The fact is that Jackie actually
It was in this spirit that Jackie bared her soul to JFK in a handwritten letter on October 5, shortly after the
“If I hadn’t married you my life would have been tragic, because the definition of tragic is a waste,” she wrote in the privacy of her personal stateroom, named for the Greek island Chios. As is her habit, Jackie substitutes dashes for normal punctuation. The First Lady goes on to admit that she’s actually sorry for their daughter, Caroline, because it will be impossible for her to marry a man as wonderful as her father.
The Kennedy marriage can be restrained at times; many things are left unsaid. But on other occasions the simmering passion is so palpable that the American people sense it just by watching JFK and Jackie stand side by side. The heat between the president and the First Lady is undeniable, and that sentiment flows through her written words. Jackie writes line after line on the
“I loved you from the first day I saw you,” Jackie’s letter confesses. Their ten-year anniversary had been September 12. “Ten years later, I love you so much more.”
Now, two weeks later, in the White House, this man whom she so adores wants to take her on a trip to Texas. How can she possibly say no?
“Sure, I will, Jack. We’ll just campaign,” the First Lady responds. Whatever happened on the
“I’ll campaign with you anywhere you want.”
The First Lady then reaches for her red appointment book and pens the word
PART III
Evil Wins
18
OCTOBER 24, 1963
DALLAS, TEXAS
EVENING
Jacqueline Kennedy has no clue. If she could see the hell her good friend Adlai Stevenson is enduring in Dallas this balmy evening, she might not be so optimistic about making the upcoming Texas trip with her husband.
Known as “Big D,” Dallas is a dusty, dry town, miserably hot in the summer and annoyingly cool in the winter. It is surrounded by some of the most unremarkable scenery in all America. It is a hard city, built on commerce and oil, and driven by just one thing: money. The television series
Fifty years from now, Dallas will be a cosmopolitan metropolis, home to a diverse population and a wide range of multinational corporations. But in 1963 the population of 747,000 is overwhelmingly white, 97 percent Protestant, and growing larger and more conservative by the day, as newcomers flood in from rural Texas and Louisiana.
Dallas is a law-and-order town. Sort of. It’s the kind of city where heavy fines on sin have driven the prostitutes to nearby Fort Worth, but one where murders are on the rise. Dallas is full of Baptist and Methodist churches, but it’s also home to a place like the Carousel Club, a downtown strip joint owned by a fifty-two-year-old suspected mafioso named Jacob Rubinstein—aka Jack Ruby—where cops and newspapermen often drink side by side.
But most of all, Dallas is a city that does not trust outsiders or their political views—–particularly those of liberal Yankees. And the local citizens are not passive in their disdain. Jewish stores are sometimes defaced with swastikas.
On this particular night, Adlai Stevenson is experiencing what some have called Dallas’s “general atmosphere of hate” firsthand. He is a devoted Democrat who ran against, and was defeated twice by, Dwight Eisenhower. Texas is decidedly not Stevenson country, even though a big crowd is now seated at the Memorial Auditorium. The occasion is United Nations Day. Last night, the right-wing zealot General Ted Walker spoke at the same venue, delivering a rousing anti-UN speech that was attended by the man who once tried to kill him: Lee Harvey Oswald.
Now, as Stevenson tries to speak, he can barely be heard. Time and again he is heckled and booed by a fringe group known as the National Indignation Convention. They intentionally mispronounce the stately diplomat’s name, calling him “Addle-Eye.”
Stevenson patiently tolerates the abuse, standing still at the lectern, hoping calm will take hold. But this proves impossible. So he finally confronts one heckler: “Surely, my dear friend, I don’t have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas manners, do I?”
Then things get worse.
Twenty-two-year-old Robert Edward Hatfield races up to the podium and unloads a violent gob of spit into Stevenson’s face. As police seize Hatfield, he spits on them as well. Adlai Stevenson has had enough. Wiping his face, he walks out of the auditorium. But the chaos doesn’t end. A waiting crowd of anti-UN protesters confronts him. Rather than let Stevenson walk back to his hotel peacefully, the protesters block his path and jeer at him. One agitator, forty-seven-year-old Cora Frederickson, actually hits the ambassador over the head with her picket sign.
Still, Stevenson tries to be diplomatic. The sixty-three-year-old politician waves off the Dallas police rushing over to make their second arrest of the night. “What is wrong?” Stevenson asks the woman who hit him. “Can I help you in any way?”
“If you don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know why. Everyone else does,” she shoots back with an angry Texas twang.
John Kennedy does not like Adlai Stevenson. But the president is shaken when he hears of the vicious attacks. Now the many negative reports he has heard about Dallas are being confirmed. Trusted friends are warning him to cancel this leg of his Texas trip. As far back as October 3, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas confided to John Kennedy that he was physically afraid of entering Dallas, calling it “a dangerous place.”
“I wouldn’t go there,” he told JFK. “Don’t you go.”
Evangelist Billy Graham is also warning the president to stay away from Dallas. Henry Brandon of London’s
But John Kennedy is the president of the United States of America—all of them. There should be no place in this vast country where he has to be afraid to visit.
As he is fond of saying before attempting a hard golf shot: “No profiles, only courage.” So it is with Dallas. JFK has decided to visit Big D. There is no backing down.
Half a world away, it is All Souls’ Day in Saigon. This is a time of prayer in the Roman Catholic Church. So it
