On 10/12/2018 11:34 PM, claviger wrote:
> CITYLAB
>
> Dallas, 1963: 'City of Hate'?
>
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2013/11/dallas-1963-city-hate/7244/
>
> Mark Byrnes Nov 22, 2013
> About the Author Mark Byrnes is a senior associate editor at
> CityLab who writes about design and architecture.
>
> In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Dallas was reviled as
> a hotbed for right wing agitators. Was the reputation deserved?
>
>
> In the wake of President John F. Kennedy's assassination,
> Dallas earned a new moniker -- the "City of Hate."
> It's a damning nickname. Is it fair?
>
False. Even before the JFK asssassination Dallas was called the City of
Hate. Especially after Adlai Stevenson was attacked.
I've corrected you many times on this and still you keep posting false
information. There is no other possible reason for you to keep doing this.
Retropolis
JFK in the ???City of Hate???: How Dallas earned its ugly label before the
assassination
President John F. Kennedy, first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Texas Gov.
John Connally ride in a limousine moments before Kennedy was
assassinated in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. (Walt Cisco/Dallas Morning
News/Reuters)
By Rachel Siegel
November 22, 2017
At 12:21 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy???s presidential limousine
turned onto Main Street in downtown Dallas. More than 150,000 people
turned out along the motorcade???s 10-mile route, including one man, rifle
in hand, perched beside a sixth-floor window overlooking Dealey Plaza.
The shots rang out nine minutes later, striking Kennedy and Texas Gov.
John Connally and sending the open-air limo speeding toward Parkland
Memorial Hospital.
Roughly one hour after his initial bulletin, Walter Cronkite paused
before breaking the news: ???From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently
official: President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time.???
Lee Harvey Oswald???s fatal shot killed America???s 35th president, sending
the nation into shock and mourning.
[How America mourned John F. Kennedy: Images of grief for a fallen
president]
It also sealed Dallas???s international reputation as the ???City of Hate.???
Unlike Los Angeles after the 1968 killing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy or
even Memphis after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Dallas
carried the unique burden as the place where ???something like this was
bound to happen,??? said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum
at Dealey Plaza.
???For so many people, Dallas the community was held accountable for the
death of the president,??? Fagin said.
Fagin points to three incidents ??? all of which took place in Dallas ???
that preceded Kennedy???s assassination and helped fuel the City of Hate
label. All stemmed from Dallas???s modest but powerful concentration of
right-wing extremists who vilified Democrats as soft on communism and
found a political home in one of Texas???s most conservative and wealthy
cities.
The first took place on Nov. 4, 1960, four days before the election that
put Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson in the White House.
On his last major campaign swing through his home state of Texas, Johnson,
then the Senate majority leader, was due to give a speech at a downtown
Dallas hotel. Republicans in town were also staging a major event that
day, with hundreds converging outside the hotel ???to show the Senate
majority leader was not welcome,??? Fagin said.
Vice presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird
Johnson, move through a crowd of hostile protesters in 1960. (John
Mazziotta/Johnson Presidential Library)
Johnson was given the option of taking a back entrance to reach the
speaking venue across the street, but chose instead to walk through the
crowd, Lady Bird at his side. Photographs circulated nationwide showed
screaming, hostile protesters barricading the street to block the Johnsons
from crossing. One grabbed Lady Bird???s gloves and tossed them in the
gutter.
???They were a small group of demonstrators so extreme in their actions
that they helped to characterize Dallas,??? Fagin said.
The second incident to mar Dallas???s reputation took place at a White
House luncheon hosted by Kennedy, now the president, for a group of Texas
newspaper publishers in October 1961. At the table was Ted Dealey, then
the publisher of the Dallas Morning News and the son of George Bannerman
Dealey, for whom Dealey Plaza is named.
During the lunch, Dealey told Kennedy ???that the country needs a man on
horseback, and Kennedy is riding around on Caroline???s tricycle,??? Fagin
said. It was not so much the political criticism that irked Kennedy but
rather the involvement of his 3-year-old daughter.
After Dealey???s confrontation with Kennedy, Jim Chambers, then the
publisher of the competing Dallas Times Herald, told the president that
Dealey didn???t represent all of Dallas and apologized on behalf of the
city, Fagin said.
[JFK???s last birthday: Gifts, champagne and wandering hands on the
presidential yacht]
The final incident coincided with Adlai Stevenson???s visit to town in
October 1963. Stevenson, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations,
came to Dallas to give a speech, and ultraconservative demonstrators
infiltrated the crowd. One man used a bullhorn to chastise Stevenson and
disrupt the speech???s broadcast.
Protesters gathered outside a speech by Adlai Stevenson in October 1963.
