Museum members are invited to join the Museum for an evening with Mark Updegrove to celebrate the publication of his new book, Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency.

6:00 P.M. | Reception

6:30 P.M. | Program | Mark Updegrove in conversation with Nicola Longford, CEO of The Sixth Floor Museum

Complimentary self-parking available in Parking Lot A.

Attendees receive a signed copy of Incomparable Grace.

Please reply by Wednesday, April 20 to rsvp@jfk.org.

Want to attend but aren’t a member yet? Join today!

ABOUT INCOMPARABLE GRACE

Nearly sixty years after his death, JFK still holds an outsize place in the American imagination. While Baby Boomers remember his dazzling presence as president, millennials more likely know him from advertisements for Omega watches or Ray Ban sunglasses. Yet his years in office were marked by more than his style and elegance. His presidency is a story of a fledgling leader forced to meet unprecedented challenges, and to rise above missteps to lead his nation into a new and hopeful era.

Kennedy entered office inexperienced but alluring, his reputation more given by an enamored public than earned through achievement. In this gripping new assessment of his time in the Oval Office, Updegrove reveals how JFK’s first months were marred by setbacks: the botched Bay of Pigs invasions, a disastrous summit with the Soviet premier and a mismanaged approach to the Civil Rights movement. But the young president soon proved that behind the glamour was a leader of uncommon fortitude and vision.

A humbled Kennedy conceded his mistakes, and, importantly for our times, drew important lessons from his failures that he used to right wrongs and move forward undaunted. Indeed, Kennedy grew as president, radiating greater possibility as he coolly faced a steady stream of crises before his tragic end.

Incomparable Grace compellingly reexamines the dramatic, consequential White House years of a flawed but gifted leader too often defined by the Camelot myth that came after his untimely death.

Represented in these interviews are the major civil rights organizations from the early 1960s, including the NAACP, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They also include powerful memories of several key moments of the Civil Rights Movement, including the Freedom Rides, March on Washington, Selma to Montgomery march and SCOPE Project (Summer Community Organizing and Political Education) organized by the SCLC.

Dr. Wornie Reed 

As a student at Alabama State University, Reed took part in the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-56. After moving to Washington, D.C., he participated in the 1963 March on Washington and the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign and became active with SNCC and the Black Power movement. Reed was acquainted with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for several years and attended his funeral in Atlanta.

Watch on YouTube

Jennifer Lawson 

A former PBS programming executive, Lawson grew up near Birmingham, Alabama, and was first arrested during a civil rights march in May 1963. She eventually left Tuskegee University to become a full-time field secretary for SNCC. Working in Lowndes County, Alabama, Lawson helped create a series of comic books and billboards to promote voter education in 1966.

Watch on YouTube

Dr. David Fankhauser 

While attending Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, Fankhauser became a civil rights Freedom Rider and was arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, in May 1961. He was incarcerated in a state penitentiary for forty-two days alongside fellow activist Stokely Carmichael.

Watch on YouTube

Betty Daniels Rosemond 

While attending high school in New Orleans, Rosemond met Dr. King and became locally active with CORE. As a CORE Freedom Rider in 1961, she nearly lost her life to a mob during a stop in Poplarville, Mississippi. Rosemond participated in several non-violent protests in the early 1960s and was arrested during a restaurant sit-in in Alexandria, Virginia.

Watch on YouTube

Thomas M. Armstrong 

As a student at Tougaloo College in Mississippi from 1959 to 1963, Armstrong was active in civil rights demonstrations and voter registration drives. He worked with NAACP activist Medgar Evers and participated in the 1961 Freedom Rides. Armstrong is the author of Autobiography of a Freedom Rider: My Life as a Foot Soldier for Civil Rights (2011).

Watch on YouTube

Maria Gitin 

As a student at San Francisco State College, Gitin spent the summer of 1965 participating in the SCOPE project of the SCLC. She is the author of This Bright Light of Ours: Stories from the Voting Rights Fight (2014).

Watch on YouTube

Lynda Blackmon Lowery 

An Alabama native dedicated to civil rights since childhood, Lowery was arrested nine times prior to her fifteenth birthday. After being brutally beaten in Selma on “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965, she was the youngest among the 300 civil rights activists to complete the five-day, 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery. Lowery is author of the award-winning children’s book, Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom (2015).

Watch on YouTube

The Sixth Floor Museum and the UNT Dallas College of Law present: Kennedy’s Avenger: Assassination, Conspiracy, and the Forgotten Trial of Jack Ruby with authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher in conversation with Felecia Epps, Dean and Professor of Law, UNT Dallas College of Law.

New York Times best-selling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher join Dean Felecia Epps for an in-depth discussion of one of the most publicized—and most surprising—criminal trials in history. This new publication explores the trial of Jack Ruby who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald just days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The book recounts the story of the trial and features twists and turns too numerous to count; Ruby died an innocent man, despite having pulled the trigger on national television.

Dan Abrams is the chief legal affairs correspondent for ABC News and host of The Dan Abrams Show: Where Politics Meets the Law on SiriusXM. He also hosts and produces numerous shows for A&E Network. A graduate of Columbia University Law School, he is CEO and founder of Abrams Media, which includes the Law & Crime network. He lives in New York.

David Fisher is the author of twenty-five New York Times bestsellers. He lives in New York with his wife, Laura.

Together, Abrams and Fisher are the authors of the New York Times bestsellers John Adams Under Fire, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense and Lincoln’s Last Trial, which received the 2018 Barondess/Lincoln Award. Their latest collaboration is Kennedy’s Avenger.

Angela Felecia Epps joined UNT Dallas College of Law as Dean and Professor of Law on July 1, 2018.

Dean Epps earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. After graduating from Creighton University School of Law in Omaha, Nebraska in 1983 she served 10 years active duty in the USMC attaining the rank of Major. She continued serving the community by working for Georgia Legal Services Program (GLSP) as the managing attorney of its Albany, Georgia Office.

In 1999 Epps started her career in legal academia at the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law. After 17 years at Bowen, Dean Epps became Dean and Professor of Law at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University College of Law. She was on the faculty at FAMU from Jan 2016 to May 2018 and served as Dean of the FAMU College of Law from January 2016 to May 2017.

10 a.m. – Noon
$10/person | 2 CPE hours available

This program will be offered through Zoom. Connection information will be provided via email after program registration is completed.

Click here to register.

Join The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza for a virtual workshop about civil rights featuring a conversation with civil rights activist Ernest McMillan and primary source-based activities for the classroom. Mr. McMillan will share his involvement with the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Dallas during the Civil Rights Movement. Educators will then build civil rights-themed online collections of Museum objects to use in their classrooms and create a visual history lesson using their personalized set of resources. This professional development workshop is an incredible opportunity for educators to experience living history and see how to incorporate relevant and impactful resources in your classroom.

About Ernest McMillan: An African American human rights advocate, Ernest McMillan was attending Morehouse College in Atlanta when the assassination of President John F. Kennedy happened in 1963. While in Georgia, he met Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and became active with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As an emerging leader, McMillan later co-founded the Dallas chapter of SNCC and continued working to desegregate the community and promote racial equality.

Watch the program at youtube.com/sixthfloormuseum

The Sixties Science program is a monthly series connecting history and STEAM from the 1960s to today for students ages 8-13. This program will highlight new topics each month through virtual programs debuting on YouTube the second Saturday of every month at 10 a.m. Visit our Education page for resources for this program and upcoming dates and topics.