Dallas 1963

by Bill Minutaglio

  General Walker is now arriving on campus, ready to lead his volunteers. But Barnett’s state police turn him away. The governor, already in plenty of trouble with the feds, wants nothing to do with Walker. The general retreats to the courthouse square. There he chats with deputies and offers his assistance to Sheriff J. W. Ford, who politely declines.11

  At 8 p.m., President John F. Kennedy takes to television to deliver a live statement from the Oval Office. He has decided he needs to explain to the nation why he is sending federal marshals to Mississippi: “Had the police powers of Mississippi been used to support the orders of the court… instead of deliberately and unlawfully blocking them, a peaceable and sensible solution would have been possible without any Federal intervention.”12

  While Kennedy is speaking, Walker is eating a steak at Oxford’s Mansion Restaurant, along with his close supporters.

  Watching the president on television, Walker mutters: “Nauseating, nauseating.”13

  Abruptly finishing his dinner, he walks up to the counter and asks for an entire carton of cigarettes. He knows it is going to be a long night.14

  While Kennedy appeals for order and calm, all hell is breaking loose on the university campus. The mob, steadily growing as Walker’s reinforcements arrive from all over the country, is surging forward toward the school’s Lyceum—and the federal marshals are hell-bent on protecting it.

  Rocks and eggs, bricks and bottles are thudding down on the marshals. Rifle shots begin ringing out in the night. The marshals are firing tear gas back at the crowd.

  The mob retreats and gathers under the twenty-nine-foot-tall statue of a Confederate soldier. The group is joined by a tall, dark-suited Texan wearing a big white Stetson. The protesters immediately recognize the man, and a joyous cry goes up: “General Walker is here! We’ve got a leader!”15 Another protester, seeing Walker, yells out, “Sic ’em, John Birch!”16

  Walker appears very calm as he greets the protesters. He looks over at the U.S. Marshals.

  Someone calls out, “General, will you lead us to the steps?”

  Walker, smoking steadily, confers with the group for a few moments, then announces: “Well, we are ready.”17

  Under Walker’s command, members of the mob move toward the marshals, but are driven back once more by the tear gas.

  As Walker’s volunteers reconvene under the statue, an Episcopalian minister from Oxford named Duncan Gray recognizes Walker. Gray has come to campus to try to stop the rioting. He approaches Walker and pleads for his help in calming the mob.

  Walker snorts at him: “You are the kind of minister that makes me ashamed to be an Episcopalian.”

  Walker calls on the mob, and a group of his followers jump on the minister and begin beating him. Walker is pointing back toward the line of marshals and shouting “Go get ’em boys… charge!”18

  Soon parts of the campus are in flames. Shots are ringing out as marshals fall to the ground, gravely wounded. Walker’s men steal a fire engine, and it races toward the Lyceum. Protesters hook a high-pressure hose to a fire hydrant and begin blasting the marshals with water.

  The marshals are running out of tear gas, but they are able to drive the protesters back enough so that they can cut the fire truck’s ignition wires and shoot holes into the hose. More shots are zinging back at the marshals, and, incredibly, Molotov cocktails are now being hurled. Suddenly a bulldozer appears, and it is aimed at full speed into the line of federal agents. Desperate shots are ringing out in response as the bulldozer comes under a hailstorm of fire. It comes crashing to a stop just thirty feet from the Lyceum.

  Walker is striding purposefully through the smoke and chaos. He is in his element: In contrast with his milquetoast appearance before the Senate committee, Walker is exuding calm, even serenity, as the fighting roars around him. It is like leading the charges in Europe during World War II.

  He tells the protesters: “You’re doing all right—riot, riot. You are getting news all over the country. Now you’ve got casualties.”19

  After midnight he leaves the campus for a time. He is seen with a group of men who approach a gas station. They fill a five-gallon container full of gasoline and grab an empty case of soft drink bottles. Restocked with the ingredients for more Molotov cocktails, they speed back to campus.

