Recounting the Lewis vs. Conn Championship Farce

[Most of the journal excerpts published on this blog to date deal with descriptions of Army life, musings about society and politics, and the occasional introspective journey. My father’s journals, however, are also filled with critiques of books he read and movies he saw, along with dozens of other wide-ranging topics. The following excerpt is an example — a wry description of the June 19, 1946 World Heavyweight Champion bout between Joe Lewis and Billy Conn, held in Yankee stadium and experienced by my father via radio. The detailed — and amusing — recount of the match speaks well of both the broadcast’s quality and my father’s reporting and writing skill. Perhaps he should have gone into sports writing rather than political journalism. Mike Jacobs, mentioned in the first paragraph, was the Don King of his day, a boxing promoter who exerted near total control over the sport.]

June 20, 1946 (Fort Lawton, WA)

The records set in Yankee stadium last night were not exactly those predicted in the pre-fight ballyhoo. Possibly there was as much interest in the “three-million dollar gate” as there was in the projected controversy between Joe Lewis and Billy Conn. But the gate was a flop, slightly less than two million dollars when the turnstiles stopped clicking. Though this was the second-highest haul in history, it will draw only sneers from Americans, who have no sympathy with second-best performances. Not a few cynical ladies and gents, who have recently been advised in national magazines of the stranglehold which Mike Jacobs holds on prizefighting, will no doubt derive a perverted pleasure from this financial fiasco. The sportswriters, in a sudden burst of honesty, have come as close as possible to biting the hand that feeds them. They have been hard put to find enough adjectives to describe the avariciousness of kindly old “uncle” Mike. A lot of folks get a hell of a kick out of the disappointment of greed, except when they are involved as principal parties in the drama. Of course there’s no possibility that Mike lost money on his show, but certainly his prestige was deflated just a little.

First congratulations should go to Louis, who has always been a great and fair fighter, and who suffered no loss of reputation last night. Second congratulations should go to the thousands of people who could have got into the stadium for a price, and stayed outside instead. And Billy Conn should get some kind of consolation prize for covering more space in eight rounds than any previous challenger or champion, even after deducting from the total distance the six feet which he covered in the final ten seconds.

Billy put up his best fight in the newspaper article which appeared under his name a couple days before he met Louis in the ring. He was full of Irish cockiness as he claimed right out that Louis was as good as a dead pigeon. Louis, of course, mentioned that Conn might be mistaken in this opinion, but not many people took Joe seriously. The idea was fast gaining ground that the champion was practically in his dotage. Conn himself seemed to be making a lot of this notion; he knew he couldn’t whip Louis by trading punches, but apparently he expected the Negro to drop from the sheer exhaustion of the chase. This strategy might have succeeded on a quarter mile track, with no time between rounds. But in the ring Billy kept running into the ropes and couldn’t dodge quite all of the punches that Joe threw at him.

As heavyweight brawls go, this one was a very genteel affair. Billy and Joe obviously remained good friends throughout. A couple of times Billy slipped on a corner and fell to the canvas. Joe simply stepped back and waited for him to regain his feet, being content to score his putout unassisted. Billy kept grinning every time Joe managed to get close enough to jolt him. Possibly he wanted to reassure his backers who expected him to keep out of range until Louis was staggering with weariness. “A mere tactical error,” he seemed to be saying. Then in the eighth round it was a mere tactical error which laid him flat on his back, and for once poor Billy couldn’t manage a grin.

I heard the fight in Seattle at the Servicemen’s’ Center. Approximately a hundred fellows were bunched around the big radio in the second-floor ballroom. Most of them were sailors, since the Fort Lawton authorities, apparently fearing a race riot, had imposed a fifteen percent quota of passes. That sounded to me like a typical example of brass-hat reasoning. The only riotous phenomenon which came to my attention was the laughter the fellows bestowed on the announcer’s description of Conn’s frantic race against time. The fellows got just as many laughs and were far more comfortable than the suckers who paid a hundred bucks for the privilege of shivering in a ringside seat at Yankee Stadium under the assumption that they were going to see a fight.

