‘Wallace is the governor of Alabama. Why would he need to address the nation?’
‘I suspect he will oppose Jack Kennedy in next year’s Democratic primaries. He’s running for President, folks. And he opened his campaign today on national television – with our help.’
There was a moment of quiet in the office as this sunk in. George could tell that they were convinced by his argument, and worried by its implications.
‘Right now, Wallace leads the news, and he looks like a hero,’ George finished. ‘Maybe President Kennedy needs to seize back the initiative.’
Bobby touched the intercom on his desk and said: ‘Get me the President.’ He lit a cigar.
Dennis Wilson took a call on another phone and said: ‘The two students have entered the auditorium and registered.’
A few moments later, Bobby picked up the phone to talk to his brother. He reported a non-violent victory. Then he began to listen. ‘Yes!’ he said at one stage. ‘George Jakes said the same thing . . .’ There was another long pause. ‘Tonight? But there’s no speech . . . Of course it can be written. No, I think you’ve made the right decision. Let’s do it.’ He hung up and looked around the room. ‘The President is going to introduce a new civil rights bill,’ he said.
George’s heart leaped. That was what he and Martin Luther King and everyone in the civil rights movement had been asking for.
Bobby went on: ‘And he’s going to announce it on live television – tonight.’
‘Tonight?’ said George in surprise.
‘In a few hours’ time.’
That made sense, George thought, though it would be a rush. The President would be back at the top of the news, where he belonged – ahead of both George Wallace and Thich Quang Duc.
Bobby added: ‘And he wants you to go over there and work on the speech with Ted.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said George.
He left the Justice Department in a state of high excitement. He walked so fast that he was panting when he reached the White House. He took a minute to catch his breath on the ground floor of the West Wing. Then he went upstairs. He found Ted Sorensen in his office with a group of colleagues. George took off his jacket and sat down.
Among the papers scattered on the table was a telegram from Martin Luther King to President Kennedy. In Danville, Virginia, when sixty-five Negroes had protested segregation, forty-eight of them had been so badly beaten by the police that they had ended up in hospital. ‘The Negro’s endurance may be at breaking point,’ King’s cable said. George underlined that sentence.
The group worked intensely on the speech. It would begin with a reference to the day’s events in Alabama, emphasizing that the troops had been enforcing a court order. However, the President would not linger on the details of this particular squabble, but move quickly to a strong appeal to the moral values of all decent Americans. At intervals, Sorensen took handwritten pages to the secretaries to be typed.
George felt frustrated that something so important had to be done in a last-minute rush, but he understood why. Drafting legislation was a rational process; politics, by contrast, was an intuitive game. Jack Kennedy had good instincts, and his gut feelings told him that he needed to take the initiative today.
Time passed too quickly. The speech was still being written when the TV crews moved into the Oval Office and began to set up their lights. President Kennedy walked along the corridor to Sorensen’s room and asked how it was coming along. Sorensen showed him some pages, and the President did not like them. They moved into the secretaries’ office, and Kennedy started dictating changes to be typed. Then it was eight o’clock, and the speech was unfinished, but the President was on the air.
George watched the TV in Sorensen’s room, biting his nails.
And President Kennedy gave the performance of his life.
He started off a little too formally, but he warmed up when he spoke of the life prospects of a Negro baby: half as much chance of completing high school, one third of the chance of graduating college, twice as much chance of being unemployed, and a life expectancy seven years shorter than that of a white baby.
‘We are confronted primarily with a moral issue,’ he said. ‘It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American constitution.’
George marvelled. Much of this was unscripted, and it showed a new Jack Kennedy. The slick modern president had discovered the power of sounding biblical. Perhaps he had learned from the preacher Martin Luther King. ‘Who among us would be content to have the colour of his skin changed?’ he said, reverting to short, plain words. ‘Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?’
It was Jack Kennedy and his brother Bobby who had counselled patience and delay, George reflected. He rejoiced that now at last they had seen the painful inadequacy of such advice.
