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+--- Thread: As 50th anniversary approaches, Dallas’ nerves still raw about JFK (/thread-9024.html)
As 50th anniversary approaches, Dallas’ nerves still raw about JFK - Bernice Moore - 05-03-2012
Subject: As 50th anniversary approaches, Dallas' nerves still raw about JFK
assassination
As 50th anniversary approaches, Dallas' nerves still raw about JFK
assassination
Sixth Floor Museum officials have reserved Dealey Plaza for the week of the
50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, but as of now there are no plans
to have an event there.
By SCOTT K. PARKS
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20120303-as-5
0th-anniversary-approaches-dallas-nerves-still-raw-about-jfk-assassination.e
ce?action=reregister
Published: 03 March 2012 10:55 PM
What should the city do to officially observe the 50th anniversary coming up
in November 2013?
"This is very important unbelievably important as to our place on the
world stage," Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said recently. "We can't get out of
our skis on this."
With the event still more than 20 months away, a community group led by the
Sixth Floor Museum is working behind the scenes to plan the first official
commemoration built around the date of the assassination.
They're calling it A Day of Remembrance: The Life and Legacy of JFK.
The planners know that many Dallasites, especially the older ones who lived
through the tragedy, prefer to let the anniversaries pass without official
fanfare. To them, remembering calls up painful memories of a time when the
world unfairly tarred Dallas as "The City of Hate" and "The City that killed
Kennedy."
Nothing is set, and task force members say a lot of civic, business and
political leaders will be involved in decisions about what happens on Nov.
22, 2013.
"What we are talking about is the politics of memory," said Jim Hollifield,
an SMU political science professor and task force member.
"Remembering is a very political thing. It's an intensely emotional thing."
Typically, Nov. 22 comes and goes in Dallas without much notice.
Sixth Floor Museum traffic increases, and more tourists than usual gather in
nearby Dealey Plaza for a spontaneous moment of silence at
12:30 p.m., the approximate time that JFK was assassinated as his motorcade
traveled down Elm Street. The museum might unveil a new exhibit, and the
news media marks the anniversary with brief stories.
But next year will be different, according to historians. The 50th
anniversary of a calamitous event is a bridge between older generations and
younger generations who might not even know that an American president was
murdered in Dallas.
Publishers will launch new books on JFK and the assassination, and those
books inevitably will explore what Dallas was like in 1963 and what it's
like today. And, undoubtedly, international media will focus on the event.
"To think that the 50th anniversary can be ignored is Pollyannaish and
infantile," said Dr. Edward Linenthal, a history professor at Indiana
University-Bloomington and a consultant for the Sixth Floor Museum.
"In a way, the desire to forget becomes part of the evidence of the horrific
power of the event itself," Linenthal said. "One appropriate way that you
can bring a sense of justifiable pride in your city is a remembrance
ceremony of great integrity."
Open for debate?
Robert Dallek, a nationally known presidential historian, told The Dallas
Morning News that the 50th anniversary is the perfect occasion to debate
whether Lee Harvey Oswald was simply a misguided soul who killed JFK by
himself or whether the murder was a conspiracy involving multiple gunmen and
sinister forces such as the Mafia or the CIA.
"The one thought I have is that the people in Dallas would want to focus on
the issue of this enduring concern about there being a conspiracy,"
said Dallek, who wrote An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963.
When Dallek's biography was published in 2003, a Gallup poll reported that
75 percent of the American public believed in one of the many conspiracy
theories about JFK's death. The poll results probably wouldn't be much
different today, Dallek said.
"I think the city of Dallas would be well-served by accepting and supporting
the proposition that Oswald was the only killer," he said.
"If they do some kind of forum, it should definitely be orchestrated by the
Sixth Floor Museum."
But Dallek lives in Washington, D.C., and not in Dallas.
Task force members visibly cringe when confronted with the idea of holding a
symposium that might delve into entry wounds, exit wounds and other gory
details surrounding the assassination. They worry about what Caroline
Kennedy, JFK's daughter, and other members of the Kennedy family might think
about such a program.
"We don't want Dallas to be ashamed and embarrassed when the media spotlight
descends on us in November 2013," said Nicola Longford, executive director
of the Sixth Floor Museum and a task force member.
