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Among Friends |
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| Old ways won't do When my Dallas host suggested we visit the site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, my stomach lurched. Why dredge up memories of that awful time by playing tourist at Dealey Plaza and the old Texas School Book Depository? "Because it's been turned into an instructive museum worth seeing," my friend said, sensing my reluctance. "It won't take long." The next afternoon, we became so engrossed in the black-and-white minutiae -- old photographs, newspaper clippings, government reports -- detailing Kennedy's assassination that we finally left the Sixth Floor Museum only because it was closing time. Artifacts assembled in the place where Lee Harvey Oswald once worked as a janitor and is believed to have shot Kennedy from a front window provide a profoundly moving and instructive primer on the vulnerability of American presidents and the ephemeral transience of those who wield that power. They also remind us of the courage it takes to participate in public life. Assassins killed JFK, his brother Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, and nearly succeeded in murdering Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. As the torch is passed in this election to a new generation of Americans, the museum at Dealey Plaza reminds us not just of the terrible events that occurred there, but also of what Kennedy once said: "We seek a free flow of information ... we are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." Despite constant threats from fellow citizens whose hatred, for whatever biased and sick reasons, could at any time erupt in violence toward politicians and their families and supporters, our candidates and office holders put themselves at risk every day. In an era of vitriolic talk radio and Internet bloggers spewing racial hatred, it is hard to imagine the courage it takes for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and other politicians of color to walk a rope line, deliver an open-air speech before thousands or simply stroll among masses of cheering strangers who could be camouflaging a would-be killer. Even now, two men described by federal agents as neo-Nazi skinheads are in jail without bond on charges of plotting to assassinate Obama, and also shoot or decapitate 102 black people in a proposed Tennessee murder spree. U.S. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents said in court documents the white supremists met on the Internet just weeks ago. "You are obliged to tell our story in a truthful way, to tell it, as Oliver Cromwell said about his portrait, 'Paint us with all our blemishes and warts, all those things about us which may not be immediately attractive,'" Kennedy said. The Sixth Floor Museum exhibition detailing his assassination puts America's "blemishes and warts" -- racism, paranoia, militarism, jingoism -- on full display for the millions who've made a pilgrimage to the intersection of Houston and Elm Streets. As we begin a new era with the election of the 44th president of the United States, it is haunting to realize the modern relevance of Kennedy's words as he accepted his party's nomination on July 15, 1960: "The American people expect more from us ... For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do." The old ways -- polarizing partisanship, racial prejudice, political cronyism's graft, greed and corruption -- cannot -- must not -- do. With nearly half a century of hindsight between Nov. 22, 1963, and Election Day 2008, this is the clarion lesson of the Dealey Plaza National Historic Landmark. In a now-trendy neighborhood of modernized brick buildings, museum-goers fall back into being stunned spectators to the jerky home movie featuring the grassy knoll, the young president's last wave, his wife's happy smile, a sudden sideways fall and the desperate lunge of a Secret Service agent whose efforts came too late. Still photographs of momentous events that shook our lives are always in the back of our minds. I look up at a fluffy white cloud and suddenly see an image of the exploding Challenger space shuttle enfolded in a puff of white smoke. Every spring, I wake up from nightmares in which a helicopter hovers above a stairway of desperate people, my bad dream replicating the panic of the fall of Saigon in April 1975. I can't watch a movie about New York City without searching its scenery for the World Trade Center. Was the film made before or after Sept. 11? Even if it is post- 9/11, my mind still puts the twin towers in the blank spot where they should be. I was barely 16 years old when my school's principal came on the intercom, told us Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas and sent us home early. That day separated my life into two parts, childhood and adulthood. I date my adult disbelief that the world is good, people are kind, and nothing bad will ever happen to me to the moment when I heard a fellow American had killed his president. Glued to the television with my family that night, we joined the world in hanging onto CBS correspondent Walter Cronkite's words but said little ourselves as we watched first lady Jacqueline Kennedy leave Air Force One in her blood-stained pink suit. Looking back across that great distance, I see Kennedy's death as a global as well as personal loss, as the ultimate "what if?" unanswered question of my generation. After an awkward delay in acknowledging its own history, Dallas has given us a straightforward, instructive and valuable overview of Kennedy's murder. The 10 unique exhibition spaces of the Sixth Floor Museum offer about 400 historic photographs and dozens of artifacts, including the scale model of the assassination site prepared in 1964 for the Warren Commission by the FBI, and the actual window where Oswald supposedly fired his mail-order rifle. All who tour it will surely be moved by reliving the events of a distant autumn day that changed the world in a split second. |
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