“I just want to stay around and observe what is going on,” I replied trying to use a non-confrontational voice.
“Why? What do you suspect?” he countered gruffly.
“We have learned about police brutality from some victims and we want to make sure nothing like that happens here.” I tried to ignore his increasing irritation.
“You can stay if you like, but you won’t see anything,” he muttered, turning his back to me. He was clearly annoyed by my presence, and I was glad the confrontation was over. He was right—we saw nothing. In the booking room everything was orderly, but when the police took those arrested into a back room where we were not allowed to follow, we had no way of telling what happened. We learned from the experience to be more realistic in our planning, but symbolically it was an important show of solidarity with the black community. It was becoming clear to me how long and painful the struggle for racial harmony was going to be.
Another issue of growing importance and public concern was the US military expansion in Vietnam. Americans for Democratic Action continued to support the war and it led me to resign my membership and sever all contact. In its place, as the conflict in Vietnam escalated, I became active in the Clergy and Laity Concerned. The group was formed in 1965 by the National Council of Churches and was headquartered in New York City. The organization first became widely known in 1967 when it cosponsored a White House demonstration in conjunction with the Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. I made frequent trips to Washington, DC, during this time to demonstrate, meet with legislators, and attend conferences. Once I spearheaded a protest march in Hackensack, New Jersey, which led to my election as president of the Bergen County Council of Churches. Laypeople and clergy in the Newark diocese of the Episcopal Church who opposed the war proposed resolutions to end the conflict at their Annual Convention, and in 1968 I made a particularly impassioned appeal from the floor to pass such a resolution. I was moving further from my early profile in England as the shy, sometimes lonely “Czech Boy.” I thought the meaning of my life had started to reveal itself. My objectives seemed more clear: to interpret, integrate, and now act in accordance with my convictions about human rights and world peace. But the declaration I chose to make before a large gathering at the 1968 Convention showed my discontent publicly, which later came “home to roost” with leaders of the denomination I was serving. In that short speech, I pleaded for the convention to support a resolution to end the unwarranted US interference in a civil war in Vietnam. Those remarks played a role in conferring upon me a new, more controversial image and taking me to another crossroad.
Based on my convictions about the Vietnam War, I was one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey sedition statute, N.J.Rev.Stat. § 2 A:148-22, which we argued had a chilling effect on the free expression of citizens’ right to protest. We continued to demonstrate in the streets and won the case.
The effects of the war in Vietnam were brought directly home to me one evening when two marines came to the Vicarage and asked if I would accompany them to the home of an Episcopal family in town whom I did not know. I was told their son had been killed in action and the marines had to break this news to the parents; they wanted a clergyman with them. I felt compelled to go but could not find words of comfort that did not sound hollow in my attempt to assuage the grief brought on that family. The inability of either the representatives of the military or of the church to offer meaningful comfort was heartrending. The three of us did not prolong our stay, sensing that the parents needed to deal with their loss alone. For a long time afterward I pondered why, standing there next to the family, I became so inarticulate. All I could think is how terrible and unnecessary was the loss of those parents’ son and the war itself; and the visit made a deep impression on me. I felt a kinship with them as I thought back to members of my own family and our friends and neighbors in Prague who perished or were forever changed as a result of the world war fought twenty-five years earlier.
But parish work also had its lighter moments. I was conscientious about calling on the shut-in, the sick and the elderly. One elderly man who suffered from emphysema lived on the top floor of a three-family house. I often climbed the long, rickety back staircase to visit him in the late afternoon. He was always glad to see me and talked nonstop to the point that I was required to say little or nothing. Several times I found myself nodding off. I was chagrined, but fortunately he took it with good humor.
I did enjoy preaching and frequently gave as illustrations events that currently stirred society and the world. I found writing sermons to be a creative form of self-expression and enjoyed developing a theme. As subjects for my texts I chose mainly the teachings and parables of Jesus and the condemnations by Old Testament prophets of the uncaring rich and powerful. One time when I was in the pulpit waxing eloquently about the misguided US policy in Vietnam, a man suddenly shot up out of his seat red-faced and huffed loudly for everyone to hear, “Bullshit!” He stared for a moment at me and the bewildered parishioners then walked slowly and deliberately down the aisle and left the church. I recovered and resumed my sermon before a congregation that sat in complete silence to the end. Later I visited the man when he was ill in the hospital, but neither of us mentioned the incident and he said he appreciated my visit.
The ministry had its surprises, too. A knock on our door one night revealed a tall, good-looking black man, just arrived from Trinidad, who had no place to live or even to sleep that night. Since the vicarage had a spare room in the attic, we offered it to him on a temporary basis. He gratefully accepted and stayed several days before making contact with friends in Brooklyn and left to accept their hospitality. Several months later, after I had lost touch with him, we saw him coming down the street with a large object hoisted on his shoulder. He proved to be an excellent cabinetmaker and had designed a gift he presented to us—a hanging wall desk using quality walnut to blend with our other furniture. This show of gratitude delighted the family, and we welcomed the useful piece he made for our home. His thoughtfulness was especially touching considering the small deed we thought we did for him in providing an unused room for a short time.
