Little D

The architect had been commissioned, $8,429 had been set aside for a huge chunk of Texas red granite, and last week the city fathers of Dallas approved the wording for a roadside marker at the spot where John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

"Many historic events have centered around this site," the marker will note. "The settlement of Dallas began in 1841 when John Neely Bryan's log cabin was built near by. The first legislature of the new state of Texas created Dallas County in 1846 with Dallas as the 'Seat of Justice.' In 1855 a toll bridge crossed the channel of the Trinity River at the west end of this plaza. Years later the river channel was moved one-half mile westward and confined between flood-control levees. Dallas was incorporated as a town in 1856.

"There was navigation of the Trinity River as early as 1868. The S.S. H. A. Harvey Jr. arrived from Galveston in 1893 and anchored near the west end of this plaza. In 1872 a railroad was completed to Dallas from the Gulf. The next year another railroad from the East built its terminal a few blocks northeast of this site. Rapid growth of Dallas quickly followed.

"With a background as the center of constructive growth, this site unfortunately became the scene of a tragedy which plunged the world into a state of shock. On November 22, 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, thirty-fifth President of the United States, visited Dallas .. ."

While funds have been raised privately for a memorial to the late President only three blocks away (TIME, Dec. 24, 1965), many citizens were shocked at the tawdry boosterism of the city-approved legend. The juxtaposition of "historical trivia with a happening of transcendent significance," observed the Dallas Times-Herald, "will appear to many an attempt to evade the stark fact that a President of the United States was assassinated here, or at best an attempt to pass the event off as one of minor consequence."

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