“If you don’t mind, I’ll start showing the recruits how to use the weapons,” Jackie said. Robinson, halfway through a message to the world, nodded absently. It was a few minutes later that it caught up with him; Jackie didn’t know how to use the weapons!
“Hang on a moment,” he snapped. He jumped up and followed him. “Granddad, you don’t know how to use one…”
Jackie chuckled and held up a manual. It had been printed for the National Guard; it had all of the subtly of a child’s book, perhaps for people who couldn’t even read.
“Give me five minutes and I’ll show you,” he said firmly. “It’s a bad idea to be playing with deadly weapons at your age.”
The White House
Washington DC, USA
5th April 1941
“This is all your fault, you nigger son of a bitch,” Governor Frank Dixon bellowed at volume. Ambassador King, who’d been shouted at by experts, only smiled. “We lost thousands of guns to those nigger… communists!”
“You make it sound like an insult,” King said, half-hoping that Dixon would have a heart attack on the spot. He glared at one of his guards who had been moving forward, pushing him back. “Let me get this straight; you’re blaming me for people seeking to claim the rights of American citizens? I may have come from the future, but do I look like a founding father?”
Dixon’s face turned purple. A Democrat, he expected that the President would provide assistance for his state. “We have a god-damned nigger insurrection brewing,” he bellowed. “Franklin, I demand that you do something about this!”
Roosevelt looked pale. He’d been getting worse recently. “We have a war on our own doorsteps and you want us to send good old boys off to Germany,” Dixon snapped, sensing an advantage. “The niggers are turning on us…”
“And who can blame them?” King asked. “After all, you only deny them the rights of Americans. Dear me, what a reason to rebel…”
“They were happy until you came along,” Dixon snapped. “Happy and contented…”
“And now they’re getting uppity?” King asked mildly. “My dear fellow, they’ve seen the future… and why should they have to wait? They want to be free, and they are willing to fight for it.”
He turned to Roosevelt. “Mr President, if you signed into law the civil rights legislation and arranged equal opportunities, you could head this problem off at the pass. The last thing we need is a civil war and…”
“We’ll kick their black asses from one end of the playing field to the other,” Dixon snapped.
“One-third of your state is black,” King snapped, feeling something snap inside. “If they rebel, against you and your torments, you’ll have a fight on your hands that makes the civil war seem like nothing.”
“The War of Northern Aggression,” Dixon snapped. “They’re attacking honest upstanding…”
“Lynchers?” King asked. “You know; the kind of good old boys whose idea of fun is to hang the nearest nigger?”
Roosevelt chuckled. It defused the tension. “Governor, Ambassador, we do have a war on our hands,” he said. “Perhaps we could find them other targets for their aggression…”
Both men objected at once. “That would just give them the skills they need to kill white men,” Dixon snapped. King grinned. “So far, they haven’t faced a real army. Mr President, I propose federalising the National Guard and sending it in to hunt for the bandits!”
“Ever heard of Vietnam?” King asked. “The lessons are there; you cannot suppress an entire movement when you’re in the wrong. If you react with force, you will set the entire United States ablaze.”
“I agree with Ambassador King,” Vice-President Truman said calmly. “We do not need a second civil war, particularly one when we don’t know for sure who’s an enemy or not. We have one war on our hands; we should make it more worth the while of the black man to stick with us.”
“Eu Tu Brute,” Roosevelt said wryly. King felt a flicker of sympathy; decisive action was not one of Roosevelt’s traits. “Very well, we’ll see what we can do in the field of both law enforcement – all kinds of laws. It may be that the… ah, lynching craze will burn itself out with its victims shooting back and generally cutting down the numbers of crazies.”
King smiled thoughtfully. A sociologist would have found the infusion of 1940 and 2015 terms fascinating. Perhaps reasonable action would stop events before the United States of America careened into a second civil war.
“I cannot believe that I’m hearing this,” J Edgar Hoover said. King felt his heart sink; despite being semi-ousted – no one knew for sure – as a homosexual, Hoover remained a Power within the government. “we are talking about making deals with subversives.”
He waved a hand at the list of incidents. Firefights between the Ku Klux Klan and the new Black Power movement. Wildcat strikes that had led to racial violence. Thousands of black voters suddenly registering to vote. A black man trying to stand for the Senate in Texas.
“These are all part of a conspiracy,” Hoover said, “one started by your… missing Marine, Ambassador. A conspiracy to bring down the United States once and for all.”
He paced the room, words spewing from his mouth. “We are at war, even if we refuse to acknowledge it, with all three of the… Axis powers,” he said. “The Communists are working with the Germans, and are supporting them in the political battlefield here. Do you think that the Germans could have distributed communist literature? What about the Papal Bull?”
King shrugged. It hadn’t exactly been a Papal Bull; the Pope had spoken ex cathedra, with all the power of his office and the doctrine of Papal Infallibility. In short, he’d condemned both Vatican II and Vatican III as heretical and evil – and ordered all Catholics to return to the old ways or face excommunication, calling upon the British Government to enforce it as the only true way, “as thou knowest well, my sons.” From his sources in Britain, the only response had been howls of laugher from the other religions, and an embarrassed silence from Catholics.
“This is nothing more or less than an attack upon America,” Hoover said. “The only solution is to root out the subversives and restore America to the innocent state she once was.”
“You can’t put the mushroom cloud back in the bomb,” King said, and caught Roosevelt’s look of alarm. Everyone knew about nuclear weapons now – the newspapers had reported on the single use of a bomb with a mixture of awe and fear – but the scope of the Manhattan Project was a closely held secret.
Roosevelt tapped the table sharply. “Our choice seems to be between… allowing the Negro some equality…”
“Complete equality,” King said, knowing that Roosevelt was kinder to the black unionists than that.
“Or to run the risk of race war,” Roosevelt continued. “Ambassador, can you assure me that they will be good citizens?”
“If you allow them the opportunity to be good citizens, then yes, they will be,” King snapped.
Dixon banged the table. “Perhaps you have forgotten,” he said. “They will want revenge and power – political power. This… proposal will not be greeted warmly; anywhere!”
“Governor Dixon wasn’t happy,” Roosevelt observed later. The two men were sitting alone in the Oval Office. “Anyone would think that he was planning a second secession.”