Dallas 1963

by Bill Minutaglio

  Now he is back in Dallas.

  Walker is still alive. He wouldn’t be holding this rally, giving this speech, if Oswald had altered his shot by just a fraction of an inch—if his bullet hadn’t hit the wood on the windowpane.

  Oswald, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt, wants to look casual. He blends in perfectly. He finds a seat and watches as people tote huge American and Dixie flags into the auditorium.

  General Walker is fidgeting nervously, chain-smoking as he waits for the program to begin. He looks out into the auditorium and sees that many of the seats are filling up—some twelve hundred people in all. It is not a capacity crowd, but respectable nonetheless.

  Once everyone assembles, the event begins with the reading of supportive telegrams from patriots in Dallas—Bruce Alger, Hunt’s former employee, the ex-FBI agent Dan Smoot, and former University of Dallas President Robert Morris, a close friend of Ted Dealey.

  Walker steps to the microphone. Oswald listens to the man he tried to kill five months ago:

  “The main battleground in the world today is right here in America, and it involves the United States versus the United Nations.”8

  Pausing to look out at the crowd, his voice acid with contempt, he adds:

  “Adlai’s going to sell his hogwash, and here’s who is sponsoring him in Dallas.”9

  Walker reads a long blacklist, stopping after each name to allow the audience to scream condemnations: the Boy Scouts of America, the YMCA, the League of Women Voters, the Kiwanis Clubs, the Optimists Clubs, and the Rotary Clubs… groups like the ones in Dallas where the castrated Holocaust survivor Jack Oran had gone to speak against hatred.

  Walker marches on, name checking churches, temples, even the generally conservative and virtually segregated Southern Methodist University. On and on Walker reads, until at last he finishes indicting what he says are sixty-one anti-U.S. organizations in Dallas.

  Then he turns his attention to national figures—Kennedy, Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Truman, the CIA, Nixon, the State Department—and efforts by men like Rhett James, the black Dallas preacher, to repeal the poll tax.

  But most of his ire is saved for the United Nations:

  “I’ll tell you who started the UN,” he shouts into his microphone. “It was the communists…” 10

  Walker is interrupted, time and again, by cheers. The huge flags undulate over the crowd. Adlai Stevenson will be appearing on the very same stage in twenty-four hours. Speaking into the very same microphone and gazing out over the same auditorium. It is like the parallel universes of Dallas are bumping up against each other.

  “Tonight we stand on a battleground… the symbol of our sovereignty,” Walker roars.

  “Tomorrow night there will stand here a symbol to the communist conspiracy.”11

  Before he steps away from the microphone, Walker asks the crowd: Which side will Dallas choose?

  Stanley Marcus’s executive vice president is standing on the tarmac at Love Field, where President Kennedy will land in a few weeks. The morning sun is bright and warm as the flight from New York arrives. The Neiman Marcus executive is relieved to see no protesters or picket signs, just a small welcoming group and a handful of reporters. Marcus sent observers to monitor General Walker’s U.S. Day rally the evening before, and they came back spooked.

  After Adlai Stevenson’s plane lands, he walks down the ramp a bit stiffly. He seems older and more frail than in photos. Reporters begin shouting questions:

  “Are you expecting a friendly crowd at your speech tonight?”

  Stevenson smiles. He knows that the night before, the rogue General Walker had held an anti–United Nations, anti–Kennedy administration rally in Dallas.

  “I don’t know why not,” he replies to the reporter.

  Marcus has arranged a limousine for Stevenson, and it takes him to the Sheraton. After checking into the Presidential Suite, Stevenson meets with Marcus—who has sponsored a formal luncheon in the ambassador’s honor. Dozens of Marcus’s friends in the business sector or local government are in attendance. The group has been carefully screened.

  Stevenson receives polite applause and an honorary Texas cowboy hat. Stevenson turns to Marcus: “Having been through Texas several times in my campaigns, I have about sixty-five Texas hats.”

  Stevenson makes a show of inspecting the hat closely. “But of all of them, this is the best one.” He puts the hat on and the room breaks out in cheers.12

  Stevenson takes friendly questions from the audience as lunch is served. Outside, a small plane is flying over Dallas, methodically zigzagging its way across the city. A large banner tails behind the plane, proclaiming, GET US OUT OF UN.

