Dallas 1963

by Bill Minutaglio

  The mother and son speak on the telephone almost every day. She also sends him notes, pointers, campaign advice. She gives him tips on how to improve his public speaking: “1. Going to the podium with your speech clearly written and with NO changes inserted and 2. Reading aloud, over and over, until you are thoroughly familiar with every word, for twenty-four hours, more or less, before delivery.”11

  Even as he is addressing crowds numbering in the thousands, she is hunched over her desk, sending out hundreds of letters, drumming up support. She writes to generals, senators, congressmen, and ordinary citizens. In her impassioned notes, she echoes her son and indicts President Kennedy. She knows what Kennedy is doing: “Bordering on treason.”12

  Mrs. Walker sends out pleas for donations, as if it is still World War II and money needs to be raised to defeat the enemy: the communists and Kennedy. Across the country, people open up hand-addressed letters from her. She says her son needs their faith, their support, and their money. Supporting him will save the nation: “If he folds up for lack of funds, the commies will have won another victory.”13

  She also aggressively monitors coverage by the socialist media. She is quick to personally challenge journalists who disappoint her. She lights into one Associated Press reporter: “Your… reports carry news of all gubernatorial candidates EXCEPT Gen. Walker. Why is this?”14

  She knows that Dealey’s Dallas Morning News is usually supportive. Her son granted one exclusive interview during his entire campaign—to the Dallas Morning News. And his mother followed suit, granting her only campaign interview to the paper. One day, she writes Dealey a note: “It’s gratifying to see people concerned over the subversive elements in this country.”15

  And she also decides to write a note to the paper’s chief editorial writer, Dick West: “If we had more editors like you with the courage of their convictions, TRUTH would be established instead of propaganda spread by liberals.”16

  Walker doesn’t really want her campaigning, especially at her age, but she insists on making at least one formal appearance. In the embracing city of Dallas, she has been invited to speak before five hundred women at the sprawling, manicured Dallas Country Club. As the uniformed waiters offer refreshments, she is given a rousing welcome. And she can feel it, too. Here, it seems, people know how endangered America is. How anemic and unsuspecting men rule Washington. How they have conspired to crucify her son—a war hero, a super-patriot, a man who loves his country and its Constitution more than the spineless Kennedy and his cronies in the White House.

  Charlotte Walker’s appearance cannot, however, mask the fact that her son is rarely in Texas. Now, more than a few voters—and newspapers—are questioning how Walker’s ongoing national crusade really relates to what he might do to help Texas. People are beginning to wonder: What do his constant anti-Kennedy rants have to do with governing Texas?

  Walker decides to return to Dallas just long enough to issue an official platform: “All state business will be conducted with a prayer for divine guidance… my platform is the Constitution of the State of Texas.”17

  He assures voters that there is a reason they should care about his battle against communism: Texas is “a prime target of Soviet attention,” according to the ex-general.

  Back in his home state, he also makes his segregationist stands clear, announcing that he is for “state’s rights.” He is, as one newspaper reports, the only gubernatorial candidate who is not even making a nod toward wanting the black vote.18

  Walker’s fervent segregationist rhetoric flies in the face of the elders in his adopted city, the ones who have finally, reluctantly, recognized that legalized desegregation is becoming a reality. But Juanita Craft, Rhett James, and Stanley Marcus know that not everyone is ready to just flick that lever and surrender the “Southern traditions.” Walker knows it, too. And now it’s almost as if he is speaking directly to those disempowered in the city, the ones who felt betrayed by the begrudging but united front presented by the mighty Dallas Citizens Council.

  While Dallas may have temporarily retreated in the face of the “socialist pro-integration” enemy, Walker is raising the banner of segregation high, waving it fearlessly for everyone to see. He is doing more than trying to slow integration; he is trying to win back lost territory.

  He tells reporters that Jim Crow is not only proper, it is: “Actually a source of unique cultural benefits.”

