Mr. Robeson: I have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. I invoke the Fifth—
Mr. Arens: I suggest, Mr. Chairman, that the witness be directed to answer that question.
The Chairman: You are directed to answer the question.
Mr. Robeson: I invoke the Fifth.
Mr. Scherer: The witness talks very loud when he makes a speech, but when he invokes the Fifth Amendment I cannot hear him.
Mr. Robeson: I invoked the Fifth Amendment very loudly. You know I am an actor, and I have medals for diction.
Mr. Scherer: Will you talk a little louder?
Mr. Robeson: I can talk plenty loud, yes. [Almost shouting now.] I am noted for my diction in the theater.
Mr. Ahrens: Who are Mr. and Mrs. Vladimir P. Mikheev? Do you know them?
Mr. Robeson: I have not the slightest idea, but I invoke the Fifth Amendment.
. . .
Mr. Robeson: To whom am I talking?
The Chairman: You are speaking to the Chairman of this Committee.
Mr. Robeson: Mr. Walter?
The Chairman: Yes.
Mr. Robeson: The Pennsylvania Walter?
The Chairman: That is right.
Mr. Robeson: Representative of the steelworkers?
The Chairman: That is right.
Mr. Robeson: Of the coal-mining workers and not United States Steel, by any chance? A great patriot.
The Chairman: That is right.
Mr. Robeson: You are the author of all of the bills that are going to keep all kinds of decent people out of the country.
The Chairman: No, only your kind.
Mr. Robeson: Colored people like myself, from the West Indies and all kinds. And just the Teutonic Anglo-Saxon stock that you would let come in.
The Chairman: We are trying to make it easier to get rid of your kind, too.
Mr. Robeson: You do not want any colored people to come in?
The Chairman: Proceed.
SOURCE: U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings on June 12, 1956 (84th Cong., 2d sess. [Washington: Government Printing Office, 1956]).
GOLD COUNTED IN FORT KNOX
One of the least serious charges ever made against the New Deal Democrats was that they had stolen the gold in Fort Knox. Only a few crackpots believed the accusation. But in 1953 the Daughters of the American Revolution forced Dwight Eisenhower, the first Republican president in twenty years, to have the gold counted. Investigators found that the Fort contained $30,442,415,581.70 worth of the precious metal. That was ten dollars less than it should have been. Mrs. Georgia Clark, treasurer of the United States under the Democrats, sent the government a check to cover the loss.
SOURCE: Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade—And After: America, 1945–1960 (New York: Vintage, 1960), p. 239.
HOWARD HUNT AND THE COMMUNISTS
In 1954, E. Howard Hunt was in Guatemala helping overthrow the anti-American government that had recently come to power. The future Watergate burglar was one of the leading CIA agents involved in the coup against the leftist government. Just before he departed from the country, Hunt revealed a soft streak and ordered a small band of prisoners set free rather than shot.
Afterwards Hunt told friends that that was the greatest mistake of his life. One of the prisoners he freed, he later learned, was Ché Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary. Hunt swore that he would never again succumb to feelings of compassion.
SOURCE: Douglas Hallett, “A Low-Level Memoir of the Nixon White House,” New York Times Magazine, October 20, 1974, p. 39.
THE DAY AMERICA DIDN’T PULL THE TRIGGER ON VIETNAM
On the morning of April 3, 1954, a Saturday, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles summoned eight leaders of Congress to the State Department for a secret meeting. The secretary began by striking an authoritative note. “The President,” he said, “has asked me to call this meeting.” The legislators fidgeted nervously. Dulles went right to the point. The situation in French Indochina, Dulles declared, had become critical. Thus, the President wanted a joint congressional resolution allowing him to use air and naval forces to save the French.
Arthur Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stepped forward. He pointed to a map on the wall. Dienbienphu had been under siege for three weeks. At any moment it might fall. As a matter of fact, it may already have fallen—communications were so bad the administration was unsure what was happening. And if Dienbienphu fell, Indochina would fall, and with it Free Asia.
