[freethistle]

At that time I was young and planning to register with Conservative Party in New York when I was old enough to vote. The anger was definitely right-wing.

We had the John Birch society really active-they had the Let Freedom Ring telephone message line going-and they were anti-Kennedy. I thought it was a little over the top but I used to call in and get the message of the day.

Years later I found out from in-laws in the midwest that the local civic leaders in their town had secret meetings when Kennedy ran to discuss what to do in the event he let the Pope take over religion in the US.

(Some of that may seem crazy now but the fear was real. One of my in-laws attended the meeting and he was genuinely concerned about Kennedy being a danger).

Some people were making plans for joining the resistance and going underground if Kennedy got too cozy with the Pope or the communists. He was considered then to be a liberal.

It was sort of weird because the Catholic Church was very anti-communist and had official prayers to be said for the conversion of Russia. (maybe they worked).

The New York Times, iirc, had an article before his visit to Dallas about the anti-Kennedy stuff going on there.

There were right wing Democrats in those days,and right wing Republicans-they were scared of change, opposed Kennedy and things were kind of rough.

I thought then and still think that Oswald was CIA-connected-which doesn't mean the CIA killed Kennedy. But a person going to Russia in those days was a very rare thing.

Heck, a girl in my grade school back then wrote to Russia for a penpal and she got a visit from the FBI.

If you 'defected' to Russia in the 1950s or early 60s you were a traitor and would have been followed by the FBI, and have an enormous FBI file.

[WaterDragon]

I remember, in the Deep South, at that time that Kennedy was hated by the staunchest Democrats. He could only have gotten votes by fraud, and the Democratic party down there engaged in voter fraud openly as a matter of course.