JFK in Forth Worth got up close to Texans happy to see him. (www.codewit.com)

It was so darkly ironic and therefor all the more painful, recalled my late, great friend Liz Carpenter, a proud sixth-generation Texan, because “a real effort was made to inspire peoplei into giving President Kennedy the warmest and most enthusiastic welcome the Lone Star could muster.”

Liz Carpenter and Lady Bird Johnson (notevenpast.org)

I first met Liz in 1990 to conduct an interview for my book First Ladies, volume 2, about her work as First Lady Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Press Secretary but we remained good friends from that day forward and talked about everything under the sun. It was in her capacity as an aide to then-Vice President Johnson that she was in the official party on President and Mrs. Kennedy’s fateful trip to Texas.

She knew well about the misgivings about the President including the city of Dallas on his itinerary.

Liz Carpenter. (notevenpast.org)

During the 1960 presidential campaign, the equally unabashed Texas-proud Lady Bird Johnson, had been campaigning as the wife of the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate when she was spat upon in Dallas by those opposing JFK and LBJ because they refused to support racial segregation.

Dallas protestors at Stevenson’s speech. (dmagazine.com)

Less than a month before the Kennedys arrived in Texas, Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been hit on the head with a placard by someone advocating that the U.S. pull out of the United Nations. Senator William Fulbright point-blank told JFK, “Dallas is a very dangerous place. I wouldn’t go there. Don’t you go.”

This view was supported by no less a person than Texas Governor John Connally.

JFK, Connally and LBJ.

He felt the Dallas stop should be reconsidered since some elements there could be “too emotional.”

A Dallas woman wrote White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, “Don’t let the President come down here. I’m worried about him. I think something terrible will happen to him.” An Austin newspaper editor, “He will not get through this without something happening to him.”

FDR, Jr. seated at far right in car with JFK campaigning in 1960.

Liz Carpenter recalled, however, that President Kennedy insisted on keeping Dallas in the itinerary. He pointed out that his Assistant Navy Secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., son of the president, had told him how each time his father’s public schedule and open-car parade route through cities around the U.S. were published in newspapers there were always direct threats of danger against him. The Ku Klux Klan was also known to threaten First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt before public appearances she made in the Deep South, due to her racial equality views. No harm ever came to either the President or Mrs. Roosevelt.

In the case of the Kennedy trip to Dallas, it was specifically the Dallas Morning News editor Ted Dealey who was the most visible leader in the city driving anti-JFK sentiment there.

At the 1961 meeting, Dallas Morning News editor Ted Dealey read a hostile statement point-blank to JFK.

On October 27, 1961, Dealey had joined President Kennedy for lunch with a dozen and a half other Texas newspaper editors. He interrupted JFK’s talk to read from a nine-page statement, some of which went:

“The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters. Particularly this is true in Texas right now. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation — and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle….We can annihilate Russia and should make that clear to the Soviet government. This means undoubtedly that they can simultaneously destroy us. But it is better to die than submit to communism and slavery…”

Although stunned at the incident other Texas editors spoke out angrily against Dealey, one of whom told the President, “We don’t agree, he’s not speaking for us.” As chronicled in the new book Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis, Texas newspaper editors then wrote to Dealey saying his actions were “embarrassing” to Texas and “inappropriate.” One of his colleagues confronted Dealey, declaring him to be “leading the worst fascist movement in the Southwest and you don’t realize that nobody else is with you.”

The Dallas Morning News editorial cartoon which appeared the day the Kennedys arrived in Texas, ironically (www.hailofbullets11221963.blogspot.com)

LBJ would not acknowledge Dealey, for whom he held deep contempt. Stanely Marcus, owner of the prosperous Nieman-Marcus Department store was angered at increasingly right-wing tone of the Dallas Morning News and threatened to withdraw his substantial advertising dollars from the paper.

The day Kennedy landed in San Antonio, Dealey’s paper printed an editorial cartoon that showed JFK in the back of an open car aiming his rifle at deer who were labeled as Texas’s 24 presidential electoral votes.

The Dallas Morning News ad which appeared on the morning of November 22, 1963.

Sharing Dealey’s view that the Kennedy Administration was soft on communism was Dallas resident Edwin A. Walker, a former U.S. Army General fired by JFK’s Defense Secretary for trying to infuse right-wing thinking among his troops. One of his acolytes was Bernard Weissman, whose name was listed as one of the “American Fact-Finding Committee” members who paid for the famous full-page Dallas Morning News ad, forebodingly bordered in black mourning and sarcastically headlined, “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.”

A flyer passed out to crowds waiting to cheer President Kennedy in Texas.

The Dallas Police Chief would list Walker’s group among a number of local groups being watched for any threatening moves towards the President, including racist, states-rights, isolationist organizations, but also the Dallas Committee for Full Citizenship, Young Peoples Socialist League, Dallas Civil Liberties Union and Black Muslims. The only one known to be planning a demonstration was that of the Indignant White Citizen’s Council to take place outside the Trade Mart at the scheduled luncheon JFK never lived to attend.