  APRIL

  An overflow audience pushes into the marble-walled Caucus Room of the Old Senate Office Building. General Edwin Walker is in Washington for the long-awaited “Walker Hearings”—his appearance before a controversial Senate committee investigating charges that the Kennedy administration is “muzzling” high-ranking military officers like Walker.

  He is dressed in his best suit, his hair combed to perfection. He has been waiting for this. He is excited, and he knows there will be people watching around the nation. This widely anticipated event, a dramatic showdown in the nation’s capital, should provide the ultimate stage to launch his attacks against Kennedy. This will be a perfect chance to make his case to the American people, to offer them a contrast between himself and John F. Kennedy.

  All eyes turn toward him as he enters the room flanked by his attorneys. There is a bustle as reporters jockey for positions and senators study Walker while they sip from glasses of water. Among the spectators is a haunting-looking man that some recognize as George Lincoln Rockwell, the stormy leader of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell has turned out to show his support for Walker. The neo-Nazi is telling everyone who will listen that General Walker is the man the country needs in the White House: “A good leader for a national coalition of patriots.”

  Rockwell is prominently displaying a swastika lapel pin on his jacket. Just as the hearings are about to begin, House security officers approach Rockwell and ask him to remove the swastika. He refuses. The officers grab him by the arms and attempt to forcibly escort him from the building. There is jostling, shoving, as a small melee breaks out. As the leader of America’s Nazi movement is dragged outside, he shouts out his support for the man from Dallas.1

  Walker looks nonplussed as he settles in front of a microphone. The official proceedings finally begin, and Walker is invited to offer some opening remarks. He arranges sheets of paper in front of him and begins reading, in a slow and deliberate monotone, from a nine-thousand-word statement. He has worked hard on it, and it is a manifesto. It is a distillation of things he feels about America and about Kennedy.

  I am a Christian martyr, personally victimized by the international Communist conspiracy. Being assigned to command the 24th Infantry Division in Germany had amounted to entrapment. There are enemies within. People with ‘powerful backing’ are against me. The Kennedy Administration is filled with communists.2

  As he marches through his speech, some Democratic senators are visibly sighing, shrugging. Others are leaning forward, trying to pick up any specifics, any details, in Walker’s charges. As he speaks, some senators are already deciding that Walker is worse than Joseph McCarthy—who at least occasionally offered some actual evidence of a treasonous communist conspiracy. As Walker drones on, even conservative senators begin shaking their heads as they hear Walker say he has been “framed in a den of iniquity.”3

  When he is finally done, some of the senators seem almost relieved. They begin to pepper him with questions.

  General Walker is not used to being questioned. And unlike at his lone press conference in Dallas, Walker doesn’t know the questions ahead of time. Even the friendly queries seem to take him by surprise. He is openmouthed and speechless as he looks at the senators, trying to summon thoughts or words that refuse to come. After several excruciatingly long pauses, his attorneys whisper suggestions in his ear.

  Walker begins speaking in a halting manner, his voice cracking. Walker’s two attorneys begin trying to answer for him, but the senators cut them off.

  Democratic Senator Stuart Symington from Missouri is
eager to grill Walker. He starts by saying that Walker has denounced many books as communist-inspired, including What We Must Know About Communism—a favorite target of the John Birch Society. He adds that President Eisenhower had once recommended the book as a good and useful study of communism, and that he thoroughly agreed.

  Symington demands an answer from Walker:

  “What then did you find objectionable about the book?”

  Walker looks at Symington. There is an infinite pause. Finally, stammering, Walker says that he has not actually read the book.

  The Caucus Room is quiet, almost in sympathy with the awkward moment. Under further questioning, Walker is forced to admit that he has not, in fact, read any of the books he has been ferociously denouncing as communist-inspired. Some senators are staring aghast at Walker, clearly disturbed that they have let this man take up so much of their time.

  Reporters are scribbling in their notebooks, ready to race outside to bang out stories or aim for telephones so they can call their editors.

