#Death and State Funeral of John F. Kennedy

[deadpresidents]

"Thank you Mr. President" Jackie Kennedy's letter to LBJ less than 24 hours after burying JFK

When Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in as President on board Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, Jackie Kennedy was standing next to him, her pink Chanel dress, white gloves, and bare legs smeared with the blood and brain matter of her assassinated husband.  Traumatized and almost certainly in shock, Jackie wanted to support the new President and new First Lady as power was officially transferred in the same solemn ceremony that has always marked such an occasion in American History.  As the Presidential airplane left Dallas and returned to the nation's capital, Jackie sat in the back of the plane with the coffin containing her husband's body.

Despite her deep personal loss, her traumatic experience, and her obvious physical exhaustion, Jackie threw herself into planning President Kennedy's funeral as soon as she returned to Washington, D.C.  Jackie was sensitive to the needs of the country and protective of her husband's legacy.  When she arrived at the White House, she requested information about the exact specifications of Abraham Lincoln's funeral after he was assassinated in 1865.  Even though it was the middle of the night, Kennedy staffers went to the National Archives and the Library of Congress to research the Lincoln funeral and Jackie helped make plans for the pageantry that would commence over the next few days.  With a few minor exceptions, JFK's funeral was nearly an exact replica of Lincoln's funeral almost 100 years earlier.  The effect was monumental.  Kennedy's funeral will always be remembered as a dignified, iconic moment in our nation's history.

As Jackie Kennedy prepared to bury the 35th President, Lyndon Johnson consumed himself with becoming the 36th President, continuing Kennedy's work and leading the nation through the darkness of the assassination and its aftermath.  When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base on the night of November 22nd, the Secret Service urged now-President Johnson to take a helicopter directly to the White House.  Johnson immediately vetoed the move as he thought it would disrespectful for him to land on the South Lawn of the White House (as Presidents regularly do) while Kennedy's family still lived in the building.  When LBJ arrived at the White House via motorcade to begin his work that night, the new President went directly to an office in the Old Executive Office Building rather than working out of the Oval Office.

Over the next few weeks, President Johnson extended many kindnesses to Jackie Kennedy.  LBJ and Jackie had always had an extremely close relationship, and Johnson never forgot how kind Jackie had been when LBJ was Vice President -- a depressing time for Johnson due to his lack of power and influence.  During his Vice Presidency, Johnson had experienced many problems with members of Kennedy's Administration, but was always treated very well by President and Mrs. Kennedy. 

The Kennedys had two young children who had just lost their father, and the first thing that LBJ did as President was write two letters to President Kennedy's children to read when they were old enough to understand them.  When JFK was elected President, the Kennedys hoped that their daughter Caroline would be able to attend a normal school with children her age.  When it became apparent that the logistics wouldn't allow that, a room was prepared at the White House for Caroline's teacher to hold class daily.  When JFK was assassinated, LBJ insisted that Caroline's class continue using the White House for classes as long as Jackie wished.  In fact, LBJ urged Jackie to continue living in the White House throughout the entirety of his term.  Jackie moved out within a few weeks, but she appreciated President Johnson's offer.

What Jackie Kennedy most appreciated, however, was President Johnson's presence at John F. Kennedy's funeral.  On November 25, 1963, the entire nation stopped and world leaders gathered in Washington to bury the slain President (one place that the nation didn't stop was Dallas, where JFK's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was shot and killed as he was being transferred to another police facility).  Kennedy's funeral was historic and emotional.  The enduring image is of John F. Kennedy, Jr. -- celebrating his 3rd birthday on that very day -- stepping forward to salute as father's flag-draped casket passed by.

Another stirring image from that day was accompanying President Kennedy's funeral cortége.  As Kennedy's casket rested on the exact same caisson that carried Abraham Lincoln's casket, a remarkable procession of some of the most famous, powerful people in the world followed behind it.  Led by Jackie Kennedy and the slain Presidents two brothers, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward Kennedy, scores and scores of political leaders, diplomats, monarchs, and more trailed the casket, marching in complete silence other than the sounds of their feet on the pavement.  Dozens upon dozens of countries were represented -- not just by ambassadors or minor officials, but by Kings, Queens, Emperors, Presidents, and Prime Ministers.  When one looks at the photos, our eyes are immediately drawn to the majestic strength of Jackie Kennedy leading the procession.  If the faces of those behind her are scanned, they reveal legendary leaders such as Charles de Galle, Haile Selassie, U Thant, Golda Meier, King Baudoiun I, Lester Pearson, Willy Brandt, Queen Frederica, Eamon de Valera, Prince Philip, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and scores of other international figures, not to mention the leading Americans, who took to the streets of Washington, D.C. -- on foot -- to honor President Kennedy.

It's often forgotten that Lyndon Johnson was there.  Johnson was such a larger-than-life character and so rarely relegated to the background that it's difficult to imagine a scene where he would not be the major player.  Since President Kennedy had been murdered in broad daylight on the streets of a major American city just three days earlier, the Secret Service -- understandably nervous due to their failure to protect one President that week -- was adamantly opposed to President Johnson's participation.  Johnson overruled the Secret Service concerns and turned down their insistence that he ride in an armor-plated limousine.  For maybe the only time in his life, Lyndon Johnson -- now President of the United States -- went virtually unnoticed to the public.

Yet, one person did notice.  And, on November 26, 1963, despite all that she had been through; despite all that she was feeling; despite all that she had lost; despite the fact that just 24 hours earlier she had buried her husband, the father of her two young children, the 34-year-old widowed former First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sat down in the White House and wrote this letter to the new President of the United States, Lyndon Baines Johnson:

November 26 Tuesday Dear Mr. President, Thank you for walking yesterday - behind Jack.  You did not have to do that - I am sure many people forbid you to take such a risk - but you did it anyway.  Thank you for your letters to my children.  What those letters will mean to them later - you can imagine.  The touching thing is, they have always loved you so much, they were most moved to have a letter from you now. And most of all, Mr. President, thank you for the way you have always treated me - the way you and Lady Bird have always been to me - before, when Jack was alive, and now as President. I think the relationship of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential families could be a rather strained one.  From the history I have been reading ever since I came to the White House, I gather it often was in the past. But you were Jack's right arm - and I always thought the greatest act of a gentleman that I had seen on this earth - was how you - the Majority Leader when he came to the Senate as just another little freshman who looked up to you and took orders from you, could then serve as Vice President to a man who had served under you and been taught by you. But more than that we were friends, all four of us.  All you did for me as a friend and the happy times we had.  I always thought way before the nomination that Lady Bird should be First Lady - but I don't need to tell you here what I think of her qualities - her extraordinary grace of character - her willingness to assume ever burden - She assumed so many for me and I love her very much - and I love your two daughters - Lynda Bird most because I know her the best - and we first met when neither of us could get a seat to hear President Eisenhower's State of the Union message, and someone found us a place on one of the steps on the aisle where we sat together.  If we had known then what our relationship would be now. It was so strange - last night I was wandering through this house.  There in the Treaty Room is your chandelier, and I had framed - the page we all signed - you - Senator Dirksen and Mike Mansfield - underneath I had written "The day the Vice President brought the East Room chandelier back from the Capitol." Then in the library I showed Bobby the Lincoln Record book you gave - you see all you gave - and now you are called on to give so much more. Your office - you are the first President to sit in it as it looks today.  Jack always wanted a red rug - and I had curtains designed for it that I thought were as dignified as they should be for a President's office. Late last night a moving man asked me if I wanted Jack's ship pictures left on the wall for you (They were clearing the office to make room for you) - I said no because I remembered all the fun Jack had those first days hanging pictures of things he loved, setting out his collection of whales teeth etc. But of course they are there only waiting for you to ask for them if the walls look too bare.  I thought you would want to put things from Texas in it - I pictured some gleaming longhorns - I hope you put them somewhere. It mustn't be very much help to you your first day in office - to hear children on the lawn at recess.  It is just one more example of your kindness that you let them stay - I promise - they will soon be gone - Thank you Mr. President Respectfully Jackie

At the LBJ Library on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin, there are many displays of priceless, historic artifacts that tell the story of the years of Lyndon Johnson, his service to the United States, and the world that he knew.  As you pass through the exhibits, it's difficult not to be astonished, inspired, and touched by what you see around you during your visit.  Many of the things you'll see there will take your breath away, but nothing leaves an impression on your heart and soul like the seven pieces of paper containing these words in Jackie Kennedy's handwriting -- words that somehow convey strength and fragility, evoke optimism and sadness, and simultaneously project support while demonstrating a sense of loss that very few of us can imagine.  Items like these are the source materials for what history truly is -- a biography of humanity, a story about people.

#History #JFK Assassination #Kennedy Assassination #Assassination of John F. Kennedy #JFK #John F. Kennedy #President Kennedy #Jacqueline Kennedy #Jackie Kennedy #First Lady #First Families #Death and State Funeral of John F. Kennedy #Funeral of John F. Kennedy #Presidents #Presidential History #Presidential Funerals #Presidential Deaths #Lyndon B. Johnson #LBJ #President Johnson #White House #Kennedy Family #Presidential Relationships #Presidential Correspondence #JFK's Funeral #60th Anniversary of JFK's Assassination #60th Anniversary #60th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination

[thenamesofthings]

John’s son, John F. Kennedy Jr., aka John John, who had turned three the day of his father’s funeral, embodied the Kennedy myth in the heart of all Americans. The route seemed traced for him to become president one day. He died on July 16, 1999, with his pregnant wife and his sister-in-law, when his private plane suddenly and mysteriously nose-dived into the ocean a few seconds after he had announced his landing on the Kennedy property in Massachusetts.

John John had long been portrayed as a superficial, spoiled and harmless young man. But that image was as misleading as young Hamlet’s in Shakespeare’s play. John had serious interests in mind, and, at age 39, he was just entering politics. In 1995 he founded George magazine, which seemed harmless until it began to take an interest in political assassinations. In March 1997, George published a 13-page article by the mother of Yigal Amir, the convicted assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The article was supporting the thesis of a conspiracy by the Israeli far-right. So JFK Jr. was eliminated while following in the footsteps of his father, entering politics through the door of journalism and taking an interest in the crimes of the Israeli deep state. Canadian-Israeli journalist Barry Chamish believes John Kennedy Jr. was assassinated precisely for that.

The nonsensical notion of a mysterious curse on the Kennedy family is an obvious smoke screen. The unsolved murders of JFK and his two legitimate heirs—his younger brother and his only son—require a more rational explanation. The sense that the official stories about their deaths amount to a huge cover-up is obsessing the American psyche, a bit like a repressed family secret affecting the whole personality from a subconscious level.

President John Kennedy and his brother are heroic, almost Christ-like figures, in the heart of a growing community of citizens who have become aware of the disastrous longtime effect of their assassinations. Only when the American public at large come to grips with the truth of their deaths and honor their legacy and sacrifice will America have a chance to be redeemed and be great again...

—Laurent Guyénot, “Did Israel Kill the Kennedys?” (2018)

[deadnburied13]

PRESIDENT JOHN F KENNEDY

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

58 years ago

November 2, 1963: Death of the President

Shortly after noon on November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas, Texas.

Kennedy's funeral was set for Monday, November 25,

Above Photo: Jackie Kennedy and the children of JFK, John F Kennedy JR (who would perish in a plane crash in which he was the pilot along with his wife Carolyn Bassett and his sister in law, Carolyn's sister, Lauren Bassett)

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

John F Kennedy Jr

(who would perish in a plane crash in which he was the pilot along with his wife Carolyn Bassett (left) and his sister-in-law, Carolyn's sister, Lauren Bassett (right) Above Photo

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

Left to Right

Robert Kennedy, (brother)

Jackie Kennedy (wife)

Right Ted Kennedy ( brother)

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

THIER DEATHS...

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

ROBERT KENNEDY

(November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also referred to by his initials RFK or by the nickname Bobby, was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 64th United States Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. Senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. He was, like his brothers John and Edward, a prominent member of the Democratic Party and has come to be viewed by some historians as an icon of modern American liberalism.

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

EDWARD MOORE KENNEDY

Ted Kennedy

(February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009)

was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts for almost 47 years, from 1962 until his death in 2009. A member of the Democratic Party and the prominent political Kennedy family, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died. He is ranked fifth in United States history for length of continuous service as a senator. Kennedy was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and U.S. attorney general and U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy. He was the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

JACQUELINE LEE KENNEDY ONASSIS

(July 28, 1929 – May 19, 1994)

was an American socialite, writer, photographer, and book editor who served as first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. A popular first lady, she endeared the American public with her fashion sense, devotion to her family, and dedication to the historic preservation of the White House. During her lifetime, she was regarded as an international fashion icon.

Jackie was diagnosed with cancer in January 1993 and On May 19, 1994 at 10:15 p.m., she died in her sleep in her Manhattan apartment at age 64, with her children by her side. In the morning, her son John F. Kennedy, Jr. announced his mother's death to the press, stating that she had been "surrounded by her friends and her family and her books, and the people and the things that she loved". He added that "she did it in her very own way, and on her own terms, and we all feel lucky for that."

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

Jackie lit the flame 🔥 herself, with a gas-soaked rag on a stick, at the conclusion of JFK's burial.

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

Jackie Kennedy and Robert Kennedy walk away from the Gravesite of JFK after lighting the flame 🔥

John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame

Established November 25, 1963 (temporary)

March 15, 1967 (permanent)

Governing body U.S. Department of the Army

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

The casket of JFK waiting to be lowered into the ground

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

🔥Legend says ever since his death the flame has been burning brightly, except for two instances.

🔥The first took place on December 10, 1963. According to Mental Floss, “a group of Catholic schoolchildren were visiting Kennedy's memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

This permanent site replaced a temporary grave and eternal flame used at the time of Kennedy's state funeral on November 25, 1963, three days after his assassination. The site was designed by architect John Carl Warnecke, a long-time friend of Kennedy.

⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢⚝︎ ࣪ ͎.⋆𓍢. ⚝︎ ࣪ ͎. ⚝︎

₊ ﹒✟˛ ☠︎ ⁺ 𝔇𝔈𝔄𝔇⁺𝔑⁺𝔅𝔘ℜℑ𝔗𝔇 ⁺ ☠︎ ˛✟﹒ ₊

#jackie kennedy #ted kennedy #robert kennedy #history #JFK #Assassination #Camolot

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 11.25 (after 1920)

1926 – The deadliest November tornado outbreak in U.S. history kills 76 people and injures more than 400. 1936 – In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures "to safeguard their common interests" in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation. 1941 – HMS Barham is sunk by a German torpedo during World War II. 1943 – World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 1947 – Red Scare: The "Hollywood Ten" are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios. 1947 – New Zealand ratifies the Statute of Westminster and thus becomes independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom. 1950 – The Great Appalachian Storm of 1950 impacts 22 American states, killing 353 people, injuring over 160, and causing US$66.7 million in damages (1950 dollars). 1952 – Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London's West End after a premiere in Nottingham, UK. It will become the longest continuously running play in history. 1952 – Korean War: After 42 days of fighting, the Battle of Triangle Hill ends in a Chinese victory. American and South Korean units abandon their attempt to capture the "Iron Triangle". 1958 – French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community. 1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated. 1963 – State funeral of John F. Kennedy; after lying in state at the United States Capitol, a Requiem Mass takes place at Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle and the President is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. 1968 – The Old Student House in Helsinki, Finland is occupied by a large group of University of Helsinki students. 1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot commit ritualistic seppuku after an unsuccessful coup attempt. 1973 – Georgios Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, is ousted in a hardliners' coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis. 1975 – Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands. 1977 – Former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., is found guilty by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2 and is sentenced to death by firing squad. He is later assassinated in 1983. 1980 – Sangoulé Lamizana, president of Upper Volta, is ousted from power in a coup d'état led by Colonel Saye Zerbo. 1981 – Pope John Paul II appoints Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 1984 – Thirty-six top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid's "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. 1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua. 1986 – The King Fahd Causeway is officially opened in the Persian Gulf. 1987 – Typhoon Nina pummels the Philippines with category 5 winds of 265 km/h (165 mph) and a surge that destroys entire villages. At least 1,036 deaths are attributed to the storm. 1992 – The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, with effect from January 1, 1993. 1999 – A five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast. 2000 – The 2000 Baku earthquake, with a Richter magnitude of 7.0, leaves 26 people dead in Baku, Azerbaijan, and becomes the strongest earthquake in the region in 158 years. 2008 – Cyclone Nisha strikes northern Sri Lanka, killing 15 people and displacing 90,000 others while dealing the region the highest rainfall in nine decades. 2009 – Jeddah floods: Freak rains swamp the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, during an ongoing Hajj pilgrimage. Three thousand cars are swept away and 122 people perish in the torrents, with 350 others missing.

#Events

[serve-update]

Lee Radziwill Net Worth: Popularity In The World Of Fashion He Was 85 Years Old. She Is Dead!

The American socialite, PR exec, and decorator Caroline Lee Bouvier, formerly Canfield, Radziwi, and Ross, was more well-known as Princess Lee Radziwill. ON 3 MARCH 1933, IN THE U.S. CITY OF Manhattan, NEW YORK, HE WAS BORN. She was the President's sister-in-law and the younger sibling of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.

Lee Radziwill Net Worth

As of the time of her passing in 2019, American socialite, executive, and actress Lee Radziwill were worth $50 million. Lee Radziwill into the world in Southampton, New York in March of 1933. She was well-known as the sister of ex-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy. Must read about this article Marshawn Lynch Net Worth. Since her marriage to Prince Stanislaw Radziwi in 1959, she has been considered a member of the Polish nobility. She tried her hand at acting for a while and also spearheaded the creation of the seminal 1975 documentary Grey Gardens. https://twitter.com/wikiglobals/status/1097159287707705344 There was a ceremony to induct Radziwill into the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1996. Radziwill worked for Giorgio Armani of Italy as a public relations officer. She wed Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill, Herbert Ross, and two more men. She was the mother of two, one of which was the future king of Poland, Anthony Stanislas Albert Radziwill. Carole Radziwill, Anthony's wife, shot to fame many years later as a cast member on "The Real Housewives of New York." You might also be interested to read about Erika Alexander Net Worth. Michael Canfield was Lee Radziwill's first husband. It was in England that she met her future husband, Stanislas Radziwill. They were quickly divorced and married after the meeting. In 2019, Lee Radziwill passed away on February 15th at the age of 85.

Popularity In The World Of Fashion He Was 85 Years Old. She Is Dead.

Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, has passed away at the age of 85. This past Friday, February 15, Radziwill reportedly passed away, as reported by WWD. At this time, we have no information to suggest a cause of death. Radziwell, a longtime regular in the front row at New York Fashion Week, will be fondly remembered for her impeccable taste. "She epitomized grace and beauty; she was an authentic icon," "According to WWD, Christian Dior's PR head Mathilde Favier made the following statement. Favier and Radziwill's husband is rumored to have met through the fashion designer. We hope you like this article Lisa Barlow Net Worth. "As a beautiful woman, could easily adjust to any environment. She never wore clothes that were too revealing or too drab... Because she was a fashion pioneer, she exuded timeless grace and was a source of inspiration for generations. This is a tragic development. An era has come to a close.

Lee Radziwill Net Worth Caroline Lee Bouvier, afterward Radziwill, was the daughter of stockbroker John Vernou Bouvier III and socialite Janet Lee Bouvier. Her sister's marriage to John F. Kennedy (and subsequent status as First Lady of the United States) catapulted her into the fashion spotlight, and the two sisters became one of the most well-known and frequently photographed pairs of the 1960s. At the time, Radziwill was most known for her role as a public relations officer for Armani, though she did dabble in acting (in films like Laura) briefly. Must read about Cody Longo Net Worth. Anna Christina Radziwill, Radziwill's daughter, will carry on the family name. Anthony Radziwill, her son, died in 1999. Funeral arrangements for Lee Radziwill have not been made public, but you can rest assured that her loved ones and the whole fashion industry are devastated by her passing. https://youtu.be/poN3YMrtN8E Description The documentary “Lee Radziwill Net Worth” is a must-see for every lover of the show. The show is about a celebrity and the details of his net worth will make you go “Geeeeez” (even if you don’t like this expression) while viewing it. Its stunning visuals and animation effects are the result of meticulous design and development. It will keep you entertained for quite some time, so if you haven’t seen it yet, please do so and then rate it and share your thoughts below. If you like this article, follow our website serveupdate.com & don’t forget to follow our social media handles.   Read the full article

[kmp78]

Diana's funeral was just painful af and I lost it completely when Elton started singing Candle in the Wind. 😭💔. 😫🥺😢 I think that was The Moment The Earth Stood Still. (That and when John F. Kennedy was shot).

Yeah I don't think there has ever been a moment/event since then that stopped the whole world like that... 🙁

I remember reading articles that stated that the reason Diana's death seemed to touch so many people is that it kinda allowed people to openly mourn their own losses too without fear of being looked at funny or ecen ridiculed.

[v-literacy]

Photo Analysis

The nation was taken aback after the brutal assassination of 35th American president John F. Kennedy. The burial took place on November 25th 1963, just three days after his murder. Viewers from around the world watched as a change of power was being handed off and as his widow, Jackie Kennedy mourned his death in front of thousands. The photo above was printed on newspapers and sent around the world almost instantly. The audience can see a mourning Jackie Kennedy standing next to her now fatherless children in strong stance wearing haunting dark veil. Many people claim that she decided to dress her kids Caroline and John Jr Kennedy in brighter colors that would stand out and to bring more attention. Of course the attention is on the deceased's family at the funeral but she took it one step further to dress them to stand out, especially contrasting against her dark clothing and veil. 

It may not have been the photographers choice to have these colors contrast but the colors do contrast in this photo which is a key design element in photography. This can also be seen as a metaphor of how young the kids are and how naive to what the affects their fathers death with not only have on them but of the United States of America. It is almost a playful color contrast, meanwhile all the adults behind the children are in their darkest darks, also displaying they are at their lowest in life, mourning their loss. 

The shutter speed in this photo is most likley rather high to capture real time movements. This was a time in not only political but also popular culture that would change the course of history. Press and paparazzi knew this and were rady to capture any and everything that would occur at this burial. This was a relatively unprecedented time for the American people. Assasinations had occurred before but for such a turn of power so quick was new for the public. Not to mention that with more advanced technology John F. Kennedy’s death was broadcasted worldwide. Oppose to former presidents assasination, for example, Abraham Lincoln’s death was shared but there were not such graphic photos shared for anyone to see.

The ISO in this photo was probably rather low as it was taken outside in daylight. I would guess that the ISO could have been in the 100-400 range, The noise or grain in the photo is evident of the age and ISO of the photo. This photo rocked the nation similar to the photo of LBJ inauguration photo where Jackie is seen covered in former President Kennedy’s blood. Jackie was very methodical to place her children in brightly colored clothing and to wear such a dark intense veil. While I was far from alive from when this photo was taken I know it as most people my age do. This shows the power that this one photo can have.

[frankterranella]

Mourning the unknown losses of gun violence

Robert F. Kennedy was gunned down on June 6, 1968

        As I grieve for the deaths of 19 children in Texas last week, I think of the unknown loss to the world. What could those young people have accomplished in their lives? Did we lose a Nobel Prize winner, a future President, a potential cure for cancer? We will never know.         One thing we know for certain; they are not alone. We have lost thousands of our fellow human beings to civilian gunfire. The world is certainly poorer for the loss of shooting victims like John Lennon, John Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.        But in my mind, the loss of one man, at the age of 42, stands apart from all the others, because of the major impact he almost certainly would have had on America had he lived. And that is Robert F. Kennedy, who was gunned down 54 years ago this week. Bobby Kennedy was never permitted to reach his full potential. Because he was born after his brother John, he was only permitted the role of wingman to his older brother. He had to live in that shadow. But everyone knew who the most talented Kennedy was. He had shown it as Attorney General under his brother. And beginning just over a year after John was assassinated, Bobby began to show the world his talents in the U.S. Senate.        He announced his campaign for the Presidency in the spring of 1968 and quickly began winning primaries. I think he undoubtedly would have been the nominee of the Democratic Party because he appealed to a wide spectrum of Democrats. That would likely have prevented the violence in the streets of Chicago that summer, when Hubert Humphrey, the establishment candidate, was nominated instead. Since the prevailing mood of the country in 1968 was grave discontent with the status quo, this effectively gave the election to Richard Nixon, who at least promised change.        Bobby had also promised change, starting with an end to the war in Vietnam that his older brother had started. I think he would have beaten Nixon handily. But that was not to be. Shortly after midnight on June 6, 1968, Bobby Kennedy was shot to death in a Los Angeles hotel, just after winning the California primary. He was not going to be a choice for young Americans fed up with an immoral war. And so Nixon (who also pledged to end the war) was elected President.        And when Nixon ran for re-election in 1972, again Bobby wasn’t there as a choice for me. I couldn’t bring myself to vote for either Nixon or McGovern. I felt that neither candidate represented my values. So my first election ballot had no vote for President (a choice I now regret). But I would have been happy to have voted for Bobby Kennedy.        At his funeral in 1968, Bobby was eulogized by his younger brother Ted. I remember watching it live on television and was moved by the raw emotion in Ted’s voice as he proclaimed: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”        There was greatness in the man. So I remember Bobby Kennedy and mourn his loss every 6th of June. I mourn how a single bullet changed the trajectory of the country and set it on a path to the selfishness of extreme capitalism. Guns in the wrong hands can do that.        Next month, on July 12, we can mark the 218th anniversary of the shooting death of Alexander Hamilton. It seems like America has been killing its best and brightest for almost as long as there has been a United States of America

[kemetic-dreams]

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist in Mississippi, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, and a World War II veteran who had served in the United States Army. He worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans, which included the enforcement of voting rights. A college graduate, Evers became active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Following the 1954 ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, Evers challenged the segregation of the state-supported public University of Mississippi, applying to law school there. He also worked for voting rights, economic opportunity, access to public facilities, and other changes in the segregated society. Evers was awarded the 1963 NAACP Spingarn Medal.

Assassination

The rifle used by De La Beckwith to murder Evers

Medgar Evers lived with the constant threat of death. A large white supremacist population and the Ku Klux Klan were present in Jackson and its suburbs. The risk was so high that before his death, Evers and his wife Myrlie had trained their children on what to do in case of a shooting, bombing or other kind of attack on their lives. Evers, who was regularly followed home by at least two FBI cars and one police car, arrived at his home on the morning of his death without an escort. None of his usual protection was present, for reasons unspecified by the FBI or local police. There has been speculation that many members of the police force at the time were members of the Klan.

In the early morning of Wednesday, June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's nationally televised Civil Rights Address, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Evers' family had worried for his safety that day, and Evers himself had warned his wife that he felt in greater danger than usual.

Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go", Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle; the bullet passed through his heart. Initially thrown to the ground by the impact of the shot, Evers rose and staggered 30 feet (10 meters) before collapsing outside his front door. His wife, Myrlie, was the first to find him. He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson, where he was initially refused entry because of his race. His family explained who he was and he was admitted; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later. He was only 37 years old. Evers was the first African American to be admitted to an all-white hospital in Mississippi. Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.

After Evers was assassinated, an estimated 5,000 people marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to the Collins Funeral Home on North Farish Street in Jackson. Allen Johnson, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders led the procession. The Mississippi police came prepared with riot gear and rifles in case the protests turned violent. While tensions were initially high in the stand-off between police and marchers, both in Jackson and in many similar marches around the state, leaders of the movement maintained nonviolence among their followers

#kemetic dreams #medgar evers #african america #african american

[dreamofstarlight]

The Long Relationship Between The British Aristocracy/Royal Family and The Kennedy Family

These two incredibly influential and famous families have had connections for nearly a century. Not all of these are direct connections but it is to show the layers of how these two families have had interactions for many years. If there are any additional points please feel free to reblog with them, this is not perfect and there might be connections we don’t even know about!

And so it begins... in 1938 Joseph P. Kennedy Sr was appointed as ambassador of England by President Franklin Roosevelt and met with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth possibly several times including the event pictured here: 

The Kennedy family would live between England and the US during the patriarch’s post. During this time Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy would meet her future husband, William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington at a party. In 1939 the family moved back to America shortly after Germany invaded Poland, this split up Kick and William’s friendship to much of her dismay.  Kick later joined the Red Cross at the height of the World War and was sent to England where she would find William again as he served in the British Army, they later married on May 6, 1944 at a London Register’s office with only Joseph Kennedy Jr in attendance from the bride’s family as her mother disapproved of their relationship due to religious differences (Kick being Roman Catholic and Billy being Protestant). Kick became Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington and was officially a part of the british aristocracy. 

