WHO CONTROLS SPEECH ON UNIVERSITIES? AND WHO SHOULD? AND THE THREAT FROM CHARLIE KIRK

 Each of us has unique experiences, but I will report in part on mine, acknowledging it is limited.  The reason for this, to discuss the change on campus brought by Charles Kirk.

I entered Tulane U. in New Orleans as a freshman in Sept. 1956.  In my Sociology course on race relations, during the half year course, there was only one lecture on black-white relations in New Orleans.  It was presented by Dr. Dan Thompson of Dillard U., also in New Orleans, a HBCU.  That lecture was not presented in person, but on tape.  Had Dr. Thompson delivered it in person, he might have been arrested for violating the state's segregation laws.  Tulane's Arts and Science College was all-male.  Females attended Newcomb College, similar to the sexual divisions at many private universities like Columbia and Harvard.  The uni. administrator for the Interfaith panel wanted each group to develop a basketball team or the like; leave politics alone.  But there were exceptions; a pastor at the Wesley Center (Methodist) quietly circulated a petition to free Morton Sobel, convicted with the Rosenbergs. My point, Tulane in the 1950s was basically a politically conservative university, but compared to the rest of the city, or to the rest of the South, there were some unexpected liberal bubbles perking up.  Not boiling the pot, but there.

    When very conservative publicist William Buckley came to address us in our large auditorium, some of us bood his points, but everyone could hear the points he was making.  Perhaps in club on foreign affairs, I recall debating a friend, son of Christian missionaries who had worked in China, on happenings in Laos.  I argued, using NY Times articles, that the Pathet Lao was winning elections and should be recognized; he that it was communist and they don't run elections fairly.  Both of us could present our arugments without trouble, but the audience was perhaps 20.  For the oratory contest, there was a larger crowd.   My topic, "Look Not to Outer Space."  Sci-fi films sometimes portrayed kindly aliens who would get all the nations of earth to work together.  I mentioned that idea, and those who looked to religion and God to bring peace on earth.  My point - if we were to have peace, we would have to make it, not outer space aliens or angels.  I won the gold medal. 

Despite the opposition of the local NAACP, on Sept. 9, 1960, New Orleans finally had its first modern sit-in, with 7 arrested from several local colleges.  Two of us were from Tulane, and the rules at the time; we would be suspended until proven innocent.  As that was unlikely on the local level, or even on low appellat levels, we might be expelled for years.  Within a week, the board of Tulane changed its rules;  it deemed the sit-in a political rather than a criminal act, and we were not expelled.  Suddenly many more on campus joined CORE, the organization leading the sit-ins.  When the 7 us first appeared in court, when the judge entered he threatened to cite us with contempt, as the 2 whites sat with the 5 black defendants and our attorneys.  That infuriated the judge.  All 7 of us became convicted felons.  The first sit-in brought other changes too.  The NAACP Youth Chapter quickly defied the adults, and joined the CORE picket lines with their own.  Soon, the adult NAACP withdrew its opposition, too.  Tulane telephonists were instructed to listen in to all calls to student activists.  When liberals sought to form an organization a few years later, the Dean's office lost the petition with the names.  Next year, around 1965 or 66 the new petition was accepted and a Young Liberals organization was recognized on Tulane campus.  Also a few black graduate students were enrolled at Tulane.  Leaders of the Tulane Young Libs debated Mrs. Gaillot on radio one Sunday morning.  She demanded to know their religion.  Bob Bullard quickly replied by asking about hers.  She had been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by the local Archbishop, that is deprived of receiving communion and the Catholic community.  On the radio she usually referred to a famous black minister as Martin Lucifer King and was vigorous in her defense of segregation..  Bullard and Bruce Kruger provided powerful voices to counter her strong segregationist sentiments.

Around this time I was teaching history at Dillard, an HBCU in NO.  The Tulane Young Libs had invited the new head of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham, to speak.  In October 1963 the Louisiana Un-American Activities Comm., in conjunction with NO DA Jim Garrison raided and arrested the then leader of SCEF and two attorneys who worked with it.  SCEF had been founded during the New Deal, and Mrs. Roosevelt had even been present at its inception.  After WWII it published glowing reports on how well integrated schools were doing.  Naturally, the LUAC would find it subversive.  LUAC  was headed by very conservative American Legionnaires, who were dismayed when the non-white territories of Hawaii and Alaska were admitted as American states.  Their fun organization would retain its title, the 40 and 8.  Now the Young Libs were inviting a black minister, the new leader of SCEF, an organization not popular with LUAC to address their first large meeting at Tulane.  I invited a Dillard student to accompany me to the Tulane meeting.  It went well.  Some of us decided to go for a pizza on nearby Maple St.  Rev. Shuttlesworth could not come with us.  We went to Ray's Pizza, a popular place with Tulanians, pulled 2 tables together and prepared to order.  The middle-ated waitress came and announced she would not take our order, as we were a mixed group (the Dillard student),  Should we have a sit-in, get arrested?  I looked at the only black, my guest.  I did not say anything, nor did he, but he slowly nodded his head, no.  I had not brought the topic up beforehand, because I did not expect trouble.   The student said no, so I made an excuse that we had to get across town, and left.  However, Cathy Cade, an activist started a who series of picketing of the Maple St. eateries, with large numbers of students going for a long time, and with the support of the Tulane Hullaballoo newspaper.  Viet Nam was also an issue on campus at Tulane, but I was not there.

