Jump to content
The Education Forum

Tim Gratz and the Plot to Kill Wallace


Recommended Posts

He sounds like a wild man. Where was the civil rights demonstration that he disrupted, by the way? When I "google searched" I found some Reiersons. It is presumably a Scandinavian name. Lots of Swedes and Norskis in Wisconsin! Anyone area of a study of the ethnicity of racism?

I am very proud of my father, who is now 87 and healthy. He never had any racial prejudices and I have never heard him utter any foul words or even an off-color joke. Nor a racial epithet (goes without saying).

Edited by Tim Gratz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 97
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

He sounds like a wild man.  Where was the civil rights demonstration that he disrupted, by the way?  When I "google searched" I found some Reiersons.  It is presumably a Scandinavian name.  Lots of Swedes and Norskis in Wisconsin!  Anyone area of a study of the ethnicity of racism?

It doesn't say where he was arrested, but I assumed it was in Madison. The article says he was from Madison, and that's where he was arrested the second time. I guess he didn't play on your block. Sprague would be disappointed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pat the reason why I asked was because I do not recall any racial protests or civil rights demonstrations in Madison in the early sixties. The black population was extremely small. In the later sixties there was an active black protest movement on the UW campus to gain a black studies program. I did not like the use of disruption to gain the goal but there was a very charismatic leader of that movement named Kwame Salter. He and I later became friends and I tried to recruit him to run for political office. The last I heard he was working in public relations for the Oscar Mayer Company. I always regretted he decided not to run for political office. He was attractive, articulate and charismatic. I thought he could end up as a U.S. Senator.

But in any event I do not recall any protest or demonstrations in Madison in the early sixties. By 1967 Madison was becoming a hotbed of anti-war protests, of course.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pat, one further comment: since Wallace was known as an anti-Negro racist who stood at the school-house door to prevent integration, why would a racist want to kill Wallace? Most racists blinded by their race hatred would not want, I suspect, to kill one of their heroes merely to ensure the re-election of Richard Nixon.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pat, one further comment:  since Wallace was known as an anti-Negro racist who stood at the school-house door to prevent integration, why would a racist want to kill Wallace?  Most racists blinded by their race hatred would not want, I suspect, to kill one of their heroes merely to ensure the re-election of Richard Nixon.

Tim,

As you well know most of us here believe that Bremer was being "run" by someone who very much wanted to ensure that your man- RIchard M. Nixon- be re-elected. Wallace's shooting accomplished that. (Along with some very dirty tricks type advertising against Geroge McGovern. McGovern, decent CHRISTIAN man that he is, did not have a clue- or the desire- to fight back in kind.)

CIA asset Jack Anderson also came in very handy with his revelations about Tom Eagleton--especially the totally false drunk driving charge.

Dawn

Link to comment
Share on other sites

CIA asset Jack Anderson also came in very handy with his revelations about Tom Eagleton--especially the totally false drunk driving charge.

Dawn

I think it's inaccurate to call Anderson or his mentor Drew Pearson CIA assets. While I'm sure there were times that they cooperated with the CIA, they also drove them crazy at times, so much so Hunt and Liddy made plans to murder Anderson with the stated reason that his columns had endangered CIA assets in Pakistan.

In order to understand Pearson and Anderson, I believe, you have to accept the fact that, like Edward Bennett Williams and Robert Maheu, they were powers unto themselves, willing to connect themselves to whatever powerful force was moving in their direction. And just as willing, at times, to go it alone.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pat is right, of course.

Hunt wanted Anderson killed because Anderson had revealed secrets about CIA operations in the Soviet Union that the CIA was convinced put its agents in harm's way.

And of course the last thing the CIA wanted revealed was its engagement of the Mafia to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.

No way was Anderson under the control of the CIA.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My father who is eighty-seven retains a keen intellect and a good memory. I called him and asked him if he had ever heard of an Owen Reierson or remembered the incident and he said he did not.

That being said, and everyone understanding it is not my theory of what happened, I think people motivated by racial hatred could have hated Kennedy enough to have wanted him killed. We know, of course, of the lynchings and murders of blacks and the murders of civil rights workers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...