Read Full Post »

American Fascists and the America First Movement

[This entry illustrates my father’s life-long omnivorous reading trait as well as his enduring skepticism of politicians and others who engaged in anti-democratic actions under the guise of “patriotism.” The book he references is Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America, published in 1943 and written by John Roy Carlson, one of the pen names used by investigative journalist Avedis Boghos. The book, in part, explored the fascist, pro-Nazi leanings of many of the politicians who joined the America First organization, which lobbied to keep America from entering World War II. Once again, my father’s words reverberate with meaning for today’s polarized political landscape, where obstructionist right-wing politicians exhibit nothing but “contempt for the middle-of-the-road compromises of the democratic system.”]

May 16, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

Today I finished Under Cover. It was most surprising to me to find how deeply the Fascist philosophy has penetrated the minds of political big shots like Senators Nye, Wheeler, Taft, and other members of Congress, though I wasn’t unaware of their apparent leaning in that direction. Such men may not call themselves Fascists, but their inflated “patriotism” which makes “America First” a great ideal for them is the beginning phase of just such an unhealthy nationalism as has produced dictatorships in many countries.

Along with the extravagant concern for the power and purity of one’s own nation there comes a contempt for the middle-of-the-road compromises of the democratic system, a cynical disdain for the “mob,” and a distorted conception of the destiny of one’s own “race.” This last fallacy makes the persecution of the Jews, Negroes, and other relatively defenseless minorities the proper concern of those in power. No sensible democrat claims that such persecution is absent from American democracy. But he knows that the democratic philosophy makes it morally binding on all sincere citizens, whether in the government or out, to try and eliminate persecution and discrimination. He isn’t discouraged when democracy fails of complete fulfillment in his country, because he knows that it’s doing an immeasurably better job of maintaining human freedoms than are Fascism and Communism in other nations. He believes, too, that social conditions are gradually improving wherever democratic government is kept alive and healthy. So he’s willing to fight for his system wherever he sees it challenged, at home or abroad. 

Read Full Post »

Lack of Leadership, and America’s “Rotten Core”

[Here, my father uses the racism faced by African-American contralto Marion Anderson and the story of a Japanese-American ill-served by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to conclude “there is something rotten at the core of our national life.” He suggests that the failure to live up to Christian-democratic ideals can be traced to the lack of real leadership in America, where even the President “can very rarely speak the whole truth, especially when it’s bitter, and most-needed, because this would be politically inexpedient.” How little things have changed, given our current world of hysteria over the building of Islamic mosques and the blatant racism evident in many of the “birther,” “secret Muslim” and “Kenyan anti-colonialist” attacks on our first black President.]

May 6, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

While at [Jefferson Barracks], I had the opportunity to go into St. Louis one night and hear Marian Anderson sing. It was an experience I still remember with intense pleasure. Marian Anderson not only had a  beautiful voice; she was a very gracious lady. It makes me ashamed to remember that here is a whole section of our country where it would be practically impossible for this great artist to give a recital, and that out of this very state of Mississippi there is a man by the name of Bilbo who fiercely champions in the United States Senate the cause of “white supremacy.” [Note: Theodore G. Bilbo, a Democratic U.S. Senator from 1935-1947 and, earlier, a twice-elected Mississippi governor. He was an open member of the Ku Klux Klan.]

There seems to be plenty of the same kind of people in the North, and in the West, too. Just this week in LIFE I read of the sorry plight of a Japanese-American who was recently hounded out of a New Jersey town where he was sent by the WRA.

I believe that the soldiers who worry about these conditions on the home front form a very small minority. Most of the fellows don’t connect their parts in this war with the preservation of Christian-democratic ideals. The thoughtful letters from soldiers which appear in the magazines and newspapers are perhaps interpreted by some as a hopeful sign. But these letters represent but a few thousand out of millions.

Though I keep well-posted on the news, I know that I frequently let myself forget the disquieting events which are occurring throughout the country, or, if I think of them, it’s with a rather hopeless feeling of resignation. What can I do? Write a letter?