‘We preach freedom around the world,’ the President said. He was about to go to Europe, George knew. ‘But are we to say to the world, and much more importantly to each other, that this is the land of the free – except for the Negroes? That we have no second-class citizens – except Negroes? That we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race – except with respect to Negroes?’
George exulted. This was strong stuff – especially the reference to the master race, which called the Nazis to mind. It was the kind of speech he had always wanted the President to make.
‘The fires of frustration are burning in every city, north and south, where legal remedies are not at hand,’ Kennedy said. ‘Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that’ – he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language – ‘race has no place in American life or law.’
That was a quote for the newspapers, George thought immediately: Race has no place in American life or law. He was excited beyond measure. America was changing, right now, minute by minute, and he was part of that change.
‘Those who do nothing are inviting shame as well as violence,’ the President said, and George thought he meant it, even though doing nothing had been his policy until a few hours ago.
‘I ask the support of all our citizens,’ Kennedy finished.
The broadcast ended. Along the corridor, the TV lights were switched off and the crews began to pack their gear. Sorensen congratulated the President.
George was euphoric but exhausted. He went home to his apartment, ate scrambled eggs, and watched the news. As he had hoped, the President’s broadcast was the main item. He went to bed and fell asleep.
The phone woke him. It was Verena Marquand. She was weeping and barely coherent. ‘What happened?’ George asked her.
‘Medgar,’ she said, and then something he could not understand.
‘Are you talking about Medgar Evers?’ George knew the man, a black activist in Jackson, Mississippi. He was a full-time employee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the most moderate of the civil rights groups. He had investigated the murder of Emmett Till and organized a boycott of white stores. His work had made him a national figure.
‘They shot him,’ Verena sobbed. ‘Right outside his house.’
‘Is he dead?’
‘Yes. He has three children, George – three! His kids heard the shot and went out and found their father bleeding to death on their driveway.’
‘Oh, Christ.’
‘What is
wrong
with these white people? Why do they do this to us, George? Why?’
‘I don’t know, baby’ said George. ‘I just don’t know.’
* * *
Once again Bobby Kennedy sent George to Atlanta with a message for Martin Luther King.
When George called Verena to make the appointment, he said: ‘I’d love to see your apartment.’
He could not figure Verena out. That night in Birmingham they had made love and survived a racist bomb, and he had felt very close to her. But days had gone by, then weeks, without another opportunity to make love, and their intimacy had evaporated. Yet, when she had been distraught with the news of the murder of Medgar Evers, she had not phoned Martin Luther King, nor her father, but George. Now he did not know what their relationship was.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ll bring a bottle of vodka.’ He had learned that vodka was her favourite booze.
‘I share the place with another girl.’
‘Shall I bring two bottles?’
She laughed. ‘Easy, tiger. Laura will be happy to go out for the evening. I’ve done it often enough for her.’
‘Does that mean you’ll make dinner?’
‘I’m not much of a cook.’
‘How about if you fry a couple of steaks and I make a salad?’
‘You have sophisticated taste.’
‘That’s why I like you.’
‘Smooth talker.’
He flew there the next day. He was hoping to spend the night with her, but he did not want her to feel taken for granted, so he checked into a hotel, then got a taxi to her place.
He had more than seduction on his mind. Last time he had brought a message from Bobby to King, he had felt ambivalent about it. This time Bobby was right and King was wrong, and George was determined to change King’s mind. So first he would try to change Verena’s.
Atlanta in June was hot, and she greeted him wearing a sleeveless tennis dress that showed her long light-tan arms. Her feet were bare, and that made him wonder whether she had anything on under the dress. She kissed him on the lips, but briefly, so that he was not sure what it meant.
She had a classy modern apartment with contemporary furniture. She could not afford it on the salary Martin Luther King was giving her, George guessed. Percy Marquand’s record royalties must be paying the rent.
