What an honor to be featured on the History Channel’s “History Stories,” although under sad circumstances. Famed sportswriter Pat McManamon shared my recollections of the tragic event which shook Dallas, the nation, and the world — the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Read an excerpt below and a historical perspective here.
Two Days After JFK’s Assassination, the Dallas Cowboys Faced Backlash
By Pat McManamon
The team was heckled and cursed at by Browns fans in Cleveland, where the Cowboys lost ‘a game that nobody was interested in playing.’
Two days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, the Dallas Cowboys played the Browns in front of angry, anguished and hostile fans in Cleveland. Many blamed Dallas, a hotbed of far-right extremism in the early 1960s, for JFK’s death—and by extension the city’s National Football League team.
“We did not feel welcome throughout the United States, no matter where we played, for quite a while,” Pettis Norman, a Cowboys tight end, recalled years later.
