A chance encounter
Powers, Thomas
recognition from Pol Pot. Such a step would indicate not only a The problem is how to get the administration to go beyond new sensitivity on our part to Cambodian suffering, it would such symbolic...
...In 1971 I went back to Mississippi to see how things had turned out...
...Secondly and more importantly, we can go political pressure...
...He did as he was told...
...Evers was a good speaker too, a master of the Southern black antiphonal style who could build the"Yes, Lord...
...It meant they were serious, and worthy of trust by sus- picious blacks, who gibed that the white Commonweal: 198 kids hadn't put their lives on the line, and could always run back home to Mommy and Daddy and a station wagon in the suburbs...
...This sounds like a bad joke now...
...he stood erect, a bit squarish in shape, and looked right at you, eyes bulg- ing behind his glasses...
...White people have called them by their first names all their lives...
...The white man was a beast...
...The revolution" seems like a dream...
...To one set of people it means the way in which any given society agrees to order itself, and it is hard to argue with such a sunny definition, which puts community and agreement at the center...
...T HE LAST TIME I saw Allard Low- enstein was in the changing room at the Yale Club...
...In 1965 Robert Moses dropped out of sight, saying he didn't think the Move- ment ought to have leaders...
...spittle caught the light...
...But this is important, he needs your support...
...For them "their revolution" was a kind of spiritual earnest money...
...For some reason I never spoke to Low- enstein...
...Have you heard that Aaron Henry is running for gover- nor...
...I was alone...
...What law means should not be seen too easily...
...I'm not sure what we thought we were doing there, but we had come anyway...
...In Missis- sippi the very air was chemically one part fear...
...Outside, Jackson city police slowly passed back and forth...
...Someone told me Lowenstein never slept more than a night or two in the same house, but I didn't understand why until I'd been there a couple of days...
...SNCC broke...
...I can't remember his precise words, but I do remember his drift and tone...
...instead, contending parties agreed on the choice of a judge whose word would be final...
...When we left two or three rednecks in a pickup chased us for a while...
...when his motorcade raced from one rally to another up through the Delta, State Police cars led the way with sirens screaming...
...Things moved quickly in those years...
...A meeting hall on Lynch Street was about a third full at the appointed hour...
...He had a brisk, liquid way of speaking...
...You call these people mister...
...But in the ceremony of tragedy she is honored communally...
...But the Movement was riding high in 1968...
...one of the SNCC people said he was on "C.P.T...
...The way law affects the poor, the "least of the brethren," is in Christian terms law's judgment of itself...
...The passions are only cinders...
...issue of Commonweal...
...Yessuh, how I do it...
...they meant re- placement of the government by a dic- tatorship of the proletariat...
...The Marxist and the philosophi- ~cal anarchist and the socialist and the Republican all agree that without some commonly established way of ar- riving at social order people will suffer even more than they ordinarily do...
...The people who claimed Lowenstein was an agent of the CIA have forgotten all the details...
...The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced snick) had been running a voter-registration program with limited success...
...McLaurin told me he was about to give up on voting rights...
...with Lowenstein on political grounds...
...Ed King...
...Two or three hundred black people in their Sunday best shifted nerv- ously in their seats...
...another volunteer from Yale had been shot at the day before...
...There is no fear like the fear of men...
...and there wasn't no turning back now ("Yes Lord...
...Then Lowenstein started to talk about the whites in Mississippi, the scared folks who crept around at night in white bed sheets and ganged up twenty to one be- fore they dared beat up a Negro boy...
...This was Lowen-stein's doing but we didn't know it...
...I'd like to have said: Allard, you made a deeper impression on me than any other chance encounter of my life...
...theses on Eugene V. Debs...
...For many people law is identified with coercion, which is, in this view, law's II April 1980:199...
...we had no idea why he'd been beaten...
...The burnt-out cases are raising organic vegetables or teaching crafts in community colleges or working on PhD...
...Lowenstein was wearing a white T-shirt...
...Two or three couples got up and walked quietly to the rear, out the door...
...On the outskirts of Jackson we'd filled up with gas and asked directions to Lynch Street...
...He was furious, and I was hurt, angry and ashamed in return...
...But he's trying to win the vote for Negroes in Mississippi...
...Others followed...
...He talked about the Constitution and the Rights of Man...
...With him that night was a slight, soft-spoken black man named Robert Moses...
...There is a necessary tension between the definitions...
...Aaron Henry was late...
...Of course there had been a hundred sources of friction, but what SNCCsaid was that Lowenstein didn't belong, Lowenstein was a New Deal liberal recruiting black votes for the Democratic power struc- ture...
...The windshield on the car of a friend of his had been blown out with a shotgun blast...
...He looked about the way he looked when he died, perhaps not quite so chunky...
...One day in a small shack town on the edge of a big plantation a black man answered my knock...
...Evers admitted they'd whipped us, he'd bite no bones about that, but what he said sounded like a victory speech ali the sanle...
...By revolution they did not mean a kind of revitalization of American democratic ideals in the pur- suit of populist reforms...
