Skip to main content
Advanced Search
Image of Dallas Memorial Auditorium during Kennedy's campaign stop
Image of Dallas Memorial Auditorium during Kennedy's campaign stop

Image of Dallas Memorial Auditorium during Kennedy's campaign stop

Object number2014.080.0019
Date09/13/1960
ClassificationsPhotographs
Photographer Donald C. Grant
ObjectNegative (b&w)
Credit LineThe Dallas Morning News Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza Donated by The Dallas Morning News in the interest of preserving history
MediumFilm
Dimensions2 3/8 × 2 3/8 in. (6 × 6 cm)
Collections
DescriptionOriginal 120 mm black and white negative taken by The Dallas Morning News staff photographer Clint Grant of the audience at Dallas Memorial Auditorium during John F. Kennedy's campaign visit on September 13, 1960. Members of the news media are visible in the lower left portion of the image; beyond them the auditorium is filled with people in the floor seats and balcony. Most people are standing and many appear to be cheering or waving.
Curatorial Commentary
Just over three years after Senator Kennedy's speech, Dallas's Memorial Auditorium was also the location for United Nations Ambassador Adlai Stevenson's address on U.N. Day, October 26, 1963. A crowd of right-wing demonstrators, by some accounts numbering more than one hundred, persistently interrupted Stevenson's locally-televised speech. Following his program, in a moment captured on film and seen around the country, Stevenson was violently hit on the head with a placard outside Memorial Auditorium. Occuring less than one month before the assassination, this incident helped to unfairly characterize all of Dallas as a toxic "city of hate" in the immediate aftermath. - Stephen Fagin, Curator