  After the luncheon, Stevenson tours Neiman Marcus, visits the Dallas Press Club to talk to newsmen, and then makes his way to an elevator crowded with a dozen people.

  Stevenson is beginning to think that all the stories he’s been hearing about Dallas’s hostility are gross exaggerations.

  As he steps out of the elevator, he hears a derisive voice calling after him: “What the hell’s the United Nations for, anyway?”13

  Marcus’s people send a security man back to the police chief to ask for even more protection tonight. Again, the chief assures them that everything will be fine. The police will have everything under control.

  Larrie Schmidt is among the very first to arrive at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium, and he has brought company. He used his contacts to roust a small platoon of sign-wielding college students—and now they are striding into the auditorium and setting up a picket line in the lobby.

  Marching together, they wave signs: ADLAI, WHO ELECTED YOU?

  They chant, “GET THE U.S. OUT OF THE UN.”

  The students are smartly attired in sport coats and ties. Schmidt had insisted on the dress code: “I wanted to show people the difference between conservative pickets and leftist beatniks.”14

  Anxious contingents of UN supporters mix uneasily with Schmidt and pro-Walker supporters. More protest signs are bobbing overhead, and some people are carrying Confederate flags, rattling Halloween noisemakers and shouting as they pour inside.

  A man in an Uncle Sam suit is waving an American flag and shouting that the UN is for communist race mixers—he is Bobby Joiner, an infamous Dallas-area segregationist who is running for the state legislature under the banner of the “Indignant White Citizens Council.”

  As people jostle through the lobby and toward the auditorium, a man suddenly confronts Schmidt’s line of well-dressed college-aged protesters. He begins screaming, calling them “Nazis.” The man tries to grab a picket sign. Several people push in and for a moment it looks like a fight, or even a riot, might break out.

  It is precisely what Larrie Schmidt is hoping for. The shouting man is one of his own people. Schmidt had planned the political theater to make his groomed group look like martyrs. He wants news to emerge that pro–United Nations goons are bullying his peaceful, reasonable picketers in Dallas.

  Seats are filling quickly. Walker’s supporters are waving their placards and blocking the views of those sitting behind them. More insults are shouted back and forth. Fistfights are even breaking out as emotions boil over. Dallas police are still nowhere to be seen.

  Finally, about fifteen minutes before the program is scheduled to begin, cops begin arriving. They break up a couple of fights and take up stations around the arena, looking on grimly. There are now almost two thousand people inside the auditorium.

  In North Dallas, Walker is finishing a fine meal at a friend’s house. The men retreat to the living room. Walker is leaning in close to the television for the live broadcast of the Stevenson speech. Walker knows enough, after being arrested by Kennedy’s people in Mississippi, to stay away from the affair. Who knows what Kennedy’s people would do to him if he showed up in person to challenge their damned United Nations ambassador?

  Above the stage hangs a large banner: WELCOME ADLAI.

  The sign had been a curiosity. It was there
when the auditorium crew arrived earlier that afternoon. They weren’t sure how that had happened, but they left it in place.

  From his chair on the stage, looking out at the restive crowd, Stanley Marcus is beginning to realize that the confrontation Stevenson has been avoiding all day is finally arriving… and Marcus is stunned by its scope. It isn’t supposed to be this way. He had thought that the arrival of a reasonable, well-spoken man would placate the extremists in Dallas—possibly even win them over. It was, really, the same thing that Rhett James had thought when he invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Dallas. That having these men in the city, that hearing them, the hard-edged people would be forced to retreat, to surrender to the collective goodwill of the city.

  Marcus’s role is to introduce Stevenson, but as he walks to the podium a cacophony of boos and catcalls rains down on him. Positioned directly behind him is the official flag of the United Nations. Marcus, who has set the style for Dallas for so long, feels waves of hatred washing over him.

