PLEDGE IN POMONA
Mayer, Milton
Pledge in Pomona By Milton Mayer LIKE 16,811 other American cities of less than 50,000 pop., Pomona, Calif., is known as The City of Churches. And no wonder; it has 52 of them, or one for every...
...The cards were signed, "Keep America Committee, Box 3094, Los Angeles 54, Calif., H. W. Courtois, Sec'y...
...I wanted to address myself to "The Struggle for America," but I had been billed to discuss "The Struggle for Europe" and I discussed it...
...You must excuse me," said Prof...
...Everyone wished to be sure to do what every other one was doing, and especially to say how loyal they were, and to take pledges like the one I could not take this evening...
...Ferner Nuhn, the chairman, was a Quaker...
...The other four of us on the platform were already sitting...
...Why was I? Was I afraid of being hurt...
...it doesn't hurt much...
...Prof...
...there was catharsis, too...
...Why did a few, so widely scattered, call out so wildly, like people in a burning theatre, and why did the rest get up so submis^ sively when these few called out, "Get up...
...As long as America is good, and as long as we have the wish to be free with ourselves, here in Pomona, in Clare-mont, in every city, America need not be afraid...
...I had been rattled a bit...
...afraid of Communists in a land flowing with grapefruit juice and guided missiles...
...MILTON MAYER, who recently re...
...Congregation didn't help, either...
...I didn't know about him, but I suspected that he might be a refugee and, like so many refugees, afraid of ever having to be a refugee again...
...Tay did...
...And it went on, and the earth shook in Pomona...
...In the end, everyone was afraid...
...Ah, come on," one of the earlier callers in front called out, and, at the same time, another of the earlier callers in back called out, "Let's go, Americans—the pledge to the flag," and then still another of the earlier callers, with an overseas cap tucked into the shoulder strap of his Army shirt, went to the front, faced the audience, and started reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag, with his right hand over his heart...
...Why is he allowed to speak in a Christian Church or Public School...
...Nuhn said, "I beg your—," a man at the left side, in front, called out, "Everybody who isn't a Communist get up and take the pledge.to the flag," and then a man at the right side, in back, called out, "Don't be afraid of the Commies, folks—get up...
...A few, at first, and then more and more, but ever more slowly, all over the auditorium...
...I heard him breathe a deep, uneven breath—he was almost next to me—and then say in his foreign accent: "I try to be loyal to America...
...Of being shamed in Pomona...
...When the man with the overseas cap began reciting the pledge, perhaps twenty persons, of the 300 in the auditorium, stood up to recite it with him...
...If I try to be loyal," he said, "I must do all that I can to keep harm from coming to America...
...was...
...You bet," said the leader, and shook Republican Creamer's hand...
...I didn't know, as I say, how the other four felt or whether, indeed, they would stay in their seats to the end...
...Merlan's spot was tight in the extreme...
...All right, Joe," called one of the men who had earlier called for the pledge of allegiance, "that's enough...
...His ancestors had fought, he said, in every American war and on both sides of the Civil War...
...The few who had called for the pledge appeared to be afraid of Communists...
...Why, they would protect me...
...There was a quiet in the auditorium...
...Nuhn asked him if he would like to come to the platform and speak, though it was late, for five minutes...
...If the many had remained in their seats, wouldn't fear have melted away in sunny Pomona, the fear that had seized both the few and the many, and from Pomona wouldn't fearlessness have spread through the land...
...Ferner Nuhn, as chairman, rose frowning to his feet and the laughter subsided...
...And when these pledges are taken under compulsion, because some one, any one, says, 'You must take them,' then they prove that every one is afraid only...
...I guess so," said the leader of the pledge, "but I was wounded in Korea and I don't like these fellows...
...I'm sorry," said Mr...
...A local newspaper reported that it was / who advocated defiling the flag...
...I was just back from Germany, where, when it happened there, beginning with the way it was happening here in Pomona, people said, "Oh, well—Germans...
...On the platform, also, was an American flag...
...I must discuss loyalty to America...
...Prof...
...The many who had got up, reluctantly, appeared to be afraid of the few who were themselves afraid...
...Roosevelt, the English...
...We should have, I suppose...
...asked the other one...
...Philip Merlan of Clare-mont Graduate School...
...I knew that the people who had got up were afraid...
...Nuhn sat down...
...But the Pasadena meeting was never in danger of disruption...
...Prof...
...I didn't...
...Teacher Tay hadn't said much at dinner before the meeting, and the meeting was taking place in the very school where he was employed...
