Irving Wallace - The Man

He held his breath, and then, leaving his deliberate manner behind, rushed in where former Presidents had feared to tread.

“Extraordinary challenges to our way of life, we have decided, must be met promptly and firmly by extraordinary countermeasures within the law. Drastic crimes against our government must be met and punished by drastic executive action. Recently, whatever its motivation, a deplorable crime occurred in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. A county judge was kidnaped and taken across two state lines, to be held for human ransom. The leader of the abduction was caught by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and is now standing trial, and his individual case will be decided, without prejudice, on its own merits. The concern of your government, however, has been with the factors behind the crime itself.”

He no longer looked up from the printed words. His gaze was directed to the carefully prepared text. He read from it with measured emphasis.

“Irrefutable evidence, examined by objective minds, has made it clear that the Federal crime was not perpetrated by irresponsible individuals, but was an act of organization policy. The abduction, we now know, was committed by the activist Turnerite Group, which has been financially backed by the Communist Party, as the first act in a premeditated strategy to subvert our laws, our country, and take the administration of justice into its own hands. Such activity cannot be permitted in a democratic government by the people, of the people, for the people. And so, to halt its cancerous spread, and with full knowledge of my accountability to our tradition of civil liberties, I take this occasion to announce to my fellow Americans that I am invoking the Subversive Activities Control Act against the leadership and membership of the Turnerite Group. As of eleven o’clock this morning, the Turnerite Group is outlawed and banned, and any further activity of any nature by its members will be regarded as criminal and dealt with under the statutes that provide-”

There was a thin crackling sound that interrupted Dilman, a sound similar to that of an eggshell breaking, and it distracted Dilman and made him lift his face to the microphones. He saw at once that it had been an egg, a raw egg that had hit the microphones, broken and splattered, now spilling its liquid yolk down upon the page of his manuscript.

Bewildered, he looked out over his audience and saw that a curious thing was happening before his eyes. The black mass, so inert, so silent, had come alive like dark amoebae breaking apart, moving, under a giant microscope lens. The rear two-thirds of the throng was surging forward, pushing and upending the faculty and dignitaries from their folding chairs on the fore part of the campus lawn.

Suddenly there were red, white and blue signs and banners rising above the dark, animated pack of three thousand. Squinting, Dilman could make out the crude, savage lettering on one sign, then another, and another, and still another: GO HOME, UNCLE TOM!… HE’D RATHER BE WHITE THAN BE PRESIDENT!… BLACK JUDAS! GIVE BACK YOUR THIRTY PIECES!… DILMAN, WIPE OFF THE BURNT CORK! SHOW YOUR TRUE FACE!… TWO RAT FINKS-DILMAN AND ZEKE MILLER!!

And, assaulting him like so many angry black fists, from beneath the signs, behind them, around them, he could hear a single choral chant screamed out by the infuriated horde: “Down with traitor Dilman! Down with traitor Dilman! Down with traitor Dilman!”

Petrified, eyes wide, mouth agape, Douglass Dilman saw the air suddenly filled with flying, churning objects. Dozens of eggs exploded on the platform around him, against the front of the rostrum, and then followed the rotten apples, gnawed chicken bones, chunks of red watermelon and green rinds.

The single chant, hoarse and hating, began to fragment into a hundred shouts of individual protest, shrieks dinning against his ears: “Beat it, you bastard!… You’re puttin’ us back in slavery!… Doughface, doughface!… Give Simon Legree the white man’s degree!… Sellout!… Down, down, down, with the Jim Crow President!”

Instinctively he recoiled at the fury of protest, lifting his arm to shield his face. He could hear police whistles, see the swaying comber of officers in blue, clubs out, bowling over the photographers, as they formed a chained line to protect him from his people. The wood platform on which he wavered now rocked with footsteps, the Chancellor, regents, deans, and Secret Service agents crowding about him to save him.

Someone was tugging at his shoulder, wrenching at it, and he gave way a little to stop the hurt, twisting his head, and he saw it was the Secret Service agent Otto Beggs. As he tried to speak, he was struck sharply on the jaw. His free hand went to his jaw and came away with a handful of gooey, dripping white and yellow egg and pieces of shell. There had been no physical pain in being struck, only psychic pain, followed by shock and fear.

“Come on, come on, outa here, Mr. President, outa here. Got to get you to where it’s safe!” Beggs was shouting.

They had surrounded him entirely now, his white Praetorians, almost lifting him from his feet as they hustled him across the platform, down the rear steps, and through the heavy lines of gathering police officers and faculty members, into the Main Administration Building behind.

Once, breathless, before being shoved inside, he had turned, wanting to call out something to the misled multitude, to explain why he had announced what he had announced, to explain that it would save them in the end. But it was no use. While the raised platform hid the eye center of the vortex, he could make out the rest of the wild mob on either side, the black students swinging their homemade signs and banners and yelling their foul epithets, and the police, reinforced by state troopers, retaliating with their clubs and curses and whistles.

Presently-he would never know how he had arrived there-he found himself on the tan leather couch in Chancellor McKaye’s high-ceilinged, oak-paneled office. The swift transition from the animal bedlam of the disorder outside to the hushed quiet of the soundproofed office left him limp and dizzy. Familiar persons came and went: Beggs wiping the egg from Dilman’s chin, Chancellor McKaye with his endless apologies, and Admiral Oates with his stethoscope and tranquilizers. After the dour White House physician had barred all visitors but those who were absolutely necessary and then himself had left, Dilman had received Tim Flannery.

“I’m sorry, I’m damn sorry, Mr. President,” the press secretary said, scratching his head through his rumpled red hair. “That was unexpected. Even the reporters were thrown.”

“What are they saying?” Dilman wanted to know.

“Most of them think it was planned by the Turnerites themselves,” said Flannery.

Dilman thought about this. “No, I don’t think so,” he said at last. “I don’t think one organization would be big enough. I think-I believe all of us misjudged Negro sentiment here and around the country. I can see it now, after the fact. Because the Crispus Society, the NAACP, the Urban League were still for going slowly, for the minorities bill, outspoken against the activist outfits like the Turnerites, we thought that was the heavy majority of Negro opinion. We’re wrong, Tim. I think those young Negro boys have had it. They may not be Turnerites, but they’re sympathetic, they want action. Gradualism is out. They’re rebelling against their fathers, who accommodated themselves to the segregation system. The young are disenchanted by the recent past. Their fathers failed. Hurley and his leaders represented a new look in paternal authority. And now, without thinking it out, they expected the first Negro in the Presidency to see things their way. And I refused. I went along with their fathers and the white men who fenced them in. I used a legal instrument to cut off their momentum and make their goal harder to reach. They weren’t positive I’d do it, but they suspected I would, and they came here prepared for it, with their signs and slogans, waiting. That’s the sum of it, I’d guess, the gospel truth.”