WORLD IN ACTION ’65

On 22nd November, 1963 John F. Kennedy, thirty-fourth President of the United States was shot dead in Dallas, Texas. For a cataclysmic moment it was as if the sun had gone out. The world became suddenly unfamiliar; the darkness of evil seemed to close in on it. Without Kennedy what would happen? There was horror, anger, shock, sorrow, fear. And bitterness too – bitterness that the first modern man to reach world leadership had been so cruelly destroyed.

Tim Hewat flew out to Dallas with the World in Action team and a few days later, Thanksgiving Day, he presented this portrait of the city where Kennedy was murdered.

This is a special day in the city of Dallas in the State of Texas, U.S.A. It is what the Americans call “Thanksgiving” – the 342nd anniversary of the day the first British settlers put aside to give thanks to God for their new home, new life, new hopes. But in Dallas, where the people probably have more riches to give thanks for than any other city on earth, there is no thankfuness. For it was here that President Kennedy was shot down. And it was here – in the basement of a police station – that the man accused of killing him, Lee Oswald, was shot down in turn by the operator of a strip-tease joint, the Carousel burlesque house.

In Dallas this Thanksgiving Day, the people know that the eyes of all America and indeed the whole world are upon them. And those eyes see not just the outward signs of affluence, of violence, and of sheer bigness which they might expect of a city whose citizens rejoice to call it Big D. Instead they see a city of fantastic opposites. Dallas is rich all right. It is also grinding poor. Many a home less than a mile from the central post office looks out on an unmade dirt road. One in five of Dallas’s million and quarter people are Negroes. Another forty thousand Mexicans, peasants who came north across the border. A further handful – perhaps four thousand – are Red Indians, Apaches and Cherokees. The riches of Dallas are not for them.

Dallas has not always been rich. 120 years ago when Queen Victoria was on the English throne, it was a township, an unimportant part of the Lone Star State – the independent Republic of Texas. Fifty years ago it was what they call a cow town, a rough, tough centre for ranching. It was only thirty-three years ago that one Columbus M. Joiner brought in a gusher, struck oil in East Texas and started the richest field in America.

Dallas grew up on oil and became perhaps the biggest boom town of all time. Today the oil fortunes of just one generation have been directed into making Big D one of the most important banking, insurance and space-age industrial cities in the U.S. The Chamber of Commerce cannot say how many millionaires live in town, certainly run into thousands. And they tend to live up the Texas legend for bigness. Many of them use aeroplanes in much the same way other people use the family car. At their own particular shop, Nieman-Marcus, they can go shopping for a £7,000 midget submarine; or a £4 their dog. At the fine art shops scattered everywhere they are able to satisfy their expensive hunger for culture.

But at the other end of town, down Deep Elm Street where the shops are mean and garish, people go shopping for other merchandise. They go shopping for gun. Strangely, while one can buy a gun and ammunition for dollars in Dallas, one cannot buy whisky or gin in a bar. For the power of the churches – and there are all sorts in the city, including separate ones for Negroes – is such that their campaign for temperance affects the law. To drink spirits legally it is necessary to buy a full bottle from shop. This you carry into the bar or restaurant which sells you ice and soda water. It is only from the sale of beer and wine – and soda water – that the bars make money.

Odd frustrations like this help to explain, perhaps, why Dallas not only has the very rich and the very poor, but also the most outspoken political extremists in America. Men like General Walker, who, during President Kennedy’s administration, flew the Stars and Stripes upside down on his front lawn, who constantly attacks the United Nations, and sets about the churches.

There are more dangerous people. Like those who distributed in Dallas loathsome allegations about John Kennedy’s private life – all of them lies. Like those who spat on Adlai Stevenson. Like those who roughed up Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife.

On the day of the assassination, the Dallas Morning News, itself right-wing, published an unknown committee’s advertisement, which is being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation after Congressmen described it as: “Vicious, cruel and abusive; the kind of verbiage that tends to incite fanatics.”

The most extreme group of all is the John Birch Society – militantly anti-Negro, anti-Government, anti-United Nations.

World in Action visited the home of Mrs. Beth Anderson Rachel who has done publicity work for the Society.

“I feel keenly the personal loss of Mr. Kennedy among my friends,” she said, “but I disagreed with him diametrically politically and I don’t feel the loss in that respect. We disagreed with the extensive Federal programme of aid, financial aid, to the people of the States. We feel this should be handled primarily by the States if there needs to be any aid. We think the American people are quite capable of shouldering their own responsibilities whether it be their school lunch programmes or aid to their aged or dependent relatives, or aid of whatever nature.

“We certainly disagreed with Mr. Kennedy on foreign affairs particularly in his support of the United Nations which many of my associates and I feel is just about the worst instrument to have hit this earth. We disapprove of sitting down and collaborating with people who are known to be our enemies. We would not think, at the local level, of sitting down and conniving, if you will, with robbers, murderers, thieves, and we do not feel we should do this on a national or international level.

“Federal aid or the shouldering of the people’s responsibilities, taking on the responsibilities that people should assume for themselves, leads we feel quite strongly to a police state. This is the threat of the Federal shouldering of persons’ responsibilities. We think of it and often refer to it as ‘Big Daddy Government’.”