My next teaching post was another HBCU, the fairly new Southern U. in NO, an offshoot of the major campus in Baton Rouge (which I think at the time was the largest black university in the world).  There certainly WAS activism on this campus.  In spring 1969 a small number of students pulled down the American flag from the pole at the front of the university, and replaced it with a Black Nationalist flag, black, red, and green.  So began a black nat. boycott of classes.  I know faculty had free speech, and both pro and anti members spoke on stage at different points.  I recall a light-skinned professor saying," I may look white, but my heart is as black as yours is."  Eventually, Gov. Mc Keithen came to the campus for the first time, and he had no trouble speaking.  His first words, please remove that flag (the black nat) before the tv cameras come.  He promised to improve conditions.  The student strike leaders sometimes brought their rifles to campus, and there was one episode 2 lines, police with loaded weaposn, and strikers.  Had a rock been thrown and there might have been tragedy.  But, after a time of staring at each other, the striker line dispersed.  Some students expelled, some faculty fired, and things went back the following year as if nothing had occurred.  For at least a month, most students had boycotted classes.  An Arab became the scapegoat, disrupting our way of doing things.  He was a radical, and a few years later wrote of glowing biography of w woman hijacker.  He was also a scholar who had published in major political science journals.  But he left shortly before he was to be deported.

Anti-war demos were visible examples of the left wing influence on American campuses.  But beneath the surface, there was a more important reason.  The Civil Rights Act promised to treat all applicants for job equally, but the EEOC soon interpreted this to mean quotas to get the number of professors to match the general population as best as possible.  It did not mean exactly the same - for example only high-schoo graduates would be in the pool for the quotas for possible admission to universities.  But over time, there were more quotas, for women, for this group, for that.  By the time affirmative action had taken on the name Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, it was a bureaucracy, in itself, and then promoting certain types of courses, and required courses to denigrate white males and instill the notion that all people of color are oppressed and deserve added boosts.  Soon, ANYONE WHO QUESTIONED THIS PREMISE ON CAMPUS WOULD BE MET WITH A LARGE CONTINGENT WHOSE JOBS AND PRESTIGE DEPENDED ON ACCEPTANCE OF THESE PREMISES.  A challenge was a personal insult and a threat.  So, in the 1990s when scholar Charles Murray sought to lecture about his results on IQ and race, there was rage by the campus left witn.  On one campus his auto was attacked, though I don't recall any serious injuries.  A woman law professor in Pennsylvania was constantly vilified because she  rejected the DEI presuppositions; they demanded she be fired, etc.  Insults.  When a biological female went on campus to denounce the unfairness of having been injured playing another female team with a trans male, who spike the ball so hard on the her that she was seriously injured.  But the pro-trans crowd prevented her from speaking, threatened her, had had her boxed in a room until help could free her.  UNIV. HIRES, DEI, MADE THE ESTABLISHMENT IN MOST UNIVERSITIES NOT MERELY SYMPATHETIC TO THE LEFT, BUT USING (OFTEN DISTORTED RESEARCH) TO BOLSTER THE LEFT, AND USED ITS EMPLOYEES TO STIFLE ANY RIGHT WING OR OTHER CRITICISM.

    This is why Charlie Kirk is important.  He broke through.  He got people tp question the official line.  Some things he said, I certainly DO NOT AGREE WITH.  That is NOT the point.  He fought the established b.s. which the academics could not defend academically.  Kirk broke the bubble.  He brought an era of freedom, so one did not have to agree with him or DEI, or anyone else.  Free speech, free inquiry is important, especially at universities.  This is one more reason why his murder is a tragedy to all. 

Hugh Murray

 

A QUARTER CENTURY OF STUDENT LIFE AT TULANE:

A DEAN'S NARRATIVE HISTORY, 1949-1975

By John H. Stibbs; Ed. With Annotations by John Edgar Browning

(Donaldsonville, La.: Margaret Media, Inc., 2013)

Rev. by Hugh Murray

The editor of this work writes in the Preface that this memoir is important because Dean Stibbs presents “an authoritative account with interesting personal anecdotes...an engaging insider's look at some of Tulane's most complex and controversial moments in its history;...that saw cultural upheaval, student unrest, ethnic division, anti-war demonstrations...”(p. Xiii) Is it really? Or is it a biased view, which omits significant material? One reason Dean Stibbs is important during this period is that as Dean of Students, “When disciplinary measures are necessary, the action taken by the Dean of Students will generally - except for review by the President of the university – be final.”(14)

