The JFK Assassination: Christian Identity Terrorists in Dealey Plaza?
In his book America’s Secret Jihad: the Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United States (2015), author Stuart Wexler brought the threat of Christian Identity to the forefront when he said the fringe theology “provided new justifications for terrorism after World War II.”
What is Christian Identity? Wexler defines it as follows: “Built on an idiosyncratic reading of the Book of Genesis that identifies Jews as the spawn of the devil, Christian Identity theologians, starting in the 1940s, spoke to a cosmic conspiracy, one where Jews manipulated sub-human minorities (notably blacks) in a covert war against the true chosen people: white Europeans.” Wexler goes on to write that “the past 60 years of domestic terrorism in the United States is unintelligible outside of the context of Christian Identity theology.”
This is a remarkable claim, and for the next 400 pages Wexler lays out how Christian Identity adherents and offshoot affiliates wreaked domestic havoc, from the terrorist acts in the south and assassination of Medgar Evers through events at the end of the 20th century.
In his preface Wexler writes of a “network of religious terrorists [that developed] cross-affiliations and methods of communication that inspired horrible acts of violence.” Was the JFK assassination an act carried out by religious extremists — Christian Identity terrorists?
Spas T. Raikin & A Militant Church
Before he came to the United States, Bulgarian native Spas T. Raikin wanted to fight communism “in the name of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.” According to a 1956 FBI report, Raikin looked to escape to Greece to “join such a church group there, if such existed. If none existed, he desired to form such a militant illegal church group to fight communism inside Bulgaria.”
Raikin came from a family of Bulgarian farmers, but studied theology and taught it at Sofia Theological Seminary. He later writes in his autobiography he was “assigned to recruit Theology students to join with other students from other schools for a brigade.” He doubled this assignment by “carrying on surreptitious activities which were squarely anti-communist in conception and in execution.”
Did Raikin ever locate a militant church? In Greece, Raikin managed to land a scholarship from the World Council of Churches (WCC), according to the Hoover Institution’s biographical sketch on Raikin. The FBI, however, noted Raikin was sent to Chicago by the WCC to “assist” a Bulgarian political exile. Either way, clearly Raikin undertook assignments for the WCC in some capacity; he was deeply tied to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, a member of the WCC until 1988.
This brief sketch on Raikin — the very individual who would greet Lee and Marina Oswald upon their return from Russia in 1962 in his capacity with the Travelers Aid Society — is an apt example of the existence of “militant illegal churches.”
God Wills It
The notion of a militant, illegal church as cover for hatemongers dominates groups behind racial violence and anti-Semitism in the postwar period, particularly in the South. These white supremacists — Christian Identity believers — could be found in within the Minutemen, the California Rangers, Posse Comitatus, and of course, the Klan.
A Southern California preacher with an enormous amount of influence in this environment was Rev. Wesley A. Swift (1913–1970), founder of the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian in 1946, which he used, Wexler said, “as a front for paramilitary activities connected to the Identity message.” Swift was an elder in a faction of the Klan called Christian Knights of the Invisible Empire, and a rifle instructor for Klan members, with one of the largest gun collections in the state of California. The core of Swift’s sermons and lectures centered around an impending race war, a necessary event in order for the white race to triumph in purification.
A devotee of Swift was Georgian Klansman Joseph Milteer, who bragged of a plot in the works to kill President Kennedy from an office building with a high-powered rifle. The day after the assassination, FBI and Miami Police informant Willie Somersett, a Klan insider, drove Milteer, jubilant over the death of the president, from Jacksonville to a Klan meeting in South Carolina. Milteer named three shooters in Dealey Plaza. Of course, this is titillating information, but how well can we trust Willie Augustus Somersett?
The Informant
The FBI took notice and advantage of Somersett’s extensive contact network, from politicians in the southeast to “Klansmen and hoodlums.” In addition to his Klan involvement, Somersett was a member of the National States’ Rights Party, the short-lived white supremacist political party that attracted a number of men (and women, like Delphine Roberts) pertinent to our narrative. According to Jeffrey Caufield, Somersett was sent to New Orleans by the FBI in November 1960 to follow the controversy over the move to desegregate Archdiocese of New Orleans Catholic schools. Caufield noted this placed Somersett squarely in the milieu of Guy Banister and his cadre of segregationists who abhorred the archbishop’s decree of school integration.
