Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

Outreach to the Communist Party, U.S.A. Post-FPCC Debate

Following the disclosure of his defection, Oswald sought advice from the Communist Party, U.S.A. He had previously sent unsolicited photographic samples to the Party newspaper, the Worker, offering free contributions. He presented Arnold Johnson, Gus Hall, and Benjamin J. Davis honorary membership cards in his nonexistent New Orleans FPCC chapter. Arnold Johnson, director of the Party’s information and lecture bureau, replied that the Party had no organizational ties with FPCC. Marina Oswald testified that such correspondence from those he considered important meant much to Oswald, providing proof that “there were people who understood his activity.” In an August 28, 1963 letter to the central committee, Oswald asked whether he should “always remain in the background, i.e. underground” given his compromised position, and Johnson advised that it was often “advisable for some people to remain in the background, not underground.”

Oswald’s 1963 New Orleans Personal and Professional Hardships

By August 1963, after only three months in New Orleans, Oswald had fallen on difficult times. He had disliked and quit his job greasing coffee processing machinery after slightly more than two months and had not found another. His wife was expecting their second child in October, with associated financial concerns. His FPCC efforts had won no support; the Bringuier altercation and arrest upset him and caused him to “cool off a little.” Most damaging, his defection history was now public, leaving him vulnerable to attack. Following Johnson’s advice to “remain in the background” was impossible since there was no background to his one-man “organization,” and he had received no letters from FPCC national headquarters since May 29, 1963, despite writing four detailed letters to V. T. Lee and keeping the headquarters informed of address changes.