Motivations & Movements Of Lee H. Oswald In Dallas #2

Oswald handing out Pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans
Photo Credit: HSCA Exhibit F-596

There he goes again, stirring up people. No it’s not a March Of Dimes cup in his hand. It’s Mr. Oswald in New Orleans, during the summer of 1963, handing out Pro-Castro leaflets.

Pro-Castro leaflets handed out by Oswald in New Orleans
Photo Credit: HSCA Exhibit F-595

This brazen act of standing in the streets of New Orleans handing out Pro-Communist literature has sparked many of a debate amongst researchers. There is an overwhelming majority of people that believe this act was some sort of intelligence operation performed by Oswald. They point to possible links with rabid anti-communist characters such as Ex-FBI agent turned private investigator, Guy Bannister, Naval Intelligence, FBI, etc. The common thread running in these theories was Oswald was acting as intelligence operative for this government to “lure” possible commie sympathizers so the intelligence agencies could monitor their activities. This leads to all kinds of international espionage and adventure theories from people who clearly attempt to link Oswald to everyone’s favorite boogeyman, the CIA. From that easy link, they go onto conclude the CIA murdered President John Kennedy with Oswald as a fall guy or operative.

Cuban Anti-Batista Rebels move into Havana 1959.
Photo Credit: LatinAmerican Studies

Ok, I admit all this talk of Cuban revolution, spies, mercenaries, nuclear mass destruction, Mafia and international espionage is more exciting than what I’m going to discuss in this article. Oswald’s Pro-Castro “activities” in New Orleans have spawned all kinds of spy vs. spy rabbit holes sucking researchers to bottomless pit stories with no conclusions. However, this is an article about Oswald in Dallas and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out something researchers have possibly overlooked.

Author at 214 West Neely apartment in June 2014

In the first article I gave a little background info on the Oswald’s living on 214 West Neely street in Oak Cliff. Oswald was working at Jaggers-Chiles Stovall on 525 Browder street in downtown Dallas. He would ride the bus everyday to work. Oswald had everything set up downtown for convenience from his post office box on North Ervay street to some shopping excursions to HL Green’s. On payday, he would occasionally cash his Jagger’s check at Mart’s Liquor store just up the street. HL Green’s department store could be best described as a large Five & Dime type store that carried a little of everything from clothing to pet box turtles. It sat on the busy corner of Ervay and Main streets.

Map of Oswald’s work to post office box route.
Photo Credit: Google Maps

HL Green Department Store Civil Rights Protestor
Photo Credit: Marion Butts collection, Dallas Public Library

It was at this busy corner in front of HL Green’s that something occurred that angered some shoppers and citizens. Citizens were used to seeing the occasional civil rights picketing on the HL Green company out front, but this time an unusual man with a sign around his neck was causing a scene.

DPD Finnegan affidavit on Pro-Castro picketer
Photo Credit: Warren Report Vol 22 CE 1409

After the assassination, a couple of Dallas Police officers remembered an encounter with a man passing out Pro-Castro literature in front of HL Green’s back in the late spring of 1963. The first on scene was DPD officer W.R. Finigan, who called for back-up. Finigan was joined by Commissioner of the Northern Texas Judicial District, W. Maddon Hill who remarked “Something should be done about that guy passing out literature”. The man was described as a white male of medium height, white shirt and no hat. He was wearing a sign or placard on his back that read ” Viva Castro” and handing out literature. Sound familiar?

Harkness affidavit on Pro-Castro picketer
Photo Credit: Warren Report, Voll 22 CE 1409

As Sgt. David Harkness drove up on his three wheel motorcycle, the “man” dropped his sign and ran inside the HL Green department store. A passerby who observed the scene remarked to officer Finigan “the white male said, oh hell, here come the cops”. Harkness told Finigan to let him go, and the ordeal was all over. Everyone went on about their own business. (1) Was this Lee Harvey Oswald handing out Pro-Castro literature before his New Orleans adventure? I believe the probability remains high that they are one in the same, as you will see forthcoming.

Oswald letter to FPCC stating he was demonstrating for Cuba in Dallas
Photo Credit: Warren Report VT Lee Exhibit #1

In fact, he did claim to have a placard around his neck, passing out Pro-Castro literature with “Hands Off Cuba! – Viva Castro!” handwritten on it. He states this was the first time in his life that he did this in this letter to the Fair Play For Cuba Committee. (2) Oswald lost his job at Jagger-Chiles-Stovall on April 1, 1963. The notation on the above letter, written by FPCC personnel, shows April 19, 1963.(3) It is unclear when Oswald wrote the letter, but it’s very close to the Walker shooting attempt on April 10, 1963.

