HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: Christian Champions of Free Speech Silenced by an Assassin’s Bullet

During my lifetime I have withnessed three Christains assassinated. They were all proponents of the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

It appears that history is repeating itself and now America has a choice to make. Freedom of Speech, or Hate Speech.

The first was President John Fitzgerald Kennedy

According to the John F. Kennedy Presidental Library and Museum:

By the fall of 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his political advisers were preparing for the next presidential campaign. Although he had not formally announced his candidacy, it was clear that President Kennedy was going to run and he seemed confident about his chances for re-election.

At the end of September, the president traveled west, speaking in nine different states in less than a week. The trip was meant to put a spotlight on natural resources and conservation efforts. But JFK also used it to sound out themes—such as education, national security, and world peace—for his run in 1964.

A month later, the president addressed Democratic gatherings in Boston and Philadelphia. Then, on November 12, he held the first important political planning session for the upcoming election year. At the meeting, JFK stressed the importance of winning Florida and Texas and talked about his plans to visit both states in the next two weeks.

Mrs. Kennedy would accompany him on the swing through Texas, which would be her first extended public appearance since the loss of their baby, Patrick, in August. On November 21, the president and first lady departed on Air Force One for the two-day, five-city tour of Texas.

President Kennedy was aware that a feud among party leaders in Texas could jeopardize his chances of carrying the state in 1964, and one of his aims for the trip was to bring Democrats together. He also knew that a relatively small but vocal group of extremists was contributing to the political tensions in Texas and would likely make its presence felt—particularly in Dallas, where US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson had been physically attacked a month earlier after making a speech there. Nonetheless, JFK seemed to relish the prospect of leaving Washington, getting out among the people and into the political fray.

The first stop was San Antonio. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Governor John B. Connally, and Senator Ralph W. Yarborough led the welcoming party. They accompanied the president to Brooks Air Force Base for the dedication of the Aerospace Medical Health Center. Continuing on to Houston, he addressed the League of United Latin American Citizens, and spoke at a testimonial dinner for Congressman Albert Thomas before ending the day in Fort Worth.

[ … ]

Crowds of excited people lined the streets and waved to the Kennedys. The car turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza around 12:30 p.m. As it was passing the Texas School Book Depository, gunfire suddenly reverberated in the plaza.

Bullets struck the president’s neck and head and he slumped over toward Mrs. Kennedy. The governor was shot in his back.

The car sped off to Parkland Memorial Hospital just a few minutes away. But little could be done for the President. A Catholic priest was summoned to administer the last rites, and at 1:00 p.m. John F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. Though seriously wounded, Governor Connally would recover.

The president’s body was brought to Love Field and placed on Air Force One. Before the plane took off, a grim-faced Lyndon B. Johnson stood in the tight, crowded compartment and took the oath of office, administered by US District Court Judge Sarah Hughes. The brief ceremony took place at 2:38 p.m.

Less than an hour earlier, police had arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, a recently hired employee at the Texas School Book Depository. He was being held for the assassination of President Kennedy and the fatal shooting, shortly afterward, of Patrolman J. D. Tippit on a Dallas street.

On Sunday morning, November 24, Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from police headquarters to the county jail. Viewers across America watching the live television coverage suddenly saw a man aim a pistol and fire at point blank range. The assailant was identified as Jack Ruby, a local nightclub owner. Oswald died two hours later at Parkland Hospital.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute reported:

At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. News of King’s assassination prompted major outbreaks of racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide and extensive property damage in over 100 American cities. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. During King’s funeral a tape recording was played in which King spoke of how he wanted to be remembered after his death: “I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others” (King, “Drum Major Instinct,” 85).