Dulles again. If America did not act and act fast, the West would be forced out of Asia. The French barely had enough strength to evacuate their men. They could not be relied on.
Radford once more. Two hundred planes from the carriers Essex and Boxer, and more planes from the Philippines, could do the job. A neat, single strike and Dienbienphu could be rescued.
Then the questions began. Would this mean war? Yes. What if the neat, single strike did not work? Well, the United States would have to find some other way to save Dienbienphu. Would land forces be resorted to? Radford wouldn’t say. Then a very important question: “Does this plan have the approval of the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?”
“No,” said Radford.
“How many of the three agree with you?”
“None.”
“How do you account for that?”
“I have spent more time in the Far East than any of them and I understand the situation better.”
Lyndon Johnson, the minority leader of the Senate, asked a few questions. Had Dulles sought the support of other nations? Had he gotten it? Would other countries help in the fighting? Johnson remarked that the United States certainly would want to avoid another Korea, that it would be absolutely wrong to try to go it alone. Dulles answered that he had not asked any other country for help.
Suddenly the room exploded with questions. No allies? What about the United Nations? And Britain? Finally, the meeting came to a close, all the legislators agreeing on one central point. If the United States could not get allies, it should not go to war.
Dulles spent two weeks looking for allies but could not find any. Most important, he could not persuade Britain to support the proposed United States action.
Lyndon Johnson’s questions had undermined Dulles’s entire plan—no allies, no war. In the middle of March the members of the National Security Council had voiced the same concern as LBJ. But Dulles had ignored the council’s opinion, as he safely could. But Dulles could not ignore Johnson. Without him, there could be no war.
A decade later, however, war came, under the leadership of the man who, more than anyone else, was responsible for keeping the United States out of war in 1954, Lyndon Johnson.
SOURCE: Chalmers Roberts, “The Day We Didn’t Go to War,” Reporter, September 14, 1954, pp. 31–35.
VERTICAL INTEGRATION
Integration posed great problems for some Southern communities. In Danville, Virginia, blacks had never used the main public library. Until the 1954 Brown decision, no one in Danville had ever considered the possibility that they might want to use the all-white building. Now the Supreme Court had ruled race discrimination in public facilities unconstitutional. The main library’s “whites only” policy must be illegal, but no one knew exactly what real-life changes the high-court ruling might precipitate. Blacks had never tried to enter the building. Danville librarians, as well as the rest of the nation, would have to wait and see how the integration decision would affect America and the South.
But not every American waited. Harry Golden, founder and editor of the Charlotte, North Carolina, Carolina Israelite, proved more than willing to publish ideas designed to ease the court-ordered mixture of races. One of his more brilliant visions for school integration was described in an article entitled “The Vertical Negro Plan.” The idea was simple. Whites and blacks throughout the South stood at the same grocery and supermarket counters; they deposited money at the same bank teller’s windows; they walked through the
same dime and department stores; they paid phone and light bills to the same clerk; they even stood at the same drugstore counter together. Only when a black stopped being “vertical” and tried to sit down did Southern whites start complaining. A black who served tables in an elegant restaurant was more than welcome, as long as he remained on his feet and did not attempt to receive service himself. Obviously, then, wrote Golden, the state legislature should pass an amendment providing only desks for public schools. No chairs. With only “vertical Negroes” integrating a school, no Southerner could possibly have any basis for complaint. In addition, millions of dollars would be saved on the cost of chairs.
A short while after the publication of Golden’s article, conflict began at the Danville Public Library. One afternoon a small group of high school–age blacks entered the library and exercised their civil rights by actually studying at one of the large desks in the center of the building. At closing time they quietly put down their work and left. They did not even try to check out any books.
The building was closed for several months while library officials considered possible solutions to their problem. No one wanted to alienate any longtime users. On the other hand, the high-court ruling was very clear concerning a matter such as this. Finally, in a desperate attempt to please everyone, the library reopened—minus every chair in the building.
