In my second decade, I discovered the depth of controversy surrounding the most public assassination of a political figure that we can collectively recall. At that point, thirty-one years had passed since the event and eighteen years since the official judgment on the probable cause, but still it was incredibly easy to poke the embers of conversation and get a healthy fire going. Today's unending remembrances and reflections and retrospectives should be enough to convince anyone that it is a favorite, though shallowly submerged, chew toy for debate. By comparison, we do not have the same present cultural memory of the attempted murder of Ronald Reagan by an errant mistake of genetics with a fixation for child prostitutes, which occurred in 1981.
I was exposed to the conspiracy arguments by my homeroom teacher in a spare moment, as the then-blisteringly-new Macintosh (I believe a Color Classic, specifically) could play videos off CDs provided by Encyclopedia Britannica. One of these videos was the Zapruder Film, and after a few exploratory questions to confirm my suspicions, I was off to read all about the fuss.
I was convinced, until this morning, that I had thoroughly investigated a broad enough swath of information to be as educated on the subject as a person should be without making a career of it. In fact, I was dreading the anticipated news day as being precisely what it was: soft-focus looks at a black day in American history, punctuated only by advertising for 41-hour shopping celebrations. But literally the very first thing I saw regarding the assassination this morning was an introduction to a previously-unseen gem from the past, a modestly-menacing figure who immediately fascinated me and satisfied the love of learning new things that is innate in us.
He is called The Umbrella Man, and I had seen him without seeing him a thousand times.
This is a wonderful example of an untrained mind recognizing multiple details as they are but not coalescing them into an observation. As you can see from the above photo, the sun is providing distinct, crisp shadows. People are dressed for a comfortable fall day, shirtsleeves and dresses. And in the middle of all this is one man dressed entirely in black and holding an open black umbrella. It had rained the previous evening, but cleared early in the morning. No one else is seen with an umbrella, open or otherwise.
He is seen circled here, standing next to a freeway directional sign. It is roughly in line with this sign that Kennedy was shot, and on the films the man can be seen moving the umbrella slightly up and down. It could be argued he was signaling to proceed shooting, another speculation was that this man carried out an unseen role in the plot, shooting the President in the neck with a poisoned dart to immobilize him so he would, presumably, make an easier target.
None of this was the case, obviously. The Umbrella Man is really called Louie Witt, and he was protesting in what I think was a very clever way. Thirty years prior to the day in question, President Kennedy's father politically supported the Nazi appeaser Neville Chamberlain, and Prime Minister Chamberlain was visually distinct for carrying an umbrella with him (although how that would distinguish him from anyone else walking on the street in London I cannot say). The political satirists of the time used the umbrella as a symbol of Chamberlain and his failed policies, and it was this historical Daily Show reference that Mr. Witt was delivering to the President in Dallas. Mr. Witt personally delivered his explanation of his actions at the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, and a good time was had by all.
All of this fascinating stuff was brought to my attention by The New York Times and a video interview with Errol Morris from 2011.
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