Extremists in Dallas created volatile atmosphere before JFK’s 1963 visit [View all]

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U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was struck on the head by a sign wielded by a woman protesting outside Memorial Auditorium in Dallas in October 1963, one month before President John F. Kennedy's assassination.

By SCOTT K. PARKS
Staff Writer
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Published: 12 October 2013 11:49 PM
Updated: 13 October 2013 09:26 AM

... The John Birch Society designated Dallas a regional headquarters and opened a bookstore here. The society preached that Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower — among many others — were willing dupes of the Communist Party ...

As Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, was pursing the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, Hunt secretly financed the printing of 200,000 copies of an anti-Catholic sermon by the Rev. W.A. Criswell, the influential pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas. Criswell argued that if a Catholic became president, the pope would dictate American policy ...

... Walker began a campaign for governor of Texas, filing as a candidate in the Democratic primary. Dallas was his campaign headquarters. With the backing of H.L. Hunt, he ran as a states’ rights segregationist dedicated to exposing communists in every walk of life ...

In the early 1960s, the opinion pages of The Dallas Morning News reflected the anti-Kennedy views of the newspaper’s publisher, E.M. “Ted” Dealey. Day after day, editorials and opinion columns criticized the president. He was soft on communism. He was deceitful. He was expanding the reach of the federal government at the expense of individual liberty ...

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