“Thank you, Harold, I’ll do my own pouring.”

The valet left the room. Roosevelt went to a cabinet behind his desk and took out a crystal decanter. “Except I’ll be pouring this. What’ll it be, Captain, whiskey or wine? I’m having claret myself. I never touch spirituous liquors.”

That is how I wound up sitting beside TR on the green sofa, sipping fine Kentucky bourbon from a china teacup embossed with the presidential seal.

“I presume our old friend Nate Pryor has given you some idea why I wanted to see you,” he said.

I placed my cup on the saucer. “He actually didn’t say much, to be honest. Only that it was to do with the South, some kind of mission. A problem with the colored people? Danger, perhaps.”

“I’ve been doing a little checking on you, Ben. It just so happens that the place you were born and raised is the perfect place to send you. Assuming you agree to this assignment.”

“ Mississippi?”

“Specifically your hometown. Eudora, isn’t it?”

“Sir? I’m not sure I understand. Something urgent in Eudora?”

He walked to his desk and returned with a blue leather portfolio stamped with the presidential seal in gold.

“You are aware that the crime of lynching has been increasing at an alarming rate in the South?” he said.

“I’ve read newspaper stories.”

“It’s not enough that some people have managed to reverse every forward step the Negro race has managed since the war. Now they’ve taken to mob rule. They run about killing innocent people and stringing ’em up from the nearest tree.”

The president placed the portfolio in my hand.

“These are papers I’ve been collecting on the situation: reports of the most horrible occurrences, some police records. Things it’s hard for a Christian man to credit. Especially since the perpetrators of these crimes are men who claim to be Christians.”