26 Thoughts to “Johnny we hardly knew ye…..JFK: November 22, 1963”

  1. Carlos Danger
    November 20, 2013 at 11:50 pm

    Wasn’t even a twinke in my moms eye. I’ve never asked her about where she was or remembered, I will next next week. Not sure how much she will remember, I think she was around 7 or so…

    What was my turning point in us history? Good question, I’ll have to think about it and get back to you.

  2. Cargosquid
    November 22, 2013 at 7:25 am

    I remember DISTINCTLY what I was doing.

    But I can’t articulate it.

    I forget baby speak.

    Something to do with….blankets, a bottle, …..

    1. Moon-howler
      November 22, 2013 at 7:47 am

      You will probably be the only person who answers, youngster. I emailed my little brother to see what he remembered. Not all that much and he wasn’t all THAT little.

      There are all sorts of shows on tonight about it on NBC, NatGeo, and MSNBC. Killing Kennedy with Rob Lowe is on NatGeo. That was filmed in Richmond.

  3. Ivan
    November 22, 2013 at 8:14 am

    I was sitting in class when the anouncement came over the loud speaker. School was dismissed and I went home and watched the coverage on TV. The next day school was canceled and I saw Ruby shoot Oswald live and in black and white.

    1. Moon-howler
      November 22, 2013 at 10:35 am

      I can’t remember if I saw the Oswald shooting live or a rerun. I don’t think we got out early. I just can’t remember. I remember whoever was on the radio kept talking about that bubble cover that had been removed. About an hour later they said he had died.

      We should have been sent home. No learning after that. I think school was off the following Monday because of JFK’s funeral. I can’t recall if school was out or not. It must have been out because I recall watching the funeral on TV.

      It’s hard to remember back 50 years for specifics.

  4. Censored bybvbl
    November 22, 2013 at 12:51 pm

    I was in English class when the announcement came on the intercom. One student thought it was a joke but the teacher was quick to correct her. I think we got out of school a couple hours early but not before -in true Southern fashion – having a pep rally for the football team which was involved in a regional playoff. The Junior Miss contest, as well as the football game, proceeded as planned .

    My husband said he heard some cheering at his Alabama high school.

    1. Moon-howler
      November 22, 2013 at 4:10 pm

      Bill Clinton said there was cheering in his school. As student body president he admonished the student body.

  5. Emma
    November 22, 2013 at 8:21 pm

    I think I was really busy getting potty trained or something to pay much attention.

    1. Moon-howler
      November 22, 2013 at 9:09 pm

      Another youngster. Do you and Cargo feel cheated?

  6. Wolverine
    November 22, 2013 at 10:53 pm

    Never saw any of it until I returned to the States two years later. At the time there was no cheering where I was. All I saw was tears or anger or puzzlement. Kind of awkward to be the only White American guy among thousands and thousands of Blacks, many of whom were certain that Kennedy was killed only because he tried to help the Black race in America and in Africa.

  7. Moon-howler
    November 22, 2013 at 10:59 pm

    That’s actually ironic. Perhaps if he hadn’t been killed on NOv. 22, 1963, that would have become the case. We will never know.

  8. middleman
    November 23, 2013 at 6:32 am

    What will always stand out in my memory of that day is coming home from school to find my mother and sister crying. I had never seen my mother cry, and being eight years old, I had no idea who this man was whose death had caused them to be so sad.

  9. middleman
    November 23, 2013 at 6:59 am

    There’s a great article in yesterday’s WaPo extra section on the Kennedy assassination. It details the parallels between today and 50 years ago and they are chilling.

    There was a large faction of extremist Kennedy-haters in Dallas that accused Kennedy of many of the same things Obama is accused of today. They accused Kennedy of being a socialist, of neutering the U.S. on the world stage, of spending us into bankruptcy, of expanding health care that would lead to death panels, of advancing big-government agendas on main street and wall street. They even questioned his personal history and religion. Sound familiar?

    Texans back then led what they saw as a moral crusade against Kennedy. It was fueled by millionaires opposed to federal oversight, rabid media, bible-thumping preachers and extremist lawmakers. Oil billionaire H.L. Hunt financed an anti-Kennedy radio campaign.

    Fifty years doesn’t change much, does it?

    1. Moon-howler
      November 23, 2013 at 10:58 am

      It could have been written today. How chilling!!!

  10. George S. Harris
    November 23, 2013 at 7:02 am

    At work, Field Medical Service School, Camp Pendleton, CA.

  11. Lyssa
    November 23, 2013 at 10:14 am

    2nd grade. St Emily’s in Illinois. Looking back, I just worried as a child can worry about things going on around them.

  12. Furby McPhee
    November 24, 2013 at 5:44 am

    Middleman,

    Go ahead and provide any evidence you can other than Dan Rather’s completely made-up line about Dallas being a “City of Hate” when Kennedy was killed. It was a lie then and it’s still a lie.