  The long night becomes a series of pitched battles as the beleaguered marshals continue to desperately fight off the mob, waiting for reinforcements that never come. Cars are overturned and set on fire. The journalists not holed up in the Lyceum are singled out by mob members. Many are chased and beaten, including a television reporter from Dallas whose newsreel camera is smashed.

  Another reporter is found murdered, shot in the back at close range.

  Bobby Kennedy has been on the phone, fielding the frantic reports from aides in Mississippi who are trying to monitor every move by Walker. Now he’s huddling with his brother to see what presidential orders can be dispatched.

  “General Walker’s been downtown getting people stirred up… Can we get it arranged to get him arrested?” he asks.

  President Kennedy says: “By the FBI.”

  His brother thinks about it for a second. “Well, let’s see if we can arrest him,” he says. “Will you tell the FBI that we need an arrest warrant?”

  President Kennedy needs to know something first. “What’s his crime?” he asks his brother.

  “He’s been stirring people up,” says Bobby Kennedy.

  “Inciting,” adds the president.

  Bobby Kennedy suggests that there is one more thing that they can probably charge Walker with: “Obstruction of justice.”

  It is like a war room, really, as White House aides run in and out with scraps of paper, huddle in corners, check their watches. The two brothers continue quickly trading solutions to the Walker dilemma.

  “Would the FBI have trouble arresting him… How many agents do you have down there? I think you ought to get those MPs [military police] into there and over by the airport. I don’t see what you’ve got to lose,” observes President Kennedy.

  His brother mulls it over. “Yeah, OK. All right. I’ll do that,” he replies.

  The brothers hunker down some more. Aides sprint in with news about gas masks, riot gear, how it could turn into a “war.”

  “General Walker,” says the president. “Imagine that son of a bitch having been the commander of a division up till last year? And the Army promoting him?”

  One of his aides mentions the bestselling novel Seven Days in May—a book many people believe is based on Walker. It centers on a treasonous conspiracy by right-wing military commanders to stage a coup d’état and overthrow a president they believe has endangered the United States by bending to the Soviet Union. Kennedy has read the book.

  Suddenly, Bobby speaks up: “He’s getting them all stirred up. If he has them march down there with guns, we could have a hell of a battle… Walker’s baiting them. They need to keep an eye on him.”

  The president listens to the back-and-forth, the bits of information being phoned in from the Kennedy aides who are on the ground in Mississippi—they are trying to stay on some phone lines in the basement of a campus building.

  “I haven’t had such an interesting time since the Bay of Pigs,” says President Kennedy.20

  The president and the attorney general are beginning to realize that five hundred federal marshals aren’t enough. One of Bobby Kennedy’s men manages to get through on the telephone and tells his boss: “It’s getting like the Alamo.” Bobby grimaces and responds, “Well, you know what happened to those guys, don’t you?”21

  The president orders two battalions of army military police to go to Oxford immediately to reinforce the marshals. Yet as the hours pass the help fails to arrive. Kennedy finally tells his aides that Khrushchev would have gotten “those troops in fast enough. That’s what worries me about the whole thing.”22

  OCTOBER

  As the new day dawns, two people are dead. Of the 350 mar
shals who had been guarding the university’s Lyceum Building, 180 are injured—27 wounded by gunfire. Fires are still burning as broken glass and burned-out automobiles litter the campus. America is awakening to the shocking scenes of devastation.

  As the extent of the rioting becomes clear, Kennedy orders fifteen thousand federal troops into Oxford. It is the biggest military force used to quell a civilian insurrection since 1865. And as the U.S. soldiers stream into Oxford in military convoys, they are greeted by the sight of Confederate flags flown at half-mast. Hundreds of jeering civilians are lining the streets, many of them hurling bottles and insults at the army trucks as they rumble down the littered streets. A contingent of U.S. Marshals briskly escorts James Meredith to the Lyceum. He had been hidden away in a guarded dormitory room overnight. Inside the administration building, Meredith pays his tuition with $230 in cash and is officially enrolled.