In September of 1944, Billy was killed in action and Kick became a widow. Four years later, Kick found herself involved with another member of the aristocracy but the true nature of their relationship is unknown, they both died in a plane crash together in 1948, only Joseph Kennedy Sr attended her funeral from the family. 

In 1961, President John F Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy visited London for the primary purpose of attending their neice, Anna Christina Radziwill’s christening but the trip did entail a dinner with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip which is loosely depicted in The Crown. I personally don’t think the interactions displayed in the show actually happened but it has been reported that Jackie just wanted to go to London to spend time with her sister and was not very keen on meeting Her Majesty. It is important to note that Jackie was not extremely comfortable with the attention that came with being FLOTUS and was naturally a shy person. 

Prince Philip attended President Kennedy’s funeral on behalf of the Queen as she was pregnant with Prince Edward at the time and was advised to not travel. 

Prince Philip is seen talking to French President Charles De Gaulle at a reception at the White House following the funeral

Prince Philip is also seen talking to Eunice Kennedy Shriver at the reception

After President Kennedys death, the British Government decided to honor his memory by erecting a memorial in Runneymeade which is where the magna carta was signed in the 1200s. This is significant because of the document being the basis of many American values that influenced the US Constitution and basic values of America. The Kennedy family including Jacqueline, Caroline, John Jr, Robert, Edward and Jean. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were in attendance, Her Majesty made a speech that expressed the late President’s impact on not only the United States but the whole world in his less than three short years in office. There is a sweet moment where Philip holds the hand of JFK Jr as they are walking to the memorial.

In the mid 1970s, Caroline Kennedy had a fling with Mark Shand (Camilla Parker Bowles brother) and they were seen together in London a few times in her time as an intern at Sothebys. Their relationship did not seem to last very long but it is rumored that Caroline had strong feelings toward him. 

#kennedy family #john f kennedy #jfk #jacqueline kennedy #jackie kennedy #kick kennedy #lee radziwill #queen elizabeth ii #prince philip #eunice kennedy shriver #caroline kennedy #john f kennedy jr #jfk jr #robert f kennedy #bobby kennedy #rfk #ted kennedy #edward kennedy #jean kennedy smith

[howieabel]

Who is Malcolm X?

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska. His mother was the National recording secretary for the Marcus Garvey Movement which commanded millions of followers in the 1920s and 30s. His father was a Baptist minister and chapter president of The Universal Negro Improvement Association who appealed to President Hoover that Marcus Garvey was wrongfully arrested. Earl’s civil rights activism prompted death threats from the white supremacist organization Black Legion, forcing the family to relocate twice before Malcolm’s fourth birthday.

Regardless of the Little’s efforts to elude the Legion, in 1929 their Lansing, Michigan home was burned to the ground. Two years later, Earl’s body was found lying across the town’s trolley tracks.

Police ruled both incidents as accidents, but the Little’s were certain that members of the Black Legion were responsible. Louise suffered emotional breakdown several years after the death of her husband and was committed to a mental institution. Her children were split up amongst various foster homes and orphanages.

Eventually Malcolm and his buddy, Malcolm “Shorty” Jarvis, moved back to Boston. In 1946 they were arrested and convicted on burglary charges, and Malcolm was sentenced to 10 years in prison. (He was paroled after serving seven years.) Recalling his days in school, he used the time to further his education. It was during this period of self-enlightenment that Malcolm’s brother Reginald would visit and discuss his recent conversion to the Muslim religion. Reginald belonged to the religious organization the Nation of Islam (NOI).

Intrigued, Malcolm began to study the teachings of NOI leader Elijah Muhammad. Muhammad taught that white society actively worked to keep African-Americans from empowering themselves and achieving political, economic and social success. Among other goals, the NOI fought for a state of their own, separate from one inhabited by white people. By the time he was paroled in 1952, Malcolm was a devoted follower with the new surname “X.” (He considered “Little” a slave name and chose the “X” to signify his lost tribal name.)

Intelligent and articulate, Malcolm was appointed as a minister and national spokesman for the Nation of Islam. Elijah Muhammad also charged him with establishing new mosques in cities such as Detroit, Michigan and Harlem, New York. Malcolm utilized newspaper columns, as well as radio and television to communicate the NOI’s message across the United States. His charisma, drive and conviction attracted an astounding number of new members. Malcolm was largely credited with increasing membership in the NOI from 500 in 1952 to 30,000 in 1963.

The crowds and controversy surrounding Malcolm made him a media magnet. He was featured in a week-long television special with Mike Wallace in 1959, called “The Hate That Hate Produced.” The program explored the fundamentals of the NOI, and tracked Malcolm’s emergence as one of its most important leaders. After the special, Malcolm was faced with the uncomfortable reality that his fame had eclipsed that of his mentor Elijah Muhammad. Racial tensions ran increasingly high during the early 1960s. In addition to the media, Malcolm’s vivid personality had captured the government’s attention. As membership in the NOI continued to grow, FBI agents infiltrated the organization (one even acted as Malcolm’s bodyguard) and secretly placed bugs, wiretaps, cameras and other surveillance equipment to monitor the group’s activities.

Malcolm’s faith was dealt a crushing blow at the height of the civil rights movement in 1963. He learned that his mentor and leader, Elijah Muhammad, was secretly having relations with as many as six women within the Nation of Islam organization. As if that were not enough, Malcolm found out that some of these relationships had resulted in children.

Since joining the NOI, Malcolm had strictly adhered to the teachings of Muhammad – which included remaining celibate until his marriage to Betty Shabazz in 1958. Malcolm refused Muhammad’s request to help cover up the affairs and subsequent children. He was deeply hurt by the deception of Muhammad, whom he had considered a living prophet. Malcolm also felt guilty about the masses he had led to join the NOI, which he now felt was a fraudulent organization built on too many lies to ignore.

Shortly after his shocking discovery, Malcolm received criticism for a comment he made regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. “[Kennedy] never foresaw that the chickens would come home to roost so soon,” said Malcolm. After the statement, Elijah Muhammad “silenced” Malcolm for 90 days. Malcolm, however, suspected he was silenced for another reason. In March 1964 Malcolm terminated his relationship with the NOI. Unable to look past Muhammad’s deception, Malcolm decided to found his own religious organization, the Muslim Mosque, Inc.

That same year, Malcolm went on a pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The trip proved life altering. For the first time, Malcolm shared his thoughts and beliefs with different cultures, and found the response to be overwhelmingly positive. When he returned, Malcolm said he had met “blonde-haired, blued-eyed men I could call my brothers.” He returned to the United States with a new outlook on integration and a new hope for the future. This time when Malcolm spoke, instead of just preaching to African-Americans, he had a message for all races.

After Malcolm resigned his position in the Nation of Islam and renounced Elijah Muhammad, relations between the two had become increasingly volatile. FBI informants working undercover in the NOI warned officials that Malcolm had been marked for assassination. (One undercover officer had even been ordered to help plant a bomb in Malcolm’s car).

After repeated attempts on his life, Malcolm rarely travelled anywhere without bodyguards. On February 14, 1965 the home where Malcolm, Betty and their four daughters lived in East Elmhurst, New York was firebombed. Luckily, the family escaped physical injury.

One week later, however, Malcolm’s enemies were successful in their ruthless attempt. At a speaking engagement in the Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom on February 21, 1965 three gunmen rushed Malcolm onstage. They shot him 15 times at close range. The 39-year-old was pronounced dead on arrival at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Fifteen hundred people attended Malcolm’s funeral in Harlem on February 27, 1965 at the Faith Temple Church of God in Christ (now Child’s Memorial Temple Church of God in Christ). After the ceremony, friends took the shovels away from the waiting gravediggers and buried Malcolm themselves.

Later that year, Betty gave birth to their twin daughters.

Malcolm’s assassins, Talmadge Hayer, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson were convicted of first-degree murder in March 1966. The three men were all members of the Nation of Islam.

The legacy of Malcolm X has moved through generations as the subject of numerous documentaries, books and movies. A tremendous resurgence of interest occurred in 1992 when director Spike Lee released the acclaimed movie, Malcolm X. The film received Oscar nominations for Best Actor (Denzel Washington) and Best Costume Design.

Malcolm X is buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

#Malcolm X

[deadpresidents]

Burial At Sea: The Odyssey of JFK's Original Casket

It was approximately 1:00 PM when a man called Vernon B. O'Neal of O'Neal's Funeral Home and asked for the best casket that O'Neal had available.  The man on the phone, simultaneously calm and tense, needed the coffin quickly and O'Neal had a slight problem.  Of the 18 people who worked at O'Neal's Funeral Home, 17 of them were out to lunch.  After all, it was a beautiful Friday day for November in Texas.

O'Neal picked out a solid-bronze coffin with white satin lining tagged at a sales price of $3,995 from his storeroom and waited for three more of his employees to return from lunch.  The bulky Handley Brittania casket from the Elgin Casket Company weighed over 400 pounds when it was empty and O'Neal certainly couldn't lift it into his Cadillac hearse by himself.  Once he had it loaded, he rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital on the most important delivery of his career.

The man who had ordered the casket, Clint Hill, was a Secret Service agent and less than an hour earlier he had climbed on to the back of a moving limousine to try to get to the subject he was charged to protect.  He was unsuccessful.  The casket was for the President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

When the casket arrived at Parkland Hospital, O'Neal was met by agents from the Secret Service and some of President Kennedy's aides.  They helped O'Neal push the coffin into the hospital and down a corridor towards Trauma Room One where the President had been officially pronounced dead just minutes earlier.  One of the President's aides and the doctor who had just worked on Kennedy tried to distract the President's grieving wife so that she wasn't anguished further by the sight of the coffin that her now-dead husband was about to be placed in.  

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy refused to turn away and begged to be let into the Trauma Room to see her husband once more.  The doctor didn't want her to see anything else, but Jackie insisted, telling the doctor "How can I see anything worse than what I've seen?" and pointing out that "His blood is all over me!"  The doctor let her in the Trauma Room as O'Neal wheeled the casket inside and she placed her wedding ring on JFK's finger before retreating back to the outer hallway once again.

Vernon O'Neal was horrified when he saw the condition of the President's body.  Blood was everywhere and a gaping wound exposed brain matter which was seeping out of John F. Kennedy's head.  Not wanting to damage the beautiful and expensive casket that he had picked out for the President, O'Neal and several emergency room nurses went to work.  The bottom of the inside of the coffin was lined with a plastic mattress covering and the President's body was wrapped in a bed sheet.  The nurses went even further and spent 20 minutes carefully wrapping President Kennedy's head in numerous white bed sheets so that blood didn't seep through and stain the lining of the casket.

After Kennedy's body was placed in the coffin, preparations were made to leave Parkland Hospital and take the President back to Air Force One at Dallas's Love Field so that they could transport him back to Washington, D.C.  As the Secret Service and the President's aides (many of whom were longtime, close friends of JFK) wheeled his casket towards the exit, they were stopped by Dr. Earl Rose, the medical examiner for Dallas County, Texas.  In 1963, it was not a federal crime to kill the President of the United States.  Because of this, there was no federal jurisdiction for John F. Kennedy's murder -- only local.  Despite tsxxxshe scale of the crime to the nation, it was technically just another murder in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 (because of the laws at the time, on a purely legal basis, the murder of Dallas police offer J.D. Tippit about 45 minutes after Kennedy's shooting was a far more serious crime than the President's assassination).   Because of this, Dr. Rose informed the men escorting the President's body that they needed to leave it in Dallas.  Rose noted that he needed to autopsy the body before they took it anywhere.  To Dr. Rose, a homicide victim was a homicide victim and he had a job to do.

The Secret Service was incredulous and President Kennedy's loyal aides were even angrier.  In the corridor of Parkland Memorial Hospital, things got tense.  Rose found himself in a shouting match with the Secret Service and some of Kennedy's aides.  Even the doctors at Parkland sided with the Secret Service and pleaded with Rose to release the body so that they could take the President back to Washington.  A justice of the peace arrived, with the power to overrule the medical examiner.  But he didn't.  The justice of the peace said that Kennedy would have to be autopsied in Dallas and ensured the Secret Service that it wouldn't take any more than three hours.

Again, tempers flared and the men in the hallway at Parkland were close to fisticuffs as the medical examiner, Dr. Rose, literally blocked the casket's path with his body in order to keep it inside the hospital.  When the President's close aide, Kenny O'Donnell, appealed to the medical examiner and the justice of the peace for compassion for Jackie Kennedy and an exception for this case so that they could return the dead President to Washington and get Jackie out of Texas as quickly as possible, the justice of the peace, Theron Ward, refused.

"It's just another homicide as far as I'm concerned," said the justice of the peace.  

O'Donnell lost his temper, "Go fuck yourself!  We're leaving.  Get the hell out of the way."

With that, the Secret Service and all the President's men pushed forward.  The medical examiner, the justice of the peace, and several Dallas policemen were forcibly shoved out of the way by Secret Service agents who were ready to draw their guns, if necessary.  Jackie Kennedy was close by, her hand softly guiding the President's bronze casket as it was removed from the hospital and placed in the hearse which raced en route to Love Field and Air Force One.

When the entourage arrived at Air Force One, they found a plane completely encircled by heavily armed Secret Service agents.  The plane’s powerful engines were running, ready to lift off at any moment and push Dallas and everything that happened there behind them as quickly as possible.  Fearing the unknown and suspecting a possible conspiracy to decapitate the entire government, the shades were drawn down over the windows throughout the aircraft in order to protect against any further possible attacks.  On the plane was Lyndon Johnson, soon-to-be sworn in as the 36th President of the United States, and awaiting the arrival of Jackie and the body of the deceased President.  The Secret Service and the President's aides struggled with the extraordinarily heavy casket as they maneuvered it up the steps to Air Foce One and into a holding area in the back of the plane cleared out by removing two rows of seats.

Jackie remained with President Kennedy's casket from almost the entire time she boarded Air Force One until it landed at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington.  The only exception was prior to the plane taking off from Dallas when she stood -- still wearing her blood-stained pink Chanel dress -- on one side of Lyndon Johnson as he took the oath of office as the new President, his hand resting on JFK's book of Catholic missals, which had been found in JFK's private cabin by aides rummaging for a Bible for the oath-taking ceremony.