He put the vodka down on the kitchen counter and she handed him a bottle of vermouth and a cocktail shaker. Before making the drinks he said: ‘I want to be sure you understand something. President Kennedy is in the greatest trouble of his political career. This is much worse than the Bay of Pigs.’
She was shocked, as he had intended. ‘Tell me why,’ she said.
‘Because of his civil rights bill. The morning after his television broadcast – the morning after you called to tell me that Medgar had been murdered – the House Majority Leader telephoned the President. He said it was going to be impossible to pass the farm bill, mass-transit funding, foreign aid and the space budget. Kennedy’s programme of legislation has been completely derailed. Just as we feared, those Southern Democrats are taking their revenge. And the President’s rating in the opinion polls dropped ten points overnight.’
‘It’s done him good internationally, though,’ she pointed out. ‘You may just have to tough it out at home.’
‘Believe me, we are,’ George said. ‘Lyndon Johnson has come into his own.’
‘Johnson? Are you kidding me?’
‘No, I’m not.’ George was friendly with one of the Vice-President’s aides, Skip Dickerson. ‘Did you know that the city of Houston shut off dockside electricity to protest the navy’s new policy on shore leave integration?’
‘Yes, the bastards.’
‘Lyndon solved that problem.’
‘How?’
‘NASA is planning to build a tracking station worth millions of dollars in Houston. Lyndon just threatened to cancel it. The city turned the power back on seconds later. Never underestimate Lyndon Johnson.’
‘We could do with more of that attitude in the administration.’
‘True.’ But the Kennedy brothers were fastidious. They did not want to dirty their hands. They preferred to win the argument by sweet reason. Consequently, they did not make much use of Johnson – in fact, they looked down on him for his arm-twisting skills.
George filled the cocktail shaker with ice, then poured in some vodka and shook it up. Verena opened the refrigerator and took out two cocktail glasses. George poured a teaspoonful of vermouth into each frosted glass, swirled it around to coat the sides, then added the cold vodka. Verena dropped an olive into each glass.
George liked the feeling of doing something together. ‘We make a good team, don’t we?’ he said.
Verena raised her glass and drank. ‘You make a good Martini,’ she said.
George smiled ruefully. He had been hoping for a different answer, one that affirmed their relationship. He sipped and said: ‘Yeah, I do.’
Verena got out lettuce and tomatoes and two sirloin steaks. George began to wash the lettuce. As he did so he turned the conversation to the real purpose of his visit. ‘I know that we’ve talked about this before, but it doesn’t help the White House that Dr King has Communist associates.’
‘Who says he does?’
‘The FBI.’
Verena snorted contemptuously. ‘That famously reliable source of information on the civil rights movement. Knock it off, George. You know that J. Edgar Hoover believes that anyone who disagrees with him is a Communist, including Bobby Kennedy. Where’s the evidence?’
‘Apparently the FBI has evidence.’
‘Apparently? So you haven’t seen any. Has Bobby?’
George felt embarrassed. ‘Hoover says the source is sensitive.’
‘Hoover has refused to show the evidence to the Attorney General? Who does Hoover think he’s working for?’ She sipped her drink thoughtfully. ‘Has the
President
seen the evidence?’
George said nothing.
Verena’s incredulity mounted. ‘Hoover can’t say no to the President.’
‘I believe the President decided not to push the matter to a confrontation.’
‘How naive are you people? George, listen to me.
There is no evidence
.’
George decided to concede the point. ‘You’re probably right. I don’t believe that Jack O’Dell and Stanley Levison are Communists, though probably they used to be; but don’t you see that the truth doesn’t matter? There are grounds for suspicion, and that’s enough to discredit the civil rights movement. And, now that the President has proposed a civil rights bill, he gets discredited too.’ George wrapped the washed lettuce in a towel and windmilled his arm to dry the leaves. Irritation made him do it more energetically than necessary. ‘Jack Kennedy has put his political life on the line for civil rights, and we can’t let him be brought down by charges of Communist association.’ He tipped the lettuce into a bowl. ‘Just get rid of those two guys, and solve the problem!’