...I hadn't been shameful, and the world is wide...
...Thomas of Aquino felt about the very old lady who, he was told, wanted to know if the names of the blessed were inscribed on a golden scroll in Heaven...
...Merlan was clearly a foreigner, and, I was sure, a Jew...
...Certainly the other four—except maybe Ferner Nuhn—hadn't bargained for trouble...
...I don't think so...
...Nobody was afraid now...
...Led by FBI-trained Chief Ralph E. Parker, one of the youngest and ablest police chiefs in the State, the Pomona Police Department has been recognized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as . . ." Ill What was it I was afraid of...
...And we most assuredly should have assumed anti-foreignism...
...At a meeting in Syracuse, N. Y., in 1947 I had said that some of the people who oppose world government believed that the advocates of world government wanted to defile the American flag...
...But I guess you're right, I'm glad they had a chance to talk...
...These pledges do not prove that one is loyal...
...I've been hurt before...
...Britt of Scripps, a small, spare, elderly man, had been president of Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois...
...Everything holy and profane that man can do to protect Pomona has been done...
...This was my country, my people, my home, rich and strong and not, like old Germany, stripped and impoverished...
...Come on, everybody," an elderly man in the middle called out, "we're not Commies in Pomona...
...But here trouble was...
...There wasn't anything more to say, but, as the speaker of the evening, I had to discuss the discussion of the discussion...
...The fear had called out—to a flag, to be sure —and was quieted...
...Tay was in a tight spot...
...Thomas, "but I do not suppose that it does any harm to think so...
...And I think that most of the people who were at the meeting won't be afraid the next time...
...People in the auditorium were laughing, more and more...
...Merlan looked around, through his thick glasses...
...He called— doubtless in the interest of American culture—upon an elderly man in the middle of the auditorium who had been demanding all evening, and always out of order, to be heard...
...Prof...
...Primarily I was afraid be>-cause I felt fully, for the first time in my life, the power of fright over people of my own kind, of my own country and condition...
...The evening preceding Pomona, at a similar meeting in a Pasadena church, people outside the church distributed handbills reading, "Milton Mayer said: 'Haul down the American Flag . . . haul it down, stamp on it, and spit on it!' This man is a subversive sponsored by a subversive organization, the American Friends Service Committee...
...Terrible harm came to Europe...
...Nuhn said, "It is my pleasure, this evening, to welcome—," when a man at the right side, in the front row, called out, "Let's all take the pledge to the American flag...
...Very briefly, very sharply...
...Although the newspaper subsequently published the finding by the district attorney that I had been misquoted, the canard kept appearing in (and only in, as far as I know) Southern California...
...I owe not only my happiness and my good position, but I owe also my life...
...Outside the Pasadena meeting sample ballots also were distributed for the MacArthur-Tenney Presidential ticket of Gerald L. K. Smith's Christian Nationalist Party, along with copies of Smith's pamphlet entitled...
...Merlan of Claremont rose to discuss the discussion...
...Joseph Griggs in Claremont, another lady came in, with her young daughter...
...Merlan, in an accent which frightened me all over again, "if I do not discuss Prof...
...When the recitation of the pledge to the flag was finished, everybody sat slowly down...
...But that was secondary, and I can't say I really thought of it while we five sat in our seats on the platform and the people below, their arms stretched out, palm upward, recited in unison the pledge to the flag...
...And yet there is fear in Pomona...
...And then, when Mr...
...I hadn't believed it...
...It is also the Site of the New $50,000,000 Home of the Convair Guided Missile Division of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation...
...But nameless anticipation was not the only ingredient of the quiet...
...Then it started slowly—much the way the people had got up out of their seats to take the pledge— and then more and more people joined in...
...freedom of conscience of our Christian countrymen, I said, was more important for the safety of our country even than the pledge of allegiance to the flag...
...Not that I know of," said St...
...Is Com~ munism Jewish...
...Then Ferner Nuhn added an anticlimax of his own...
...I was afraid to look at them...
...Merlan stood up—uncertainly, I thought—I saw suddenly that this was the deadly moment...
...An offering would be taken for the work of the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers), whose work, in small part, consists of sponsoring such meetings in the interest of peace...
...My daughter stood up in the meeting when I did," said the lady...
...The applause did not start at once...
...Eisenhower were elected, Rabbi Silver of Cleveland would run the country— succeeded in diverting the discussion from the Struggle for Europe to the honor of the American flag, but nothing serious had happened...
...Why were people afraid, in, of all places, Pomona...
...turned from a 15-month stay in Europe, is lecturing widely throughout the country under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee...
