Description:

Nixon Richard 1913 - 1994 Richard Nixon's Washington: A photographic police archive documenting the 1971 May Day protests and the 1972 Watergate burglary


A collection of seven black and white photographs, a printed document, and a series of five cropped photographs mounted to a 14" x 11" mat board documenting the 1971 May Day protests and the Watergate burglary of June 1972 from the papers of a Washington D.C. police officer. Minor marginal wear, else fine condition overall.

A unique archive of mostly photographic material from the estate of Cecil Wayne Kirk, a D.C. Metropolitan policeman and photographic expert who would later serve as an expert witness in the 1978 Congressional hearings reexamining the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

The first portion of the collection concerns the May 3, 1971 May Day protests in Washington D.C. and features three composite 8" x 10" black and white photographs each bearing eight to ten portraits of the protest leaders used for identification purposes by the police. The portraits include Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman as well as Linda Sue Evans, (who would be jailed for her involvement harboring a fugitive in the 1981 Brinks Robbery) as well as another member of the Weather Underground, Bernadine Dohrn, together with leaders of the Socialist Worker's Party, Communist Party (CPUSA), The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and other left-wing groups.

Four other photographs (one 8" x 10", three 8" x 5") are candid images from the protests in which 12,000 people were arrested - the largest mass arrest in U.S. history. The photographs are accompanied by a printed statement from Richard Nixon (relayed by D.C. Police Chief Jerry V. Wilson) dated May 8, 1971: "TO THE FORCE: THE PRESIDENT THIS MORNING HAS AKED ME TO INFORM EACH OF YOU OF HIS PERSONAL APPRECIATION, AND OF THE THANKS ON BEHALF OF THE CITIZENS OF THIS CITY AND OF THE NATION, FOR YOUR SERVICE IN KEEPING THIS CITY AND THE GOVERNMENT OPEN THIS PAST WEEK WITH A MINIMUM OF PROPERTY DAMANGE OR INJURIES. THE PRESIDENT STANDS BEHIND US ONE HUNDRED PERCENT."

Those mass arrests confirmed popular suspicion of Nixon's paranoia which would play out about a year later at the Watergate complex in June 1972. Accompanying the above photographs is a 11 x 14 mat board to which has been affixed five cropped black and white photographs. Four of the images are from the address book of from Watergate burglar Bernard Baker and include the names of other burglars including Raul Virgilio Gonzalez as well as the main number for the Watergate Hotel. The fifth image (affixed to the right of the board) is from another address book (presumably from Martinez) which lists E. Howard Hunt's White House phone number: the connection that would be exploited by Woodward and Bernstein in their groundbreaking reports that resulted in Nixon's resignation in August 1974.

Cecil Wayne Kirk (1938-2011) was a police officer, investigator and photography expert who served with the D.C. Metropolitan Police from 1960 to 1980 where he assisted the federal investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In 1978, Kirk testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations as a photography expert. During the 1978 hearings, Kirk would help prove the veracity of the oft-disputed photographs of Oswald posing in his backyard with the rifle he allegedly used to assassinate John F. Kennedy. In 1980 he transferred to Scottsdale, Arizona to investigate the murder of actor Bob Crane and revamped the city's forensic investigative unit.

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