The University of Alabama was the last all-white state university in the USA. On Tuesday, June 11, two young Negroes arrived at the campus in Tuscaloosa to register as students. George Wallace, the diminutive governor of Alabama, stood at the doors of the university with his arms folded and his legs astride, and vowed to keep them out.
At the Department of Justice in Washington, George Jakes sat with Bobby Kennedy and others listening to telephone reports from people at the university. The television was on, but for the moment none of the networks was showing the scene live.
Less than a year ago, two people had been shot dead during riots at the University of Mississippi after its first colored student enrolled. The Kennedy brothers were determined to prevent a repeat.
George had been to Tuscaloosa, and had seen the university’s leafy campus. He had been frowned at as he walked across the green lawns, the only dark face among the pretty girls in bobby socks and the smart young men in blazers. He had drawn for Bobby a sketch of the grand portico of the Foster Auditorium, with its three doors, in front of which Governor Wallace now stood, at a portable lectern, surrounded by highway patrolmen. The June temperature in Tuscaloosa was rising toward a hundred degrees. George could visualize the reporters and photographers crowded in front of Wallace, sweating in the sun, waiting for violence to break out.
The confrontation had long been anticipated and planned by both sides.
George Wallace was a Southern Democrat. Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, had been a Republican, while pro-slavery Southerners had been Democrats. Those Southerners were still in the party, helping Democratic presidents get elected, then undermining them once in office.
Wallace was a small, ugly man, going bald except for a patch at the front of his head that he greased and combed into a ludicrous quiff. But he was cunning, and George Jakes could not figure out what he was up to today. What result did Wallace hope for? Mayhem—or something more subtle?
The civil rights movement, which had seemed moribund two months ago, had taken wing after the Birmingham riots. Money was pouring in: at a Hollywood fund-raiser, movie stars such as Paul Newman and Tony Franciosa had written checks for a thousand dollars each. The White House was terrified of more disorder, and desperate to appease the protesters.
Bobby Kennedy had at last come round to the belief that there must be a new civil rights bill. He now admitted that the time had come for Congress to outlaw segregation in all public places—hotels, restaurants, buses, restrooms—and to protect the right of Negroes to vote. But he had not yet convinced his brother the president.
Bobby was pretending to be calm and in charge this morning. A television crew was filming him, and three of his seven children were running around the office. But George knew how fast Bobby’s relaxed openness could turn to cold fury when things went wrong.
Bobby was resolved that there would be no rioting—but he was equally determined to get the two students enrolled. A judge had issued a court order to admit the students, and Bobby, as attorney general, could not let himself be defeated by a state governor intent on flouting the law. He was ready to send in troops to remove Wallace by force—but that, too, would be an unhappy ending, Washington bullying the South.
Bobby was in his shirtsleeves, bent over the speakerphone on his wide desk, with wet marks of perspiration under his arms. The army had set up mobile communications, and someone in the crowd was telling Bobby what was happening. “Nick has arrived,” the voice on the speaker said. Nicholas Katzenbach was deputy attorney general, and Bobby’s representative on the scene. “He’s going up to Wallace . . . he’s handing him the cease-and-desist.” Katzenbach was armed with a presidential proclamation ordering Wallace to cease illegally defying a court order. “Now Wallace is making a speech.”
George Jakes’s left arm was in a discreet black silk sling. State troopers had cracked a bone in his wrist in Birmingham, Alabama. Two years earlier a racist rioter had broken the same arm in Anniston, which was also in Alabama. George hoped never to go to Alabama again.
“Wallace isn’t talking about segregation,” said the voice on the speaker. “He’s talking about states’ rights. He says Washington doesn’t have the right to interfere in Alabama schools. I’m going to try to get close enough so you can hear him.”
George frowned. In his inaugural speech as governor, Wallace had said: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” But then he had been speaking to white Alabamans. Who was he trying to impress today? Something was going on here that the Kennedy brothers and their advisers had not yet understood.
Wallace’s speech was long. When at last it was over, Katzenbach once again demanded that Wallace obey the court, and Wallace refused. Stalemate.
Katzenbach then left the scene—but the drama was not over. The two students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, were waiting in a car. By prior arrangement, Katzenbach escorted Vivian to her dormitory, and another Justice Department lawyer did the same for James. This was only temporary. To register formally, they had to enter the Foster Auditorium.