Of course, there were problems that landed on the Dean's desk in his early years at Tulane, years he remembers fondly. For example, in 1950, the night before a major football game against its chief state rival, Louisiana State U., some green wave supporters stole the caged “Mike the Tiger” that was the mascot of the Baton Rouge school. The tiger-napping caused great consternation, but the Dean was able to negotiate with the culprits, and prior to the game, a parade with police escort and the tiger, but now lounging in a cage decorated in the green and blue colors of Tulane, entered the stadium to massive cheers from both sides.(16) Tulane, like most major universities of that era, had a separate liberal arts division for women, Newcomb College. Following WWII, Tulane constructed more dormitories, and in 1954, several hundred Tulanians marched from their dorms to those of Newcomb for the first pantyraid. Police were called, and four students were arrested, three convicted. Browning includes newspaper clippings in his appendix of what today seems a quaint fad.(126-29) After another homecoming and football game, the Dean had heard of a problem, and purposely drove along nearby Broadway Ave. As expected, a couple of drunken SAE fraternity men were hurling empty beer bottles in front of cars passing their frat house. They did it now in front of his vehicle. Stibbs stopped, jumped from his car, raced up the steps to courageously confront the frat brothers. When they recognized him, they were shocked and embarrassed, as he ordered them to stop an told them they would be disciplined. He then returned to his drive.(37-38) Stibbs could reflect on Tulane in the 1950s: “Campus life was happy and lively, sometimes too much so.”(37) Were the 50s really such halcyon days? Or has his memory played tricks?

One fraternity prank evoked disgust and terrible publicity for Tulane and the fraternity community. As part of their initiation, several pledges were ordered to steal from a news stand. They took only a small sum of money, but the man managing the stand was blind. The culprits were caught. The news of privileged frat boys stealing from a blind man trying to earn a living through his news stand did not read well in most New Orleans homes. This incident is not mentioned in the book.

One area for which Dean Stibbs deserves considerable credit is in planning a new university center, which would open in 1958. Students, faculty, almost everyone was able to have input in what they thought the new center should contain. Raising funds was essential to its success. The Dean, close to student government, and many student organizations, faculty, staff, the planning paid off. Stibbs contended that once opened, it became perhaps the most used university center in the nation.(35) I cannot compare other university centers, but I do think it changed the character of Tulane. I entered Tulane as a freshman in 1956, and recall the old student center. I did not reside in the dorms, but was a scholarship student living with my parents. Tulane, for me was a commuter school. Arrive, attend classes (hopefully clustered together) and return home. The old student center was on the 2^nd floor of an older building. One could hang out there, usually with a few other New Orleanians, but other than sit on comfortable chairs, there was nothing to do except learn to and play bridge. With the new university center, locals could meet students from Dallas, Mobile, Tennessee, Brooklyn, North Carolina. I began to feel more like a part of Tulane with the new center. And Dean Stibbs deserves credit for this change, which was not only in my attitude, but in that of many others. Before the opening of the new student center, one almost had to join a fraternity to feel a part of Tulane.

My freshman year, I took a course in American History. There were about 80 students, and the professor gave out 4 As, after the first term. I received one, and another A in that class was a fellow Unitarian, from Houston, Tom. He had a friend from Latin America, Alberto, and the 3 of us began to hang out during the second semester. Being a native, I showed them some places they might not have encountered. I remember we went swimming in one of the city's park swimming pools, spring 1957. This would have been unnecessary a year or so later because the new university center would boast a large swimming pool of its own.

September 1957 we took different classes and went our own ways. Tom had been and remained a Beta frat member, and I heard that Al joined the Pikes, I remained Gamma Delta Iota (God Damned Independent). Months, a year went by. On Monday 29 September 1958, I chanced upon Al walking on campus, and feeling that I should have done more to salvage the friendship, decided I would now try to renew it. “Where are you going?” “To my dorm.” “I'll walk with you.” I tried to stir up a conversation, but he replied in simple monosyllables, almost not wanting to speak. We arrived at his room, we both entered, and were soon joined by one of his frat brothers too. Al went to a corner to whisper to the frat student, while I just stood by on the other side of the room. I thought it strange, but not really rude. Then he approached me and said, “Would you mind leaving?” I was shocked. I felt, I made the effort to renew; next time, if there is to be a next time, must come from him.

Was it Tuesday's or Wednesday's newspaper, I don't recall. Suddenly, I was reading in a major article what had been discussed in Al's room with his fraternity brothers: how to dispose of a wallet! Over the weekend, 3 Pikes, Al and two others, had gone to the French Quarter to roll a queer. One Pike entered a gay bar, while the others waited outside and were to stay close. When John F. (Pike), seated at the bar, was soon joined by a Mexican tour guide, Fernando Rios, they conversed and relaxed. Rios invited John to his home. Taxis avoided picking up passengers from that area, so they walked. John led Rios to an alley between the Cabildo and St. Louis Cathedral. While James D. suddenly blocked the exit, John was joined by Al in beating the queer and knocking him to the ground. Al took the wallet from Rios' back pocket, and the 3 left, satisfied with their adventure. Next morning, a grounds keeper discovered the badly beaten Rios still on the pavement; police were called and Rios taken to hospital, where he died without regaining consciousness. Meanwhile, when the Pike 3 discovered Rios had died, they were unsure what to do. They gave the American money in the wallet to the church; burnt the Mexican and Canadian bills. Unsure, they finally called the Dean of Students, Stibbs, who “called the boys a defense attorney and the police to get their statements.”[Jelisa Thompson, “You Make Me Feel: A Study of the Gay Rights Movement in New Orleans, p. 17, Honors Thesis, U. of Southern Mississippi, Fall, 2011].

