by Joan Mellen
Reeves Morgan identified that same photograph as Lawrence Howard. “This one here looks similar to a fellow I saw on the streets of Jackson!” he said. When Blackmer quickly pulled out a Xerox of another picture of Howard, and Morgan did not connect it immediately to Howard’s photograph, Blackmer cried out in triumph: “Let the record reflect that the Xerox photograph was a newspaper photograph of Lawrence Howard taken in 1967 and is not familiar to the witness!”
In his sharp country way, Morgan, unruffled by Blackmer’s attempt to manipulate the interview, then strengthened his identification. “This picture in here looks more like when I saw him around here. I just knew that somebody said he was one of them Mexicans over there,” he said, referring to Marydale Farms. Howard was indeed of Mexican origin. “He didn’t have no looseness, in none of his pants or nothing. He walked like a wrestler.”
Henry Earl Palmer, the registrar of voters in 1963, also identified Lawrence Howard. “I have seen a man similar to that,” he said. Howard might have worked for Mr. Louie, Louis Roussel, the oil billionaire who owned a farm next door to Lloyd Cobb’s. The HSCA never investigated Marydale Farms.
Judge Rarick did not doubt Lea McGehee’s story of Oswald and his haircut because he had observed the black Cadillac himself. He had been standing with District Attorney Richard Kilbourne, observing the CORE registration drive. Kilbourne was a tall man with a short mustache who, when upset, would roll his eyes back as far as they would go, then abruptly raise his head. He was no friend of Rarick’s. Kilbourne headed the local Citizens’ Council, which he used as his personal campaign organization. He watched approvingly as only police officer in Clinton, Town Marshal John Manchester, a ruddy six-footer, approached a black Cadillac.
Manchester, from a dirt-poor family, was proud of being a police officer; his other job was reading gas meters. He favored a ten-gallon hat, and on the orders of Special Counsel Richard Van Buskirk, questioned all strangers who appeared in East Feliciana Parish. He was especially proud of having arrested CORE volunteer Michael Lesser, who had been sitting on the stairs leading up to the Registrar’s office. Manchester charged Lesser with “criminal anarchy,” a capital crime in Louisiana, tantamount to treason. Having learned that efforts would be made to integrate the courtroom on the day of Lesser’s hearing, Kilbourne filed a motion for a continuance—and got it.
That summer a black activist named Mama Jo Holmes, who sheltered CORE volunteers, noticed her gas bill was unusually high. Then her house was robbed and the papers of the CORE people stolen. Crosses were burned on State Road 10, and you knew where a Klan member lived because he had planted a white camellia tree in his front yard. Lloyd Cobb’s brother Alvin, that friend of Guy Banister, headed a “White Camellia Organization,” a unit of the Klan.
Now Kilbourne and Rarick notice that Manchester has two men spread-eagled on the black Cadillac.
“We’ve been occupied by the Fed,” Kilbourne drawls, “and now the Feds are fixing it so the Negroes can take over.” When Manchester spots Kilbourne watching, he joins him and Rarick. “We pulled that guy over!” Manchester says. He had asked to see their drivers’ licenses. “They claimed they didn’t have anything to do with this. It was two dudes out of New Orleans.” They were lost, coming up from Baton Rouge on Plank Road, Manchester says, referring to the area of Reeves Morgan’s house. They were circling around, looking for Jackson.
Returning home from his haircut a year later, Judge Rarick telephoned his friend Ned Touchstone. Then he called Jack Rogers, who, from the day of the assassination, had a private detective named J. D. Vinson developing information on Oswald, whom he presumed was a Communist.
“Why don’t you tell Jim Garrison about this?” Rarick told Rogers. According to McGehee, Rarick then wrote a little story on the appearance of Oswald in Jackson and Clinton for the Councilor. Soon Jack Rogers and Ned Touchstone paid their own visit to McGehee’s barbershop, taking notes as McGehee talked. Rogers informed State Sovereignty Commission official Fred Dent Jr. about the appearance of Oswald, Ferrie and Shaw in East Feliciana Parish. By the time Dent told Dischler and Fruge, they knew that and more.