Actually, however, I’m not in a mood to allow myself the luxury of cynicism, and haven’t been since I came into the Army. I’ve learned that the progress of civilization is often at an indiscernible pace, but that as long as there are men and women who have the faith to work for the betterment of their society, there is still progress, even though it doesn’t make the daily headlines…

It seems that our schools, as a system, fail to teach us faith in, or even respect for, the ideals of democratic society. This failure, of course, is shared by our churches, our public leaders, and by our families themselves. Nowhere in the institutions of our society is there a profound conviction in the values on which these institutions are founded, or, if the conviction is there, it no longer characterizes the institutions. The continuing neglect of their fundamental values naturally reduces the effectiveness of the institutions. Instead of serving their valid purpose of invigorating and strengthening our society, they become centers of disintegration. Even in this very serious crisis of war, they cannot bring any real unity of faith and purpose to the American people.

The lament over the lack of an integrating faith, both religious and political, is an old one, but there is little evidence that it is being heeded constructively. By this I don’t mean to say that there aren’t many thousands of people who are doing all that they can, which is considerable. But it doesn’t seem to be enough. There’s something rotten at the core of our national life, and I think I have an inkling of what it is.

There are far too many leaders in America, and there is a corresponding lack of real leadership. There is no one person, no one institution, which can speak with authority to all the people, and speak the truth, – not even the President of the United States. He, it is true, can speak with considerable authority, especially in war-time, though Congress still has many ways to hamstring that authority. The President, however, can very rarely speak the whole truth, especially when it’s bitter, and most-needed, because this would be politically inexpedient.

The ministers, if they have the courage and the insight, can speak the truth until it hurts. But the ministers can no longer speak with authority. There is too much division in the Christian church itself, and too much disbelief among the people. The teachers can tell the truth about some things, and with considerable authority, but their influence is mainly limited in a person’s life to his few years of school, and even during these years is often counteracted by the student’s experience outside of school.

The writers are free to write what they please, but the people are free to read what pleases them, so that too many writers, who might do better, write simply to please.

Thus the American people as a whole never hear the truth about themselves and their duties and responsibilities spoken to them with authority. They grow up in an intellectual atmosphere of pleasant myths, romantic idealism, and easy optimism.

Where will all this end? I only know that the main serious conflicts in American society are apparently very much similar to those which have ended in dictatorships in many countries. And democratic process, as we practice it half-heartedly, and sometimes cynically, does not seem capable of resolving these conflicts.

When I look for a solution to the problem of leadership, I run into a dilemma. For inevitably I must try to conceive a government both more authoritative and more democratic than the one we have now, a government which can aggressively protect and promote its basic democratic philosophy, and at the same time give more real meaning to the democratic freedoms. 

Read Full Post »

A School Teacher’s Life

[The following, a vignette about an elementary school teacher my father met at a USO dance, is typical of the profiles of people he regularly entered into his journals. This entry — the last in his fourth journal — provides a glimpse of a young woman’s career and family life, her approach to teaching and her unselfconscious prejudice. My father’s description of the teacher’s salary and class size also provides an interesting point of comparison to some current hot-button educational debates.]

February 7, 1944 (Jefferson Barracks, Mo.)

Bernice Wildhaber is a thin blond girl of about 22. She lives in north St. Louis, and teaches fourth grade in grammar school. Ever since she was little, she wanted to be a teacher, and she never lost the ambition. For a while she thought of joining the WAC’s or the WAVE’s, but finally it seemed to her that teaching school was just as patriotic.

“Much more important in the long run,” I said.

She really loved teaching school. I wouldn’t be bored by hearing her tell about it, would I?

“No, not a bit. My father’s a school teacher, and maybe some day I’ll be one, too.”

Well, that was good. Most fellows ran the other way when they found out she was a school teacher. She had forty-five kids in her class, all of them Jewish youngsters. And they were the best bunch any teacher could wish for. Very clean and neat, and most all of them unusually bright. They didn’t misbehave at all. The only thing was that they loved to talk. They talked all the time…

I asked her if she hoped to go on to high-school teaching. O, no, she wanted to stay right where she was. She wasn’t smart enough to teach high school, and it was too much trouble to get a master’s degree.

She’d gone to teacher’s college right in St. Louis. Anyone who wanted to teach in St. Louis had to go there. But she was still technically a substitute teacher, getting paid by the day. So she could hardly ever afford to miss a day. That meant six dollars. None of the girls in her class had been given their appointments yet. She didn’t know why, except that there was a lot of trouble on the school board, and they’d changed over to a new system of appointing just about the time she’d started.

