Fifty years after Kennedy death, Dallas opens an old wound

DALLAS—After John F. Kennedy was assassinated here on Nov. 22, 1963, it took years for this metropolis to shake its stigma as the "City of Hate," with many people blaming its virulent anti-Kennedy sentiment as the cause.

So as Dallas approaches the 50th anniversary of the president's assassination next month, and international attention turns again to the city's darkest hour, civic groups and institutions are determined to present Dallas in a more positive light. They are planning myriad lectures, programs and symposiums to discuss seemingly every aspect of the assassination—and demonstrate that Dallas, criticized in the past for minimizing the Kennedy assassination, has come to grips with what happened.

A local artist, meanwhile, is seeking to counter what some still see as the city's sullied image with the Dallas Love Project, a campaign to display more than 11,000 love-inspired posters along the 10-mile motorcade route that Kennedy took that day, from Love Field through downtown's Dealey Plaza, where he was shot, to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he died....