Wednesday, July 24, 1963: Clinton meets JFK

Bill Clinton, 16, of Hot Springs, Arkansas, shakes hands with President Kennedy during a Boys Nation reception at the White House. The pictures were taken by Arnie Sachs of Consolidated News Photos.

From Clinton's autobiography "My Life" (2004): 

     President Kennedy walked out of the Oval Office into the bright sunshine and made some brief remarks, complimenting our work, especially our support for civil rights. After accepting a Boys Nation T-shirt, Kennedy walked down the steps and began shaking hands. I was in the front, and being bigger and a bigger supporter of the President's than most of the others, I made sure I'd get to shake his hand even if he shook only two or three. It was an amazing moment for me, meeting the President whom I had supported in my ninth-grade class debates, and about whom I felt even more strongly after his two and a half years in office. A friend took a photo for me, and later we found film footage of the handshake in the Kennedy Library.

     Much has been made of that brief encounter and its impact on my life. My mother said she knew when I came home that I was determined to go into politics, and after I became the Democratic nominee in 1992, the film was widely pointed to as the beginning of my presidential aspirations. I'm not sure about that. I have a copy of the speech I gave to the American Legion in Hot Springs after I came home, and in it I didn't make too much of the handshake. I thought at the time I wanted to become a senator, but deep down I probably felt as Abraham Lincoln did when he wrote as a young man, "I will study and get ready, and perhaps my chance will come."

* Video (from Clinton Foundation): @

* Kennedy's remarks (from American Presidency Project): @

* "Pres. Kennedy Compliments Delegates to Boys Nation" (Associated Press, published July 25, 1963): @

* More about Boys Nation (from American Legion website): @

* Consolidated News Photos: @

* Arnie Sachs obituary (Washington Post, 2006): @ 

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Friday, July 12, 1963: Movie multiplex

Stanley H. Durwood opens the two-screen Parkway Twin in a shopping center in Kansas City, Missouri, with both theaters showing "The Great Escape." While not the first multiplex, it helped popularize the business concept of having several screens under one roof.
* "The Multiplex is Born" (The Kansas City Public Library): @

* "The Many Births of the Multiplex" (cinelog.org): @

* " 'A revolutionary concept in screen entertainment' : The emergence of the twin movie theatre, 1962-1964" (Christofer Meissner,  Post Script, Essays in Film and the Humanities, 2011): @
* "Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture" (Charles R. Acland, 2003): @
* Durwood obituary (Variety, 1999): @

* Durwood obituary (New York Times): @

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Thursday, July 11, 1963: Liliesleaf raid

     South African police raid the African National Congress headquarters, the Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, just outside Johannesburg. Virtually the entire leadership of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), armed wing of the ANC, were arrested. Nelson Mandela, the commander in chief of the MK, was not arrested as he was serving a five-year prison sentence for leaving the country illegally in 1962. The farm was privately owned by Arthur Goldreich, but bought with funds from the Communist Party of South Africa. At the farm police found documents relating to the manufacture of explosives, Mandela's dairy of his African tour and copies of a draft memorandum, "Operation Mayibuye." It outlined a possible strategy of guerrilla warfare. More arrests followed shortly after this incident. Mandela and his co-accused were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia trial that ended in June 1964.
     -- From South African History Online (www.sahistory.org.za)

* "The Rivonia Trial Fifty Years Later" (Longer summary from South African History Online): @
* The Liliesleaf Trust: @
* "Operation Mayibuye" document (from nelsonmandela.org): @
* "The Last Meeting at Liliesleaf Farm" (from City of Johannesburg website): @
* African National Congress: @
* Post on Mandela's arrest (August 5, 1962): @ 

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Wednesday, July 10, 1963: 'The Situation in South Vietnam'

From Special National Intelligence Estimate 53-2-63 (prepared by CIA and U.S. military):

     A. The Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam has highlighted and intensified a widespread and longstanding dissatisfaction with the Diem regime and its style of government. If -- as is likely -- Diem fails to carry out truly and promptly the commitments he has made to the Buddhists, disorders will probably flare again and the chances of a coup or assassination attempts against him will become better than even.
     B. The Diem regime's underlying uneasiness about the extent of the US involvement in South Vietnam has been sharpened by the Buddhist affair and the firm line taken by the US. This attitude will almost certainly persist and further pressure to reduce the US presence in the country is likely.

