David Chadwick Oral History
Object number2021.001.0026
Date04/30/2021
ClassificationsOral Histories
Oral history interview subject
David Chadwick
Oral history interviewer
Stephen Fagin
ObjectOral history
Credit LineOral History Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
MediumBorn digital (.m2ts file), Born digital (.m4a file), Born digital (.mp4 file)
DimensionsDuration: 110 Minutes
Collections
- All Online Objects
- Oral History Collection
DescriptionVideotaped oral history interview with David Chadwick. A Fort Worth native, Chadwick was present when U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was accosted in Dallas on October 24, 1963. The following year he traveled to Mississippi as a civil rights worker with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). As a white southerner, he briefly served as a spy in the heavily segregated city of Natchez, Mississippi, and was later arrested.
Interview conducted via Zoom on April 30, 2021 by Stephen Fagin. The interview is one hour and fifty minutes long.
Curatorial CommentaryDavid Chadwick passed away on February 23, 2026. - Riley Harris, Collections Cataloger
Despite being a native of the Dallas/Fort Worth area, at the time of this 2021 oral history, David Chadwick actually lived farther away than any other participant in our project's history. Via Zoom, we connected live between Dallas and his home in Bali, Indonesia, nearly 10,000 miles away across the Pacific Ocean. As a result of the thirteen-hour time difference, I recorded from Dallas on the evening of Friday, April 30, while David participated in the interview on the morning of Saturday, May 1. - Stephen Fagin, Curator
A multi-part memoir detailing David Chadwick's experience during the Civil Rights Movement, Freedom Songs: my Journey through 1964, may be found here: Freedom Songs - index. Chadwick is also the author a number of books, including Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki (1999) and Thank You and OK: An American Zen Failure in Japan (2007). - Stephen Fagin, Curator
