`Ms.' Magazine's `Restricted' Archives--Part 1

Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], Ms. magazine has generally claimed to be in favor of freedom of information. Yet when a woman anti-war activist and I drove out to Northampton, Massachusetts in the late 1990s to examine the contents of the 250 boxes of Ms. archives donated by the magazine to the Smith College library’s Sophia Smith Collection, guess what happened? The librarian wouldn’t let us look at any of the material until she and other members of the library staff first got a chance to remove “the restricted material.”

Feeling that the notion of maintaining a “restricted” magazine archives seemed similar in spirit to the notion of maintaining restricted country clubs, I telephoned the collection’s reference archivist, Susan Boone, the next morning to ask her to clarify the library’s policy on providing journalists with access to Ms. magazine’s archives.

“Ms. records are available. And the Steinem material has been separated. But there’s a possibility that there is other restricted material in the records,” said Boone. “And that means that we can and we will go through the boxes and pull any restricted material.”

Some of the separated “Steinem material” was briefly described in the typed index of the Ms. records which the woman anti-war activist and I were allowed to look at. The restricted “Steinem material” contained in box 115 of the Ms. archives includes Gloria Steinem’s 1971-1977 correspondence, material on the Ms. Foundation, Women’s Action Alliance annual meeting reports for the years 1980 to 1982 and “Gloria Steinem—correspondence clippings, 1971-1982.” The restricted material in Box 62 is described as “Gloria Steinem speaking request—fee correspondence” for the years 1973 to 1976. And the restricted material in Box 132 includes material on Gloria Steinem’s 1970 to 1981 appearances, more material on the Ms. Foundation and more Steinem correspondence.

In the course of examining this typed index, the woman anti-war activist who was with me noticed the following hand-written note on one page: “Material re: Redstockings events & Elizabeth Harrris restricted.” The phrase “Redstockings events” likely refers to the events surrounding that radical anti-war feminist group’s 1975 revelation that Ms. magazine founder Steinem’s political activity had been funded by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950s and 1960s.

A February 1967 article in the now-defunct U.S. left magazine Ramparts had revealed that the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Independent Research Service organization—which Gloria Steinem apparently had set-up in 1958—received at least $180,000 in CIA funds between 1961 and 1965. The CIA funds were funneled to the Independent Research Service organization through a CIA foundation conduit: the Independence Foundation.

In her 1997 book Inside Ms.: 25 Years Of The Magazine And The Feminist Movement, former Ms. editorial staff member Mary Thom claimed that the Independent Research Service entity “had been founded by former National Student Association [NSA] officials”—not by Steinem; and that “Steinem learned of the CIA financing from NSA people.” Yet in a February 21, 1967 New York Times article which confirmed the Ramparts magazine disclosure, Steinem had told the Times that: (1) the CIA had been “a major source of funds” for the Independent Research Service since its formation in 1958; (2) “she had talked to some former officers of the National Student Association, who told her CIA money might be available;” (3) she “was a full-time employee of the service” until 1962; and (4) “The CIA’s big mistake was not supplanting itself with private funds fast enough.”

Under Steinem’s leadership, the CIA-funded Independent Research Service had, according to Ramparts magazine, “actively recruited a delegation of hundreds of young Americans to attend” world youth festivals in Vienna in 1959 and in Helsinki in 1962 “in order to actively oppose the communists;” and important officers and ex-officers of the CIA-funded National Student Association “were very active in the Independent Research Service activities in Vienna and Helsinki.” At the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival, the Independent Research Service distributed a daily newspaper, The Helsinki News, which was printed in five languages. The Helsinki News was apparently edited by Clay Felker—the New York magazine editor who would later fund and distribute Ms. magazine’s initial December 1971 sample issue as an insert in his patriarchal New York magazine.

Also attending the 1962 Helsinki Youth Festival with Steinem under CIA sponsorship was Barney Frank, who subsequently became an aide to Democratic Boston Mayor Kevin White and then a long-time Massachusetts Democratic representative in Congress. As The Pied Piper: Allard K. Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream by Richard Cummings would note in 1985:

“Barney Frank at Harvard had been with the Independent Research Service delegation to Helsinki, an operation which, by Frank’s own admission, he clearly understood was CIA-backed. Frank joked about the role of fellow delegate Gloria Steinem, whom he described as running around at nightclubs set up by the CIA in Helsinki, helping to win over Africans.”

