Edwin Walker

Controversial former army general Edwin A. Walker was born in Center Point, Texas, on November 10, 1909. He attended the New Mexico Military Academy, graduating in 1927, and then attended West Point Military Academy from 1927-1931. After World War II broke out he was placed in command of a combined Canadian-US commando unit, the First Special Service Force--a predecessor of the more widely known Green Berets--in Italy. After the war ended he was posted as a liaison to Greek government forces fighting a Communist-led revolt (which they eventually crushed). In 1951, now a colonel, he was assigned to an artillery unit and saw combat in the Korean War. After he was transferred back to the US he received a reserve assignment placing him in command of the Arkansas Military District, headquartered in Little Rock. When state and local authorities in Arkansas refused to implement the court-ordered integration of the Little Rock school system in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard in order to enforce the decision. Walker, who by this time was a devoted member of the ultra-right-wing John Birch Society--which was rabidly anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic and anti-integration--strongly disagreed with the decision to integrate the school system, but as commander of the National Guard he had no choice but to comply with the President's orders. In October of 1959 he was named Division Commander of the 24th Infantry Division, headquartered in Augsburg, West Germany. In 1961 it was discovered that he was using training sessions to indoctrinate his troops in the extreme-right-wing views of the John Birch Society and other ultra-rightist political organizations, by, among other things, using the groups' literature as instructional materials and reading assignments for the troops. Walker was relieved of his command by Defense Secretary Robert MacNamara pending a Defense Department investigation. The resulting investigation concluded that Walker did indeed attempt such political indoctrination of his troops and, in addition, deliberately disobeyed orders by his superiors to stop it. With the approval of President John F. Kennedy, Walker was officially reprimanded by the army for his willful disobedience of orders. Now a major general, Walker resigned his commission, left the army and became heavily involved in far-right-wing politics. His dismissal became a cause célèbre for conservatives who claimed that the Kennedy administration was "soft on Communism" and muzzling the free-speech rights of military officers, and by liberals who saw Walker's activities as a direct and dangerous challenge to civilian control of the military. In 1962 Walker, now a civilian, announced his candidacy for Texas governor. Although he received support from some big-name conservatives, such as Barry Goldwater and John Tower, he finished last in the race. In September of that year Walker was back on the front pages when he traveled to Oxford, Mississippi, to help organize protests by the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist groups against the enrollment of African-American student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. Walker's organizing activities, his fiery and vitriolic speeches railing against integration of the university and his exhorting his followers to "take action!" were believed to have contributed to violent riots instigated by the Klan and its allies in which two people were killed and a half-dozen federal marshals were shot. An arrest warrant was issued against him by the federal government on charges of sedition, conspiracy and incitement to insurrection and rebellion. He was arrested and imprisoned for five days On April 10, 1963, Walker was sitting at his desk in his Dallas home when someone fired a shot at him through his window, the bullet missing him by only a few inches. It was later discovered that the would-be assassin was none other than Lee Harvey Oswald, later suspected of assassinating President Kennedy. Walker eventually faded from the right-wing political scene. In 1976 he was arrested in a public park in Dallas, Texas, on charges of fondling the genitals of a male undercover vice cop. He was arrested again in Dallas on the same charges the next year. He pleased "no contest"--equivalent to a guilty plea but without actually admitting guilt--and was given a fine and a suspended sentence. Edwin Walker died of lung cancer in Dallas in 1993. Author Fletcher Knebel said that Walker was the model for the right-wing army general who attempts to organize a coup against what he perceives to be an administration that is "weak" and "soft on Communism" in the novel "Seven Days in May". Burt Lancaster played the part in the film version of the book, Seven Days in May (1964).