Nov. 22, 1963: A Turning Point for America

    

 (Today marks the 60th anniversary of  one of the nation's darkest days, the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered by government actors in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was a young president who was growing in the job and who aimed to end the Cold War with Russia and create a more peaceful world. But he was cut down before being allowed to finish his program. To this day the government still refuses to follow the law and release all the CIA files that would shed light on who was responsible for this notorious crime. Why is that? The following is the piece I wrote 10 years ago on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's assassination).

By Reginald Johnson

                For a long time, I  believed 9-11 was worst thing that ever happened to the United States. It was awful. Nearly 3,000 people killed in those terror attacks and so many families left grief-stricken.

      And 9-11 set the stage for the brutal (and in one case misguided) wars that followed, in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

          But in the last few weeks, I’ve changed my mind.  When I saw the 50^th anniversary shows on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and saw the old footage, it all came back. As bad as Sept. 11 was, I don’t think anything shook this country as much as the death of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t seem like this country has ever been the same since that day.

     I’ve heard phrases thrown around recently to describe the meaning of that day: “The day we lost our innocence,”  and another, (the title of a blog by Ira Chernus) “The day truth died.”  These are both right. It was such a shattering event.

    Maybe it’s because I was a naive 16-year-old private school student when this happened. Very idealistic, and, like a lot of  people my age at the time, a great fan of JFK. Here was this dashing young president who was both bright and witty and inspiring. He seemed to say and do all the right things: urging young people to get involved,  helping their country and the world with efforts like the Peace Corps; working to help the movement for integration; backing legislation that would eventually become Medicare; signing the nuclear test ban treaty; promoting the space program and sending men into space.

   In those days, we were in a Cold War with Russia, and we were proud when Kennedy stood up to the Soviets over the placement of missiles in Cuba and spoke out for freedom while visiting the Berlin Wall.

   And he came to be president  at a time when the country was booming economically and was the most admired country in the world. Our standard of living was tops and there were plenty of jobs --- particularly manufacturing jobs.

   It seemed like America and our young president could do no wrong.

   It was in that cocoon of innocence that I returned from lunch on Nov. 22, set to go to another class, when I overheard someone say, ‘Kennedy was shot.’   Feeling stunned, I rushed over to this small building where students could socialize and smoke cigarettes. Some of my friends were there listening to the radio. I lit up a cigarette as  the news came over. Minutes later, there was silence. Then a somber voice announced, ‘The president is dead.’ The Star Spangled Banner began playing. I couldn’t believe it.  Just total disbelief.  I was also pissed. I threw down my cigarette, stomped on it and left. I didn’t want to talk with anyone.

   The next several days, I was glum and kept to myself. I missed the 24-7 television coverage, missed alleged perpetrator Lee Harvey Oswald getting shot, missed new President Lyndon Johnson’s announcements and much of Kennedy’s funeral. How could this happen here? The United States?  It took months for me to get over the shock.

 I was able to get over it in part because I was reassured by Johnson’s statements and actions. He pledged to follow the Kennedy program, particularly with civil rights. When the following fall came around, Johnson seemed downright saintly compared to the crackpot Republican candidate for president that year, Barry Goldwater, who had talked about dropping an atomic bomb on Vietnam!  Johnson, meanwhile, said he would not send U.S. troops to Vietnam. Seemed like a good guy.

  But within months, it was clear Johnson was lying. In early ’65,  the U.S. had started bombing North Vietnam. By the spring, the first troops were sent. Within a few years, we had hundreds of thousands of troops there, all in the name of “stopping communism.” Many of our soldiers died. But many, many more Vietnamese died. We pulverized that country with bombing and poisoned it with napalm and Agent Orange. When all was said and done, we had lost 55,000 people; the Vietnamese had lost 3 million.

   And during the Vietnam era, a lot of ugly divisions in our society began to surface, between hawks and doves, liberals and conservatives, hippies and hard hats, religious versus non-religious. A lot of that divisiveness is still out there today.

  After Johnson, we got the corruption of Richard Nixon and Watergate.  A few years later, the downward curve continued with the coming of Ronald Reagan, and his backwards notion that “government is the problem.”  Reagan began the process of chipping away at the safety net and the New Deal, and undermining unions --- more trends we’re still dealing with today.

  More recently we’ve had George W. Bush and his disastrous war on Iraq and two vacillating small ‘d’  democrat presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Their vision of government is almost as limited as the Republicans.

   Maybe I am idealizing the Kennedy years, but things were better then. Since that period there’s been progress only in few areas. Women’s rights are certainly better today than they were in the early ‘60s. Legal and political rights for blacks are better, though the economic struggle for most blacks still goes on.

