Letters to Jackie (43 page)

“Patients in hospitals”: Mrs. Thomas Hurta to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, January 16, 1964, Adult Letters, box 9, folder 65, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “One man dying of cancer”: Mrs. Marcella Pieper, November 25, 1963, Adult Letters, box 9, folder 72, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“I was born the first day of April”: E. Mae Greene to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 27, 1963, Adult Letters, box 20, folder 159, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“I am old enough”: Edmund F. Jewell to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 30, 1963, Adult Letters, box 22, folder 175, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“the President’s body was brought back”: Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 347–48, 323–24.

“She asked herself why”: Theodore White, “Handwritten Notes of Camelot Interview with Jacqueline Kennedy,” Theodore H. White Papers, box 40, Camelot Documents, JFKL.

“Most persons outside the state”: Jean Maxewell to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, Adult Letters, box 3, folder 23, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “I feel in some way”: H. Howard Howard, to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, Adult Letters, box 6, folder 41, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“newspapers published in bold headlines”:
New York Times
, November 23, 1963, p. 1;
Dallas Morning News
, November 23, 1963, p. 1. “Mrs. Kennedy had returned”: Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 418–23, 435–39.

On the events of Sunday morning: Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 656–58; Vincent Bugliosi,
Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy
(New York: Norton, 2007), pp. 79–169; Gerald Posner,
Cased Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
(New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 273–80.

“thousands stood in line”: “Thousands Pass Bier at Night Despite the Cold and Long Wait,”
New York Times
, November 25, 1963, p. 2.

“I have been taught all my life”: Marsha Hardin to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, January 18, 1964, Unprocessed Letters, box 3, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

Politics, Society, and President, 1963

“He was Born Holding a Flag”: Bertha Schultz to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, Adult Letters, box 7, folder 52, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “It will not be easy”: Theodore Sorensen,
Kennedy
(New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p. 757.

“It still riles me to think”: Bette Douches to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, no date, Adult Letters, box 9, folder 69, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “We may not realize that fault now”: Eileen Harayda to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, March 16, 1964, Adult Letters, box 13, folder 100, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“tensions that challenges to segregations had heightened”: Taylor Branch,
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954–63
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. 880 and chapter 22,
passim
.

“A rare letter from a white supremacist”: Continent Preservation Party to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, December 7, 1963, Adult Letters, box 19, folder 148, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“The day he was born”: Bertha Schultz to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, Adult Letters, box 7, folder 52, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

On Kennedy and civil rights, see: G. Calvin Mackenzie and Robert Weisbrot,
The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s
(New York: Penguin Press, 2008), pp. 140–43 and
passim
; Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, pp. 292–93; Branch,
Parting the Waters
, pp. 354–55, 359–71, 374–78, 917–19.

Salisbury quoted in Harvard Sitkoff,
The Struggle for Black Equality
(New York: Hill and Wang, 1981), p. 129.

On Birmingham and the events of the April and May 1963, see: Victor S. Navasky,
Kennedy Justice
(New York: Atheneum, 1971); Branch,
Parting the Waters
, pp. 586–87, 864–70, chapter 19–21, and
passim
; John Dittmer,
Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
(Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 92–95, 153–57, 165–69; Mackenzie and Weisbrot,
Liberal Hour
, pp. 143–58; Sitkoff,
The Struggle for Black Equality
, pp. 100, 105–8, 111–15, 128–58 and
passim
; Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, pp. 594–606.

“an open test of wills with the Kennedy administration”: Victor S. Navasky,
Kennedy Justice
; Branch,
Parting the Waters
, pp. 821–22.

“We are confronted primarily”: John F. Kennedy, “Radio and Television Report to the American People of Civil Rights,” June 11, 1963, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/JFK/003POF03CivilRights06111963.htm.

“The very evening of JFK’s civil rights speech”: Branch,
Parting the Waters
, chapter 22 covers well the events of June–November 1963. Lewis’s speech at the March on Washington can be found at http://www.crmvet.org/info/ mowjl2.htm; Sitkoff,
Struggle for Black Equality
, p. 165.

“You and yours have suffered a great loss”: Mrs. A. Marie Lawson to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, no date on letter, envelope postmarked November 23, 1963, Adult Letters, box 9, folder 70, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “if civil rights activists clearly saw”: Branch,
Parting the Waters
, p. 880 and chapter 22,
passim
. “I am one person”: Carolyn Richards to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Adult Letters, box 9, folder 65, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“Among the tactics used”: J. Morgan Kousser,
The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of a One-Party South 1880–1910
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974); Alexander Keyssar,
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States
(New York: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 111, 130, 228–29, 236–37, 264, 269–71.

