Why Do They Hate Us So Much?
When John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Dallas was my hometown. For twenty years my neighbors and I have suffered the world’s blame. Now it is time to lay our burden down.
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The new world was extending itself. What was happening in Dallas was spreading throughout Texas, pulling apart the ancient coalitions that constituted the Democratic party (since Reconstruction, the only real party in Texas). Two Democrats whose politics were widely disparate, Senator Ralph Yarborough and Governor John Connally, were engaged in a quarrel that would finish with the death fo Texas liberalism and the birth of the Republican party in the state. But perhaps Kennedy could hold the state for the Democrats if he would just come to Texas. And bring his wife, Yarborough advised.
Crowds in San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth met the president with enthusiasm, but these receptions were eclipsed in the press, which was playing up the rift between Yarborough and Connally and, incidentally, between Yarborough and Johnson. Those men would all deny that Kennedy had come to Texas to pacify their quarrels, but it is certain that Kennedy did what he could to force a show of unity. And he had some success. By the time he had given his early-morning first speech in Fort Worth, the members of the presidential party were feeling triumphant. Dallas was next—Kennedy was going to speak at a luncheon for the city’s leaders at the Trade Mart—and although there was some worry about what might happen in that town, Kennedy seemed to be in terrific form, the audiences were enchanted, and his wife’s presence had caused a sensation. The relief people felt in the presidential party was like that of a coach who sees his best player at the top of his game and knows that on a good day his best player is unbeatable. After Dallas, the Kennedy’s were flying on to Austin. According to Stanley Marcus, Lyndon Johnson was going to conclude a welcoming speech the following night with the remark, “And thank God, Mr. President, that you came out of Dallas alive.”
After breakfast in Fort Worth, Kennedy was given a copy of the Dallas Morning News, which had front-page articles about the disputes among the Texas Democrats and full-page, black-bordered advertisement inside the front section. “Welcome MR. Kennedy to Dallas,” it read, “A city so disgraced by a recent Liberal smear attempt that its citizens have just elected two more Conservative Americans to public office….A city that will continue to grow and prosper despite efforts by you and your administration to penalize it for its non-conformity to ‘New Frontierism.’” The advertisement included twelve rhetorical questions that accused the president of going soft on communism and betraying American allies. It was signed by Bernard Weissman, who was chairman of the American Fact-finding Committee, a completely fictitious entity. Weissman turned out to be a member of a right-wing coterie formed by three American servicemen in Germany; like Oswald and General Walker, the members of the group had gravitated to Dallas.
Kennedy read the advertisement and handed it to his wife. “Oh, you know,” he told her, “we’re heading into nut country today.”
My father had his own dark thoughts about Kennedy. As a younger man with some political ambition he had made preparations for Kennedy to speak in Oklahoma. At the time Kennedy was a congressman from Massachusetts, already cultivating a national constituency for his eventual run for the presidency; my father was a bank vice president, but like Kennedy he was a war hero, and bright possibilities were predicted for him in the political arena. Kennedy was a model for many men like my father who hoped to trade their wartime glory for public office; clearly there were advantages in an alliance with the young political star. My father was expected to supply whatever the congressman needed, and one thing he needed was an ample and varied selection of Oklahoma women—no, not dinner dates, my father was instructed, just sexual companions. It was the moment my father’s own political aspirations died. He did not even go to hear Kennedy speak.
In Dallas, however, he reached some grudging accommodation with Kennedy’s presidency. He saw political power and the aggrandizement of wealth at closer quarters; he came to understand men whose needs were greater than his own, men who made promises only to themselves. He could believe now that it was a divine failing in himself that kept him from being such a man. On November 22, 1963, he was invited to hear Kennedy speak at the Dallas Trade Mart, and this time he decided to go.
One of my sisters recalls seeing that date written on a blackboard several days before—she had a school assignment due that day—and feeling an instantaneous surge of horror. There were other premonitory currents in the city. Later the guilt we felt for Kennedy’s death would have less to do with his assassination by a man only slightly associated with our city than it would have to do with our own feelings of anticipation. Something would happen—something. We expected to be disgraced. It had happened with Johnson, it had happened with Stevenson, it would happen again. There was a vague air of excitement in the city such as there might be in a movie audience when a gunfight is about to occur—it was that kind of secondary excitement, not the fear that someone would really die but an expectation that something dramatic would appear to happen, that we would see it or hear about it, probably talk about it later, and it would pass with no harm done. Political theater, in other words.