The Danville Public Library.
A week or two later someone must have informed library officials that the “Vertical Negro Plan” had been a spoof. The chairs were quietly and unceremoniously returned. Danville blacks, however, remained welcome not only to use the facility, but even to take out books.
SOURCE: Lecture by Payton McCrary at Vanderbilt University, March 1978.
AMERICA CHOOSES AN AMBASSADOR
Ambassadorships are always assigned to the best possible candidates. Certainly President Dwight Eisenhower had only this in mind when he nominated chain-store president Maxwell H. Gluck to be America’s ambassador to Ceylon. Gluck, not famous for his experience in international politics or diplomacy, was better known for personally contributing some twenty to thirty thousand dollars to the Republican 1956 campaign chest. Senate questioning of Gluck during his confirmation hearings was led by William Fulbright.
Mr. Fulbright: What are the problems in Ceylon you think you can deal with?
Mr. Gluck: One of the problems are the people there. I believe I can—I think I can establish, unless we—again, unless I run into something that I have not run into before—a good relationship and good feeling toward the United States.
Mr. Fulbright: Do you know our Ambassador to India?
Mr. Gluck: I know John Sherman Cooper, the previous Ambassador.
Mr. Fulbright: Do you know who the Prime Minister of India is?
Mr. Gluck: Yes, but I can’t pronounce his name. [The name was Nehru.]
Mr. Fulbright: Do you know who the Prime Minister of Ceylon is?
Mr. Gluck: His name is unfamiliar now, I cannot call it off.
Reporters later asked Eisenhower if Gluck’s strongest credential for the ambassadorship had not in fact been his thirty-thousand-dollar donation. “Unthinkable,” snapped Ike. “Now, as to the man’s ignorance. . . . Of course, we knew he had never been to Ceylon, he wasn’t thoroughly familiar with it; but certainly he can learn.”
After one year in Ceylon, Gluck resigned.
SOURCE: Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1963), p. 10.
IKE AT GETTYSBURG
Intellectuals and President Eisenhower were not cut from the same mold. Ike’s definition of an intellectual was “a man who takes more words than is necessary to say more than he knows.” Intellectuals countered by equating Eisenhower with the mundane and complacent “Leave It to Beaver” 1950s America, a place where, as satirist Jules Feiffer remarked, “satire doesn’t stand a chance against reality any more.” In 1957, Doris Fleeson, a Washington reporter, rewrote the Gettysburg Address as Ike would have delivered it had he been there after the battle instead of Lincoln:
“I haven’t checked these figures, but 87 years ago, I think it was, a number of individuals organized a governmental setup here in this country, I believe it covered certain eastern areas, with this idea they were following up, based on a sort of national independence arrangement. . . .
“[W]e can’t sanctify this area—we can’t hallow, according to whatever individual creeds or faiths or sort of religious outlooks are involved, like I said about this particular area. . . . The way I see it, the rest of the world will not remember any statements issued here, but it will never forget how these men put their shoulders to the wheel and carried this idea down the fairway.”
SOURCE: Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade—And After (New York: Vintage, 1960), pp. 304–5.
PRESIDENTS ARE REALLY NOT NEEDED
Republican Senator Kenneth Keating: “Roosevelt proved a man could be President for life; Truman proved anybody could be President; and Eisenhower proved you don’t need to have a President.”
SOURCE: Leon Harris, The Fine Art of Political Wit (New York: Dutton, 1964), p. 228.
SPEAKER RAYBURN’S TACT
In the 1950s the reigning monarch of the House of Representatives was Texan Sam Rayburn. When Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaiian of Japanese descent who lost an arm during World War II, came to Washington in 1959 as his state’s first congressman, he sought out Speaker Rayburn. Inouye introduced himself formally to the Speaker as Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii. Rayburn replied, “I know who you are. How many one-armed Japs do you think we have around here?”
SOURCE: Steven Gerstel, newspaper reporter, Washington, D.C., in a personal interview with Richard Shenkman at the Capitol, January 1979.
