It’s been half a century since President John F. Kennedy was gunned down by Lee Harvey Oswald on that fateful November day in Dallas, but after the official Warren Commission, and more than 2,000 books and numerous movies — both documentary and fiction — the assassination remains fruitful ground for conspiracy theorists. Here’s a sample of theories, from the thoughtful to the wacky to the plain paranoid.
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The Sons of Liberty was an organization of American colonists that was created in the Thirteen American Colonies. The secret society was formed to protect the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. They are best known for undertaking the Boston Tea Party in 1773 in reaction to new taxes. Britain responded with the Intolerable Acts, leading to a counter-mobilization by the Patriots.
In the popular imagination, the Sons of Liberty was a formal underground organization with recognized members and leaders. More likely, the name was an underground term for any men resisting new Crown taxes and laws. The well-known label allowed organizers to issue anonymous summons to a Liberty Tree, “Liberty Pole”, or other public meeting-place. Furthermore, a unifying name helped to promote inter-Colonial efforts against Parliament and the Crown’s actions. Their motto became, “No taxation without representation.”
