Since JFK assassination, no US president has visited Dallas’ Dealey Plaza
There’s no record of any presidential visits in the six decades since.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States has had 11 presidents in the six decades since President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. There is no record of any of them visiting Dealey Plaza or even driving through the triple underpass.
For whatever reason — superstition or coincidence — every presidential motorcade since Nov. 22, 1963, has avoided the site where a sniper killed John F. Kennedy.
Presidents have visited Dallas dozens of times over the last 60 years. Many people got very close to Dealey Plaza without having to drive through it.
“It seems to me that it would have gotten some attention,” Dallas historian Darwin Payne said.
There are no such headlines.
A quarter-mile away, Gerald Ford led a parade in an open-top car flanked by nervous Secret Service agents.
Barack Obama came within 1,000 feet of the George W. Bush Library the night before it opened in 2013. That motorcade exited the freeway onto Commerce St., but instead of continuing through the triple underpass, it turned right and circled the Hyatt Reunion.
Ronald Reagan addressed a prayer breakfast at Reunion Arena, where Bill Clinton was watching a basketball game. At the American Airlines Center, Donald Trump held a campaign rally. He and Reagan made an appearance at the Municipal Auditorium near City Hall.
There is no evidence that any of them drove by the assassination site.
“I don’t know of any taboo per se unless it’s among the presidents themselves,” Payne was quoted as saying. But he’s almost certain that “no president has gone through Dealey Plaza since then.”
The Secret Service and the Dallas Police Department both declined to comment on any post-1963 policies concerning dignitaries and Dealey Plaza.
No thanks
Kennedy’s successors have had numerous opportunities to visit.
Dealey Plaza was designated a national historic landmark on November 22, 1993, just in time for its 30th anniversary.
Officials in Dallas invited the current president to the dedication.
Instead, Clinton held a White House press conference with the president of the Philippines and mediated an end to an American Airlines flight attendant strike.
Clinton stayed several times at the Turtle Creek Mansion, which is about 2 miles from Dealey Plaza.
On Oct. 16, 1995, he spoke at a $1,000-per-plate luncheon at the Le Meridien hotel, which is now the Dallas Marriott Downtown.
He was best man at his brother Roger Clinton’s wedding at the Dallas Arboretum in March 1994.
Even the three Texans who have served as president since Kennedy — Lyndon B. Johnson, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, a current Dallas resident — appear to have avoided Dealey Plaza.
Johnson’s only visit
After taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field following the shooting, Johnson would not return to Dallas for more than four years.
The date was February 27, 1968.
The secrecy was astounding.
Before LBJ’s 707 landed at Love Field, the Secret Service gave Dallas police only one hour’s notice.
“The man’s coming,” Forrest V. Sorrels, the agent-in-charge in Dallas, told police Chief Charles Batchelor the next day, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Johnson left his ranch in the Texas Hill Country early that morning for a surprise appearance before 7,000 delegates at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association conference. Thousands of attendees were caught off guard and missed the speech.
The five-car motorcade sped past Dealey Plaza at 50 miles per hour before exiting on Cadiz Street.
“On his Stemmons Freeway route from Love Field to Memorial Auditorium and back, President Johnson passed within easy sight of the Texas School Book Depository Building,” Kent Biffle, a reporter for The News, reported.
That is, Johnson did not drive through the three underpasses.
Unbroken precedent
The precedent was not broken.
President Joe Biden campaigned in Dallas in advance of the 2020 Texas primary. He has yet to visit after nearly three years in office.
Others have arrived dozens of times since Kennedy. Dallas is a major donor base for both parties and hosts large conventions of the type that presidents enjoy speaking at.
After a gunman ambushed five Dallas police officers during a peaceful downtown protest march in July 2016, Obama spoke at the Meyerson Symphony Center’s memorial service.
This is about a mile away from Dealey Plaza.
Many presidents have come that close and come no closer.
‘Disturbing … idea’
Reagan spent three days in Dallas during the Republican National Convention in August 1984.
He took a shuttle between the Loews Anatole, where he stayed for three nights, and the Dallas Convention Center, where he accepted the Republican nomination for a second term on Aug. 23. That morning, he spoke at a prayer breakfast at Reunion Arena.