Rogers scrawled his later notes on a 1965 calendar. A man named David Broman reported to Rogers that the FBI had interviewed Rose Cheramie. He learned Rose had laughed when she read in the papers that there was no connection between Ruby and Oswald. One of his “operators,” as Rogers termed his informants, said he found a woman in Laredo, Texas, who had a photograph of Oswald and Ruby taken in February 1963, “Laredo,” recalling Richard Case Nagell’s code name.
Rogers also believed he had made a major discovery: Rose Cheramie had a sister in Jackson named Gladys Palmer. Although Palmer’s maiden name was Ragland and two of her sisters were alive to inform Rogers that Rose was not their sister, Rogers had nonetheless stumbled onto an important lead. After “Rose Cheramie” his source did write the words “maiden name Ragland.” Gladys Palmer worked as a stripper at the Carousel Club for Jack Ruby; she and Rose Cheramie were “sisters” in the trade. During the summer of 1963, Gladys had driven back to Louisiana in a steel blue Mercury registered to Jack Ruby. During that summer, Gladys Palmer had been seen often with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Everywhere in Clinton, Fruge and Dischler met witnesses who spoke of Gladys Palmer, a skinny, dark-haired woman always impeccably made up. Gladys was outspoken, and cutting. If her sisters asked her to do something, she would reply, “Why don’t you do it yourself!” Wild, a terrific dancer, promiscuous, noisy and boozy, Gladys took drugs, again rendering her a double for Rose Cheramie.
Sometimes deputy sheriff Carl Bunch had to lock Gladys up. Her husband was Matt Junior Palmer, whose aunt, Peggy Palmer, ran the “Bayou Sara Lounge” near the St. Francisville ferry landing, and Gladys, even in her forties a “hot number,” could often be found there. It was after one of her big blowouts with Matt Junior that she fled to Texas to work for Jack Ruby.
Jim Garrison confirmed some parts of this lead. On March 17th, a Thomas Williams reported that Matt Junior Palmer’s ex-wife had been employed by Jack Ruby. She had returned to Jackson driving a “black Lincoln Continental” and been placed at East for drug treatment. Williams also reported that a pilot named Billy Kemp, whose wife, Maxine, worked at East, had been approached three or four weeks before the assassination to fly a group of people out of the country for $25,000.
By 1967, Gladys was shunned in East Feliciana Parish. “Don’t give her any money for the funeral because she’ll use it for drugs,” Josephine Palmer, Henry Earl’s sister, said when Matt Junior died. “Once she put him in the ground she walked off.” Henry Earl Palmer, Matt Junior’s cousin, thought Oswald wanted a job at East to be near Gladys.
Fruge and Dischler learned that Gladys had been spotted with Lee Harvey Oswald at two bars east of Baton Rouge: the Audubon and the Hawaiian Lounge. Sometimes they were accompanied by Gladys’ eighteen-year-old cousin, Gloria Wilson, an emaciated girl. Gladys drove Gloria to Acadia Parish to meet Gloria’s lover—in a black Cadillac. This lover, terrified after the assassination because he had seen Gloria with Lee Harvey Oswald, confided to Anne Dischler that both he and Gloria knew Oswald. He had seen Oswald at the drugstore, he told Anne Dischler later. He had been frightened for Gloria when he saw her in that Cadillac. Gloria worked at Cochran’s Drug Store in Jackson; some said she was “dating” Oswald. “Got in car,” Dischler’s notebook reads.
Fruge and Dischler discovered that deputy Alvin Doucet and special sheriff’s deputy Hardy Travis had confirmed that the steel blue Mercury that took Gladys home was registered in the name “Jack Ruby.” D. J. Blanchard, an engineer at East, saw Gladys drive with Oswald in this blue car to the Audubon. The FBI had interviewed Gladys, Henry Earl Palmer reported to Fruge and Dischler. As Rose Cheramie’s name does not appear, so neither is there a reference to “Gladys Palmer” in any of the indices of names attached to the Warren Commission findings. By the time Jim Garrison’s investigation found Gladys Palmer, she had married a man nam
ed Earl Wilson and moved to Baton Rouge.
Jim Garrison directed Fruge and Dischler to focus on the appearance of Oswald, Ferrie and Shaw in Clinton where Oswald had attempted to register to vote. Oswald in the presence of Shaw would corroborate Perry Russo, and render Clay Shaw, who had denied ever having met Oswald and Ferrie, a perjurer, at the very least.