For four hours, Air Force One flew in a dark cloud of sadness towards the nation's capital.  New President Johnson made numerous phone calls, including calls to the slain President's mother, Rose, and brother, the Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.  In flight, LBJ also hastily made preparations for meetings upon landing in Washington.  In the back of the plane, a silent vigil was held around John F. Kennedy's casket by Jackie and the President's aides, who were so close to Kennedy that they were often referred to as the "Irish Mafia".

President Kennedy's personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, suggested to Jackie that JFK's body be taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital upon arrival in Washington for the autopsy.  Jackie showed great compassion herself on that terrible flight.  She insisted that Bill Greer drive the vehicle carrying the President's casket to Bethesda.  Greer was grief-stricken and apologetic during the flight because he had been driving JFK's limousine in Dallas and made no attempt to speed up or take evasive maneuvers when shots were first fired.  Greer felt partly responsible for President Kennedy's death and Jackie wanted to show her confidence and appreciation in his service to her late husband.

When Air Force One arrived at Andrews Air Force Base after dark on November 22, 1963, Bobby Kennedy rushed on to the plane and directly to Jackie to comfort his sister-in-law, blowing past President Johnson and snubbing LBJ as the new President attempted to offer his condolences to JFK’s devastated brother.  The dead President's aides and Secret Service detail rebuffed a military casket team who arrived to remove the President's coffin from the plane.  Instead they formed a personal honor guard and handled Kennedy’s casket themselves, awkwardly placing it on to a catering lift and lowering it to the ground so that they could place it in a waiting Navy ambulance from Bethesda.  Jackie, with her husband's blood still clearly visible on her bare legs, and Bobby climbed into the back of the ambulance with JFK's casket and drove straight to Bethesda as President Johnson made a statement for the millions of Americans watching the arrival ceremony on live television.

The motorcade transporting the body of President John F. Kennedy from Andrews Air Force Base to Bethesda Naval Hospital for his autopsy arrived right around the same time that President Lyndon Johnson's helicopter landed on the South Lawn of the White House from Andrews so that the new President could take the reins of the government of a nation in shock.  As trusted members of his "Irish Mafia" helped to remove Kennedy's casket from the Navy ambulance, Jackie Kennedy and RFK headed upstairs at Bethesda where private suites were set aside for their comfort and friends and family were waiting to help with the comforting.

Across town, the new President prepared to charge into his new duties.  During the flight home from Dallas, Lyndon Johnson had summoned Cabinet members, diplomats, Members of Congress, current White House aides, former White House aides, and anybody else who had any inkling of what powered the Executive Branch, to meet him at the White House upon his arrival for consultation, directions, and mutual support.  Upon arriving at the White House, Johnson briefly spent a moment by himself in the Oval Office before leaving and walking with aides to the neighboring Old Executive Office Building.  LBJ didn't feel right with immediately setting up shop in the Oval Office just hours after President Kennedy's death.  Instead, Johnson decided to use his Vice Presidential office in the OEOB for the meetings he planned on holding that night.

Before those meetings began, however, President Johnson took a moment for a brief pause in his frenetic assumption of the Presidency.  Requesting a few minutes of privacy, LBJ sat down at his desk in the OEOB and wrote two short letters which became the first pieces of correspondence of the Johnson Administration -- letters which the young recipients couldn't even read yet:

"Dear John--It will be many years before you understand fully what a great man your father was.  His loss is a deep personal tragedy for all of us, but I wanted you particularly to know that I share your grief--You can always be proud of him.  Affectionately, Lyndon Johnson" "Dearest Caroline--Your father's death has been a great tragedy for the Nation, as well as for you at this time.  He was a wise and devoted man.  You can always be proud of what he did for his country.  Affectionately, Lyndon Johnson"

The casket containing the father of those two young children had been wheeled into the hallways leading to Bethesda Naval Hospital's morgue.  Despite the fact that this was being done in a completely secure, private, inner sanctum of the famed military hospital, the casket was that of a man who had started the day as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Military.  Out of respect and duty, an honor guard lifted the coffin from a gurney and carried it through the halls and into the brightly-lit, antiseptic autopsy room where doctors prepared to examine the lifeless body of the 35th President of the United States.

When President Kennedy's casket was opened, it became readily apparent that the hard work of Vernon O'Neal and the nurses at Parkland Hospital in Dallas to protect the inside of the expensive coffin was unsuccessful.  The makeshift bandage which had been carefully wrapped around Kennedy's head did not prevent seepage after all.  Blood soaked through the sheets which made up the "bandage" and the inner lining of Kennedy's ornate casket was obviously damaged.  It was a surreal, eerie sight in the autopsy room as John F. Kennedy was removed from his coffin and placed on the stainless steel autopsy table at Bethesda.  The 35th President was naked and seemed to be in remarkably good physical condition for a 46-year-old man who was known to suffer from serious health problems.  Most shocking for those in the room during the autopsy, however, was the fact that this seemingly young and vital President who had inspired a new generation was now very much dead with a massive gunshot wound to the head that exposed the part of his brain still contained within it and left the top of his skull jaggedly disfigured with missing pieces of bone and flesh.  Kennedy's eyes were fixed open, staring vacantly into space with dilated pupils that could no longer envision ambitious goals for his nation.  The mouth which formed his famous words, framed his most inspirational messages, and spoke that unmistakable Boston accent now hung open, forever silenced and permanently paralyzed in a final expression which seemed to mirror the mood of the entire country:  a combination of shock, pain, horror, and perplexity. 

The pathologists who performed John F. Kennedy’s autopsy finished their work shortly after midnight on November 23, 1963.  Photographs and drawings were taken of Kennedy’s body during the autopsy, and when the autopsy was finished, morticians from one of the capital’s finest funeral parlors arrived on the scene.  A team from Gawler’s Funeral Home entered the autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital to embalm the President and attempt to make him presentable.  The casket that brought JFK back to Washington from Dallas would not work.  While the casket from O’Neal’s was a beauty from the exterior, the interior was a mess.  All of the safeguards attempted by O’Neal and the Parkland nurses in Dallas were not quite enough to protect the inside of the Handley Brittania from the gruesome wound that had killed the President.

The question many might have is why would there be such a need to make John F. Kennedy’s remains presentable when JFK was obviously in no condition to be viewed?  Why couldn’t they simply close that beautiful Handley Brittania casket that was purchased in Dallas and bury Kennedy in the container which carried him back to Washington?  

At the orders of Jackie Kennedy, aides went to the Library of Congress in the hours after President Kennedy’s body returned to Washington, D.C. and researched the historic, iconic, epic state funeral of Abraham Lincoln – the first American President to be assassinated, almost exactly a century earlier.  Kennedy’s funeral preparations would be steeped in tradition and either perfectly replicate or closely mirror the funerals of other fallen American Presidents including Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.  As information about these past Presidential funerals (along with the funerals of famous Congressional and military leaders throughout United States history) was brought forward, one constant was apparent:  in almost every case, the fallen leader was viewed by a grieving public in an open casket display.  For many Americans, streaming past the open casket of a former President or American military hero was an opportunity to pay tribute, look upon the face of a fallen hero, and find closure in another storied chapter of American History.

Yet, as much as Jackie wished to replicate Lincoln’s funeral, she was dismayed at the thought of an open casket for John F. Kennedy.  Jackie had seen what the assassin’s bullet had done to her husband.  As Kennedy’s motorcade raced to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas minutes after the shooting, Jackie wouldn’t allow doctors and Secret Service agents to remove President Kennedy’s body from the limousine until an agent covered Kennedy’s head with his suit jacket, shielded the President from the view of others, and preserved some of the dignity that was so important to the Kennedy image.  As the morticians from Gawler’s worked on JFK, Jackie once again expressed her wish that her husband’s coffin would be closed.  Bobby Kennedy, however, didn’t think that the decision was up to the family.  RFK felt strongly that JFK belonged to the people, too, and that the American people would want their opportunity to say goodbye.

Following his assassination in 1865, Abraham Lincoln’s remains embarked on an epic, 20-day-long train trip that retraced the route he took to Washington in 1861 prior to his Inauguration.  In major cities throughout the Northeast and Upper Midwest, hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out to pay their respects to their “martyred” President.  Embalming was a relatively newly-mastered American art at the time of Lincoln’s death – a technique which had been much-improved upon and much-practiced during the Civil War when young men frequently died far from home and families looked to preserve their fallen loved ones so that they could have one last look at them before they were laid to rest.  

However, even today, embalming can’t guarantee perfect preservation for an extended amount of time.  In 1865, there were definitely some worries about Lincoln’s extended, national funeral.  After all, the warm weather of spring had started throughout the United States and Lincoln would be honored with open casket viewings by Americans in well over a dozen cities between Washington, D.C. and Springfield, Illinois in the twenty days after his death.  Some people worried whether it was appropriate to view Lincoln’s corpse at all considering the fact that he had died from a gunshot wound to the head.  Lincoln’s wound was far less devastating visually than Kennedy’s.  The bullet that killed Lincoln had entered his brain, but did not exit Lincoln’s skull.  The only damage visible was a black eye from bruising of the facial bones close to where John Wilkes Booth’s bullet had lodged in Lincoln’s brain.  Undertakers accompanied Lincoln’s body on the funeral train back to Springfield and as time passed, they certainly became necessary.  Lincoln’s face blackened considerably by the time his remains reached Springfield – partly from the facial bruising, partly from the dirt and dust of twenty days exposure to the elements, but also partly due to the beginning stages of decomposition.  At some cities, the undertakers who accompanied Lincoln home would brush his face with chalk to make him more presentable to the citizens who came to pay their respects.  In a few cities, it also became necessary to surround Lincoln’s casket with fragrant flowers and spray the area with heavy perfumes for reasons that I’m sure aren’t too difficult to surmise.

John F. Kennedy was not going to be viewed by the public for twenty days in over a dozen cities throughout the country and the funeral industry had made even larger strides in the century since Lincoln’s death.  However, JFK was severely disfigured by the bullet that killed him.  Unlike in Lincoln’s case, the bullet that tore through Kennedy’s skull and brain also exited his head, causing major damage that would be difficult for even the most-skilled mortician to disguise.  The team from Gawler’s were perhaps the best in the business, but it wasn’t simply a matter of brushing some chalk or cosmetic makeup on Kennedy’s face to cover up some bruising or minor discoloration.  Entire pieces of JFK’s skull were missing and parts of the President’s head needed to be synthetically reconstructed.  The morticians also had to pack his skull with cotton and Plaster of Paris in the place of his brain -- parts of which were removed during the autopsy and other parts of which were in countless places including (but not limited to) the fabric of his wife’s Pink Chanel dress, the windshields of the motorcycle cops escorting his motorcade in Dallas, the backseat and trunk of his limousine, and all over Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

The mortuary team from Gawler’s took over three hours to work on President Kennedy, clean him up, dress him (in a bluish-gray pinstriped suit with a white shirt, black shoes, and blue tie with dots), place him in a brand-new casket and put a rosary in the hands of the nation’s only Catholic President.  A little after 4:00 AM, President Kennedy, his widow and Bobby Kennedy arrived at the White House after a solemn motorcade through the darkened streets of Washington.  In the first nod to Lincoln’s funeral, JFK’s flag-draped casket was carried by an honor guard into the East Room of the White House and placed on a replica of the black catafalque that Lincoln’s coffin once rested on.  After Kennedy’s casket was situated in the East Room, Jackie Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy entered the room and asked that the lid be opened.  Both Jackie and Bobby were exhausted and emotionally drained, and Jackie was still wearing the Pink Chanel dress that she had cradled her dying husband’s head in.  The front of her dress was smeared with the dried blood and brain matter of the President.  As ghastly as the sight was, Jackie continually refused to change, noting that she wanted everyone to see what “they” did to her husband.  As the casket lid was opened, Jackie snipped a lock of her husband’s hair with scissors and turned to Bobby, saying, “It isn’t Jack” – once again alluding to her wish that the casket remain closed.

Jackie left the East Room and headed upstairs to the White House Residence to finally change her clothes and attempt to sleep.  In the East Room, Bobby remained near his brother’s coffin with a couple of friends, close aides, and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.  The stoic RFK – always much tougher than his older brother – was a wreck by this point, after attempting to stay strong and supportive throughout the night for his stunned sister-in-law.  Bobby had not yet looked at JFK’s remains.  To finally make the decision about whether or not JFK would have an open casket, RFK took a look at his brother’s face.  When he saw Jack in the coffin, RFK immediately agreed with Jackie’s feelings, “She’s right.  Close it.”  While the team from Gawler’s had done an admirable job of repairing the massive trauma to the President’s head, JFK was virtually unrecognizable as the man he once was.  To those who saw his body as the casket was briefly open in the East Room early that morning, it was apparent that the American people wouldn’t want to remember their fallen President in that way – as if he were a wax museum knock-off of the real John F. Kennedy.  The funeral ceremonies over the next few days would all be closed casket and the nation would remember JFK as the young, lively, inspirational President that he had been for so many Americans.

••• Since the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, there have been so many unanswered questions and theories and allegations.  Many are the result of sloppy work on behalf of the government in the hours following the shooting, during the autopsy, after the autopsy, and in the failure to protect the suspected assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, as he was being transferred to a new facility to face charges of murdering President Kennedy and Dallas Police Office J.D. Tippit.  Evidence has been lost or misplaced, and some records remain sealed until 2017 – 54 years after the assassination and 100 years after JFK’s birth.

There is one aspect of this story that received some closure, however, and that is what happened to JFK’s original casket – the expensive Handley Brittania coffin that Clint Hill ordered from Vernon O’Neal’s Funeral Home in Dallas in the hectic minutes after President Kennedy was pronounced dead.

After JFK’s autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital and the hard work by the mortuary team from Gawler’s Funeral Home to make him presentable, President Kennedy couldn’t be placed back in the beautiful but bloodstained bronze coffin that had carried him home from Texas.  Gawler’s had brought with them to Bethesda another elegant casket fit for a President – a $3,160 Marsellus 710 coffin that was crafted from “hand-rubbed, five-hundred-year-old African mahogany”.  It was that flag-draped casket from Gawler’s that John F. Kennedy, Jr. saluted and Americans saw being laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery.