I was strolling along the super-wide Canal Street during the day in late January 1959, when behind me I heard a loud raucous. I turned to see – 3 or 4 blocks away there was a motorcade crossing out of the French Quarter [headed toward Tulane U.] The boys had been charged with murder, and the courtroom was located in the Quarter. The jury's verdict had just been announced, not guilty. The Pikes, parents, and friends were celebrating the verdict, and to make sure the message was heard, as the motorcade rolled through the streets, they were shouting “Open season on queers!” “Kill all the queers.” No one doubted they were guilty, but a doctor testified that Rios had an unusually thin skull. It was also said that he was wearing female panties for underwear when killed. DA Richard Dowling was criticized for even bringing murder charges against the students in such a case.

This case was big news, with international implications. Dean Stibbs was indirectly involved. Not a word about this case in his memoir. However, when writing about the attempt to gain recognition for a Tulane Gay Students group in the 1970s, Stibbs writes he delayed recognition for 2 years, until the majority of the Senate voted approval.(94) The 1950s were a happy time.

In August 1960 I was one of 7 New Orleanians attending a 3-week training institute conducted by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Oliver St. Pe and I were the only whites from the area to go, and I did not know him well as he was a student at Loyola U. of the South. Though it was physically next to Tulane, before Pope John Paul's reforms, there seemed to be an enormous intellectual gulf between these two universities. Others came from Dillard and Xavier (historically Black universities in New Orleans), and some were in the work force. We were trained in methods of non-violent change, going to places to test if they were segregated, negotiations, and if that failed, boycott and picketing. We also trained for sitting in, and how to respond non-violently if segregationists sought to punch or hurt us in other ways. We stayed in a Black motel in Miami, integrating the rooms, and during the day we took over the lounge for our training sessions. One day, out teacher was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who at the time was “off the record” supporting Sen. John Kennedy and the Democrats for President. Another day, our teacher was baseball legend Jackie Robinson, who was openly for VP Richard Nixon and the Republicans. Fewer than 50 partook in the CORE conclave, including several Miami natives. The supermarket Shell's City had a restaurant in its building, and we went in mixed groups to test it. About half our CORE group was arrested, including St. Pe. (St. Pe, who was legally blind, would later become a leader in promoting solutions for the blind and other disabled people in New Orleans.) I sat at a table with Ruth Dispenza, a young Black woman from New Orleans, who was quite light-skinned. The authorities assumed we were a white couple, so neither of us was arrested.

We returned to New Orleans at the end of August 1960, just as Tulane and most universities were about to begin their fall semesters. I had received my BA in the spring and was to continue at Tulane as a graduate student in history. I also had a part-time job at the Tulane library on weekends. But like the other CORE trainees, I was determined to bring the first sit-in to New Orleans, which according to the 1950 census (the last one available), was still the largest city in the South – larger than Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Dallas. Moreover, the sit-in movement had begun in North Carolina in February 1960 and spread to many places, but not to New Orleans.

Tulane was aware that some of its students were preparing to partake in some action with CORE. Dean Stibbs sent a few students to talk to us. He may have done so in person, but my memory is hazy. I do remember that we were informed of the university's rules if we were arrested – we would be suspended until we were found innocent. Was this intended as a threat? Just hearing the consequences was chilling. We were aware that we would not be found innocent in local courts, and if appealed, there was no certainty. If we went to the US Supreme Court, we might win, but there was no guaranty that our case would be accepted for review by the high court, or that we would have the resources to appeal. Even if we won, it would probably take several years, so we would be suspended from Tulane for a long time. I would also lose my job. If arrested, I planned to move from my parents' home, for if I remained, they would become a target. So, as an individual, I was facing the abyss. But I had trained for this, talk is cheap, and wanted to “put my body on the line.” With the gloomy news from the Dean's emissaries, only 2 of us from Tulane decided to go ahead with the plan. Bill Harrell, a grad student in sociology and a few years older that I, Bill was to be my cell mate a few days after the Dean's info session.

On Friday 9 September 1960 New Orleans had its first lunch-counter sit-in, at the large Woolworths across from the Saenger Theater on the corner of Canal and North Rampart streets. All 7 of us, led by Ruth Dispenza, were arrested and charged with criminal mischief, a felony. Then, the unexpected happened. Tulane's Board changed the rules! The Board determined that these charges were of a political, not a criminal nature, and the threatened suspensions did not occur. I would be a graduate student and retain my job after all. I moved out, but my parents nevertheless received many threatening phone calls at all hours. I did not get them because I did not have a phone. MOST IMPORTANT – this change meant that the dam had broken, dozens more Tulane/Newcomb students would become involved with CORE and the integration movement, numbers from the Jewish fraternity AEPi, and GDI's from both North and South, freshmen and women. The surge in Tulane/Newcomb support was a result of the change in Tulane U. policy; students knew now that they would not be suspended from the university for years if arrested in picketing or sitting-in in the Canal St. shopping area. During that year, CORE meetings often had a majority of whites attending where we met at the Negro YMCA on Dryades St. In the 3 January 1961 issue of the popular, national picture magazine, Look, there was an article, “Introduction to a Sit-In,” describing the arrest of the 19-year-old Newcomb blond gal from Atlanta and her arrest in New Orleans. This was national news, and a result of the change in policy by the Tulane Board in September 1960. Dean Stibbs clearly knew of this. However, he omits all mention of it in the book. Was he sympathetic to the changed policy? Opposed? The memoir is silent.

