Laborers

“Unions were created to make living conditions just a little better than they were before they were created, and the union that does not manifest that kind of interest in human beings cannot endure, it cannot live.”  USWA President Philip Murray

 Philip Murray in 1936

Scottish-born Philip Murray (1886-1952) came to America in 1904 with his father, a coal miner. Young Philip also went to work in a mine, first in Scotland and then in the Pittsburgh area but was fired in 1904 for punching a manager who tried to cheat him by altering the weight of the coal he had mined.  He went on to become the president of a United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) local and in time a close associate of UMWA president John L. Lewis.  When Lewis formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO), he tapped Murray to head up the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC).  He went on to succeed Lewis as CIO President and in 1942 transformed SWOC into the United Steel Workers of America (USWA), serving as its first president. 

 Lowell Labor Day parade photo by Post-Tribune's Suzanne Tennant

Becca as Mary Poppins; below, Dunes National Park site by George Sladic

The town of Lowell held its hundredth annual Labor Day parade, with Teamster Local 142 president Ted Bilski (also a Lake County Councilman) one of the planners.  Phil came in for the Labor Day weekend to attend a fantasy football draft at Robert Blaskiewicz’s. Toni hosted a sixty-ninth birthday party for Angie’s dad John Teague, who arrived with a cooler of beer left over from James’s graduation party. Beth, up from Carmel, contributed a rhubarb pie.  Toni served ribs, corn of the cob, and rice, plus special meals for Angie (a vegan) and Charles, who doesn’t eat pork.  Becca borrowed my umbrella for an upcoming benefit at which she’ll sing a number from “Mary Poppins.”  In the Hoosier Star vocal competition in LaPorte, next week, she’ll perform “At Last,” made famous by Etta James and covered by Beyonce. Sunday would have been a perfect beach day only I opted to watch the Cubs get shut out for the second day in a row.  Dave stopped in after dropping Phil off, and we got in Acquire and pinochle games – first time in quite a while.

steelworkers on strike in 1949 (above) and 1952 (below)

left, shooting pool at union hall

Philip Murray Building

John and Diane Trafny’s “Downtown Gary, Millrats, Politics, and US Steel” contains photos of Gary Works employees picketing during the 1949 and 1952 steel strikes, as well as two of Philip Murray union hall (exterior and interior) at Fifth and Massachusetts, headquarters for Local 1014 until the 1970s when replaced by McBride Hall on Texas Street near I-65.  In 1959 a 116-day strike ended after President Dwight D. Eisenhower invoked the Taft-Hartley Act. While those three job actions yielded beneficial resulted for workers, by the time of the 1986-87 USX lockout, the longest in steel industry history, union workers were on the defensive.  

Betty LaDuke

On the way to Valparaiso University’s College of Arts building to speak to Liz Wuerffel’s podcast class, I ran into Brauer Museum director Gregg Hertlieb and had time to check out the current gallery exhibit, entitled “Social Justice Revisited” and featuring the impressive work of Betty LaDuke.  The 86-year-old Oregon artist has traveled to 19 African nations and many other so-called Third World countries to learn about and portray regarding food production and migration.  

The podcast class met in a graphic design lab, and the 18 students had their own work stations. I introduced myself and asked each their name and where they from.  One said Peru – Indiana, not South America, I found out later. I discussed oral history as a vital tool for researching workers, immigrants, minority groups, and seniors.  The students’ first assignment is to interview someone from the Calumet Region, so I suggested talking to Regal Beloit workers who had been on strike since late-June or perhaps seniors who go to Banta Center.  I stressed not going into the interview with a long set of questions but rather engaging the subject in a conversation and being flexible and open to the unexpected. I cited mistakes I’d made such as failing to check my equipment and not asking my subject to turn off his TV.

