Monday, November 27, 2006

New Sixth Floor Museum exhibit features police force memories

By Pegasus News wire

Over 300 Dallas Police officers, about one-fourth of the total force, were assigned to cover President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Dallas on November 22, 1963. Their stories, along with those of the Dallas County Sheriff’s deputies who also worked that fateful weekend, are told in Voices from History: Dallas Law Enforcement, which opened on Monday, November 20, 2006, at The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Featuring artifacts, videos, selections from the Museum's Oral History Collection, and photographs, the exhibition runs daily through August 5, 2007, in the seventh floor gallery. “We are gratified by the willingness of these officers to share their memories of that harrowing weekend with our visitors,” said Nicola Longford, executive director of the Museum. “This exhibition provides rare and vivid insights into the assassination, Dallas history, and law enforcement operations of that time.”

Presented in four sections – Dealey Plaza, Oak Cliff, Dallas Police headquarters, and the shooting of Oswald – Voices from History: Dallas Law Enforcement is highlighted by an array of rarely-seen artifacts:

• Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Gene Boone’s customized .45 automatic pistol;

• equipment and supplies from a crime scene kit used by Lt. J. “Carl” Day, head of the

Dallas Police crime lab;

• clothing worn by Detectives Jim Leavelle and L.C. Graves as they escorted assassination suspect Lee Harvey Oswald on the day he was shot by Jack Ruby;

• an Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle almost identical to the one thought to have been used by Oswald; and

• items from the John F. Kennedy Collection of the City of Dallas Municipal Archives.

Voices from History: Dallas Law Enforcement also offers two videos produced specifically for the exhibition. An introduction video features footage of investigators inside the Texas School Book Depository, at the murder scene of police officer J.D. Tippit, and at police headquarters the weekend of the assassination. It is narrated by Pierce Allman, a former WFAA radio program director and one of the first reporters to enter the Depository after the shooting.

A second video takes visitors back to November 24, 1963, when Ruby murdered Oswald in the basement of Dallas Police headquarters. Visitors select any of six different views of the shooting recorded by network and local TV news photographers.

Personal accounts of 14 law enforcement officers are presented in the exhibition, ranging from Sergeant D.V. Harkness, who supervised a downtown portion of the presidential motorcade route, to Deputy Sheriff Luke Mooney, who discovered the sniper’s perch on the sixth floor of the Depository.

Source: Sixth Floor Museum

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