Dangerous Grounds

by Parsons, David L. ;

  Robert Duane Ferré, a former air force officer and native of Rochester, New York, was manager of the UFO coffeehouse during this period of intense scrutiny and harassment in the latter half of 1969. Ferré had served a year in prison for refusing to go to Vietnam and joined the antiwar movement after his release, arriving in Columbia, South Carolina, after the Fort Jackson Eight case. In addition to his work at the UFO, he involved himself in antiwar activities at locations throughout Columbia, hoping to reach those soldiers from Fort Jackson who might not visit the coffeehouse. On August 1, 1969, Ferré and another UFO staff member, Chris Hannafan, went to Jimmy’s Drive-In, a local movie spot popular among GIs, to hand out antiwar leaflets. During their visit they spoke with two AWOL soldiers who wanted advice on applying for conscientious objector status. The manager of the drive-in called military police, who arrested the two soldiers. Ferré and Hannafan were themselves charged with disorderly conduct, each fined $100, and sentenced to thirty days in the Columbia jail.55

  As it gained attention, the UFO became the subject of significant local hostility, targeted by some of Columbia’s most influential groups and individuals. In addition to the Elite Epicurean Restaurant’s animosity toward the UFO’s existence, many other local merchants regularly complained to police about the coffeehouse’s loud music, sidewalks blocked by hippies, and “obscene” posters facing the street. One of the latter featured “grinning American soldiers admiring severed human heads and was captioned, in part, ‘the Army can really fuck over your mind if you let it.’”56 In late 1969 these merchants began circulating a petition stating that the UFO coffeehouse was a public nuisance whose hostile atmosphere intimidated their customers and damaged long-standing businesses.57

  The owner of the Elite Epicurean Restaurant was reluctant to sign the petition, fearing that she would have to testify in court. She was nevertheless subjected to pressure from several different merchants as well as the minister of a nearby church, all of whom urged her to help close the UFO. The chief of police and several police captains, who regularly had their morning coffee at the Elite, also persistently advised her that the coffeehouse was a potentially dangerous nuisance and that shutting it down would be in the city’s (not to mention the Elite’s) best interest. In January 1970, she relented and signed the petition.58

  Unlike the many antiwar and civil rights petitions that had been circulated in Columbia and at Fort Jackson over the preceding years, the petition to close the UFO coffeehouse had the support of the city’s prominent businesses, church leaders, military authorities, and city hall and thus carried considerably more weight despite its comparatively scant twelve signatures. Shortly after gaining the Elite Epicurean Restaurant’s signature of support, a grand jury issued an indictment and Judge Harry T. Agnew wrote an injunction calling for the UFO coffeehouse to be forcibly shut down. On January 13, 1970, Columbia police put a chain and padlocks across the UFO’s front doors and arrested Duane Ferré; his wife, Merle Ferré (then eight months’ pregnant); and fellow UFO staff members Leonard Cohen and William Balk. The indictment accused the coffeehouse of being “a disorderly, ill-governed place, where fighting, cursing, and loud noises generate a public nuisance, marijuana and other drugs have been bought, sold, or used on the premises, obscene material has been displayed, and minors have been corrupted.”59

  The UFO’s closing, and its staff’s ensuing trial, caused a considerable furor in Columbia. The defendants received support from the city’s increasingly vocal antiwar and counterculture community. The Reverend Gonzalo Leon, a local eccentric known for his bare feet, flowing hair, and stewardship of a New Age spiritual center called the Universal Life Church, became one of the coffeehouse’s biggest champions, leading a series of rallies throughout the spring of 1970 in defiance of the city’s attempt to shut it down. Other supporters raised constitutional arguments against the UFO’s forced closure. Jon Kraus, an instructor at the University of South Carolina’s Department of International Studies and president of the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, led a rally on January 18, 1970, five days after the UFO’s closure, expressing his outrage at what he called a “a blatant attempt at political repression.”60 Howard Levy, recently released after serving thirty-two months in federal prison for his defiance at Fort Jackson three years earlier, also spoke at the same rally, which began on the university campus before sending more than 300 people marching downtown. The demonstration culminated in front of the locked doors of the UFO coffeehouse in “one of the loudest, if not the largest, protest marches ever held in the city.”61

