MetaFilter posts tagged with JFK

50 years after Medgar Evers

HuronBob — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:23:09 -0800

Starting on Jan 14th, 1963, with George Wallace's pledge for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" there followed a year that included 930 demonstrations and over 20,000 arrests, the year ended with a conversation between Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson on December 3rd, only two weeks after the assasination of John F. Kennedy. It was the beginning of a long struggle, Susan Glisson, director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi said it well with the statement, "It took grass roots — women and children and men — to lead the effort for social change, and it was much harder in Mississippi than other places. And that story needs to be told. It's not just this easy, Martin stood up and Rosa sat down and everybody's free." Next Monday, June 11th, 2013, will be the 50th anniversary of JFK's announcement: "This afternoon, following a series of threats and defiant statements, the presence of Alabama National Guardsmen was required on the University of Alabama to carry out the final and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of the Northern District of Alabama. This order called for the admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happen to have been born Negro." Next Tuesday will be the 50th anniversary of the day, Medgar Evers was assassinated in the driveway of his home by Byron De La Beckwith. It took over 30 years for De La Beckwith to be convicted of the crime. 50 years later, the country is still struggling with issues related to civil rights, including the Supreme Court's examination of aspects of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. (during the summer of 2013, NPR will be continuing its focus on the civil rights related events of 1963)

Not because it was easy, but because it was hard

Artw — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 00:03:59 -0800

Apollo 40 years on: how the moon missions changed the world for ever

JFK Recordings

HuronBob — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 18:31:55 -0800

"The story came straight from Kennedy himself." "Though even some of his closest aides did not know at the time, Kennedy recorded more than 260 hours of Oval Office conversations, telephone calls and dictation into his Dictaphone. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation has culled the highlights into a new book of annotated transcripts and two audio CDs. Some of audio portions will be available online." Please note the recording links on the left side of the page.

Color him pretty.

Cash4Lead — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:54:19 -0800

Anti-JFK coloring book from the early 1960s. Talking Point Memo has posted photos of the New Frontier Coloring Book, a conservative satire of the Kennedy administration, discovered by a TPM reader. Notes:

Abraham Ribicoff was Kennedy's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare (now split into Health and Human Services and Education) and one of the point men for Kennedy's proposal for universal health care for the elderly, or Medicare. Ribicoff left the administration in July 1962 to run for the Senate in Connecticut, which puts the date of the book at least before then.
J. William Fulbright was a Democratic Senator from Arkansas, Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, and a supporter of Kennedy's Medicare proposal.
John Kenneth Galbraith was US Ambassador to India and a leading liberal economist at the time. He was also very tall.
Billie Sol Estes was a Texas businessman with ties to Vice President Lyndon Johnson who was discovered running an elaborate fraud involving nonexistent selling ammonia tanks to farmers, for which he was later sent to jail.
"Urban Affairs" refers to Kennedy's proposal to create what would become the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"Laos" refers to the Kennedy-backed agreement to keep Laos neutral in the then-brewing conflict in Vietnam.
The "we couldn't get him" line refers, of course, to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba.

I couldn't track down every reference--for example, what's with JFK wearing a coonskin cap on the cover? and why does Castro have a chicken on the last page?--so hopefully commenters can fill in the gaps.

Enterprise Lands at JFK

brownpau — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:10:45 -0800

Front-row window seat to Space Shuttle Enterprise landing at JFK.

"He has the Bunton strain."

computech_apolloniajames — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 18:50:10 -0800

Robert Caro has been working on his biographical series The Years of Lyndon Johnson for about 35 years. The long-awaited fourth volume, "The Passage of Power," is due out on May 1. It covers Johnson's vice presidency and his ascension to the presidency after John F. Kennedy's assassination. An excerpt from the book concerning the events of Nov. 22, 1963, was published in the April 2 issue of The New Yorker. This volume's predecessor, “Master of the Senate,” was published in 2002 and earned Caro a Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Caro writes in the introduction to the first book in the series, “The Path to Power”: Knowing Lyndon Baines Johnson—understanding the character of the thirty-sixth President of the United States—is essential to understanding the history of the United States in the twentieth century. Johnson was born in 1908 in the hardscrabble Texas hill country, an area so remote that most residents didn't even have electricity until the late 1930s. Unlike another president who identifies himself with Texas, Lyndon Johnson pulled himself up out of a life of little opportunity, becoming a teacher, and then pursuing elected office, inspired by his father's service in the Texas legislature. From a very young age, he knew he wanted to be president, and did everything from ingratiating himself with anybody who could help him gain influence to taking enormous, undocumented donations to, many allege, stealing elections to achieve that goal. Caro also earned a Pulitzer for his 1974 doorstop of a tome on Robert Moses, "The Power Broker." In that book, he exhaustively details the life of a man who started his career in the path of public service, and was ultimately transformed into a person who acquired power for its own sake. Moses' legacy on the New York infrastructure is still debated. A fifth Johnson volume is promised by the publisher, and if it follows the frequency already established, we should expect it around 2022.

