Bob Dylan: President Kennedy Was Riding High
President Kennedy was riding high
Good day to be livin’ and a good day to die
In the third and fourth lines of “Murder Most Foul,” Bob Dylan offhandedly and succinctly imparts what millions of us know about November 22, 1963.
The twenty-four hours before Lee Harvey Oswald fired his mail-order rifle were good ones for President John F. Kennedy. In a way, he was “riding high.” He wasn’t a cinch to be reelected the next November, but politically he was on a roll. The last 10 months and 22 days of his presidency showed JFK to be a more confident and determined leader. That tough first year, with the Bay of Pigs fiasco and a difficult meeting with Soviet Premier Khrushchev, was behind him. Taking a calculated view of history, we can think of Kennedy’s early stumbles as rookie mistakes — mistakes he would learn from while growing into the office. Maybe he sensed he was riding high. It was coming late to him, but JFK was now enjoying his presidency. Even taking some stands that got him grief proved satisfying. In his 1960 campaign, Kennedy said he ran for president because “the presidency is the center-of-action.” He realized being in the thick of it was the action he craved most.
A political trip brought him to Texas, not the friendliest territory, but more accommodating than expected. The morning hours of November 22, first in Fort Worth and then Dallas, were setting up as a reprise of the love fest the day before in San Antonio and Houston. The reception was heartening given that Texas was no sure thing for JFK the next November. Even if Lyndon Johnson, a Texas political legend, was back as Kennedy’s running mate, those 25 Texas electoral votes could still fall in the GOP column. In fact, Johnson was deep in the heart of JFK’s Texas problem, a problem Johnson couldn’t resolve.
The state’s senior senator, Ralph Yarborough, leaned further to the left than most Texans and he didn’t run from his convictions. His senate record was a progressive one, the kind of record JFK was working on — some would say too slowly — for his presidency. Yarborough is remembered as a brash and admirable office-holder; in his first bid for reelection, he defeated George H.W. Bush, who criticized Yarborough for supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yarborough regarded Johnson and Texas Governor John Connally as impediments to change in the state and the nation — the type of politicians Dylan called out in a song he had recorded less than a month before, “The Times They Are A-Changin’.”
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
Dylan had the civil rights movement in mind when he wrote the song. In June ‘63 Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the doorway at the University of Alabama’s campus to keep two Black students from attending their classes. Wallace was traveling full-speed ahead on the old road that Dylan said was “rapidly agin’.” Yarborough knew he wasn’t likely to find support for Kennedy’s proposed civil rights bill from his fellow Texan in the Senate, Republican John Tower. And Connally, a preening sort with national ambitions, also traveled that rapidly agin’ road. He happily informed Kennedy that he was controlling things in the Texas Democratic Party. Yarborough felt cast aside; he believed JFK’s people gave him few opportunities for exposure on the Texas trip. Seriously irritated, he refused to ride in the same car as Johnson in the presidential motorcade through downtown Dallas. That didn’t sway Kennedy, who told Yarborough that if they were to continue as friends, then he would have to ride with Vice President Johnson. And so he did.
Kennedy preferred not to focus on the Texas infighting. He expected Johnson to assert himself more in resolving the party’s differences, at least in his own state. JFK told his wife, Jackie, along for the trip, that “Lyndon’s in trouble,” which may or may not have indicated Johnson wouldn’t be his running mate in the coming campaign. He’d think about that later, because that morning JFK was riding high. Even the full page advertisement in the Dallas Morning News, vile as it was, left him undaunted. The ad was draped with a funereal black border and headlined “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.” That was the only friendly portion of the ad’s message. The ad listed a dozen charges against the president, each of the charges posed as questions, such as:
WHY have you ordered or permitted your brother, Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on Communists, fellow-travelers and ultra-leftists in America while permitting him to persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?
WHY have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the Spirit of Moscow?
WHY have you approved the sale of wheat and corn to our enemies when you know the Communist soldiers “travel on their stomachs” just as ours do? Communist soldiers are daily wounding and or killing American soldiers in South Vietnam.