On May 23, 1967, Fruge and Dischler appeared at Henry Earl Palmer’s office. On this first visit, they intended only to make contact; Dischler had not even brought along her notebook. She did have her tape recorder, which resembled a briefcase. It lay flat on the floor and ran throughout the interview.
Palmer was a tall, rangy man, unrelenting in his opposition to black people voting. On his wall was one of the Martin Luther King Jr. posters; a doll hung from a noose on his door. “Daddy was in the Klan,” his daughter says. Palmer in fact was an “Exalted Cyclops.” Robert Buras points out that if you were white in that era and lived north of Baton Rouge, you were more than likely to join the Klan, or at the very least, the Citizens’ Council. Palmer and John Manchester were even suspicious of John Rarick because, having been born in Indiana, he was a northerner. The notion that Palmer’s testimony was not credible simply because of his Klan affiliation is fatuous. By 1967, Henry Earl had already given up his Klan robe, his daughter Margaret Harvey reports, so that his wife could use the material to make choir robes for Margaret and her sister to wear in their school Christmas program.
“Oswald registered to vote up here,” Palmer remarked. He took out his big registration book, opened it, and pointed to a place on one of the pages. “Look,” he said, “this is where Oswald registered.”
The name had been erased and written over, but you could still see the big “O” and the space where “Lee H.” had been signed. Over the erasure, another name had been written, but you could make out the pentimento, the shadow of “Oswald,” the truth beneath the surface.
“Why was his name erased?” Fruge said.
Henry Earl offered no explanation. Instead, he explained how you had to be acquainted with two registered parish voters in order to register. Oswald had mentioned two doctors at East: one was “Dr. Frank Silva,” the medical director of the hospital that summer. He was “living with Dr. Frank Silva,” Oswald had claimed. The other was Dr. Malcolm Pierson, who was at East because Dr. Silva, who was married to the daughter of the hospital administrator, Warren Price, had tried to assist in his rehabilitation by recommending him.
Oswald had produced separation papers from the Navy, Palmer said. On the strength of his having mentioned Dr. Silva, Palmer had permitted him to register. Palmer then described Oswald’s companions: a man fitting Clay Shaw’s description had driven to Jackson in a black Cadillac. He had been accompanied by a shorter man, “sloppily dressed with dark bushy eyebrows.” Palmer thought he saw another well-dressed man, placing four men in the car. John Manchester, too, would later tell John Rarick three men had remained in the car after Oswald had gotten on line to register to vote.
“We’d like to come back tomorrow,” Fruge said, planning to have the registration book copied. Palmer agreed, adding that at first he and Manchester had decided not to say anything about Oswald being up there. This was later corroborated by a garage owner named Joe Phelps to whom Palmer and Manchester had both denied they had seen a black Cadillac. Then they changed their minds.
When Fruge and Dischler appeared at Palmer’s office the next day, the big registration book had disappeared. Palmer expressed surprise. He offered no explanation. He did not deny that he had said that Oswald had registered. “Nobody can erase that from my memory,” Dischler says today.
In the months to come, Fruge and Dischler met with Palmer several more times. Never again did he mention that Oswald had registered successfully. Soon Palmer began to talk as if Oswald had failed to register. “Why eased off on statement in comparison to tape?” Dischler writes in her notebook. Nor did Palmer ever mention again that Oswald had invoked “Dr. Frank Silva.” He mentioned only Dr. Pierson, and only to say that Dr. Pierson himself was not a registered voter in East Feliciana Parish. This, Henry Earl said, was why he refused to permit Oswald to register.
Dischler and Fruge concluded that Oswald had attempted to register twice: he failed the first time, the second not. Oswald had been in Jackson already in May, when he was spotted with Gladys Palmer and Gloria Wilson.
It would be the same with Oswald’s job application at East. All evidence of his presence there had disappeared, too. Palmer also told Dischler and Fruge, inaccurately, that John Manchester had asked the radio operator to run a 1028 identification on the Cadillac, only to find it registered to the International Trade Mart, an event that did not occur. It would have been unlikely in those days to make the long-distance call in the hope of reaching the Bureau of Identification to request a license check. But Palmer was seeking to regularize what had happened on that day.