In the text (46) and in more detail among the newspaper clippings (131), there is discussion of the 1962 suspension of Tulanian Ed Clark, a white from Tennessee, a member of CORE, who brought Black friends to the university cafeteria. They were served, but Dean Stibbs admonished him for violating univ. policies, and he was suspended. Ed married another activist, Connie Bradford, a white Newcomb student from Birmingham, and also a CORE member. She attended Newcomb on a work-scholarship. Her job was telephone operator; however, part of her duties were to listen in to the conversations of the radicals. As an incoming fresher, Connie would have been too new to be listening about the events of September 1960, but what about the others who worked the phones? Is this how Dean Stibbs knew whom to contact about trying to prevent any sit-ins in September 1960? The liberal university was listening in on private phone calls.

Stibbs writes of the “winter of our discontent,” when students showed more interest in social problems.(50) “Gradually, an indifference developed to the old and honorable areas of student interests – fraternities, football, and student government.”(50) In 1967 a major fraternity folded and new pledges declined from 500 to 300. He notes that in 1965 the Liberals Club was recognized at Tulane, but fails to mention that it's official recognition was delayed a year because somehow the Liberals Club application had been “lost.” Later, Dean Stibbs admitted to confiscating some photographs(59-63); was he responsible for the lost application?

The Drama department provided drama. Stibbs found Richard Schechner's request for increased funds an “impossible amount,”(53) though Schechner had raised the Tulane Drama Review to become the leading such publication. When he was criticized for having long hair, Schechner went to the French Quarter and posed beside the statue of General Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans in the battle of 1815, stressing that the general had longer hair than he did. Eventually, Schechner left Tulane and took the review with him, with a new title, TDR - The Drama Review.

Dean Stibbs was a traditionalist, clearly more at home with football, frats, tiger napping, and student government, that social change. Some of his winter of discontent was part of a national trend – many young people did not want to risk their lives in the jungles of Vietnam. Civil Rights was a national issue. Drugs, female visitation to male dormitories, co-ed dormitories, these were part of national trends against older traditions.

However, Stibbs' greatest successes – the planning and building of the new student center, gave students a place to feel at home without joining a fraternity, a place to discuss issues in addition to the next party or football scores. Stibbs' own University Center provided a center to meet and organize activities beyond frats, football, and traditions. In that sense, Stibbs was more of a modernizer than he realized.

To clarify my position, I think one can acquire many excellent character traits through athletics. I think fraternities and sororities can and have often fostered emotional growth and friendships for most members. And I think participation in student government can provide experience in management, compromise, and how to accomplish certain ends. But I think there can be issues beyond those, unfashionable ones, unpopular ones, even illegal ones, that might also be considered.

When one Tulane publication on art and nudity planned to publish an article, including nude photos of 2 professors, Stibbs confiscated the pictures to prevent publication. He contended the pictures were immoral.(60-61, 63) He also invoked morality in delaying recognition of the gay student organization.(94) But overall, he fails to present major arguments against many of the trends he disapproved. In many important cases, he makes no case – he is silent, and the issues are ignored, swept under the carpets, omitted. Stibbs' memoir is defensive, deceptive, and disappointing. There should be a good book on the conservative reaction to the changes in universities following WWII. Unfortunately, Stibbs' account is not that book.

MY NEW ORLEANS STORY - part 1

This is the first part of an autobiographical sketch.  It begins slowly but perks up.  I think most readers will find it quite interesting.  I will add other parts later.-----Hugh Murray

            I received my MA in August and had to find a job.  I had taught for one semester in the New Orleans Public Schools – junior/senior high, but believed I had been a failure.  I was liberal and believed in allowing the kids to express themselves.  I quickly learned that this was a prescription to lose control of a class.  Once lost, restoring discipline proved difficult for me, and when another job opportunity opened, I took it.  This time, I would only be teaching 5^th grade, but it would be a small class of about 20 pupils in a brand new private school.  Even better, my salary would be higher than what I received in the public system.

            The school was a recently acquired, multi-storey building that had been an office building of the federal agricultural administration.  It was kindergarten or first grade up through high school, and three of us taught the 5^th grade – Mrs. Flagg, an older woman who had taught for many years in the public schools; a guy even younger than I (I was then 24), and this was his first full-time post; and me.  Our classes were near each other, and at first, we were “roughing it.”  To begin with, we had only fold-out metal chairs, no desks, and not even doors on the class rooms.  One 4^th grade teacher led her class in numerous songs, which drowned out our classes, but our complaints to the administrators resulted in reduced music echoing down the hall from her room.  Slowly, the physical surroundings improved: doors closed out much of the extraneous noise; three large tables provided writing space for each of my pupils, twice a week my students left my room for that of the French teacher, and one large room was used for physical recreation.  More importantly, a new system we used for teaching reading was working, and some parents thanked us for teaching the pupils to read for the first time.

            Although I quite enjoyed the teaching, some problems remained, and new ones rose.  For example, the November 1 payday saw many of us holding checks that bounced.  We were issued new ones, and after a week, everyone received our salaries.