  He has not prepared any formal remarks. As he stands under the hot spotlight, sweating and facing an angry crowd, words suddenly flee. He is usually able to spin a gossamer speech at any given moment, but now he is adrift. Visibly rattled, he limps through an abbreviated, halting introduction—punctuated by jeers. He takes a seat on stage, pulls out a handkerchief, and wipes sweat from his brow.

  Stevenson acknowledges the cheers and ignores the snaking hisses that echo in the cavernous hall.

  Suddenly a large, bulky man near the front row rises from his seat.

  “Mr. Ambassador, I have a question for you!” shouts Frank McGehee, the Dallas founder of the National Indignation Convention.

  Stevenson ignores him and begins his speech, but McGehee keeps shouting, raising his voice in defiance. Now he is asking why Stevenson insists on negotiating with communist dictators.

  Stevenson finally stares down at him and says in a dry voice: “I’ll be delighted to give you equal time after I have finished.”

  As cops move toward him, McGehee keeps shouting.

  A small, elderly Dallas schoolteacher is sitting near McGehee—and he stands up and tries to push the larger man back into his seat.

  McGehee wrestles the man. The cops finally arrive and grab him by the arms as he tries to twist away.

  “Surely my dear friend,” Stevenson says loudly, “I don’t have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas manners, do I?”

  A roar of approval erupts as police march McGehee toward the exit.

  Stevenson issues a parting shot: “For my part, I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.”

  Schmidt and the remaining protesters keep trying to interrupt Stevenson’s rhythm. Hundreds of Halloween noisemakers clack in unison the instant he starts a sentence. People are fake coughing, laughing in exaggerated fashion.

  “How about Cuber?” some people are yelling, trying to imitate JFK’s accent.15

  One man stands up and chants: “Kennedy will get his reward in hell. Stevenson is going to die. His heart will stop, stop, stop. And he will burn, burn, burn.”16

  People begin streaming into the aisles, holding American flags upside down, a tactic they have learned from General Walker to signal a nation in distress or under attack. Halfway through Stevenson’s speech, a group of Walker’s commandos dart behind the stage and pull on a rope. The large banner that reads WELCOME ADLAI flips down to reveal another message in huge letters: UN RED FRONT.

  One Stevenson supporter turns to another in disbelief:

  “This must be what it was like in Munich during the Beer Hall Putsch.”17

  More scuffles are breaking out, but Stevenson is insisting on staying on stage—and directly addressing the extremists in Dallas:

  “I understand that some of these fearful groups are trying to establish a United States Day in competition with United Nations Day. This is the first time I have heard that the United States and the United Nations are rivals.”

  Stevenson continues speaking, and when he finishes his supporters erupt with prolonged cheers. The ovation lasts for three full minutes as Stevenson waves back to the crowd and is finally hustled off stage. In the wings, Marcus leads the ambassador to a small, private reception with members of the Dallas United Nations Association.

  Stevenson listens to numerous apologies and receives assurances that most people in Dallas don’t agree with the protesters.

  Then, a policeman passes the word that not all of the protesters have left the premises. Nearly a hundred people are marching in front of the auditorium. The group is surrounding Stevenson’s limousine and chanting anti-UN slogans. Larrie Schmidt’s people are among them. They sing “Dixie” and “Onward Christian Soldiers” while a half dozen police officers nervously monitor the situation.

  One of the protesters is Cora Lacy Frederickson, the wife of a Dallas insurance executive and a staunch supporter of General Walker. She attended Walker’s U.S. Day rally last night. She is carrying a large sign nailed to a piece of wood. It is one of those used by Schmidt’s group, and it reads: ADLAI, WHO ELECTED YOU?

  Inside the auditorium, police officers confer with Marcus and Stevenson. They decide that it is best for the ambassador to leave from the south stage door, away from the knot of protesters. A police escort helps Stevenson’s driver move the limousine. As the car drives away, the crowd rushes after it.

  The cops quickly set up a rope line for Stevenson and Marcus to help them reach the waiting limousine. As Stevenson emerges, a buzz goes up and people race toward him, waving their signs and yelling: “COMMUNIST!” and “TRAITOR!”