World in Action talked about extremists to the Mayor of Dallas, Earle Cabell, who is, inevitably, a millionaire:

“We have extremists on the one side who want no participation whatsoever by the Federal Government in the affairs of the nation that are not matters of national defence, for instance. These are the extreme right. We have another group on the other side of that spectrum that want the Federal Government to take over all of the operation of business, and railroads, and let the Federal Government operate a municipal and State government – these are the extreme Liberals. Although all these groups are definitely in a minority in so far as our whole population is concerned, they are rather articulate and the fact that they make a lot of noise sometimes gives the impression that they are greater in numbers than they actually are.”

The Mayor was echoed by Captain Glen King, spokesman for the Dallas police department: “We have within the Department a Criminal Intelligence Unit whose responsibility it is to investigate the activities of these groups. We have people who are racists who believe in the supremacy of one group over another group. These are not unusual. We haven’t any kind of an extremist group that you won’t find anywhere else.”

Another man keen to talk about the political outsiders was Tom Howard, the cigar-smoking lawyer who defended Jack Ruby, accused of murdering the assassin Oswald. Mr. Howard’s office is opposite police headquarters and more than fifty alleged murderers have come to him for help. He has saved them all from the death sentence.

“The extremists in Dallas are quite fierce,” he said. “They are primarily the John Birch Society group. They have received a great deal of encouragement particularly from one of our local newspapers. I might say that this group is a very small group and do not represent the views of the majority of the people of Dallas by any means, but as I said, they have been encouraged by people that have a great deal of wealth, that have very extreme right-wing views.”

Of course, extremists are not typical of the people of Dallas; but they have their influence. For all, however, the highpoint of Thanksgiving is the family dinner party, usually held at about half past five in the afternoon. The almost obligatory dish: roast turkey. World in Action went to a typical wealthy family’s dinner at the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Wisenbaker on the outskirts of Dallas. John Wisenbaker is a geologist and runs an international oil engineering business. He is, of course, a millionaire and he has furnished his home with oriental furniture, an indoor garden and a valuable bird. At gratce before the meal he said, “Now let us observe a moment in silent meditation. Our Father, we thank Thee for this wonderful land of ours. We thank Thee for peace and for freedom. We thank Thee for this lovely sunny Thanksgiving Day. We thank Thee for our family and for our friends. We thank Thee for this food and for good health. We pray that Thou will continue to bless this household and ail mankind throughout the world – Amen.”

Very different, but certainly not an isolated case, was the Thanksgiving dinner of Mrs. Pearl Fuller, a 79-year-old Negro widow whose two children have moved to California. Her menu, in her shack among acres of shacks, was tinned meat and boiled beans, beans provided free by the Government.

The newspapers reported that in his cell in the City court house, Jack Ruby ate a hearty Thanksgiving meal. Rut shortly afterwards his lawyer, Tom Howard, said: “He’s always, to my way of thinking, on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He is just the type of man to be affected by the events that occurred in the forty-eight hours before Oswald’s death. He’s just the kind of man that would become terribly mentally disturbed and mentally deranged by a thing like this.”

But in every Dallas home Thanksgiving dinner was haunted by three questions. First, why did it have to happen here? Some Dallas people, like the Reverend Wilfrid Bailey, Minister of the Casa View Methodist Church, say that the climate of the city was such as to encourage a fanatic; that years of extreme politics had poisoned the place. Also, it was a fact that Mr. Kennedy knew he was venturing into enemy territory – his trip was designed to rally again his waning supporters.

Second, was 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald the man who killed Mr. Kennedy, and if so, why? The evidence – of fingerprints, of opportunity, of the rifle itself – suggest he did. Certainly he was capable of killing, as the honour role of policemen killed on duty testifies, for, in the last remaining space, is the name of patrolman Tippett, seen by witnesses to be shot dead by Oswald. Why might Oswald do it? It is now clear beyond doubt that he was not only a most unpleasant young man, but an unstable one. He was clearly unbalanced. Most observers on the spot reject the idea that Oswald was either a hired assassin or that he acted as key man in a cruel plot. He was too unreliable for either proposition.

The third and last question is: how could the police allow another unstable man with criminal tendencies, Jack Ruby, to shoot Oswald in the basement of police headquarters. The Mayor, Mr. Cabell, offered one explanation:

“There was a terrific amount of confusion due to the hundreds of media people, television cameras, and so on. Permitting these television and news media people in wasn’t done for purposes of publicity, but was done in order to let the world know that Oswald was properly treated in order that when he was brought to trial there could not be the accusation that he was brutally treated or that his rights were in any way taken away from him. He was shown to news people regularly so that they know that he was being treated properly. Then, of course, when this one man was able to break that cordon, that is just one of those things that can sometimes happen. May I say that sometimes in football a full-back can break a terrific line where you would think it would be impossible. That would be comparable to this situation.”

For Big D families who stayed at home on Thanksgiving night there was a macabre piece of film on television. Dallas police reconstructed the assassination – using two stand-ins in a car similar to that used by Mr. Kennedy – but substituting a camera for the rifle in the right-hand window fifth floor of the book warehouse.

Many people did not stay at home, however. By Thanksgiving Night, the assassination was six days old and, like so many of Dallas’s businessmen, newspapermen and hotelmen, people were anxious to forget and to believe that Big D was a swinging town still. They filled the clubs and the late-night restaurants — remembering, of to take their own bottles.

Only in Jack Ruby’s Carousel was business slow. The girls worked to a handful of curious sightseers from out of town.

The fact of the matter is, that, try as it may, Dallas will find it hard to forget what happened here at half-past twelve on 22nd November, 1963. Indeed, it never will.