A shabbily furnished apartment in a small house in New Orleans. A young man is stretched out on a battered couch, watching a black-and-white TV, on which John F. Kennedy is in mid-speech. It’s 11th June 1962; the twenty-four-year-old is Lee Harvey Oswald. It’s clearly a sweltering hot day, as Oswald is wearing no more than a brief pair of bright yellow shorts. Plates of half-eaten food and empty beer cans litter the floor. A large photograph of Fidel Castro, clipped from a magazine, is stuck to the wall with Scotch tape.
Kennedy The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities …
Oswald You said a mouthful, rich boy.
Kennedy … whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated. If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the colour of his skin changed and stand in his place? Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?
Oswald shouts out loudly, in Russian.
Oswald Marinenka, bring me a soda!
Kennedy One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
Oswald forms his forefinger and thumb into a pistol and points it at the screen. Then he puts the forefinger of his other hand inside his cheek and makes a popping sound.
We preach freedom around the world, and we mean it, and we cherish our freedom here at home, 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?
Oswald So: it’s you and me, motherfucker.
Kennedy That we have no second-class citizens, except for Negroes? That we have no class or caste system, no ghettoes, no master race, except with respect to Negroes? Now the time has come for this Nation to fulfill its promise.
Oswald shouts out again, this time in English.
Oswald Marina! Chrissakes, where are you?