“Kennedy had proposed to Congress”: John F. Kennedy, “Letter to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House on Revision of the Immigration Laws,” July 23, 1963,
The Public Papers of the Presidents
, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9355&st=&st1=.141 “Kennedy published an essay on immigration”: John F. Kennedy, “A Nation of Immigrants,”
New York Times Magazine
, August 4, 1963, p. 56. Several historians have emphasized the limitations of Kennedy’s vision as well as the 1965 immigration reform legislation, which continued discriminatory practices. See, for example, Mae M. Ngai,
Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), esp. chapter 7; Rogers Daniels,
Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life
(New York: HarperPerennial, 2002), chapter 13.

“My family had one of the great fortunes”: Kennedy quoted in Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, pp. 30–31.

“Kennedy advanced increases”: Mackenzie and Weisbrot,
The Liberal Hour
, pp. 87–91 and chapter 3,
passim
.

“as he campaigned in West Virginia”: Theodore H. White,
The Making of a President 1960
(New York: Atheneum, 1961), pp. 108–25.

“Eight inches of fresh snow”: “Presidential Inaugural Weather,” National Weather Service, Forecast Office Baltimore/Washington, http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/Historic_Events/Inauguration/Inauguration.html#Presentto-Past. “Rejoicing in his youth”: “Editorial Comment Across the Nation on President Kennedy’s Inauguration,”
New York Times
, January 21, 1963, p. 10.

“It is the legacy of great men”: Dick Santoro to Barbara Longsworth, November 22, 1963, enclosed in Barbara Longsworth to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, January 28, 1964, Personal Remembrances, box 2, folder 13, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

Grief and Loss

“The burden of his death”: Janet Ott to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, envelope dated November 28, 1963, Adult Letters, box 11, folder 85, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “I am a stranger”: Phil Campbell to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 28, 1963, Adult Letters, box 10, folder 77, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “The fact of the matter”: Alva Adams Thomas to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, December 2, 1963, Adult Letters, box 7, folder 49, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “At first I thought”: Blanche McCoy to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, Adult Letters, box 11, folder 83, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“I feel his loss”: Mrs. B. Abeur, January 2, 1963 [1964], Adult Letters, box 8, folder 61, Condolence Mail, JFKL. “Our lives and way of living”: Mrs. Emma Kelch to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, April 27, 1964, Adult Letters, box 5, folder 39, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“It is terribly difficult for this American”: Mrs. Lowell Barry Jacobs to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, January 21, 1964, Adult Letters, box 8, folder 57, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“Maybe I didn’t do the proper thing”: Mrs. Molesta Lindsay to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, December 10, 1963, Adult Letters, box 16, folder 128, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

J. D. Tippit: Manchester,
Death of a President
, pp. 278–82.

“the PT boat he commanded”: Stephen Plotkin, “Sixty Years Later, the Story of PT 109 Still Captivates,”
Prologue
, vol. 35, no. 2 (Summer 2003); Nigel Hamilton,
JFK: Reckless Youth
(New York: Random House, 1992), parts 11–13; Robert J. Donovan,
PT 109: John F. Kennedy in World War II
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961). “helped JFK considerably”: Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, pp. 129–30.

“Kennedy had no love for”: Dallek,
An Unfinished Life
, pp. 89–100, 129–31.

“Vaughn Meader was a comedian”: “Vaughn Meader, Satirist of Kennedy Family, Dies,”
Washington Post
, November 1, 2004, p. B07; John F. Kennedy, News Conference, December 12, 1962, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9054&st=meader&st1=. “Meader is Dropping Kennedy Imitation,”
New York Times
, November 30, 1963, p. 17.

“old soldier down in the West Virginia hills”: Sgt. Walt Carter, November 27, 1963: Adult Letters, box 7, folder 49.

“It is said you are not grown up”: Cindy Corwin to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, no date, Adult Letters, box 11, folder 84, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

“We shall miss you”: Mr. and Mrs. Aldo Angelino to Mrs. John F. Kennedy, November 26, 1963, Adult Letters, box 18, folder 136, Condolence Mail, JFKL.

ELLEN FITZPATRICK
, a professor and scholar specializing in modern American political and intellectual history, is the author and editor of six books
and has appeared regularly on PBS’s
The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer
. She has been interviewed as an expert on modern American political history by the
New York
Times
, the
Wall Street Journal
, the
Los Angeles Times, USA Today,
the
Boston Globe
, the
Washington Post
,
CBS’s
Face the Nation
, and National Public Radio. The Carpenter Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire, where she has been recognized for Excellence in Public Service, Fitzpatrick lives in Newton, Massachusetts.

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Jacket photographs: First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy greet the crowd after deplaning from Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963. Photographs taken by John H. Titmas, © Mary Anne Titmas, courtesy of the John H. Titmas family of Dallas, Texas.

Letter reprinted with the permission of Mr. Charles B. Wade. Envelope reprinted with the permission of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

All jacket images held in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Jacket design by Allison Saltzman