his quest, addressed the assembly from a platform on a flatbed truck. "It's true that we got some mean white folks in Mississippi," Meredith told listeners, "but these people can be decent. There is only one thing that is holding them back. And that thing is the system of white supremacy." He noted that he had been shot, "but as you can see here, that didn't end a thing." June 27, 1966 (Monday) Dark Shadows, a daytime soap opera billed initially as "the first television program styled in the tradition of the gothic novel"<ref>"Dark Shadows To Premiere", Hagerstown (MD) Herald-Mail", June 25, 1966</ref> made its debut on the ABC television network at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. On the first installment of the "romantic suspense" series, Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke) came to the small fishing village of Collinsport, Maine, to become the governess of a 10-year-old boy, and took up residence at a gloomy Victorian mansion, "Collinwood", operated by the Collins family matriarch (Joan Bennett). The show was initially panned by critics but would feature supernatural plots after its first ten months, with ghosts, a vampire (Barnabas Collins), a witch (Angelique) and a werewolf (Quentin), and the setting gradually shifted from the 20th century to the past and the future, including the year 1995. By 1969, Dark Shadows would become the highest-rated daytime program in the United States, running until April 2, 1971. Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention released their debut album, Freak Out!. Initially, the record album was a commercial failure, but after Zappa's rise to fame, Freak Out would gain a massive cult following and become a major seller in subsequent years. Born: J. J. Abrams, American film and television director, and co-creator of the TV series Lost, in New York City June 28, 1966 (Tuesday) In Argentina, a junta deposed president Arturo Illia in a bloodless coup, and appointed retired General Juan Carlos Onganía to replace him. Dr. Illia, who had refused the day before to resign, quietly left the Casa Rosada and departed for exile in Uruguay. General Ongania and the other junta members (Army Lieutenant General Pascual Pistarini, Rear Admiral Benigno Varela, and Air Force Brigadier General Adolfo Alvarez) said that they acted because President Illia had not been assertive enough against supporters of exiled dictator Juan Peron. An elephant at the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin, pulled a three-year-old girl through the