  Suddenly, without prompting, Walker begins describing how a “real control apparatus” is out to get him.

  The senators press him to explain. Who… or what… is out to get you?

  Walker stares back at them and gulps:

  “I cannot identify those that are completely in control of the apparatus.”4

  His testimony is called to a halt. Walker and his attorneys begin to pack their briefcases.

  As Walker finally exits the suffocating atmosphere of the Caucus Room, he is confronted by a swarm of reporters, including Tom Kelly, a correspondent for the Washington Daily News. The five-foot, five-inch 155-pound reporter steps up to Walker and asks whether the general will disavow the support of American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell.

  Walker glares at the reporter. And suddenly, violently, he raises his right arm, rears back, and punches Kelly in the right eye, snapping the reporter’s head back into a camera.

  Walker doesn’t speak. He marches on, refusing to look back or answer any questions.5

  Bruce Alger has been crafting a speech, one that will take a full two days to deliver on the floor of the House. He wants it to explain how Kennedy is dooming America and everything it stands for. He decides to call his speech “Requiem for a Free People.”

  He steps to the floor and begins reading his carefully composed words. As the other congressmen listen, it must seem like the man from Dallas is comparing the Kennedy administration’s “dictatorial” tactics to those used in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union:

  “I wonder how long we will be able to speak freely in this House. I intend to speak out as long as I can… We have read news stories of private citizens and newspapers being aroused in the dark hours of the night by agents of the federal government to answer questions… Are we, the citizens of the land of the free, now to expect the thunder of boots in the night, the knock at the door, the summons to appear to justify our actions whenever we say anything or do anything that does not meet with the approval of the President and the planners who surround him?”6

  Alger wouldn’t be faulted for wondering about the wood-lined, top floors of the downtown buildings, where the city’s future is daily mapped out by men from the Dallas Citizens Council—and where the million-dollar oil and real estate contracts are signed, where the fate of the entire Dallas school system is being shaped, where the very look of entire neighborhoods is really decided. Of course, none of it has its true genesis in City Hall—he knows that by now. It begins in the hushed dining rooms at the RepublicBank, inside the private clubs atop the Baker Hotel, in the Dallas Morning News executive offices, even in the pastor’s office at First Baptist. Dallas is still tight that way, coordinated that way, and that is the real reason it has never exploded.

  Alger knows it, anyone who spends time at the Dallas Country Club knows it. The city’s history is firmly guided by its citizen kings, always has been, always will be. He perhaps wonders if there is dissatisfaction, now, with his own role. If he has begun to strike some of the men who brought him to office as ineffective. Truth be told, he was never part of the legacy structure in the city: He wasn’t wealthy enough to gain a seat at the head table alongside the Dallas Citizens Council leaders. He didn’t have the roots in the city to be one of the primogenitor kingmakers. Do they see him as flailing, pushing for political trophies he can’t win? Perhaps Dealey and so many others in Dallas are asking each other: Is Alger really good for business?

  Maybe he is no longer protecting and promoting Dallas’s image as a place that desperately wants to be taken seriously. He had been rebuked by former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, and by one Kennedy minion after another. No one has told him, but perhaps he can sense it, the way the powers-that-be in the city are beginning to think of options. Maybe someone with deeper roots, links to the viziers that have run the city for decades. It could be that Alger never recovered his bearings after he was attacked for the unhinged protest in Dallas against Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson two years ago—the one that helped catapult Kennedy to the White House.

  Whatever it is, Alger is on uncertain, shifting turf. In Dallas, decisions are being made beyond his ken or even his understanding. The wives of the downtown men are even whispering at the Dallas Country Club: Alger is getting divorced, it is becoming “racy”…7

  And Dealey is serving, as he usually does, as the public voice for any dissatisfaction inside the upper reaches of the hierarchy. The editorials in his paper are like press releases from the pantheon, the civic curriculum delivered straight from the Dallas Citizens Council. Lately, Dealey’s paper has been slapping Alger for not knowing that he needs to befriend, and abide by, the hidebound ultra-conservative Southern Democrats… the ones with a long, loyal history of fighting integration, fighting FDR, fighting for states’ rights.8 They are nominally Democrats, of course, but in many ways they are more conservative than the most conservative Republicans. Dealey perhaps is staggered that Alger cannot understand it: It would take an army to overthrow Kennedy and Johnson.

