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 5th 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 5th 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 4th 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 5th
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