     C. Thus far, the Buddhist issue has not been effectively exploited by the Communists, nor does it appear to have had any appreciable effect on the counterinsurgency effort. We do not think Diem is likely to be overthrown by a Communist coup. Nor do we think the Communists would necessarily profit if he were overthrown by some combination of his non-Communist opponents. A non-Communist successor regime might be initially less effective against the Viet Cong, but, given continued support from the US, could provide reasonably effective leadership for the government and the war effort.
* Complete text (from www.foia.cia.gov): @ 
* Post on "American Prospects in South Vietnam" (April 17, 1963): @

* Post on Thich Quang Duc (June 11, 1963): @

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July 1963: U.S. interrogation manual

"KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" was produced by the CIA (KUBARK being the agency's code name for itself). The manual was declassified in 1997. From the introduction:

     This manual cannot teach anyone how to be, or become, a good interrogator. At best it can help readers to avoid the characteristic mistakes of poor interrogators.  Its purpose is to provide guidelines for KUBARK interrogation, and particularly the counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources. ... As is true of all craftsmen, some interrogators are more able than others; and some of the superiority may be innate. But sound interrogation nevertheless rests upon a knowledge of the subject matter on certain broad principles, chiefly psychological, which are not hard to understand. The success of good interrogators depends in large measure upon their use, conscious or not, of these principles and of processes and techniques deriving from them.

* Manual, pages 1 through 60: @
* Pages 61 through 112: @
* Pages 113 through 128: @
* "Prisoner Abuse: Patterns from the Past" (from National Security Archive, 2004): @

* "Iraq Tactics Have Long History With U.S. Interrogators" (Washington Post, 2004): @
* "The Birth of Soft Torture" (www.slate.com, 2005): @
* "Educing Information. Interrogation: Science and Art -- Foundations for the Future" (National Defense Intelligence College, 2006): @
* "Torture and Democracy" (Darius Rejali, 2007): @
* "Torture and State Violence in the United States: A Short Documentary History" (Robert M. Pallitto, 2011): @
* "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War" (Albert D. Biderman, 1957): @ 

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Saturday, July 6, 1963: Greenwood, Mississippi

In a cotton field just south of Greenwood, Mississippi, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Theodore Bikel and the Freedom Singers take part in a folk music festival-rally organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which had been working to get blacks registered to vote. Dylan sang "Only a Pawn in Their Game," which he had written after the June 12 shooting death of Medgar Evers. (In its account of the event, The New York Times referred to Dylan as "Bobby Dillon.") 
     Photos by Danny Lyon
* Excerpt from "No Direction Home" (Robert Shelton, 1986): @
* Entry from www.pophistorydig.com: @

* Freedom Singers biography (from The New Georgia Encyclopedia): @
* "Northern Folk Singers Help Out at Negro Festival in Mississippi" (New York Times, July 7; from www.bobdylanroots.com): @

* Earlier post on death of Medgar Evers (June 1963): @
* Earlier post on forming of SNCC (April 1960): @

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Saturday, July 6, 1963: Portrait of Alfried Krupp

On assignment for Newsweek magazine, photographer Arnold Newman takes this portrait of German industrialist Alfried Krupp at a factory in Essen, Germany. (The photo would appear in the September 23 edition.) Krupp's sinister appearance is intentional; Newman, who was Jewish, told American Photo magazine in 2000: "Krupp ... used slave labor during World War II. When the workers were too weak to produce, he just shipped them off to Auschwitz to die. So when the editors asked me to photograph him I refused. They asked why. I said, 'Because I think of him as the devil,' and they said, 'Fine, that's what we think.' So I was stuck with the job. When I arrived at the factory and was told by Krupp's PR people that the sitting was off, I demanded that my photographs be shown to Krupp so that he could decide for himself. The startled PR guy complied, and then came back and said, 'Herr Krupp would like to see you.' Krupp told me, 'These are beautiful pictures. You must photograph me.' I asked to see the factory, and noticed a huge casting that I thought would make a good background. They moved it just for me, and built a special platform so that we would be overlooking the factory. I lit Krupp's face from slightly below, using two small lights. It was just an okay picture until I asked Krupp to lean forward. He leaned forward and my hair stood on end. He looked like the devil."
* Arnold Newman website: @

* Newman talks about other photos (from Getty Images website): @

* Slideshow of Newman's works (from University of Texas): @
* Newman obituary (New York Times, 2006): @
* Alfried Krupp biography (from Encyclopedia Britannica): @

* "Krupp Trial and Nazi Clemency" (video from Robert H. Jackson Center): @; website: @
* Time magazine cover of Krupp (August 1957): @

