The Wrong Side of Murder Creek

by Bob Zellner

  Educators recognize the value of civil rights teaching material produced by actual participants in the events they are describing and analyzing. Movement veterans support a Freedom Teaching Plan because we want our story to be told by us, since others who are writing curricula have learned of the movement from secondary sources. We, who made and lived the freedom movement, are now facing our mortality and realize that in a short quarter-century, few if any of us will be left to tell the story. It is crucial that those who made this history be involved in passing it on and interpreting our movement to children and students. Already many “experts” are putting their spin on our history. That’s why the Freedom Curriculum is destined to make a major contribution to American education for the rest of this century.

  23

  Up South

  As I mentioned, Linda and I were married on Shelter Island, near Southampton, New York. We still live in Southampton, and our home is not far from the Shinnecock Indian Reservation. There on February 24, 2000, three Native Americans were arrested on St. Andrews Road. Some confrontations had occurred between tribe members and Parrish Pond Associates, a real estate developer attempting to develop reservation land. At the time, Linda and I were in New York City for a preview of the movie, Freedom Song, so I had no knowledge of these arrests. When I checked my messages on Friday morning I had a call from Ben Haile, a friend and member of the tribe. He asked me to contact him about the arrests. When I returned the call I spoke to someone on the reservation who asked if I could go to a construction site on St. Andrews Road and talk to Ben.

  I was called as co-chair of our local anti-bias task force. This group is appointed by the town board, and it’s a respected organization of business people and concerned citizens who monitor and investigate charges of bias in the area. There is strong bias in the local area against both African Americans and Native Americans. I told them I would come down and stay fifteen or twenty minutes and at least talk to the State Police and make sure they were not going to hurt anybody. I had no intent to participate in the demonstration—just to mediate between the police and the activists on this reservation, who were protecting their burial site from desecration. The person explained that there was a large contingent of State Troopers at the site, and based on their experience the day before they were concerned that events not be repeated.

  The Shinnecock Reservation had dwindled from hundreds of thousands of acres to the smallest that it was ever supposed to be, thirty-six hundred acres. That minimum was guaranteed to the Shinnecocks a century ago by way of a thousand-year lease from the Town of Southampton. Then the railroad came through. It’s strange to think of railroad land grabs from Indians on Long Island. It sounds so Western. But it happened right here, and it’s still with us, taking egregious advantage of the Native Americans. The tribe gave a right of way to the Long Island Railroad. Then the white people took advantage by taking everything north of the railroad. They argued that since the railroad separates the thirty-six hundred acres into two parts, the tribe will no longer own or control all lands north of the right of way. The reservation was thus effectively reduced to eight hundred acres.

  In 1959 a developer laid the foundations for several houses on reservation land along the Montauk highway. The ruins of the foundations are there still, but the New York state attorney general went into court and stopped the buildings from being constructed on reservation land. The tribe has not always been so lucky. The attorney general, under ancient laws, is charged with the responsibility of defending the rights of the Indians under the ward-of-the-state theory and law. But things have changed drastically now that “The Hamptons” is a world-famous destination. In recent years, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed cases against the Shinnecocks.

  Still the developers come and try to take a few acres here and there. The development attempt in 2000 was on sixty-two acres contiguous to the reservation—a traditional hunting ground and ceremonial burial area. Under cover of night developers brought in a bulldozer and started destroying the trees. Even the ecologists were upset. Finally, on February 24, the young activists said they had had enough and were going to stop the bulldozers by sitting in front of them. The police then came with riot gear, equipment, and forty vehicles. They started beating the small picket line of old men and women and children and a few young activists.

  Arriving at the site on February 25, the day after the initial arrests, I observed half a dozen state police cars at the entrance to St. Andrews Road. At the protest site I observed another dozen or so state police vehicles and more troopers than there were demonstrators. I spoke briefly to the people on the picket line, some of whom carried signs. The tribal historian, Harriet Gumbs, mother of the tribal chairman, Lance Gumbs, gave me a briefing on the confrontation between the Nation and the developers. She told me that the developers were in a frenzy of tearing down trees and ripping up the ground and that a chain-link fence had been constructed overnight, to try to get as much done before a restraining order came. The tribe was concerned that the developers were attempting to make the protection of the land a moot point by making the site development into a fait accompli. Gumbs also said the state police were in no way acting as disinterested peace-keepers but were openly hostile to the interests of the Native People and seemed to be friendly to the developers. Then they told me that their lawyers had obtained a stop-work order, or temporary restraining order, and that it was on the way to the site. She asked if I would communicate with the state police in an attempt to maintain the peace until the stop-work order arrived. They asked me to reiterate to the police that material or equipment could leave the area but they did not want any other machinery to enter the site since it was being shut down by court order.