...Naturally he was much resented by those who had exactly that in mind, but the real hate came from those who were the most innocent in their commitment, the "kids" who were not so much trying to change things, as to identify with the poor and oppressed...
...The night of the election there was a party at the meeting hall on Lynch Street in Jackson where Lowenstein had spoken Of several minds: John Garvey I CAESAR IN OUR FUTURE...
...This wasn't no protest movement...
...Lowenstein believed in the system, which made Lowenstein part of the system, which meant Lowenstein was the enemy--Whitey with a velvet glove...
...What was I to say...
...I soon found I could get more votes ifI cut the palaver and just told people what to do...
...Another use of the word is not so benign...
...His body was short, chunky, heavy with muscle...
...Later, when Lowenstein won a measure of broader public fame for organizing the "dump Johnson" move- ment in 1968, he had two distinct reputations--as a kind of radical insur- gent on the furthermost edges of mainstream American politics, and as a Red-baiting reactionary desperately try- ing to stem the leftward surge of the American student community...
...But that's just not the sort of thing one can say to a stranger, out of the blue...
...He was wine-dark with exertion and gleaming with sweat...
...Then Lowenstein disappeared and that was the last I saw of him in Mississippi...
...One of them grabbed me by the ann, swung me around, and pointed his pistol at me...
...The old line about hypocrisy being the tribute vice pays to virtue is built into the operation of a reasonable society, and into the way that society will regard law and the limits of law...
...What you want me to do...
...The bitterness of the break is hard to exaggerate...
...There is an ambiguity about the word "law...
...I heard him called the world's oldest living student leader, I didn't know any of the history behind the remark...
...The willingness of Christians to use coercion has been seen in all its ugliness only with A T ONE LEVEL there is no argument...
...We can stop our hostile posturing some Americans have done in opposition to SALT or others toward Vietnam and instead face the fact that for the im- are doing in opposition to registration for the draft...
...The separation of church and state is certainly good for the church, which for too long, from Constantine through Tor- quemada to Cromwell, enjoyed the use of a weapon which it should have fore- sworn for the sake of the Gospel...
...Mississippi was having an election campaign for governor that fall...
...Antigone is, in communal terms, a moral absolutist and quite unreasonable...
...We could see rifles hanging on a rack in the cab...
...But in our time the nation-state--whatever its ideological cast--has the final word where law is concerned...
...I want you to vote for Aaron Henry...
...A long silence followed...
...colored peoples' time...
...Such a step would indicate not only a The problem is how to get the administration to go beyond new sensitivity on our part to Cambodian suffering, it would such symbolic acts as having Rosalyn Carter visit refugee signal our disapproval of the arms shipments Pol Pot's guerril- camps...
...I don't know what he did at the club...
...I wish I could remember how he did it, but Lowenstein got the audience to laugh, and then he got them to cheer, and then he got them laughing and cheering and whistling and he kept it up, never break- ing stride, for the better part of an hour until Aaron Henry finally arrived, swept up onto the stage by a wave of cheers and yells and hallellujahs...
...the struggle was for something else, something basic, something revolutionary...
...The first time I saw Lowenstein was in Jackson, Mississippi, in November, 1963...
...Charles Evers, the black mayor of the tiny town of Fayette, was running for governor...
...Antigone knows a higher reverence, and will honor her brother's body even if it means death...
...A reasonable community has some mental room for what it cannot bring itself to accept in ordinary practice: the unjust king recognizes the authority of the prophet, even while plotting the prophet's death...
...The second night, on our way up to the Delta, we were stopped by the local police...
...s into a roar from the audience...
...Large contingents came from Yale, where', Lowenstein had gone to law school, and Stanford, where he had been an adminis- trator for a time...
...What you wanta go there for...
...he feared nothing more than a rerun of the 1930s, when every legitimate grievance or aspiration was turned into an organizing tool of "the revolution...
...No suh, I don't do no votin...
...The hall was quiet but for the creak- ing of chairs...
...SECULARIZATION k THE LAW eight years earlier...
...I couldn't find the words to be- gin, as we passed to and from the shower...
...In Cleveland we stayed with a young black organizer named Charlie McLaurin...
...Have you voted in the election yet...
...Hair cut short, thinning wisps rising high on his crown, horn-rimmed glasses, lips pursed around prominent front teeth...
...By that time the Movement--that is, the organi- zations like SNCC and SDS at the heart of the broader activist ferment--had firmly declared itself Marxist-Leninist, and had redefined its goal as revolution in the United States...
...Yessuh...
...He spoke of the new day coming, white and black working together for a better life in Mississippi...
...They were quaking in their beds at night, all those plantation-owners, just plain terrified of the day when Negroes in Mis- sissippi marched head-high to the polls...
...If law is defined simply as the way order is achieved, everyone is for it...
...asked the man at the pump...
...A ~ complacent ecclesiastical official recognizes the authority of Francis of Assisi's witness, and wishes it weren't so...
...If he didn't spend so much time here," my friend said, "maybe he'd get elected...
...Lowenstein and Moses seemed to be running the show...
...He was trembling, and his voice shook with fear...
...A couple of friends and I had driven straight through from Yale...
...A black organizer joined me at one point while I was talking to a bent old man named John something...
