Nov. 18, 2013

Remembering November 22,1963
By A. Peter Bailey

SPECIAL COMMENTARY

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - On November 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, I was a 23-year old editorial reference clerk working in Time Inc.’s biography files. The job, among other things, required my responding to calls from Time, Life and Sports Illustrated reporters for files on individuals about whom they were writing.

As can be ascertained, the afternoon of the assassination created an absolute deluge of ASAP requests from frantic reporters for the huge number of bio files on President Kennedy, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and dozens of other political and public figures even remotely connected to the Kennedy administration. As I remember we worked throughout the night under hectic but not chaotic conditions.

My initial reaction to the assassination was wonderment at how a U.S. president could be so boldly shot down in broad daylight. I must admit that I was not then and am not now among those who were dazzled by or impressed with the Kennedy administration. One of my most lasting memories from that time was the day I loudly booed President Kennedy as he was driven away after a speech at the United Nations. I had positioned myself at a turn where I knew his limousine had to slow down.

As it passed by, while most of the crowd applauded enthusiastically, I booed as loudly as I could. This resulted in hard stares from members of the Secret Service and numerous threats from onlookers, including Black ones. I quickly exited my spot, feeling satisfied about taking advantage of an opportunity to show my anger at the failure of the Kennedy administration to do more to protect the lives of Black folks who were being repeatedly brutalized by predatory white supremacist terrorists who opposed the demand for equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity in this country.

Ten of 40 names on the civil rights memorial in Montgomery, Ala. are those of people killed by terrorists during the Kennedy administration. It was several decades before any of them were arrested for those heinous crimes. The 10 included Medgar Evers and four young girls killed in the Birmingham church bombing.

I didn’t believe 50 years ago and still don’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only person involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Once, as a young man, I complained to my grandmother about something that was bothering me. When I asked her advice on what to about it, her response was “Boy, use your common sense.”

My common sense won’t allow me to believe the official position on the Kennedy assassination. And the possibility of anyone ever persuading me to change my mind was shattered forever when Oswald was fatally shot by Jack Ruby while in the custody of the Dallas police.

The assassination, in my opinion, was not the action of a zealot passionately promoting or defending a cause or of someone striving for the limelight since Oswald denied his involvement to the bitter end. I believe it was plotted and executed by cold-blooded professional killers with no desire for the limelight.

Whether Oswald’s cohorts were members of the FBI or CIA, pro-Castro Cubans or anti-Castro Cubans, members of the Mafia or rightwing white Americans, I don’t claim to know. I just believe he was working with someone else and those forces, as far as it is generally known 50 years later, have gotten away with successfully assassinating a president of the U.S.