Parks also provides an unusual critique of history in the play. The conflict between Lincoln and Booth is a historical one. They remember their personal histories in different ways. Long-held animosities, buried through the intervening years, are eventually uncovered, compelling Lincoln and Booth to rethink their relationship throughout the play. However, Parks suggests that the conflict being played out between two brothers in a shabby one-room studio is part of a larger historical legacy. On one level, the brothers’ names create an obvious connection to history and establish the roles that each brother will occupy. Booth will assassinate his brother just as John Wilkes Booth, an actor, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in April, 1865. This fact is known, perhaps, from the opening scene of the play. How Booth is driven to fratricide and why he ultimately pulls the trigger provide the substance of the play’s dramatic tension. By linking the two brothers to broader historical issues and personages, Parks suggests that their struggle for survival resembles the historical struggle of all African Americans in the face of racial and social inequities.