Page 10
University Daily Kansan Friday, March 6, 1964
240 bwf80052
Facts Show How JFK Death Shook Americans
CHICAGO,—(UPI) —In cold percentages, statisticians told today how the assassination of President Kennedy burned into the nation's heart.
The statisticians, concluding a long study of reaction to the Nov. 22 tragedy, found that:
- Nine out of 10 Americans responded immediately with marked emotion to the assassination.
- Nine out of 10 expressed immediate sympathy for Mrs. Kennedy and the children.
- Four out of five "felt deeply the loss of someone very close and dear."
- Nine out of 10 suffered some physical discomfort during the four days following the slaying.
days following his death. • Five out of six felt "shame that such a thing could happen in our country."
The study was made by the National Opinion Research Center, an affiliate of the University of Chi
cago. Prof. Peter H. Rossi, director of the center, said never before "have modern techniques in the behavioral sciences been available to provide a reliable analysis of an event of such historical importance so quickly."
The report was based on personal interviews with 1,384 persons, considered to be a representative national sample.
"Frobably never before were the sentiments of the American public engaged so quickly and deeply by a political happening," the report said.
"THE NETWORKS OF mass communications and personal contact spread the news with a speed which was in all likelihood unprecedented and, instantaneously, public attention turned away from everyday personal concerns to the details and meaning of the improbable event," the report said.
In less than 30 minutes after the shooting, the report said, 68 per cent of adult Americans knew about it. Five and a half hours later the percentage rose to 99.8.
The researchers compared their findings with previous studies and concluded that the assassination had not changed the basic views of Americans toward the world around them.
"Three out of four still believe most people can be trusted," the report said. "Only two out of five expressed fears about how the United States would carry on."
Among "important findings" listed in the report were that the assassination saddened virtually every American, that there was a strong tendency to personify the event, and that most people followed the usual pattern of grief familiar to physicians.
THIS GRIEF PATTERN, the re-
Mrs. King Reveals
All Negros, Whites Concern King
ATLANTA —(UPI) —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has been concerned for "the common man and not just the Negro" as long as she has known him, his wife said today.
"When I first met him, he talked about this concern for the common man and about wanting to do something to correct the evils," the wife of the Negro integration leader said in an interview.
Since their marriage ten years ago, life has been filled with apprehension and excitement, children and — she admits — some twinges of jealousy that her husband lands in jail for his beliefs while she stays at home to care for their four youngsters.
The Kings had their first child two weeks before the outbreak of the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott that started the young Negro preacher on his rapid rise.
"HE ALWAYS SAYS, you have to stay at home and look after the children, and I suppose he's right," she laughed.
Yolanda, the oldest child who is known in the family as "Yoki", was just an infant when a bomb went off in the King home at Montgomery. She remembers crosses burning in the yard and for a year or so has noticed the
Nurses Present Old West Play
Christine K. and her British Bunnies will be featured in the 13th annual production of Caduceus Capers.
The musical production is presented every year by the student nurses at the KU Medical Center. This year's play, "Buckskin and Bows," featuring Christine and the Bunnies, will be presented at 8 p.m. tonight and tomorrow at Battenfeld Auditorium in the Student Union of the Medical Center, at Rainbow and Olathe Boulevard in Kansas City.
"Buckskin and Bows" is set in the Old West. The plot recounts the story of girls from the East who track to the West looking for adventure and excitement. Undaunted, when their train derails and they lose their chaperons, the young ladies march on to Possum Trot.
However, on reaching their destination, the girls are forced to eat in a saloon, where they are confronted with the "crudeness" of Western girls.
Today, the production replaces the carnival as the primary moneymaking project of the student nurses.
The present-day musical production evolved from a series of skits which were presented by the nurses at their annual carnival.
Caduceus in the title of the show refers to the staff which was carried by the mythological figure, Hermes, and is now the symbol of the medical profession.
Tickets for the event cost $1.00 and can be purchased from any student nurses or bought at the door.
irregular home schedule of her father.
"She started asking why we are different and why white people don't like us," Mrs. King said. "I tried to tell her that most white people don't dislike Negroes, only some. And I would tell her that her father was trying to help relieve problems for all people. But Yoki is still the least secure of the children."
KING'S WIFE IS deeply committed to the struggle he is in, including its non-violent aspects.
"I had gone to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where I had been exposed to pacifism and Quakerism," she recalled. "I had heard about Gandi (the Mahatma of India whose nonviolent revolution led to independence) and I remember that someone came to the college and lectured on the Indian struggle.
"We also had some conscientious objectors on the campus and it was integrated by the time I went there. My sister was the first Negro to attend. I had lived in that kind of a setting about six years before I met Martin."
She recalled that he told her he would return South "because that is where I can do the most good." As their courtship flowered she decided to give up ideas of a concert career and marry him.
She said they both had a strong "social consciousness" and that King did not think it was "fair or right for so much of the material things to be concentrated and owned by such a few people."
"He could never embrace communism but he felt that there could be a more equitable distribution of wealth in the country under our present system," she said.
it did not affect their attitudes toward civil rights, nor did it erode their basic optimism about other people's motives," the researchers said.
The report said that shortly after the assassination the nation lay vulnerable to violent appeals but that "no responsible leader took advantage" of the situation.
A world of strange places and moralities...in the most different and touching love story of our time!
The report added that while relatively few Americans condone political violence, they are not unaware of its past occurrence or its future possibility."
- SYLVIA SYMS • MICHAEL WILDING TECHNICOLOR
port said, consisted of an initial phase of shock; a developing awareness of the loss coupled with feelings of sadness, sorrow, shame and anger; the onset of physical symptoms such as tears, tenseness, sleeplessness, fatigue and loss of appetite; and, finally, a gradual recovery.
The report said that shortly after the assassination "only 11 per cent hoped the man who killed him should be shot down or lynched."
"The assassination of their president did not seem to make (Americans) more or less anti-communist,
LATIN AMERICAN NIGHT
COMO CARABI
International Club Saturday, March 7, 7:30 p.m. Big Eight Room
A SHATTERING ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE!
1234567890
Ends Tonite — "SUNDAY IN NEW YORK" 7:00 & 9:10
NOW SHOWING!
ONE man's way The Story of NORMAN VINCENT PEALE
STARRING
DON MURRAY
CO STARRING
WILLIAM WINDOM
CAROL OHMART
Eve. 7:00 & 9:00 Mats. at 2:00
Sun. 2:30 - 4:40 - 6:50 - 9:00
SOON — "DR. STRANGE LOVE"