Beginning Nov.1, Tarrant County College and the John F. Kennedy Museum Foundation will present an exhibit of rare, never-before-publicly-displayed, one-of-a-kind historical artifacts relating to the Kennedy Administration and JFK's assassination, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Space Program during the 1960's. It is expected to draw thousands." -- TCC press release, October 2000

Strolling through the well-lit Carillon Gallery on Tarrant County College's South Campus back in the fall of 2000, viewers of "Kennedy: The Man, The President, The 1960s," could see one of Jack Kennedy's famous rocking chairs and the Dallas theater seat where the fallen president's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was sitting just before he was captured. There was a cigar box from Air Force One, surveillance maps from the Cuban missile crisis, a piece of the Berlin wall, FBI wanted posters of James Earl Ray, convicted of killing Martin Luther King -- and little else that viewers hadn't seen before.

Lining the walls were old news clips and the all-too-familiar photos of the Kennedys and their times that have been published ad infinitum, from Jackie in her blood-soaked suit to Oswald's public murder to John-John saluting his father's casket. For some, it was hard to believe that these curious memorabilia were being touted in the press as a "multi-million-dollar" collection.

"I was not wowed," said one long-time faculty member. "It was a bomb, an embarrassment."

For Dolly Worden it was worse than that. "This was a terrible waste of taxpayer money," she said angrily of the exhibit that was set up in the gallery dedicated to her late husband. "What was there was so out of context that it could hardly be of historical significance to students today. How can a cigar box say anything about those times?" NEXT »

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