Screen Shot 2013-10-10 at 9.03.28 AM

Two East Dallas neighbors, Cliff Simms and Peter Wood, believe Dallas has silently borne the weight of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on Nov. 22 in 1963 for long enough.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

Although neither are Dallas natives, Simms and Wood, who work together for an ideation and brand culture agency called Resident Alien, now consider Dallas their home, and they wanted to “do something for the city and its citizens,” Simms explains.

For more than a year, the two have been creating a montage of video and pictures of JFK’s “Unspoken Speech,” as both a tribute to the 50th anniversary of the president’s assassination, as well as an opportunity for Dallas citizens to unite around his words and speak out, in hopes of giving the city a bit of closure.

“At the time, there were all kind of horrible things said about Dallas,” Wood says. “We’re not trying to wrap it up and put it away; we’re trying to remind people that we are not personally responsible for this monstrosity.”

There are 2,929 words in the speech Kennedy never had the opportunity to give, but Simms and Wood didn’t use the entire speech. Instead, they pulled seven sections, of about 50 or so words each, that they felt were powerful, both on their own as well as for what they meant at the time. While mining through the speech, both were amazed at how well some of the statements fit the social and ethical battles America is fighting today. “It just goes to show how much of a visionary he was and how relevant he still is today,” Simms says.

Some of the videos, like “Words Alone” or “Dissident Voices,” feature pictures and videos of Dallas citizens holding signs or flipping through a book. Other videos, like “Only an America” or “Our Adversaries,” feature a person or a group of people speaking the words in visually compelling locations. The video “Both Texas and Texans” features a woman singing the words.

The project is still underway, so some of the videos are still in production, but you can view all the videos that are available on their website, Unspoken Speech. Then, of course, you can check back for more later.