Why The JFK Assassination Still Matters

It’s been over sixty years, but the JFK Assassination has remained a subject of fascination, bewilderment, and of course conspiracy. It undeniably changed the course of Dallas and Texas history (even if both the city and state would prefer it otherwise).

So it makes perfect sense for the JFK Assassination to be a topic at the third annual It Came From Texas Film Festival, which kicks off Friday, September 12 at the Plaza Theatre in Garland. On Saturday, September 13, the festival will be screening the PBS documentary JFK: Breaking the News, which debuted in 2003 as a co-production with the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas. The documentary gathers some of the leading print and television journalists from the DFW region to share their insights and memories of that fateful day.

Introducing the documentary will be Stephen Fagin, a Curator for the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which was previously the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald worked and where he assassinated President Kennedy. The festival is also bringing together other notable speakers about the JFK Assassination, including SMU Professor Dr. Sean Griffin and Farris Rookstool III, one of the foremost experts on the topic who wears many hats: forensic historian, former FBI analyst, and current prolific filmmaker.

Texas Signal spoke with both Griffin and Rookstool about why they believe this story still resonates all these decades later. For Griffin, the screening of JFK: Breaking The News really exemplifies one of the big themes of the overall festival: “investigating or considering the way history is remembered or told.”

Griffin, who is a professor in the SMU Division of Film and Media Arts, also plans to discuss the role of local news on November 22, 1963. Because the national stations had already set up their cameras at the Convention Center, the aftermath of the assassination was chronicled by the local stations, who really became “the heroes of the day” according to Griffin. 

Both the SMU Archives and the Sixth Floor Museum have played critical roles in preserving the physical history of the event. A lot of the physical footage that was captured was in real danger of being lost to time, notes Griffin.

As for Rookstool, he is looking forward to the festival both as opportunity to return to Dallas (where he is originally from) and for speaking on a topic that he knows extensively. “The case of the JFK assassination is so fascinating, because there is so much to be learned from it,” he told the Signal.

And there is likely nobody on the planet with more knowledge on the JFK Assassination than Rookstool. Rookstool was at Love Field on November 22, 1963 as a very young child. And as an FBI agent, he was the Bureau’s primary resource for the JFK Task Force. At one point his FBI role saw him transporting nearly 500,000 pages of materials related to the assassination from Dallas to Washington, D.C. in a U-Haul. 

The government’s handling (or mishandling) of those materials has certainly fueled the still-rabid preoccupation with this period of history. Rookstool can even see the parallels to today and the Epstein files. “The general public does not like when the government is not transparent,” notes Rookstool.   

Another reason the Saturday screening of JFK: Breaking The News is so important, is the losses that accelerate with the passage of time. Many of the key witnesses for that day have sadly passed away. Clint Hill, a Secret Service Agent who ran into the limousine as the shots were fired and contributed an oral history to the Sixth Floor Museum, died in February. Hill was 93.

No matter what anybody believes or does not believe, the JFK Assassination is a pivotal moment of Texas history. And one that nobody should forget. As Rookstool told the Signal, “If you don’t learn from the past, you’re going to repeat it again.”

It Came From Texas runs from September 12-14 and is presented by Garland Cultural Arts. Rookstool will also be appearing before a screening of Bonnie & Clyde on Friday, September 12.