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Tropes of a Texan trauma: monumental Dallas after John F. Kennedy

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 16; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13527258.2010.512729

1470-3610

Hanneke Ronnes, Anna Meijer van Putten,

American Political and Social Dynamics

Abstract Dealey Plaza in central Dallas serves both as a ‘cradle’ and a ‘grave’; at this historic site Dallas was born and an American president died. The assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963 changed Dealey Plaza, the site where the first citizen of Dallas settled in 1841, from a symbol of civic pride into a place of guilt and shame. After the events of 1963, the Dallas community voiced a wish to forget and hence, the exact location where Kennedy was murdered was initially remembered by neither monument nor plaque. At the same time, America grieved and from all over the country US citizens started to visit the assassination site. Dealey Plaza became a place of pilgrimage, which caused a change in the monumental landscape and eventually transformed civic guilt into civic pride. This article offers an analysis of the responses to this Texan trauma in terms of commemorative heritage and describes Dallas’ shift from ‘amnesia’ to ‘identification’, two contrary responses to traumatic, or mourning, heritage. Keywords: John F. KennedyDallasmourning heritagememory cultureidentitydissonant heritage Notes 1. See the developments as regards the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum: http://www.national911memorial.org/site/PageServer?pagename=New_Home [Accessed 21 April 2010]; note also the exhibition at Smithsonian (until 2006), titled ‘September 11: Bearing Witness to History’, http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11 [Accessed 21 April 2010]; the exhibition at the Library of Congress ‘Witness and Response: September 11 Acquisitions at the Library of Congress’, http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/911/911-overview.html [Accessed 21 April 2010]. 2. The uncertainty surrounding the origin of the city’s name has been taken to be indicative of the ambivalence of Dallasites towards their past. 3. In 1898, a five‐storey warehouse was built on the northwest corner of Elm Street and Houston Street. It was destroyed by fire in 1901, after which the same company built again on the same location. It was this building that was the later Texas School Book Depository. 4. The WPA Dallas guide and history (Saxon and Holmes Citation1992), published in the 1940s, is one of the first guides to celebrate the plaza as a tourist site. 5. To name but a few of the projects: the Dallas Zoo, a park system and the Dallas Guide. 6. See http://www.jfk.org/go/exhibits/dealey-plaza/change-of-focus [Accessed 13 January 2010]. 7. See http://www.jfk.org/go/exhibits/dealey-plaza/reconciliation [Accessed 13 January 2010]).