The Kennedys with Nellie Connally in San Antonio. (pininterest.com)

The police never definitely determined what group or individual had distributed handbills which showed the President full-faced and in profile above the headline, “Wanted for Treason.”

From the moment the presidential party landed at San Antonio Airport just before noon on November 21, through the open-car motorcade they made to their stop at the air force base hospital dedication, their open-car ride through Houston the tensions among those in the group had eased.

The Kennedy and Connallys in San Antonio.

The crowds were not only larger than expected but demonstrably warm and receptive, most surging behind police barricades to simply touch JFK’s hand.

Greeting well-wishers in San Antonio.

The Kennedys received separate standing ovations from a tightly-packed well-attended breakfast the next morning in Fort Worth.

Outside the hotel where they’d stayed the night, JFK couldn’t help himself from walking over the the crowds eager to shake his hand, laughing, smiling, applauding, cheering and in full support.

Negative signs (“Ban the Brothers” said one) were far outweighed by the positive (“Jackie, Come Water-Ski in Texas!”).

The motorcade leaves Love Field. (Dallashistory.org)

It had only been when the Kennedys returned briefly to their Fort Worth hotel suite before vacating it to continue the itinerary that JFK saw the ominous ad in Dealey’s newspaper, showing it to Jackie and quipping, “We’re heading into nut country today.”

Yet he also added that, “Last night would have been a hell of a night to assassinate a president.”

And, of course nothing even suggesting that had occurred.

Another snapshot of the Kennedys in Dallas.

Liz recalled that there was slightly more tension once the motorcade took off into Dallas, but that Mrs. Johnson felt it dissipate as soon as they hit downtown.

Liz relayed her observation that it was teachers with their grammar school classes, working-class men of all races on their lunch hour, housewives, high school students, and simply tens of thousands of individual everyday citizens who “shocked” the presidential party by their “outpouring of glee, excitement and obvious love” for the President as his motorcade proceeded through the streets of Dallas.

Here is proof of that, from San Antonio, Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas:

The Kenendys shaking hands at Love Field upon arriving in Dallas.

That exuberant holiday mood of the receptive crowds, many sidewalks packed four-thick, is what led the Texas Governor’s wife Nellie Connally, riding in the car with her husband in the seats in front of the Kennedys, to turn around and famously quip, “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”

Mrs. Kennedy responds to a sound on the motorcade on Elm Street. (Croft photo/6th Floor Museum)

With no indication that the motorcade was proceeding smoothly, Liz Carpenter began to think ahead to the next and last leg of the trip.

From Dallas they would proceed to the capital city of Austin and then the overnight stay of the President and Mrs. Kennedy at the nearby ranch of the Vice President and Mrs. Johnson.

More often than not, the prevailing attitude of an entire population of people is summarily ascribed to the official declarations made by coalesced power of organizational institutions, be they labor unions, churches, business associations, university communities and, most overtly, the mass media.

The Kennedy motorcade headed towards Dealey Plaza and history.

Such shorthand, however, can often prove flawed in getting an accurate sense of “the people.” It can often prove to be the fatal flaw in the best of marketing strategies, for example, when instead the unexpected idea, product or person hits a critical mass of popularity. The residents of varying socioeconomic backgrounds of any city or county or nation are not a monolith, nor are their views easily ascertained. The reality is that there are shades of opinion among even those who share the exact same demographics.

The presidential limousine in the Parkland Hospital emergency entrance parking lot.

The blessing and the curse of this reality is so much still, ultimately, comes down to the individual who does their own thinking an feeling, even if they keep it to themselves.

That was dramatically proven as President Kennedy’s car turned onto the plaza named, ironically enough, for Ted Dealey’s rabidly pro-FDR Democratic father, when one individual pulled a trigger.

Here is a video interview with Liz Carpenter of her memories from that day:

The Kennedys welcomed into the car at Dallas by Connally.

Dallas crowds waving to the Kennedys. (kennedy-photos.blogspot.com)

All through Dallas the Kennedys only meet with enthusiastic cheering.

With security permitting such immediate access in those days to a President, many in Dallas could cheer Kennedy closely. (kennedy-photos.blogspot.com)

Confetti reigned on the Kennedys at point in their Dallas motorcade. (www.jfkfiles.blogspot.com)

Related articles

• Jackie Onassis Confirmed JFK “picked” her Pink Suit for Dallas, Four Years Before She Died (carlanthonyonline.com)
• Witnesses to the JFK assassination: Three Dallas stories – Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
• JFK niece cannot rule out second gunman theory (telegraph.co.uk)
• Half a century later, JFK conspiracies still thrive (kansascity.com)
• JFK: The assassination of a beloved leader – New York Daily News (nydailynews.com)
• Opinion: Dallas comes to terms with JFK’s murder (cnn.com)
• JFK conspiracy theories still abound 50 years later (star-telegram.com)
• Some never-before-seen photos of JFK’s final moments (lunaticoutpost.com)

Categories: Presidents, The Kennedys

Tags: Dallas, Dallas Morning News, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, John F Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson, Liz Carpenter, Lyndon B. Johnson, The Kennedy Assassination