            Later that month I was teaching one Friday while Mrs. Flagg was conducting her 5^th grade class’s lunch period with free time directly across the hall from my class room.  Doors were in place, so this was not disturbing.  She knocked on my door and requested that I come to her room.  I reluctantly left my room unattended, but assured the class I would be right back.  I closed my door, and then entered her room, swirling with the noise of kids enjoying the recess of lunch time recreation.  Mrs. Flagg directed me to a table where a pupil had brought to school one of the new, small transistor radios.  The 10-year-old, Mrs. Flagg, and I craned over the device to hear above the din of the kids.  We heard the main point of the broadcast, and I then returned to my class.

            I returned, shut the door behind me, and announced – it has just come over the radio that President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas.  Spontaneously, my pupils erupted in cheers of joy.  One girl reacted strangely – she put her head down in her arms on the table and wept.  I was shocked by the general reaction and proceeded to give one of my best history lectures – quite impromptu.  As I spoke, I did not know the seriousness of the President’s injuries, only that he had been shot.  But I had a rare feeling for what I wanted to say, because now I was angry with the kids whom I generally liked.  My speech could not disguise my anger.  “You think that this is the end of integration.  You think that if Kennedy is dead, then segregation will continue, that racial problems will cease.  That is wishful thinking.  At the end of the Civil War, the North won.  But some thought the South might still come back if Lincoln were eliminated.  Lincoln was assassinated.  Killing Lincoln did not restore slaver.  Killing Lincoln did not resurrect the Confederacy.  Killing Lincoln did not restore Southern power.  Lincoln was assassinated, and all that did was make the North more determined to press its ways upon the defeated South.”  My pupils’ initial reaction to the news of the shooting undoubtedly reflected the views of their parents.  Almost everyone assumed a segregationist had killed Kennedy.  About an hour later, the school released all classes early because of the assassination.

            Later that afternoon, I was at home – I was still living with my parents – when I received a phone call from Shelly.  Shelly was an attractive blond who had married Carlos Z. a good friend.  Carlos was of mixed Mexican and Cuban heritage.  He had attended the post St. Martin’s Episcopal School in a burb where his parents resided.  Carlos and I had both attended Tulane University the same years, and more importantly, we had both been members of New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) during its first, formative year in the Crescent City (1960-61).  I had been arrested with six others in the very first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans in September 1960.  It was an era in the South when anyone who openly favored integration was viewed as a Communist.  Having been arrested in the first sit-in (we were even shown on Huntly Brinkly’s national NBC Nightly News, but I did not see it because we were still in jail then.), and just one of two whites arrested, many New Orleanians thought I was a Communist.  It was an era also when on the radio Rev. Martin Luther King might be referred to as Martin Lucifer King, or simply Lucifer King.

            It was in this background that I heard the words of Shelly Z. – they arrested the man who shot President Kennedy.  He was not a segregationist.  He was a Communist, from New Orleans.  My heart sank.  Fear gripped me.  A communist from New Orleans!  People thought I was a Communist from New Orleans.  What would happen now?

            I knew from history that in 1938 in Paris, a young Jew had shot a German Embassy official.  This would be the excuse a few days later for the massive, anti-Jewish pogrom all over Germany called Kristall Nacht.  Jewish shop windows smashed (the broken glass provided the image for the name of the pogrom), synagogues torched and fire brigades not permitted to intervene unless the blaze endangered neighboring Aryan properties, thousands of Jewish men rounded up, insurance companies ordered not to pay any damages, and Jews fined an amount basically confiscating most of their wealth in the Reich.  Kristall Nacht was the turning point when anti-Jewish actions vastly escalated.

            If this is what happened to Jews in Germany after a Jew killed an Embassy official, what will happen in New Orleans when and alleged local Communist kills the President?  My fears were not entirely irrational.  Kennedy was killed November 22, 1963.  On October 3, 1963 the round up of alleged Communists in New Orleans had already begun.

            A few houses down from where my parents rented, lived Mrs. Pfister, the neighbor who sold my mother Avon products.  Mrs. Pfister was an attractive young woman and good at sales.  Her husband was a bit older, very active in the American Legion, and he had been elected a few years prior to the Louisiana State House.  There, Representative James Pfister soon led the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee, which competed with the State Sovereignty Committee in exposing Communist organizations.  It was in the 1950s that the State Sov. Committee investigated the subversive nature and Communist background of an organization, and the hearings were broadcast throughout Louisiana.  Listeners could readily learn how the American Civil Liberties Union was a subversive organization with links to the Communists.  After listening to some of the hearings, I joined the ACLU.

            On October 4, 1963 the LUAC led raids on Communists in New Orleans – confiscating the files and photos and such from the office of the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF), and arresting its leader James Dombrowski, and arresting two local attorneys, SCEF treasurer Ben Smith and his law partner Bruce Waltzer.  I was on the SCEF mailing list, and it issued a small, monthly promoting integration.  I knew Dombrowski and Smith slightly, and was a good friend of Jack P. a junior member of Smith’s law office.  Over 100 police and other officials partook in the raid, and when officers raided Smith’s home, they used an axe to get in the front door.  Eventually, the case would go to the US Supreme Court.

            The day that occurred, October 4, I had been teaching.  Because of the pleasant weather, I had made plans to play tennis after work, and did so.  When I returned home somewhat later than usual, my mother greeted me with, “Where were you?  I thought they had rounded you up too.”  I had no idea at that moment what she was referring to but quickly found out, as it was big news on the local radio, TV, and the next day’s papers.

