Free Republic

Seven months before he shot President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald tried to kill Major General Edwin Walker Seven months before Lee Harvey Oswald shot President John F. Kennedy, he took his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to Major General Edwin Walker‘s house, stood by the fence, aimed towards the window, and shot at him. Walker was a stark anti-communist voice and an increasingly strident critic of the Kennedy’s, whose strong political stances had him pushed out of the army in 1961. In an excerpt, published at the Daily Beast, from a new book, Dallas 1963, Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis tell the...

The battle (riot) at Ole Miss continued into the morning hours of Monday October 1, 1962. Protestors used a bulldozer and a car to batter into the federal marshal force. Hundreds were injured in the fighting. James Meredith was not harmed by the protestors who directed their attack at the marshals. Two people were killed in the fighting. A local jukebox repairman Ray Gunter and a London newspaper reporter, Paul Guihard, were killed by .38 caliber bullets that a Mississippi state investigator believed came from the federal marshals. President Kennedy, Attorney General Kennedy and the president's aides stayed in the...

Shortly after midnight (early Sunday September 30th) President Kennedy signed orders federalizing the Mississippi National Guard. The talks over some sort of "honorable surrender" by Governor Ross Barnett continued. The hope was for a situation where Barnett and the state troopers would stand aside when confronted by the federal force. This kind of politically beneficial event was achieved next year in 1963 when Alabama Governor George Wallace stood in the door at the University of Alabama in the face of federal orders to admit black students. But for now the move was on and Governor Barnett wanted to look good...

Federal officials were increasingly concerned about the crowds of people coming to Oxford, Mississippi to oppose the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi. Some were members of the Ku Klux Klan and violence was feared. The goal of the Kennedy Administration remained to enforce the court order to admit Meredith with the minimum amount of force. But the crowds were making that a more difficult proposition. Among the opponents arriving in Oxford was Edwin Walker. Walker was the major-general who had commanded troops just five years before in Little Rock when the first nine black students attended...

A thousand soldiers ringed the Little Rock Central High School on Wednesday morning September 25, 1957. White students who wanted to go to class went in, but many stayed away. Major General Edwin Walker, commander of the troops, addressed students in the auditorium shortly after school began. General Walker said: "Those who interfere.....with the proper administration of the school will be removed by the soldiers...." An Army staff car (a station wagon with U.S. Army markings on its sides) came to the home of NAACP president Daisy Bates to take the nine students to school. They arrived at 9:22 AM....

Nine black students entered Little Rock Central High School on Monday September 23, 1957. They attended the first three periods of the school day before being removed at noon. One student told reporters: "nothing much happened." But outside a crowd of more than one thousand people erupted into acts of violence as police repeatedly pushed them back from the school. Windows at the school were broken. Two black reporters were attacked by the mob with cameras clicking and rolling. The Little Rock police had some help from Arkansas State Police but they left at noon (the same time the students...