The Only Winning Move is to Watch This

symbioid — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 18:36:29 -0800

Most of us reading on the blue lived through at least a portion of it. Forty-plus years of tension between the world's two superpowers and their allies. That's right: The Cold War. Then, they made a documentary. Aired on CNN in 1998, and never released on DVD, the 24 episode, 20 hour series features tons of archival footage, along with many interviews with individuals directly involved at some of the highest levels. You might not be able to see it on DVD, but you can watch the full series on Youtube, starting with Part 1: Comrades (1917-1945).

LBJ, Saint

grobstein — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:30:20 -0800

JFK, Monster? Some vignettes of semi-consensual sexual humiliation from Camelot.

New JFK assassination tapes

stbalbach — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:56:08 -0800

US National Archives releases newly discovered JFK assassination tapes, of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination. The digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov

The Umbrella Man

Tenacious.Me.Tokyo — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 05:30:52 -0800

On the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, filmmaker Errol Morris examines a particularly intriguing figure of conspiracy speculation - "The Umbrella Man".

This is delicious made with squirrels when camping out on a hunting trip

sweetkid — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:12:16 -0800

JFK's Waffles, Adlai's Pie, Humphrey's Soup and 13 More Political Recipes. Political Pot Luck: A Collection of Recipes from Men Only, published in 1959 by the Peninsular Publishing Company in Tallahassee. It was edited by Meg Madigan, whose father was a Florida state comptroller and lobbyist. And she went all out for the cookbook, from governors to senators to media barons. Some of them can cook

Sundrome No More

beisny — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 15:08:37 -0800

Known as The Sundrome , I.M. Pei's Terminal 6 at JFK Airport (b. 1970) has been slated for demolition.

So You Think You Can Solve The Kennedy Assassination

Trurl — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 09:37:47 -0800

Want to (dis)prove who killed JFK? Start with the 5 million pages of material in the National Archives' Assassination Records Collection¹. Better review the 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits published by the Warren Commission. And each frame of the Zapruder film². And just to be on the safe side, the operating manual for his then top-of-the-line Bell & Howell 414PD camera. (1: previously, but with outdated link. 2: related) This photographic panorama and intensively annotated diagram of Dealey Plaza are both striking found-art objects, in a J.G. Ballard sort of way.

On President Kennedy, the Space Race, legacies and politics

Brandon Blatcher — Wed, 25 May 2011 12:13:00 -0800

50 years ago today, on May 25 1961, US President John F. Kennedy decided "...this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Eight years later the Apollo program fulfilled the task, leaving the world with a legacy that includes advances in computers and communciation, lessons in managing complex projects, technological innovations and new views of the Earth. Yet Kennedy wasn't exactly enthusatic about a manned space program. As a Senator, he opposed it and as President would have probably loved to opt out of a big space program. But the supremacy of the Soviet Union in space and the domestic disaster of the Bay of Pigs caused the President to rethink his position. This prompts a question: If Kennedy had lived, what would have happened to the Apollo program?

Call the wahmbulance?

fixedgear — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 04:37:33 -0800

The ambulance that was used to carry the body of John F. Kennedy from Andrews Air Force Base to Bethesda Naval Hospital was sold at auction last night for $120,000. Or was it? Members of the professional car society who collect and restore ambulances, hearses and flower cars helped to solve this mystery, which had accusations of forgery, FOIA requests, photoshopped pictures and Kennedy family intervention.

"You killed my president, you rat!"

