Impeach Earl Warren

            IMPEACH EARL WARREN, declared one billboard after another throughout the nation, especially in the South, in the late 1950’s and 1960’s. It was rumored they were paid for by an organization called the John Birch Society, but no one seemed to know for sure.

            Standing beneath such a sign on Highway 80 I found to be a good place to hitchhike after football practice in the fall. I seemed to always get a ride. It was six miles to the road where I got out of whatever car or truck had picked me up. Sometimes the drivers were white, sometimes they were black. One was an Air Force colonel on his way to a new posting who, seeing my duffel bag stuffed with football gear to be washed, had hoped I was traveling a longer distance. He was disappointed when I got out and walked the last mile to my house in order to feed forty head of White-Faced Herefords. They were always glad to see me. It probably had more to do with the hay and cottonseed meal mixed with salt I served up of an afternoon. They seemed to know they were destined for the slaughterhouse and I refused to become too attached to them even though I had treated their pink eye, helped deliver their calves, and generally tended to their needs until that eventful time when they would be hauled off to market.

            As a confirmed and unapologetic Gutenbergian, I was hooked when I recently ran across a vintage hardback copy of the Warren report. Upon examination, I learned the book was published by Doubleday and Company in 1964.

            Its sticker price: $4.99

            Its size: 9” x 6” x 2”

            Its weight: 3 pounds

            Number of pages: 887

            Its title: The Official Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is printed on the spine of the book in silver letters with a Presidential Seal on the black cloth cover.

            This tome opens with commentary by Louis Nizer, a New York trial lawyer born in Great Britain, with an afterword by the noted narrative historian Bruce Catton, whose other published works chronicled the American Civil War.

            In excellent condition, the book’s only flaw is a child’s scribble in blue crayon and yellow pencil on the front page. It is otherwise virgin reading, full of tedious description and uninspired prose. The writing has all the grace and style of a lawyer’s brief. Yet, when one begins to read, it is at your own peril. The reader can easily become submerged in facts, and even obsessed with this investigation of events that occurred on that November day in Dallas long ago.

            The official report had been ordered by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the commission headed by the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren. This thorough accounting of the President’s assassination was intended to quiet the speculators, mollify and pacify the populace. It would do none of these things.

            November 22, 1963 dawned wet, cold, and blustery, but would clear off as the late fall sun warmed the South in general, and central Texas in particular. As the Presidential motorcade made ready to depart, the plexiglass bubble-top seemed unnecessary, so the limousine carrying the President and his wife, Governor and Mrs. John Connally, along with various Secret Service types, pulled out into the motorcade. Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife Lady Bird were further back in the long line of black limousines that contained various dignitaries, elected officials, security, and members of the press.  

            Thus began the phenomenon of extraordinary spontaneous coincidences that would result in the death of a President, a Dallas police officer, and the accused murderer of each, over the next several days.

            “Why did this have to happen in Texas?” was a quote attributed to the Vice President’s wife, Lady Bird Johnson.

            Why did it have to happen at all? The answer is of course, it didn’t have to happen, and yet it did.

            To declare the Warren Commission report dense is to damn it with faint praise. Conspiracy theorists, while always with us, had a field day with the report, its content, its contradictions, its omissions, and the seemingly foregone conclusion that the Presidential assassination was the result of a peculiarly American phenomenon - the lone gunman.

            Oh well, what else is new?

            I often reflect on those days. The Impeach Earl Warren signs disappeared just as they had arrived, quietly, without fanfare and under the cover of darkness. I think of the many rides I caught back-and-forth with farmers, numbers runners, bootleggers, preachers, and the Air Force colonel. I wonder if he served until retirement and was honorably discharged. Vietnam was just around the corner, but as an officer he wasn't likely to see action. I wonder if he ever found that hitchhiker who was ready to ride with him, for the long-haul.

            Our football team went seven and three that season. We played Mechanicsville in the Timber Bowl and won 14 to 7. It was late November 1963 and nothing would ever be the same.

William Dunlap