Questioned about doing oral history and other matters, one student who had read the portions of Steel Shavings magazine I had assigned asked if I wrote persuasively.  I said that as a historian, I sought the truth but didn’t try to disguise my point of view.  As Alessandro Portelli put it, oral history must have as one purpose the advancement of social justice; otherwise, what’s the point?  A Korean-born student wondered what, if anything, scholars would find relevant about our present age.  I noted the climate change crisis, the changing nature of work, and ever-increasing advances in technology.  Asked if I thought Trump would get us into a war with Russia or China.  I declined to discuss Trump other than predict that if he thought he needed a war to get re-elected, he’d pick on a nearby weak country (like Reagan invading Grenada) rather than a superpower. I made several references to the VU Flight Paths Project, whose co-directors are Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette.

from left, Liz Wuerffel, Rebekah Arevalo, Christina Crawley, Allison Schuette

I showed a short clip from my interview of Martha Azcona, whose parents were migrant workers who moved to Gary in the early 1950s when she was a pre-schooler. The eldest of seven, Martha talked about hours spent cleaning her sisters’ cloth diapers, insisting on diaper service for her own children, and using disposables for the next generation.  Now that’s social history at its essence! Next came the main reason I brought the DVD.  Suddenly, Martha said, “I don’t know if I should say this but when I was 15, my parents split up because of another woman.” She explained that the “nice Jewish grocers”her dad worked for told him, who had relatives who perished in Nazi “Death Camps” and believed in family above everything, that they’d have to let him go if he didn’t reconcile with his wife.  He refused, and as a consequence, Martha had to delay graduating from Horace Mann high school to join her mother as a migrant worker.

I noticed a German-born student wearing a Philadelphia Eagles jacket.  He had enjoyed the section in Steel Shavings,volume 48, about the Eagles, led by QB Nick Foles, defeating Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to win the Superbowl and the raucous celebration afterwards.  I included this paragraph from a Sports Illustratedarticle:

  The Crisco that state police had lathered onto street poles two weeks earlier had been replaced by hydraulic fluid – so fans simply uprooted the poles from the ground and carried them down the streets on their shoulders.  Others climbed atop traffic lights and surveyed the unprecedented scene unfolding beneath them. Some 2,000 college students marched from Walnut to 30th Street and, en masse, chanted “Fuck Tom Brady” and “Big Dick Nick.”  Other revelers stood atop cars and threw dollar bills into the air.  One man dressed as Santa – a costume that evokes the most ignominious moment in franchise history – crowd-surfed down the road, not too far from where a Christmas tree was set afire. A police horse was stolen and trotted through the city.

I told the student that my fantasy football draft was that evening, and he nodded with approval. I stuck pretty close to what the experts recommended but consulted with Dave and took a couple personal favorites such as QB Carson Wentz and Bears running back Terik Cohen).  Nephew Garrett tried to persuade me to trade Wentz to him, but I replied, “No dice.”

Karen Freeman-Wilson (r) with Joe Buscaino, Kathy Maness, 
and NLC predecessor Mark Stodola, Mayor of Little Rock

IU Northwest hosted a three-day National League of Cities meeting of mayors, as Gary’s Karen Freeman-Wilson is finishing out her one-year term as president of the organization.  I saw nothing about it in either local paper.  In fact, The NWI Times, which opposed her bid for a third term, egregiously claimed it was a distraction from her mayoral duties. 

At Banta Center for duplicate bridge a guy with a guitar setting up to entertain seniors at lunch told me he mainly played upbeat 60s and 70s numbers.  Bridge opponent Ric Friedman recalled some good local bands back then.  I brought up Styx, and Ric claimed he bought a car previously owned by one of the band members with all sorts of special gadgets, including remote control for music. Dottie Hart and I each earned half a master point, finishing with 54% despite a couple hands I wish I could bid or play over.  When opponent Ed Hollander got set and said, “I was screwed,”Dottie replied “And you weren’t even kissed.”  I’d never heard that expression before.  Chuck Tomes mentioned a LaSalle College basketball player, and I noted that NBA great Tom Gola starred for the Philadelphia school when I was a kid and went on to lead the Philadelphia Warriors to a championship in 1956, six years before the franchise moved to San Francisco.

Learning that bridge opponent Don Giedemann was a bowler and that his partner, Judy Selund, was vacationing in Poland, I talked him into subbing for the Electrical Engineers since we were in desperate need for a fifth bowler.  He already knew many Mel Guth Seniors league bowlers. He started slowly but rolled a 230 second game and finished with a 198 average.  Don once carried a 210 average but took several years off when his wife became critically ill.  A 1955 Bishop Noll graduate, he recalled Noll’s basketball team barely losing to Indianapolis Attucks in front of 5,000 fans at Hammond Civic Center.  Led by Oscar Robertson, Attucks would go on to become state champion by defeating Gary Roosevelt, 97-74.  When he heard I’d spoken in a Valparaiso University class, Don said that for seven years he participated in one on public speaking for an exercise of one-on-one disputation.  The Purdue graduate was a manager at LTV and retired in 2001 after 44 years.