  Walker, unaware that Meredith has been registered, enjoys a victory breakfast and is now walking to Oxford’s courthouse square. Supporters shout his name, race to his side, and he smilingly poses for photographs. A radio reporter thrusts a microphone toward him and he speaks elatedly about true patriotism, about Americans rising up.

  The mood is still edgy. Little brawls and skirmishes are erupting and the federal troops are chasing people away. Suddenly, a military officer recognizes Walker and strides toward him, ordering him to leave the area. Walker glares at the man and refuses. Several soldiers march over, pointing their bayonets at Walker, and finally force him away.

  Just after 9 a.m., President Kennedy orders an aide to quickly find Solicitor General Archibald Cox. Kennedy has had time to sleep on it. He knows what he wants to do.

  “Good morning,” Kennedy says when his call goes through. “We want to arrest General Walker, and I don’t know whether we just arrest him for disturbing the peace or whether we arrest him for more than that.”1

  Walker piles into a car driven by his chief aide, Robert Surrey. With them is J. Evetts Haley, the Texas segregationist who was a hero to the National Indignation Convention in Dallas.

  The car hurtles down the road, trying to flee the university scene, but heads unknowingly right toward a roadblock set up by two armed soldiers. One of them, Walker notes, is a Negro. After some brief questioning, the soldiers remove Walker from the car and take him into federal custody.

  Under orders from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Walker is arrested on four federal counts, including rebellion, insurrection, and seditious conspiracy against the U.S. government.

  Back in Washington, Bobby Kennedy begins making urgent, insistent calls. Something has to be done with Walker. The attorney general orders federal officials to begin a drilled-down examination of everything they can find on Edwin A. Walker: his strange behavior in front of the Senate committee, his confrontational public statements in the media—even his internal files from the army report, including the one that mentions his “psychosomatic disorders.”

  Bobby Kennedy also turns finally to Dr. Charles E. Smith, medical director and chief psychiatrist of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Smith provides a report on Walker to a sympathetic federal judge in Mississippi—the report says that Walker’s recent behavior indicates “essentially unpredictable and seemingly bizarre outbursts of the type often observed in individuals suffering with paranoid mental disorder.”

  Even though Walker has not been examined by an independent psychiatrist, nor by Dr. Smith himself, the judge quickly agrees and orders Walker committed to a federal psychiatric prison for evaluation.

  As Walker is spirited away by the federal agents, his supporters back in Dallas quickly spring into action. His attorney is Robert Morris, whose rabid anti-communism proved too much even for the University of Dallas—Morris left a few months ago to form a group called the Defenders of American Liberties.2 He still writes editorial columns for the Dallas Morning News, and he is still willing to help Ted Dealey with any reconnaissance on Kennedy.

  Morris calls a press conference to decry the treatment of Walker. He describes Walker as “the United States’ first political prisoner. One would think we’re in Havana or Budapest, the way General Walker has been treated.” Thousands of angry telegrams and letters begin arriving at the White House, demanding Walker’s release. Hundreds of protesters arrive at the U.S. Medical Center in Springfield, Missouri, where Walker is incarcerated. Some of them wave Confederate flags and hold signs that read: INTER-RACE MARRIAGES WILL RUIN THE WHITE RACE.

  Morris knows the visuals will not win Walker sympathy across the country. He asks the picketers to please go home.

  In Dallas, the Morning News rushes to embrace the general. It claims that Walker’s actions in Mississippi had been peaceful. It is the Kennedy administration, the News argues, that has been the violent aggressor by sending marshals to the South.