The history of Vernon O’Neal’s casket did not end that night at Bethesda when President Kennedy was transferred to a different coffin.  Gawler’s Funeral Home took possession of JFK’s original casket after they placed him in the undamaged casket that their mortuary team had brought to Bethesda Naval Hospital following Kennedy’s autopsy.  Whether it was as a morbid souvenir or simply due to confusion about what to do with it, Gawler’s stored JFK’s original coffin in a warehouse in Washington, D.C.  In January 1964, less than two months after JFK’s burial, Vernon O’Neal submitted a bill to the federal government for $3,995 for the casket that Secret Service Agent Clint Hill ordered in Dallas and JFK was transported to Washington in.                 

The government felt that O’Neal’s bill was “excessive”, particularly since he had merely delivered the casket to Parkland Hospital in Dallas and had not performed any other funeral services such as embalming, chapel services or transportation of mourners.  O’Neal lowered the price by $500, but the government still had an issue with the $3,495 price tag.  What Vernon O’Neal actually wanted was the casket itself.  O’Neal had received offers of $100,000 by parties interested in collecting and displaying the casket as a unique relic of the slain President.  For the Kennedy Family – still reeling from the assassination and its aftermath – the last thing they wanted was a spectacle surrounding a bloodstained coffin that JFK had spent just a few hours in.  At the family’s urging, the federal government paid O’Neal (he received $3,160 for his services on November 22, 1963) and the General Services Administration took possession of the object in 1965.

In September 1965, the House of Representatives passed a bill which required the government to preserve any objects related to the Kennedy Assassination which might contain evidentiary value.  Several days later, Representative Earle Cabell from Texas sent a letter to Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach (who had replaced Bobby Kennedy at the Justice Department a year earlier).  In his letter, Congressman Cabell suggested that the casket had no value for anyone other than “the morbidly curious”.  Since the Kennedy Family “did not see fit to use this particular casket in the ultimate interment of the body”, Cabell felt that it was “surplus” material owned and controlled by the federal government.  To shut down those who might be “morbidly curious”, Cabell recommended that the casket “be declared the proper property of the USA and, as such and in keeping with the best interest of the country, be destroyed.”

The Kennedy Family agreed with Congressman Cabell’s sentiments and Attorney General Katzenbach ensured everyone that the casket had no evidentiary value, no good reason for display or storage, and that it was the property that the government had the right to dispose of in whichever way it sought fit.  On February 18, 1966, several members of the Air Force picked the casket up from a secure building at the National Archives just a few blocks from the White House.  The casket was placed in an Air Force truck and transported to Andrews Air Force Base – the very place that the casket had originally landed in Washington with President Kennedy inside of it less than three years earlier.  At Andrews, the Air Force team from the 93rd Air Terminal Squadron loaded the coffin on to a C130 transport plane.

To dispose of the casket, the Air Force had decided to take it to a place that JFK had once considered being buried:  the Atlantic Ocean.  Kennedy loved the sea and was said to have considered being buried at sea when he died.  Of course, we know that Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery instead, but for many reasons, the Atlantic Ocean was the perfect place for the disposal of the casket that had brought him back to Washington following his assassination.

The Air Force wanted to ensure the integrity of the casket and not allow it to become a souvenir by someone who happened to come across it floating in the ocean or washing up on the shore.  The C130 flew about 100 miles east of Washington, D.C. and descended to about 500 feet above the water.  Before taking off, the Air Force had drilled over 40 holes into the casket and filled it with three 80-pound sandbags.  It was also secured inside of a wooden crate and sealed shut in a manner so that it wouldn’t break apart upon hitting the water.  

At approximately 10:00 AM, the C130’s tail hatch was opened and the casket was pushed out of the aircraft.  Parachutes softened its fall and the coffin began to sink instantly.  The airplane circled the drop zone for about 20 minutes to make sure that the coffin didn’t resurface, but they had no reason to worry.  The Air Force had chosen an area of the Atlantic that saw very little air or sea traffic, and the casket settled in about 9,000 feet of water.  The Kennedy Family was relieved that they no longer had to worry about a bloody casket going on display somewhere for the “morbidly curious”.

#History #John F. Kennedy #JFK #President Kennedy #Assassination of John F. Kennedy #JFK Assassination #Kennedy Assassination #60th Anniversary of JFK Assassination #60th Anniversary of Kennedy Assassination #60th Anniversary #Presidents #Presidential History #Presidential Assassinations #Presidential Deaths #Death of John F. Kennedy #State Funeral of John F. Kennedy #Death and State Funeral of John F. Kennedy #Burial At Sea #Burial At Sea: The Odyssey of JFK's Original Casket #JFK's Original Casket #Presidential Funerals #Funeral of John F. Kennedy #Politics #Presidential Politics #Dallas #U.S. Air Force #Kennedy Family #Jacqueline Kennedy #Robert F. Kennedy #RFK

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

Burger Commission Report

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Reagan, informally known as the Burger Commission, was established by President George Bush through Executive Order 12304 on April 8, 1981 to investigate the assassination of United States President Ronald Reagan that had taken place on March 30, 1981. The U.S. Congress passed Senate Joint Resolution 59 authorizing the Presidential appointed Commission to report on the assassination of President Ronald Reagan, mandating the attendance and testimony of witnesses and the production of evidence. Its 776-page final report was presented to President Bush on June 30, 1982, and made public four days later. It concluded that President Reagan was assassinated by John Hinckley Jr., and that Hinckley acted entirely alone. The Commission took its unofficial name—the Burger Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger.

Committee

Warren E. Burger, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (chairman)

Barry Goldwater (R-Arizona), U.S. Senator

Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), U.S. Senator

Tom Foley (D-Washington), U.S. Representative, House Majority Whip

Robert H. Michel (R-Illinois), U.S. Representative, House Minority Leader

William J. Casey, Director of Central Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency

Floyd I. Clarke, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Joan Quigley, astrologer (not officially part of the commission, but former First Lady Nancy Reagan insisted that she be included in committee meetings so as to "leave no stone unturned.")

At one point, Nancy Reagan insisted that the Commission hold a seance to summon the spirit of President Reagan himself so he could help solve his own murder. President Bush respectfully declined the suggestion, though Senator Goldwater, a close personal friend of the Reagans, humored the former First Lady by spending a week in November of 1981 investigating the "Curse of Tippecanoe," the supposed pattern of deaths in office of presidents of the United States who won the elections in years that are evenly divisible by 20

William Henry Harrison (1840)

Abraham Lincoln (1860, 1864)

James A. Garfield (1880)

William McKinley (1896, 1900)

Warren G. Harding (1920)

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1932, 1936, 1940, 1944)

John F. Kennedy (1960)

Ronald Reagan (1980)

The Committee found no evidence of conspiracy linking Reagan's death to any previous president's, chocking it up to a coincidence as it failed to account for the death of President Zachary Taylor (1848), and the survival of Presidents Thomas Jefferson (1800, 1804) and James Monroe (1816, 1820).

State Funeral of Ronald Reagan

Date: April 3 - 7, 1981

Mourning Period: March 30 - April 30, 1981

Location: Capitol Rotunda, U.S. Capitol, Washington, DC

Participants: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George Bush, members of the 97th Congress, the 52 former Iran hostages

George Bush would probably nominate a moderate Republican to be his Vice President under the 25th Amendment sometime in May or June; while Republicans controlled the Senate, Democrats held a considerable majority in the House of Representatives, preventing Bush from appointing a hardline conservative.

George W. Romney, Governor of Michigan (1963 - 1969), HUD Secretary under Nixon (1969 - 1973)

Jim Jeffords, Attorney General of Vermont (1969 - 1973), U.S. Representative from Vermont's at-large District (1975 - present)

John Chafee, Governor of Rhode Island (1963 - 1969), U.S. Senator from Rhode Island (1976 - present)

William Scranton, Governor of Pennsylvania (1963 - 1967), United States Ambassador to the United Nations (1976 - 1977)

Bush had more experience in foreign policy then domestic, so I think Scranton would be a probable choice for VP. Governor of a swing state and an ambassador under Gerald Ford. This combined ticket of Bush/Scranton would be seen as far too liberal by Republicans in 1984, so he would likely choose a more conservative running mate for his second term.

Perhaps Barry Goldwater, Senator from Arizona, father of modern conservatism, mentor to late President Reagan, and Republican nominee for president in 1964 (he lost to Johnson in a 60-40 landslide due to his opposition to the Civil Rights Act). If not Goldwater, perhaps his son Barry Jr, a Representative from California.

Bob Dole, Senator from Kansas, and President Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976

Caspar Weinberger, Reagan and Bush's Secretary of Defense

William French Smith, Regan and Bush's Attorney General

Alexander Haig, Reagan and Bush's Secretary of State (though he would be a controversial choice, having erroneously claimed to be acting-president in the time between Reagan death and Bush's return to Washington, DC from Texas)

In June 1982 of our timeline, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, in part because the assassination failed. Attempting to assassinate a president is different than actually assassinating them, so Hinckley would very likely be found guilty and sentenced to death, becoming the first federal inmate to be executed since Victor Fregur in 1963.

#alternate history #ah #au #alternate universe #ronald reagan #john hinckley jr #reagan #hinckley #george bush #george hw bush #bush #1981 #assassination #presidential assassination #assassin #politics #political #history #us history #american history #1980s #warren e burger #warren burger #burger

[blackkudos]

Yolanda King

Yolanda Denise King (November 17, 1955 – May 15, 2007) was an African American activist and first-born child of civil rights leaders Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King. She was also known for her artistic and entertainment endeavors and public speaking. Her childhood experience was greatly influenced by her father's highly public and influential activism.

She was born two weeks before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat on a public transit bus in Montgomery, Alabama, she occasionally experienced threats to her life, designed to intimidate her parents, and became a secondary caregiver to her younger siblings and was bullied at school. When her father was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the 12-year-old Yolanda King was noted for her composure during the highly public funeral and mourning events. She joined her mother and siblings in marches, and she was lauded by such noted figures as Harry Belafonte, who established a trust fund for her and her siblings.

In her teenage years, she became an effective leader of her class in high school and was given attention by the magazines Jet and Ebony. Her teenage years were filled with even more tragedies, specifically the sudden death of her uncle Alfred Daniel Williams King and the murder of her grandmother, Alberta Williams King. While in high school, she gained lifelong friends. It was the first and only institution where King was not harassed or mistreated because of who her father was. However, she was still misjudged and mistrusted because of her skin color, based on perceptions founded solely upon her relationship with her father. Despite this, King managed to keep up her grades and was actively involved in high school politics, serving as class president for two years. King aroused controversy in high school for her role in a play. She was credited with having her father's sense of humor.

In the 1990s, she supported a retrial of James Earl Ray and publicly stated that she did not hate him. That decade saw King's acting career take off as she appeared in ten separate projects, including Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Our Friend, Martin (1999) and Selma, Lord, Selma (1999). By the time she was an adult, she had grown to become an active supporter for gay rights and an ally to the LGBT community, as was her mother. She was involved in a sibling feud that pitted her and her brother Dexter against their brother Martin Luther King III and sister Bernice King for the sale of the King Center in Atlanta, Georgia. King served as a spokesperson for her mother during the illness that would eventually lead to her death. King outlived her mother by only 16 months, succumbing to complications related to a chronic heart condition on May 15, 2007.

Early life

Early childhood: 1955–1963

Born in Montgomery, Alabama to Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, Jr., she was only two weeks old when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. Even in her infancy, Yolanda was faced with the threats her father was given when they extended to his family. In 1956, a number of white supremacists bombed the King household. Yolanda and her mother were not harmed. She and her mother, at the time of the bomb's detonation, were in the rear section of their home. Despite this, the front porch was damaged and glass broke in the home. She kept her father busy when walking on their home's floors. While her mother liked her name, her father had reservations about naming her "Yolanda" due to the possibility the name would be mispronounced. During the course of her lifetime, King's name was mispronounced to the point that it bothered her. King's father eventually was satisfied with the nickname "Yoki," and wished that if they had a second daughter, they would name her something simpler. The Kings would have another daughter almost eight years later named Bernice (born 1963). King recalled that her mother had been the main parent and dominant figure in their home, while her father was away often. Decision-making towards what school she would attend in first grade was done primarily by her mother, since her father expressed disinterest to her early in the decision making.

Martin Luther King III described his role as the second-born of their family as having made Yolanda jealous, and that she was always overcommitted but "still found time to get to the things that were most important to her". Her mother referred to her as being a confidant during the time following her husband's assassination. She complimented her mother on her achievements and her mother spoke of her in a positive light, as well. When asked by a young boy what she remembered most about her father, she admitted that her father was not able to spend much time with her and the rest of her family. When he did, she would play and swim with him. King cried when she found out her father had been imprisoned. Her father admitted that he had never adjusted to bringing up children under "inexplicable conditions". When she was 6 years old, she was saddened by classmates' remarks that her father was a "jailbird". An important early memory was that she wanted to go to Funtown, a local amusement park, with the rest of her class, but was barred from doing so due to her race. She did not understand, and asked her mother Coretta why she was not able to go. When she replied "Your father is going to jail so that you can go to Funtown." after numerous attempts to explain the issue to her, Yolanda finally understood. After having not seen her father for five weeks while he was in jail, she finally was able to meet with him alongside both of her brothers for less than half an hour.Her father also addressed the issue himself. He told her that there were many whites who were not racist and wanted her to go but there were many who were and did not want her to go. However, her father reassured her as she began to cry that she was "just as good" as anyone who went to Funtown and that one day in the "not too distant future" she was going to be able to go to "any town" along with "all of God's children".

Assassination of John F. Kennedy and Nobel Peace Prize: 1963–1964

On November 22, 1963, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, she learned of his death at school. When she returned home, she rushed to confront her mother about his death and even ignored her grandfather, Martin Luther King, Sr., to tell her mother what she had heard and that they would not get their "freedom now." Her mother tried to debunk this, insisting that they would still get it. She predicted at that time that all of the "Negro leaders" would be killed and the non-leading African-Americans would agree to segregation. Her mother started to realize that Yolanda had become more aware of the possibility that her father could be killed as well. For Christmas 1963, King and her siblings accepted a sacrificial Christmas as appealed by their parents and only received a single gift. King and her brother Martin III bragged about their selflessness at school. In 1964, upon learning her father would receive the Nobel Peace Prize, she asked her mother what her father was going to do with the money he was receiving in addition to the award. After she suggested that he would most likely give it all away, King laughed with her mother.