  But what else? Our middle class has sunk, quality jobs have evaporated, and our nation is constantly at war.

  I think if Jack Kennedy lived, I think the late 1960s would have been better, and that would have provided a good foundation for the future. It is a fact that he signed a memorandum a month before he died that he intended to pull all U.S. advisors out of Vietnam by 1965. Supposing there had been no Vietnam War? And supposing Kennedy had followed up on feelers to bring a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, and end the insane arms race?

   It should be said Kennedy had his failings, and there are certainly a lot of skeptics out there who downplay what he would have done if he had lived. He was a philanderer and dishonest to his wife; though publicly pushing integration he was friendly with southern segregationists for political purposes; and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 was a boneheaded move.

   But I believe if Kennedy had lived, there would have been no Vietnam War, and he would have achieved lot at home, in the end compiling a domestic record that would have rivaled FDR’s.

   I think it’s definitely fair to say if JFK, his brother Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King had lived, America would be a much better place today.

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I’ve always felt there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy.  Lee Harvey Oswald may well have been part of it, but he did not act alone. Too many people heard too many shots that day in Dallas, and eyewitnesses saw some shots come from the front of Kennedy’s motorcade, something the Warren Commission denied happening. (The Warren Commission, charged with investigating the assassination, concluded Oswald acted alone, and shot Kennedy from the rear, firing a rifle from a 6^th-floor window).

 While Kennedy was quite popular in general,  he was hated by some, including right-wingers and anti-Castro Cubans. He also had a lot of detractors in the military and the intelligence agencies, who thought Kennedy was ‘too soft on communism.’  I believe people from the intelligence sector and the military, as well as some anti-communist Cubans, were part of the conspiracy. Oswald was on the fringes. Jack Ruby was sent to shut Oswald up. The fact that Ruby, a nobody, could waltz into the Dallas police station while the most important criminal suspect in American history was being transported, then walk up and shoot Oswald dead, tells you all you need to know about this case. It’s been a total cover-up.

On Thanksgiving and the Dispossessed

 

  I have often thought that the plight of the Palestinians and Native-Americans is very similar.­ Both groups have had their land taken away by force and trickery, with settlers claiming they had some special or divine right to the land. In both cases, large numbers of their people have been killed off or pushed into containment areas, refugee camps or reservations. In both cases observers believe that what has happened to the indigenous people of North America and what is happening to the Palestinians qualifies as genocide. In 2012, shortly after Thanksgiving, I wrote about the bitterness that so many Native people have about this day, since they feel they have nothing to be thankful for. I also wrote about the parallel experiences of the Palestinians, who were being attacked then just as they are today.

By Reginald Johnson
Dec. 11, 2012


Like most Americans, I’ve always loved Thanksgiving. It’s a day to share good times with family and friends, have a wonderful meal and yes, be thankful for what we have.

I must say that now, however, I have different perspective, after having attended an event put on by American Indians in Plymouth, Mass. called “The National Day of Mourning” on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 22. I had heard about this event for years, but never got around to going. It was an eye-opener.

Plymouth, of course, is where English Pilgrims arrived aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and began a settlement that many Americans associate with the start of the United States. The first Thanksgiving, at least according to legend, took place a year later and saw the Pilgrims partaking in a meal with Indians, “giving thanks” for a bountiful harvest and for having successfully lived their first year in the “New World.”

Most Americans, I think, see this history in a pretty positive way. The Pilgrims, fleeing religious persecution in England, made a settlement that laid the groundwork for what later would become America, a democratic society where people could practice their religion freely and speak and write as they wished. Many Americans are aware that at the same time, the evolution of our country was not all smooth, that Native people (not to mention Africans, who were held in bondage as slaves) were treated terribly, there was a lot of killing and the English and other Europeans broke agreements and stole Indian land.

But the mythology surrounding the Mayflower, the Pilgrim settlement, the march westward and “the birth of a nation” is so strong that the Indian side of the story, and just how bad the Indians got treated, tends to get lost. Also, in the view of many present-day Natives, there hasn’t been enough teaching in the schools about the Native American history so people will better know what indigenous people have gone through.

“The National Day of Mourning” is an effort to educate people about the Indian narrative of what actually took place in those early years of the country as well as to “honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native people to survive today,” in the words of a statement by the United American Indians of New England, which holds the event.

A plaque put up on Cole’s Hill ---- overlooking the bay where a replica of the Mayflower is docked and above the fabled “Plymouth Rock,” where the Pilgrims allegedly first stepped on shore ---- captures the harsh view that many Indians have about the beginnings of this country. It reads in part: “Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture.”