...I showed him where to sign his name...
...His face had been designed for caricature...
...Sorry you lost another race for Congress, better luck next time...
...I asked...
...He gave an impression of force and direct- ness...
...Shots had been fired through living room windows in Sunflower County, churches had been burned, people had been beaten...
...Someone came up with an idea for a mock election cam- paign in the black community to dramatize how many people would vote if they could vote...
...He turned out his house lights before opening his front door at night so he wouldn't make a convenient silhouette for a sniper...
...mediate future they will control Cambodia and that any solu- NICOLAUS MILLS tion to Cambodia's food problems must take into account the (Nicolaus Mills wrote "The Working American" in the last food shortages the Vietnamese are also experiencing...
...Reporters were milling about...
...THOMAS POWERS I bottom line: look at what happens to you if you do not obey, if you do not fit in, if you are vagrant or strange...
...Lowenstein made some phone calls, found us a place to stay, gave us directions...
...He talked about the thousands of voters who had cast their first ballots in the last week, he said the whole nation was watching, the day was fast coming when the vote would be theirs as a natural right...
...He was about my age, four inches taller, eighty pounds heavier...
...Who can really say what went wrong7 But the Movement was not without its effect...
...City police directed traffic out front...
...within a year or two it simply evaporated, paralyzed by a commitment to revolution, lightly given, which it could not make good...
...The Movement wasn't out there courting broken heads for the right to sit at a lunch counter...
...What they needed was a revolution, a guerrilla war in the countryside...
...I w~plain 11 April 1980:197 terrified for a week straight...
...What this country needed was re- volution...
...I never saw him on the squash courts...
...The night before the regular election a rally was held in Jackson for Aaron Henry and his running mate, the Rev...
...Later, in Natchez with two black or- ganizers early one morning, we got a phone call telling us to leave town im- mediately...
...But he had obviously been doing something which required great effort--weight lifting, chin-ups, some-thing strenuous and monotonous...
...No suh, I don't have nothin to do with that...
...this was a revolutio- nary movement...
...The Movement is as dead as the Popular Front...
...It was about 10 o'clock at night...
...Lowenstein appeared wearing a suit and tie...
...Yessuh...
...Of course the Mayor was going home to Fayette, but they'd had those old white politicians running scared there for awhile ("Oh yeah...
...The place was packed...
...He recounted the history of Aaron Henry, the druggist from Clarksdale who had worked long and hard for the rights of Negro Americans...
...Antigone confronts Creon, who insists that her rebel brother's body must not be given reverence: he must be a sign to the community of the peril involved when one transgresses the community will, or at least the will of the community's representatives...
...They were quick to oblige...
...For that, what is needed in an election year is serious las are receiving...
...I often saw him there in the last seven or eight years, always in the middle of the after- noon...
...Lowen- stein had opposed the leftist romance from the beginning...
...But this is all ancient history...
...I Of several minds: Thomas Powers A CHANCE ENCOUNTER ALLARD L©WENSTEIN, R.I.P...
...Few people would monm the passing of the order which mingled the spiritual and temporal too casually, reducing problems of spirituality and collective order to religious and civic administra- tion...
...Wisdom and fair- ness, not state appointment, were the criteria by which a man was accepted as a judge...
...Now, John," I said, think- ing to be friendly, "it's important for you to help Aaron Henry by signing this card here...
...I saw Charlie McLaurin at a rally in Sunflower County...
...An organizer went to the podium and said, Don't go away folks, Mister Henry is on his way...
...We'd spent a decade together in thirty-six hours...
...A local television crew was waiting to get the Mayor's concession speech...
...The generous and optimistic definition is based on recognition of an obvious need to acknowledge and pay reverence to the idea of communal obligation, to put that idea into a form which binds us to one another, and--especially in our age--to state an alternative to the individualism which leaves each of us finally abandoned...
...Can we do as much for the Cambodians as beyond diplomatic gestures...
...This is not the only conceivable way: in ancient Celtic societies, for example, the judiciary was not a function of the central governing authority...
...I remember the pitching and bucking of the car as we tore down the long straight road, slowly pulling away from the pickup until it was lost in the distance behind us...
...Lowenstein suggested bringing in a crew of white student volun- teers to help with canvassing and attract the attention of the national press...
...You call them mister...
...You had to understand that black people wanted no part of white imperialist capitalist America, fighting a racist war in Vietnam and murdering black people here at home...
...Mississippi was another country in 1963...
...It was just a remark...
...Do you know what part of town that is...
...When he had gone back inside the black organizer said, "Look, I'm going to tell you some- thing...
...The obituaries say he was 51 years old but he carried the years well...
...A friend and I passed him once not long after he'd been defeated for the sec- ond or third time in a congressional race...
...I've for- gotten who was running, but the candi- dates certainly weren't courting the black community, which was almost totally disenfranchised through phony reading tests and sheer intimidation...
...He told someone to find Henry and get him there and he went on stage to speak...
...He was run- ning for the state legislature, had gained weight, gave a practiced, sensible speech supporting the Mayor...
Vol. 107 • April 1980 • No. 7
