[A loud crash and two or three feminine screams from the audience.] `What the hell-is this?'
`STOP THEM!' [Bang.] Mrs. Wippleton, still openmouthed, is seen standing up and fiddling with the microphone at
her neck She tries a smile: `Will the members of the audience please-'
'Ahhhhgggh a long scream.
`Shut her up!'
[The camera jerks a pan over the audience to locate two armed men, one white and one Negro, standing at the door
behind the audience, one looking out, the other glaring at the audience. Then, for obscure reasons, the image of Dr.
Rhinehart returns, removing his pipe, exhaling air, and returning it to his mouth to chew on it.]
`Has Bobby got the elevators?'
`Are we on?'
[Bang, bamtwang.]
`What if they got Bobby?'
`Stay in your seats! Stay in your seats! Or we'll shoot!'
'Are we on?'
'Go ask Eric what's'
Bambambambam.
`LOOK OUT!'
[More gunshots bang away and Rhinehart disappears and is replaced by an armed man falling (clutching his belly).
Two men with pistols fire past the audience at something. One of them falls forward with a groan. The other stops
shooting, but remains looking off intently.]
'Are we on?' comes the masculine voice again. [Dr. Rhinehart's benign face is again the image on the home screen, but not centered, since the camera which happens to be on him and happens to be being transmitted has been deserted by the cameraman, who is sitting quietly now in the audience trying to look natural, which, since everyone else in the audience looks terrified, makes him stand out like a nude at a funeral.]
`All right, Charlie, get your camera aimed over here; our boys in the control room will do the rest.'
`Where's Malcolm? He was going to introduce Arturo.'
'He's 'Oh. Yes.'
`Ladies and gentlemen, Arturo X.'
On the screen Dr. Rhinehart looks out as always.
'Am I on?' says someone's voice.
'Is he on?'
Dr. Rhinehart exhales.
`Where's Eric?'
`What the hell's the matter with you guys in there?' shouts someone.
[The image shifts to a shot of Rabbi Fishman's feet, which are wrapped around each other, and then to Arturo X, who
is standing tensely with his back to .the camera looking off at the control room.] `You're on,' comes a muffled shout.
Arturo turns to face the camera.
`Black brothers and white bastards of the world A gray-flanneled arm and white hand appear around his neck; the face
of Dr. Dart is seen tensely beside and behind that of Arturo.
`Drop your gun, you, or I'll shoot this man,' Dr. Dart says toward his right.
`Inside the control room there, you I' shouts Dr. Dart. `You! Throw down your gun and come out with your hands up.'
Arturo's face begins to show less, strain, and the viewer becomes aware of Dr. Dart's face taking on a strangled look. A
long blacksuited arm and huge white hand are seen now, firmly around his neck, and the face of Dr. Rhinehart, still
with the pipe in his mouth and still with the benign look on his face, appears beside that of Dr. Dart. Arturo breaks
away from Dart and the viewer sees a gun in Dr. Rhinehart's other hand sticking into the side of Dr. Dart.
`What do you want me to shoot now?' an off-screen voice says.
`Shoot me,' says Arturo's voice.
[The image pans slowly from the sedate wrestler's pose of the two psychologists past the terrified and bewildered faces
of Mrs. Wippleton and Rabbi Fishman, past the empty chair of Father Wolfe, to Arturo, still gasping for breath, but
looking intently and sincerely into the camera.]
`Black bastards and white brothers of the world…' begins Arturo. A pained, quizzical expression crosses his face. He
says: `Black brothers and white bastards of the world, we have taken over this television program this afternoon to
bring you some truths they won't tell you on any program except at gunpoint. The black man-'
[A tremendous explosion from the rear of the studio interrupts Arturo. Screams. A single `bang.']
'Fire!!'
[More screams, and several voices pick up the cry of fire. Arturo is staring off to his right and he yells: `Where's Eric?
']
`Let's get out of here!' someone shouts.
Arturo turns nervously back to the camera and begins speaking of the difficulties of being a black person in a white
society and. the difficulties of being able to communicate his grievances to the white oppressors. Smoke drifts across in front of him and coughs, which had come at isolated intervals, now cone from off-screen with machine- gun regularity.
`Tear gas,' yells a voice.
'Oh no,' screams a woman and begins crying.
Bang. Bang bang.
More screams.
`Let's go!' Arturo, glancing continually to his right and occasionally pausing, struggles on with his speech, staring,
whenever he finds the time, sincerely into the camera. ` .. Oppression so pervasive that no black man alive can breathe without seeming to have ten white men standing on his chest. No more shall we lie down before white pigs! No more shall we obey the laws of white injustice! No more
shall we-simper and fawn to watch out over there Ray! - There! to . . . ah . . . white men anywhere. We have abjected ourselves for the last time. No white, no white Ray! There! [Shots are being exchanged off-screen; Arturo is crouching, his face a tangle of terror and hatred, but he struggles on
with his speech.]
'. . . No white can deny us again our right to be heard, our right to say that WE STILL EXIST, that your efforts to
enslave us continue, and WE WILL NOT LIE DOWN FOR YOU any MORE! Ahhhh.'
The 'Ah' at the end of Ids speech was a gentle sound, and as he fell forward onto the floor the last glimpse the Sunday afternoon television audience had of his face showed a look not of fear or hatred but of bewildered surprise. The shouts and groans and shots continued sporadically, smoke or tear gas floating across in front of the
