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SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE Confession To Conspiracy To Assassinate JFK by Kerry Thornley As Told To So
SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE Confession To Conspiracy To Assassinate JFK by Kerry Thornley As Told To So
Confession to Conspiracy to
Assassinate JFK by Kerry Thornley
as told to Sondra London
Unbeknownst to me, Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans at the time
of my arrival, and would soon depart for Mexico City, where I had just
spent one or two weeks.
Yesterday Slim had made the usual suggestion about visiting Brother-inlaw and we sped through what was then remote, rural Louisiana country
in the car Slim had arranged to borrow from Gary.
In those days besides the brewery across the field, only an immense steel
bridge that arched over the river and over which cars moved in slow,
eerie silent procession signaled civilization's designs.
Note 44
"Yeah, the Reichstag was their government record building, wasn't it?" I
said so as not to seem ignorant.
"Kerry? What if VanderLubbe had had a friend who realized he was
innocent? Think of what would have happened! If that friend had come
forward and exposed the truth, then Germany would have been spared
all those years of suering under the Nazis." Brother-in-law seemed
inappropriately excited about such an academic speculation.
I didn't know what to say.
"Kerry, you know, you aren't going to be able to trust Time Magazine."
"A professor at the University of Southern California used to say that Life
is a magazine for people who can't read, and Time is a magazine for
people who can't think," I commented in agreement.
Note 45
"I haven't got anything against niggers -- as long as they stay in their
place. There is a nigger at work I like. He knows his place."
"There was a time," I said, "when the use of the word 'nigger' used to
make me so mad I would shake, when I first got to New Orleans. But I've
been in the South long enough now to see that there really are some
people who should be called niggers."
I was thinking of precisely the blacks that Brother-in-law said he liked -guys who stood wringing their hats in both hands and mumbling
"yazzuh" when you asked them for directions. I didn't say that, though. I
was ready to drop the subject.
"Now a nigger who does not know his place is Martin Luther King."
Note 46
"I like Martin Luther King," I said to Brother-in-law. "To feel like I felt that
night in the park when Ola and I went to see him, to feel that way all the
time, takes great courage. I kept thinking about how somebody could
throw a bomb at us."
Having said that much, I was quick to abandon the courage of my
convictions by adding, "I didn't like that C.O.R.E. worker, though. That
white Yankee college student stood there looking at those Negroes like
he thought he was their good shepherd or something. I think there is
racism in an attitude like that. And the argument I got in with Ola
afterwards! Was she ever irrational! I expected her to at least understand
Ayn Rand's principles. But she just kept whining like a wishy-washy
liberal."
Brother-in-law nodded in warm approval.