Killing Kennedy

the repressive Soviet police state, she lives in fear of being marched off to jail in the middle of the night and disappearing forever.
    On April 21, Marina spots Oswald getting ready to leave the house with a pistol tucked in his waistband. It’s a Sunday. He’s wearing a suit. Marina furiously demands to know where he’s going. “Nixon is coming,” Oswald tells her. “I’m going to go check it out.”
    The former vice president has just made headlines by demanding the removal of all Communists from Cuba. Like General Walker, Richard Nixon has been making a political name for himself by denouncing Communists.
    “I know how you look,” Marina says. Her husband’s idea of checking out a situation is to fire a shot at a human being. It’s quite clear that Lee Harvey needs to be saved from himself.
    Then, showing just how powerful she can be when pushed to the limit, Marina Oswald pushes her husband into their tiny bathroom and forces him to remain there. Her husband is a prisoner the rest of the day. By the time she sets him free, it’s clear that, for his own good, Lee Harvey Oswald must leave Dallas.
    *   *   *
    Five days after John Kennedy’s Rose Garden speech, the president and First Lady formally announce that she is pregnant. This marks the first time that a sitting president’s wife will have a baby since Grover Cleveland’s spouse gave birth in 1893.
    Americans respond with warmth and enthusiasm—and more than a little surprise. For although she is four months along, Jackie still doesn’t show the slightest sign of expecting. The baby will sleep in the same white crib that John Jr.used as an infant. Drapes and a new rug will be added to a small room in the residence as it is transformed into a nursery.
    With every passing moment, the Kennedys seem to be living an idyllic life, where everything goes right and each day is more glamorous than the one before it. Unlike Abraham Lincoln, whose shoulders sagged and whose face grew lined and weary from the strains of being president, John Kennedy truly enjoys the job—and it shows. Friends have noted how much he has grown as a leader during his time in office, and the vigor with which he tackles his work.
    But America is changing rapidly. John Kennedy will soon be forced to use every bit of these hard-won presidential skills to manage turbulent times. The tense challenges that have dogged his presidency—Cuba, Vietnam, Mafia power, civil rights, and even his personal life—have not disappeared.
    For now, they are merely simmering—and as spring becomes summer in 1963, these problems will explode.

 
    11
    M AY 3, 1963
    B IRMINGHAM, A LABAMA
    1:00 P.M.
    “We’re going to walk, walk, walk. Freedom … Freedom … Freedom,” the protesters chant as they march out through the great oak doors of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. It is a Friday, and these young black students should be in school. Instead, they have gathered to march for civil rights. Some are less than ten years old. Most are teenagers. They are football players, homecoming queens, track stars, and cheerleaders. Most are nicely dressed, in button-down shirts and clean slacks for the boys, and dresses and bows for the girls.
    The marchers number more than one thousand strong. All have skipped class to be here. Some of them even climbed over locked gates. Their goal is to experience something their parents have never known for a single day of their lives: an integrated Birmingham, where lunch counters, department stores, public restrooms, and water fountains are open to all.
    The Children’s Crusade, as Newsweek magazine will call it, fans out and marches across acre-wide Kelly Ingram Park. “We’re going to walk, walk, walk,” they continue to chant. They are peaceful, almost spiritual. Yet electricity courses through the group, for what they are doing is completely illegal. “Freedom … Freedom … Freedom.”
    The protesters plan to march into the white business district and peacefully enter stores and restaurants. More than six hundred students were arrested doing the same thing yesterday. The youngest was just eight years old. This earned the Children’s Crusade national recognition. About a thousand miles away, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy actually scolded the black civil rights leaders who had organized the children’s march, stating that “schoolchildren participating in street demonstrations is dangerous business. An injured, maimed or dead child is a