The Mob Clearly Killed JFK
And 4 other things I learned from Roy Williams' forgotten book on Dallas History
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“In publishing this “alternative” history book on Dallas history, the authors are not laying claim to this being a definitive, ultimate work on Dallas history”, begins the Author’s note in Roy Williams and Kevin J. Shay’s deeply immersive ‘Time Change: An Alternative View of the History of Dallas’, “it is important that readers approach this book with an open mind…make their own investigations and come to their own conclusions about the subject at hand”. And investigate I did!
I stumbled onto ‘Time Change' while I was 30 tabs deep into a google search on the life of Roy Williams, one half of the Dallas civil rights duo who, along with Marvin Crenshaw, sued the city to secure the 14-1 City Council system we have today. I could only find a few used copies online scattered throughout the country ranging from $18 to $112. What were the odds that the one I did end up buying was checked out from the library five minutes from my home in 1992?
It is one of the most entertaining books on Dallas I’ve ever read, filled to the brim with the type of research and hearsay that this newsletter fundamentally thrives on. Stories like that of the “Catfish Club”, a group of disenfranchised white Dallasites who ran for Council in 1935 against the Citizens Council slate - aptly named Catfish because they hid like “catfish hide in mud”, or that time Marvin Crenshaw testified in court under oath that Annette Strauss attempted to bribe him out of running against her, or an infamous 1989 brawl at City Hall where Domingo Garcia got punched…or not.
So here it is: a collection of my favorite pieces of gossip and factoids from Roy Williams’ forgotten book on Dallas history.
1. The Time Annette Strauss (allegedly) Tried To Bribe Marvin Crenshaw
The year is 1987, and election season is fully underway. Annette Strauss — who would go on to become the second ever female mayor of Dallas — approaches Marvin Crenshaw in a parking lot like a scene out of a movie and asks him if he’s going to run for mayor against her. When Crenshaw says he will, she reminds him that she paid for his college education. Crenshaw sharply tells Strauss that he will be running regardless. Several days later, Strauss gives Crenshaw a number to call, which turns out to be that of none other than Ray McBride who used to work for then Congressman John Bryant. McBride offers to raise $5k for Crenshaw’s campaign if he drops out of the mayoral race and enters an at large council race instead. Williams writes "Strauss…publicly denied that she and anyone she knew ever attempted to “buy out” Marvin during the ‘87 campaign. But, unlike Marvin, she never testified on the situation under oath”.
2. Everything about Mayor J. “Waddy” Tate - The Coolest Mayor You Never Knew
The Dallas Citizens Council had a bit of infighting going on in the 1920s which allowed for Tate to win the mayoral race from under their nose in 1929. Tate had made his money in real estate and oil and ran as an independent (or alternatively, as the only member of the Waddy Tate Party), spent less than $250 on his campaign and earned the nickname “the hot dog candidate” for saying he’d rather see “a hot dog stand where a tired fisherman can dine for nickel instead of a place that charges a dollar for a chicken sandwich”. Tate campaigned on the slogan by holding a huge hot dog bash at Fair Park where he told voters he only wants the votes of those “who liked fish or owed money”. He won.
Tate spent his one and only term wreaking havoc upon the city in the best way possible. In his first week in office, he instructed the city attorney to find out why ice cost more in Oak Cliff than other parts of the city. He removed the spikes around City Hall saying they were elitist, removed the “keep off the grass” signs from city property, and issued a proclamation that it was legal for unhoused Dallasites to sleep in city parks. He put an end to closed sessions of the city commission and made city swimming pools free three days out of the week. When people complained about the cleanliness of the latter, he amended the rule to say that those who wanted to use the free pools would also need to shower there. He led a procession of 20 donkeys through downtown for kids to ride and allowed city prisoners to go free on Armistice Day.
The Citizens Council was rocked beyond belief, and they eventually found a way around Tate. A campaign was ran to amend the city charter to implement the (still existing) manager-council form of government and made the Mayor an appointed position chosen by and among the city council-members, almost all of whom were hand picked and funded by the Citizens Council.
It was fun while it lasted. You can read a bit more about Tate’s hijinks here, and his wonderful NYT obituary here. And if you ever happen to visit the White Rock Lake Bath House, remember that it was Mayor Waddy Tate that championed its creation.
3. The Time the Mob Killed JFK
During the 1940s, Dallas saw an influx of immigrants from Chicago, many of whom who were alleged mobsters. One of those alleged mobsters? Jack Ruby.
Ruby, who was described as “a small town peanut” by Dallas County Sherriff Steve Guthrie (whom Ruby had tried to bribe at one point), moved to Dallas in 1947 and opened the Silver Spur Club on South Ervay which quickly became the “the hangout of the Chicago gang during the bribery talks”, and also, a way for Ruby to make friends with local cops. Between 1949 and 1963, Ruby was arrested nine times for engaging in “drug trafficking, prostitution, and illegal gambling…but somehow was only convicted one time, paying a $10 fine in 1949”.