Jim Spicer, elated over Green Bay’s NFL victory, 10-3, over the pathetic Bears, posted his joke of the week:

    Doug lived all his life in the Florida Keys and while on his deathbed, knowing his life’s end was near, spoke to his wife, his daughter, two sons, and his doctor. He asked for two witnesses to be present and a lawyer so that he could place in record his last wishes.

    “My son, Andy, you take the Ocean Reef houses. My daughter, Sybil, take the apartments between mile markers 100 and the Tavernier. My son, Jamie, I want you to take the offices over in the Marathon Government Center. Sarah, my dear wife, please take all the residential buildings on the bayside on Blackwater Sound.”
    The lawyer and witnesses were blown away as they didn’t realize his extensive holdings. Doug slipped away and the lawyer said, “Mrs. Pender your husband must have been such a hard-working man to have accumulated all this property.”
    The wife replied, “No, the jerk had a paper route.”

Ron Cohen and I sent the following memo to Vicki Roman-Lagunas, IUN Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs, and Latrice Rosana Booker, dean of the Library

  In the summer of 2020 IU Northwest Archivist Steve McShane will be retiring.  As co-founders and co-directors of the Calumet Regional Archives (CRA), we feel it is imperative to guarantee that he will be replaced by a full time, professional archivist in order to maintain the CRA’s excellence and importance as the most extensive professional Archive in Northwest Indiana, as well as implement plans to establish an IUN campus administrative archive. In order to make sure that Steve (right) will be on hand to acclimate his successor to the job, we are writing to urge that authorization for the position be made as soon as possible in order for a search to commence.        

   Note: Professor James Lane and Ronald Cohen (on left) joined the IUN History Dept. in September 1970. They soon began doing research on Gary and the Calumet Region’s history, which led to collecting historical materials that were initially stored in their offices. When the university began planning the new Library/Conference Center the administration agreed to include a space for the newly created Calumet Regional Archives (CRA). In 1982 the CRA was officially launched with the hiring of Stephen McShane as the full-time archivist. Lane and Cohen have long remained the CRA’s Co-Directors.  Over these last almost forty years the CRA has grown into a massive collection that has been used by countless historians, genealogists, and others from around the world in researching local history, as well as students and faculty. During this time the CRA also expanded its space on the 3rd floor to accommodate the always increasing number of collections.

Around the Region

Gary sites: sunset at Marquette Park & inland marsh, photos by George Sladic

    “When does a man become a revolutionary?  Just when is that precise instant when he perceives with unmistakable clarity that he is but a humble tenpin in the cosmic bowling game of life.  And others are balls in that game.” Jean Shepherd, “Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters.”

 Johnny Carruthers, Dan Dakich, Matt Lelito

Dakich guards Michael Jordan

At Innsbrook Country Club in Merrillville sportscaster Dan Dakich spoke at the Andrean High School boys basketball banquet.  The 1981 Andrean graduate, who as a junior starred on the a 59ers team that reached the state semi-finals, congratulated the players for winning the class 2A championship.  Famous to Hoosiers fans for holding Michael Jordan to 13 points in IU’s 1984 upset of number 1 ranked North Carolina in the NCAA tournament, Dakich often announces Big Ten games and is especially hard on lackluster defenders. Dakich thanked the players for giving “old guys like me a hell of a thrill this year.”  Pointing out that he still holds the school record for most points in a single game, 49, he challenged sophomore Kyle Ross, who notched 31 against Hammond High, to “break the hell out of it.”  Afterwards, Ross told NWI Timesreporter James Boyd, “What he said motivated me to break that record, and I’m for sure looking forward to that.”  I saw Dakich play numerous times while he was Andrean.  In the state semi-finals against favored New Albany, he scored 32 points, but with no time left on the clock teammate Mike Paulson missed two free throws.  While in college Dakich worked summers in the IUN mailroom and was always affable when interacting with the History department members.

