The Sunday after Kennedy was shot my dad and I drove downtown to Dealey Plaza. It was an apology of sorts since my parents had refused to let me skip school to see the presidential motorcade on November 22. We were standing on the grassy knoll between the Old Red Courthouse and the Triple Underpass when our neighbors from across the street—a man and his teenage son my age—walked up with a noose and began exhorting bystanders to go lynch Lee Harvey Oswald. The mood of the crowd quickly turned from consternation to embarrassment, and it wasn’t long before people began inching backward. At that point, somebody with a transistor radio yelled, “Lee Harvey’s been shot!”
A number of people began walking briskly toward police headquarters nine blocks away. The rest of us stood there mute, transfixed by the specter of frontier justice galloping unbidden into the heart of the 20th century.
A half-century ago, Dallas was a regional city of 680,000 whose contribution to national culture consisted of Dr Pepper, Frito-Lay, and a three-year-old football team called the Cowboys. The town was 75 percent white, ruled by a Citizens Council of oligarchs, and largely un-air-conditioned. Following the Kennedy assassination, the only home I knew was labeled a “city of hate.”
Dallas’s critics did not lack for examples. After becoming John Kennedy’s running mate in 1960, Lyndon Johnson and his wife Lady Bird were screamed at and spit upon by a group of well-dressed women while trying to enter a downtown hotel for a political event. Their greeting was organized by Dallas congressman Bruce Alger, who stood nearby during the attack holding a sign that said, “LBJ Sold Out to Yankee Socialists.”
The most outspoken critic of what would become the Kennedy administration was the Dallas Morning News. In 1960, it explained in an editorial that it was endorsing Richard Nixon for president to stop “this nation’s unrelenting drive toward a welfare state and its inevitable end, Marxian socialism.”
Three years later and just one month before Kennedy’s fateful visit, United Nations ambassador Adlai Stevenson suffered an attack similar to Johnson’s when he was accosted following a U.N. Day speech by screaming protesters, one of whom hit Stevenson with a “Down With the U.N.” placard provided by Gen. Edwin Walker, an ardent anti-Communist who was spearheading the drive to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Stevenson’s treatment prompted a Time magazine story headlined “A City Disgraced” and alarmed the Citizens Council, which grew concerned that some civic embarrassment might mar the upcoming presidential visit. Dallas officials immediately began planning an elaborate welcome for Kennedy, Johnson, and Texas governor John Connally. But years of Dallas Morning News invective could not be erased overnight. Days before Kennedy’s arrival, “Wanted for Treason” posters bearing a mug-shot-style photo of the president began circulating on Dallas streets.
On the morning of November 22, 1963, the News published a full-page advertisement framed in funereal black with the sarcastic headline “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.” Purchased by the John Birch Society, the ad posed a series of 12 questions, one of which was: “Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the ‘Spirit of Moscow’?”
Nearly 200,000 residents, almost one-third of the city’s population, lined the streets to welcome the Kennedys. But one afternoon’s cheers could not obscure years of extremism. For people born and raised in Dallas who defined their hometown by the “Big D” melody in the musical Most Happy Fella, the assassination was devastating.
“The demonstration against the Johnsons, the attack on Adlai Stevenson, Bruce Alger’s behavior, and the ‘Wanted for Treason’ fliers established the city’s profile,” says Southern Methodist University political science professor Dennis Simon. “Then follow it up with television’s first live murder and you have a nationwide narrative of what Dallas is all about.”
It didn’t take long for the nation to strike back. Harry Bartlett was the production manager for Schoelkopf, a downtown Dallas leather company making saddles and rifle cases. His son Steve later would serve as a congressman and mayor of Dallas. “After the shooting my dad left work to get a drink,” Steve Bartlett remembers. “When he returned to the office the telephone switchboard was jammed with calls from angry buyers all over the United States canceling orders for saddles. The minute one call ended another would come in. Schoelkopf had an old-fashioned switchboard with cables and plugs that kept ringing and blinking even when calls weren’t connected. It finally got so bad that he got a wire cutter and severed the telephone cable.”
