I got to
know Oliver better in 1960 as the integration crises heated up. In February of that year students in North
Carolina began the modern sit-in movement.
(It was not “the first,” but it was the spark that set the movement
aflame. Columbus was not the first to
discover America, but his voyages would thoroughly change both the New World
and the Old.) In response to the
Carolina sit-ins, similar demonstrations spread in many areas of the
South. In New Orleans too, some of us
wanted to join the protests. This was
especially important because before the 1960 census figures were calculated,
New Orleans was still the largest city in the South – as it had been for over a
century. It was also a vanilla city,
too, though barely. Soon Houston,
Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, and other Southern cities would outrank New Orleans,
but in 1960, the Crescent City was still the most populous one in the South.
Lanny
Goldfinch, son of a Baptist minister, and a Tulane graduate student in
philosophy, told me one spring day that there would be a meeting at Dillard U.
(one of the Black colleges in the city) to plan for a sit-in. I was familiar with Dillard because of my
involvement with the Unitarian Church.
American Unitarians were a small denomination, numbering fewer than
100,000 in 1960. Although both the
Washington, D.C., and the Charleston, S.C., churches were established by Vice
President John C. Calhoun, by 1860 the religion was associated with Abolition
and questioning entrenched institutions.
At the end of the Civil War only two Unitarian Churches survived in the
South – those in Charleston and New Orleans.
The New Orleans church continued in that tradition of radicalism on
race, and after WWII it was a center of the Henry Wallace Progressive Party in
the Louisiana. In the 1950s its
minister, Rev. Albert D’Orlando was summoned before the national House on
Un-American Activities, and his wife admitted to have been a member of the CP
around 1940. Herbert Philbrick of “I Led
Three Lives” fame, alleged that the minister was still a secret Communist. At one point, a small bomb exploded at his
residence, but no one was hurt. By the
early 1960s, with the mounting struggles against segregation, the church
required a 24-hour guard. To be a
Unitarian in the 1950s was to be an integrationist.
But as a
high school student around 1955, I was unaware of this background when I first
attended the Unitarian service. It was
an old church building that looked like many other Protestant Churches. President Taft, a Unitarian, had attended the
church when he visited New Orleans in the early 20th century. It appeared as a typical Protestant church,
except the stained glass windows included signs of the zodiac, and there was no
cross.
Not knowing
anyone, I sat on a small side pew near the back, one that had room only for 3,
with a wall on one side. Shortly after
the service began, a couple arrived late, and desiring not to disrupt the
general service, they moved to enter the pew with me. To make room for them, I pushed toward the
wall and suddenly realized, they are Black!
What are they doing in a white church?
I had never sat beside Blacks as equals before. Isn’t this against the law? I began to breathe with difficulty, and I
felt the blood as it rushed to my face and undoubtedly reddened by appearance. Sure, Blacks might attend a Roman Catholic
mass, but they would know enough to sit on the last rows and not with
whites. Moreover, they would wait till
all the whites had received communion before they would go to the rail to receive
theirs. And almost all the Protestant
churches were segregated. Even at the
Billy Graham Crusade for Christ that I attended at Pelican Stadium in the
mid-50s, the audience was segregated.
What was this couple doing beside me?
My father would soon be referring to this as “that Bolshevik
church.” I continued to attend this
church. I was not reborn in Christ, but
I was becoming reborn on the race issue and shedding my segregationist
world-view.
At the
Unitarian Church in 1957 I met Dr. Georg Iggers and his wife Dr. Wilma
Iggers. They alternated between the
synagogue and the Unitarian Church. Both
had fled Hitler’s Europe in the late 1930s, met and married in the New World. They had only recently arrived in New Orleans
from the north – Little Rock, where they had taught at Philander Smith College,
a Black institution. In NO, Wilma was
teaching at Xavier (the Black Catholic college) and Georg at Dillard. He also taught a course at Tulane, where I
also knew him. Georg had been on the
board of the Little Rock NAACP, and he was quite surprised by the mobs then
erupting at Central High. He had thought
the integration would go smoothly. After
all, Arkansas Gov. Faubus was a liberal Democrat. It took Republican Pres. Eisenhower to send
troops to quell the disorders, perhaps the first time troops were sent South to
insure the safety of Blacks since Reconstruction.
I asked if
I could sit in one of his history classes at Dillard, and he agreed. (I do not want to repeat everything covered
in my article published in 1978 in the
J.
of Ethnic Studies, “The Struggle for Civil Rights in New Orleans in 1960.” This is available on line at
http://www.anthonyflood.com/murray.htm. For more
details on some items discussed here, you might consult that article.) I did go to Dillard for a number of weeks and
attended his class. No one was rude to
me, and I made a few friends, including Shirley, who was active in the local
NAACP. I also joined. But in the late 1950s, the NAACP was outlawed
in Louisiana because it refused to disclose its membership list. To do so would have resulted in intimidation
and possible firings of any teachers who were discovered to be members. While appeals were in the courts, the New
Orleans Improvement Assn. was established, basically as a front-group for the
NAACP.
