ustxtxb_obs_1964_03_06_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

The Texas Observer MARCH 6, 1964 A Journal of Free Voices A Window to The South 25c Dallas, After All Dallas On November 22nd, before breakfast hi the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth, President Kennedy exclaimed to Senator Ralph Yarborough, “Did you see what the Dallas News is trying to do to us?” Kennedy had “a very strong feeling” about this; “He did not say it in the light bantering manner that he often used when meeting criticism,” Yarborough says. The News that morning stressed the intra-party struggle that was being waged around Kennedy on his Texas tourthat was the news, forsoothbut the News also contained a full-page advertisement contending that the Kennedys were helping the communists, which Yarborough believes is what Kennedy was talking about. “I was much concerned about going to Dallas,” says Cong. Olin Teague of Bryan. “That morning by long distance, I talked with my office . . . in Washington and told them what a wonderful reception the President had received in San Antonio, Houston, and Fort Worth, but that I was very much concerned about the few hours to be spent in Dallas.” During the short hop in Air Force One from Fort Worth to Dallas, Kennedy and some of the Texans discussed hostility in Dallas toward “various public officials,” Cong. Jim Wright of Fort Worth recalls. “It was pointed out by Gov. Connally, believe,” Wright says, “that Dallas is essi. tally a financial center, the domicile 6_ banking and insurance companies, which makes for very much a ‘white collar’ city. It was mentioned that being ‘conservative’ had come to be synonymous with social acceptability, and that various junior executives thought it useful to talk even mores conservatively than the boss in order to prove to him and others that they had `arrived.’ “But there seemed to be a somewhat general consensus to the effect that the real culprit in the whole situation is the steady drum-beat of ultra right-wing propaganda with which the citizenry is constantly besieged. The Dallas News, of course, is the primary drumbeater,” Wright says. However, “The President himself expressed no conclusions,” Wright recalls. Photo, Downtown Dallas Committee