  I asked who was in charge, then I introduced myself to State Police Major Thomas Weber as co-chair, along with Oscar Byrd, of the Southampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force. I told Major Weber I had been asked by people from the Shinnecock Reservation to contact the state police to facilitate communication between the Nation and the state police. I told the major that there had been complaints of mistreatment and injuries from the day before, February 24, and I wanted to be sure that there was a clear understanding between the parties. I asked the major if he was aware that a restraining order had been granted by the court stopping work at the site. He said he had been informed of that. While I was talking to the major, I learned later, a truck had pulled up to the picket line. I suggested to the major that, as the person in charge, he could set a good tone of even-handedness by asking truck drivers not to cross the line until the order was served, at which time the builders could peacefully remove their equipment.

  I asked if we could go to talk to the developer about the fact that the work had been officially stopped by the court and that the restraining order was even now being driven to us from the New York State Supreme Court and was only a few minutes away.

  He said he couldn’t do it—that he had to keep the road open, and that I was standing in the middle of it. I was not aware of standing in a “road” at that moment. While I was literally still shaking the major’s hand, I was grabbed by several state troopers from behind, pulled backwards, and wrestled to the ground. I have had experiences with the police in the South when they have lost control of themselves during demonstrations and have exercised more force than necessary to make an arrest. This experience with the New York State Troopers had the same feeling. They were out of control.

  They were attempting to handcuff me, and I relaxed my arms so they would be able to handcuff me, and they took advantage of that by holding me by the elbow and the wrist and literally turning my arm backwards. I could hear the cartilage and tendons snapping in my elbow, and I screamed “You’re breaking my arm.” They intended to, because when I said that they gave it another twist. I turned and looked over my right shoulder and said, “I want your name. You’re breaking my arm.”

  When I did that, they said, “Oh, you’re resisting a
rrest.” That’s when they began to kick me. They kicked me in the jaw and knocked it out of place so that my teeth would not fit together, and my left knee, weak from previous surgery, was re-injured. Then they dragged me between two cars. I had experienced police brutality and knew they were really going to work me over, but a brave photographer, a woman from the Southampton paper, came right over with a camera. The cops told her she couldn’t take photos, but she told them that she was the press and started taking pictures, and that’s when they stopped beating me. When they allowed me up, I stood and walked to the police van with my hands cuffed behind my back. I was not told I was under arrest and from that time until my release after arraignment the next morning I was not read my rights against self-incrimination, though there were numerous attempts to interrogate me. I had done nothing to warrant arrest, but the constitutional principle was lost on these police officers.

  I was placed in a police utility vehicle with my hands still cuffed behind my back and the cuffs cutting into my arms. The officer slammed the door on my already painfully injured right arm. The pain was so excruciating that they finally handcuffed me in front and allowed me to stand for a moment in the rain so I could get my breath. I asked the driver to take me to Southampton Hospital as soon as possible because of my heart condition; I was feeling faint with a terrific headache. It was all so Southern. It’s incredible. When I talk on the lecture tour, I talk about moving from Down South to Up South.

  Much later I was taken to Suffolk Central Hospital where the trooper said I “claimed to be injured.” The attendants casually X-rayed my right arm, noted “no injuries,” and released me with medication for pain and swelling. My blood pressure was very high but I was taken to the trooper barracks on Flanders Road, where I was cuffed to a steel bench with Doreen Arundel, who had also been arrested, until late at night and then taken to town lock-up for the night. While waiting at the trooper barracks, the Diallo verdict came in and the troopers made a big show of clapping and laughing that their fellow officers were acquitted. “Next time we go on the reservation, we’re bringing our bullet-proof vests.”

  At town lock-up I was refused access to my medication even though the state police had given it to the jailer. At breakfast time Saturday morning a guard opened the door and asked, “Can you catch?” And then he threw a sandwich and a carton of fruit punch at me which I attempted to catch with my left hand, unsuccessfully. I don’t know if that was a routine indignity or if the officer was trying to see if my right arm would function. My right arm was too stiff to move.

  This was February 26. The development was stopped for several weeks. Then they had a court hearing, and the judge ruled on a technicality that the tribe had not responded in a timely fashion. Obviously, the town officials were in on the deal. Welcome to America in the twenty-first century in the beautiful Hamptons, and that is part of the irony. The Hamptons is considered one of the great garden spots of the world. Rich people from all over come there, and we have the most backward and the most embarrassingly reactionary government that you can imagine

  After the Shinnecock episodes, I ran for town supervisor and although I lost, my campaign work helped to elect, for the first time in history, a majority-Democratic town board. We have now been through a number of two-year election cycles and Southampton is reverting to Republican cronyism. We do still have enough influence, however, that activist members of the tribe and community supporters have gotten an agreement from the town to buy and preserve some land that used to be part of the reservation.

  During the incident on the reservation land, my elbow was permanently dislocated, and I will probably be in some pain for the rest of my life. It had been a long time since anything like that had happened to me, and I realized I’m not willing to be beaten up any more—I’m getting too old for that, and you don’t bounce back from it when you are in your sixties like we did when we were young people in the fifties and sixties. The episode was indeed reminiscent of the South, because the police were in such a fury over the young activists on the reservation. You could tell the police wanted to hurt people.

