Lots of info in this Lowdown published in November 1956, but the prestigious banner position is reserved for a U.S. Supreme Court justice who editors claim was a member of the racist organization the Ku Klux Klan. The man in question is Hugo Black, a career Democrat who served on the high court until 1971, and indeed had been a member of the Klan in Alabama. You probably already know this, but for those few who don’t we’ll note here that the Democratic Party was the more conservative party in the U.S. with regard to racial issues until Democratic President John F. Kennedy endorsed, and his Democratic successor President Lyndon B. Johnson signed, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This event led to the cementing of Democrats as the preferred party for black voters and the defection of millions of conservative white voters to the Republican Party, radically shifting the political spectrum of 1960s America (though only with regard to race, since both parties have drifted rightward on virtually all other issues since then).

Anyway, despite the KKK’s racist agenda, and the fact that Black’s racist bona fides were pristine (as a senator he once filibustered an anti-lynching bill), his Klan membership may have been more strongly tied to the group’s anti-Catholic agenda. This in turn prompted him to become a leading defender of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment: i.e., the separation of church and state. In short, his fear and hatred of Catholics led him to do everything he could to keep religion out of politics. Or so certain biographers claim. Much more revealing, perhaps, are Black’s own words on the subject: “I would have joined any group if it helped get me votes.” Uttered near the end of his life, the phrase confirms once again—to us, at least—that a politician is a construct, not a person. Basically, you can never know what any of them really believe, because they’ll say anything to win office. Some of the most successful ones present a mask upon which the various segments of the public can project any face they wish. Maybe that’s why Hugo Black felt so comfortable under a hood. 

An item came across the wires today that we found quite interesting. Seems Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin is being auctioned by Nate D. Sanders Auctions of Los Angeles, CA. The reality of the auction certainly shows that there’s nothing that isn’t for sale, especially in America, but that isn’t what caught our eye. We first read about the event thanks to Hugh Collins of AOL News, and double-checked what we read by visiting several other news outlets. The pieces we encountered demonstrated not only the incredible laziness of mainstream journalism, but also the mechanism that keeps a myth in place in spite of fierce pushback from the public at large.

In the AOL article, for instance, Collins doesn’t refer to Oswald as the person arrested for Kennedy’s assassination. That would have been accurate. No, he instead refers to Oswald as the person “believed” to have killed Kennedy. Now, as we pointed out in our recent post on Oswald, the actual truth is that he is believed to have been part of a conspiracy. Depending on which survey you read, up to 81% of Americans think there’s something fishy about the official account of that sad day in Dallas, and that number was 52% in 1963 when Gallup conducted its first poll on the subject just days after the assassination.

That means proponents of the official theory have never been in the majority. So how does all that translate in Collins’ mind to Oswald being “believed” to be Kennedy’s killer? Is it possible it’s because this is simply what he believes? Maybe, but more likely, he didn't bother to check what people actually believe and neither did his editors.

The problem here is a reader with doubts about the official assassination story might have read Collins’ piece and had those doubts put to rest, for today at least. They might have thought, “Oh, since I’m in the minority on this one, I guess I’ll just keep my mouth shut so I don’t look like a crackpot.” Are we saying the conspiracy theorists are right? Not at all. What we’re saying is there’s a point at which you have to stop pretending people are crazy, and address the issues involved with intellectual honesty.

With half of Americans having questions about this crime back in 1963, and up to 4 in 5 having questions today, we’re well past the level of snide dismissal with Kennedy. The mainstream press cannot, with any level of professional integrity, equate doubters with people who believe in extraterrestrial cow mutilations, the healing power of crystals, or a flat Earth. Disbelievers of the official Kennedy story are the vast majority, and those without doubts are the tiny minority, so maybe lets start referring to these groups properly, m'kay?

Oh, and nice coffin, by the way. Bidding for this grisly treasure starts at a grand, for those who have a ghoulish bent and some spare cash laying around. But before you bid we gotta be serious for a sec—having said all of the above, if you buy this filthy old box it's very possible that you actually are a crackpot.