Ruby wasn’t the only one thriving in Dallas which at the time “contained a strong CIA community, including Lee Harvey Oswald’s Russian mentor George de Mohrenschildt” and the Mayor’s brother, Charles Cabell, who served as the deputy director of the CIA during the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy had forced Cabell’s resignation after the whole thing, and it was “widely believed that he and other renegade CIA agents loathed Kennedy”. Mayor Cabell was under investigation shortly after the assassination for the role he could have played, including the possibility that he could have been asked by his brother not to pursue an investigation and if he could have had something to do with changing the parade route which “was altered on the assassination day so that the motorcade would drive by the…Depository”.
But it doesn’t stop there. Between 1963-66, 18 key witnesses of the Kennedy assassination died in Dallas, including eight who were murdered, two by suicides, three by “accidents”, and five by “natural causes”. Five waitresses from Ruby’s Carousel Club “met violent deaths by 1975”. Esther Ann Mash, a Carousel Club waitress who survived, moved to Arizona as soon as she saw Ruby kill Oswald because she “knew [Ruby] had done it to silence [Oswald].” Similarly, Dallas attorney Carroll Jarnagin said in a 1988 interview that he overheard Ruby and Oswald talking about “getting Robert Kennedy”, after which Oswald “finally said the way to get to Bobby was to get his brother, Jack”. Jarnagin testified in front of the Warren Commission following the assassination, after which he experienced two attempts on his life. Another Dallas official, Robert Craig, a deputy sheriff who was at Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination, also gave his testimony and was promptly fired by the Sherriff’s department. Craig survived two attempts on his life before he was found dead in what was ruled a suicide in 1975.
On a completely unrelated note, you should watch THE IRISHMAN on Netflix.
4. When “The Catfish Club” Slate Took Over The City Council — And Fired All The Women
In the 1935 municipal elections, a “disenfranchised group of Anglos known as the Catfish Club” ran insurgent campaigns against the Citizens Council slate and won every single seat on the City Council. As their first order of business, they appointed George Sergeant as Mayor. For their second, they fired all married women from City Hall.
The ordinance was short lived — just six weeks later, the city’s Civil Service Board nullified it. But the Catfish Club had other fish to fry as well: they cut salaries across city departments then spent $20,000 ($400k+ adjusted for inflation!) on a statue of Robert E. Lee —yes, that very same Lee statue that was finally torn down in 2017. The statue was officially dedicated at a ceremony by President FDR in 1936 where he called Lee “one of the greatest American Christians”. So, there’s that.
5. When Domingo Garcia got punched (or not) at City Hall
1980s Dallas politics were dominated by two things: calls for a police review board and the continued battle for single member council districts. In 1986, Dallas police killed or wounded 29 residents in just one year — one of the highest per capita rates in the nation at the time. By May 1987, a congressional hearing led by John Conyers was held in Dallas to address the issue. As the calls got louder, so did the DPA: they asked residents to ride with their lights on during the day with “Back the Blue” stickers and lobbied heavily against the strengthened review board. Meanwhile, an 8-3 council map had “effectively diluted non-[white] voices so much that in 1989 that about 82% of Council was white in a city where the population was less than 50% white”. Protests, hunger strikes, and actions were a daily occurrence. Folks like Marvin Crenshaw, Roy Williams, John Wiley Price, and Domingo Garcia were fighting a war on both fronts. At a 1989 City Hall meeting, the fighting took more of a literal meaning.
Depending on who you ask, Domingo Garcia either did or didn’t get punched that day. Garcia was protesting at City Hall when he drew the ire of Councilman Al Gonzalez, the only non-white councilmember to have won an at large seat during the 8-3 era. Gonzalez had taken flack throughout his campaign for being the “hand picked minority candidate” of the Citizens Council, and hated the implication it brought with it. In a 1988 testimony, Gonzalez stated “I don’t want to be anybody’s hand picked anything…everything I got, these two hands got me”. Still, the perception was there. It’s within that context that Gonzalez, in the middle of a council meeting, “charged into the audience and punched Domingo Garcia” after Garcia — in so many words — called him a coward and questioned his backbone over his lack of support for the police oversight board. As Garcia tells it: “he swung at me, I put my head back. I’m a former Golden Gloves boxer. He didn’t punch me”. It is worth noting though that Gonzalez, too, was a boxer.
You can find a used copy of “Time Change: An Alternative View of the History of Dallas” here, here, or here. But it would be great if you could find it here. Deep Vellum, what say you to another revival?