Enrollment at Spring Street Elementary School and last years with father: 1965–1967

King and her brother Martin Luther King III were enrolled in the fall of 1965 to Spring Street Elementary School. In 1966, she listened to a speech her father gave when he was addressing a rally. At the age of eight after writing her first play, she enrolled in the only integrated drama school of that time. The head of the school was Walt Roberts, father of the actress Julia Roberts. She began speaking at the age of ten and even filled in for her parents on occasion. Her memories of her father prompted her to state that he "believed we were all divine. I have chosen to continue to promote 'we're one, the oneness of us, and shine the spotlight,' as my father did." Coretta King wrote in her memoirs, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr., that "Martin always said that Yoki came at a time in his life when he needed something to take his mind off the tremendous pressures that bore down upon him."

Father's death: 1968

On the evening of April 4, 1968, when she was 12, Yolanda returned with her mother from Easter-dress shopping when Jesse Jackson called the family and reported that her father had been shot. Soon after, she heard of the event when a news bulletin popped up while she was washing dishes. While her siblings were trying to find out what it meant, Yolanda already knew.She ran out of the room, screamed "I don't want to hear it," and prayed that he would not die. She asked her mother at this time, if she should hate the man who killed her father. Her mother told her not to, since her father would not want that. King complimented her mother as a "brave and strong lady," leading to a hug between them. Four days later, she and her brothers accompanied their mother to Memphis City Hall on her own terms, as she and her brothers had wanted to come. King flew to Memphis, Tennessee with her brothers and mother and participated in leading a march in Memphis with sanitation workers and civil rights leaders.

King was visited by Mrs. Kennedy before her father's funeral. After the funeral, she was visited by classmates from Spring Street Middle School with flowers and cards. At that time, she was also called by Andrea Young, whose own father had insisted that she should. The two were the same age. Bill Cosby flew to Atlanta after the funeral and entertained King and her siblings. King and her siblings were assured an education thanks to the help of Harry Belafonte, who set up a trust fund for them years prior to their father's death.

In regards to the possibility that her father could have been saved, King said she doubted that her father could have lived much longer given all the stress he had during his tenure as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement. She did admit that, had he lived or he been listened to more, "we would be in a far better place." King openly stated years later that she did not hate James Earl Ray.

Teenage years and high school: 1968–1972

At Grady High School, King was president of her sophomore and junior class, and vice president of her senior class. She ranked in the top 10 percent of her class. She was active in student government and drama. She made lifelong friends while in the institution that would collectively be called the "Grady Girls". She was also on the student council. At that time, King still did not know what she wanted to do with her life, but acknowledged that many wanted her to be a preacher. Her inclinations were driven to be artistic, which did not suit the political aspects of her father's life. Of the King children, Yolanda was the only one to attend Grady High School, as her siblings would go to different high schools following her graduation.

During the family's interview with Mike Wallace in December 1968, Yolanda was introduced by her mother and revealed her role in keeping the family together. Being the oldest, she had to watch her three younger siblings; Martin Luther King III, Dexter King and Bernice King and referred to the three as independent when she watched them whenever their mother went out of town. Sometime after Martin Luther King's assassination, King told her mother "Mom, I'm not going to cry because my dad is not dead. He may be dead physically, and one day I am going to see him again".

On July 21, 1969, King's uncle and father's brother Alfred Daniel Williams King was found dead in the swimming pool of his home. His youngest two children, Esther and Vernon, were vacationing with King and her family in Jamaica when they heard of his death. On April 4, 1970, the second anniversary of her father's death, she and her sister Bernice attended their grandfather Martin Luther King, Sr.'s silent prayer for their father at his gravesite. The practice of going to her father's grave on the anniversary of either his birth or assassination became an annual ritual for the King family to mourn his death.

In her teenage years, King preferred to go by her nickname "Yoki." As she said during an interview, "I prefer Yoki. Maybe when I'm older I won't be able to stand Yoki, but Yolanda sounds so formal!" She felt teenagers were confused and were using drugs as a method to escape their problems.

At 15 she was subject to controversy when she appeared in the play "The Owl and the Pussycat" with a white male lead. Though her mother kept her naïve to the controversies so she could "fulfill [her] objective, which was to do the play", that did not stop her from learning of the negativity implemented from her role years later. Her grandfather Martin Luther King, Sr. initially was not going to go to her performance due to opposition by locals, but changed his mind afterward. During a Sunday visit to Church, King was forced to stand before the congregation and explain her actions. In response to her role in the play and her own response to the role, a man wrote to Jet predicting that she would marry a white person before she was eighteen. Despite statements such as these, King did not become aware of the public discomfort with her role until years later, citing her mother's involvement in her knowledge of the criticism.

When King was 16 she received attention in Jet in 1972, where she talked about what her father's famous name was doing for her life. In the interview with the magazine, She related how people expected her to be "stuck up" and referred to it as one of the "handicaps" of being Martin Luther King's child. She recalled having met a friend that was scared of being acquainted with her, because of her father's identity and expressed her thoughts in the colleges she wished to attend. King would ultimately attend Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts after graduating from high school.

King called her father's name and having to live up to it a "challenge" and recalled a friend when she first met a friend of hers, who believed she could not say anything to King but after beginning to know her, realized that she was "no worse than my other friends" and she "could say anything" to her. King also voiced her dislike of the assumption that she would behave just like her mother and father, and the difficulty of being perceived as not being someone others could talk to. When asked what kind of world she would like to live in, King said she wished "people could love everybody". Despite this wish, she acknowledged that this was of no ease and expressed happiness that her father had changed many things, and even made some people gain self-esteem.Positive reception came to this interview, and Yolanda was even called the "leader of the 16-year-olds" for her "calmness, her concern," and "her vision".

Early adulthood

College: 1972–1976

After graduating from high school, she went to Smith College. She took classes taught by Manning Marable and Johnnella Butler, and became satisfied with her choice of a college. But after finishing her sophomore year and returning home so she could work over the summer, her grandmother Alberta Williams King was killed on June 30, 1974. With her death, the only remaining members of King's father's immediate family were her grandfather Martin Luther King, Sr. and aunt Christine King Ferris. She was also subject to some harassment by her classmates, describing it as the "era when students were making demands and many black students were closer to the teachings of Malcolm X, or what they thought were his teachings." The children referred to her father as an "Uncle Tom" and she was scared that he would go down in history as such. She reflected "I had never read his works. I was just someone who loved someone, and I knew he had done great things and now people didn't appreciate it." She proceeded to read his books, and started to believe that her father had been correct all along.

When asked about what pressures emerged from being a daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., King stated that "as soon as people heard me speak, they would compare me to my father ... My siblings had the same kind of pressure. There was such a need, like they were looking for a miracle." At the time of her turmoil in college, King recalled having not known Malcolm X and "didn't understand daddy, so here I was trying to defend something I thought I knew about but really didn't." On April 4, 1975, King joined her family in placing azaleas over her father's crypt, marking the seventh anniversary of his assassination.

Immediate life after Smith College: 1976–1978

An alumna of Smith College after graduating in 1976, she was the subject of an essay among the "remarkable women" during a celebration during the college's one hundred and twenty-fifth year and she was a member of the Board of Directors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc. (the official national memorial to her father) and was founding Director of the King Center's Cultural Affairs Program. King became a human rights activist and actress. She stated in 2000 to USA Today, that her acting "allowed me to find an expression and outlet for the pain and anger I felt about losing my father,". Her mother's support helped in starting her acting career. Despite some early opposition to acting that she received during her controversial play in high school, King still tried to get roles and actively tried performing.

She served on the Partnership Council of Habitat for Humanity, was the first national Ambassador for the American Stroke Association's "Power to End Stroke" Campaign, a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Human Rights Campaign, and held a lifetime membership in the NAACP. King received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, a master's degree in theater from New York University, and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Marywood University. In 1978 she starred as Rosa Parks in the TV miniseries King (based on her father's life and released on DVD in 2005).

Meeting Attallah Shabazz: 1979

In 1979, Yolanda met Attallah Shabazz, the eldest daughter of Malcolm X, after arrangements had been made by Ebony Magazine to take a photograph of the two women together. Both were worried that they would not like each other due to their fathers' legacies. Instead, the two quickly found common ground in their activism and in their positive outlook towards the future of African-Americans. The two were young adults at the time and had a mutual friend who noticed they were both studying theater in New York and arranged for them to meet. A few months after King and Shabazz met, the pair decided to collaborate on a theatrical work, resulting in Stepping into Tomorrow. The play was directed towards teens and focused on the 10th year reunion of six high school friends. Stepping into Tomorrow led to the formation of Nucleus in the 1980s, a theater company which King and Shabazz founded. The theater company was based in New York City and Los Angeles and focused on addressing the issues that their fathers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, spoke of in their lifetimes.The pair performed in around 50 cities a year and did lectures together, typically in school settings.

Adult life

King holiday, arrests, and return to Smith College: 1980–1989

When presenting herself in 1980 to the GSA staff members, she stated: "Jim Crow [segregation] is dead, but his sophisticated cousin James Crow, Esq., is very much alive. We must cease our premature celebration [about civil rights already achieved] and get back to the struggle. We cannot be satisfied with a few black faces in high places when millions of our people have been locked out." She received a standing ovation afterwards, alongside a thunderous applause. In February 1982, King was a speaker during the centennial of Anne Spencer's birth. In 1984, she was arrested in the view of her mother for having protested in front of the South African Embassy, in support of anti-apartheid views. It was the first time she had ever been arrested. On January 7, 1986, Yolanda, her brother Martin Luther King III and her sister Bernice were arrested for "disorderly conduct" by officers responding to a call from a Winn Dixie market, of which had an ongoing protest against it since September of the previous year.

She showed dissatisfaction with her "generation" on January 20, 1985, and referred to them as being "laid-back and unconcerned", and "forgetting the sacrifices that allowed them to get away with being so laid-back". That same year, she presented the Martin Luther King, Jr. Award for Public Service to Chicago Mayor Harold Washington during the fifth annual Ebony American Black Achievement Awards.

She celebrated her father's holiday on January 16, 1986 and attended a breakfast in Chicago with Mayor Harold Washington. She stated that her father had a "magnificent dream", but admitted that "it still is only a dream." King started Black History Month of 1986 by giving a speech in Santa Ana, which called for the study of African-American history to not "relegated to the shortest and coldest month of the year."After having been a public speaker for over twenty years, Yolanda recalled her talents having "happened very naturally growing up in a house like mine". She also found "great irony" in President Ronald Reagan having signed a bill to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a national holiday.

She kicked off Martin Luther King, Jr. Day by starting a weeklong celebration on January 12, 1987 and talked to students about opportunities that they had at that point which their parents and grandparents did not have.On April 8, 1988, King and Shabazz were honored by Los Angeles County supervisors for their "unifying" performance and message on stage at the Los Angeles Theater Center the previous night. Their play Stepping into Tomorrow was praised by supervisors as being "entertaining and enlightening." At the time of the honor, King said that their production company had been approached by organizations seeking to arrange special staging of the play for gang members before May 1, when the show's run would end. Supervisor Kenneth Hahn said to King that he "sensed I was in the presence of a great man when I met your father."She returned to Smith College on January 26, 1989. There, she gave a speech and made references to her past difficult experiences when first coming to the college. King made it clear that while she had not been "endeared" to the institution, she was still "grateful" for her experience. She called for Americans to memorialize those who gave their lives for "the struggle for peace and justice." At this point in her life, King also served as director of cultural affairs for the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and was tasked with raising and directing funds for all artistic events.

Arizona boycott and James Earl Ray retrial: 1990–1999

On December 9, 1990, she canceled a planned appearance in a play in Tucson, Arizona and ignored a boycott going on at the time by civil rights groups and other activists for Arizona voters rejecting the proposal of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day being celebrated there. King and Shabazz had planned the play months before the voters of the state rejecting the holiday, and King prepared a statement which solidified her reasons for supporting the boycott. Despite this, Shabazz still appeared in the state and performed in the play. On January 17, 1991, Yolanda spoke before a crowd of students at Edmonds Community College, around 200 in number. She debunked complacency in having any role in progression of her father's dream. She joined her mother in placing a wreath around her father's crypt. King stressed in 1992 that love would help people make their mark on the world. That same year, she also spoke at Indiana University. In October, King gave support for a Cabrini-Green family that wants to escape the violence, and a fundraiser for their cause.

25 years after her father's assassination, she went to his gravesite. There, she joined hands with her siblings and mother along with other civil rights activists, singing We Shall Overcome. During July 1993, she agreed to speak at the Coral Springs City Centre for airfare and a fee in January 1994. She originally wanted $8,000, but was negotiated down to $6,500. During said speech, she mentioned that the fact that the poverty line in America among children had nearly tripled and urged people to "reach out" and "do what you can". In October, she uttered her belief that her father's dream of integration was not understood fully.

On February 1, 1994 King attempted to speak before a diverse class of students at North Central College. She stated, "It is entirely appropriate that you would choose to focus on multiculturalism as the opening activity of Black History Month. The only reason why Black History Month was created and still exists is because America is still struggling and trying to come to grips, come to terms with the diversity of its people." In July 1994, after seeing some photographs of her father prior to his death, Yolanda lamented that "this [had] brought back a lot of memories. It's often hard for young people to understand the fear and terror so many people felt and how bold they were to get involved in the marches. But walking through the first part of the exhibit I felt that terror." She honored her father in 1995 by performing in the Chicago Sinfonietta in the play "A Lincoln Portrait", in which she was the narrator. The "commitment" to diverse members in the audience and the play itself, was what represented the opportunities for which King fought.

In the fall of 1995, at age 39, she joined Ilyasah Shabazz and Reena Evers in saluting their mothers as they chaired an attempt at registering one million African-American women to vote in the presidential election of 1996. King joined the rest of her family in February 1997, in supporting a retrial for James Earl Ray, the man convicted of her father's murder, having realized that "without our direct involvement, the truth will never come out." In an interview with People magazine in 1999, she recalled when she first learned of her father's death and stated that "to this day, [her] heart skips a beat every time [she] hear one of those special bulletins." King appeared in the film Selma, Lord, Selma, based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches as Miss Bright. Prior to the film's release, King expressed belief in children of the time only knowing "Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, but when it is time to talk about the facts and the history, there is not a lot of knowledge. They look at me when I'm talking as if this is science fiction."