MODERN AMERICAN JUSTICE
Critics often claim that the modern American penal system is a tortuous bureaucratic maze where justice is rarely realized. In 1925 sixteen-year-old Stephen Dennison of upper New York State was convicted of stealing a five-dollar box of candy. Sentenced to the state reformatory, he was later moved to the state penitentiary. There he broke minor rules, which added years to his term. In 1959 he finally gained his release, thirty-four years after committing only one crime, stealing a box of candy.
Seven years later the Court of Appeals of New York awarded Dennison $115,000 in an attempt to compensate him for his mistreatment. The court stated, however, that “no amount of money could compensate Dennison for the injuries he suffered and the scars he bears.”
SOURCE: Jay Robert Nash, Bloodletters and Badmen (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1973), p. 153.
THE SANE GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA
Few modern governors must be declared sane to keep their job. But in 1959 Governor Earl Long of Louisiana, brother of the late demigod Huey Long, was forcibly kidnapped from office and sent to a mental institution. Less than four weeks later, through sheer determination and skillful political maneuvers, he was back in office—sanely firing those responsible for his incarceration.
Long’s health had seriously declined during the May legislative session. A bill to disfranchise blacks and poor whites had tremendous support, and many have suggested that Long’s untiring efforts to block removals from voter registration lists led directly to his health problems. Others claim that the disfranchisement battle merely coincided with the governor’s failing health.
On May 27, Long delivered two long-winded diatribes against his political opponents. His physical health, he later freely admitted, was not good. Earl’s wife, Blanche, however, thought her husband was on the verge of lunacy. She summoned doctors and relatives to the Governor’s Mansion, and together they decided Earl needed immediate psychiatric attention and should be sent to a mental clinic in Galveston, Texas. When the medics arrived to take Long away, the governor battled furiously. Even after he was strapped to a stretcher and given sedatives, six men were required to keep Long in place. Blanche signed a formal petition requesting the governor’s treatment to prevent Earl’s leaving th
e hospital.
Governor Long fought the proceedings to have him declared insane, signing his name and describing himself “Governor in exile, by force and kidnapping.” From his hospital window he shouted to reporters, “I’m no more crazy than you are.” But Long also worked at getting out of the Galveston hospital. He became a model patient and, within about two weeks, Blanche withdrew any objection to her husband’s release. Earl voluntarily agreed to enter a clinic in New Orleans.
Less than twenty-four hours after his arrival in New Orleans, Governor Long walked out of the clinic, got in a car, and started driving toward Baton Rouge, the state capital. His wife, Blanche, however, raced ahead of him and made arrangements to have the governor committed to the Southeast Louisiana Hospital at Mandeville. When Long reached the capital, he was “examined” by the East Baton Rouge Parish coroner and a local psychiatrist for forty-five minutes, then committed by a district judge who had been one of Long’s political rivals. The governor was taken by police to Mandeville.
For eight days Long plotted his release. A habeas corpus hearing to decide on his release was scheduled for June 26. On the eve of the hearing Earl filed a separation suit against his wife. Legally, she could no longer obtain her husband’s commitment to any hospital. A tape recording of Long, in which he personally declared he had not been up to par physically but had remained mentally sound, was released to a New Orleans radio station. With the aid of the lieutenant governor and a loyal state senator, Long’s attorney called a meeting of the state hospital board, the board that in a few days would hear the governor’s case, and fired all members who Long felt might hesitate to declare him sane.
The hearing on June 26 lasted fifteen minutes, with the newly appointed superintendent of hospitals, Jess H. McClendon, saying of Earl, “He should be released and I intend to do so.” McClendon, before his appointment, had been a lifelong friend of the governor. The state attorney general joined in the release motion, and Earl, found sane, returned to his duties as Louisiana’s governor. His marriage to Blanche, however, was permanently disrupted. They remained separated until Long’s death in 1960.
One-Night Stands with American History Page 26