* Newsreel about Krupp's death (narrated in German): @
* "The Arms of Krupp" (William Manchester, 1968): @

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Friday, July 5, 1963: Endangered buildings

Life magazine publishes a photo essay titled "America's Heritage of Great Architecture is Doomed ... It Must Be Saved," with photos by Walker Evans. The introduction:

     Above the scurry and tumult of travelers, clocks tick away the final hours of a grand and historic monument. New York's Pennsylvania Station is doomed. Its herculean columns, its vast canopies of concrete and steel will soon be blasted into rubbish to make way for a monstrous complex -- sports arena, bowling alley, hotel and office building. The disaster that has befallen Penn Station threatens thousands of other prized American buildings. From east to west, the wrecker's ball and bulldozer are lords of the land. In the ruthless, if often well-intentioned, cause of progress, the nation's heritage from colonial days onward is being ravaged indiscriminately -- for highways, parking lots, new structures of modernized mediocrity. Some 2,000 buildings classified by the government as major landmarks of history and beauty have vanished in the past 25 years. At this very moment most of the buildings shown on these pages are endangered -- and others have been saved only by fights. Unless citizens and officials act to halt the holocaust, the noble, the picturesque and all that is beautiful in America's architectural heritage will be memories and a handful of dust.

* Complete issue of Life magazine (article begins on page 52): @

* Slideshow (from life.time.com): @

* Penn Station entry from www.nyc-architecture.com: @ (Demolition began on October 28, 1963.)

* Walker Evans biography (from Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art): @.  (The museum acquired Evans' personal archives in 1994; it can be searched at www.metmuseum.org.) 

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Tuesday, July 2, 1963: Plans for March on Washington

     NEW YORK -- Leaders of the six largest national Negro groups decided today to march on Washington Aug. 28 in "the strongest action, numerically speaking, that we have ever held."
     The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said the demonstration will press for civil rights legislation and dramatize the Negro unemployed situation.
     He said the march will not be limited to Negroes. "We'll have machinery that will control the demonstration. No acts that could be considered civil disobedience will occur," he added.
     The march is scheduled to coincide with debate in Congress on President Kennedy's civil rights bill.
     -- Associated Press, July 2

Note: The Associated Press photo shows the leaders of the six groups. From left:
   * John Lewis, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
   * Whitney Young, National Urban League
   * A. Phillip Randolph, Negro American Labor Council
   * Martin Luther King, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
   * James Farmer, Congress of Racial Equality
   * Roy Wilkins, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
* "Proposed Plans for March" (planning document; from crmvet.org): @ 

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Monday, July 1, 1963: ZIP codes

     
     The Post Office Department put into effect today its program to give every mailing address a number.
    The new system is called "zip code" and is designed to help speed mail deliveries.
     The department planned to mail 72 million cards to every mailbox in the country. The card informs the addressee of his five-digit "zip code" number and provides a brief explanation of the system.
     The Post Office Department wants everyone to put the number after the name of his city and state when writing his return address. The number also should be used in addressing mail to persons who have included it in their return addresses.
     "Zip code," or zone improvement program, has been invented for the day when all letters will be pre-sorted by machines. The Post Office Department said that it is easier to develop a machine which reads numbers because there are less variations of numerals than there of letters.
     -- United Press International, July 1

Note: To help explain ZIP codes and encourage their use, the Post Office Department also introduced the character Mr. ZIP.
* "Mr. Zip and the ZIP Code Promotional Campaign" (from National Postal Museum): @

* "You'll Be Seeing Lots of Mr. ZIP, Courtesy Of Post Office Dept." (Associated Press, June 29, 1963): @

* "ZIP code song" by The Swingin' Six and ZIP code explainer: @
* Other public service announcements: @ and @
* Earlier post on Mr. ZIP (October 1962): @ 

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Monday, July 1, 1963: Kim Philby

     Former Foreign Office official Harold Philby has admitted he was the "third man" in the case of British diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.
     Security services are now aware that using information he gained while working for the MI6 in Washington, Mr. Philby warned the pair that intelligence services were on their trail. This information enabled them to escape to the Soviet Union.
     It is now apparent Mr. Philby was a double agent working for the Soviet authorities during his time with the foreign office.
     The news was announced in the House of Commons by the Lord Privy Seal Edward Heath.
     -- From BBC. Full story: @. 1968 photo of Philby in Moscow from Russia Beyond the Headlines (website: @)
* Heath's statement: @
* Entry from spymuseum.com: @

* Earlier post on Philby (January 1963): @ 

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