  The bizarre trial of the three UFO staff members (Merle Ferré was not charged due to her pregnancy) showcased Columbia’s official disgust with the coffeehouse and the people who frequented it. That revulsion was represented by the city’s lead prosecutor, Fifth Circuit solicitor John Foard, a physical embodiment of Columbia’s connections to state, federal, and military leadership. Foard, a decorated World War II veteran, had been a prominent city prosecutor for eighteen years, gaining a reputation as something of a showman. By the late 1960s, he was one of the city’s most visible and colorful public characters. His arguments at trial often turned into fiery sermons, with Foard singing hymns and dropping to his knees to beg juries for guilty verdicts.62 In 1970 he aimed his biblical righteousness at the UFO coffeehouse, casting it as a demonic entity polluting a decent town. In Foard’s opening remarks to the jury, he read aloud several passages from the Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper found among many others at the UFO. He highlighted profane language and comic images featuring drugs and nudity. Any place that would distribute such material, he argued, must be a “cesspool of evil.”63

  Throughout the trial, Foard painted the coffeehouse and its staff as dangerous agitators from outside Columbia, bent on destroying the city’s way of life. He accused the UFO of being “detrimental to the peace, happiness, lives, safety and good morals of the people of the State of South Carolina” by promoting drug use, loud music, and antiestablishment values.64 Foard even sang a few verses from “The Old Rugged Cross” in his closing argument. Several editorials in the city’s leading newspaper, the State, commended Foard’s passion and expressed disgust with the UFO’s patrons and staff. One citizen called them “immature rabble . . . self-proclaimed redeemers of social and political ills who mock democracy and its freedoms and who chant slogans dedicated to our destruction” and stated that such persons forfeit their constitutional liberties.65 But the coffeehouse was not without its supporters; the State also printed many letters that defended the UFO and assailed the police department and Foard himself for unfairly singling out the coffeehouse when several bars and restaurants around town were known for loud, drunken fights and easily obtainable marijuana. Why would soldiers be barred from a coffeehouse while still permitted to visit bars and brothels? The trial, these supporters suggested, was clearly politically motivated.66

  On April 27, 1970, the three defendants were convicted of operating a public nuisance, a misdemeanor offense that typically carried a sentence of no more than ninety days.67 In delivering his sentence, however, Judge Harry T. Agnew used the opportunity to set an example for the state of South Carolina, fining the UFO coffeehouse $10,000 (equivalent to nearly $60,000 today) and ordering Duane Ferré, Leonard Cohen, and William Balk each to serve six years in prison. He defended the unusually harsh sentence in a statement that captured how deeply the UFO coffeehouse had offended Columbia’s city leadership: “As I understand it, two of the defendants came from great distances to this community. I have wondered where we are headed in this country, and what the future holds for my own children. It concerns me. I certainly hope that they won’t come under the influence of persons who will guide them in the direction that I feel individuals who frequented the UFO would guide them. A great number of young people from all over South Carolina were exposed to the teachings of the defendants and the people of South Carolina are not accustomed to teachings of people from New York and San Franc
isco, who rebel against our form of life.”68 Despite his apparent disgust with the UFO staff, Agnew released them pending appeal, and a year later the sentences were reduced in exchange for their acceptance of lifetime banishment from the state of South Carolina.69 John Foard himself agreed to lighter treatment for the staff, later explaining that he had accomplished his main goal, the permanent closure of the UFO coffeehouse.70