Jim and Marcia Carson were at the Chesterton bridge game after a lengthy vacation in Australian and New Zealand.  They visited the Al Noor Mosque just weeks after a gunman killed 42 Muslims attending Friday prayer. Outside, flowers, messages of hope, and other expressions of condolence were still plentiful.  A man approached Jim and Marcia and offered to take them inside, explaining that he had been at prayer when the assailant started mowing down worshippers right to left and would have been next had not a worshipper, Naeem Rashid, charged at the assailant, sacrificing his life.  It had to have been an incredibly moving experience.  Having been inside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, I could imagine what it was like inside.  Unlike the U.S., where nothing is done in the wake of mass shooting, New Zealand quickly passed gun control legislation. Prime Minister Jacinta Ardem described the mass killing as “one of New Zealand’s darkest days.”

Driving west on 80/94 to IUN, signs warned of long delays due to flood water blocking several lanes near Kennedy Avenue.  Things looked OK at the Ripley exit, but before I could reach the I65 South exit, vehicles appeared to be at a near standstill.  I managed to ride on the apron for half a mile and didn’t get significantly delayed.  We’ve had an incessant downpour for several days, and that stretch of the expressway has been susceptible to flooding.

This NWI Times headline caught my eye: “I couldn’t hold it,” man says after urinating outside [North Porter County] government complex, police say.” Enough said.  Another headline read: “Drunken man arrested for nudity at the Dunes [State Park] after trying to enter others’ tents, police said.”  Dean Bottorff, former Post-Trib headline writer, could have improved on these.

Urban League chapter president Vanessa Allen-McCloud is opposing Merrillville attorney Adam Sedia’s selection by the Lake County Judicial Nominating Commission as one of three finalists to fill a seat on the Superior Court. Allen-McCloud noted that Sedia had posted Facebook messages disparaging Mexicans and Muslim immigrants.  One questioned the integrity of Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an East Chicago native, whom he inaccurately accused of belonging to an organization, the National Council of La Raza, that he compared to the KKK. Sedia subsequently deleted the posts and quit using Facebook.  Even though Lake County Republicans favored Sedia, Governor Eric Holcomb selected Hammond city attorney Kristina Kantar.  Downstate a gunman shot two judges, one critically.  The police first announced that they had just left a strip club and later amended the report to simply identify the crime scene as near a White Castle.

Mayors Karen Freeman-Wilson and Duke Bennett of Terre Haute (above) are holding their breath as Governor Holcomb ponders whether to sign the bill allowing land-based casinos in their cities, in Gary’s case near Route 80/94.  Freeman-Wilson told Dan Carden of the NWI Times:“For us, it’s always been about the ability to develop Buffington harbor into the North American Intermodal Gateway.  The movement of the casino out of this corridor will give up the opportunity to work with the private sector to develop this intermodal facility.  And it doesn’t just create economic opportunity for the city of Gary, but it creates it for all of Northwest Indiana.”

Phyllis Smock took a photo showing Ray with the Mueller Report in one hand and Sam Adams in the other.  He wrote:

    The Mueller Report lists at least a dozen examples of obstruction of justice for which Trump is not charged because a sitting president cannot be indicted, according to Justice Department rules. He is under investigation for his fake charitable foundation, which the State of New York ordered closed for being a money funnel for Trump, pretending to be a charity. And the list goes on. It is no exaggeration to say the President of the United States is a one-man crime wave. Only his position as president, aided by an army of private and government lawyers, have kept him from jail. He is not the only culprit. His hand-picked Cabinet officers have been involved in numerous scandals and abuses of power. People serving at high levels in the executive branch who have tried to speak truth to power have been shown the door, often learning of their firing via Twitter.

    The release of the Mueller Report, even in its redacted form, has set the president on edge to the point that he appears manic and paranoid. He is lashing out in all directions with outrageous charges. When Attorney General Barr preempted the Mueller Report with his own spin on it, declaring the president did not collude with Russians, Trump declared victory and pronounced himself vindicated.  But as the details of the Mueller Report started to sink in with Trump and with the public, Trump changed his tune and played the victim. He reverted to his earlier characterization of the Mueller investigations as a witch hunt. 

    Trump went way too far when he said before a crowd at the National Rifle Association that the Mueller probe was an attempt to overthrow the government tantamount to a coup against him and his administration. He said there was corruption at the highest levels of the Department of Justice. He claimed in his speech before the NRA that he beat back the coup without using a gun. He continued to run down the very government that he was elected to lead. It has never been about the government or the safety and security of the American people, it has always been about him, and how he has been maligned and hounded by Democrats.

Ken Orris came across my Portage Shavings at the library and located me at IUN, saying he had to have it.  I mailed him one free and included my latest, volume 48, more than three times the size of 96-page volume 20, with loads of photos in color and, due to modern technology, printed at a cost less than I paid 28 year ago, when the entire copy had to be re-typed and half-tones cost ten dollars apiece.

