The night Bob Dylan drunkenly said he identified with Lee Harvey Oswald at a Bill of Rights dinner
Throughout Bob Dylan’s career, he’s never shied away from politics. In fact, to say he never shied away from it is almost as reductive as calling him a folk artist. Being staunchly political was the cornerstone upon which artistry could be built, unwavering in the face of adversity and uncompromising in the face of commercialism.
This is an idea perhaps crystallised no finer than in his seminal 1976 track, ‘Hurricane’. An unflinching assault on American politics through the lens of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter’s false murder charge, the song was a pioneering example of music as a form of protest.
But a decade before his iconic protest song, during his global emergence in the early 1960s, Dylan’s voice immediately captured the anthropological zeitgeist. Right from the outset, ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’ introduced the world to a vocal assassin, a lyricist so fine-tuned that within a three-minute finger-picking ballad, he could swiftly ridicule man’s inability to refrain from perpetual conflict and social injustice. And so thereafter, music fans hung on his every word to help navigate the sticky waters of the modern world as they sought understanding.
Such artistic profoundness earned him the Tom Paine Award in 1963 from the Emergency Civil Liberties Union (ECLU). An accolade bestowed on people for their fight for civil liberties, it was rarely awarded to musicians and, therefore, promised to be a monumental moment in music’s recognised relationship with politics.
Upon acceptance of the award, an inebriated Dylan gave a speech that was punctuated by a chorus of boos for its referencing of President Kennedy’s assassinator, Lee Harvey Oswald. Speaking of the man who shot the president just one month prior to the speech, transcripts of the evening reveal Dylan said: “I’ll stand up and to get uncompromisable about it, which I have to be to be honest, I just got to be, as I got to admit that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don’t know exactly where —what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit honestly that I too – I saw some of myself in him”.
Following the initial shock of the statement, Dylan continued, aiming to provide context, “I don’t think it would have gone – I don’t think it could go that far. But I got to stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me – not to go that far and shoot”, fighting through the boos, he continued “You can boo but booing’s got nothing to do with it. It’s a – I just a – I’ve got to tell you, man, it’s Bill of Rights is free speech and I just want to admit that I accept this Tom Paine Award in behalf of James Forman of the Students Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and on behalf of the people who went to Cuba”.
Following the event, ECLU chairman Corliss Lamont, wrote a letter to the attendees of the dinner, apologising on his behalf, stating: “Many of our friends disapproved our choice of Bob Dylan for the Tom Paine award. Without defending his acceptance speech, I would like to tell you why we feel he deserved the award”.
He continued to explain that the committee “defends the right of all Americans to advocate their beliefs. This is not confined to ideology or political groups. It should certainly be extended to our own youth, who according to many experts are becoming increasingly alienated and lost in our present society. Whether we approve or not, Bob Dylan has become the idol of the progressive youngsters of today, regardless of their political factions. He is speaking to them in terms of protest that they understand and applaud”.
Dylan himself followed the chairman’s letter with a response of his own. Written in free verse and with plenty of enjambment, it saw Dylan in an environment that was perhaps more comfortable for him, the world of crafted artistry as opposed to impromptu public speaking and therefore garnered him to provide context in his own unique style. He said: “when I spoke of Lee Oswald, I was speakin of the times / I was not speakin of his deed if it was his deed. / the deed speaks for itself / but I am sick / so sick / at hearin “we all share the blame” for every /church bombing, gun battle, mine disaster, /poverty explosion, an president killing that / comes about”.
Further down his response, he said: “yes if there’s violence in the times then / there must be violence in me”.
Despite the context, Dylan’s reference to Oswald was a shocking inclusion within a speech delivered to a nation still in the raw stages of national mourning. While the intention was surely to speak on the complicity of society in isolated tragedies, the dust kicked up from the statement threatened Dylan’s position as fierce defender of civil rights. However, in the years that followed, Dylan’s poetic rebuttal to the ECLU made way for his music, which painted the wider picture of his point with the sort of nuance an award acceptance speech could never achieve.
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