  13. Moon-howler
    November 24, 2013 at 7:02 am

    I don’t think that middleman was limiting the hate to Dallas, just the fact that such ill-will was directed against a president.

    Are you saying that there weren’t Kennedy haters in 1963? Large, organized groups of Kennedy haters?

  14. Moon-howler
    November 24, 2013 at 7:03 am

    @Lyssa

    Some children do worry and they are often incapable of articulating what their worry is over.

  15. middleman
    November 24, 2013 at 7:59 am

    Here you go, Furby: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/jfk50/reflect/20131012-extremists-in-dallas-created-volatile-atmosphere-before-jfks-1963-visit.ece

    It’s pretty easy to document this stuff- it was only 50 years ago and the newspaper records, etc. are freely available.

    Dallas was not the only home to Kennedy-haters, but my point, of course, was how eerily familiar the accusations are to what is being directed to the current president. And the fact that the accusations are coming from many of the same places.

    1. Moon-howler
      November 24, 2013 at 9:17 am

      That s a very interesting article, middleman.

  16. middleman
    November 25, 2013 at 5:08 pm

    …crickets from Furby. And it took me over 3 minutes to find that article for F. McPhee!

    1. Moon-howler
      November 25, 2013 at 5:13 pm

      See what you get for your efforts!!!

      Nada and crickets!!!

  17. Furby McPhee
    November 26, 2013 at 12:40 pm

    No crickets here, just AFK for a few days.

    So who should I respond to? Middleman who goes with the general party line that Dallas was a “City of Hate” or Moon-howler who says there was nothing particularly special about Dallas in 1963. (Which is actually kind of my point)

    Middleman seems to have bought into the premise that JFK was killed by the malevolent thoughts of right wingers that took corporeal form and killed him. The article you linked to has a handful of anecdotes (note that ‘data’ is not the plural form of anecdote.) that yes, some people in Dallas didn’t like LBJ and some didn’t like JFK either. But nothing in the article shows that there was anything unique about it in terms of scale (very large demonstrations) or particularly violent. (one person hitting someone with a sign does not a “City of Hate” make)

    More importantly, Middleman and the article skip over the main point. Even if Dallas was a special hotbed of right-wing extremism in 1963. IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH JFK’S ASSASSINATION. JFK was killed by a Communist who was only passing through Dallas when he heard Kennedy was going to be in town. Do you really believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was influenced by the John Birch society? Or are you going to go out into conspiracy theory land. (In which case my response will be crickets because there’s no point in having that argument.)

    If you want to say Little Rock was a “City of Hate” in 1956, I’d agree with you. But there was nothing even remotely like that in Dallas in 1963. If Dallas was such a “City of Hate” why do all the films show cheering crowds for JFK and no protesters?

    The “City of Hate” meme was useful for emerging New Left both for political purposes and to help avoid the unpleasant reality that Kennedy was killed by “one of their own”

    Since you seem seem hellbent on comparing this to the Tea Party, we’ll do a modern version of it. If Obama were assassinated in Richmond by a crazy Occupy Wall Street protester, would you blame the Tea Party for it? Would you say Richmond was a “City of Hate”? That’s what happened in Dallas in 1963.

  18. Moon-howler
    November 26, 2013 at 6:10 pm

    For the life of me, I don’t see here I said there was nothing special about Dallas. I said I don’t think that middleman was limiting his comments about hatred just to Dallas.

    I think there were lot of pockets of hatred throughout the south in the 1960’s. The Dallas area just happened to be where a lot of the money was concentrated. Money talks and we know what walks.

    I don’t think we really knew who was behind the Kennedy assassination and we probably never will. History will certainly give credit or discredit to a single shooter working on his own. Who knows. Jack Ruby snuffed out any chance of really finding out definitely.

    Did middleman even mention the tea party? I think he just talked about people who hate the president and the similarities. Perhaps I overlooked those words.

    Any place that is a hotbed of unrest leaves itself open to unrest and violence, whether it is Dallas, Mississippi, or Memphis.

  19. Furby McPhee
    November 27, 2013 at 7:40 am

    I still don’t see anything remotely resembling causation between the political climate in Dallas and the assassination. If I were to claim that the Twin Towers were attacked because Guillani had been cracking down on crime, you would (rightly) dismiss me as a crackpot. The attackers weren’t from New York and it had nothing to do with the local community. It just happened there. Same thing with JFK.

    Or should we blame the lawlessness of hippies in 1968 California for RFK’s assassination? Obviously not, but that’s the same argument that is used to somehow “blame” Dallas for JFK’s assassination.

    Like I said, you’ll only get crickets from me on conspiracy theories on JFK, moon landings and 9/11. If new evidence came out, I’d certainly consider it but until then it seems clear that Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist, killed JFK. Heck, there are photos of him WITH THE GUN in Daily Worker or whatever the Communist paper was. Trying to tie that to right-wing opposition to JFK is a real stretch.

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