The ad concluded with this proclamation: MR. KENNEDY, as citizens of the United States of America, we DEMAND answers to these questions and we want them NOW.
Kennedy, knowing arch-conservative Ted Dealey was the publisher of The Dallas Morning News, was hardly surprised by the ad’s content. Naturally, an organization calling itself “The American Fact-Finding Committee” would pay to place such drivel, confident JFK would see it. Kennedy was irritated, but realized it all came with the territory. In The Death Of A President, William Manchester captured the scene in the Kennedys’ Fort Worth hotel suite. JFK blended tension with humor as he passed the paper along for Jackie to see. “Oh, you know, we’re heading into nut country today,” he says. “But Jackie, if somebody wanted to shoot me from a window with a rifle, nobody can stop it, so why worry about it?” He then conjured a scenario about a man pulling a pistol from his briefcase, firing before he “melted away in the crowd.” His being cinematic about it all lightened Jackie’s mood. After all, she was not looking forward to their appearances in Dallas. Already she knew it was going to be a long day in nut country.
The Kennedys’ day was full. A breakfast speech in Fort Worth. From there to the airport for a 13-minute flight to Dallas. Then a motorcade on the way to the Dallas luncheon where JFK would give another speech. Another flight, this one to Austin and another motorcade to a fundraising dinner. Another speech. The fundraiser was actually the most vital event of the two-day trip. Resolving the intra-party squabbles in Texas would come much easier with the bucks a president could generate. JFK knew that. Just get through the day. Then next week he’s back to work, trying to move the country forward. Succeeding won’t be easy. It will take every day of the next five years — there in “the center of action.”
JFK’s Texas trip was getting coverage across America that morning. An early edition of The Atlanta Journal (the town’s afternoon paper) had two short articles on the Texas trip on the front page, both above the fold. One involved Kennedy’s support of the TFX fighter plane to be produced in Fort Worth by General Dynamics, which beat out Boeing Aircraft for the $6 billion dollar contract. The other JFK/Texas story reported on the enthusiastic reception Jackie was receiving and how she was keeping up with her husband — handshake for handshake.
A story in the bottom right corner of the front page proclaimed “Nixon Says JFK May Dump LBJ.” Nixon was also on a two-day, multi-city tour of Texas, including Dallas, where he met with Pepsi-Cola bottlers, clients of his New York law firm. Joining Nixon in the receiving line at the Baker Hotel was film star Joan Crawford, whose late husband, Alfred Steele, had been Pepsi-Cola’s Chairman and CEO until his death in 1959. Crawford continued to make appearances for Pepsi. A film clip shows her meeting and greeting people with Nixon, who lost the presidential election to JFK three years earlier. Crawford appears to enjoy Nixon’s company although JFK got her vote in ’60. Just several months earlier she had met with Kennedy at the White House in an appearance for the “Stars for Mental Health” organization.
Drugs and sex were also featured among the eight front-page stories that jumped to the inside. One involved federal narcotics agents seizing $52,500.00 in marijuana at a farm in Meriwether County, not far from Warm Springs. In the other, we read about Oklahoma Senator Tom Steed accusing at least one senator of keeping a couple of call girls on the payroll.
JFK and Jackie charming the Texans. Mommie Dearest and Tricky Dick in the receiving line for Pepsi-Cola. Dope-running in rural Georgia. Prostitutes on U.S. Senate payrolls. That’s enough news to absorb on a Friday in November. The next crisis could wait. Peace in the neighborhood, peace in the nation, and peace in the world were, as always, primary ambitions. Americans, particularly in the Black communities, were looking for hope. The way of life in America needed changing. Change was imperative. And we needed to be positive– even jubilant — while forging the changes. Curtis Mayfield helped with that.