Former student Jim Reha, now retired from teaching but a docent at Saginaw Valley Naval maritime Museum on board the naval destroyer “Edson” wrote: “They needed an Army guy to keep the sailors in line. Seriously, I enjoy it greatly.  We even have a former mayor of Bay City as a volunteer.”  Reha also teaches military history to seniors at Saginaw Valley State University and will be speaking on JFK’s wartime experiences at a university luncheon. Toni and I were at Jim and Deb’s wedding, and before he moved away he gave me a series of Time/Lifepictorial histories covering twentieth-century American history decade by decade.

 Dick Maloney, Terry Kegebein, Jimbo, Mel Nelson, Frank Shufran; photo by Bob Fox

My bowling team, the Electrical Engineers finished the season in fourth place, up from fifteenth a year ago. I stuffed myself at the banquet; someone always brings delicious corn pudding, and another provides Polish sausage and sauerkraut in a crock pot.  My Cole slaw was popular; this year I provided a bowl and tongs, which made it more accessible than leaving it in the container.  I got Bob Fox to take a photo of the Electrical Engineers, including Melvin Nelson on the DL since January (between me and Frank Shufran; on my left are Dick Maloney and Terry Kegebein), but minus Joe Piunti, who only missed one week all year. Gene Clifford was sporting a black eye and other facial bruises. Turkey hunting, he tried to switch hands at the last moment, and the rifle recoiled, causing the injuries.  “All I got was feathers,” Clifford said, vowing to go out again if it ever stopped raining. Driving through Lake Station, I saw several homes surrounded by flood water, but Deep River had not closed Ripley Street like 11 years ago.

I finally saw the “Game of Thrones” episode “The Long Night,” with the climactic, hour-long battle scene at Winterfell.  Late-night comics had ridiculed how dark the scenes were, but it ably depicted the fog of war and the terror that the white walkers inspired. It was difficult to keep the three dragons straight and I was left uncertain about the fate of several characters, including Lady Brienne, but I loved that it was – spoiler alert – Arya and not Jon Snow who saved the day and saved the Night King.  Just three episodes to go – sigh.  

Jim Crow

“Three-fourths of the 900,000 African-American veterans who served during World War II were coming home to communities in the old Confederacy.  This was the world of Jim Crow, where black citizens were relegated to the margins of American democracy and expected to be the bootblacks and mudsills of the nation’s economy.” Richard Gergel, “Unexampled Courage”

A recent Washington Post Sunday magazine carried a lengthy article adapted from Steve Luxenberg’s “Separate: The Story of Plessy V. Ferguson and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation” titled” The North, the South, and the Origins of Jim Crow.”  During the 1830s numerous white entertainers donned black face and sang in a parody of what they claimed was black dialect.  The most famous, Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice, dressed in mismatched shoes and threadbare gold pants and billed himself as the “Original Jim Crow.”  “Daddy” Rice performed a ludicrous off-balance jig during a ditty called “Jump Jim Crow” that contained the lines,“Weel about and turn about and do jis so/Eb’ry time I wheel about I jump Jim Crow.” By the end of the decade “jumping Jim Crow” became a synonym for compromising one’s principles and Jim Crow a synonym for separate accommodations in public facilities, such as locomotives.  Historian Luxenberg found an October 12, 1838 notice in the Salem Gazettereferring to the “Jim Crow car at the end of the train.”  Even after the Civil War, in the North as well as Dixie, African Americans were often segregated on trains and steamships; as Luxenberg wrote, “the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson ruling [was] written by a New England-born justice for a 7-1 majority dominated by Northerners.”

Prudence Crandall

In 1832 Canterbury, Connecticut schoolteacher Prudence Crandall, the wife of a minister, admitted 17 year-old African-American Sarah Harris to her private school for girls.  When white parents withdrew their daughters, Crandall, with the support of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, turned her institution into exclusively a boarding school for young women of color until retaliatory actions by townspeople, including nuisance lawsuits and the poisoning of the school’s well, forced the Crandalls to leave town.