  Bruce Alger, who has received a flood of pro-Walker phone calls and telegrams from his constituents, calls Attorney General Robert Kennedy personally. Alger releases public statements defending Walker and takes to the floor of the House of Representatives, charging that the Kennedys’ actions mean that “the freedom of every citizen of this land is in jeopardy.”3

  Reporters are dispatched to Walker’s house on Turtle Creek to see if they can get some reaction from his headquarters. The first reporter to arrive, from the Dallas Times Herald, is ordered off the premises. Then a freelance photographer named Duane Robinson shows up. A former photojournalist for United Press International, he’s just received a magazine assignment to photograph General Walker’s home. Robinson sets up his camera and is preparing to take his picture when a man emerges from Walker’s house and demands the film. Robinson refuses, noting that there is no law against taking a photograph of a house. Walker’s aide lunges at him, and Robinson runs for it. Another Walker aide comes charging out of the house, and the two men chase Robinson through the streets of Dallas, finally catching him. They begin beating Robinson, then grab his camera and run away with it.

  Later, Walker’s house has an armed guard standing watch by the front door. Dallas police officers show up at the house to ask about the photographer’s missing camera, but they are turned away.

  The guard tells them: “The badge is not good enough. You’ve got to have legal papers to get in here.”4

  In custody, Walker remains silent, refusing to provide anything but his name, rank, and serial number.

  Another psychiatric prisoner in the facility, however, is attempting to get messages through to Walker.

  The prisoner writes to the general: “My case started… when I made charges of organized homosexuals in government and of their influence and power. I am still making the same charges. And I still have evidence and proof of it. I also now charge there is a homosexual-communist alliance to undermine moral codes of decency.”

  The man closes his letter: “I am still on record in the Justice Department as being ‘insane’ and so are you…”

  Walker decides not to reply.5

  Finally, Walker’s attorneys and the Justice Department agree that Walker will submit to an independent psychological examination in Dallas. Walker’s supporters raise the general’s $100,000 bond, and he is freed after spending six days as a prisoner of the federal government. He exits the medical center at Springfield into the waiting arms of his mother, who has come from Dallas to meet him.

  Walker flies home, arriving to find a joyous crowd of some 250 Confederate-flag-waving supporters. The throng also holds signs reading HAIL THE HERO! and WALKER FOR PRESIDENT IN 1964.

  Walker briefly addresses the crowd, telling them he doesn’t understand why the Kennedys imprisoned him, since he had only gone to Mississippi to see a football game.

  Everyone laughs and cheers. As the general exits the terminal at Love Field, people burst into song: “For he’s a jolly good fellow!”

  Walker is nearly tearing up.

  “I appreciate this very much. It is wonderful to be back in Texas,” he tells them.


  People in the crowd murmur in turn:

  “God bless you… we’re with you.”6

  As Walker settles back into Dallas and plots his next move, a lean former marine marksman named Lee Harvey Oswald is settling into his new city. He has found a job making photographic reproductions at a graphic arts company. He is looking for a home for his Russian bride and his young daughter. He is also renting a PO box downtown, where he can receive his copies of the Worker, the weekly paper published by the U.S. Communist Party. News about Dallas’s General Walker is everywhere, and the Worker is no exception. The radical left is as paranoid as the radical right, and for some of the open communists in America, Walker’s forays into Mississippi are drumming up fears that the right really is planning some sort of violent, fascist takeover of the nation.

  Walker is bidding for the “Fuehrer Role” says the Worker: “The first open candidate for leadership of the mass movement which the military-monopolist-pro-fascist plotters are now hoping to organize throughout the nation.”

  The newspaper is convinced that Walker would never be able to live so well in Dallas and travel the nation at ease if he was not supported in the city by “financial backers of the extreme right wing groups.”

  It calls for “action against him and his allies.”7

  As he reads the Worker, Oswald understands more clearly than before that America’s violent right wing is headquartered in the city where he has brought his family.

  He was born in New Orleans, moved around the country with his mother, and then joined the marines when he was seventeen. He spent three years in active duty, developed a fascination with communism and Russia—and abruptly decided to abandon the United States and make his way to Moscow in 1959. He was ready to start a new life, to stay, perhaps, forever. He met and married a quiet woman, Marina; they quickly had a child named June.