If you dialed in to a Pop or Rhythm & Blues (R&B) station any time that November, chances are “It’s All Right” by the Impressions would be playing or coming up soon. “It’s All Right” had just topped the R&B charts and peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was ubiquitous. It was joyful. Surely it blared over transistor radios as Texans waited in line to get a glimpse of the Kennedys. Curtis Mayfield, songwriter, producer and lead singer for the Impressions, was a vital part of the nation’s soundtrack through five presidential administrations. Curtis kept pushing through the decades, taking R&B to new heights with such hits as “Freddie’s Dead” from the 1972 film Superfly. But “It’s All Right” most embodied the Mayfield message. In Travelin’ Soul, his biography of Curtis, Todd Mayfield calls “It’s All Right” his dad’s “first great party song.” That it was, but even with its sweet, swinging vibe, the song also connected with serious endeavors being made in the USA. It inspired those on the front lines of the civil rights movement and those pulling for them back home. Todd Mayfield writes:
During this time of great uncertainty, many movement activists adopted “It’s All Right” as a message song. They took strength and solace from lyrics like
“When you wake up early in the morning
Feeling sad like so many of us do
Have a little soul, make life your goal
And surely something’s got to come to you”
Perhaps things would turn out all right for the Kennedy team, never mind the day’s drizzly start. Even with the conservatives’ attempt to poison the atmosphere, a sense of optimism prevailed. Think of the sweet and positive vibe that filled the songs of Curtis Mayfield. JFK was determined to dash that sad early-morning feeling. It’s all right, have a good time.
Kennedy was having a good time. In the light rain outside his Fort Worth hotel, he talked policy before a friendly crowd. Then he headed back inside for the breakfast. Eggs, issues and some good-natured banter. Conceding that he was the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Texas, he noted how “nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear.” So far so good. Next up is a 13-minute flight to Dallas. Then the motorcade ride through Big D’s business district to the Dallas Trade Mart.
The ride through downtown was slow. The president’s limo was moving along at 11.2 miles-per-hour. With the Lincoln Continental’s top down, the thousands of people gathered on the sidewalks got a great view of the Kennedys. One would have never thought Kennedy was struggling to keep Texas in his column. There was great excitement as the crowd saw JFK and Jackie. Governor Connally and his wife, Nellie, in the jump seat in front of the Kennedys, were basking in the glow as well; the governor knew he was more popular in his state than the president, yet he must have felt a halo effect being so close to Kennedy that day. Connally wasn’t just the governor playing host, he did much of the planning for the presidential trip. As far as he was concerned, if JFK didn’t go along with his plans, he could just visit another state.
Manchester wrote that Jackie wasn’t taken with Connally’s Texas-sized swagger. Earlier in the trip, she impulsively blurted out to JFK that she didn’t like the governor. Kennedy asked her why she said that.
“I can’t stand him all day. He’s just one of those men — oh, I don’t know, I just can’t bear him saying all those great things about himself. And he seems to be needling you all day.”
“You mustn’t say you dislike him, Jackie. If you say it, you’ll begin thinking it, and it will prejudice how you act toward him the next day. He’s been cozying up to a lot of these Texas businessmen who weren’t for him before. What he was really saying in the car was that he’s going to run ahead of me in Texas. Well, that’s all right. Let him. But for heaven’s sakes, don’t get a thing on him, because that’s what I came down here to heal. I’m trying to get two people in the same car. If they start hating, nobody will ride with anybody.”
Connally was using Kennedy. Kennedy was using Connally. Just politics, nothing but.
“Don’t say Dallas don’t love you, Mr. President,” Dylan sings relatively early into the sixteen minute and fifty-four second “Murder Most Foul.” Nellie Connally, swept up by the reception for Kennedy, leaned toward him in the jump seat and said, “You sure can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.” JFK, appreciating the crowd and her enthusiasm, smiled and said, “No you can’t.” It was 12:30, Central Standard Time. In five minutes the motorcade would arrive at the Dallas Trade Mart. The president could relax a bit. At the lunch he would give a speech on America’s strength and security, delving deeply into challenges at home and abroad. No doubt Kennedy looked forward to sharing his administration’s goals with Dallas and, by extension, the nation. The speech was thorough, heavily detailed. Lots of high notes. He would enjoy delivering it.
And Kennedy was enjoying the ride. Dallas really did seem to love him that day. JFK was riding high. On the sidewalk a man held his five- year-old son up high so he could wave at the president. The boy caught JFK’s eye. He smiled, raised his arm and started to return the wave.