Kennedy

Last Friday was my birthday, and thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday.

It was also the 61st anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. I couldn’t find any information about that, remembrance, or anything else in my Friday news.

Many people don’t remember why he was shot. But this was an act not of the Russians (which is a popular theory) or the lone gunman on a hill. Maybe it was plain old white supremacist politics, just like what we have going on right now.

President Kennedy and his brother supported an effort to get James Meredith, a black man, into the University of Mississippi. The Department of Justice had ruled that they must register this man. Many courts had ruled that he must be registered. The governor there physically barred him from getting to the registrar. Eventually, many Highway Patrol and 500 U.S. Marshalls helped him get into the dorm. A riot broke out, and 300 people were injured, and two died. On Oct 1, 1962, Meredith became the first black man to go to Ole Miss. He Graduated a year later despite all of the continued harassment, injuries, and extreme isolation.

The following year, President Kennedy knew that feuding between party leaders in Texas could jeopardize his chances of winning the state in 1964. Thus, one objective of the trip was to bring Democrats together. This support strengthening and the recent Meredith incidents at Ole Miss were loosely connected. Race issues continued to simmer, and contrary to today, the Republicans were good; Meredith had registered Republican, and most of the white supremacists were in the South, among the Democrats.

I remember Lady Bird Johnson writing about that day; one thing stands out in my memory. She described Jackie Kennedy in her pink suit as covered in blood, her legs and one of her white gloves being caked in her husband’s blood. She was an elegant lady; she even had a Secret Service codename of “Lace.” It was horrific what she went through. Lady Bird Johnson wrote that Jackie, coming out of a stupor, told her she would get changed later and wanted them to see what they had done. She was only 34 years old.

Tom