Steinem was “on the agency’s payroll” for 4 years, according to America’s Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty by Sig Mickelson. And in late February 1967, the then-32-year-old Steinem had told Newsweek magazine:

“In the CIA, I finally found a group of people who understood how important it was to represent the diversity of our government’s ideas at the Communist festivals. If I had the choice, I would do it again.”
(end of part 1)

Next: Ms. Magazine’s “Restricted” Archives—Part 2

Hillary Clinton's Historical Holt and `Time' Magazine Connections

One reason the husband of 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was able to beat the draft was apparently because aides to U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Fulbright apparently used their special influence on behalf of Bill Clinton in 1969. While attending Georgetown University in the 1960s, Hillary’s husband had begun working on a part-time basis at $3,500/year with Fulbright’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he is quoted in Clinton: Young Man In A Hurry by Jim Moore as saying that “They gave me the job when I was nobody from nowhere. My family had no money, no political influence, nothing.” The same book also notes, however, that:

“Actually Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jack Holt had recommended Clinton to Lee Williams, who was Senator Fulbright’s administrative aide. Clinton had campaigned for the chief justice’s uncle during a gubernatorial campaign.”

(Coincidentally, former Arkansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Jack Holt’s son—former U.S. Air Force Colonel Jack Holt Jr.—was the Chief Justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1992—just like his Dad used to be.)

At the same time Hillary’s husband was apparently allowed by the U.S. government to ignore two separate orders to report for military induction in 1969 and to continue studying at Oxford University in England, “Clinton’s best friend was Time magazine senior correspondent Strobe Talbott [who later worked as a U.S. State Department official during the Clintons’ first two terms in the White House].” Coincidentally, Time magazine—whose editor-at-large during the 1992 presidential election campaign was Strobe Talbott—was not eager then to let its readers know exactly why the induction orders of Hillary’s husband were apparently handled differently by the U.S. government than the induction orders issued to other young men of the Clintons’ baby-boom generation.

Asked by Downtown in a 1992 telephone interview if Time magazine’s campaign coverage had been influenced by editor-at-large Strobe Talbott’s past friendship with Hillary’s husband at Oxford, Time’s then-managing editor, Henry Mueller, replied: “No. Of course not.”
(Downtown 10/7/92)

Next: Ms. Magazine’s “Restricted” Archives—Part 1

Ford Foundation Owns $14.9 Million Worth of Halliburton Stock

I recently got a chance to check out the Form 990 PF financial filing of the Ford Foundation for the year beginning Oct. 1, 2005 and ending Sept. 30, 2006. In 2004, the Ford Foundation gave a $150,000 grant to help subsidize the Democracy Now! Productions alternative media enterprise.

It turns out that as of September 30, 2006 the Ford Foundation's $12 billion dollar stock portfolio included:

526,500 shares of Halliburton stock, worth $14.9 million;

710,854 shares of Chevron stock, worth $46.1 million;

314,424 shares of Caterpillar stock, worth $20.6 million;

2,103,362 shares of ExxonMobil stock, worth $141 million;

530,000 shares of Aetna Insurance stock, worth $20.9 million;

463,663 shares of Boeing stock, worth $36.5 million;

606,006 shares of United Technologies stock, worth $38.3 million;

8,749 shares of Raytheon stock, worth $420,039;

3,186,694 shares of Time Warner stock, worth $58 million; and

415,596 shares of Wal-Mart Stores stock, worth $20.4 million, etc.

Ironically, when Democracy Now! aired its show about the Gates Foundation article of L.A. Times reporter Charles Piller on January 9, 2007, which it titled "Report Gates Foundation Causing Harm With The Same Money It Uses To Do Good," Amy Goodman apparently forgot to mention that the Ford Foundation that gave her media group $150,000 in 2004 was also engaged in unethical practices. Following is a portion of the transcript from that 1/9/07 show which indicates how Amy Goodman spun the issue of tax-exempt foundations that help fund alternative media groups also investing in anti-humanistic corporations:

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Piller, we only have a few minutes, and you’ve done such extensive reporting here. I want to get to a number of the cases you cite, but the issue of the firewall, the kind of, I think it's called, blind-eye investing, the Gates Foundation pouring money into these philanthropic endeavors, yet at the same time are pouring money into investments in these polluting corporations.

