Daniel Meyer

A New York Times archives search shows that the President's Commission on the Assassination was already being called "the Warren Commission" by December of 1963, months before the report was issued. Example: http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50916FC3E55127B93CAAB1789D95F478685F9&scp=1&sq=%22Warren+Commission%22&st=p

Former President Jimmy Carter interviewed by John Stewart on "The Daily Show" Video: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-september-20-2010/jimmy-carter From about 1:30 to 2:10 some interesting comments. Carter: "I ran against the establishment. I ran against Washington that was in disgrace. And where people had despair, they were looking for a fresh face, or fresh faces. And, it was after Watergate, disaster, and the resignation of a President. It was after we lost in Vietnam and told lies about it; It was after the assassination of a President, and his brother, and Martin Luther King Jr.; It was after Frank Church revealed that the Presidents and the C.I.A. had committed murder over seas. So people were looking for someone outside, like the Tea Party is now, and I filled that role." Hm, I wonder what that set of unrelated crimes by some lone nuts is doing in that list of problems with Washington.

FWIW, from 1965 Polk's New Orleans City Directory: Garner, Jessie J (Lena M) driver Yellow Cab h 4911 Magazine (tel) TW9-4244 Rice, John W (Esther J) spl agt in chg US Secret Service Div h 1467 Owens 283-2185 (No listing for a John W. nor Esther Rice in current New Orleans phone book.) Rivera, Jose R (Luz S) parasitologist Touro Infirmary h 8228 Palm 488-5339 Ferrie, David W psychologist h 3330 Louisiana ave pkwy (no phone number listed)

I'm not aware of any. I see him credited as "Layton Martens" in some of his films. He sometimes went as "Kid Layton" as a jazz musician and bandleader.

Memorial pamphlet from Layton Martens funeral 25 March 2000 at Bultman Funeral Home, Louisiana & St. Charles Avenue, Uptown New Orleans.

As I haven't found a Forum Topic on Layton Martens, I'll start one. Layton was the only JFK/Garrison investigation figure who I had more than a short passing encounter with. He was a friend, though I knew him 20 years later (from the '80s to his death in 2000) and mostly as a musician. Layton Patrick Martens (19 February 1943 - 18 March 2000) is known in JFK related circles for his associations with David Ferrie. He was staying at Ferrie's apartment in the Broadmoor section of New Orleans when President Kennedy was killed. Layton Martens was questioned by the Garrison investigation. Garrison Grand Jury transcript: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/garr/grandjury/Martens/html/Martens_0001a.htm Thread "The Houma Arms Cache Raid Revisited": http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=14366 Photo of Layton as an actor in Oliver Stone's "JFK" movie: http://www.jfk-online.com/jfkcameomartens.html A nice photo by Luke Fontana of Layton playing a jazz funeral: http://lukefontana.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=138 Attached: Scan of Layton Martens obituary, "The Times-Picayune" newspaper, New Orleans, Saturday March 25 2000, page B-5; shared for educational purposes under fair use. [edited to substitute link to copy of image on Flickr for copy taking space on Forum -- DM]

If I remember correctly, it was about 1978. I was a young undergrad hanging around Tulane's special collections mostly working with pre-Columbian Mesoamerica material. At the time Special Collections was on the 4th floor of Tulane's Howard Tilton Library building on Freret Street. The late Congressman Hale Boggs' papers had been donated to the University. One day the Special Collections librarians were shocked to see several feet of the Boggs collection missing from the shelves, apparently having vanished over night. A piece of paper was then found in the otherwise empty shelves stating material had been seized by the F.B.I. It caused quite a stir at the time. I was far from an insider. From what I heard the Boggs material had yet to be gone over in complete detail, but the missing material seemed to be related to the Jack Kennedy assassination investigations.