Growing up in Fort Washington, PA, I was aware of a small cluster of homes three blocks from us inhabited by black folks who took in foster children from Philadelphia. Some went to my elementary school, and I’d see them wearing clothes my brother and I had outgrown that Midge had given to our cleaning lady Ada Jenkins. In fifth grade my safety patrol corner was a block from where they lived, and I knew many by name.  Bernard Johnson was a playmate. My first encounter with racism, I believe, was when the principal left Charlie Gaskins, the best player in our class, off the softball team.  In seventh grade at Upper Dublin were classmates from the black community of North Hills, and I became friends with Percy Herder and Bernell Nash and had fantasies about five-foot-ten, full-breasted Beatrice Addie Green (even the names seemed exotic, given my white bread suburban upbringing). In the gym locker room I gaped upon spying Percy’s silk, yellow briefs with tiger stripes.  My first epiphany regarding Jim Crow realities was a year later when the Montgomery Bus Boycott began.  A neighbor from Alabama blamed outside agitators, but scenes on TV exposed that as a lie.

 C. Vann Woodward

In grad school at Maryland, C. Vann Woodward’s “The Strange Career of Jim Crow” (1955), based on lectures delivered at the University of Virginia, was must reading and led many of us to Woodward’s more substantial “Origins of the New South, 1877-1913” (1951). In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education(1954) Woodward traced the history of Jim Crow laws, which until the 1890s were more common in the North than in the South, where racial separation in public places was custom rather than law.  Then when Populists began looking to bring African Americans into their movement, conservative “Bourbon” Democrats passed legislation to create, in Woodward’s words, “legally prescribed, rigidly enforced, state-wide Jim Crowism.”

Photographer of urban ruins Cindy C. “Cupcake” Bean, whose shot of a Lake Michigan sunset with steel mills in the background appears in “Gary: A Pictorial History,” wrote: “Crouching in the darkness of an abandoned house, I sat in the middle of a room filled with toys. The sun was sinking casting ominous shadows in the room. I sat next to the horse on springs and looked at it…it sadly stared into nothingness as I photographed it. I felt lost…lost in a room full of toys.”  At first glance the horse on springs appears quite lifelike.

abandoned Glen Park church; photo by Cindy Cupcake

In the Jeopardy category “the 1870s,” I knew four of five answers, including Boss William Marcy Tweed and cartoonist Thomas Nest as the first to  draw images of a donkey for Democrats, but fanned on one about a botanist who developed the russet potato, so-named due to its reddish-brown color.  It was Luther Burbank, but I guessed George Washington Carver.  Known as the “Peanut Man,” Carver also did research on sweet potatoes at Tuskegee Institute but not russet potatoes.  One contestant guessed “Russet.”  Along with Boston Massacre victim Crispus Attucks and educator Booker T. Washington, Carver was extolledduring the Jim Crow era as a nonthreatening Negro, but that should not detract from his remarkable discoveries.

At Chesterton library Steve Luxenberg’s “Separate” was in the New Books section, but I opted for Richard Gergel’s “Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sergeant Isaak Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring.”  On February 12, 1946 (“The Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln’s birthday), Sergeant Isaak Woodard, wearing his army uniform, was returning on a Greyhound bus to his home in Augusta, Georgia upon receiving an honorable discharge after three years of military service as a longshoreman in the Pacific and came under intense fire in New Guinea.  Sitting with a white G.I., passing a bottle back and forth, and talking too loudly to suit a passenger nearby, he was removed by the driver and arrested by Batesburg, South Carolina police chief Lynwood Shull.  While having him in custody, Shull and other police beat Woodard severely with nightsticks, and later Shull jabbed him in the eyes with a billy club for answering “Yes” rather than “Yes sir.” The beating permanently blinded Woodard.    

Isaac Woodard after beating; below, Julian Bond

The outrage mobilized black veterans and led to President Truman desegregating the military by executive order.  After an all-white jury acquitted Shull, conscience-stricken Federal Judge Waring began issuing landmark decisions that challenged Jim Crow laws.  His dissent in a 1951 case pertaining to segregated schools became the model for the unanimousBrown v. Board of EducationSupreme Court judgment overturning the Plessy “separate but equal” precedent  and ordering the Topeka, Kansas school board to desegregate its schools.  The role of the NAACP was crucial in publicizing and litigating the Woodard case.  In “We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal team That Dismantled Jim Crow” (2018) Margaret Edds highlights the role of two NAACP attorneys who developed a legal strategy that found a receptive audience in federal judges in key civil rights cases.

