60 Second Stories By Cal - The JFK Wanted Poster

This poster has a weird place in my life. I found it in the Brandon University library during grade 8 when I had to do a project on an American president. Since I won first choice, I of course went with JFK because he was the guy that I knew the most about. It was no coincidence that his assassination figured heavily into my choice of individuals to write about.

In collecting my resources, librarian in our school suggested I got to the Brandon University library because they had more info than our little school library did.

The lady was really nice and took me around and showed me all kind of things from their archives. I even had been able to sign out a 16mm copy of the famous 'Zapruder Film' (which those of you in the know is the film that was shot by an ordinary person with his movie camera, right at the moment when JFK was shot.) for my presentation (look below). I thought I had scored the big one and was sure to get an A.



Then she thought she remembered something while checking out my books and ran to one of the back rooms. She returned with a dusty old paper folder stuffed with articles and wrapped in a thick elastic band.

When I got home, Mr Dad and I looked all over the stuff and he told me about his recollection of those times and how much Kennedy was hated by a certain section of the population. He remember stories about how this 'wanted' poster was put all over Dallas during the President's fateful visit to that city in 1963.

I only knew JFK as this immensely popular and glamorous figure who had a pretty wife and lived in a really nice house. I didn't even think that you were ALLOWED to openly hate your leader or accuse him of anything bad. Just like in school, if you spoke up then expect there to be consequences.

This 'wanted for treason' poster changed my whole outlooks on politics that day and I have had an interest in the subject ever since. The way political parties can manipulates the way we see and hear things and how often the truth is kept from us became enormously fascinating to me.

I became a junior conspiracy theorists and after following the many threads of evil in politics, I also became very interested in how the Nazi propaganda machine worked. I had been to Dacau's concentration camp and I had always wondered how the German people could just let something like the Holocaust happen right under their noses. I finally understood that people were actively keeping such information about the evil that they were doing from the German population.

My dad got me copies of many of the articles and pictures in that file folder that day. The copies were the old kind that were done on shiny paper and ink that ran if you touched it.

I still have my copy of the wanted poster and it reminds me every time I see it that trust is earned and people will lie to you just to get you to follow an agenda that isn't necessarily in your best interest.

My world became a much more secretive and evil place that day.