CHARLES PILLER: Yes. I think the fundamental issue here is that American foundations, because of tax laws, generally give away about 5% of their net assets every year. And this allows them to avoid most taxes. The other 95% is invested. It's invested in a wide range of securities, stocks, bonds. And the reason why a wide range is used is that obviously a prudent investor wants to protect their investment.

Now, the issue that we found is that the Gates Foundation established a firewall between the people who manage its investments and the people who give away its grants, and as a result, there is no coordination made so that the investments don't tend to contravene the grants and the charitable goals of the foundation. And so, as a result, what we found is that the 95% that's invested every year, in large measure, tends to go to industries, to companies that not just may be doing some harm, because, frankly, a lot of companies do harm in the world, and it's a difficult thing to police at times, but they go to companies that in many cases directly engage in activities that tend to subvert the charitable goals of the foundation, not just in the pollution angle.

But we found, for example, $1.5 billion approximately in foundation investments in pharmaceutical companies whose practices tend to price their AIDS drugs out of reach of the very people that the Gates Foundation has decided are its highest priority to help: AIDS victims in the developing world who can only afford a very meager price for AIDS drugs, but are unable to afford the drugs from companies that the Gates Foundation is making hundreds of millions of dollars in profit from
.
AMY GOODMAN: Charles Piller, we have less than two minutes. And in your second piece, you begin your piece, “Gates Foundation Invests in Firms Accused of Abuses,” about a couple, Cheryl and Jeff Busby, and Ameriquest. Please quickly describe that story.

CHARLES PILLER: Yes, well, one of the highest priorities for the Gates Foundation has been service programs within the Pacific Northwest, their home. And, in particular, they've attacked homelessness and housing instability as a key goal. What we found is that, as the Gates Foundation is giving tens of millions of dollars to assisting people in unstable housing and poor people who need help and homeless people, they are also invested to the tune of well over $2 billion in companies that are in what’s called the sub-prime loan industry.

Now, this is an industry that is designed to serve people who have less-than-perfect credit and still want to be homeowners. But this industry has been rife with abuse for many years, and as a result, many of the investments are contributing to the financial well-being of the Gates Foundation and to the companies that have been implicated widely in abuses of lending that have resulted in people losing their homes, thousands and thousands of people losing their homes all throughout the Pacific Northwest and throughout the country.

The Busbys are one example of that, a poignant example because Cheryl Busby works for an agency that was given donations by the Gates Foundation, in part to counsel victims of predatory lenders, victims of the sub-prime industry. And this same -- the company that was a predator in their case, Ameriquest, was implicated as a predator in their case, is also a company that the Gates Foundation is profiting from as an investor.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there. Charles Piller, Los Angeles Times reporter -- two-part series on the Gates Foundation -- I want to thank you very much for being with us. We’ll certainly link to it at our website, democracynow.org.

Next: Hillary Clinton’s Historical Holt and Time Magazine Connections

Hiroshimagate?

Wilfred Burchett was the first Western journalist to enter Hiroshima after an atomic bomb was dropped on it by the U.S. government’s Enola Gay B-29 plane one morning 62 years ago. In his 1983 book, Shadows Of Hiroshima, Burchett wrote the following:

“In 1945 I was too overwhelmed by the enormity of what had happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to appreciate the cool deliberation and advance planning that went into manufacturing the subsequent cover-up…

“…As I learned of the experiences of journalistic contemporaries and Japanese survivors, I was forced to recognize the existences of an official policy to suppress accurate reportage of the terrible after-effects of nuclear war. This cover-up—which continues today—is closely related to other attempts to disguise the reasons why President Truman decided to drop two atomic bombs on an already prostrated and defeated Japan. The total accumulation of lies, half-truths and manipulated public opinion, at the ultimate expense of thousands of lives…makes the Watergate Affair look like rather small change…"

According to A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn, in addition to the 100,000 Japanese civilians who died immediately and the “tens of thousands more” who died more slowly from radiation poisoning, “twelve U.S. navy fliers in the Hiroshima city jail” were also killed in the atomic bombing—although “the U.S. government has never officially acknowledged” this fact. The same book also noted that at the time the A-bomb was used “it was known that the Japanese had instructed their ambassador in Moscow to work on peace negotiations with the Allies” and that A World Destroyed by Martin Sherwin asserted that after a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki “among the Nagasaki dead were probably American prisoners of war.” Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths Of American History by Richard Shenkman also observed:

“In 1946 the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after an exhaustive survey, found that…`in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped…and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated…’ On June 20, 1945, the emperor and leading members of the Supreme War Direction Council had secretly decided to end the war…”
(Downtown 3/15/95)

According to Killing Our Own: The Disaster Of America's Experience With Atomic Radiation by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, among the civilians bombed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki "were several thousand Americans of Japanese ancestry, stranded in Japan when the war began" and "at least 11 American POWs being held in Hiroshima died from the bombing." In his introduction to the same 1982 book, a former third-party presidential candidate named Dr. Benjamin Spock also observed:

"Shortly after the blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American soldiers were sent in to help clean up the rubble...They have suffered an extraordinary rate of rare cancer that could only havae been caused by that radiation...Our government set up a massive study of the Japanese victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the data was kept secret, and it was later used in a way that brought charges of manipulation and deliberate suppression of the dangers of radiation..."
(Downtown/Aquarian Weekly 8/7/96)

Next: Ford Foundation Owns $14.9 Million Worth of Halliburton Stock

`Remember Sacco and Vanzetti'

Remember the heroes who gave their lives for you
Remember two men whose souls were beautiful
Remember how they worked to help workers be free
Remember Sacco and Vanzetti.

They framed them for a crime that they did not commit
And killed them for their beliefs and for their politics
They manufactured evidence and used the death penalty
Remember Sacco and Vanzetti.

The press whipped up hysteria and the FBI harassed
And the President of Harvard declared the verdict “just”
But locked behind the bars for seven years of uncertainty
Were the workers named Sacco and Vanzetti.

The people raised a protest, but the government wished them dead
The rich hated Italians and also hated Reds
They were just immigrants who believed in anarchy
Remember Sacco and Vanzetti.

Around the world the rallies sought to stop the electricity
But the death row cells were guarded by machine guns and police
Their names now live as symbols of love for humanity
Remember Sacco and Vanzetti.

August 23, 2007 will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution of two Italian-American anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. According to Felix Frankfurter’s 1927 book, The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti, “facts have been disclosed, and not denied by the prosecution, to show that the case against Sacco and Vanzetti for murder was part of a collusive effort between the district attorney and agents of the Department of Justice to rid the country of these Italians because of their Red activities.” Labor’s Untold Story by Richard Boyer and Herbert Morais also noted:

“…Celestino F. Madeiros, under death sentence on the charge of killing a cashier in a bank robbery…was moved when he saw Rosina Sacco, and the two children, Inez and Dante, visit Sacco…He knew that the agents of the Department of Justice were right when they said that the Braintree job had not been done by Sacco and Vanzetti but by professionals. It had been done by the notorious Morelli gang of Providence. He knew. He was there.

“On Nov. 15, 1925, he sent Sacco a note which said, `I hereby confess to being in the South Braintree shoe company crime and Sacco and Vanzetti were not in said crime.’ He confessed in detail to William G. Thompson, Boston’s foremost lawyer, who had taken up the case, and when his story was checked and rechecked Sacco and Vanzeti had been conclusively proved innocent…

“…Governor Allan T. Fuller…appointed three of the Commonwealth’s greatest to sift the evidence, to decide whether the two should live or die. They were A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University, Samuel W. Stratton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], and Robert Grant a retired probate judge…On August 3 [1927] the three old men of Massachusetts, Lowell, Stratton, and Grant, decided that the momentum of the established order required the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.”

The Remember Sacco and Vanzetti protest folk song was written while living in a cheap apartment near the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn in 1977, to mark the 50th anniversary of the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

(To listen to Remember Sacco and Vanzetti, click on the following link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Remember+Sacco+and+Vanzetti

To listen to other protest folk songs, you can go to following music site:

http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music )

Next: Hiroshimagate?

U.S. Admiral Leahy: `Wrong To Use A-Bomb'

Fleet Admiral William Leahy was the chief of staff to Democratic President Truman when Truman learned that the White House order to drop an atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima had been carried out. In his postwar book, I Was There, Leahy recalled how Truman reacted to this news:

“On Aug. 6, 1945, the cruiser Augusta was speeding across the Atlantic, bringing President Truman and the delegation that had accompanied him to the Potsdam Conference back to Washington…While the President was eating lunch…Captain Frank H. Graham…handed him a brief message…

“This message told him that the Army Air Force had dropped an atom bomb on…Hiroshima…

“Truman was excited over the news. He shook Captain Graham’s hand and said, according to those present, `This is the greatest thing in history!’”