King had arrived in Tennessee on Wednesday, 3 April, to prepare for a march the following Monday on behalf of striking Memphis sanitation workers. As he prepared to leave the Lorraine Motel for a dinner at the home of Memphis minister Samuel “Billy” Kyles, King stepped out onto the balcony of room 306 to speak with Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) colleagues standing in the parking area below. An assassin fired a single shot that caused severe wounds to the lower right side of his face. SCLC aides rushed to him, and Ralph Abernathy cradled King’s head. Others on the balcony pointed across the street toward the rear of a boarding house on South Main Street where the shot seemed to have originated. An ambulance rushed King to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead at 7:05 P.M.

President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a national day of mourning to be observed on 7 April. In the following days, public libraries, museums, schools, and businesses were closed, and the Academy Awards ceremony and numerous sporting events were postponed. On 8 April King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and other family members joined thousands of participants in a march in Memphis honoring King and supporting the sanitation workers. King’s funeral service was held the following day in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church. It was attended by many of the nation’s political and civil rights leaders, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Ralph Bunche. Morehouse College President Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy, predicting that King “would probably say that, if death had to come, I am sure there was no greater cause to die for than fighting to get a just wage for garbage collectors” (Mays, 9 April 1968). Over 100,000 mourners followed two mules pulling King’s coffin through the streets of Atlanta. After another ceremony on the Morehouse campus, King’s body was initially interred at South-View Cemetery. Eventually, it was moved to a crypt next to the Ebenezer Church at the King Center, an institution founded by King’s widow.

Shortly after the assassination, a policeman discovered a bundle containing a 30.06 Remington rifle next door to the boarding house. The largest investigation in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) history led its agents to an apartment in Atlanta. Fingerprints uncovered in the apartment matched those of James Earl Ray, a fugitive who had escaped from a Missouri prison in April 1967. FBI agents and police in Memphis produced further evidence that Ray had registered on 4 April at the South Main Street roominghouse and that he had taken a second-floor room near a common bathroom with a view of the Lorraine Motel.

The identification of Ray as a suspect led to an international manhunt. On 19 July 1968 Ray was extradited to the United States from Britain to stand trial. In a plea bargain, Tennessee prosecutors agreed in March 1969 to forgo seeking the death penalty when Ray pled guilty to murder charges. The circumstances leading to the plea later became a source of controversy, when Ray recanted his confession soon after being sentenced to a 99-year term in prison.

During the years following King’s assassination, doubts about the adequacy of the case against Ray were fueled by revelations of the extensive surveillance of King by the FBI and other government agencies. Beginning in 1976 the House Select Committee on Assassinations, chaired by Representative Louis Stokes, re-examined the evidence concerning King’s assassination, as well as that of President John F. Kennedy. The committee’s final report suggested that Ray may have had co-conspirators. The report nonetheless concluded that there was no convincing evidence of government complicity in King’s assassination.

After recanting his guilty plea, Ray continued to maintain his innocence, claiming to have been framed by a gun-smuggler he knew as “Raoul.” In 1993 Ray’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, sought to build popular support to reopen Ray’s case by staging a televised mock trial of Ray in which the “jury” found him not guilty. In 1997 members of King’s family publicly supported Ray’s appeal for a new trial, and King’s son Dexter Scott King supported Ray’s claims of innocence during a televised prison encounter. Despite this support Tennessee authorities refused to reopen the case, and Ray died in prison on 23 April 1998.

Even after Ray’s death, conspiracy allegations continued to surface. In 1999, on behalf of King’s widow and children, Pepper won a token civil verdict of wrongful death against Lloyd Jowers, owner of Jim’s Grill, a restaurant across the street from the Lorraine Motel. Although the trial produced considerable testimony that contradicted the original case against Ray, the Justice Department announced in 2000 that its own internal investigation, launched in 1998 at the King family’s request, had failed to find sufficient evidence to warrant a further investigation.

Charles James “Charlie” Kirk

On September 10, 2025, Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a TPUSA public debate event on the Utah Valley University campus. His death gained international attention and led to the condemnation of political violence by prominent domestic and international figures.

We are all Charlie Kirk now!