Similar atrocities against returning World War I veterans occurred without such dramatic repercussions.  Woodard’s blinding was not an isolated incident.  In a chapter titled “Reign of Terror” Gergel documents horrendous occurrences in Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee. In the course of his research Gergel came across a statement by Julian Bond that the Isaac Woodard incident triggered the modern civil rights movement. Interviewing the civil rights icon and University of Virginia History professor, Gergel wrote:

 Bond recalled from memory the story of Woodard’s blinding and described a photograph he remembered from his childhood. As Bond described the image, he began to weep openly.  Composing himself, he apologized for the tears but stated that after all the years, “I still weep for this blinded soldier.”

A decade later, a photo of Emmett Till’s mutilated body would shame the nation and provide propaganda for the Soviet Union.

Gergel’s use of the word mudsills, meaning those at the lowest social level, led me to this quotation by Abraham Lincoln, whose background was not far removed from those whom he described:

 By the 'mud-sill' theory it is assumed that labor and education are incompatible; and any practical combination of them impossible. According to that theory, a blind horse upon a tread-mill, is a perfect illustration of what a laborer should be -- all the better for being blind, that he could not tread out of place, or kick understandingly. According to that theory, the education of laborers, is not only useless, but pernicious, and dangerous. In fact, it is, in some sort, deemed a misfortune that laborers should have heads at all.

Before being inducted into the army Woodard had laid railroad tracks, delivered milk, took construction jobs for two dollars a day, and got hired at a sawmill, Doolittle’s Lumber.  Gergel wrote: "He worked as a 'log turner,' a backbreaking and dangerous job that earned him but $10 a week.  Because they faced such dismal employment options, it is not surprising that despite the perils of service in the armed forces, Woodard and many other African Americans residing in the rural South viewed military service as a promising alternative."

Bill Hudnut

In the Winter 2019 Traces Editor’s Note, Ray Boomhower described his 28-year association with the magazine, including playing a role in soliciting reader opinion on what to call it, finally settling on a name similar to Steel Shavings.  Pictured are numerous past covers, almost half of which contain articles of mine, including my one cover story on Gary pugilist Tony Zale.  My most recent pays tribute to Gary civil rights pioneer Reverend L.K. Jackson, the self-styled “Hell-raiser from the East,” “Servant of the Lord’s Servant,” and “Old Prophet.”  A current article describes the civil rights contributions of Republican Bill Hudnut, who served as mayor of Indianapolis for 16 years, beginning in 1976. At a time when most downstate politicians shunned Gary mayor Richard Gordon Hatcher Hudnut embraced him as a valuable ally and in 1980 supported Hatcher’s successful bid to become president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Several African Americans compete in Unit 154 duplicate bridge events, though not commonly in Chesterton, including Richard Hatcher’s wife Ruthellyn, and the Gary game has far more tables than ours.  In 1932 blacks formed the American Bridge Association (ABA) due to being barred from American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) events, especially in the South. In 1967 the ABCL included in its by-laws a rule stating that nobody could be denied membership on the basis of race, color or creed.  The ABA still exists and holds biannual tournaments.

At Chesterton YMCA I played duplicate for the first time in over a month, partnering with Charlie Halberstadt.  Director Alan Yngve said, “Welcome back,”and sassy Dottie Hart quipped, “Where have you been?”  When I commented on Sally Will’s green outfit being early for St. Patrick’s Day, she said she decided to wear green all week and pointed to her earrings shaped like leprechauns.  In the hand I wish I could play over, Dottie Hart opened a Heart, Charlie overcalled to 2 Clubs, and Terry Bauer and I passed.  Dottie bid 2 Hearts, and both Charlie and Terry passed.  I held 8 high card points, Queen, spot, spot of Clubs, and King, Jack, spot, spot of Spades.  Aware that Charlie sometimes overcalls light, I took Terry’s pass as a sign that my partner either had a strong Club suit or opening count and figured that even going down one would produce a better score than if Dottie made 2 Hearts.  I bid 3 Clubs and Charlie went down three. Result: low board.

photos by George Sladic, above, and Paul Kaczocha

George Sladic and Paul Kaczocha posted photos of the Lake Michigan lakefront, reminding me that visitors still don’t have free access to Mount Baldy due to possible sinkholes and that this is a dangerous season for intrepid or naïve visitors wandering onto ice formations that often break off from the shoreline.  In fact Paul’s dog had to swim to shore when trapped that way.