...Or so it seemed, while I sat in my seat, along with the other four men on the platform, and 280 of the 300 people in that great big brightly lighted auditorium took the pledge of allegiance to the American flag...
...There are just four footnotes...
...And so you see, it is natural that I try to be loyal...
...I think I owe more to America and also to the people of America even than most of you do...
...Now I think I'm better prepared when it happens again, so I'm glad I had the experience...
...I wondered—even in my fear—if Ferner Nuhn was afraid of American culture...
...With a foreign accent," said somebody else...
...The church in Pasadena had been filled...
...Mayer, a regular contributor to The Progressive, has also turned up in recent years in The Negro Digest, Commonweal, Harper's, Life, and Fellowship...
...His ancestors, he said, came over here in 1532—• really early, when you think of it— and he and his ancestors had been fighting ever since against the world conspiracy of the Rothschild international bankers...
...But I wasn't expecting anything litfe that...
...I admired him...
...But I hadn't suspected how afraid— how unprepared—I would be to do what was right the first time in my life I ever had to do what was right in the presence of fear all around me...
...Britt of Scripps, the retired president of Knox College, did not discuss the Struggle for Europe any more than Mr...
...Loyalty is in one's acts and in one's life, and also in great ideals and not even in the symbol of great ideals...
...Merlan of Claremont had a strong foreign accent...
...Why," I said, "Jesus said He came to fulfill the Jewish Law, and Paul said there would be neither Greek nor Jew, don't you believe that...
...Was it only because the man on the platform is naked, unhidden...
...Prof...
...You get away from me, you Jew," said the first very little thin lady, and they both rejoined Joe Higgins, leaving me standing there...
...I did wrong, and she did it because I did it...
...On the platform with me, as panel discussants, were Prof...
...I doubt that I could have got to my feet if I'd wanted to, I was that afraid...
...They had refused to take the pledge, hadn't they...
...More and more who remained were laughing...
...But they appeared—paradoxically enough—to be less dangerous, for the time...
...When Prof...
...Would you agree...
...Everybody was having fun with Joe Higgins...
...That was very good, but there was not much applause...
...Prof...
...But, I said, those of us who did not mind taking the pledge of allegiance could not, as good Americans, believing in freedom of worship, compel others to take it who believe literally in Christ's injunction against taking oaths to human beings or to human institutions...
...maybe he was prepared for what was happening, because Quakers are supposed to be prepared (according to an old engraving) to go on with their worship even when Indians with tomahawks break into the Meeting House...
...What was the trouble...
...Would you say it was correct...
...The bright lights of the auditorium didn't help...
...There was also, as chairman of the meeting, Ferner Nuhn, distinguished authority on American culture...
...What was the matter in sunny Pomona, The City of Churches, Site of the New $50,000,000 Home of the Convair Guided Missile Division of the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation...
...You're not a Christian," one of them said, "you're a Jew...
...What right have you got to talk about Christianity...
...But the auditorium seats 800, and the crowd was too thinly scattered for that pleasant packed-in sense that goes, on both sides of the apron, with a full house...
...I don't think so...
...At least the meeting was allowed to proceed...
...Me, too," said Republican Creamer, "I'm a veteran myself, but I'd a lot rather talk than fight...
...He paused—again, I thought, uncertainly...
...it has 52 of them, or one for every 730.77 Pomonans...
...But Pomona, away out in the citrus groves, is a good bit spookier, by night at least, than Pasadena...
...Be ye unafraid, for I am with you always," said somebody in the room...
...As the recitation proceeded, others got to their feet, slowly, in ones and twos and threes, and joined in...
...and Mr...
...Britt seemed to.surprise the audience...
...Merlan-1—I didn't say what for—and then I said that most of us in the auditorium had been brought up to take the pledge of allegiance to the flag, and I had never before supposed that it might do any harm...
...Before we left the hall, a pastor from nearby Claremont came up to the platform and said to me, "I needed to have this experience tonight...
...What's that, when a man has, as I have, a clothes-brush...
...Mayer's analysis of the European situation except to say that, in general, I agree with it...
...That's right, ma'am," I said...
...A Republican advertising man from Los Angeles, one C. Richard Creamer, got hold of the man who had led the pledge of allegiance to the flag, shook hands with him, and thanked him for letting the meeting go on after the pledge was taken...
...I needed to realize that what can happen anywhere can happen anywhere else...
...Herbert Tay, the Junior High School history teacher...
...Of a general disturbance, with the police coming in...
...After all —Pasadena...
...A little later, while we were having a council of peace at the home of Dr...
...Nuhn said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but you are out of—," and a man at the left side, in the back row, called out, "Come on, everybody, take the pledge of allegiance...
...What was the matter —for that matter—in me...
...I think," said Republican Creamer, "that it's a darned good idea to leteveryone talk, don't you...
...Now up to that point no one (at least not I) had considered anti-Semitism as an element in the meeting...
...Then he sat down, and in the presence of one who had been prepared to be crucified the fear of all fell away...
...When I finished (to uncertain and mild applause), I was scheduled to call upon each of the panel discussants to discuss the discussion, and I did so...
...But it began again...
...Mer-land looked around, still, I thought, uncertainly, as if to say, "What do you think of what I have said...
...And when Joe Higgins finished, Ferner Nuhn thanked him for his contribution to the discussion, and the meeting ended...
...Tay, the history teacher, discussed free enterprise, favorably, as the basis of American strength in the world...
...The five men on the platform, including me, were still in their seats at the end, too...
...that was clear, not only from the way they stood up but also from the way they sat down, just as slowly, at the end...
...In their capacity for fright, for being carried away from their reason and their training, I felt fully, for the first time in my life, my own...
...I didn't know about him...
...I was afraid of American culture...
...Weren't the five men on the platform, and the twenty below them in the auditorium, as dangerous now as before...
...I had never given a second thought to taking the pledge of allegiance to the flag...
...Some people left...
...on the contrary, it seemed all the harder to hide...
...He discussed freedom of discussion, and the respect of every American for the freedom of every other, as the basis of America's strength...
...I must discuss something else...
...Prof...
...What was the matter...
...to me he simply revealed himself as one of those ordinary great Americans to whom the Americanism of the Fathers is simply the natural state of human society...
...I said thank-you to Prof...
...Yes," he said, "I must discuss loyalty to America...
...Nuhn, the distinguished authority on American culture, "but...
...Tay, who had not taken the pledge of allegiance, was a public school teacher in Pomona, in the very school where he had not taken the pledge...
...Admission to the meeting was free...
...Outside the school—I was one of the last to leave, because some college youngsters had come up to talk to me—two very little thin ladies broke away from a conversation they were having with Joe Higgins and came up to me...
...II I was the reason for the outbreak, and its prime object...
...No sooner had Mr...
...Prof...
...Or tried to...
...W. Courtois turned out also to be a lady, who was afraid if Gen...
...all seemed to be adding their fright to the fright of each...
...I didn't think I had discussed free enterprise, but Mr...
...Ferner Nuhn stood up again, frowning...
...Albert Britt of Scripps College...
...Nuhn opened the meeting...
...Nobody, including those who had called for the pledge, knew what to do next—or, rather, what was going to be done...
...But the brightly lighted auditorium disclosed a few people at the far sides, both front and back...
...Of being thrown out into the street...
...I don't know about the other four —and I haven't seen them since— but my heart failed me for fear...
...the man on the platform is supposed to handle this sort of thing with an iron hand, and I am not the iron-handed type...
...IV Then Prof...
...I did not think it made men loyal or illuminated treason, but I felt about it, as I suppose most of us did, the way St...
...If it had not been for America, I would have been killed in Europe, long ago...
...I was afraid not to look straight ahead at all those people in the auditorium with their right arms stretched out toward the flag on the platform...
...He was Joe Higgins, candidate of the Liberty Party for President of the United States...
...Formerly on the faculty of the University of Chicago, Mayer lives now in Carmel, Calif., where he is working on a book...
...Pomona," says the Chamber of Commerce, "is virtually crime^free...
...The quiet in the hall was dreadful anticipation now, unmixed with relief...
...An America which would be afraid, afraid of freedom, would not be an America to which I would wish—to which I would wish to be loyal with my life...
...Nuhn, in his cultured American manner...
...One evening recently I was scheduled to speak at Pomona's Junior High School on "The Struggle for Europe...
...A goodly crowd, around 300, was there...
...Mr...
...Please—," said Mr...
...He paused again, and took another long, uneven breath...
...Prof...
...Then Joe Higgins poured it on, on the mess in Washington, the perfidy of the UN, Mrs...
...By the time the recitation ended, there were not more than twenty persons, of the 300 in the hall, who were still in their seats...
...What were the people in the auditorium—including those who had called for the pledge to the flag— afraid of...
...Part of this harm, perhaps much of it, came because people became afraid to be thought disloyal...
...A lady in front—H...
Vol. 17 • January 1953 • No. 1