On September 18, 2025 The Daily Caller’s Media Reporter in a column titled Turning Point USA Names Charlie Kirk’s Widow New CEO Nicole Silverio wrote:

The Turning Point USA Board unanimously elected Erika Kirk, the widow of the late Charlie Kirk, to serve as the new CEO and chair of the board for the organization in a Thursday vote.

The nonprofit’s board elected Erika in a unanimous vote to honor Kirk’s wishes, in which he told many executives that he wanted his wife to inherit his role in the event of his death. Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012, which currently has over 3,500 chapters in schools, over 2,000 student groups and over 800 faith groups.

“It was the honor of our lives to serve as board members at Charlie’s side. Charlie prepared all of us for a moment like this one. He worked tirelessly to ensure Turning Point USA was built to survive even the greatest tests. And now, it is our great pride to announce Erika Kirk as the new CEO and Chair of the Board for Turning Point USA,” Turning Point USA said in a statement.

Erika married her husband in May 2021 and share two children ages 3 and 1.

Kirk’s widow has shared several emotional videos and images since her husband’s death on Sept. 10. One video posted to Instagram shows an emotional Erika kneeling over Kirk’s casket while clasping her husband’s hands and telling him she loved him.

Erika spoke to the nation on Friday where she vowed that her husband’s movement will “never surrender” and only grow more powerful. She also shared that she told her 3-year-old daughter that Kirk was on a business trip with Jesus in order to afford her “blueberry budget.”

“The evildoers responsible for my husband’s assassination have no idea what they have done. They killed Charlie because he preached a message of patriotism, faith, and of God’s merciful love. They should all know this,” Erika said. “If you thought that my husband’s mission was powerful before, you have no idea. You have no idea what you just have unleashed across this entire country and this world.”

The Bottom Line

In the case of President Kennedy his legacy of being anti-Communism, pro-law enforcement and pro-Second Amendment, he was a life time member of the NRA, has faded into the new party that today stands against everything JFK stood for.

In the case of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. his movement to have has “children not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” has, sadly, too faded away. Now we have Democrats demanding, via Critical Race Theory, that we judge people by the color of their skin, not by the content of their character.

Lastly, we have Charlie Kirk. His legacy has now skyrocketed. Turning Point USA is now a global movement that is gaining more and more followers.

According to a  September 13, 2025 column titled Erika Kirk’s first speech since husband’s assassination sparks massive TPUSA chapter surge nationwide Fox News reporter Alexandra Koch wrote:

Turning Point USA leaders announced the organization received 18,000 new chapter requests after founder Charlie Kirk‘s wife, Erika, addressed the nation for the first time since her husband’s assassination.

Republican Minnesota state Rep. Elliott Engen shared a screenshot Saturday of a conversation with a TPUSA leader, where they said they had received 18,000 requests to start chapters at colleges and high schools.

Prior to Erika’s speech, TPUSA reported having 9,000 college chapters and 1,100 high school chapters.

Turning Point USA says 54,000 requests for new chapters have come in nationwide.

According to a  September 13, 2025 column titled Erika Kirk’s first speech since husband’s assassination sparks massive TPUSA chapter surge nationwide Fox News reporter:

Turning Point USA leaders announced the organization received 18,000 new chapter requests after founder Charlie Kirk‘s wife, Erika, addressed the nation for the first time since her husband’s assassination.

Republican Minnesota state Rep. Elliott Engen shared a screenshot Saturday of a conversation with a TPUSA leader, where they said they had received 18,000 requests to start chapters at colleges and high schools.

Prior to Erika’s speech, TPUSA reported having 9,000 college chapters and 1,100 high school chapters.

It appears that of these three martyers, only one is seeing his movement grow, exponentionally.

We believe that Erika will take TP USA to newer and even greater hights, culturally, socially, and politically.

©2025 Dr. Richard M. Swier, LTC U.S. Army (Ret.). All rights reserved.