How SC man became pallbearer at JFK funeral

Yesterday, thousands of documents about the assassination of John F. Kennedy were released, unleashing a flurry of questions as well as potent memories of a tragic chapter in U.S. history. And while many associate Dallas and D.C. with the president’s last days, they might not know about the surprising South Carolina connection to Kennedy’s funeral.

Did you know the black Army sergeant who was a pallbearer at JFK’s funeral is from Sumter, SC?

James “Jim” L. Felder was the top-ranking noncommissioned officer in the military honor guard, and held the corner of the president’s flag-draped casket.

After being drafted into the military in 1962, he spent six months at Fort Jackson in basic training, advanced infantry training and leadership school. That summer he was was inducted into an elite outfit in Washington, DC . After 18 months, he moved up to the rank of sergeant, just before Kennedy was assassinated.

“I ended up heading the casket team, and that simply happened because of the seniority system,” said Felder in an interview prepared by The Auntie Karen Foundation for the South Carolina Department of Education. “If it had happened two weeks earlier I would have been no place in the picture.”

“At the time, I was so intent on doing my job that I refused to feel any emotion,” he reminisced later in a 1993 interview with The State. “I went through the motions, and I wanted the motions to be perfect. It must have been about two weeks later that I was standing at my locker and it hit me. I realized that I had lost someone I respected, admired and loved. I sat down on my bunk and cried.”

Felder published a book titled “I Buried John F. Kennedy” in 1994, which explored the role he played in the famous funeral.

Later, Felder became known for his activism in the Civil Rights Movement, heading up the voter education project in 1967 that increased the number of black citizens registered to vote from 50,000 to 200,000 in 18 months. Felder was also one of three African-Americans to be elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 1970.

He currently lives in Columbia and serves as president of the South Carolina Voter Education Project, is a life member of the NAACP and is Steward Pro Tem at Union Station AME Church. He has two children, Jimmy and Adrienne, a son-in-law, Lance Wright, Sr. and two grandsons, Lance II and Sean.

This story was originally published October 27, 2017 at 5:00 PM with the headline "How SC man became pallbearer at JFK funeral."