Polls conducted in the last ten years indicate that 70% to 75% of Americans do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald, seen above in a photo taken while he was in the U.S. Marine Corps, acted alone when U.S. president John F. Kennedy was killed in Dallas in 1963. A March 2010 Gallup poll tells us the number might be as high as 81%. These are astounding percentages when you consider that reaching a higher level of agreement in a poll is nearly impossible. For perspective, consider that according to a 2005 article by New York Times journalist Cornelia Dean, only about 80% of Americans believe the Earth revolves around the sun.

Such overwhelming belief in a Kennedy conspiracy is easy to understand when reading the many contradictory accounts of the event. But filter out all the white noise and what attracts attention are the statements of two people who were highly respected—if not revered—in their fields. First, Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who was laying atop Kennedy to shield him as the limousine drove away from the scene of the shooting, testified that the President had a five inch diameter wound behind his right ear, indicating the exit of a bullet that had struck from the front. Other witnessess observed this too, but Hill was closest—literally inches away.

Second, Marine gunnery sergeant Carlos Hathcock testified that, utilizing the same rifle as Oswald, and shooting from the same range and angle and with the same weather conditions, he was unable to duplicate Oswald’s feat, even after multiple tries. Why is that significant? Because Hathcock was one of the best riflemen in the world, the winner of multiple shooting championships and a guy who in Vietnam documentably notched a kill from a distance of 1.42 miles. Oswald was a “marksman”—the lowest Marine designation for rifle qualification.

So what happened that day in Dallas when America lost a president? Was it Oswald who fired the fatal shot or someone else? We don’t know. We are not particularly what you could call "conspiracy theorists" around here. But we are realists, and realistically speaking, conspiracies exist in droves. That's why in federal court there are such charges as "conspiracy to commit wire fraud," and "conspiracy to commit murder." Oswald was well before our time, which makes him a historical curiosity for us, rather than a visceral part of our personal history. But looking at the case from afar, we certainly understand belief in a conspiracy associated with Kennedy's murder.

Midnight, like other tabloids, learned quite well that a Kennedy could move product. Thus their editors splashed a Kennedy, or Jackie Onassis, on the cover of their paper at pretty much every opportunity. On the above issue from today in 1969, editors tell us that Teddy Kennedy is at the end of his rope. Apparently, after enduring the assassination of two brothers, a plane accident in which he broke his back, his wife Joan’s miscarriage, and a car accident on Chappaquiddick Island in which he drove into a pond and his companion Mary Jo Kopechne drowned, Kennedy was not in a good frame of mind. Go and figure. Midnight claims to have gotten this statement out of him: “I see [Mary Jo Kopechne’s] face in my dreams and imagine her features contorted as she struggles to escape the car, death closing in on her.” And this: “I dream of Mary Jo every night and wake up in a cold sweat, scared and screaming.” Did Midnight really scoop every paper in the land and get these anguished quotes? Well, no—this is the same paper that wrote two weeks earlier that John Kennedy’s ghost was haunting Jackie Onassis. So we take their claims of unfettered access to the Kennedy clan with a grain of salt. However, we have three more issues of Midnight with Kennedy themes, so maybe they can still convince us. We’ll be sharing those issues down the line. 

Above is a colorful cover of the tabloid Top Secret, from this month 1960, with Sammy Davis, Jr. composited next to a woman the magazine says is his future wife, Canadian singer Joan Suart. But things change quickly in Hollywood. Davis had just broken off his engagement with Stuart and was already seeing Swedish actress May Britt, who he would marry in the autumn. In any case, Stuart doesn't look anything like Kim Novak, the world class beauty Davis had briefly been involved with and who he may well have been pining for since their split. We’ve mentioned the story before: when Novak was possibly the most famous woman in cinema, she and the Candyman started sleeping together. Her studio bosses weren’t about to risk the news reaching the public, so they spoke to some Mafia friends and had Sammy kidnapped to throw a scare into him. It worked, and the affair with Novak ended.

