By late 1966, there were 385,000 American soldiers on the ground in Vietnam, with another 60,000 sailors stationed offshore. More than 6,000 Americans had been killed that year, and another 30,000 wounded. I was a naive sophomore at Memphis State University. I was there rather than at one of the many 'better' schools which had offered me scholarships because I kinda felt I wasn't really ready for prime time, and Memphis State wasn't quite prime time. The summer before I had been nominated by one of my professors to attend a big National Student Association summer seminar, first in Louisville with the other southern kids, then in Madison, where I was assigned the task of writing a paper about the influence of automation and computers on the job opportunities of minorities. I and the rest of the kids who were told we were there because of our brilliance, and we got to meet some of the rock stars of left-leaning political and artsy=fartsy sorts: Saul Alinski, Davis Campbell, and Julian Bond among others. (I had a serious crush on Bond.) Hubert Humphrey gave us a rousing address at the end of the event in Madison. Later I would learn that I had been chosen because I had subscribed to Ramparts Magazine, and that rather than being funded by the Field Foundation, as had been claimed, the whole shindig was an agent provocateur operation run by the CIA.
But in the fall of 1966, I wondered why my luggage had been searched on the train from Louisville to Madison, but didn't expect it had been done by my government. I was still romantic and clueless. I still thought that Kennedy had been a 'good' president, and that congressmen thought about the decisions they made with some care and wisdom. (Having Bill Fulbright as my Senator probably skewed my perception. I considered E. C. Gathings to be bad guy in a regular sort of way, but I never wondered what it was he 'Took', and the farmers liked him, it seemed, and my grandmother liked his wife. (I don't know if it was the wife who posed naked for magazines on bear skin rugs.) So, when there began to be protests against the war in Vietnam, and the Commercial Appeal published an editorial boasting how much wiser Memphians were than the citizens of Cleveland, I did what any romantic young clueless kid who had been told he was brilliant would do: I wrote a letter to the editor.
In my letter to the editor the Memphis Commercial Appeal--'A Beacon of Light to Serve the Mid-South'--I did not criticize the Vietnam War. I suggested rather than perhaps Memphians might not be wise to ignore it, that it was likely to become a really big deal, and that perhaps they should do a bit of research about it--not so easy then, more than thirty years before Google--and that, most importantly, they might consider writing to their congressmen to see what they thought about the growing US involvement in Vietnam. I signed it with my Memphis State address.
Wowsers! The Commercial Appeal published my letter in the Sunday edition. I had achieved the big time. The glitch was that they published it with my parents' address. My parents started getting angry phone calls. The idea that one should write to one's congressman about something more trivial than the farm allotments and subsidies!
I decided to become a big time activist, since I was already getting the flack. I organized a 'write-in march'. I put posters up around town suggesting that people might write to their congressmen about the US involvement in Vietnam, and that we might gather at Union and East Parkway and walk to the downtown post office to mail our letters. I even wrote a press release, which I duly took to the local TV stations. Two of them just had in-boxes, but the Scripts-Howard station--the Beacon of Light guys--had a receptionist who took my paper and asked me what it was. I said it was a news release. I was told that nothing was news unless they decided it was news. A few days later about twenty stalwart US citizens gathered to walk to the post office. Many more people, it seemed, were interested in furtively photographing us, and occasionally throwing rotten eggs at us. I know, a cliche, but true.
We mailed our letters. I and a few friends had lunch at Britlings--I always got the cod and the vanilla pudding, and went home for the next day in the life. On the next day in the life, two men in cheap hats parked their brown Chevrolet Biscayne with small hubcaps outside my apartment and just about never left. My telephone began to make strange noises. The Commercial Appeal published another editorial about the Vietnam War, calling us rebels who had written letters to congress a 'small group of nobodies'. Although my room mate and I had never been late for our rent, we were told that our lease could not be renewed. Memphis State wrote me to say that they could not re-admit me the following year, even though I was a National Merit Scholar with a gradepoint of about 3.8, but they would find my transcript if I wanted to transfer.
There are a lot of other embellishments I could add to this story, including how Frank Zappa's Susie Creamcheese was the daughter of the Memphis police chief, who bragged to her that he has put one of her friends under the jail, which was how we found out what had happened to him and therefore could get him out, but this little amusement is already longer than the 15 seconds one is allotted in the 21st. century. But I was reminded of it when I was appalled by yesterday's photograph of Mark Zuckerberg and Emmanuel Macron sucking (zucking?) up to each other yesterday. They wore better suits than the guys in the cheap Chevrolet, but they jogged my memories of the good old days when the data leaks and spying and abuse were less well known.
I am, I suppose, still romantic and naive. I expect better of us. But we ain't changed much. What has changed is that the truth is not only out there, but not so hard to find if we are willing to look for it. Jesus is reported to have said, 'know the truth, and the truth shall make you free'. But we seem to value border walls or 'free health care' over freedom.
*smiling* and *sighing*
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