  In the end, we did not let them get away with it. We filed a federal court lawsuit and a jury found that I and the Shinnecock Nation members were victims of false arrest, malicious prosecution, denial of civil rights, and unlawful physical injury (though it found we were not subject to “excessive violence”). The state appealed, but the verdict was upheld and we collected damages. Most importantly, we demonstrated again that truth crushed to earth will always win in the end.

  Linda Miller and I were married on June 18, 1994, at the Rams Head Inn on Shelter Island, near Southampton, New York. Julian Bond was again my best man, and family and many old friends, including Joe Thomas and the late Townsend Ellis from Huntingdon College days, came to the wedding. Townsend, who had been my roommate at Huntingdon, had the voice of an angel and was our soloist. His renditions of “Amazing Grace” and “O Promise Me” brought everyone to tears.

  I wrote a piece about our marriage and celebrations called “Twelve Days that Shook the World—June 15–26, 1994.” The activities indeed lasted twelve days and covered four states—from New York to New Orleans and crawfish, to Mississippi and the thirtieth anniversary of Freedom Summer, to Alabama and my family, with another wedding ceremony, and a great Southern feast.

  Linda and I lived and still live in Southampton. She was prepared for my work, being a great organizer herself, and we do many projects together.

  I formerly taught history at Long Island University’s Southampton College (now Stoneybrook Southampton). My course was the history of activism with emphasis on the freedom movement, including the women’s struggle, the fight for gay liberation, Native American rights, environmentalism, and various ethnic and religious rights movements. I hope my course did not contribute to the demise of Southampton College.

  Linda sold the publishing business she and her brother Jim had built over a twenty-year span. Homes of the Hamptons became the standard against which all other real estate publications are measured. Linda and I finished our beautiful house on Peconic Bay and moved in with Pooh Bear, our huge black dog and his younger sister Lulu, both retrieved from ARF, the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. Pooh is now circling the great fire hydrant in the sky while Lulu continues to chase her beloved ball.

  I gallivant around the country, while Linda finds third and fourth careers. First was Goldman Sachs, then Miller Publishing. She then bought a store on Southampton’s Jobs Lane, the “Rodeo Drive” of the Hamptons. Linda and her founding partner of the fashionable boutique, Cynthia Kolbenheyer, are now metamorphosing that store, “Clothes Minded,” into an expanded business called “Open Minded,” a community concierge for the upbeat Hamptons.

  Cynthia’s husband and his business partner, along with Linda and I through Miller+Zellner Associates, have designed and completed for sale a five-bedroom “cottage” overlooking the Atlantic and Shinnecock Bay.

  Miller+Zellner Associates also owns and operates The Level Woodworks, my cabinet shop on North Main Street, our consulting service on Building and Design, Education, and Politics, and the lecture series I do around the country every year. Writing a book and making a movie sounds like high cotton for a preacher’s boy from lower Alabama. It only goes to show to that a lifelong revolutionary, usually never making a penny, can have a soft landing.

  Since Southampton College and finishing this book with the able assistance of my friend of forty-eight years and scholar of the movement, Connie Curry, I have learned a lot. All of us who were together in the struggle carry a deep love for each other and we meet whenever we can. Sometimes it is for a comrade’s memorial service, or reunions and conferences.

  We take time to celebrate. I was honored to attend Chuck McDew’s retirement event from his years of teaching at Community College in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2005. He told us to make our comments as if it were his memorial service—he wanted to hear the stuf
f while he was still alive. McDew was and is one of my boon running buddies. My first emotional bond with him and Bob Moses was formed when I was attacked in McComb and the two of them came over and absorbed some of the blows that were directed at me. McDew and I had to show up for various trials, and we sometimes traveled together to college campuses, both north and occasionally south. McDew was the first real traveling executive of SNCC. His job was to translate nationally what was happening locally—to tie together the bus boycott, the lunch counter sits-ins, the freedom rides, and the voter registration work in Mississippi which met with such brutal treatment. Besides publicizing our work, his speeches and meetings with students helped form SNCC support groups across the country, which eventually brought offices in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

  When I first met Chuck, I thought of him as a brash northerner—with a wonderful, droll sense of humor, a dry wit. He would have been a great comedian, or great at anything he did, because he is a person of great talent. One of the things that he spoke of in SNCC was his double vision of the church, because so many white racists were imbued with church doctrine. He also had some ambivalence about the North and South in general. He was raised in the steel town of Massillon, Ohio, but his parents were from the South, and at his parents’ insistence, he enrolled in South Carolina State in Orangeburg. He started going to church but soon found he couldn’t go to whatever church he wanted with so-called Christians. Then he went to a synagogue and was welcomed. He would talk about the concept from the Talmud—if not me, who; if not now, when—and how that had helped propel him into the movement. He had found some people in the movement who would stand up—in the tradition of social justice in the Jewish faith that he didn’t find elsewhere. This caused Bob Moses to make a very famous statement about McDew when we were all in jail in McComb. Moses was writing about each person, and he wrote a wonderful letter called “The Center of the Iceberg.” He says, “McDew is a revolutionary who dares to stand in a strong light. He was a black man by birth, a Jew by choice, a revolutionary by necessity.” It is one of the great poetic passages from the movement.