Letter from the Kennedy-Johnson campaign to Phil Willis

The addressee and two of the three signers of this letter all played significant roles in 1963.

In November 1963 Phil Willis, his wife, their two daughters and her parents were all in Dealey Plaza watching when President Kennedy was shot, three years to the day after this letter was written.  Willis had his camera with him that day and several of his color slides taken before, during and after the assassination are among the most studied images of the assassination in Dealey Plaza.

The same Judge Sarah T. Hughes who signed this thank-you letter to Willis in 1960, swore in the new president, Lyndon Johnson, aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas.  One year after President Kennedy had been elected, then Vice President Johnson nominated Hughes and President Kennedy appointed her as a Federal district judge in north Texas, the first woman in the state to gain that position.  Initially, the Justice Department opposed the nomination claiming that, at 64, she was too old for the position.  But with Texans Johnson and Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn on her side, Justice withdrew its objection.

Co-chair Carl Phinney was a long-time friend of Lyndon Johnson and also enjoyed a 50-year career as a lawyer in Dallas. 

In 1961, Campaign Director Barefoot Sanders was appointed by President Kennedy as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, which included the Dallas area.  It was Sanders who eventually located Judge Sarah Hughes and told her to go to Love Field to swear in Lyndon Johnson.

And they are all together in this one remarkable thank you letter! - Gary Mack, Curator

Barefoot Sanders is, in many ways, best known for his role in helping to desegregate Dallas' public schools.  As a federal judge in the 1970s Sanders presided over a desegregation case that ultimately determined that despite federal laws that made segregated schools illegal, the city's schools had not successfully desegregated .  Instead of following the more standard solution of busing students, Sanders promoted the creation of magnet schools as a way of getting students of different backgrounds to attend the same schools.  Today, the Judge Barefoot Sanders Magnet Center for Public Service is an award-winning Dallas high school that trains students for careers in law, government and law enforcement.  - Sharron Conrad, Associate Director of Education and Public Programs

Phil Willis (1918-1995), the original collector of this item, was a second lieutenant in the Army Air Corps who survived the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 and was also an eyewitness to the Kennedy assassination. He took a series of important color photographs of the Kennedy motorcade and the Dealey Plaza aftermath which continue to be studied by researchers around the world. During the 1960 election, Willis was a very active local volunteer for the Kennedy/Johnson campaign. - Stephen Fagin, Curator