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Billie Cox Oral History

Billie Cox Oral History

Object number2014.001.0069
Date06/16/2014
ClassificationsOral Histories
Oral history interview subject
Oral history interviewer
ObjectOral history
Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
MediumBorn digital (.m2ts file)
DimensionsDuration: 40 Minutes
Collections
  • All Online Objects
  • Oral History Collection
DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Billie Cox. Cox, a longtime teacher at Annie Webb Blanton Elementary in Dallas, was close friends with fellow teacher--and well-known assassination eyewitness--Jean Hill for more than thirty years. Cox attended many assassination talks with Hill and was in Dealey Plaza for the filming of Oliver Stone's "JFK" (1991). Interview conducted at Churchill Estates retirement community in Dallas on June 16, 2014 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is forty minutes long.
Curatorial Commentary
Located about eleven miles from downtown Dallas, I visited the Churchill Estates retirement community (known as The Landon at Lake Highlands since 2018) on several occasions. During this visit in June 2014, five residents took part in the Oral History Project. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
Billie Cox passed away on May 10, 2015. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

During this interview, former schoolteacher Billie Cox talks at length about her friend and colleague Jean Hill, a controversial eyewitness to the Kennedy assassination. Hill, who passed away in 2000, recorded an early audio oral history with the Museum in 1989. That interview can be accessed here: Jean Hill Oral History – Works – The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza.

In addition to Billie Cox, another schoolteacher colleague of Jean Hill who was able to observe some of the location filming of Oliver Stone's JFK, Lana Henderson Sloan, recorded an oral history with the Museum in 2014 (Lana Henderson Sloan Oral History – Works – The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza). Lana Henderson Sloan's late husband, Bill Sloan, co-wrote Hill's autobiography and recorded oral histories with the Museum in 2001 (Bill Sloan Oral History – Works – The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza) and 2014 (Bill Sloan Oral History – Works – The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza). Bill Sloan passed away in 2019. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Since 2010, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza has actively engaged in community outreach to grow the institution's ongoing Oral History Project. Unlike the one-on-one interviews recorded onsite at the Museum or via Zoom or telephone, community outreach recordings are typically brief, on-the-spot reflections of President Kennedy and the weekend of the assassination that, on average, run between five to fifteen minutes. During a typical outreach visit to a retirement home, church or community center, I give a half-hour presentation about the assassination and the Museum's project and encourage those in attendance to add their voices to this tapestry of living memory. Following the program, somewhat like a doctor's office, I call on volunteers to sit down with me one-on-one, one after another to briefly share their memories. These impromptu recordings have, over the years, uncovered a wealth of untold stories and hidden gems. Among the dozens of everyday memories of hearing about the Kennedy assassination at work, in a restaurant or at school, are a number of Kennedy motorcade spectators, Parkland Hospital personnel, attendees of the Fort Worth breakfast or Dallas Trade Mart luncheon, acquaintances of Jack Ruby, Peace Corps volunteers, civil rights activists and even one local FBI agent, long since retired from the Bureau. It has been an honor to record these and other unique stories related to the life, death and legacy of President Kennedy and the broader history and culture of the 1960s. If you live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and are interested in scheduling an oral history outreach visit for your retirement community or organization, please contact oralhistory@jfk.org. - Stephen Fagin, Curator