Final years: 2000–2007

King attended and spoke at the Human Rights Campaign Detroit Gala Dinner of 2000. In a twenty-four-minute-long speech, she brought up the presidential election of that year, and also quoted the words of Bobby Kennedy by recalling his line which he took from George Bernard Shaw, that of "Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?". During a presentation in May 2000, King was asked if the human race would ever become "color blind". In response, she pushed for "the goal" to be "color acceptance." Following the September 11 attacks, King spoke in North Chicago in 2002 and related that her father's wisdom during the crisis would have been of great aid to her. She mentioned the possibility that the event could have been a calling for Americans to put their loyalty towards "their race, tribe and nation", as her father once said. She, her brother Martin Luther King III and Al Sharpton sang We Shall Overcome in front of "The Sphere", which stood atop the World Trade Center prior to the September 11 attacks.

In honor of her father, King promoted a show in Los Angeles entitled "Achieving the Dream" in 2001. During the play, she changed costume numerous times and adjusted her voice and body language when changing roles. King and Elodia Tate co-edited the book Open My Eyes, Open My Soul: Celebrating Our Common Humanity, published by McGraw-Hill in 2003. In January 2004, King referred to her father as a king, but not as one who "sat on a throne, but one who sat in a dark Birmingham jail." While in Dallas in March 2004, King related; "It's only in the past half-dozen years or so that I have felt comfortable in my own skin. I don't have to try and prove anything to anyone anymore." "I struggled with a lot of the legacy for a long time, probably actually into my 30s before I really made peace with it," Yolanda stated in 2005 on "Western Skies", a public radio show based in Colorado. During the fall of 2004 she played Mama in "A Raisin in the Sun" at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Cornell University.

Mother's death, sibling dispute and final months: 2006–2007

Coretta Scott King began to decline in health after suffering a stroke in August 2005. She also was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The four children of the civil rights activist noticed "something was happening". King was having a conversation with her mother in her home when she stopped talking. Coretta Scott King had a blood clot move from her heart and lodge in an artery in her brain. She was hospitalized on August 16, 2005, and was set to come home as well. Alongside the physician that took care of her mother, Dr. Maggie Mermin and her sister, Yolanda told the press that her mother was making progress on a daily basis and was expected to make a full recovery. She became a spokesman for the American Heart Association after her mother's stroke, promoting a campaign to raise awareness about strokes.

That year, she and her brother Dexter came to oppose their other brother and sister, Martin Luther King III and Bernice King, on the matter of selling the King Center. King and Dexter were in favor of sale, but their other siblings were not. After Coretta Scott King died on January 30 of the next year, Yolanda, like her siblings, attended her funeral. When asked about how she was faring following the death of her mother, Yolanda responded: "I connected with her spirit so strongly. I am in direct contact with her spirit, and that has given me so much peace and so much strength." She found her mother's personal papers in her home.

She preached in January 2007 to an audience in Ebenezer Baptist Church to be an oasis for peace and love, as well as to use her father's holiday as starting ground for their own interpretations of prejudice. She spoke on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day 2007 to attendants at the Ebenezer Baptist Church and stated: "We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other,". After her hour-long presentation, she joined her sister and her aunt, Christine King Farris, in signing books. On May 12, 2007, days before her death, she spoke at St. Mary Medical Center, on the part of the American Stroke Association. It would be the last time she would speak on behalf of the association.

Death

On May 15, 2007, King stated to her brother Dexter that she was tired, though he thought nothing of it due to her "hectic" schedule. Around an hour later, King collapsed in the Santa Monica, California home of Philip Madison Jones, her brother Dexter King's best friend, and could not be revived. Her death came a year after her mother died. Her family has speculated that her death was caused by a heart condition. In the early hours of May 19, 2007, King's body was brought to Atlanta, Georgia by private plane belonging to Bishop Eddie Long. A public memorial for Yolanda King was held on May 24, 2007, at Ebenezer Baptist Church Horizon Sanctuary in Atlanta, Georgia. Many in attendance did not know her, but came out of respect for the King family's history of non-violence and social justice. King was cremated, in accordance with her wishes. She was 51. All three of her siblings lit a candle in her memory.

Bernice King said it was "very difficult standing here blessed as her one and only sister. Yolanda, from your one and only, I thank you for being a sister and for being a friend." Martin Luther King III uttered that "Yolanda is still in business. She just moved upstairs." Maya Angelou wrote a tribute to her, which was read during the memorial service. She wrote "Yolanda proved daily that it was possible to smile while wreathed in sadness. In fact, she proved that the smile was more powerful and sweeter because it had to press itself through mournfulness to be seen, force itself through cruelty to show that the light of survival shines for us all." Many former classmates of both Grady High School and Smith College attended to remember her. Raphael Warnock stated; "She dealt with the difficulty of personal pain and public responsibility and yet ... she emerged from it all victorious. Thank you for her voice."

Ideas, influence, and political stances

To the time of her death, King continued to express denial in her father's dreams and ideals being fulfilled during her lifetime. In 1993, she debunked any thought that her father's "dream" had been anything but a dream, and was quoted as saying "It's easier to build monuments than to make a better world. It seems we've stood still and in many ways gone backward since Martin Luther King Jr. was alive.", during a celebration that marked what would have been her father's sixty-fourth birthday.

Despite this, she was quoted in January 2003 of saying that she was "a 100 percent, dyed-in-the-wool, card-carrying believer in 'The Dream'. It's a dream about freedom—freedom from oppression, from exploitation, from poverty ... the dream of a nation and a world where each and every child will have the opportunity to simply be the very best that they can be." The statement was made while she was in the presence of 800 people who gathered to honor her father at the Everett Theatre. She made it clear that month that she was not trying to fill her father's footsteps, noting jokingly that "They're too big" and that she would "fall and break [her] neck". She also advocated for her father's holiday to be used as a day for helping others, and also expressed dissatisfaction on the basis of people relaxing on his day. On January 15, 1997, she spoke at Florida Memorial College and expressed what she believed her father would feel if "he knew that people were taking a day off in his memory to do nothing". She disliked cliches used to define her father and expressed this to Attallah Shabazz, and recalled having seen a play where her father was a "wimp" and carried The Bible with him everywhere.

King was an ardent activist for gay rights, as was her mother, Coretta. King protested many times over gay rights. She was among 187 people arrested during a demonstration by lesbian and gay rights activists. She stated at the Chicago's Out and Equal Workplace Summit in 2006 "If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, you do not have the same rights as other Americans, you cannot marry, ... you still face discrimination in the workplace, and in our armed forces. For a nation that prides itself on liberty, justice and equality for all, this is totally unacceptable. Like her parents and siblings, King did not outright go and make any affiliation with a political party publicly. Despite this, she did voice opposition to President Ronald Reagan in his reluctance to sign Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, her father's national holiday.

Legacy

Dexter King said of his sister, "She gave me permission. She allowed me to give myself permission to be me." Jesse Jackson stated that King "lived with a lot of the trauma of our struggle. The movement was in her DNA." Joseph Lowery stated; "She was a princess and she walked and carried herself like a princess. She was a reserved and quiet person who loved acting." January 2008's issue of Ebony, her relationship with Rev. Suzan Johnson Cook was highlighted in an article written by the minister, as she dubbed her deceased longtime friend a "queen whose name was King". On May 25, 2008, her brother Martin Luther III and his wife, Arndrea, became the parents of a baby girl and named her Yolanda Renee King, after his late sister. During a 2009 reunion at her alma mater Smith College, a walk was done in her memory by fellow alumni.

Portrayals in film

Yolanda has mostly been portrayed in films that revolve around her parents.

Felecia Hunter, in the 1978 television miniseries King.

Melina Nzeza as a child and Ronda Louis-Jeune as an adult, in the 2013 television movie Betty and Coretta.

Filmography

King (1978, TV Mini-Series) as Rosa Parks

Hopscotch (1980) as Coffee Shop Manager

Death of a Prophet (1981, TV Movie) as Betty Shabazz

No Big Deal (1983, TV Movie) as Miss Karnisian's Class

Talkin' Dirty After Dark (1991) as Woman #2

America's Dream (1996, TV Series)

Fluke (1996, TV Movie) as Mrs. Crawford (segment "The Boy Who Painted Christ Black")

Ghosts of Mississippi (1996) as Reena Evers

Drive by: A Love Story (1997, Short) as Dee

Our Friend, Martin (1999, Video) as Christine King (voice)

Selma, Lord, Selma (1999, TV Series) as Miss Bright

Funny Valentines (1999) as Usher Lady #2

The Secret Path (1999, TV Movie) as Ms. Evelyn

Odessa (2000, Short) as Odessa

JAG (2000, TV Series) as Federal Judge Esther Green

Any Day Now (2001, TV Series) as Marilyn Scott

Liberty's Kids (2002, TV Series) as Elizabeth Freeman (voice)

The Still Life (2006) as Herself / Art Buyer

#11/17 #05/15

[the-mangled-readings]

Project AI0.043 (Part 5)

lA/N: With Today’s new Part, I wanted to move things ahead just a little, so we can have a better understanding of what’s going to happen on the future parts, it will all make sense, I promise. 

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Reader

Story Summary: On the 12th Hour of the first day of October 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth. This was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire and adventurer, resolved to locate and adopt as many of the children as possible. He got seven of them but never found the last one.

Chapter Summary: We jump WAY ahead into the present, when Five comes back to the Past, and learn a little about the situation Five and the Reader got into.

Warnings: Spoilers, violence, blood, Language.

Word Count: 3,030

Tag List: @featuringcone9​ @lesbianismybitchname​ @fiveisadorable​ @here-in-never-land sweetingcas @whatawildone

PROLOGUE | PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 5.5 | PART 6 | PART 6.5 | PART 7

November 22, 1963 -  John F. Kennedy Assassination Day

“Alright, I’m in position Foxtrot ... What's your status?” You spoke through your headset, waiting for Five to answer. Nothing. “Foxtrot ...”

“I’m here Alfa, I’m just enjoying the view, my partner looks marvelous with that infantry rifle.” He praised, making you grin at his comment. “It’s a 6.5×52mm Carcano Model 91/38, if I may say ...” You teased over the headset. 

“Hey, um-I’ve been thinking lately ...” His tone quickly changing. “Yeah, about what?” You asked, repositioning on the spot. “I think I know the equation ...” The both of you stayed silent, you knew what those words meant, he founded a way to go back. “Five, we can’t do that now ...” You warned him. “Yeah well, I think I don’t got much of a choice now, do I Anya” 

You knew he wasn’t going to let this go, he was hardheaded when it came to going back in his time, at the beginning you had promised him that you were going to help him, and you did but through the years, the both of you became closer than ever, you had been married for a decade and you knew if he left, all of those years would be gone too, but you knew it was also important to him, since his siblings died in the Apocalypse. “Anya, I need you t-” 

“No, please, not right now.” You quickly cut him off, your voice breaking on the process. “If not now, then when, huh?”

(Announcer on Radio) 

... Dallas Love Field, the Dallas-Fort Worth area broadcasters bring you a special description of the arrival of President John F. Kennedy. 

“Please Anya ...” Five begged. Time was running out, if he was going to do this, it was now or never. 

And the crowd yells, and the president of the United States ...

“Okay ... Give me a second.” You finally gave in, taking a deep breath you teleported part of yourself towards Five location, leaving another double on your previous spot. “I’m here ...” Placing a hand over Five’s shoulder he smiled back at you. 

(Announcer 2 on Radio)

... To get another view of the president as he and his First Lady depart Love Field.

“Are you sure you got the right equation this time, I don’t want to repeat Vietnam.” You insisted, only making him chuckle. “I’m sure of bit, it’s going to work I promise.” He held your chin up, wiping a tear away from your cheek. “And if it doesn’t ... I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t ...” He held your hands up, kissing them softly. “How do you know that ...”

“Because I trust you Printsessa ...” You never knew how, but he would always take your breath away, even with the simplest thing, it always had an effect on you. “Okay ... get ready then.”

(Announcer 3 on Radio) 

The presidential car moving out.

The president and First Lady ... head out for downtown Dallas, where thousands should already be on the street right now ...

Five quickly pulled out an old book, scanning through it, trying to find again the equation. 

“Come on Five ... we don’t got much time.” You insisted. 

(Announcer)

Dallas police out here in force today, doing a beautiful job of handling the crowd along with a contingent of Texas Rangers. 

“Found it ...” Five whispered, placing the book on his right side, closing his fists as tight as he could, concentrating deeply. You watched as the air slowly whooshed through you, and began to head electricity crackling through his fists. 

“Anya ... Do it ... Now!” Five begged, and you did as you told. Raising your right hand towards him, your body began to light up, your veins and eyes glowed a bright orange, your breathing began to deepen. Fives body was trembling but right ahead of him, a blue like portal began to appear. The wind howled, but everything around them seemed to be stopping in time, and then through the portal, he noticed 5 figures.

“We did it, Anya ... We d-” He turned to see his wife who was tearing up again. “I promise everything is going to be okay, we’ll be together in no time.” He looked back at you, not so sure of his words, which you already knew. “Jus-just G-go ...” Your voice was cracking up from the pain. “I love you, Anya.” 

He turned to the portal again, and then saw an object flying through it, a fire extinguisher? But quickly pushed himself through the portal, yelping on the progress. It burned, every second of bit burned, but he didn’t care, it was now or never. He pushed and pushed until he went through it and fell into the floor.

Five slowly got up and watched the figures he saw approach him, it was his sibling, all grown.

“Does anyone else see little Number Five, or is that just me?” He heard Klaus asked everybody, and that’s when it hit him. Little? Five looked down and sure enough, he was back as a 13th-year-old boy. “Shit ...”

“What’s the date? The exact date.” Five sighed as he reached over for some bread. “The 24th” Vanya answered, everybody’s eyes were on the small boy. “Of what?” He insisted again. “March.” Taking a moment to think he nodded. “Good.”

“So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?” Luther watched Five closely as he placed two slices of the bread on the wooden board, not saying a word. “It’s been 17 years.” Luther insisted, standing in front of Five, making him scoffed at his statement. “It’s been a lot longer than that.” He teased as he walked through the taller sibling. “I haven’t missed that.” Luther muttered.

“Where’d you go?” Diego continued. “The future. It’s shit, by the way.” Five answered, reaching for marshmallows this time, and returning once more to his previous spot. “Called it!” Klaus pointed. “I should’ve listened to the old man. You know, jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice.” Five explained, placing some peanut butter on the table, quickly making a pause, looking over at his perplexed siblings.“Nice dress.” 

