Some of the nation’s foremost experts on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. will gather April 8-9 for a conference at Olney Central College.
Political Assassinations of the 1960s: New Revelations in the Murders of JFK and MLK will explore, in an academic setting, the deaths of these iconic leaders focusing on new details, which have emerged with the release of previously withheld documents.
The in-person event is free and open to the public. Those unable to attend can join via Zoom. The link may be accessed and purchased through www.projectjfk.com. The cost is $40.
The conference will feature an outstanding array of authors, researchers, historians, educators and college professors who possess extensive knowledge on the subjects. Presentations will begin at 10 a.m. on April 8 and continue throughout the following day.
Featured Speakers
Brian Edwards has spent more than 40 years researching the JFK assassination. He has interviewed more than 50 of the Dealey Plaza witnesses along with Dallas police officers and detectives who were directly involved in the investigation of President Kennedy’s assassination and the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit. In addition, he has interviewed 10 of the doctors and medical personnel who were inside Trauma Room 1 at Parkland Hospital. He has also interviewed many of the Navy corpsmen who were on duty at Bethesda Naval Medical Center on November 22, 1963. In 1993, Edwards was granted a two-day interview with Marina Oswald-Porter at her home in Rockwall, Texas. Brian is featured in the Showtime documentary, JFK revisited: Through The Looking Glass by Oliver Stone.
David Knight has been an academic researcher and lecturer on the murder of President John F. Kennedy since 1989. He has produced several documentary films with Project JFK.
Casey Quinlan is the director of Project JFK and has been the featured lecturer at many universities throughout the Midwest. In 1991, he was a guest historian for the A & E Network and the History Channel for Oliver Stone’s blockbuster movie, JFK. His first publication, Beyond the Fence Line: The Eyewitness Testimony of Ed Hoffman and the Murder of President Kennedy, continues to be a best-seller.
David Denton has been a history professor at Olney Central College in Illinois since 1990. He has given numerous presentations across Illinois and Indiana at both public libraries and forums. He participated in the Illinois Humanities Council speakers’ bureau from 1995 to 2002, giving presentations on the Vietnam War, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 2001, he began teaching a course on political assassinations of the 1960s, which explores the deaths of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Gary Shaw was formerly co-director with Larry N. Howard of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas. He was co-author with Larry R. Harris of Cover-Up: The Government Conspiracy to Conceal the facts About the Public Execution of John Kennedy. He also is the co-author with Charles Crenshaw of Trauma Room One.
Ryan Jones is the Museum Educator at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn. An MLK historian, he has presented at history conferences about the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and on other topics related to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Larry Rivera is Chairman of the Oswald Innocence Campaign. He has made a lifelong study of the JFK assassination, making hit first trip to Dealey Plaza in 1991. He has published many articles on the assassination and has many YouTube videos covering his research. He has given numerous presentations on the assassination. He has a degree in Compute Networking and is an expert at computer imaging technology and facial recognition, using state of the art digital overlays.
Additional speakers are anticipated and will be announced closer to the event. A complete schedule will also be posted soon. For more information, contact David Denton at 618-204-1498 or email dentond@iecc.edu.
The conference is sponsored and funded by the Olney Central College Foundation.