“Maybe. We’ll see.”
His eyes had begun to glitter, and Marina thought she had better sign. She told herself that it was nothing but child’s play anyway, and it was better for him to be playing with bits of paper than with a gun. But she had no idea what she was signing. “It could have been my own death sentence,” she said later.
As long as she was going to sign, however, she wanted her writing to look pretty.[12] Several times, on a piece of scratch paper, she practiced writing the name Lee wanted her to sign. He thrust the card in front of her, and with some care she wrote “A. J. Hidell.” He was “president” of the New Orleans “chapter” of the FPCC.
“What’s that?” she asked, commenting on the name. “An altered Fidel?”
“Shut up.” He was blushing. “Don’t meddle in what you don’t understand.”
“So America has its Fidel,” she said sarcastically. “Don’t you think you’re taking a bit too much on yourself?”
He was ashamed at being caught and admitted there was no such person as “Hidell.” But he wanted people to think he had a big organization.
“Do you mean that you have two names?” she asked in wonder.
“Yes,” he said.
Two days later he put his alias to another use. He took a standard yellow international vaccination certificate, wrote his name at the top, stamped it “Dr. A. J. Hideel” (sic) and, in his own handwriting this time, forged the name “A. J. Hidell” above the stamp. In addition to being president of the New Orleans “chapter” of the FPCC, “Hidell” was also his doctor.[13] Three days after that, Lee listed “A. J. Hidell” and Marina Oswald as persons entitled to receive mail at the post office box he had opened on June 3.[14]
All of these things together—the handbills, his remarks to Marina about going to Cuba or China, the passport photos, the vaccination certificate, his intention to send Marina back to Russia—suggest that a multiple scenario was beginning to take shape in Lee’s head.
A third important letter arrived during the first week in June, this one from Ruth Paine. Much of the letter was written in English for Lee. Ruth repeated her offer for Marina to come to Texas to have her baby at clinic in Grand Prairie. She explained how much it would cost, said that Marina would have to bring her medical records from New Orleans, and expressed hope that she would go to a doctor soon to anticipate any complications in her pregnancy.
Coming so soon after Marina’s fainting spell of June 1, the letter seems to have had an effect on Lee. On Saturday, June 8, he took Marina for a medical examination at the New Orleans Charity Hospital, a large institution near their home. Unfortunately, it was a state hospital, permitted to treat only Louisiana residents or emergency cases. Marina had not lived long enough in Louisiana to qualify as a resident, nor was hers an emergency. Although Lee spent a full hour pleading to have a doctor examine her, the Oswalds were turned away.[15]
The impact could hardly have been more dramatic. “Everything is money in this country,” Lee said, his face contorted with anger, awash with apology and shame. “Even the doctors are businessmen. You can’t even have a baby without money.” The tears were rolling down his cheeks.
“It’s okay. I understand. Everything will be all right,” Marina said to comfort him. Lee always had an extra $10 in his pocket, and Marina later realized that he could have taken her to a doctor. But she was too sorry for him to think of it at the time. She wanted to see a doctor, but she put the idea aside and was not examined until she was in her ninth month.
The week that began two days later, on Monday, June 10, was a memorable one in the presidency of John F. Kennedy and a memorable, as well as tragic, one for the civil rights movement. On June 10 President Kennedy gave the famous “American University” speech in which he hailed the Russian people for their achievements and asked for a world “safe for diversity.” On the evening of the speech, Lee sat down and wrote a letter to the Worker, the newspaper of the US Communist Party in New York City. He announced that he had formed a Fair Play for Cuba “chapter” in New Orleans, asked for Communist Party literature for his “office,” and sent honorary membership cards in his “chapter” to Gus Hall and Benjamin Davis, leaders of the party in the United States.
The following day, June 11, was a landmark in the civil rights struggle that had been raging that spring with its focus in Birmingham, Alabama. In January a governor named George Wallace had been inaugurated in Alabama with a speech promising that he “would stand in the schoolhouse door, if necessary,” to resist court-ordered desegregation. On June 11 Wallace fulfilled his promise by standing in the doorway of the registration building of the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. Twice Wallace held out his hand in a “stop” signal, and twice James Hood and Vivian Malone, two black students who were accompanied by the deputy attorney general of the United States, Nicholas Katzenbach, had to retreat. As the day wore on, President Kennedy, in Washington, signed an order federalizing part of the National Guard in Alabama. As guardsmen walked onto the campus, Governor Wallace walked off, and the two students were allowed to register.
That evening President Kennedy went on the air from the White House to call for a new civil rights law. But it was a night that ended in tragedy. Only a few hours after Kennedy finished speaking, Medgar Evers, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi, was shot and killed by a sniper who had been lying in wait outside his home in Jackson, only two hundred miles from New Orleans.[16]
Lee had often spoken of the necessity for greater understanding between the United States and the Soviet Union. He claimed that racial discrimination in America was the chief reason he had become a Marxist. But if he recognized that President Kennedy had that week taken major steps toward better relations with Russia abroad, and toward better relations between the races at home, he did not give the slightest sign of it. His mind appeared to be fixed on Cuba.
On the afternoon of Sunday, June 16, the day Evers’s tumultuous funeral was reported in every newspaper in the land, Lee went, without a word to anyone, to the Dumaine Street Wharf, where the USS Wasp was berthed. There he passed out his white “Hands Off Cuba” leaflets, FPCC literature that he had received from New York, and yellow application forms for his Fair Play for Cuba “chapter” to such sailors and civilians as happened to come off the boat. Approached by Harbor Patrolman Girod Ray and asked whether he had a permit, Lee replied that he did not and he had no need of one. He was within his rights distributing leaflets anywhere he liked. Patrolman Ray informed him that he was on property of the New Orleans Port Authority and that a permit was, indeed, required. Either he must show a permit or be arrested.
Lee Harvey Oswald left.[17]
— 28 —
Castro and Kennedy
Lee Oswald’s interest in Castro was not new. As early as the fall of 1958, when he was barely nineteen and was stationed in the Marine Corps at El Toro, California, after his tour of duty in the Far East, he was already cheering Castro on. Castro was not yet in power at the time. He was leading a guerrilla band in the Sierra Maestre, fighting to overthrow the Cuban dictatorship.
Oswald had a friend in the Marine Corps named Nelson Delgado, a New Yorker of Hispanic extraction. Over Christmas of 1958 Delgado went on leave. When he returned, just after January 1, 1959, Castro was the ruler of Cuba. “Well,” Oswald greeted him, “you took a leave and went there and helped them, and they all took over.”[1]
15
Letter from Leo J. Kerne, director, New Orleans Charity Hospital, to the author, March 15, 1965.
16
So close are southern Louisiana and Mississippi in geography and feeling that New Orleans is often called the southern capital of Mississippi. The closeness was evident that day, for the New Orleans