 

212 and 214 West Neely Street apartments in 1963
Photo Credit: McAdams.posc.mu.edu

Oswald eventually moves out of 214 West Neely, skipping out on the rent, on April 24, 1963. Ruth Paine takes him to the bus station to his next adventure in New Orleans.

So there you have it, Oswald had already started his Pro-Castro activities in Dallas, before New Orleans. Was this a high level covert intelligence operation going on with Oswald handwriting a homemade sign and wearing it around his neck in a right wing town? I seriously doubt it………

References:

1. Warren Report, Vol 22, CE 1409
2. Ibid
3. Vincent T. Lee testimony, Warren Report Vol. 10, page 86

 

 

 

 

 

Dallas – The Turbulent Years

First in a series of the turbulent history of Dallas

Southern Rock Island Plow Company circa 1910 Photo Credit: Dallas Morning News

Look familiar? Not much has changed in the old façade of the former Texas School Book Depository building on Elm and Houston street in Dallas. In 1894 the Rock Island Plow Company out of Illinois purchased this site and originally built a five-story building there. This plant was among other Rock Island Plow buildings that sold farm implement equipment. In 1901, the building caught fire (lightning by some accounts) and replaced with a more permanent seven story structure. In 1963 another fateful event would manifest itself upon this building that the city of Dallas could never erase in the minds of its citizenry. Near the end of the American Depression era, the building was sold to Carraway Byrd Corporation in 1937. However the corporation defaulted on the loan and it was purchased in a public auction by Dallasite, David Harold Byrd. (1)

D.H. Byrd began his career in the burgeoning oil boom in Texas, starting from the bottom and worked himself through Trinity and University of Texas studying geology. Like a lot of Texas wildcatters, he struck out on his own and finally shook his “Dry Hole Byrd” moniker when he struck two significant oil wells in the East Texas field. By 1931 he formed his own oil company, Byrd-Frost Incorporated with 492 producing wells. Somewhat of a celebrity (his cousin was explorer Admiral Richard Byrd, who named a range of Antarctica mountains, Harold Byrd mountains in his honor), business continued to prosper for Byrd. (1) Upon purchase of the building, Byrd leased it out to the Perfection-Aire Conditioning company, which went into bankruptcy sometime after. However Byrd finally found a client, the John Sexton Company out of Chicago. The Sexton company leased the building as a branch warehouse to distribute wholesale food/grocery items from 1941-1961. (2) The company utilized the rail spur behind the building to receive products manufactured in Sexton plants. Sexton did not renew their lease and moved out in 1961 to a modern single story facility. After the Sexton company moved out, the building was leased to the Texas School Book Depository company who moved most of their operation and books from an old warehouse on 1917 North Houston street. In 1963, the TSBD company employed 19 warehouse employees (including 4 at the Houston street warehouse) and 12 office support staff. The Houston street warehouse is where unknowingly TSBD warehouse worker Wesley Buell Frazier parked his car on November 22, 1963 and let out his soon to be infamous passenger, Lee H. Oswald. Today the building is operated as the Sixth Floor Museum housing various JFK assassination items and exhibits. Every year thousands of tourists flock to the museum to see what the old folks and long time civic leaders of Dallas would love to forget……… the cold-blooded death of JFK on Elm street.

David G. Burnet Elementary School Dallas I was outside on the playground when I heard the news

November 22, 1963 was a very dark day for us Americans. Everyone of age remembers where they were and the shock that swept our nation. I remember that day as a 8-year-old kid in school in Dallas. It seemed the world just stopped and everybody just froze in place. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis was fresh in our minds, and certainly on the lips of people in Dallas that I knew. Nobody knew what was coming next….. Nobody!

A lingering fog of shame held over many Dallas residents for years. This was exacerbated by people from other places than Texas blaming us for killing Kennedy. The remarks were very demeaning in nature. To this day, I still get angry…..it never goes away.

Dallas, like many cities faced lots of challenges and hard times. Though my generation grew up living through the tragic days of November 1963, there were more difficult times that were played out in this city decades before.

It happened in the 1920’s when Dallas overcame one of it’s biggest menace to society.

KKK Rally Texas State Fair 1923 Photo Credit: Dallas Morning News

October is Texas State Fair time in Dallas. The event is huge where people from all over Texas and neighboring states pour in to see the exhibits and rides with their families. However on October 23, 1923, a different group of folks were pouring into Fair Park in Dallas. These people wore their Sunday Best, white robes and hoods. The “Invisible Empire” of hate made a resurgence revival near Atlanta, Georgia in 1915. Fresh inspiration came forth for the “Phoenix of Hate” in the 1915 D.W. Griffith film, “Birth of a Nation”. The movement started small but quickly gained popularity after WWI in the early 1920’s. Membership soon swelled and many marches and parades ensued. The KKK in this second re-birth manifestation in America took on a religious tone this time and ardently supported Prohibition. Most of the Klansmen were protestants and the Bible was always close by at cross burning ceremonies. (4)

