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.