Before the nation mourned, news of President John F. Kennedy's death made its way around a broken city. Some Dallasites were waiting to hear JFK speak at the Trade Mart when they heard he would never arrive. Rev. Zan Holmes remembers a party frozen in grief.
On the mood at the Trade Mart after hearing of Kennedy’s assassination:
The thing that I remember was all of the food that was left on the tables. I’ve never seen so much food left over anywhere, in all of my life. We needed some soul food – some food for our spirit. Because we were stripped of our pride and our pretention and our prejudice.
On the legacy of the assassination:
One of the greatest tragedies that we experience in life is not so much the tragedy of President Kennedy but the tragedy of unlearned lessons…I do believe that God does not want us to waste any experience that has happened to us. I believe if we don’t grow through what we’re going through, life will check our transcripts and send us back to repeat the course.