After John F Kennedy was murdered on November 22 1963, Dallas became known as “the city of hate”. Its citizens were charged with creating a fervid rightist atmosphere in which Lee Harvey Oswald felt moved to shoot the president. Mike Rawlings, the city's current mayor, told me: “There are stories of people going to places and almost being embarrassed to be from Dallas back in the 1960s, early 1970s.”
I found Rawlings sneaking a catnap at the New Cities Summit in Sao Paulo in June. The man who came to Dallas in 1976 with $200 in his pocket and made it to president of Pizza Hut was taking the briefest break from his usual activity: plugging Dallas. But how does any city incorporate a global trauma into its image? It's taken Dallas 50 years to learn to deal with the murder.
Many Americans in 1963 couldn't accept that a lone loser like Oswald had changed history. Consequently, they blamed larger entities. Conspiracy theorists accused the Central Intelligence Agency or Cuban exiles. Others blamed Dallas itself.