Halloween Jack — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:54:18 -0800

48 Hours and 36 Minutes in the Life of Jack Ruby, by Jack Kirby. Kirby drew the three-page feature for Esquire in 1967, during his seminal run at Marvel Comics; the text is based off of testimony given to the Warren Commission. Via Potrzebie, the blog of Bhob Stewart, author and uber-fan for over a half century.

Let the word go forth

Horace Rumpole — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 14:28:23 -0800

To mark the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's inauguration, the JFK Library has unveiled a new digital archive containing 200,000 pages; 300 reels of audio tape, containing more than 1,245 individual recordings of telephone calls, speeches and meetings; 300 museum artifacts; 72 reels of film; and 1,500 photos.

RIP Liz Carpenter.

ColdChef — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:56:01 -0800

Liz Carpenter, Texas humorist, women's rights crusader and aide to Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson, dies at 89 Co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus, she was a descendant of five generations of Texans, including a 17-year-old relative who died at the Battle of the Alamo. A great-great uncle wrote and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. On Nov. 22, 1963, Carpenter scribbled the 58 words that Lyndon Johnson delivered to the nation when he returned to Washington from Dallas after the assassination of President Kennedy: "This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help and God's." Ann Richards once said, "(Liz is) the tilt-a-whirl at the State Fair with all the lights on and the music. The only difference between Liz and a tilt-a-whirl is that, with Liz, the ride never comes to an end." Farewell to the "Foot-Washing, Psalm-Singing, Total Immersion Texan"

Debarking in Dallas on 22 November, 1963

jjray — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:02:44 -0800

The Ward Warren Film. Gary Mack, Curator at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, is calling it "the best home movie I have seen of the Kennedy arrival in Dallas on November 22, 1963." For the first time, color film of President and Mrs. Kennedy arriving on Air Force One that fateful day is being released for public viewing. Other documents of That Fateful Day are available at The Sixth Floor Museum website.

Private and Confidential

Artw — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 23:56:56 -0800

Bush and Blairline-dancing, The Queen on the loo, Marilyn wanking (nsfw). The phototgraphy of Alison Jackson blends the real and the irreal.

What the World Needs Now

alms — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:43:26 -0800

What the World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love (Abraham, Martin and John) (direct mp3 link), via My Life, h4cK3D!.

Land, Eagle, Land

Miko — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:48:18 -0800

We Chose the Moon: The JFK Library and Museum has just launched this interactive web experience using archival audio, video, photos, and recorded transmissions to re-create, in real time, the July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 mission to the moon.

I can see the fnords!

empath — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:29:52 -0800

Before 9/11, the center of the conspiracy theorist's universe was the Kennedy Assassination. And probably the definitive statement on the ridiculousness of the conspiracy theories of that era was the Illuminatus! Trilogy[warning, the entire several hundred page novel in PDF], published in 1975 and written by two Playboy editors at the height of the era of flower power. It drew on many sources, but most distinctively, it drew from a little public domain pamphlet called The Principia Discordia. Many people know the catch phrases (Fnord! Hail Eris!), but not many people know the authors' very real connections to the Kennedy Assassination. Malaclypse the Younger (Greg Hill) worked in Jim Garrison's office in New Orleans and the very first copy of the Principia was run off of Garrison's copy machine. There's a copy of the first edition in the official House JFK assassination records. Kerry Thornley served in the Marines with Lee Harvey Oswald and wrote a novel based on Oswald before he assassinated Kennedy. He testified to the Warren Commission about his friendship with Oswald and later was accused of being part of the conspiracy by Jim Garrison, who ended up charging him with perjury. Garrison's theory was so convincing that Thornley actually came to believe that he may have been unknowingly involved in the conspiracy.

Tales of the New Frontier - JFK Comics!

Ufez Jones — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:11:32 -0800

Tales of the New Frontier - Adventures in a mythical 1960's Kennedy administration. Comics by Todd Ramsell.

Oh, it's a big, pretty white plane with red stripes, curtains in the windows and wheels; why, it looks like a big Tylenol!

crapmatic — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:12:32 -0800

Mark takes us on the A380 (warning: image heavy) from Dubai to New York with meticulous photographic detail. For $7300 you can fly the A380 with access to amenities like showers and a full-service bar, and stroll down to see the plebs in steerage. Arguably the last time a flying hotel was tried in earnest was the post-WWII Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, a staple of Pacific routes until jet-powered 707s appeared on the scene.