The lunchtime news came on television, and in Bobby Kennedy’s office someone turned up the sound. Wallace stood at the lectern, looking taller than he was in real life. He said nothing about colored people or segregation or civil rights. He talked of the might of central government oppressing the sovereignty of the state of Alabama. He spoke indignantly about freedom and democracy, as if there were no Negroes being denied the vote. He quoted the American Constitution as if he did not spurn it every day of his life. It was a bravura performance, and it worried George.
Burke Marshall, the white lawyer who headed the civil rights division, was in Bobby’s office. George still did not trust him, but Marshall had become more radical since Birmingham, and now he proposed resolving the stalemate in Tuscaloosa by sending troops in. “Why don’t we just go ahead and do it?” he said to Bobby.
Bobby agreed.
It took time. Bobby’s aides ordered sandwiches and coffee. On the campus, everyone held their positions.
News came in from Vietnam. At a road junction in Saigon a Buddhist monk called Thich Quang Duc, doused in five gallons of gasoline, had calmly struck a match and set himself alight. His suicide was a protest at the persecution of the Buddhist majority by the American-sponsored president Ngo Dinh Diem, who was a Catholic.
There was no end to the travails of President Kennedy.
At last the voice on Bobby’s speakerphone said: “General Graham has arrived . . . with four soldiers.”
“Four?” said George. “That’s our show of force?”
They heard a new voice, presumably that of the general addressing Wallace. He said: “Sir, it is my sad duty to ask you to step aside under orders from the president of the United States.”
Graham was the commander of the Alabama National Guard, and he was clearly doing his duty against his inclination.
But the voice on the phone now said: “Wallace is walking away . . . Wallace is leaving! Wallace is leaving! It’s over!”
There was cheering and handshaking in the office.
After a minute the others noticed that George was not joining in. Dennis Wilson said: “What’s the matter with you?”
In George’s opinion, the people around him were not thinking hard enough. “Wallace planned this,” he said. “All along, he intended to give in as soon as we called in the troops.”
“But why?” said Dennis.
“That’s the question that’s been bothering me. All morning, I’ve had this suspicion that we’re being used.”
“So what did Wallace gain by this charade?”
“A showcase. He’s just been on television, posing as the ordinary man standing up to a bullying government.”
“Governor Wallace, complaining about being bullied?” said Wilson. “That’s a joke!”
Bobby had been following the argument, and now he intervened. “Listen to George,” he said. “He’s asking the right questions.”
“It’s a joke to you and me,” said George. “But many working-class Americans feel that integration is being shoved down their throats by Washington do-gooders such as all of us in this room.”
“I know,” said Wilson. “Though it’s unusual to hear that from . . .” He was going to say from a Negro, but changed his mind. “From someone who campaigns for civil rights. What’s your point?”
“What Wallace was doing, today, was talking to those white working-class voters. They’ll remember him standing there, defying Nick Katzenbach—a typical East Coast liberal, they’ll say—and they’ll remember the soldiers making Governor Wallace withdraw.”
“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 that 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 nonviolent 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 the 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. 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 marveled. 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 color 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 counseled 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 favorite 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 have been 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 program 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 naïve 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!”
Verena spoke patiently. “O’Dell is an employee of Martin Luther King’s organization, just as I am, but Levison isn’t even on the payroll. He’s just a friend and adviser to Martin. Do you really want to give J. Edgar Hoover the power to choose Martin’s friends?”
“Verena, they’re standing in the way of the civil rights bill. Just tell Dr. King to get rid of them—please.”
Verena sighed. “I think he will. It’s taking a while for his Christian conscience to get around to the idea of spurning loyal longtime supporters, but in the end he’ll do it.”
“Thank the Lord for that.” George’s spirits lifted: for once he could go back to Bobby with good news.
Verena salted the steaks and put them in a frying pan. “And now I’ll tell you something,” she said. “It won’t make any goddamn difference. Hoover will continue to leak stories to the press about how the civil rights movement is a Communist front. He would do it if we were all lifelong Republicans. J. Edgar Hoover is a pathological liar who hates Negroes, and it’s a damn shame your boss doesn’t have the balls to fire him.”
George wanted to protest but unfortunately the accusation was true. He sliced a tomato into the salad.