KKK State Fair Invitation 1923 Photo Courtesy Of Texas State Historical Society

Meanwhile the following day on October 24, 1923, the newly formed Dallas Chapter KKK #66 (1920) inducted an astounding number of 5,631 new members at Fair Park. Each member took the oath of allegiance to the KKK, with Klan #66 with a 75 member drum and bugle band playing for added inspiration and patriotism. An estimated additional 800 women were also inducted into the Klan’s women’s auxiliary unit. Thousands of spectators cheered on. The event was very much like the old tent revival evangelist meetings that were prevalent during those days. Hatred of Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and Catholics was celebrated openly in this public event.(5) Many leading civic, business and law enforcement men of Dallas joined the ranks of the KKK, including the future mayor of Dallas in 1953, businessman Robert L. Thornton. It was estimated that Dallas alone had more than 13,000 members during this time. Darwin Payne, SMU journalist professor, estimated that out of the total population of 160,000 people in Dallas at that time, excluding non-protestants, minorities, women and children, an estimated 1 out of 3 protestant men in Dallas were Klan members or supporters. That number still boggles my mind.

The Dallas #66 chapter of the KKK had the largest membership in the nation in the 1920’s.

Dallas KKK #66
Photo credit: Dallas Morning News

The Klan were beginning to be a force to reckon with in Dallas. They began to take the law into their own hands and being outright brazen about it. Many blacks were taken to the Trinity River bottoms, beaten, tarred and feathered and just plain ran out-of-town. Most of these instances went unreported and several law enforcement authorities turned a blind eye. In the most publicized KKK event, after the KKK #66 was formed, a black man was beaten and taken to the Trinity river bottoms. The letters” KKK” were etched on his forehead with acid. He was paraded back to the Adolphus hotel where he worked, half-naked. The poor victim was of accused of seeing a white woman. Dallas County sheriff Dan Harston and Dallas Police Department decided not to investigate, “said he had it coming”. The Dallas Klan quickly through it business members began to exert financial leverage of people not sympathetic to its cause. (6)

George Bannerman Dealey Photo From Diaper Days Of Dallas, by Ted Dealey

One of the Dallas Times Herald newspaper editors was a Klansman, so was the head of the Dallas County Democratic party. Things were starting to get ugly in the city by the Trinity. Finally a courageous Dallas Morning News editorial writer had enough. Alonso Wasson wrote a scathing attack of the brutality of the Dallas Klan in an editorial named “Dallas Slandered”. George B. Dealey, owner of the Dallas Morning News woke up the next morning and read the editorial. He was supportive, but yet he admonished Wasson for not having a formal meeting of DMN staff before to discuss editorial changes of the paper. Nevertheless, Dealey and his Morning News staff pursued a vigorous anti-Klan stance documenting the Klan’s beatings and downright lawlessness in Dallas. Members of the Klan, including those on the Dallas City Council and civic leaders were at war with George Dealey and the Dallas Morning News. They exercised great financial pressure and propaganda to put the newspaper out of business. Klan business members withdrew advertisement from the paper. Newspaper circulation dropped dramatically around the county. Things got pretty bad for George Dealey. While Dallas Klan members vowed to put the Morning News out of the business, they almost succeeded. Dealey in desperation, sold his parent company The Galveston News, just to survive. Slowly the tide began to turn when Miriam “Ma” Ferguson (with the Dallas Morning News endorsement) won the Texas Democratic Governor Primary run-off against Judge Felix Robertson, an openly known Klan member. In the early 19th century Texas was a strong Democratic state. Texas voters elected Ma Ferguson governor in 1924. One of her laws she got through the Texas legislature was no person was allowed to wear a hood or mask in open demonstrations. There was no question where Ma Ferguson stood on the Klan in Texas. Membership began to falter from the 13,000+ in 1923 to less than 1,300 members. Finally the Klan closed it’s headquarters in Dallas in 1929. (5)

The courage of George Dealey, the oppressed black community and other Anti-Klan people in Dallas is a virtual unknown story to most people in Dallas, and one that needs to be revisited. Sadly that lesson of courage against hatred and bigotry would be lost with George Dealey’s son and heir to the Dallas Morning News in later years. That my friends is yet another story………..

References

1. Texas State Historical Society
2. Flashback Dallas, blog by Paula Bosse
3. Murder Perch To Museum, by Jerry Organ
4. One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth And Decline of the Ku  Klux Klan in the 1920’s by Thomas Pegram
5. Dallas Morning News, “At It’s Peak, Ku Klux Klan Gripped Dallas”, May 15, 2010 by Bryan Woolley
6. Dallas: The Making Of A Modern City by Patricia E. Hill