I asked her if she’d tell me how she went about teaching English grammar. It was the ancient traditional method, – anatomizing the parts of speech, drilling on the irregular verbs. Since she said that the kids seemed to enjoy this stuff, I didn’t tell her how much I’d hated it.

Instead I asked if she had them do any original writing. Yes, but not nearly as much as in the two previous grades, where they had to write a little story almost every day. She only had them do one about twice a month now. For one thing, she hated to correct the papers. That was one thing she hadn’t counted on before she started teaching. She figured that the papers would be fun for her…

Her whole family was working. Her father drove a bus, and had to get up every morning at three-thirty. He was done a little after noon time, and always slept for about three hours as soon as he got home. Then in the evening he went to bed at nine-thirty, and the house had to be quiet after that. Her father listened to all the commentators, unless there was some program the girls wanted to hear more, which was often. Her mother worked in a dress factory, and her sister, who was two years younger than she, was a stenographer.

She’d never had a real vacation, because every summer she felt she had to work. Last summer she’d put in several weeks at the Ordnance plant, – weighing and gauging fifty-caliber bullets. But it was terribly boring, and she did quit in time to take two weeks off. She was certainly glad to get back to school, though she hadn’t thought she would be when she finished in June.

This summer her father had told her she’d have to take a vacation, to gain some weight. She’d lost weight from worrying during the summers she was supervising playgrounds, and she hadn’t been able to gain it back. A while ago she had her father get her a case of beer, because she’d heard that a bottle of it every night would give her weight. But she hadn’t liked it at all, and after a doctor told her it wouldn’t do any good, she started taking vitamin pills instead.

When I told [her] that it was a funny thing, but I couldn’t remember a single one of my grade school teachers, she said it was almost the same with her, except she’d gone to a convent all the way through high school. There weren’t any teachers there, – just nuns. She skipped first the fourth, and then the seventh grades, so that by the time she started high school, she was two years younger than the rest of her class, and painfully aware of it. The girls had their own class clubs, but they wouldn’t admit any “skips.” When she was thirteen, though, she shot up practically to her present height. Things weren’t so bad after that.

After we began talking about teaching again, I supposed that they were studying the geography of some part of the world. Yes, they were just beginning the Belgian Congo tomorrow. They’d finished last week with Egypt and the Nile Valley. She’d been very pleased with a test she’d given them. Usually she wrote the answers on the board along with the questions, because they had so much trouble with them. But this time she’d given them ten blanks to fill in with things she’d especially stressed, and they did surprisingly well.

Did she ever attempt to tie in events of the war with places they were studying? No, no, she didn’t know enough about it to attempt doing that. Last week, though, one of her uncles, who had been to North Africa, came home on furlough, and she had him speak to the class, since by a coincidence they were studying the Sahara desert at that time…

I wondered if Negroes went to the same schools with white kids. Oh, no, they had their own schools, including three high schools. She wouldn’t be able to teach a class herself if there were Negro children in it. She wasn’t prejudiced. But she was sort of affectionate, and often she put her arm around different kids who came up to see her at the desk. And she couldn’t possibly do that with Negro children.

She’d been coming to the USO off and on for over a year now. It was really the nicest place the girls could go, even though there was an awful lot of red tape to getting on the list. She was glad to give me her address and phone number, and if I couldn’t see her again before I shipped out, well, to write to her, anyway.

I said I would.

[Followed by an entry dated 3/21/46: (But I never did)]

Read Full Post »

Conflicted Sentiments about Participating in the “Great War”

[My father’s perspectives about the war effort, about religion, about democracy and about politics continually mutated and evolved, so it would be a mistake to associate any point-in-time journal entry as a definitive statement about his life-long views. In this entry, he comes across as somewhat depressed and cynical — certainly with regard to a famous fighter pilot of the time, Eddie Rickenbacker, and his story of being saved from starvation by a seagull. In October 1942, Rickenbacker was a passenger on a B-17 which ran out of fuel and ditched in the open water of the Central Pacific.  On the eighth day adrift in a raft with the plane’s crew, a seagull landed on Rickenbacker’s head, he captured it, and it served both as a small meal for the survivors and as fishing bait. After 24 days adrift, the men were all rescued, and the seagull became a heaven-sent symbol for Rickenbacker, confirming his strong Christian faith. At the end of this entry, my father’s skill in prognostication proves a bit shaky; contrary to his closing statement, he never did marry Jeanne, despite their shared doubts about God.]

January 22, 1944 (Jefferson Barracks, Mo.)

… And when they ask me Were you in the Great War, I shall answer Yes little children I was in the Great War. And when they ask Were you brave, I shall say No I was not brave at all and I thought the Great War was a hell of a way to be wasting my time, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Besides, I figured a substantial service record might help me later in a political way, even though I would know that it didn’t mean a damn thing. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever even get into politics, but it was one of those things that could happen.

But weren’t you proud to be fighting for the American Way of Life and democracy? No, I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t proud. I was ashamed when I met Negro boys, and knew I was worrying about if they thought I held something against them on account of their color, and I was angry when I heard Southern boys talk about Negroes as if they were animals. I was disgusted when I heard the radio announcers plugging War Bonds “to keep the materials of war moving to the front lines.” I was perplexed when I saw the railroadmen and the steelworkers threaten strikes, and Congress refuse to tax adequately, refuse to support subsidies, and the President refuse to forget the Fourth Term and politics. I was hopeful when Roosevelt and Stalin and Churchill didn’t fail at Teheran, but I was apprehensive when the Polish border question festered and wouldn’t heal. I was disappointed when the little, insignificant men continued to stay in power in the Republican party. I was happy when letters came from my friends and from home. And I was lonely for the life at Middlebury, and for girls, – always lonely for girls. Yes, I was a lot of things in the Great War, but I wasn’t proud.

And they won’t ask me this, but some of them will wonder why I didn’t find religion in the Great War. Men are supposed to find God in times like war. Eddie Rickenbacker did, and God saved him from death in the Pacific wastes. (Of course, there were a lot of other fellows He didn’t save from the wastes of the Pacific, but they naturally couldn’t come back to stir up a fuss with their side of the story.) Eddie had the floor all to himself, and boy! did he get to feeling wonderful and full of loving kindness. He even went so far as to say that the Russians were fine people.

But I kept on thinking Eddie Rickenbacker sounded kind of silly, and I could almost scream whenever I heard about that goddam seagull.

Once in a while I’d say Well for christsakes I may as well make a stab at it, but nothing ever came of my momentary intentions, except maybe I’d go to Sunday chapel and get mad at different things the chaplain said.

When a letter came from Jeanne in which she said that she couldn’t see why a God was necessary, and wasn’t I surprised and shocked, I wrote back that I was surprised and delighted, and to myself I said that settled it, I’d marry Jeanne. (I’d already figured I’d marry her, anyway, but that settled it.)

Read Full Post »

War-Time Politics Clash with Democratic Ideals

[My father begins this entry referencing a column by Raymond Clapper, a syndicated writer at The Washington Post. In researching Clapper, I see that he died two months after my father cited this column, perishing in a military plane crash while on assignment in the Marshall Islands. This journal entry is interesting largely as a snapshot of the war-time political maneuverings going on, including the Cairo and Teheran conferences attended by the major allied leaders. My father’s comments about the challenges and calculations associated with the Middle East are interesting, of course, in light of our current ensnarement in that region. My father also expresses disappointment about the undemocratic deals being struck by the major powers (although he accepts the economic and military strategy behind some of them). His description of the U.S. as “a nice kid who got dragged into a drunken brawl,” seems apt.]

December 9, 1943 (Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.)

Raymond Clapper said it in his column, and I’ve been trying to think just how to say it here. He said there was something disquieting about the way these Cairo and Teheran conferences were held, especially in the rotten treatment of the correspondents. Apparently they didn’t get to first base. For certain, they’ve made all kinds of formal protests themselves, and undoubtedly plenty of informal cursing, but the only news they could get sounded like the wirings of a garden party.

Clapper went on to recall a saying that part of the greatness of great men consists simply in their being there. Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang are the men who are there. And in this sense they are indispensable men. They are making decisions that will affect hundreds of millions of people for years to come. On the face of them, then, these conferences seem almost the antithesis of democracy.

But there’s this to say about the press. The correspondents did miss out on this most important news of the year. But in the nature of things, there wasn’t much of importance that could be told, anyway, so far as the military decisions are concerned.