A later occupant of that room was Harry Moniba, a native of Liberia. He was a PhD candidate at New York University and needed a place to live while he made the short commute from East Rutherford to New York City to attend classes. At that time the Newark diocese had a close relationship with the Episcopal Church in Liberia, and I offered the attic room as a place to live for a Liberian student. Harry was born in Bolahun, Liberia, where the Holy Cross Order, a Benedictine Anglican monastic community, had a mission with a school he attended. Harry was identified as a bright student and was brought to America to further his studies. His presence in our family for almost two years was exciting and heartwarming. He performed tricks with his “magic ring” and had us in stitches with imitations of TV and radio ads. Our kids loved Harry. He seldom ate with us, though, preferring to make his own food at about three o’clock in the morning when he finished studying. He had several close Liberian student friends and when they came to visit their infectious laughter could be heard throughout the neighborhood. I developed a life-long relationship with the Moniba family.
In the Episcopal Church the minister has discretion to use church buildings as he sees fit. The church in East Rutherford had a large free-standing parish hall, and I opened it to the larger community to hold dances for young people. Another use for the hall was as a voting location. One day I heard that an amateur theater company was denied a place to rehearse and perform because it wanted to produce a play called The Tunnel of Love. It was considered by some as too risqué. Since the parish hall was vacant and had a small stage, I offered the company the use of the hall, and the play was performed there. Thinking back, I wouldn’t doubt that some of our own parishioners attended the mildly off-color play, but there were those in the community who disapproved
. During the short run of the play I received several telephone calls from radio stations asking me for a comment about what prompted me to take such a “brave” stand. I was pleased that the episode was forgotten after the play closed. On another occasion I invited a peace march to use the sanctuary as a resting place. That decision, too, met with some opposition. One morning I found a Molotov cocktail on our front lawn, but luckily the fuse had gone out and it failed to explode. I took it to the police who were polite but clearly not interested. Discarded Molotov cocktails must have been a common find for them in those days of protest.
Four of us clergy members conducted many parish meetings and conferences about making the Church more relevant within contemporary society. I tried to apply our insights to the two small missions I was serving, both located near larger Episcopal parishes. I felt that it was poor use of scarce resources to keep these churches open for such a small group of people when they could easily attend other churches a short distance away. I sought to close the Delawanna Church, as its membership had declined to very few attendees. It had stayed in operation only with a significant subsidy from the diocese. I reasoned that the few parishioners could transfer to one of the nearby parishes. But at a parish meeting, the bishop, who seemed to support the plan earlier, changed his mind about closing the church. It appeared to me that he was more concerned about preserving property than focusing on how to allocate limited resources more effectively. I now understood how difficult it was for the Church to change both itself and respond to society. After this experience, my disillusion with the Church grew. A few years later the church in Delawanna was sensibly sold by the diocese and the parish was disbanded.
After five years at these two churches, I felt it was time to move on. I approached the bishop about a new assignment and was told candidly, “with your controversial image I can’t place you anywhere.” I let that sink in, then told myself that at least I knew where I stood; and at the end of 1968 I vowed that a year hence I would be elsewhere.
Again I faced my vocational choices as I thought about a new direction. I wondered where I belonged and how I should continue to shape the life I was saved to live. By May of 1969 I had received three distinctly different job offers. I could become the executive director of a social service center serving about one thousand families in the black community in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Or, I could be the assistant priest at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Newark, New Jersey, which had just merged with a mainly African and Caribbean American parish. The expanded cathedral congregation had recently chosen an African American dean to lead it, and he sought a white assistant who shared his views and values. My third option was to develop a new program at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, to “build bridges” between the college and the community.
The location of the jobs, in Scranton, Newark, and Hartford, was not a primary consideration between the three positions for me, so location wasn’t a deciding factor. The choice I needed to make depended on what type of institution was the best fit for me. Which one could I ascertain would be the most consistent agent for social change?
The position in Scranton appealed to me but there were drawbacks. I thought of a community center as ameliorating conditions rather than addressing systemic changes, which I was convinced were needed. A social service agency did not seem to me to be the most effective institution to work through. Also, I felt that a center serving the black community should have a black director and I pointed this out to the search committee. On these grounds I rejected the Scranton offer and was convinced I made the right decision.
The obstacle to the post at Trinity Cathedral in Newark was the institutional Church. I was disenchanted with the Church after my five years as parish priest. The disillusionment was over not only the Church’s lack of commitment to social justice and peace but also its unwillingness to change its own structures. I made the decision to walk away from the Church and the parish ministry.