In the
spring 1960 Lanny Goldfinch and I went across town to Dillard to the meeting to
energize action against segregation. I
was surprised at the large crowd of hundreds in the auditorium. I arrived after the meeting had begun, and a
number of speakers told of the protests then occurring in many areas of the
South, including Baton Rouge, and that now Dillard students must do their
part. There were loud cheers. Several speakers made the same point, to
roaring applause. Then, Rev. Gandy, the
university’s chaplain spoke. He was a
rousing speaker and agreed that Dillard should take a stand for freedom. But why imitate others? The others had sat-in. That was now old hat. Dillard should take a unique, Dillard
approach – do something special to Dillard. He too gained enormous applause. In effect, he had defused the call for a
sit-in, and likely arrests – and trouble for students, parents, and the
college. Instead of sit-ins, Dillard
students would march on campus (where no whites would see them), and then march
carrying signs on the sidewalks facing the street in front of the campus. Arrests would be unlikely for such a
demonstration, and Dillard could say that it had done its part.
Neither
Lanny nor I decided to join the specifically Dillard march. Soon thereafter, Lanny told me of a group
picketing on Dryades Street because the A & P supermarket refused to hire
any Black clerks. Not at the same time,
but both Lanny and I did join the small picket line of two permitted by
law. The sponsoring group was the
Consumers League, a Black organization.
It was my first picket line, and not a very pleasant experience.
National
CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) desperately sought to expand in the South,
and its recruiters met with some from the Consumers League and expanded. Rudy Lombard a Xavier student, Oliver St. Pe
from Loyola, Archie Allen, from Dillard, myself, and others were
interested. We met at the Negro YMCA on
Dryades St. and soon the organizers were seeking volunteers to go to a CORE
training institute to be held in late summer in Miami. CORE had been founded in the early 1940s, but
it was quite small and usually limited to cities in the North or West. With the sit-ins, its philosophy of
non-violent resistance to oppression was being practiced. It had made some inroads in 1960 into the
South, but was now competing with SNCC, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee. A CORE chapter in New Orleans
would greatly strengthen the organization.
I wanted to
go to the training session. My parents
wanted to know more. Would I be the only
white? No there will be perhaps a
thousand people from all over the nation, most of whom would be white. Would I be the only white from New
Orleans? I probably would not be able to
go unless another white from the city attended too. Oliver was going! I could persuade my folks.
In two
cars, eight of us drove the 22 hours in non-air-conditioned discomfort in
August 1960 to arrive at a Black motel.
I was stunned to discover there were no thousands – for this was no
convention but a training institute in non-violence. There were only about 50 of us, 8 arriving
from New Orleans. Our training sessions
were conducted by day in the Sir John’s Motel lounge where we sat around small
cocktail tables and learned about non-violence,
We also engaged in practice protests whereby some held picket signs, and
others in our group would act as the segregationist hecklers, or attackers. We were trained not curse back, not to insult
back, not to hit back, not to…
Our
sessions drew some prominent instructors.
One day our teacher was Jackie Robinson, the baseball legend. August 1960 was an election year, and he
informed us that he supported Nixon and the Republicans. Another day, the teacher was Rev. Martin
Luther King. He told us he was
supporting Democrat John Kennedy, but was not doing so publicly, or not at that
moment.
One day the
leaders divided us into small groups to test the restaurant inside Shell’s City
supermarket. I was partnered with
another New Orleanian, Ruth Dispenza, a very light-skinned Black. We were at a table for two, and other CORE
testers were scattered in groups of two,
three, or four in the restaurant. The
manager responded by turning up the air-conditioning. When Ruth and I complained of the cold, they
told us it was to get the niggers out.
(Clearly, they assumed we were a white couple.) Later 16 members of our group, from tables
obviously integrated, were arrested.
Oliver was among them. (I will
have a footnote about the dates of this training institute)
When we
returned to New Orleans, rumors circulated that CORE was planning a sit-in in
New Orleans – which it was. Tulane sent
emissaries to warn Lanny, Bill Harrell, and myself that the university policy
was that anyone arrested would be suspended from the university until proven
innocent. Because a sit-in case would
probably be judged guilty on the local and state levels, we might have to await
a US Supreme Court decision, which, if it ever came, might take several years. (Which
it did.) Meanwhile, we would be suspended from the university. As I had my small job at the university
library, I would also lose my employment.