It gets worse. The Mafia then pushed Davis into a marriage with a black dancer—just to squelch the Novak rumors that had begun to crop up—and the union lasted less than a year. His marriage to May Britt lasted longer, about eight years, but even though Sammy had found a woman the Mafia didn’t care about, most other Americans were scandalized. It was driven by racism, of course, but it was also driven by that eternal desire to control women’s sexuality. Ask any woman you know, and she'll agree that men are always trying to tell her whom she can sleep with, irrespective of skin color. Davis thought he could handle the public fallout from his interracial marriage, but when John F. Kennedy caved in to political pressure and removed him from the bill of a White House party, it scarred Davis and led to the bizarre sight of him endorsing Richard Nixon and even hugging him on live television.

There’s a second interesting story here, about the child star Evelyn Rudie, left. Rudie was nine years old in November 1959 when, without telling anyone where she was going, she hopped on a plane for Washington, D.C., with the purpose of seeing First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. Rudie supposedly broke open her four piggy banks and collected $160.00 in change, which was just enough for a ticket to D.C. And why did she want to see the First Lady? Here’s what she said at the time: “When I saw Mrs. Eisenhower in Washington last year, she told me that her grandchildren and the President enjoyed my acting so much. So I decided to talk with her and see if she couldn’t get me a part in a film or television series.” That’s called going straight to the top. But Rudie never got to see the First Lady. Mainly, she just made headlines. And that’s the most interesting part about this—the headlines did not concern the fact that she had traveled alone, but that the whole scenario might have been a publicity stunt. How times have changed. Today, her parents might end up in jail for neglect. We’ll have more from Top Secret soon.

Photo of Lee Harvey Oswald on the cover of Life, published today 1964. Some people think this photo is fake. But Dartmouth College professor of computer science Hany Farid weighs in on this convincingly and his conclusion is the photo is legit. Great. Now maybe people can focus entirely on the laughable lone gunman theory. Just saying. 

February 1964 Hush-Hush with Anita Ekberg and Vivian Malone. Malone was the woman who Alabama Governor George Wallace barred from entering the University of Alabama during the fall of 1963 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional. Wallace had state troopers at his back that morning, but when John F. Kennedy nationalized the Alabama National Guard later that day, they escorted Malone to school and the troopers were forced to step aside. Thanks to the court ruling, and Kennedy’s executive order, Malone earned a degree and worked in the U.S. State Department for thirty-one years.

Interestingly, her brother-in-law is the current U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder. The cover blurb on Malone reads vaguely sexual, but of course the story has nothing to do with that. The Ekberg story is similarly smoke sans fire. You also get a feature on Frank Sinatra and Jill St. John. The two worked together in Come Blow Your Horn in 1963 and Tony Rome in 1967, but most sources say their brief involvement didn’t commence until 1971. However St. John was part of Sinatra’s “in-crowd” for years, and to be seen palling around with Frank was to be accused of waking up in his bed.

Every actress in Hollywood knew that, and few seemed terribly concerned. Finally, after making readers think about sex for most of the issue, Hush-Hush makes them afraid to do it themselves with a story on America’s syphilis epidemic. The mid-century tabs were very much like slasher movies in that way—in the end, sex must always be punished. We found a nice shot on Ebay of Sinatra and St. John together on the set of Tony Rome, and we've posted it below. Our next trick will be to try and find a tabloid that doesn't have Sinatra inside. We think we have our work cut out for us.

Here’s a rather disturbing 1977 cover by Spanish artist Prieto Muriana for the first of a six issue comic series about the assassination of John F. Kennedy (which happened forty six years ago today), and the events leading up to his brother Robert Kennedy’s killing. When we first saw this image at Blonde Zombies it made us cringe a bit, which makes it a successful cover, since it’s clearly intended to be an iconoclastic representation of this sad day. After our initial misgivings, we were able to appreciate the artistry involved. But then JFK is before our time. If you're old enough to have personal memories of the event, maybe there's nothing artistic here at all.

April 1970 issue of Uncensored, with a different look from the 1950s version we posted previously. FYI, Alicia Purdom was the wife of British actor Edmund Purdom.  She claimed she had an affair with JFK in 1951, while they were both still single, and would have married him had not Joseph Kennedy stepped in and nixed their plans.