The political decisions are another matter. There was the formal declaration guaranteeing the independence of Iran. This was built up as an application of the Atlantic Charter, but it’s main purpose was probably to reassure all of the peoples of that section of the world that the big Western brothers aren’t out to gobble them up this time. And it’s also intended to sooth the French leaders who’ve been having trouble with little Lebanon, and charging the British with a plot to remove their influence from the near East.

The great democratic ultimatum to the German people, which many hopefuls had predicted, was not forthcoming. And this is probably because Roosevelt was the only one who was ready to issue it. Stalin has used some fine democratic language lately, but Russia is yet a long way from the methods of democracy, though their racial democracy is way ahead of ours. And England may be democratic, but she still has a huge subject empire whose millions of people might think they deserved a democratic chance before the Germans.

So we got only a very general declaration of good intentions, and a determination to cooperate. There is no doubt that Poland and the Baltic states will go to Russia by graceful default. At least, Churchill and FDR probably are praying it will be graceful. Personally, I think that this arrangement is a good thing from the economic and military points of view. But whether the peoples of these countries will figure that they have tasted the read-meat promises of the Atlantic Charter is another matter. To them, it may seem much more like a Munich sellout, before the glorious days of international idealism.

Eliot Janeway, in FORTUNE, thinks that Roosevelt is on the way to pulling another Wilson, – political isolation at the very time when he most needs the support of a majority of the nation. It seems to be a question of how far he can irrevocably commit the nation without the support of Congress or the people. Thus far he hasn’t taken the bold, but sincere, chance that Wilson did with his Points. He attends Conference after Conference; each time we hear that he’s worked out with the other leaders war plans for the months ahead. But actual political decisions, from all that has been revealed, have been so thin that sometimes one sees right through them and wonders if they’re really there. Too often, our actual political management in the field speaks much louder than these declarations, and not in the same voice.

I think that many Americans feel cheated, and ashamed, because of the deals our government has made with European rightists, reactionaries, and outright Fascists in North Africa, Vichy, Spain, and Italy. I know that I feel ashamed of these deals. There’s talk now of a deal with Franco.

It may be that this is the hard realistic way that nations must work together in the world. But if it is, a lot of us Americans have been brought up wrong. We have been told that our country is the foremost champion of democracy in the world. We expected that our country would stand on democratic principles in all of its business with other nations. But now we have a feeling that the US is very much like a nice kid who got dragged into a drunken brawl. He may protest a little at what goes on, but who the hell gives a damn! Come on, kid, you’re here, so you may as well join in and have some fun!

Read Full Post »

A Lynching in the Jim Crow South

[In this brief excerpt, my rather recounts a chilling tale of a southern lynching, as related by one of his Middlebury professors (“Prentice,” whom I believe was James S. Prentice, an assistant professor of economics). Of note, in addition to the racism and violence at the core of the story, is the professor’s characterization of black people as being little concerned about the “white man’s war,” World War II.  From a purely semantic perspective, I find it interesting that my father used both the then-common term “Negro” in his writing, as well as the “black man” descriptor. Perhaps the second was in broader use in the 1940s than I realized.]

February 12, 1943 (Middlebury College)

… I was chiefly interested, however, in [Prentice’s] stories of his recent trip around the US. The Negroes in the South are stirring as they’ve never stirred before. Lynchings are increasing. The black people are little concerned with the war – “It’s a white man’s war. What’s it got to do with us?” – Except they hope it’ll last a good long time, so that maybe “their” country at long last will have to call on them for help.

[Prentice] told of one lynching, – how a certain man went down from Birmingham on the train. The Jim Crow car was jam-packed, people standing in the aisle. The white car was almost empty. “Conductor,” said this man, “wouldn’t it be possible to fix up that other car like a trolley-car, with some of the seats in the back for black people?” The conductor stared, then went away and did nothing.

Once again the man asked if seats could be arranged for the Negroes. And again the conductor stared, turned away, and did nothing. But he came back soon and took the man’s ticket from his hatband. “Why?” the man asked the conductor. “Just checking up,” he said.

So at the next station they delivered the black man up to the police, who cursed and beat him. Then they gave him to the mob, and he was lynched.

Today is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

Read Full Post »