“Oh, well, Danke!” Klaus said excitedly.

“Wait, how did you get back?” Vanya asked still confused. “In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time.” Five explained again, only making them more confused. “That makes no sense.” Diego whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Well, it would if you were smarter.” Five teased, making Diego mad, but Luther quickly stopped him. “How long were you there?” Luther continued.

“Forty-five years. Give or take.” Making everyone sink even more on their seats. “So what are you saying? That you’re 58?” 

“No, my consciousness is 58. Apparently, my body is now 13 again.” Five scoffed at the question, walking away with his sandwich. “Wait, how does that even work?” Vanya insisted. “Anya kept saying the equations were off. Eh.” Five looked away while taking a bite. “Bet she’s laughing now ... but then again, she was right, I needed her help.” 

“Anya?” Vanya asked, making everyone look at Five even more curious. Hmm. Five walked over the table again, picking up some newspaper. “Guess I missed the funeral.” He said while reading over the news of his deceased adoptive father. “How’d you know about that?” Luther asked blankly. “What part of the future do you not understand?” Five’s tone was now annoyed. “Heart failure, huh?” He asked for confirmation. “Yeah.” Diego nodded, but Luther quickly answered with a “No.” Making everyone in the table roll their eyes. Hmm. Five clicked his tongue. “Nice to see nothing’s changed.” He finished, walking away. “Uh, that’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Allison turned to Five, who continued to walk away. “What else is there to say? The circle of life.” Everyone either shook their head or sighed at his response, clearly, he wasn’t worried one bit about the sudden death of their adoptive father. “Well ... That was interesting.” Luther turned to everyone.

Five made his way to his old room, noticing that nothing hadn’t changed around the house either, everything was still in the same place; Scratches, holes, cracks, everything was where it used to be. As he made his way through the door, he quickly opened his closet door, eager to get rid of his old suit only to be welcomed by his old uniform suits. “Ah, shit.”

After changing, he made his way to the old fireplace, standing just ahead of his portrait. He began to hear Vanya’s steps behind him. “Nice to know Dad didn’t forget me.” He turned to see her smiling. “Read your book, by the way. Found it in a library that was still standing.” He began to circle her, noticing her smile quickly dropping. “I thought it was pretty good, all things considered.” He praised. “Yeah, definitely ballsy, giving up the family secrets.” Finally turning to her. “Sure that went over well.”

“They hate me.” Her voice softly breaking. “Oh, there are worse things that can happen.” He reassured her. “You mean like what happened to Ben?” 

“Was it bad?” Five asked, but Vanya only nodded painfully. A long and thick silence began to take over them, while outside the thunder only rumbled.

After the long and awkward funeral, and Luther’s and Diego’s typical fights, Five had enough.

“We don’t have time for this.” He whispered as he walked away from his siblings. Hearing Ben’s statute being thrown into the floor, Five sighed deeply. “The world is going to end sooner.” Making his way into his room, he laid on the small bed, thinking in his father’s words.

“Nietzsche once said; 

Man is as a rope stretched between the animal and the superhuman. A rope over an abyss. It is a dangerous crossing, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous trembling, and halting. As much as you must strive for individual greatness, and strive you must, for it won’t come to you of its own accord ... you must also remember that there is no individual stronger than the collective. 

The ties that bind you together make you stronger than you are alone. They will make you impervious to the pain and hardship the world will thrust upon you. And believe me when I tell you, life will be hard. It will be painful. 

We can accomplish anything when we accept responsibility together. This is what creates trust. 

Together, you will stand against the reign of evil ...”

Hours passed before he noticed he had knocked out. Quickly making his way down to the kitchen, he began to look around for his energy boost, Caffeine. Hearing someone approaching, it was Allison. “Where's Vanya?” She asked, dropping her coat on one of the chairs, turning to Klaus and Five. “Oh, she’s gone.” Klaus answered, playing with a bass guitar. “That’s unfortunate.” Five point out as he lifted an empty jar. 

“Yeah.” Allison responded, not knowing he meant the empty coffee jar. “An entire square block. Forty-two bedrooms, 19 bathrooms, but no, not a single drop of coffee.” He snapped, making Allison frown. “Dad hated caffeine.” 

“Well, he hated children, too, and he had plenty of us.” Klaus joked, but they just stood there in awkward silence. “I’m taking the car.”

“Where are you going?” Klaus asked while putting his guitar away. “To get a decent cup of coffee.” Five scoffed. “Do you even know how to drive?” Allison teased. “I know how to do everything.” Making the 13th-year-old snap at her, while jumping through space and ending on the old family cars seat. Turning the engine on and quickly driving off into the nearest coffee shop. 

Griddy’s Doughnuts sign shined through the cold and dark night. 

The old family car breaks screeched as Five hit them. Quickly parking it on the side and sprinting inside the coffee shop, he took a seat on one of the bar stools, hitting the bell eagerly. Hearing behind him the doors opening too. Sighing, he turned to see an old man, exhaling deeply as he was sitting next of him. 

“Sorry, sink was clogged.” A small old blonde waitress appeared, chuckling at the pair. “So, what’ll it be?” She began pulling out her pen and notebook. The man next of Five began his order. “Uh, give me a chocolate éclair.” He smiled warmly at her.

“Mm-hmm. Sure. Can I get the kid a glass of milk or something?” She asked innocently, as she turned to the now annoyed 13th-year-old boy, scoffing at her request he simply said. “The kid wants coffee. Black.” Making the blonde look over at the man next of Five, chuckling nervously. “Cute kid.” Turning to find Five forcing a smile, taking it as her cue that she needed to get going. 

Five sighed deeply and turned to the man.  “Don’t remember this place being such a shithole. I used to come here as a kid. Used to sneak out with my brothers and sisters and eat doughnuts till we puked. I even brought my wife in here once, and we ended up making it a tradition, to come every year in our anniversary, we used to order milkshakes. Simpler times, huh?” He smiled at the joyful memories he had in this place, not noticing the frown on the man’s face. 

“Eh, I suppose.” He answered, still confused as to why is a small boy like him was talking like a grown-up, like if he actually meant it. The small waitress came back and handed them their orders, the man ended up paying for Five, and he couldn’t help to notice that he worked for Ishmael’s Towing. “You must know your way around the city.”

“I hope so. I’ve been driving it for 20 years.” He said smiling. “Good. I need an address.”

After a couple of minutes, the man left, leaving Five alone with his warm coffee, not long before someone else came into the shop. Five noticed a group of 4 armed men, dressed in black, stand behind him. “Hmm. That was fast.” He said bluntly. “I thought I’d have more time before they found me.”

“Okay. So let’s all be professional about this, yeah?”One of the men spoke, he was just inches away from Five, his gun aimed directly at the boy’s head, while everybody else stood by, watching them. “On your feet and come with us. They want to talk.” He ordered.

“I’ve got nothing to say.” Five’s tone was so calmed, the men started to worry. “It doesn’t have to go this way. You think I want to shoot a kid? Go home with that on my conscience?” The man insisted. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that.” Five turned to face the man. “You won’t be going home.” And with that Five slowly grabbed a knife that the waitress had given him, and quickly turned to the man, teleporting behind the armed man and stabbing him behind the neck. 

One by one, they all dropped dead. 

Five sighed and walked over to one of the dead bodies, taking his tie off his neck, and quickly fixing it on him. He began to hear gruntings from the other side and slowly walked over, kneeling over the struggling man, snapping his neck instantly. He was about to leave when he noticed a blue butterfly fly over the shop, landing on his right forearm. “Hello, Printsessa .” He smiled and turned his gaze towards the butterflies direction, a green glowing box, it was a tracker. “I guess I got no choice, huh.” And the butterfly stood still, making his way to one of the tables, Five took one of the man's knife and rolled up his sleeve. The butterfly watched on top of the coffee cup, as Five slowly cut through his right forearm, groaning from the pain he took a small green chip, that wouldn’t stop beeping, watching it closely, he turned to the butterfly. “I guess they’re smart after all, I hope you’re okay wherever you are Anya.” And with that, the butterfly faded away. “Until then Printsessa.” 

Five walked away from the bloodied cafe, dropping the chip to a puddle, and fixing his tie once more, before getting in the car and driving off. 

After driving around downtown, he founded Vanya’s apartment and decided to make a quick visit. He looked around, she kept it simple, not so much to stare but it sure needed some locks. He heard the jingle of her keys and turned the light on as soon as she stepped in.

“Jesus!” Vanya yelped. “You should have locks on your windows.” He persuaded. “I live on the second floor.” She said while dropping her keys on the side. “Rapist can climb.” He insisted. “You are so weird.” She rolled her eyes while closing the door, behind her.

Taking a seat by him, she noticed blood on his forearm. “Is that blood?”

“It’s nothing.” He brushed her off. “Why are you here?” Five sighed and looked up, not meeting her eyes. “I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust.”

“Why me?” She insisted. “Because you’re ordinary.” He said only making her look down. “Because you’ll listen.” And with that Vanya quickly ran to the bathroom to retrieve some alcohol, gauze, and tape to clean him up. Five slowly rolled up his sleeve, letting her clean him up. Vanya inhaled deeply as she saw the wound, it looked deep, but Five didn’t even flinch, not even when the alcohol made contact with his skin. “When I jumped forward and got stuck in the future, do you know what I found?”

“No.” She softly said. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never figured out what killed the human race, but ... I did find something else. The date it happens. The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.” He confessed, watching Vanya's terrified reaction. “I’ll put on a pot of coffee.”

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[girlactionfigure]

They have names. They were attending church that Sunday. One of the girls was Carol Denise McNair (pictured here). She was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1951. She was 11-years-old when she and four other young girls went into the basement of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963 to prepare for a sermon, entitled "The Love That Forgives." Denise McNair and the three other girls, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley would die in the church after a bomb planted by the KKK exploded in the church. The sole survivor of that group was Sarah Collins Rudolph, then 12, the sister of Addie Mae Collins. She remembers, "Denise walked over to Addie and said, ‘Addie, would you tie my sash?’. We all was sitting there watching her [get ready to] tie her sash and all of a sudden I heard this sound. Boom!” Her sister, Addie Mae Collins, 14, and friends, Denise McNair, 11, Carole Rosamond Roberts, 14, and Cynthia Wesley, 14, all had lost their lives in the bombing. Collins Rudolph later was rescued from the rubbish of the bombing with the loss of sight in her left eye. "Tomorrow marks 56 years since the murder of four young girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama," according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. "During his eulogy for McNair, Robertson, Wesley and Collins, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the attack 'one of the most vicious and tragic crimes ever perpetuated against humanity,' according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some white political leaders before the bombing had encouraged violent acts toward African Americans. Dr. King had sent a telegram to then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace, telling the state’s top segregationist: “The blood of our little children is on your hands.” Ten days before the bombing, Wallace had railed against the civil rights movement to The New York Times, saying, “What this country needs is a few first-class funerals.” President John F. Kennedy would say, "If these cruel and tragic events can only awaken that city and state - if they can only awaken this entire nation to a realization of the folly of racial injustice and hatred and violence, then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost." The perpetrators of the bombing at the time received a $100 fine and a suspended 180-day jail sentence. Charles Morgan, Jr., a young, white Alabama lawyer, would deliver a passionate and powerful speech, asking, "Who did it? Who threw that bomb?" and answer "We all did it . . . Every last one of us is condemned for that crime and the bombing before it and a decade ago. We all did it. "The 'who' is every little individual who talks about the 'nig**rs' and spreads the seeds of his hate to his neighbor and his son. The jokester, the crude oaf whose racial jokes rock the party with laughter. The 'who' is every governor who ever shouted for lawlessness and became a law violator. It is every senator and every representative who in the halls of Congress stands and with mock humility tells the world that things back home aren't really like they are. It is courts that move ever so slowly, and newspapers that timorously defend the law." Dr. King would say, “[T]his afternoon, in a real sense [the four girls] have something to say to each of us in their death. They have something to say to every minister of the gospel who has remained silent behind the safe security of stained-glass windows. “They have something to say to every politician who has fed his constituents with the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism. … They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.” In a story by the Washington Post, Denise McNair's parents shared that Denise had "a comfortable, enriching life, with a piano and dance lessons." Addie liked to play hopscotch and was often the peacemaker for arguments among her seven brothers and sisters. Cynthia did really well in reading and math, was constantly laughing and "just full of fun all the time." Carole was involved in Jack and Jill of America, the Girl Scouts, the marching band, the choir and the science club. If Denise had lived, her sisters say, she "would have been awesome." Before the bombing, Denise had organized fundraisers to fight muscular dystrophy and would get the other neighborhood children together to read poetry. Her sister said she remembers stories of Denise standing up for others, and says, she would have been "a doctor or lawyer or politician." Denise, however, did not understand the hate she would sometimes face. Her parents tried to teach her that not all whites were racist but could not spare their child the indignities of Jim Crow segregation. "Denise cried . . . when Mr. McNair took her to a five-and-dime store and was forced to explain why she could not sit at the counter for a hot dog," according to the Washington Post. “Remember, baby, what we told you about those few mean white people?” her father told her. “Well, those few people don’t want you to buy a hot dog in a five-and-ten-cent store in Birmingham, Alabama.” For months after his daughter’s death, her father said, he did not cry. “I was angry,” he later told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “But I had a sense of balance. People were asking me, ‘Why don’t you leave?’ I said, ‘Where else can I go and not still be black in the United States?’ My intent was to try to make this a better section of the world.” Rudolph, who has been speaking out, said recently about the bombing she survived, “We shouldn’t think of doing people like that. You don’t know them, and you want to do harm to them? It’s time for this whole nation to really love each other and stop all the killing.” Rudolph said the biggest lesson she learned from her traumatic experience was to love. “That was the name of the sermon,” she said. “That’s what they were talking about that Sunday," she said in an article from The Press of Atlantic City, June 2019. Today, a memorial named “Four Spirits” stands across the street from the church with the inscription “A love that forgives” – the title of the pastor’s undelivered sermon on Sept. 15, 1963. Langston Hughes would also write: “Four little girls Who went to Sunday School that day And never came back home at all– But left instead Their blood upon the wall… …Might be awakened someday soon By songs upon the breeze As yet unfelt among Magnolia trees.”

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page