Chapter 6

"Now," he said when they were settled and reasonably attentive. "About Mr. Kennedy's assassination. Who wants to start?"

Silence.

We'll try another approach, come at it from the side. "Ok, who can tell me about Earl Warren?"

"Chief Justice," said a boy in the back. "But..."

"Right, Doug, Chief Justice of what? What's he got to do with President Kennedy?

Silence. Perhaps they are thinking, some of them are thinking.

"Anybody know about Brown versus the Board of Education. Michael, what was that?"

He shook his head.

"Really? Very important case. Wasn't for that, you might not be here. You might be in a school with only African-American boys and girls, maybe up in Rockville. OK? One high school for all county African-Americans."

"How come?" he asked, obviously puzzled. "That can't be right. You sure?"

"On account of you're black and until 1955 we had two school systems around here. One for white kids and another for not-white kids. Whole state of Maryland did. And from Maryland south, it was the way things were. Guess its part of what known as Jim Crow. You heard of Jim Crow?"

"1955?" he asked, wrinkling his forehead. "Who was this Brown?"

"Fellow out in Topeka, Kansas, who didn't think his little kid, she was a third grader I believe, he didn't think she should have to walk past the neighborhood white school to get to the black school that was, I don't know, half-a-mile or something away. I think maybe he was a minister, Mr. Brown was." He paused, looking for responses. "The NAACP was involved I'm pretty sure."

A boy raised his hand and the teacher nodded at him. "What that got to do with President Kennedy?"

"Not a lot. But it has to do with Earl Warren. Everybody knew him at the time. Some hated him, but everybody knew who he was. There were posters and billboards all over the South that said Impeach Earl Warren. So when President Johnson, Lyndon Johnson, appointed him to look into the killing of Mr. Kennedy, he was already famous."

The boy nodded. "I get it."

"And what did the Warren Commission decide? Jim, what did they decide? I assume you read about hat."

He sniffed and made a face. But the teacher knew he knew. "One guy did it, Oswald."

"You believe that?"

He leaned back, closed his eyes and nodded.

"Jim thinks an ex-Marine named Lee Harvey Oswald killed President John Kennedy by himself with his rifle. Shot him twice, second time in the head."

Carla raised her hand. "You asked us about a magic bullet. I couldn't find anything. There's nothing in the textbook."

"Who found it?"

Several hands were raised.

"George, what did you find?"

"They, the Warren Commission, they decided that the first shot went through Kennedy and hit this other guy, in the arm I think." He blinked. "A lot of people, well, they find this kind of hard to believe. The bullet came out clean, almost undamaged." He sniffed. "I saw a picture of it in this book we have, about Kennedy."

"Who was the other guy? Where did this happen?'