In the morning I went out to get the News and found on our doorstep a flyer that looked exactly like a wanted poster in the post office: it was John Kennedy, full face and profile, and the flyer said he was “Wanted for Treason.” Below that his crimes were listed, seven items such as: betraying the Constitution, giving support to communist-inspired racial riots, appointing anti-Christians to federal office, and lying to the American people about his previous marriage and divorce.
I brought the flyer in with the paper and read it on the way to the breakfast table. I had heard most of it before—who hadn’t?—the same old right-wing tirade, although I remember wondering about Kennedy’s “previous marriage and divorce.” Since I was already running late to school I didn’t read the News that morning, although later in the day one of my first instincts was to save the paper, as did many other people in Dallas. After all, it was now a historical document.
Although some kids were let out of school in Houston and San Antonio when the president’s motorcade passed through, in Dallas we had no such luck and could only be excused to the custody of a parent. So like most of my classmates I was in school when it happened. It was in algebra class right after lunch. Mr. Irvin Hill was describing a parabola on the blackboard when three tones came over the public address system and the principal started to speak. We actually knew something was wrong before he said a word, because there was a choked pause and we could hear a radio in the background.
“The president has been shot.”
It was only a fraction of a moment before he gave us details and then played the radio commentary into the P.A. for the remainder of the hour. But in that fraction the world we knew turned into ghosts and fled. It happened!—the thing we had been waiting for. We were dazed and excited. WE turned in our chairs and looked in each other’s faces, finding grins of astonishment. Something happened! At that point in my life I knew no more about the nature of the tragedy than a blind man knows about the color blue. All I knew was that life could change, it had changed at last. Wasn’t this what we had been waiting for? We asked the question with our eyes, looking for some fixed response to this new flood of circumstance. We were giddy and scared, and as for me I was grateful for the loss of innocence.
“…shot in the head, Governor Connally wounded…”
Some of the details were off base. We heard that Johnson was shot too, he was seen entering Parkland Hospital holding his arm. Who else? Were they killing everybody? I don’t think I ever paused to think who they were; I knew. At that moment I supposed we were in the middle of a right-wing coup.
And as we sat there, gazing crazily at each other and at the P.A. box, I finally noticed Mr. Hill and realized that tears were streaming down his wrinkled cheeks. His chest was beginning to heave, then he sobbed in great barks, and everyone now was watching him, studying him as if he had the answer for our own reactions. But his grief was a private thing, and he picked it up like the greatest burden he had ever carried and walked out of the room. As he left I felt the first prodding overture of shame.
“The president is dead.”
It was a shock how much the world hated us—and why? Oswald was only dimly a Dallasite. He was a Marxist and an atheist; you could scarcely call him a product of the city. He was, if anything, the Anti-Dallas, the summation of everything we hated and feared. How could we be held responsible for him?
The world decided that Kennedy had died in enemy territory, that no matter who had killed him, we had willed him dead. And yet the truth is that we were under the spell of Camelot like everyone else. Although we were filled with resentment toward the privileged, arrogant East Coast society that Kennedy represented, it was a resentment born of envy and intense curiosity. We felt inferior. That Jacqueline Kennedy spoke French and some Spanish was impressive to us; the only people I knew who were bilingual were inner-city Mexican kids. We admired Mrs. Kennedy’s taste, we liked for her to be at home with the great musicians and artists of the world, and her breathless, Marilyn Monroe voice intimated that she was not all white gloves and pillbox hats. The Kennedys invested the country with a self-conscious eroticism that was nicely bridled by the presence of young children in the White House. In short, we had the ordinary human identification with the occupant of the presidency that most Americans did. I can even remember Kennedy phrases creeping into my father’s vocabulary. My father spoke of “moving ahead with vigor,” and when I’d ask him a question he was likely to preface his response with “Let me say this about that.” Kennedy hated wearing hats, and so my father, along with nearly every other male in the country, gave up wearing them.
My Library