Moonanum James, a Wampanoag Indian whose ancestors greeted the Pilgrims when they arrived, talked of the many distortions in history about what occurred in the early days and the Pilgrims themselves.

“When they arrived, they didn’t find an empty land. Every inch of this land was Indian land,” he said in a speech before about 400 people on Cole’s Hill.

James said that by the written account of one of the Pilgrims themselves, in the first year settlers went out and robbed Indian graves, stole crops, kidnapped Natives and sold them into slavery for 220 shillings apiece.

James, co-leader of the UAINE organization, also said that the legend of Thanksgiving beginning with a peaceful dinner in 1621 with the Indians was erroneous. He maintained that the first official Thanksgiving Day took place in 1637, when the head of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Gov. John Winthrop, proclaimed a “Day of Thanksgiving,” celebrating the safe return of 200 volunteers who had gone to Mystic, Connecticut and slaughtered 700 women, children and men of the Pequot tribe.

Some historical accounts hold that in the area of eastern Massachusetts there was relative peace for a number of decades between the colonists and Indians. But by the 1670s, trouble was brewing, with the Indians fed up with mistreatment by the colonists and constant land encroachments. Metacomet, the son of the Wampanoag leader Massasoit, who had greeted the Pilgrims, decided to unite all the Indian tribes and drive the English back.

For two years, Metacomet, also known as King Philip, led Native warriors in battles over much of southern New England. Thousands were killed in the conflict. Eventually, the English forces proved too strong, and King Philip was captured and killed, and the war all but ended.

The victors weren’t satisfied with killing the Indian leader and subduing Native forces. They mutilated Metacomet’s body, decapitated him and put his head on a pole for public observation in a Plymouth square. The skull remained there for 20 years.

Moonanum called Plymouth Rock “a monument to racism and oppression” which he and Indian activists had covered with sand on two occasions.

In their suffering, Moonanum said, Natives had a lot in common with African-Americans, who were kidnapped and brought here from Africa to be slaves on cotton plantations.

He recalled black leader Malcolm X’s quote about Plymouth Rock. “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock. Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

James and others said conditions for Native people today --- who represent about 1.5 percent of the country’s population --- are very difficult. A large proportion of Indians live on reservations, and the poverty rampant. Alcoholism and suicide rates are high.

This was the 43rd National Day of Mourning, with the first one being in 1970. James said not much has changed for Indians since then. Just as they did at the first event in 1970, Indians are demanding an end to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a branch of the U.S. Dept. of Interior, which manages the reservations.

James called the BIA “corrupt.” He said Indians should be allowed to manage their reservations on their own.

Others spoke at the rally, including Tiokasin Ghosthorse, a Lakota Sioux who has a radio show called “Indigenous Voices” aired on a number of stations including WBAI in New York and WPKN in Bridgeport, Ct.. Tiokasin spoke of environmental issues and how there had to be more respect for “mother earth.” He said present day American society is “abusing mother earth,” and this will backfire.

Other speakers expressed empathy for the Palestinian people, who in early November had to endure yet another attack by the Israeli military in Gaza. Some 200 people were killed, many of them children.

Speakers said the Palestinians were a “dispossessed people,” much like the Native people here. One UAINE speaker said the Israeli leaders were showing the same callous and racist disregard for human life in Gaza as the U.S. military showed in its wars against the Indians. She said comments by officials to the effect that Gaza should be “flattened” and “bombed back to the Middle Ages” were similar to remarks made by an Indian fighter, Colonel John Chivington.

Chivington led forces which carried out the Sand Creek, Colorado massacre, in which over 200 largely unarmed Indians were killed in 1864.

Two weeks prior to the expedition, Chivington promised a Denver audience that he would kill all Indians he encountered, including children. “Nits make lice,” he said.

A letter of support from imprisoned Indian activist Leonard Peltier was read as well. In a highly-controversial case, Peltier has been locked up in federal prison for over 35 years following a conviction for killing two FBI agents in a gunbattle on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

However, considerable information has emerged that casts doubt on the validity of the conviction, and there’s been a decades-long campaign to have Peltier released.

The rally was followed by a march through the quiet streets of Plymouth. (Just days before, leaders of the town, which bills itself as “America’s Hometown,” had a Thanksgiving celebration, featuring a “Pilgrim’s Parade”). The marchers chanted as they walked past picturesque colonial-era homes, churches, the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. There were a few curious onlookers, although most residents were inside having Thanksgiving dinner or watching a football game.

At the front of the march was a banner which read: “We are not vanishing. We are not conquered. We are as strong as ever.”