  Too, there is something else. Something that reveals how Kennedy might feel about Dallas. Alger has been trying, unsuccessfully, to convince the Kennedy administration to greenlight a federal project that could become one of the biggest money-making deals in the history of the city—a grand plan to build a federal center on the crappy western edge of downtown. It would be a massive complex that would make several Dallas millionaires even richer because they had scooped up, at bargain prices, nearby land that should skyrocket in value. It could irrevocably change the face of the city. It might mean huge construction dollars, acres seized by eminent domain, rail lines diverted, tunnels built under the city, convention centers, hotels, and even a new home for City Hall.

  The Dallas Citizens Council decides that for once it would be appropriate to bring a huge federal project to Dallas—but without it appearing that Dallas is on bended knee to Washington, or slavishly addicted to federal handouts. It would begin with a towering government building just minutes from Dealey’s newspaper, from Criswell’s Baptist church, from Hunt’s oil company headquarters.

  The pieces are all in place but the Kennedy administration has clearly put a lid on it. Federal approval is delayed. Something, someone, is stalling it. The Dallas Morning News isn’t letting its reporters note the specifics of the deal or the principals involved. And at least one skeptical reporter is so frustrated at not being able to write a story connecting the dots between the business cabal and the federal project that he tells the chaplain at his church—and the chaplain advises him to go get drunk. Some brave reporters in other parts of Texas are calling the handful of Dallas investors “the Syndicate.”9

  In Washington, Alger knows what he has to do.

  He goes back to the floor of the House, this time blaming the delays on the Kennedy machine: The Kennedy White House is out to punish Dallas, is out to crush the entire damned city, because it voted against Kennedy… because the city insisted on reelecting an
ti-Kennedy warriors like Alger.10

  On top of it all, Alger has another reelection campaign on his hands. He is running for Congress for the fifth time. The Dallas Citizens Council is impatient. They can always find another conservative to represent the city in Washington. Maybe someone like Mayor Earle Cabell, the man who welcomed Walker to Dallas, who attended the founding meeting of the John Birch Society in Dallas.

  Alger decides to ramp up his anti-Kennedy attacks. On the floor of the House, Alger is more unfiltered than ever: The Kennedy administration is assuming “almost unlimited power” and hell-bent on denying some things for Dallas because it is a city that clearly dislikes the Kennedy insiders.11

  Alger says he will make the Kennedys pay—and make them suffer a “number of rebuffs.”12

  MAY

  With the election for governor only days away, Walker is back at home on Turtle Creek Boulevard after his disastrous appearance in Washington. He is greeted by a small legion of housewives and former soldiers.

  They try to cheer him up. Even his mother is there, his fiercest supporter. As he settles in his study, Walker has time to dwell on how the Kennedys are probably smugly enjoying the accounts in the left-wing media. How their friends inside the news ranks will make a mockery of him.

  Yet even ardent conservatives are now turning against him. William F. Buckley Jr., editor of the National Review, says Walker should be “consigned to history’s ashcan.”1 Dealey is also chagrined at Walker’s performance. It doesn’t help things—and it certainly hasn’t made Dallas look very good. Walker had been lauded in stories, editorials, and even editorial cartoons in Dealey’s paper. And now the paper is being forced reluctantly to report, with studied understatement, that Walker “tended to roam in his answers and many of the questions had to be repeated by senators to elicit responses.”2

  Walker is unfazed. He begins mapping out his battle plan for the final week of campaigning. There is a special, last-minute maneuver. As the days wind down to election day, thousands of Texans are suddenly riveted to urgent messages blaring from their radios: