AN INDEPENDENT MAN'

...McCrackin asked...

...One jailer said a day later the minister was sipping milk, while others said McCrackin was accepting candy bars on the sly...

...McCrackin spent his youth in Illinois and attended McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago...

...Barnabas Church...

...He found the rule of speaking with visitors by telephone through a sheet of plexiglass demeaning, and refused to do it...

...He recalls with particular clarity a lecture by George L. Robinson, a World War I pacifist: "I remember him standing with his arms outstretched and saying, T would stand with my back to the wall and be shot down before ever taking another human life.' " After graduating from McCormick, McCrackin arrived in Cincinnati in 1945 and became pastor of the West Cincinnati-St...

...In mid-November McCrackin was kidnapped by three escaped convicts, held for three hours, and released unharmed...

...The deputies carried him down an icy set of steps, loaded him into a police cruiser, and drove him straight to the Hamilton County Jail, situated on the top two floors of the county courthouse in downtown Cincinnati...

...He corresponded with many prisoners, ended up befriending most of them, and worked his way onto their visiting lists...

...His pacifism was an abiding conviction...

...How can I go and testify against a prisoner on behalf of the state, or even seem to be doing so by going before a grand jury, when it is the state of Ohio that is responsible for the vast injustice, degradation, and horror that is Lucasville...

...He removed a wristband, identifying him by number, and flushed it down a toilet...

...the officials corrected most of them...

...What it really was," Brown says today, "was that McCrackin is a terrifying figure — an independent man...

...Within two weeks of his imprisonment — realizing they were up against an immovable object — county authorities tried to coax him into claiming a ministerial privilege for not testifying...

...As soon as the subpoena was placed in his hand, he resolved not to honor it...

...All has taken on a new look...

...John Conte, William McKinney, and David Pilkington, all inmates at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, were being transported from a prison in Marion, Ohio, back to Lucasville when they overpowered a guard and escaped...

...Meanwhile, irony unfolded within the jail...

...his testimony was not necessary to indict the two men (the food store executive's testimony would have sufficed...

...The yard is so green...

...Appearing would be a moral compromise that I am not prepared to make...

...McCrackin undertook a fast immediately upon entering the county jail...

...He was next wheeled before Common Pleas Judge Rupert Doan, who asked him why he refused to testify...

...His grandfather, a physician and minister, operated an underground railroad in southeastern Ohio for runaway slaves...

...McCrackin, the prison reform advocate, was now in the boat, rocking it...

...An independent man' The county jail couldn't hold him Lew Moores When the Reverend Maurice McCrackin failed to appear before a grand jury on January 19, deputies from the Hamilton County sheriffs office showed up on his porch...

...But when it ended, the petty rumors and degradations left no mark on the minister's character...

...His silence before the authorities spoke poignantly of the integrity of conscience...

...Initially, the issue seemed rather simple — grand juries are entitled to every person's testimony — and public sentiment was clearly on the side of the law...

...For the next two months Lew Moores is a reporter for The Cincinnati Post...

...The more he visited them, the more he became convinced that there was something fundamentally wrong with the warehousing of human beings...

...He collaborated with Robert Newman, a legal aid attorney, on drafting a list of grievances pointing out violations of jail rules by officials...

...Allen Brown, a local attorney and friend of McCrackin appointed by Doan to represent the minister, said afterwards he could see a "psy-chodrama" developing, familiar as he was with McCrackin's moral resolve...

...It's a journey into spring," McCrackin said exuberantly...

...The Monday following McCrackin's arrest, the minister was taken before the grand jury in a wheelchair (he refused to walk) and remained silent...

...he had lost thirty pounds in a twenty-one-day fast...

...He was active in the anti-war movement in the 1960s, and by the early 1970s prison reform began to occupy a good deal of his time...

...Maurice McCrackin was born in Storm, Ohio...

...Until January 19, McCrackin was never arrested again...

...jail officials allowed him personal contact...

...McCrackin was, after all, the victim — not the perpetrator — of a crime...

...he went quietly about his business...

...State authorities moved against him: In February, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, calling him a "security threat," barred McCrackin from ever visiting inmates al any of Ohio's state prisons...

...They went to Columbus, Ohio, kidnapped a food store executive, and forced him to drive to Cincinnati...

...He said holding the minister would "no longer serve the public interest...

...Dozens of well-wishers greeted him...

...he began refusing to pay Federal income taxes in 1948...

...McCrackin claimed no victory but said, "I believe there is an aroused public awareness and concern about the debasing, inhuman conditions of jails and prisons...

...When the seventy-three-year-old minister was finally released on May 10, his hair had grown to a white mane and his pants hung loosely at his waist...

...After four months the public turned, and the law — not McCrackin — caved in...

...Everything looks new...

...and, in most cases, the state generally yields to the wishes of a victim who does not choose to prosecute...

...From the beginning, county authorities tried to chip away at the old man's armor...

...McCrackin, a prison reform advocate, said, "I don't mean to do anything that might seem to them or others that I wish them back locked up...

...Because Conte and McCrackin knew one another, the inmates went to McCrackin's church, took him hostage, and held the two men for three hours — "They were courteous and considerate," McCrackin said later — before tying them up in the church basement...

...Then, in January, he was served with a subpoena to testify before a grand jury looking into charges against two of the three men who kidnapped him...

...He's getting into running the jail," one official said in exasperation...

...Saddest of all," Brown said, "is that we're dealing with a confrontation that doesn't have to be a confrontation...

...Ten years later, he ignored an Internal Revenue Service summons, was convicted, and was sentenced to six months at the Allen-wood Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania...

...We're pleased not to have him here, no question about it," said one jail official, as happy to see him go as McCrackin was to leave...

...jail officials overlooked it...

...Two years later, he was arrested during a civil rights struggle in Haywood County, Tennessee, and spent forty-one days in the county jail there...

...Hours later, though, more soberly, McCrackin reflected, "It is no victory to leave the Hamilton County Jail and know the same terrible conditions exist that I found when I was locked up last January...

...Doan found him in contempt and ordered him held until he decided to testify...

...That would be phony," McCrackin answered...

...For the next 111 days he remained their prisoner...

...Conte was shot and killed three days later, while trying to take another hostage, and McKinney and Pilkington were eventually captured...

...Arriving back at his Community Church of Cincinnati, he noticed his dogwood tree was in bloom and was adorned with yellow and white ribbons...

...He refused to respond to his jail identifying number when called...

...Finally, on May 3, Doan announced he would lift the contempt order on May 10...

...I'm not cooperating," McCrackin told them and went limp...