Dallas’s rehabilitation began within months of the Kennedy assassination. First to go was Bruce Alger, whose decade in Congress ended with his decisive defeat in 1964 by a conservative Democrat. The Citizens Council wanted a nonpartisan technocrat to be Dallas’s new mayor, and in its final act before becoming a historical footnote it gave the keys to the city to J. Erik Jonsson, the 63-year-old cofounder and chairman of Texas Instruments.
Jonsson’s TI was the leading technology company of its day, a pioneer in transistors, semiconductors, and integrated circuitry, and Jonsson brought an engineer’s precision to politics. He wanted to know what elements made a city great, so before taking office he hired urban designer Vincent Ponte to accompany him on a tour of the world’s greatest cities. One night in Athens, Jonsson was standing on his hotel balcony overlooking the ancient port of Piraeus when he realized that all of the places he visited had one thing in common: They were port cities. But Dallas was landlocked. If Dallas were to become a port, it would have to be an air port.
Upon returning to Texas, Jonsson worked with the FAA and business leaders from Dallas and Fort Worth to build a new airport. Nine years later, DFW opened midway between the two cities; today it is the world’s eighth largest airport in passenger traffic.
Following the Kennedy assassination, Dallas declared a cease-fire with Washington. It integrated public schools on schedule and switched from at-large voting to single-member council districts in the early 1970s. The court-ordered transformations increased minority participation in local governance, broadened the base of prospective employees, and spread development to long-neglected neighborhoods. Today, Dallas is one of the least-segregated cities in America. Between 1970 and 2010, black-white segregation declined nearly 32 percent (while increasing 1.5 percent in New York), and Hispanics are so well integrated that one searches in vain for a Latino ghetto.
My first inkling that Dallas was changing dramatically occurred in 1981 when I returned home to give a speech after eight years away. The hotel ballroom was filled with large tables of eight, and as I walked around it became increasingly clear that I was one of the few people there actually born in Dallas. Everybody seemed to be from Rochester or Cleveland or Chicago and now worked for a company drawn to Dallas by low taxes, open land, and a business environment free of burdensome regulation. These people looked forward to Fridays with J.R. Ewing, posed in front of Southfork for Christmas cards, and actually believed the Cowboys were America’s Team. Also, they seemed very happy, I thought. Probably because everything by then was air conditioned.
Over the past 20 years, the parade of companies into Dallas has continued. Fluor Corp., Kimberly-Clark, J.C. Penney, and Comerica now call the Dallas area home. Today, Dallas has more Fortune 500 headquarters than New York City. When Tom Leppert was named CEO of Turner Corp. in 1999 he was allowed to relocate the corporate headquarters of the holding company overseeing the activities of Turner Construction Company to the city of his choice. “I selected Dallas because the decision was easy to justify,” he remembers. “It’s located in the central time zone, has low taxes, a large airport, and a regulatory environment that promotes business growth.” Indeed, during Leppert’s tenure as CEO, Turner earned more profits than in the company’s previous 97 years combined.
In 2007, Leppert was elected mayor of Dallas, a Republican who benefited from support by South Dallas Democrats and the African-American vote. The unusual coalition did not surprise D Magazine editor Wick Allison, who notes that most Dallas Republicans have a populist streak inherited from parents raised as conservative Democrats. “There’s no theory or dogma involved in Dallas politics,” he says. “Political decisions emerge from a business mindset that weighs only the facts to determine what works.”
Since 1963, Dallas’s population has almost doubled. The city sits in a metropolitan area (Dallas calls it the Metroplex) that is the country’s fourth largest. Cattle and oil interests now compete with an immigrant population speaking more than 70 languages. Yet Dallas’s most impressive accomplishment may be a balanced political climate largely free of rancor. Of the 11 mayors elected since 1963, 6 have been Republicans and 5 Democrats.
“When it comes to the best interests of Dallas, people here work together,” says Ron Kirk, the Democratic mayor from 1995 to 2002 who recently returned to Dallas after serving as the Obama administration’s U.S. trade representative. “The Dallas GOP is shaped more by the Bush family’s compassionate conservatism than by the Tea Party.”
No city can grow without ever-increasing revenue. In Dallas, more often than not, revenue comes from new economic growth, not increased personal or corporate taxes. In 2005, for example, Dallas received $67.6 billion in taxes, fees, and assorted levies. Revenue for FY 2014 is projected to be $87.3 billion, a 29.1 percent jump in just nine years. But none of the new money comes from finding new things to tax or increasing existing levies. It results primarily from a larger economy fueled by new businesses and their employees.