  Police struggle to hold back the crowd. TV and news photographers zoom in to capture the scene as the angry picketers descend on Stevenson. Seemingly oblivious to any danger, Stevenson chats and shakes hands with supporters as he moves toward his car.

  Frederickson suddenly flies toward Stevenson, her sign raised high. Flashbulbs are popping as her placard slams down on Stevenson’s forehead, just missing his eye. The ambassador steps back under the blow.

  A clean-cut college student pushes toward the reeling Stevenson, flailing his fists. The cops and Stevenson’s aides push back.

  Frederickson is seized by the police.

  Stevenson gathers his composure and yells to make himself heard over the crowd. He tells the police not to arrest the woman. He attempts to talk to her, even as the crowd pushes and heaves.18

  “What’s the matter with you?” he asks her. “What’s the trouble?”

  Frederickson yells at him: “Don’t you know?”

  Stevenson asks: “Know what?”

  She shouts: “I know, everybody knows. Why don’t you know?”

  Stevenson gives up: “It’s all right to have your own views… but don’t hit anyone.”19

  The police are flanking him and Marcus, pushing them toward the limousine. Some of Stevenson’s supporters have dug into their pockets and are throwing coins at the protesters to get them to disperse.

  Stevenson and Marcus have nearly reached the car when two more young men leap from the crowd.

  “TRAITOR!” they yell in unison, unleashing gobs of spit at Stevenson’s face.

  Two cops wrestle one of them, a twenty-two-year-old General Walker loyalist, to the ground. The man spits again, this time into the face of one of the cops struggling with him.

  The other man darts into the line of protesters, making a clean getaway. The cops can’t chase him because it will leave Stevenson unprotected.

  They try to put handcuffs on the twenty-two-year-old. He begins screaming: “THEY ARE BURNING ME WITH CIGARETTES!”20

  One of the policemen wrenches open a door to the limousine and Marcus pushes Stevenson inside, crawling in desperately after him as the cop slams the door shut.

  The protesters begin rocking the automobile. The chauffeur appears immobilized by fear.

  Marcus barks: “Get the hell out of here!”21

  The chauffeur guns the engine and the car
pulls forward as protesters fall away. The limo hurtles through the parking lot, screeching as it turns a corner. Inside the car, Stevenson takes out his handkerchief and wipes the saliva from his face.

  Addressing no one in particular he asks:

  “Are these human beings or animals?”

  Cora Frederickson, the normally staid wife of the Dallas insurance executive, is explaining to reporters why her picket sign struck the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations on his head.

  “It was never my intention to hit him,” she tells the newsmen. “Someone must have pushed the sign down on him.”

  She gestures with her hands: “I felt someone take hold of the sign and push down on it.”

  Frederickson has a good idea who is responsible:

  “There were a bunch of colored people standing around in back of me,” she shrugs.

  Noticing quizzical looks, she adds:

  “I was pushed from behind by a Negro.”22

  In New York, Bernard Weissman’s telephone is ringing late in the evening. It is Larrie Schmidt, calling long-distance from Dallas.

  “I have made it,” Schmidt shouts excitedly. “I have done it for us.”

  He describes the “hullabaloo” inside the auditorium and how Stevenson had been mobbed and struck while trying to leave.

  Schmidt says he helped organize the demonstration.

  “It went off beautifully. There is going to be national publicity… newspapers were all over the place.” He tells Weissman he has been interviewed for TV and radio. At long last, the breakthrough moment has arrived.23

  Photographers are racing to darkrooms and frantic newsmen are phoning their offices, telling them to save space on the front page.

  A Dallas television reporter was right behind Stevenson, filming the scene as Cora Frederickson’s sign hit the ambassador.

  “I’ve got something really hot in my camera!” the TV man shouts as he rushes to air his film on the evening news. Audible gasps are heard in the studio as the film, just minutes old, appears on the monitor for the first time. The entire scene is captured in startling clarity. The dignified Stevenson is surrounded by screaming faces. Then Frederickson enters the frame, her narrowly spaced eyes squinting in fury, her mouth twisted and her tongue sticking out as she raises her sign and crashes it down on Stevenson’s head. There are no black citizens anywhere in the frame.