On Milteer and his information Somersett told the FBI, “I am satisfied that this man beyond doubt knew that [the JFK assassination] was going to happen, and from the impression I got from him this conspiracy originated in New Orleans, probably some in Miami and different parts of the country, probably in California. And I am pretty sure California had a lot to do with it, because he mentioned Dr. Swift very often, what a great man he was and [JFK would] already be killed before he got out of office.”
Indeed, one of the three supposed shooters, per Somersett, was a southern Californian, Theodore “Ted” Jackman.
Avenging Angels
1. Theodore Jackman
Dubbed “one of the toughest killers” by Willie Somersett, Jackman made a professional career as a collector of antiquities with the Palestine Research Institute, and was a representative for the World Christian Fundamentals Association, a haven for fundamentalists opposed to socialism, Darwinism and the civil rights movement, among other issues, like the Kennedy administration’s nuclear disarmament policy.
Willie Somersett reported Jackman’s presence at a Congress of Freedom (COF) meeting in New Orleans in early April 1963. Somersett attended with Milteer; the audience consisted of far-right extremists in general, a who’s-who of Christian Identity proponents and the radical right — Somersett estimated the vast majority of COF leadership were John Birch Society members. The previous month, anti-disarmament literature edited by Jackman was distributed at a March 1963 gathering in Tampa headlined by General Edwin Walker. It was kicked off by popular radio evangelist Billy James Hargis of Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the April COF meeting, according to Caufield, “plans for assassination of a large number of prominent political figures in government, business, and industry who were considered pro-Communist were revealed.” The targets for these assassinations was compiled by Mary Davison, in a pamphlet called Secret Government. Davison was leader of a group called Council for Statehood; Jackman was in the “high command” of the group. According to Caufield, “Somersett came to learn that a high-ranking inner circle,” within the Council of Statehood, “had access to large amounts of money, [and] would name the time and place for assassinations to begin.”
Jackman was flown in from California for the April 1963 COF meeting to deliver his speech, in which he vowed, “We will meet the army-head on and destroy them.”
A year earlier, Jackman was invited to speak at Clemson as a guest of the Clemson College Chapter of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). Among YAF’s advisory board was another veritable all-star list of radical right-wingers, including Gen. Willoughby and Carl McIntire.
Jackman apparently was on the road a lot with the John Birch Society’s American Opinion Speakers Bureau. He was also a reverend, but it remains unconfirmed with what denomination he was affiliated. Addresses associated with Jackman range from southern and northern California, south Florida, and Greenville, South Carolina. Jackman was originally from the Hollywood area of Los Angeles; he settled in Greenville in spring 1963.
Greenville was also a longtime residence of Rev. O.B. Graham. By the time Jackman settled in Greenville, however, Graham was in Texas, pastor of the Abundant Life Center and beginning in February 1962 host of Abundant Life Ministry of Dr. O.B. Graham, broadcast on KTVT Channel 11, a Fort Worth-based station, but owned by the Oklahoma Publishing Company. Another program aired on the station was The Dan Smoot Report. Smoot was a former FBI agent who went to work for H.L. Hunt’s Facts Forum and was acquainted with Joseph Milteer. It begs the question if Jackman and Graham were connected, perhaps through Greenville links or ancillary connections on the radical right. An even deeper connection is possible, however: O.B. Graham owned and managed the Abundant Life Temple, the Dallas church where witnesses claimed the shooter of Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit fled shortly after the assassination of the president and the murder of Officer Tippit.
2. R.E. Davis
Somersett informed authorities of another reverend purportedly acting as a rifleman in Dealey Plaza — Roy Elonzo “R.E.” Davis. It is not out of the realm of possibility if Davis — a notorious Texas fraudster, forger, and Imperial Wizard of the Original Knights of the KKK — was involved in the shooting, that he sought refuge in the Abundant Life Temple after the murder of Tippit in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. After all, both Davis and O.B. Graham were associated with the Pentecostal movement; for years Davis ran the First Pentecostal Baptist Church of God. Both held healing revivals. Davis baptized William Branham, a leading healing revivalist who confirmed Wesley Swift’s Christian Identity theology was part of the instruction in Davis’s church. Incidentally, as Davis took Branham under his wing, Branham later did the same for Jim Jones of Jonestown infamy.