And I would have to move from my parents’ home. All of us were facing difficult
decisions. Oliver would not be
participating in this action, for he had already been arrested in Miami.
On Friday 9
September 1960 seven of us entered the large Woolworths at Canal and N. Rampart
Streets. Light-skinned Ruth was our
leader, and we were seated dark, light, dark, light, etc. Bill Harrell, a graduate student in sociology
at Tulane, and I, a 21-year-old grad student in History at Tulane, were the
only whites. Archie Allen from Dillard,
Joyce Taylor, Jerome Smith and another were the seven. We were not served. I was not wearing my glasses as a precaution,
for if attacked I did not want glass in my eye.
After an hour, the area of our counter was closed, and we were roped off
from the general public. Someone said my
father was there to get me out of the demonstration, but without my glasses
when I turned to see, I was not certain it was him. I suddenly panicked at the thought of a
possible headline, “The only violence, a father beats son out of demonstration.” One more possibility to worry about. The police would not allow him through. Eventually, the New Orleans District Attorney
Richard Dowling arrived, read us the law on segregation, and had us
arrested. (Dowling was predecessor to
Jim Garrison.)
We were
taken to a police station on N. Rampart, then to the main jail on Tulane Ave,
where Bill Harrell and I were questioned by the NOPD Red Squad, and then
transferred once again to Rampart St.
Because of the transfers, we missed all the meals. We were released on bail around 9 pm. Archie Allen and I had not eaten so, joined
by Carlos Zervigon (of Mexican and Cuban heritage), we went to a Black
restaurant, Whitey’s, on either Louisiana or Napoleon Ave. The waiter approached: “I can serve you
(pointing to Archie), but not you two (indicating Carlos and me.)” What??
Then he revised, “Well I can serve you two (Archie and Carlos), but not
you (me).” We were all dumbfounded. Archie and I had been arrested earlier that
day when Woolworths would not serve Blacks.
Should we be arrested that very night because Whitey’s would not serve
whites? None of us wanted another round
of arrests. We left.
I stayed
over with different friends for a few days – at the home of Carlos, then at the
home of Oliver, then…The Tulane Board quickly met and changed its policy. It judged the arrest of Bill and myself to be
political and not criminal, so we would not be suspended. Also, I could keep my part-time, low-paying
job in the library. Terrific news.
Because of
the threats, my father had to borrow a gun and bullets to protect his home –
even though I was not living there. He
borrowed them from a co-worker on the water front. When things finally quieted down, and my dad
returned the weapon, his co-worker asked, “Why did you borrow so many
bullets? Only one would have done the
job.” Meaning, shoot me. I was not a popular figure.
I could not
continue to live as a gypsy, from one friend to another each night. Oliver lived with his parents in a far-out
burb and wanted to move closer to Loyola for his senior year. We agreed to share an apartment. We found one, large, furnished, just two
blocks from the St. Charles street car line, which wobbled leisurely to both
Loyola and Tulane. Touro Infirmary was
nearby, and it was a safe neighborhood.
We were on the 3rd floor of a 4-storey old building. The total rent was $45 a month, or $22.50
each. To save money, we decided not to
get a phone.
Oliver was
a handsome, 23-year-old senior studying sociology at Loyola. He had had troubles in school and beyond when
he was younger, but that was all in the past.
He did have one disconcerting habit, however; he never looked directly when
he spoke to you. Only when I roomed with
him did I discover that Oliver was legally blind! But I had never seen him wear glasses. He knew I was somewhere out there, but did
not look at a person’s eyes. He received
heavy LP records of books that he could listen to. I even earned small sums by reading to him some
of his assigned books in sociology. He
could read, but only after inserting hard contact lenses in each eye, and then
wearing extremely thick glasses. I
suspect that with such magnification, he could only read part of a word at a
time.
The
neighborhood was safe, but was it safe for us?
Oliver had been arrested with CORE in August, but that was in
Miami. I had been arrested in September
in New Orleans. It had been shown on
Huntley-Brinkley’s NBC Nightly News (I did not see it because we were still in
jail then), and was big news locally.
Not having a telephone, we were not victims of harassing phone calls,
but what if we were attacked? From his
parent’s home, Oliver brought his Ruger, a pistol similar to the German
Luger. He wanted me to learn how to use
it, just in case there was trouble. I
was most reticent, having accepted the non-violent, pacifistic approach of
CORE. But he insisted. And if we were attacked, should I allow the
defense of both of us to be in the hands of a blind man? I learned how to use the weapon.
The
apartment was large, furnished, and quiet.