            October 4, 1963 the round up of “Communists” in New Orleans had begun.  Now, less than two months later, with a New Orleans Communist killing the President, I was afraid.  The day I had sat-in in September 1960, I knew there would be consequences, and I planned for some.  Before my crime and arrest, I had made arrangements to stay at the homes of friends.  My parents, who like most natives were segregationists, would be safer during a period of frenzied hatred if I were not with them.  But November 22, 1963 was a total shock to me: 1) the killing, which everyone assumed was the deed of a segregationist, and 2) hearing that the killer was a Communist from New Orleans, which might spark mob action.

            So with the phone call from Shelly, which I confirmed by watching TV newscasts, I was emotionally frayed, with fear, and with questions.  Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?  The Left in New Orleans was quite small.  I did not recollect his name or his face when he appeared on TV.  I decided to go out and get drunk, for it might be my last opportunity to do so.  I drove to a place on N. Rampart Street (not far from the jail in which I was booked after the sit-in) called the Blue Note.  Today, my memory fails me.  I was hoping to see some people I knew and ask about Oswald.  I met no close friends that night, but drank a lot.  I drove home late, very drunk, and stayed in bed, hung, much of Saturday.  I was in a dark cloud.  It was not merely the alcohol that had me depressed.

            Sunday morning, or it seemed like Sunday morning, I was still in bed.  My parents called me to the living room where they were watching television – Oswald had been shot, live on TV.  I rushed to see the television with them.  Soon everyone seemed relieved; it was all over.  The murderer received the judgment he deserved.  It was over.

            Well, not quite all over.  I was still phoning friends and asking about Oswald.  Still, no one seemed to know him.  However, I now realized that a Tulane history grad student and his wife had heard Oswald on a WDSU radio interview program the previous summer, and they had told me at that time about the strange guy on radio who had lived in Russia and who was pro-Castro.  The couple had merely heard him on the air, and did not even recall his name.  They had certainly never met him.

            I phoned around and learned of a young Tulane student who had actually spoken to Oswald the previous summer.  Oswald was distributing his Fair Play for Cuba Committee flyers downtown, and Bob Heller, who was a New Yorker spoke with him.  Heller had also been active in New Orleans CORE during the early period, before the Black Nationalist purged the whites from the organization.  I recall his naiveté at an early 1960 meeting.  Heller was a freshman, new to Tulane, and new to New Orleans.  CORE met at the Negro YMCA on Dryades Street, and there was malaise in the group because of growing restrictions, and I think because of the school crisis in New Orleans when two schools were integrated, and a boycott by most white pupils ensued, and hostile parents greeting the handful of children who dared to attend.  Bob suggested members of CORE do something (perhaps picket a store, or sit-in, or I forgot the details).  His suggestion appeared to have support.  I raised my hand, “What if they are arrested?”  Rudy, the chair, shrugged.  Later, when I got to know him better, Bob thought my comment was absurd, for the CORE people were doing something so mild, there was no chance of arrest.  Well, he and some others did the action, and they were arrested.  Bob was more accustomed to law enforcement in liberal New York, not in liberal Democratic controlled New Orleans.  As a former CORE activist, it would have been natural for Bob to chat with someone distributing political literature.

            With all the information about Oswald circulating, I was now aware that I too had one of his FPCC leaflets.  In the summer of 1963 I was working frantically to finish my thesis to get my MA degree from Tulane.  My topic was the Scottsboro rape cases that had occurred in Alabama, beginning in 1931.  What made my thesis unique and controversial at the time, was summarized in one of my articles published in Phylon (1967) based on my work, “The NAACP vs. the Communist Party: The Scottsboro…”  I maintained that the Communist Party and its front organizations had provided a better defense for the young Blacks falsely accused of rape, than had the liberal NAACP.  In 1963 Louisiana, this was not simply heresy, this was nigh treason.  The History Dept. awarded me the MA, but it did not want me back for the Ph. D. program.  Of course, to finish that thesis, I had to spend considerable time in the Tulane Library.

            One day that summer of 1963 as I entered the library building (not the new library, but across from it is the old university library, now the J. Johnson Hall, that houses Special Collections), I noticed on a small table in the foyer, beside the main stairway, a stack of leaflets.  No one was around.  I saw the headline – “Hands Off Cuba!” and I took one.  It was distributed y the New Orleans branch of the FPCC.  I immediately assumed I knew who had left the flyers.  I walked up the stairs to the main desk, then walked behind it to the closed public area for the stacks and the carrels, where graduate students could work with the books they required.  Instead of trotting straight to my carrel, I stopped by that of philosophy grad student Harold Alderman.  I asked him as a raised the yellow flyer, “What are you putting out?”  Alderman had been a member of FPCC in another city, and we had both discussed how New Orleans could use such an organization.  “Let me see that,” he said.  He perused it, but clearly knew nothing about the leaflet or the New Orleans branch.  We were both curious.  There was no phone number listed on the leaflet, just a post office box (other leaflets did have an address, but I do not want to discuss that here).  Should we write?  We both joked that it might be the FBI setting a trap.  We decided to do nothing until we knew more about the organization through the grape vine.  I gave him my copy, and unbeknownst to me, he did do something about it.  He taped the leaflet to the door to his room in the dormitory.  It remained taped on his door until November 22.