Verena said: “Do you like your steak well cooked?”
“Not too much.”
“The French way? So do I.”
George made a couple more drinks and they sat at the small table to eat. George embarked on the second half of his message. “It would help the president if Dr. King would call off this damn Washington sit-in.”
“That isn’t going to happen.”
King had called for a “massive, militant, and monumental sit-in demonstration” in Washington, coinciding with nationwide acts of civil disobedience. The Kennedy brothers were appalled. “Consider this,” George said. “In Congress, there are some people who will always vote for civil rights and some who never will. The ones who matter are those who could go either way.”
“Swing voters,” said Verena, using a phrase that had come into vogue.
“Exactly. They know that the bill is morally right but politically unpopular, and they’re looking for excuses to vote against it. Your demonstration will give them the chance to say: ‘I’m for civil rights, but not at the point of a gun.’ The timing is wrong.”
“As Martin says, the timing is always wrong for white people.”
George grinned. “You’re whiter than I am.”
She tossed her head. “And prettier.”
“That’s the truth. You’re just about the prettiest sight I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you. Eat up.”
George picked up his knife and fork. They ate mostly in silence. George complimented Verena on the steaks, and she said he made a good salad, for a man.
When they had finished they carried their drinks into the living room and sat on the couch, and George resumed the argument. “It’s different, now, don’t you see? The administration is on our side. The president is trying his best to pass the bill we’ve been demanding for years.”
She shook her head. “If we’ve learned one thing, it’s that change comes faster when we keep up the pressure. Did you know that Negroes are getting served by white waitresses in Birmingham restaurants now?”
“Yes, I did know that. What an incredible turnaround.”
“And it wasn’t achieved by waiting patiently. It happened because they threw rocks and started fires.”
“The situation has changed.”
“Martin won’t cancel the demonstration.”
“Would he modify it?”
“What do you mean?”
This was George’s Plan B. “Could it become a simple law-abiding march, rather than a sit-in? Congressmen might feel less threatened.”
“I don’t know. Martin might consider that.”
“Hold it on a Wednesday, to discourage people from staying in the city all weekend, and end it early so that the marchers leave well before nightfall.”
“You’re trying to draw the sting.”
“If we must have a demonstration, we should do everything possible to make sure the occasion is nonviolent and makes a good impression, especially on television.”
“In that case, how about stationing portable toilets all along the route? I guess Bobby can get that done, even if he can’t fire Hoover.”
“Great idea.”
“And how about rounding up some white supporters? The whole thing will look better on TV if there are white marchers as well as black.”
George considered. “I bet Bobby could get the unions to send contingents.”
“If you can promise both of those things as sweeteners, I think we have a chance of changing Martin’s mind.”
George saw that Verena had come around to his point of view and was now discussing how to persuade King. That was half a victory. He said: “And if you can persuade Dr. King to change the sit-in to a march, I think we might get the president to endorse it.” He was sticking his neck out, but it was possible.
“I’ll do my best,” she said.
George put his arm around her. “See, we are a good team,” he said. She smiled and said nothing. He persisted. “Don’t you agree?”
She kissed him. It was the same as the last kiss: more than just friendly, less than sexy. She said thoughtfully: “After that bomb smashed the window of my hotel room, you crossed the room barefoot to fetch my shoes.”
“I remember,” he said. “There was broken glass all over the floor.”
“That was it,” she said. “That was your mistake.”
George frowned. “I don’t get it. I thought I was being nice.”
“Exactly. You’re too good for me, George.”
“What? That’s insane!”
She was serious. “I sleep around, George. I get drunk. I’m unfaithful. I had sex with Martin, once.”
George raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
“You deserve better,” Verena went on. “You’re going to have a wonderful career. You might be our first Negro president. You need a wife who will be true to you and work alongside you and support you and be a credit to you. That’s not me.”
George was bemused. “I wasn’t looking that far ahead,” he said. “I was just hoping to kiss you some more.”
She smiled. “That, I can do,” she said.
He kissed her long and slow. After a while he stroked the outside of her thigh, up inside the skirt of her tennis dress. His hand went as far as her hip. He had been right: no underwear.
She knew what he was thinking. “See?” she said. “Bad girl.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m crazy about you anyway.”