FWIW I went to a lecture by Jack Anderson on the Tulane University campus in New Orleans about 1978 or 1979. I don't recall a lot of details other than that it was generally interesting and entertaining commentary on current events and U.S. history of recent decades. I remember Anderson getting a bit worked up over then president Jimmy Carter, calling him "a boy scout. He's a bright boy scout. An honest boy scout. But he's still a boy scout. We shouldn't have a boy scout as President." At the question & answer section after his presentation, I asked for his perspective on a major event he hadn't mentioned, the John Kennedy assassination. (There were a couple of audible moans from the audience when I asked.) Anderson said he didn't know what happened with the assassination, but thought that LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover were quick to do a cover up to prevent anything awkward coming out such as if there were ties to Cuba which could lead to war. Anderson was the first I personally recall articulating that there was a cover up conspiracy after the assassination whether or not there was any conspiracy in Dealey Plaza.

Camp Street by Lafayette Square, New Orleans, September 1963. The building housing Mancuso's/ Bannister's office etc is towards the left edge, to the left of the neo-classical old Post Office building. Extracted from Historic American Building Survey photo by Dan Leyrer at Library of Congress website. Full original photo at: http://loc.gov/pictures/item/la0056/

For anyone who might be interested, here's the former building at the downtown lake corner of Camp & Lafayette, housing Mancuso's Restaurant, Guy Bannister's office, 544 Camp, 531 Lafayette, etc. This is from the Sanborn map of New Orleans, 1909 with pasted updates to c. 1950.

That sounds unlikely or at least very surprising. Understand that Louisiana Parishes (similar to Counties in most other states) had a good deal of political autonomy and often separate party organizations. Perez made use of that to become virtual ruler of Plaquemines and Saint Bernard. New Orleans is Orleans Parish, a different entity, where Garrison's power was confined. Perez was prominent as the most vehement of segregationists, whereas Garrison was one of what was considered the reform progressives on Civil Rights, refusing to prosecute those arrested for violating local Jim Crow laws on grounds that they had been declared invalid on the Federal level.

Heh, I'll pass on your last question. I'm unaware of any study quantifying comparative exaggeration :-) I've heard of Henry Pleasants, but don't know much about him. I've never lived in the French Quarter, but go there often for work and recreation. I guess Exchange Alley being a great place to live would depend on what one was looking for. A lot of that area was on the run down side in the 1950s, but the location was certainly very convenient, right off Canal Street, the city's bustling main street, a short walk to the entertainment section of the Quarter, bus and streetcar lines converging around there to get to other parts of town. I live Uptown, closer to where Oswald was staying on Magazine Street in '63; I drove by the building just earlier today. Years ago I used to walk through Lafayette Square several days a week. Back in August of 2005 I had a list in the back seat of my car, of places in New Orleans associated with Oswald, David Ferrie, etc I planned to take photos of. Then came a distraction called Katrina. That took up a lot of my attention for a few years. I've only recently been getting back to spending more time on some of my other interests.

A leader dies from gunfire. Shot by a lone assailant who soon after himself is shot to death, leaving his motive, if any, mysterious? Or was the leader shot by his own subordinates who then covered up the actual circumstances? Or was there an even wider conspiracy? 75 years ago, Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long was shot in the Louisiana State Capital building in Baton Rouge. Times-Picayune article: http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/09/controversy_mystery_still_surr.html

Thanks for the welcome. LOL, I'm not aware of Fats Waller making that claim. Perhaps you're thinking of Jelly Roll Morton. Morton was certainly a brilliant creator and important innovator in the early days of jazz, and also someone who believed in vigorous self promotion. Should there be an Education Forum discussion of the origins of jazz, I'd enjoy participating. I agree with jazz writer Al Rose's assertion that if you try to pin down the origin of jazz, you need to define what you mean by "jazz". What is became known as "New Orleans Style Jazz" was, I believe, the product of a series of innovations from the 1890s to 1910s, and even some of the people who created the music at the time disagreed as to where the boundary of "not yet jazz" and "jazz" was. An important influence on me was the late oral historian Richard B. Allen of Tulane University's Jazz Archive. I admired his passion for accuracy and mastery of getting information in oral histories while scrupulously avoiding leading questions. I learned that the "history" part of oral history comes not from any one person's account, but rather from the points where multiple independent accounts agree. This has colored not only my views on early jazz history but also on the JFK assassination. Cheers, D.M.

I am a New Orleanian. I do historical research, mostly related to early New Orleans jazz and related topics. I'm an administrator on Wikipedia.