JFK anniversary: Dallas struggles to shake 'city of hate' tag 50 years on The historian David McCullough will read excerpts from Mr Kennedy's most famous speeches and a Navy Academic chorus will perform before the 5,000 guests issued with tickets by lottery. At 12.30pm, the minute the bullets struck the president, bells will peel at churches across the city. It is the first time that Dallas has formally marked the anniversary - a sign of how the city has struggled to handle the legacy, to move from assassination to commemoration. The slow embrace of the past began when city fathers fought off moves to tear down the book depository by those who wanted to wipe it physically from the landscape. The building now houses the impressive Sixth Floor Museum where visitors crowd silently around Oswald's "sniper's nest." Outside, the nondescript embankment that was dubbed "the grassy knoll" and became the focus for myriad conspiracy theories about other gunmen is another source of pilgrimage. A pair of X's marking the spots where bullets struck the presidential limousine were first painted on the street two decades ago by conspiracy theorists who gather at the knoll. But this week the marks have been removed by city officials who object to the involvement of self-styled "assassination researchers." Visitors have been pouring into the city ahead of the anniversary and travel companies have been laying on dozens of additional "JFK assassination tours." It is an influx that leaves locals with mixed feelings. "It's hardly a cause for civic pride that people are coming to Dallas because the president was murdered here" said David Ware, an advertising executive who works close to Dealey Plaza. But it is a chance to show that we have changed a lot since 1963 too. Yet for all those changes - Dallas has developed from a conservative oil town into a booming Democrat-led metropolis in the last half century - it has struggled to lose the reputation as the "city that killed Kennedy." With 10,000 pieces of artwork put up across the city centre, the organisers of the Dallas Love Project are hoping to do their part to change that image.