No one resided in the flat above, and I don’t recall any noise from the
one below. There was only one, large
bed, so we shared it. After a month or
two, my hand began to roam over his privates; I began to jerk him off. First, part of him woke, and then the rest of
him, and he started shouting, “What the fuck are you doing?” He was angry.
I was emotionally crushed. Yet we
continued to sleep together after that and my hands continued to roam. He would physically move my arm, and then lie
in such a way that I could not reach. After
a month, he suggested we get into the vacant flat above. We carried down the two single beds from that
apartment to ours, and replaced them above with our large bed. After that, my hands did not touch him in
such areas.
Oliver had
rejected my sexual advances, but he did not reject me. From December through May we continued to
room together, and to sleep in the same room together, but in separate
beds. Oliver and I remained close, we
were friends, even though we were very different. He told me that as a kid he had been a
hell-raiser. He was older than I because
he had school troubles. While
considering dropping out of school altogether, he was saved. He joined a group whose leader provided him
with new direction. He joined the Civil
Air Patrol, and the leader was David Ferrie.
Oliver would speak of David while he and I roomed together. I remembered the name vividly, because I
thought it a terrible name, like being David Fruit (perhaps the most common
term for homosexual in NO at that time) or David Queer. But Oliver always spoke of him with respect
and even thankfulness. In early 1961
Oliver said he would be going to a party at David’s home, for he had not seen
him in awhile, and he looked forward to it.
I was not invited, for Oliver and I had separate social lives. When I next saw Oliver, I asked about the
party. His reply was not enthusiastic –
“Oh, David was playing soldier. There
were many dressed up as soldiers and with weapons.” Only much later would I realize that this
must have been a gathering in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
At the end
of May 1961 Oliver graduated with his BA from Loyola, and soon thereafter would
be off to Laos, working with the International Voluntary Service agency or ws it the US Agency for International Development?. He was there in 1963 when I sent
him the clipping about David Ferrie and the Kennedy assassination. When Oliver returned to New Orleans I noticed
he had a large scar on his face. What
happened? He was still something of a
risk-taker. In Laos, he bought a motor
bike and drove it around. One day he was
riding and there was this water buffalo, and…
He returned to New Orleans, married, and had two children. He continued to work for civil rights,
especially those of the disabled. He
died in the 1990s, and there is a building on the campus of the Univ. of New
Orleans named after him.
Why do I
include this story? If Oliver had been
gay, we could have engaged in lots of sex in our apartment and no one would have
known. I may not have been handsome, but
I was not the ugliest person around.
Oliver rejected me because he was not gay. Yet, the man who saved him, David Ferrie,
clearly was. Ferrie and the CAP provided
Oliver with survival skills so he could return to school and thrive. Oliver was still a risk-taker: just going to
Laos in the early 1960s was a risk, and they driving a motor bike! Oliver gained confidence to accomplish so
much. Certainly others helped too,
Father Fichter at Loyola, and who knows how many others. But David Ferrie was an important mentor for
Oliver. Did Ferrie also inspire Oswald –
another member of Ferrie’s CAP?
Might
Oliver have been sent to infiltrate the integration movement by Ferrie,
Banister, or others? I find nothing to
support this. Oliver was very religious,
teaching catechism each week, the Baltimore Catechism at a nearby school. He partook in a passion play during that year
also. Oliver was in some ways like
President Kennedy, a social conservative and an anti-Communist. He was a Kennedy Democrat. But perhaps Oliver was more willing to risk more
than Pres. Kennedy on the questions of civil rights for Blacks and the disabled Simply put – Oliver was a good man. And a hero. And possibly a saint.
And what was my social life like
during that year? I had to work at the
library, Friday nights, and 8-5 on Saturdays.
I then taught at the Unit. Sunday School around 9:30 am. My weekends were busy. Because of me weekend job, I was unable to
attend gatherings as when James Baldwin visited NO. I also missed the visit of Lillian
Smith. But even today I am still proud
of what I taught to the teens on Sundays – What is Justice, using Book 1 and
part of Book 2 of Plato’s Republic;
then What Happens to the Just Man?, using Job,
and then What Does Man Want?, using “The Grand Inquisitor” chapter from Dostoyevsky’s
Brothers Karamazov. I attended CORE meetings and a whole new crop
of people at Tulane/Newcomb were interested.
Indeed, that year, I would estimate that half of New Orleans CORE members
were white. One member, Margaret
Leonard, a blond from Atlanta and a student then at Newcomb, was the subject of
a story in Look Magazine, “The Diary
of a Sit In.” My main accomplishment
that year was that I survived.
Lee Harvey
once said that if he and Marina had had a boy, they would have named him David.
One of Oliver's sons was named David.