"I think that whatever is done in Dallas needs to be solemn, respectful and
put his death into context without reliving the details of what happened,"
Longford concluded.
Plans to consider
Interviews with task force members and others involved in the 50th
anniversary planning reveal the following ideas under consideration:
The commissioning of an original piece of music to be unveiled at one of
downtown Dallas' theaters for the performing arts.
The commissioning of a piece, or pieces, of visual art by the Nasher
Sculpture Center and/or the Dallas Museum of Art.
A symposium on how broadcast television and satellite communications carried
news of the assassination and its aftermath around the world.
When Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, it
forever changed the media landscape.
A program highlighting how Dallas has changed during the 50 years between
1963 and 2013.
The unveiling of a new exhibit at Love Field commemorating the transfer of
power that occurred when vice President Lyndon B. Johnson took the
presidential oath of office inside Air Force One as it prepared to leave
Dallas after the assassination.
One of the thorniest issues confronting the task force is what use to make
of Dealey Plaza, which always has been the public gathering spot for
tourists, mourners and assassination researchers.
The Sixth Floor Museum has obtained a special activity permit that appears
to give it control of Dealey Plaza from Monday, Nov. 18, through Sunday,
Nov. 24, 2013. The permit troubles Robert Groden and other assassination
researchers.
Over the years, Groden and the Sixth Floor Museum have clashed like angry
neighbors. He fears the museum will ban him from Dealey Plaza during the
anniversary week and try to control what happens there.
"The museum wants to be the only game in town, but I plan to be at the same
place I am every year up on the grassy knoll fighting for the truth," he
said. "What the city could do during the 50th anniversary is fund the travel
for experts on the Kennedy case and hold a formal meeting for them to talk
on the case."
Longford, the Sixth Floor Museum executive, said last week that the task
force has made no decision about whether to use Dealey Plaza. Asked why she
obtained the permit to use Dealey Plaza, she replied, "Just to be proactive
and make sure the space is committed. The direction as of now is not to hold
any event in Dealey Plaza."
A tricky issue'
José Antonio Bowen, dean of SMU's Meadows School of the Arts, is among those
involved in discussions about what to do for the 50th anniversary.
A visual artist "who works on this subject" has been approached to
participate in the project, Bowen said, declining to name the artist.
"This is a chance to say we are a great art city, but it's a tricky issue,"
he said. "It's about how people feel. We don't want anyone to think we are
taking advantage of the event for the purposes of advertising or hyping the
city."
Bowen has lived in Dallas for six years and only recently has been exposed
to the walking-on-eggshells nature of discussions about the 50th anniversary
planning.
"There is enough hesitation that somebody will have to take the reins and
say, Here's what's gonna happen.'"
In fact, Dallas has never embraced "the A word." The Kennedy Memorial two
blocks from Dealey Plaza doesn't mention the assassination. The plaque
designating Dealey Plaza as a National Historic Landmark is only feet away
from the spot on Elm Street where the fatal shots killed JFK.
But it does not mention the assassination.
Lindalyn Adams, a longtime Dallasite who has devoted much of her life to
preserving local history, remembers when she used to avert her eyes to avoid
seeing the Texas School Book Depository when she drove through Dealey Plaza.
"I just would not look there," she said recently. "So many in Dallas did not
want to preserve that building."
Later, Adams became the public face of the movement to create the Sixth
Floor Museum, which opened in 1989.
"This is a part of our history, and it will never go away," she said.
--
Regards, TOM BLACKWELL, PO Box 25403, Dallas, Texas 75225
http://DemocraticResearch.Org
PS It was not the world that first called Dallas ,the city of hate; it was their very own Judge Sarah Hughes that swore in LBJ at Love Field to Vivian Castleberry....
PPS ''I think the city of Dallas would be well-served by accepting and supporting
the proposition that Oswald was the only killer," he said.
"If they do some kind of forum, it should definitely be orchestrated by the
Sixth Floor Museum."
;;;great idea, if they have the wherewithal to ask, such as David Lifton, Len Osinac, Bill Kelly,Gary Mack and..to be a part of such discussion, if they have the back bone that is....:what: Come-On Lay it all out for Once.......:fullofit: