Adell Houston Oral History

Object number2019.001.0101

Date08/14/2019

ClassificationsOral Histories

Oral history interview subject Adell Houston

Oral history interviewer Stephen Fagin

ObjectOral history

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

MediumBorn digital (.m2ts file)

DimensionsDuration: 6 Minutes

Terms

Collections

All Online Objects
Oral History Collection

DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with Adell Houston. An office worker in downtown Dallas in 1963, Houston was eating lunch at the Piccadilly Cafeteria on Commerce Street when the Kennedy assassination took place. Interview conducted at Three Forks retirement community in Forney, Texas on August 14, 2019 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is six minutes long.

Curatorial Commentary

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

Curatorial Commentary

Forney, Texas is a growing suburban community located in Kaufman County, approximately twenty-two miles east of downtown Dallas. This 2019 outreach visit to Three Forks retirement community in Forney yielded six oral history interviews. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Curatorial Commentary

Adell Houston passed away on May 12, 2020. - Stephen Fagin, Curator

Curatorial Commentary

The exterior of the Piccadilly Cafeteria on Commerce Street can be seen in this Dallas Times Herald photograph by Bill Beal from the night of November 22, 1963: https://emuseum.jfk.org/objects/3851. Adell Houston would have eaten at this restaurant earlier that same day.

The Piccadilly Cafeteria, located at 1503 Commerce Street, was also the site of one of the most prominent and sustained civil rights demonstrations in Dallas's history. Between May and July 1964, activists interested in desegregating the popular downtown cafeteria protested at the site for twenty-eight consecutive days, attracting national news coverage. A large collection of Dallas County Sheriff's Department survelliance photographs of the demonstration and resurveillanceces may be found here: Thesaurus – Vocabularies – The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. - Stephen Fagin, Curator