*The Assassination
Politics brought John Kennedy to Texas in 1963. The 35th President won the conservative state in the 1960 election largely for his tough stand on Cuba, his promised defense build-up, and his Texan running-mate. But Kennedy's 1,026 days in office were characterized by increasingly liberal policies. The failed 1961 Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1963 Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets, and the administration's support of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement added to Kennedy's growing unpopularity in right-wing circles. In the nine months before the President's visit to Dallas, the Secret Service had received more than 400 threats on his life. On Nov. 18, one of these caused the cancellation of a planned motorcade through Miami.
In Texas, a state dependent on the oil and defense industries, recent moves to repeal the sacrosanct 27.5% oil depletion allowance and plans to begin withdrawal of U.S. military "advisors" from Vietnam were viewed with particular alarm, nowhere more visibly than in Dallas, a hotbed of right-wing fringe activity. In October 1963, U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson had been shoved, spat on, and hit with a picket sign there. When Kennedy read the Dallas Morning News on Friday morning, November 22nd, he was greeted by a full-page ad in bold, black type suggesting he was a communist and a traitor. A few hours later, as he rode through downtown Dallas accompanied by Texas Governor John Connally and Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, the motorcade route was lined with posters picturing Kennedy with the words "Wanted for Treason." The stage was set for assassination.
*Source: Back of card