In the past, political space in Dallas was dominated by the Dallas Morning News or eccentric oilmen like H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison. No longer. Today, a younger generation of entrepreneurs and corporate executives who have enjoyed the benefits of economic growth are taking the lead in the creation and funding of municipal infrastructure.
Says Leppert: “The old model that relies on money from the federal government doesn’t work any longer. Creative financing models are necessary for a city to grow its infrastructure.”
Dallas often declines federal money initially, even when it is readily available. In 1983, Dallas decided to forgo Department of Transportation funds and build a mass transit network with passenger revenues and a one-cent sales tax. Today, the Dallas Area Rapid Transit system, or DART, is the largest light rail system in America, with 85 miles of track. While it now accepts federal funds, it does not run a deficit.
The DART model served as a guide in the early 1990s when Dallas initiated a $750 million upgrade of Central Expressway, then considered one of the worst urban highways in America. “We decided against accepting federal money because it would have added at least 10 years to the length of the project,” says Walt Humann, a Dallas civic leader who headed the North Central Taskforce on a volunteer basis. Instead, the state of Texas covered the construction, with Dallas paying for an enlarged right of way. The city accomplished its goal because around half of the $190 million expansion was paid for by private contributions of land or money from individuals benefiting from the improved roadway.
Completed on budget and a year ahead of schedule, the landscaped freeway whose columns are etched with Texas’s Lone Star now accommodates over 400,000 vehicles a day.
Government is not a dirty word in Dallas. Increasingly, it is a partner. In 2001 Boeing decided to move its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago instead of Dallas because it felt Chicago offered more cultural attractions. Dallas responded by developing an Arts District anchored by the $340 million AT&T Performing Arts Center. Dallas taxpayers contributed only $17 million toward the center’s completion. The balance came from private contributions large and small, including $152 million from 152 individuals who each wrote a check for $1 million. Two private philanthropists built museums to house their collections. Today, the Dallas Arts District brings $750 million in property tax revenue to the city.
Several years ago, Dallas decided to connect its historic downtown, renovated with funds from Tax Increment Financing Districts, to the city’s uptown where the Arts District is located. The problem: The two areas are separated by a freeway. So local entrepreneurs and environmentalists proposed building a $110 million elevated park atop the freeway. City, state, and federal money paid for half the project; private contributions funded the balance. Opened 13 months ago, Klyde Warren Park not only provides a relaxing urban refuge but also contributes to surrounding property values.
In the past, municipal infrastructure projects funded by the public often were named after deceased politicians. Dallas now auctions off naming rights. Naming rights reportedly paid for $10 million of the park’s cost. Naming rights to a $181 million Calatrava-designed bridge across the Trinity River went for $12 million. Added together, private contributions paid for $28.6 million of the cost of the bridge.
Can the Dallas model of cooperative, nonconfrontational governance be transferred to Washington? Many hoped that would be the case when George W. Bush became president. Today, there is less optimism.
“Many people in Washington lack common sense because they come from dysfunctional states where the amount you spend is more important than the results obtained,” sighs Dallas congressman Pete Sessions, a Republican. “Dallas works because freedom and creativity are allowed to flourish and people in the business community who have money contribute funds to make things happen.”
Dismay over Washington’s partisan gridlock is shared by Democrats and Republicans alike in Dallas. “Don’t fight over your slice of the pie; work to make the pie bigger” is a sentiment often heard along the city’s Main Street and inside its city hall. Of course, it’s easy for politicians to work together when they’re elected on a nonpartisan basis. There is no conservative-liberal divide when it comes to sewers, potholes, and graffiti.
There are a number of cities that operate efficiently, and some demographers believe that the energy and imagination that prevailed in Washington during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations now reside in America’s metropolitan areas. Certainly the concept of the city-state predates that of the nation-state. Could places like Dallas and Atlanta become the Venice and Genoa of North America? Until Washington becomes more productive, it will remain an intriguing possibility.
Born and raised in Dallas, David DeVoss now lives in Los Angeles, where he is a senior correspondent for the East-West News Service.
