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8
The day after Sadie’s Boxing Day dinner, there was a note from Oswald in my mailbox, although it
was signed A. Hidell. This alias was in Al’s notes. The A stood for Alek, Marina’s pet name for him
during their Minsk days.
The communication didn’t disturb me, since everyone on the street seemed to have gotten one just
like it. The flyers had been printed on hot-pink paper (probably filched from Oswald’s current place of
employment), and I saw a dozen or more flapping up the gutters. The residents of Dallas’s Oak Cliff
neighborhood were not known for putting litter in its place.
PROTEST CHANNEL 9 FASCISM!
HOME OF SEGREGATIONIST BILLY JAMES HARGIS!
PROTEST FASCIST EX-GENERAL EDWIN WALKER!
During the Thursday night telecast of the Billy James Hargis so-called “Cristian
Crusade,” Channel 9 will give are-time to GENERAL EDWIN WALKER, a rightwing
fascist who has encouraged JFK to invade the peaceful peoples of Cuba and
who has formented anti-black, anti-integration “HATE-SPEAK” all over the
south. (If you have doubts about the accuracy of this information, check the “TV
Guide.”) These two men stand for everythig we fouht against in WWII, and their
Fascist RAVINGS have no place on the are-waves. EDWIN WALKER was one of
the WHITE SUPREMACISTS who tried to bar JAMES MERDITH from
attending “OLE MISS.” If you love America, protest the free are-time given to men
who pretch HATE and VIOLENCE. Write a letter! Better still, come to Channel 9
on Dec. 27 and “sit in!”
A. Hidell
President of Hands Off Cuba
Dallas–Fort Worth Branch
I briefly pondered the misspellings, then folded the flyer and put it in the box where I kept my
manuscripts.
If there was a protest at the station, it wasn’t reported in the Slimes Herald the day after the Hargis-
Walker “telemcast.” I doubt that anyone turned up, including Lee himself. I certainly didn’t, but I
tuned in to Channel 9 on Thursday night, anxious to see the man Lee—probably Lee—was soon going
to try to kill.
At first it was just Hargis, sitting behind an office-set desk and pretending to scribble important
notes while a canned choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” He was a fattish fellow with a lot
of plastered-back black hair. As the choir faded out, he put down his pen, looked into the camera, and
said: “Welcome to the Christian Crusade, neighbors. I come with good news—Jesus loves you. Yes he
does, every last one of you. Won’t you join me in prayer?”
Hargis bent the Almighty’s ear for at least ten minutes. He covered the usual stuff, thanking God
for the chance to spread the gospel and instructing Him to bless those who’d sent in love-offerings.
Then he got down to business, asking God to arm His Chosen People with the sword and buckler of
righteousness so we could defeat communism, which had reared its ugly head just ninety miles off the
shores of Florida. He asked God to grant President Kennedy the wisdom (which Hargis, being closer
to the Big Guy, already possessed) to go in there and root out the tares of godlessness. He also