“John Manchester can identify the men in the car,” Palmer said. But Manchester wanted to tell his story only to Jim Garrison. “I’m not talking to some damn state trooper!” Manchester said.
John Rarick was serving as intermediary between Garrison and John Manchester.
“I can’t drive all the way up there,” Garrison told Rarick. Rarick turned out to be invaluable. His law partner was married to one of Henry Earl’s sisters, and Henry Earl’s first wife, “Pinkie,” a medical doctor, was now married to Jack Rogers. “Jim was always a finer man than some of history has recorded,” Rarick says with a sardonic tone that matches that of his Tulane classmate.
Eventually Manchester talked to Francis Fruge in John Rarick’s office, while Anne Dischler took notes. Manchester seemed to know, she thought, that Oswald had registered to vote. “What do you think of Oswald’s having registered?” Fruge said, and Manchester knew exactly what he meant.
Manchester had examined the driver’s license of the whitehaired man behind the wheel. It read: “Clay Shaw.” Shaw had then volunteered that he worked for the International Trade Mart. When Henry Earl a few moments later asked what they were doing in Clinton, Manchester had quipped, “Selling bananas, I guess.” The CORE people had not nicknamed him “Barney” from the Andy Griffith Show for nothing.
As Dischler and Fruge continued to interview the residents of Clinton and Jackson, a narrative emerged: Oswald, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie had driven into Clinton at 9 A.M. Oswald got out of the car, and joined the already long line of black people waiting to attempt to register to vote. It was a Thursday, one of the three days a week Henry Earl deigned to open his doors: the other days were Friday and Saturday. It appears to have been September 19th.
A witness named Henry Brown said he thought he saw a hospital employee named Estes Morgan sitting briefly in the back of the car with Oswald. Estes was related to Reeves Morgan. People said they saw two white men in line together, and this was apparently Estes Morgan and Oswald.
“It’s useless to try to register because the only people who can register in Clinton are black people,” Morgan remarked to Oswald as they stood together in line.
“You’re right,” Oswald said. “The black people will eventually take over.”
For black people, passing the test was, in fact, all but hopeless. That summer, William Dunn, a driver on a sugar cane farm, attempted to register nine or ten times. Furious, he joined CORE. One black woman failed to register because she had not placed the dot directly over the “i” in the word “parish.” One woman, succeeding, thanked Jesus Christ.
“Don’t come thanking Jesus in here,” Henry Earl said. “It’s just the goodness of me passing you.”
That day the white man Estes Morgan also failed to register.
Following his own failure, Oswald headed for East, entering the old Parker Building, since the majestic Greek revival “Center Building” was being remodeled. He approached receptionist Bobbie Dedon and asked for directions to the personnel department. The hospital application, issued by the Civil Service, inquired wh
ether you had ever been arrested. Question fifteen asked whether you were a registered voter in the state of Louisiana. As he went off to take his pre-employment physical, Oswald was told: if you’re not a registered voter, you won’t be able to work here.
Wearing a T-shirt, obstreperous and calling attention to himself, Oswald falls into conversation with some hospital attendants. His subject is Cuba and what it will take to bring Fidel Castro down. His voice is loud.
The director of medical services passes by and hears him. It is Dr. Frank Silva. One of the attendants, who is from Texas, calls Dr. Silva over.
“Dr. Silva is from Cuba,” the attendant tells Oswald. Oswald behaves as if he is already aware of that fact. Now Dr. Silva, an elegant man with a profound sense of propriety, takes a long, penetrating look at the uncouth young man purporting to be looking for a job. The young man is bragging about how proficient he is with guns, how he served in the Marines, how he will go to Cuba.
“I’m involved with getting rid of Fidel Castro,” Oswald says. “I’m using my skills as a Marine.” This man is as belligerent as the one who signed his Holiday Inn bar bill “Hidell” and ran off without paying, as rude as the man who, applying for a job at the States-Item in August, twice visited the news room. There he posed as a “rabid supporter of Fidel Castro,” according to an article in the States-Item the day after the assassination; he was so annoyed by the complicated application process that he threw his uncompleted form into a trash can.