            Monday November 25, 1963 was another work-day at school.  Same for Tuesday, November 26.  I returned from school to my parents’ home after work, and soon thereafter, there was a knock on the front door.  Two men in suits identified themselves as members of the FBI to both me and my mother.  As they wanted to speak with me, my mother withdrew to the kitchen.  I had been interviewed by the FBI in 1962, but that concerned the draft.  More pertinent was when I was interviewed in jail following my arrest in the first Woolworth’s sin-in.  Seven of us had been arrested; two of us whites.  Only the two whites were interviewed by the NOPD Red Squad.  We were questioned separately.  They wanted to know everything possible about the new CORE organization.  My objective was to yield as little information as possible.  How large was CORE?  How many members?  Other question directed about the organization.  I tried to be as evasive as possible.  I also refused to give any names.  They asked if I had read The Communist Manifesto.  I had.  Did I agree with it.  I thought the graduated income tax was a good idea.  The questioning was formal, and there was no violence or threat of violence by the police in that room.

            That was September 1960.  November 1963 was different.  I wanted to cooperate as much as possible without hurting anyone unnecessarily.  At that time, the only person I knew to have spoken with Oswald was Heller.  I gave his name and told what I had heard of their conversing on the street downtown.  I told of picking up the leaflet at the Tulane library from a table, but no one was there so I had and still have no idea who put the leaflets there.  I mentioned discussing the leaflet with a grad student.  I neither gave Alderman’s name, nor did I mention that we speculated that mailing to the p. o. box might have been an FBI ruse.

 About 15 minutes after the FBI men left, I received a telephone call from Alderman informing me that he had given the FBI my name, and they might come to see me.  (I had given Heller’s name, and the FBI went to interview him.  And thereafter, wherever Phil Good, another Tulanian saw me on campus, he would blurt “Fink” at me as I passed.  Well, I am glad I cooperated with the agency on this issue.  I think everyone should have done all possible to discover the truth.  And had I not cooperated, then how could I criticize the Warren Report?)

When the FBI knocked that afternoon, I answered the front door with my mother.  They identified themselves as we both stood by the door.  They interviewed me in the living room, while my mother went to the kitchen.  Soon after they left, my mother asked me, “Who were those men?”  I answered, “They were salesmen.”  Later, when my father returned from work and we were eating supper, my mother asked me, “Who were those men who came by today?”  Again I lied, “They were salesmen.”  The cost of swimming against the stream is not only paid by the individual, but by the families and all those close to that individual.  (When my mother died two years later, my father wondered if I should attend the funeral.  He thought some of her brothers might slug me.  Or as he rephrased it, “You killed your mother.”  Sadly, there is more truth in his charge than I dare admit.)

And it was still not over.  I think it was that very week in November 1963 that a small notice appeared in the local newspaper (I forget if I read it in the NO Times-Picayune or the States-Item).  The one paragraph story stated that David Ferrie had been arrested in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy.  What??  I clipped the small item and sent it to my former roommate, Oliver, who was then in Laos.

Oliver St. Pe and I were opposites in many ways.  His folks had come from the country, and I think his parents were more at home in French than English.  They were not rich, and lived in a burb quite a distance from the city.  Oliver as a child was mixing up two languages, so he basically became monolingual.  While I had been “a good boy,” with all the negatives that that includes, Oliver had been a hell-raiser, a semi juvenile delinquent, on the road to trouble.  But he changed, and attended Loyola University of the South, which is physically next to Tulane U.  But in the 1950s there was a chasm separating the Jesuit institution and its neighbor.  Oliver was two years older than I, but when we roomed together, I was already a graduate student in history at Tulane, and he was a senior in sociology at Loyola.  He was a staunch Roman Catholic, and though I had been christened as a baby as a Catholic, by high school I was a member of the First Unitarian Church in New Orleans.  While the students at Loyola were overwhelmingly Catholic, Tulane was about 1/3 Catholic (New Orleanians), 1/3 Protestants (mainly from the rest of the South), and 1/3 Jewish (from NO, the rest of the South, and New York).  There were also differences in curriculum.  The history of philosophy course I took at Tulane was 2 semesters – the first on the ancient philosophers, the second on the moderns.  A few lectures on the medieval philosophers were squeezed in too.  At Loyola, 4 semesters were required, 1 on the ancients, 2 semesters on medieval, 1 on the moderns.

I do not recall when I first met Oliver.  I suspect it was at a gathering of the ICIC, the Intercollegiate Council for Interracial Cooperation.  Under Father Fichter’s sociological umbrella, students from Loyola, Tulane, Dillard (Black Protestant), and Xavier (Black Catholic) could gather.  The ICIC I first learned of around 1958 or 59.  We would not have met at Tulane, because Tulane was all white.  The main purpose of groups like these was to get nice people of differing backgrounds and races together.  The main activity of the ICIC was a general mailing of a cartoon that had initially appeared in a Methodist periodical.  It showed three simply drawn characters – one guy, another sitting atop his shoulders and pounding him on the head, and a third who says, “Well, I can see both sides of it.”  For our mailing, we darkened the color of the victim, and sent it to many in New Orleans.  I probably met Oliver there, but really did not know him them.
I will be adding to this story.----Hugh Murray