  THE UFO IN EXILE

  The demise of the UFO coffeehouse initiated what would turn out to be Columbia’s final explosion of antiwar demonstrations during the Vietnam era and showed how the coffeehouse had evolved into an important icon for many of Columbia’s young people. Student activists at the University of South Carolina (USC), outraged at what they interpreted as a political assault, formed a group called the “UFO in Exile,” meeting weekly in a student union building on campus called Russell House and organizing student support for the coffeehouse and its staff while the trial progressed. After Judge Agnew delivered the six-year sentences in April, Solicitor Foard publicly announced his intent to extend his campaign to the university campus, declaring an unofficial war on drugs, dissidents, and the UFO in Exile. He used his connections on the university board of trustees to instigate a series of campus drug raids, investigate the student newspaper for obscenity, and restrict access to the Russell House political meeting center while dozens of city police officers patrolled the campus, performing random searches and asking students for identification.71

  Foard’s campaign, fueled by his seemingly personal grudge against the UFO coffeehouse and its sympathizers, had a chilling effect on academic freedom in Columbia.72 Several college professors had testified in court on the UFO’s behalf, and Foard sent letters to their respective departments, claiming that because of their testimony they “don’t belong at the university.”73 Administrations at the city’s various colleges actually followed through on some of Foard’s recommendations. History professor Seldon Smith was subjected to an extensive fitness hearing at which his involvement with the UFO figured prominently; Smith had tenure and was ultimately retained by Columbia College. Other professors, however, did not fare so well. Ray Moore, a Methodist minister and untenured English instructor at Columbia College, was terminated based on the UFO trial transcript provided by Foard, as was prominent UFO supporter and untenured USC professor Jon Kraus. Several other instructors and professors reported being interrogated in the wake of the coffeehouse trial.74

  Foard’s heavy-handed effort to “clean up” the university in the wake of the coffeehouse trial coincided with the weeks of outrage on college campuses across the country over President Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent killing of four students at Kent State on May 4. The confluence of national and local pressures was explosive in Columbia. Students at USC clashed with police and the National Guard throughout the first weeks of May 1970, with the demonstrations focused particularly on the city’s repressive policies toward the UFO coffeehouse and its supporters at the college.75 Russell House was the center of the storm on campus, as the building became, much like the UFO coffeehouse itself, a physical symbol for the students’ struggle against authority. A series of escalating confrontations at Russell House eventually devolved into violence, with hundreds of students tear-gassed and beaten by National Guardsmen on May 11 and 12.

  While antiwar rallies at USC had historically drawn very small crowds on campus, the demonstrations in 1970 against Foard and the police brought thousands of students to Columbia’s streets. Even traditionally conservative campus institutions like fraternities and sororities joined in protests against police harassment after Governor Robert McNair asserted that “dorms are not sanctuaries” and authorized police to enter student housing buildings to search for drugs.76 Just as in the Fort Jackson Eight case, the majority of student demonstrators and their sympathizers were not dedicated radicals. Many had never been to a demonstration before. They saw the attack on the UFO coffeehouse and the police occupation of the university as parts of a disturbing trend in Columbia that directly threatened its citizens’ constitutional liberties.

  As a local historian notes, “The antiwar movement in Columbia peaked and collapsed during the first part of 1970.”77 The UFO coffeehouse was a significant factor in that peak and collapse. During its two years of existence in Columbia, it was known, for better or worse, as the center of the city’s developing counterculture and antiwar movements. The coffeehouse’s evolution through several different distinct phases reflects the chaotic landscape of political and cultural possibilities that defined the era. The severe repression it faced, and the specific shape that repression took in Columbia, demonstrates how city, state, and federal authorities saw the coffeehouse’s presence as extremely threatening. Its final collapse in a public trial helped trigger the largest student insurrection in the city’s history.

  When Fred Gardner opened the UFO in January 1968, just two years earlier, he certainly anticipated that an explicitly antiwar, counterculture coffeehouse would cause a stir in Columbia. That was, of course, part of its intended purpose. Arriving in town around the same time that the Orangeburg massacre brought national media attention to South Carolina’s racial conditions, the coffeehouse quickly became popular among civil rights activists, dissident college students, and antiwar soldiers from Fort Jackson, who immediately employed the space as a safe house for political discussion and organization.78 The chapel pray-in action, the formation of GIs United Against the War in Vietnam, and the defense of the Fort Jackson Eight case were all centrally planned at, and supported by, the UFO coffeehouse.