The convention was covered by news organizations from all over the world. Reporters spent a significant amount of time at the crime scene interviewing GOP delegates and local residents.
Someone would have noticed if Reagan had gone to or through Dealey Plaza.
Several presidential visits have taken place at both the Anatole and the convention center.
On March 25, 1979, Jimmy Carter delivered a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters at the convention center.
On May 4, 2018, Trump addressed the National Rifle Association there. His motorcades to and from the venue did not pass through Dealey Plaza, according to Tristan Hallman, a reporter for The News who rode in a press van behind the president’s armored vehicle that day.
“I am pretty sure I would have remembered something like that,” Hallman, a former chief of staff to Mayor Eric Johnson, said. “There is something disturbing about even the idea of driving in a presidential motorcade right past the old Texas Schoolbook Depository building and that ghoulish X on the street.”
Trump was about a mile away during two other visits: a 20,000-person rally at American Airlines Center on Oct. 17, 2019, and a $4 million fundraising stop at the Belo Mansion in the Arts District downtown on Oct. 25, 2017.
Kennedy’s sister
Many people believe that Kennedy’s family avoided Dealey Plaza, but his sister Eunice Shriver visited only nine years later.
The date was October 25, 1972. She’d just returned from a campaign rally in Denton with her husband, Democratic vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver.
“Dallas has been very generous,” she told a crowd of reporters, emphasizing that she had no ill will toward the city. She expressed gratitude for “the support the people of Dallas have shown for my brother.”
Ford’s open-air parade
Gerald Ford made one of the most remarkable presidential visits when he led the State Fair of Texas parade in an open-top limousine, just like Kennedy had.
On Saturday morning, October 9, 1976, tens of thousands of people lined downtown streets.
As it turned from Griffin onto Commerce, the route brought Ford within a quarter-mile of Dealey Plaza.
The president’s media team used the footage in a 4-minute campaign ad aimed at prime time television.
“When a limousine can parade openly through the streets of Dallas, after a decade of tension, the people and their president are back together again,” the narrator goes on to say.
According to historian Michael Beschloss, Ford’s campaign manager, Texan James Baker, rejected the ad as “nutty,” and it never aired.
The following day, Ford attended a service at First Baptist Church, where the Rev. W.A. Criswell encouraged him.
Ford had already spent a significant amount of time in Dallas. That April, he’d crisscrossed the state in an attempt to defeat Reagan in the primaries, stumping in Dallas for four days.
On April 9, during a tour of the Alamo in San Antonio, Ford made one of the most famous campaign gaffes: he attempted to eat a tamale without first removing the corn husk.
That afternoon in Dallas, he delivered an economic speech to 1,700 people at the Fairmont Hotel downtown and socialized with “250 business leaders and their wives” at a $250-per-person fundraising reception, according to The News.
That evening, he traveled to Arlington to throw out the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener. He left early to speak to the Irving Bar Association, and Dallas Cowboys Ed “Too Tall” Jones and Harvey Martin presented him with a team jersey.
It was then back to the Fairmont for the night.
His presidential diary makes no mention of the motorcades’ routes. However, the media covering the trip found nothing noteworthy to report.
Ford returned three weeks later for a rally at NorthPark Center and a speech to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, both of which were located far from downtown along the North Central Expressway.
Typical visits and coincidences
That’s common for presidential visits — nowhere near Dealey Plaza.
Richard Nixon, for example, headlined a rally at Dallas Market Hall on October 28, 1970, for Houston congressman George Bush, a future president who was about to lose a U.S. Senate race.
Robert Baskin, the News’ Washington Bureau chief at the time, flew in with Nixon from Florida that day and was in the motorcades. He’d also been in Kennedy’s motorcade and would have undoubtedly mentioned another presidential drive through Dealey Plaza.
Nixon was in Dallas on the day of Kennedy’s assassination, in one of history’s great coincidences.The former vice president had attended an American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages convention as a lawyer for Pepsi-Cola Corp.
He took off from Love Field an hour before Air Force One from Fort Worth arrived.