(Bill Winfrey Collection/Dallas Morning News/Sixth Floor Museum at
Dealey Plaza)
Upon leaving the auditorium, Stevenson came upon roughly 100
demonstrators behind a barricade, including one particularly agitated
woman. As Stevenson walked over to talk to her, a man nearby spit on
him, and the woman whacked him on the head with her sign.
Stevenson cautioned Kennedy about the trip he would be taking to Dallas
one month later, Fagin said.
Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at
Southern Methodist University, said that after Kennedy???s assassination,
history was often read in reverse by those who said ???it makes sense that
Kennedy was killed there.???
???It creates an incredible irony,??? Engel said. ???The ???City of Hate???
rhetoric paints Dallas as a center of right-wing, hawkish nationalism.
Kennedy was killed by a left-wing person.???
And then the nation watched as Oswald was shot to death on live
television by nightclub owner Jack Ruby at Dallas police headquarters.
Lee Harvey Oswald winces as Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shoots at
him from point-blank range in a corridor of Dallas police headquarters
on Nov. 24, 1963. (AP/Dallas Times-Herald)
How Dallas could climb back from its terrible fame rested largely in
rebranding the city in the American psyche. The success of the Dallas
Cowboys, who gradually earned the nickname ???America???s Team,??? played
its part. And the popular television show ???Dallas,??? a soap opera about
Texas oil magnates, helped shift the narrative from ??? ???Who shot
JFK???? to ???Who shot J.R.???? ??? Fagin said.
The empty sixth floor of the former Texas School Book Depository
Building, circa 1987-1988. (Institutional Archives/Sixth Floor Museum at
Dealey Plaza)
But what to do with the Texas School Book Depository, which housed the
sixth-floor office space where Oswald found his target, posed the most
charged questions on how to repurpose the scene of the crime. The early
1970s saw efforts to tear down the building, and it remained vacant for
several years. Dallas County acquired the building in 1977, and in 1989,
a historical exhibition on the assassination opened in the building???s
sixth floor.
About 350,000 people visit the museum each year. Many Americans remain
skeptical that Oswald acted alone, polls show, and new releases of
classified records about the assassination in recent weeks have generated
headlines around the world.
???There was a societal need to do justice to an act like the Kennedy
assassination by remembering it properly,??? Fagin said.
On the day of the museum???s opening, a front-page headline in the Dallas
Times Herald read, ???Today We Stand Whole Again.???
Read more Retropolis:
How America mourned John F. Kennedy: Images of grief for a fallen
president
Strippers, surveillance and assassination plots: The wildest JFK Files
A huge trove of JFK assassination files reveal [REDACTED]
Zapruder captured JFK???s assassination in riveting detail. ???It brought
him nothing but heartbreak.???
JFK???s last birthday: Gifts, champagne and wandering hands on the
presidential yacht
JFK assassination conspiracy theories: The grassy knoll, Umbrella Man,
LBJ and Ted Cruz???s dad
Local Headlines newsletter
Important local stories in D.C., Va. and Md., around 8 a.m. on weekdays.
By signing up you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy
121
Comments
Share on FacebookShare
Share on TwitterTweet
Share via Email
Rachel Siegel
Rachel Siegel is a national business reporter. She previously
contributed to the Post's Metro desk, The Marshall Project and The
Dallas Morning News. Follow
subscribe
The story must be told.
Your subscription supports journalism that matters.
Try 1 month for $1
The Post Recommends
JFK assassination conspiracy theories: The grassy knoll, Umbrella Man,
LBJ and Ted Cruz???s dad
A guide to the most persistent conspiracy theories associated with the
president's murder.
Oct 27, 2017
Strippers, surveillance and assassination plots: The wildest JFK Files
What Post reporters found combing through thousands of pages of newly
released documents from the CIA, FBI and other agencies.
Oct 27, 2017
Oswald???s chilling final hours before killing Kennedy: speaking Russian,
playing with his daughter, sleeping in
He put his daughter to bed and offered to do the dishes. The normally
volatile Oswald seemed content ??? and ready.
Oct 26, 2017
Sign in to join the conversation
Most Read Local
1 ???The Romanoffs??? can???t top the real-life ???sexual excess and
depraved
sadism??? of Russia???s royal family
2
What is the 13th Amendment? A Kanye-inspired history lesson.
3
A doctor is taking over Planned Parenthood ??? and she???s ready to fight
4
Perspective He was the only black boy in his class. He was changed
the day he found out why.
5
Before and after images of Hurricane Michael destruction
Be the first to know.
Our award-winning journalists are there when the news breaks.
Local Headlines newsletter
Important local stories in D.C., Va. and Md., around 8 a.m. on weekdays.
washingtonpost.com
?? 1996-2018 The Washington Post
Help and Contact Us
Policies and Standards
Terms of Service
Privacy Policy
Print Products Terms of Sale
Digital Products Terms of Sale
Submissions and Discussion Policy
RSS Terms of Service
Ad Choices