  The UFO’s closing, the prosecution of its staff, and the ensuing police crackdown at USC were all coordinated by the state police, military authorities at Fort Jackson, and the FBI.79 Solicitor John Foard’s public crusade against drugs and youthful radicalism helped him win reelection in the fall of 1970 in a campaign that promoted his closing of the UFO as one of the landmark events in his tenure.80 Although Foard adamantly denied that his prosecution of the UFO was politically motivated and that he had never cooperated with federal authorities, government records detail Foard’s close relationship with army authorities at Fort Jackson as well as substantial contact between Foard’s office and the Committee on Internal Security, which at the time was charged with investigating subversion within the armed forces.81 The coffeehouse’s closure clearly served different purposes for different groups; nevertheless, the structures of power in Columbia, South Carolina, including the U.S. military at Fort Jackson, worked together to achieve the common goal of shutting down the UFO. For GI and civilian activists, the coffeehouse’s forced closing was demoralizing but unsurprising, part of the wave of harassment and repression that every GI coffeehouse project, to varying degrees, experienced throughout the network’s brief existence.

  4: Moving On

  A Changing War, a Changing Army, and a Changing Movement

  Despite the army’s attempts to crush the GI movement, dissent within the ranks is growing, and will continue to grow as Nixon escalates the war in Southeast Asia and intensifies his crackdown here at home. But though expanding rapidly, the GI movement can’t reach its full potential without active civilian support.

  Fatigue Press pamphlet (June 1970)

  NIXON’S WAR

  Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign hinged to a large degree on his promise to de-escalate the nation’s military involvement in Vietnam. Pledging to bring “an honorable end to the war,” Nixon was responding to its deep unpopularity with the American public while simultaneously appealing to the revulsion toward antiwar protests, racial unrest, and counterculture felt by the Americans who made up his “silent majority.”1 After winning the presidency, Nixon and his administration pursued policies that significantly altered both the course of the war and the structure of the American military itself. As GI and civilian activists navigated a rapidly shifting political landscape, the force and direction of military antiwar activism underwent a considerable evoluti
on.

  Nixon’s “Vietnamization” policy substantially rearranged America’s war strategy. To withdraw ground troops, Nixon focused on the air war, placing much more of the burden of fighting on the navy and air force. As this bombing strategy unfolded, political resistance among active-duty soldiers shifted from the army to these other branches. Underground newspapers began appearing in unprecedented numbers at air force and navy bases around the country in 1970, reflecting the specific concerns of servicemen and servicewomen in these newly mobilized branches. The air force especially saw a dramatic rise in the kinds of phenomena that, in the war’s earlier stages, had been concentrated in the army. In 1971, air force desertion rates doubled, and that summer serious incidents of organized insubordination disrupted the operations of five different air force bases.2

  In addition to shifting the war’s direction, Nixon’s administration also took action to abolish the country’s draft system entirely, pledging to convert the military to an all-volunteer system of recruitment at the conclusion of the Vietnam War.3 A diverse public debate had intensified during the 1960s, as the war’s operation raised serious questions about the fairness and efficacy of the draft system.4 The Vietnam-era draft resistance movement, which developed through the 1960s and early 1970s, played a large part in publicizing the system’s racial and economic imbalances, as the sight of young men burning their draft cards, taking refuge in churches, and risking arrest and imprisonment to protest the draft system helped bring the issue to the front of national political debate.5 Over the course of the war, a number of military officials also began to support the idea of converting to an all-volunteer system. The Vietnam War’s unpopularity had created practical problems for the armed forces, as reenlistment numbers began to drop precipitously after 1965.6 With fewer young draftees choosing to stay in the army beyond the minimum requirement, some military leaders worried that the draft was creating an organization with a revolving door of unhappy, unmotivated soldiers, undermining the military’s long-term strength and stability. In the 1968 presidential election, both major candidates supported the end of the draft system.