Although I had no experience with higher education since my student days, I regarded colleges and universities as the one institution that might be willing to exercise its influence to improve social conditions. I wondered later how I could have been so naive! But the challenge of working with students, several of whom participated in the interview process at Trinity College, appealed to me and I believed their actions could lead to promoting the cause of social justice that was so important to me. I chose the Trinity College option, and we moved to Hartford. My hopes were high that this newly created and largely undefined position would lead to the fulfillment I was seeking.
Chapter Eleven: Being an Educator and an Activist, 1969–1979
DOES REPRESENTING AN educational institution of higher learning such as Trinity College justify using the term “educator” to describe oneself? I pondered this as I drove up the hill to the college on a pleasant August day in 1969. I was eager to bring my new position into clearer focus and expand the vague job description presented at my interview earlier that year. I walked by the impressive Trinity Chapel, constructed in Gothic style reminiscent of English churches I saw as a boy. I looked up at the traditional rose window and flanking towers with small stone ball-flowers attached like little noses and commonly used as a decorative motif on the towers and spires of monumental medieval cathedrals. Beyond the chapel was an expansive lush green lawn with well-chosen shade trees and a paved walkway leading to students’ living areas, offices, and meeting halls. Architecturally, much of Trinity College recalls historic sites from the Middle Ages that I visited and was impressed by during my years in England. I remember as a youth gawking at the finely detailed stone carvings on my first visit to Lincoln Cathedral when I lived on the IVSP farm in Lincolnshire. This bucolic campus where I was now employed was built on the upper part of the hill and contrasted with pockets of deterioration that defined the Hartford neighborhoods situated at the lower elevations of the area. I wondered how one begins to create meaningful programs to link these two disparate settings. Mulling over the challenges ahead I found myself wondering, again, if I might be a fish out of water—the feeling I had earlier while preparing for the ministry.
The job I had accepted was as director of the Office of Community Affairs. One aspect of the newly created position immediately appealed to me: the college had given no specific expectations of what I should focus on. I interpreted this to mean I was to carve out and define my role myself; and, indeed, I was given the freedom and latitude to do so. My initial conversations with people on campus, in the nearby neighborhood, and in the larger city beyond, convinced me that there was a huge gulf between those who occupied the college grounds and people who lived on the other side of the tall fence that enclosed the academic bastion. The accepted interpretation of this physical separation seemed to be that there were two distinct worlds in that part of the city. I learned that most residents who lived and worked in the area around the campus had never been on Trinity’s grounds even once. By the same token there were people on campus who avoided the neighborhood and thought it unnecessary for the college to be concerned with it.
A crucial question became how much was the college committed to change? The impetus for creating the office that I staffed came directly from a student action in April 1968, when a group of them locked up the trustees of the college and demanded that Trinity become more responsive to students and the needs of the city. Subsequently, the college applied for a grant to the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving to create my Office of Community Affairs. The official rationale for funding was to build bridges between Trinity College and Hartford and its residents, but not as obvious was the administration’s desire to manage the students and channel their energy “more acceptably.”
A test of the college’s commitment came two years later when funds from the grant were about to expire and Trinity had to decide whether to discontinue the office or support it with its own funds. I had accepted the position with full knowledge that nothing was assured beyond two years, but despite the lack of jo
b security we decided to buy a house in the integrated Blue Hills neighborhood of Hartford.
Our decision to locate in Blue Hills was influenced by a contact at Trinity who lived in Blue Hills and our attorney, the state representative for that area. Soon after we moved, Blue Hills began experiencing a major demographic change, and neighborhood issues moved to center stage. The largely Jewish population in the area was aging, and many long-time residents were moving out. Young black families began to move in. The realtors, hoping for quick profits, tried to induce panic selling among non-black homeowners, but many residents responded by putting signs on their lawns stating “We won’t sell.” They were courageously committed to keeping their neighborhood integrated.
I was elected to the board of the Blue Hills Civic Association (BHCA) shortly after we moved in. The Association proved to be an entrée for me to meet Hartford’s political and community leaders. In 1969 Hartford experienced the last of four consecutive summers of racial unrest. The board of the BHCA met with the city manager, the chief of police, and leaders of the black community to discuss police brutality, as it had become a major issue and remained at the forefront of discussions for the next three decades.
By 1972 through 1974, the Blue Hills neighborhood was rapidly tipping to majority black ownership. The BHCA spun off a subsidiary called the Blue Hills Housing Services Corporation and I served on its board as well. We tried various ways to keep the neighborhood biracial, even creating a bumper sticker designed to attract suburban commuters that said “Blue Hills Commuters Don’t!” since Blue Hills residents did not have to commute—already being in the city. But nothing could stop the white exodus, and by the mid-1970s Blue Hills was predominantly an African American area.
My Train to Freedom Page 10