JFK: An obit points to back to Dealey Plaza

The New York Times recently ran an obituary about McCandlish Phillips, who reported for them. His biggest story was about Daniel Burros, a Grand Dragon of New York State's Ku Klux Klan back in the sixties. What made Burros interesting was that he was Jewish, a problem in the Klan.

Mr. Phillips's most renowned article appeared on Page 1 on Sunday, Oct. 31, 1965, under the headline "State Klan Leader Hides Secret of Jewish Origin." It was a rigorously reported profile of Daniel Burros, a 28-year-old Queens man who was the Grand Dragon of the New York State Ku Klux Klan, a chief organizer of the national Klan and a former national secretary of the American Nazi Party.

Mr. Burros, the article went on to document, was also a Jew - a former Hebrew school student who had been bar mitzvahed at 13.

The article remains a case study in a reporter's perseverance in the face of intimidation. It is also a case study in the severe, unintended consequences that the airing of fiercely guarded truths can have for the guardian: despite threatening to kill Mr. Phillips if the article went to press, Mr. Burros, in the end, killed only himself.

If you go to Volume XVI of the Warren Commission files, here, and scroll to page 55 of Lee Harvey Oswald's address book, you will find Burros' name (along with George Lincoln Rockwell's) and the address for the American Nazi Party in Arlington, Virginia.

You may be curious as to why an allegedly Communist lone nut was walking around with two bigwig Nazis in his address book. Actually, his address book is very interesting. 

As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of JFK's murder it might behoove Americans to learn a little more about what happened on November 22, 1963. 

Comments

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Thanks for this post – I have struggled with this as I have NO comments yet on my blog and in some ways feel badly about that until i read your posts about this and yet I see there is more that I can do. I will participate more in other blogs and ask MORE questions I do ask some – also I like the idea of asking a question in the heading. Lots to think about but I would like to engage with readers and think comments is a great way to do so.