Ray Adler Oral History

Object number1995.043.0004

Date02/03/1995

ClassificationsOral Histories

Oral history interview subject Ray Adler

Oral history interviewer Bob Porter

ObjectOral history

Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza

MediumHi-8 videotape

Dimensions2 3/4 × 4 × 3/4 in. (7 × 10.2 × 1.9 cm)
Duration: 59 Minutes

Terms

Collections

DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Ray Adler. An employee of the First National Bank of Dallas in 1963, Adler took photographs of the Kennedy motorcade on Main Street and sold his roll of unprocessed film to a Life Magazine reporter later that day. Beginning in 1969, Adler spent seventeen years at the Dallas Times Herald. While serving as assistant managing editor, he maintained the newspaper's significant file of Kennedy assassination-related negatives. Interview recorded at Mr. Adler's home on February 3, 1995 by Bob Porter. The interview is fifty-nine minutes long.

Curatorial Commentary

Ray Henry Adler passed away on December 15, 2002 at the age of 60. During his seventeen years at the Dallas Times Herald, he led the photography and graphics departments to two Pulitzer Prizes in Feature Photography (1980, 1983). Adler left the Times Herald in the late 1980s to start a Dallas-based PR firm, Adler Communications Group.

The Dallas Times Herald's collection of approximately 700 Kennedy assassination-related negatives, discussed in this interview, were donated in 1989 to The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. Scans of those negatives and contact sheets may be found here: Works – Dallas Times Herald – Collections – eMuseum (jfk.org). -- Stephen Fagin, Curator