Thanks to Jeffrey Caufield’s efforts, we know Davis was an avid deer hunter and Imperial Dragon of the Dallas Ku Klux Klan. Both Ted Jackman and R.E. Davis had ties to General Walker, thus overlapping within similar radical right circles. Moreover, Davis was a member of the anti-integration organization, the Oak Cliff White Citizens’ Council. But was he truly a Dealey Plaza rifleman? He was 73 years old at the time, making his position on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository unlikely. However, the case has been made for a triangulated crossfire in Dealey Plaza.
2. J.D. Tippit
Slain Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit needs no introduction. Could he have really taken a shot at JFK? Tippit, of course, was the officer allegedly killed by Lee Oswald shortly before Oswald’s arrest at the Texas Theatre. Tippit moonlighted at Austin’s Barbeque on the weekends, a meeting place for the John Birch Society in Dallas.
The official account is that Oswald left the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the shooting of the president. He stopped at his boarding house about 1:00, at the same time a police car pulled up to it, honked twice — according to housekeeper Earlene Roberts — and slowly drove away. A few minutes later, Tippit then reportedly saw Oswald walking down the street. A seemingly friendly interaction turned deadly; Tippit was shot four times. This shooting took place at E. 10th and Patton, about a block away from the Abundant Life Temple. It was about 1:15, forty-five minutes after the shooting of JFK. According to police radio calls, a witness saw Tippit’s killer enter the three-story church building from the back alley. Officers were poised to enter the building: “We are fixing to go in and shake it down.” Then a new report came that the suspect was now at the nearby library on Marsalis Street, and police left. In any event, Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre almost forty minutes later.
These purported events in Oak Cliff eerily evoke a situation three decades earlier: a group of kidnappers were stalking Rev. Wesley Swift and his young wife. When Swift’s mother was threatened by the gang outside Swift’s Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, Swift’s mother escaped her assailants by rushing inside the church, according to a 1932 LA Times report.
Did someone seek sanctuary in the Abundant Life Temple? Did it just happen to be open that Friday afternoon, or did someone let the fleeing figure inside?
Temple of Doom
O.B. Graham purchased the church building at Tenth and Crawford in Oak Cliff in April 1962. Before then, the rather imposing structure was home to the Oak Cliff Christian Church; Graham’s church was damaged by a fire in February 1962. In 1964, Graham then sold the Tenth and Crawford building and appeared to alternate his time between Dallas and Tulsa. Graham died in 1974. He was 53.
It is an interesting coincidence that both Graham’s church and the Texas School Book Depository company only recently moved into their respective physical buildings in the months leading up to the assassinations. In Dealey Plaza, the Book Depository had been just across the street at 501 Elm on the first floor of the Dal-Tex Building; Graham’s Abundant Life Center relocated from two miles south, at 1730 S. Ewing.
Some assassination books and articles have made unsubstantiated claims about the significance of the Abundant Life Temple — that it was owned by colorful spinster of yarns Fred Crisman, or that it was reputedly a refuge for Cubans. Whatever may have happened that fateful encounter between Tippit and his executioner, we have at least shown a myriad of connections with the Abundant Life Center at the nexus, suggesting Willie Somersett did not pull those names out of thin air.
The Man on the Sixth Floor
Finally, Dealey Plaza witnesses spoke of seeing a heavyset man in a brown suit coat wearing horn-rimmed glasses at a window on the sixth floor: these witnesses were Arnold Rowland, Carolyn Walther, Ruby Henderson, and Richard Carr. Walther said the other man wore a white shirt and was holding a rifle. Carr claimed he glimpsed the same man in horn-rimmed glasses walking briskly down Commerce St. minutes after the shooting. Some researchers have tried to connect this mysterious man to Texan Mac Wallace, convicted murderer and reputed henchman for LBJ.
However, there is another possibility, a heavyset man in horn-rimmed glasses who bears a striking resemblance to Wallace — O.B. Graham. Might he have been who witnesses saw on the sixth floor?