A Shot Close to Home

Just north of the old Jesuit High School campus, at the corner of Turtle Creek Blvd and Avondale Avenue, around 9:30 p.m. on the evening of April 10, 1963, a rifle shot rang out, shattered a glass window of the house, and barely missed the man hunched over his income tax return. Former Major General Edwin A. Walker, a decorated World War II veteran turned political activist escaped with his life by a slight movement of his body at just the right time.

As high school seniors, we were too full of anticipation of our upcoming graduation to pay much attention to the attempted murder of a somewhat goofy political activist. Still, I recall reading about the incident, and wondering who could have been responsible. Little did I or anyone else know. We would find out before the year end.

Walker was well known in Dallas and elsewhere for his extreme and oddball politics. He resigned from the army in 1961 after being reprimanded by President Kennedy for violating federal law by attempting to influence the vote of his troops in the 24^th Division in Germany. Walker had earlier been criticized by President Eisenhower for political promotion while in uniform. After his resignation, Walker took up residence in Dallas. In 1962 finished last in a field of candidates running for governor of Texas in the Democratic primary. John Connally won that race in a run-off.

Later that year, Walker led a protest against the use of army troops to enforce the court-ordered desegregation of the University of Mississippi. (Walker claimed he was not against desegregation; but he believed it was an unconstitutional infringement on states' rights to use federal troops to enforce it.) During that incident he was arrested and ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation. Initially he was charged with sedition and inciting insurrection, but a federal grand jury declined to indict Walker for any crime. In October 1963, Walker was reputed to have organized the protest against the United Nations when Ambassador Adlai Stevenson spoke at the Dallas Memorial Auditorium. While leaving the arena, Stevenson was spat upon and struck with a placard by an overly enthusiastic protester.

After President Kennedy was assassinated a month later, Marina Oswald revealed to investigators that the President’s assassin and Walker’s assailant were the same person. Lee Harvey Oswald loathed Walker for his anti-communism and conservative politics. Forensic examination revealed that the ammunition Oswald used to kill Kennedy was consistent with the bullet recovered at Walker’s home.

The national press and political cognoscenti initially blamed the conservative political climate in Dallas for Kennedy’s assassination, and many continued to believe that misconception. Jacqueline Kennedy expressed disappointment that the President’s death was rendered meaningless because, instead of being shot by a racist segregationist, given aid and comfort by the Dallas citizenry, Kennedy was murdered by a "silly little communist." Silly indeed, but deadly.

Edwin Walker, for all his nuttiness, and John F. Kennedy had one thing in common. They were, each in his own way, both Cold Warriors. Kennedy died as a casualty of that War; Walker nearly did. Walker survived to see the end of the Cold War. He died here in Dallas in October 1993, 30 years and six months after Lee Harvey Oswald tried to kill him.

Here is the Dallas Morning News story on April 11, 1963: