Killing Kennedy

the hospital at Otis Air Force Base. A few hours later, the president arrives to be with his wife.
    Even in the midst of her incredible pain, the First Lady can see how much her husband is also suffering. Gently, she reminds him that they still have each other, as well as John and Caroline.
    “The one blow I could not bear,” Jackie tells JFK, “would be to lose you.”

 
    14
    A UGUST 28, 1963
    W ASHINGTON, D . C .
    A FTERNOON
    “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation,” begins Martin Luther King Jr. His words are scripted. His mannerisms are unusually stiff, as befitting a man speaking before such a massive audience for the first time.
    Daniel Chester French’s iconic white marble statue of Abraham Lincoln looms over King’s shoulder. One of Lincoln’s fists is curled into the sign language letter A ; the other displays the sign language L . The Great Emancipator’s shoulders are slumped, and his head is slightly lowered, as if he still carries the great burden of being president. It has been one hundred years since Lincoln freed the slaves, and now King is telling a crowd of hundreds of thousands that black Americans are still not free.
    The crowd is silent as he begins his speech. He can hear them fidgeting. The applause is light and polite, when it comes at all. King reminds them that America is still a segregated nation, one hundred years after the slaves were freed. It is a powerful thought, but his matter-of-fact delivery robs the words of their full impact.
    King rambles on, the sound system carrying his voice out across the Mall and television cameras transporting his voice and image into homes across the nation.
    John Kennedy is considered a great orator for his speeches’ carefully chosen words and phrasing, as is Dr. King. But on his best days, Reverend King takes his oration to an even higher level than Kennedy by adding the techniques learned from countless Sunday mornings speaking from the pulpit: thunder and whisper as his voice rises and falls, the changing pace as the reverend speeds up and slows down to make the listener hang on his every word, the stretching or shortening of syllables to accentuate a point. King, in particular, is fond of coming down hard on the letter t when he desires emphasis.
    Normally, King’s delivery is fearless and sure, transforming words of damning rage into a hopeful prayer.
    But today his delivery is flat. His long syllables and prepared words sound no different from those of any of the day’s other speakers. Martin Luther King Jr., truth be told, is dull.
    He talks about poverty and the fact that America separates black from white. Today is the eighth anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder. King’s words testify that little has changed since then.
    Many in the crowd have traveled hundreds of miles to be here today. They are black and they are white. The day has been long, filled with hours of speeches—many of which have been downright boring.
    But Martin Luther King Jr. is the man they’ve waited to hear. And the fatigue and the heat and the claustrophobia are all forgotten as these 250,000 people strain to hear his every word. They have come for the cause of civil rights, but they have also come to hear the great orator shape this day for them. As they listen to the speech, King’s mellifluous voice carrying out over the reflecting pools between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the audience knows in their hearts that King will rally them to greatness.
    This is their expectation: that before this speech is done, Martin Luther King Jr. will say something so powerful that this day will never be forgotten.
    The crowd listens closely, but as King’s speech passes the nine-minute mark, he has said almost nothing that excites them.
    Two minutes later all that changes.
    *   *   *
    Meanwhile, in the White House, John Kennedy watches King’s speech on television. It is exactly three weeks since Jackie went into labor with baby Patrick. She is mourning in seclusion on Cape Cod, her easy smile replaced by a solemn downward gaze and her eyes hidden behind oversize sunglasses. The president has been vigilant about breaking away from Washington whenever possible to be with her.
    But today, a Wednesday, is one day he absolutely must be in Washington, D.C. Bobby Kennedy and their brother Teddy, the new senator from Massachusetts, join JFK as he watches King begin