group of citizens who wish truth.”

  Police Chief Jesse Curry appears on television to make a special plea to all Dallas citizens: “Because of the unfortunate incident which happened with Mr. Stevenson, people everywhere will be hyper-critical of our behavior. Nothing must occur that is disrespectful or degrading to the president of the United States. He is entitled to the highest respect, and the law enforcement agencies of this area are going to do everything possible to insure that no untoward accidents or incident occurs. We will take immediate action if any suspicious conduct is observed.”

  Curry has decided to deputize the entire city: “We also urge all good citizens to be alert for such conduct. Citizens themselves may take preventative action if it becomes obvious that someone is planning to commit an act harmful or degrading to the president.”2

  Walker’s army has been busy overnight.

  Hundreds more WANTED FOR TREASON flyers have been distributed along the motorcade route. Copies of the flyer have also been placed inside newspaper vending machines, interleaved with copies of the Dallas Morning News.

  In a fashionable section of North Dallas, a family is gathered around their kitchen table. The father is skimming the Morning News and the grade-school-aged daughter is finishing her breakfast. The mother and father have been discussing Kennedy’s impending visit. As the husband and daughter prepare to leave, the mother, a member of the local PTA, kisses them good-bye. As they walk out the door, the mother calls after them: “I’m going to take a gun and go to that parade and shoot him—bingo—right in the head.”3

  A small crowd is already beginning to gather at Love Field to see the Kennedys even though Air Force One is not scheduled to arrive for another four hours. Security is exceptionally tight. Dallas police are
everywhere. Several are posted on rooftops overlooking the area. Others are controlling access to the airport. The cops scrutinize the onlookers and direct them to a spot behind a chain-link fence. Mixing in with the crowd are several plainclothes detectives. In all there are over two hundred law enforcement personnel on duty.

  Ted Dealey’s forty-four-year-old son, Joe, is glancing through the morning paper. He has been out of town in Miami for most of the week, and he only arrived back in Dallas late last night.

  He is scheduled to go to the Trade Mart later as one of the guests for the Kennedy luncheon. Dealey, like his father, is no fan of John F. Kennedy, but he is more diplomatic. He has been working diligently with other Dallas business leaders to try to repair the city’s tarnished image in the wake of the Stevenson incident.

  He turns the page of the paper and comes face-to-face with the advertisement from the American Fact-Finding Committee. A sickening feeling washes over him. He can think of only one person who would approve an ad like this on the very day of the president’s visit.

  He picks up the phone and calls his father.

  “It’s like inviting someone to dinner and then throwing tapioca in his face,” he tells his father, the man who derided Kennedy to his face.

  Ted Dealey is unmoved. The old man reminds his son that the advertisement merely endorses what the News has been saying editorially for years.

  “That’s not the point,” his son says. “The timing is bad.”4

  Heavy rains have been falling, but that doesn’t dampen the spirits of the large crowd gathered outside the Hotel Texas, a stolid, brown brick building that rises fifteen stories above Fort Worth, just thirty miles west of Dallas, within earshot of the railroad switchyard and within sniffing distance of the famed Fort Worth stockyards. People have been gathering here since 5 a.m., hoping to catch a glimpse of the First Couple. These are the people who haven’t been invited to the private chamber of commerce breakfast Kennedy will be speaking to later in the morning. These are Fort Worth’s working folks—mechanics, railroad brakemen, factory workers, clerks, waiters, union people. Despite the rain, people in the crowd are laughing and talking. They’ve been told that the president will come out to speak to them.