In the same book, Admiral Leahy explained why he felt it was morally wrong for the U.S. government to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons…

“…`Bomb’ is the wrong word to use for this new weapon. It is not a bomb. It is not an explosive. It is a poisonous thing that kills people by its deadly radioactive reaction, more than by the explosive force it develops.

“…My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarian of the Dark Ages…”
(Downtown 8/23/95)

Next: Remember Sacco and Vanzetti song lyrics

SNCC Freedom Singer Matt Jones: A 1994 `Downtown' Interview--Part 3

The Summer of 1994 marked the 30th Anniversary of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee [SNCC]’s Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964, in which over 1,000 student volunteers from around the U.S. participated, after attending training sessions in Oxford, Ohio. But in 2007, a former chairman of SNCC, H. Rap Brown (n/k/a Jamil al-Amin) is still imprisoned for life in a Georgia prison.

In 1994, Downtown spoke with former SNCC organizer and Freedom Singers Director, Matt Jones, about the Freedom Summer, the Freedom Singers, SNCC and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Jones lives in Manhattan and for many years has generously donated his time to sing at many human rights and peace benefits. At The People’s Voice Café (http://www.peoplesvoicecafe.org/) in Manhattan, a celebration of his 70th birthday took place in 2006. Following is part 3 of an interview with Jones that first appeared in the September 21, 1994 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper, Downtown.

What was daily life like in Mississippi? You mentioned how, when you were in Ohio, right before the Freedom Summer was to start, you had certain concerns. Now, when you got down there—in terms of what you recall—what was life like? I mean, people talk about a “Freedom High” that people experienced there. And some people say they were never the same. What happened down there?
Jones: They were never the same because their lives were in danger. It was so odd. Because it was really, really like being a race car driver and you were in a car and you didn’t know where the curves were. You had no idea what was going to happen to you from one day to the next. The fellows had already been killed. People like Lawrence Guyot had been caught in Ku Klux Klan rallies in Mississippi. And Medgar Evers had already been killed. And a couple of people had died in other sections of the South.

So you were talking about people being in an area where they were totally frightened. But I think that after the three fellows got killed, people were more apt to listen to some of the SNCC veterans. If they were going to drive in a car, they would listen to a fellow named George Green, who was our best driver. He was sort of like Roy Rogers on a horse. I mean, he knew how to get away from the Klan.

So after people got killed, we put radios and walkie-talkies in all our cars, so people could get in touch with each other. And people were taught that, if they were in a car, they would never let the Klan pass them. And if they were in jail, they would never let the jailer put them out of jail at night. They would always wait till the following morning and be sure that some people were coming to pick them up. And they would never let any jailer tell them “O.K., it’s 11:30 at night. You can go home now.” That was the last time that was done. People were very careful from then on out. And that’s why we didn’t have any of the rest of the kids get killed. Because they knew that the Mississippi racists were sincere about killing people and it changed even the way I dealt with law enforcement.

I remember when I was leaving Meridian—going to Jackson [Mississippi]—and I had to go through one of the counties. And our car broke down. And this fellow named “Flukie” Suarez from CORE went into Jackson with the tire, and I was left in the car till he came back. And we had SNCC and CORE literature in the car.

And when I saw the sheriff come down to check on me, with this big shotgun, I immediately hid all of the CORE and SNCC literature under the seat. And when he came in and asked me why I was there, I told him I was just there waiting on a friend of mine to come and bring a tire. And I didn’t say I was in SNCC or anything. I mean I knew to be cool. I knew that I couldn’t decide to discuss the Movement with that sheriff. And it was very clear in my mind that my job was to try to get that car back into Jackson and wait for the man to come to pick me up.

So it put a little fear in us. But we continued to work. We didn’t let that stop us from working. In 1963, we had a mock election and Aaron Henry had run for governor. Since the people in Mississippi couldn’t vote, we had our own election. The mock election in 1963 set the stage for the Mississippi Summer.

So we were, I think, “high” because for the first time in our lives we were moving to free people and, by trying to free people, we were freeing ourselves. We would always stay in the homes of some of the local people, and we would learn from the people. And the people grew. And we grew. I mean you had whites who had never been around blacks, and blacks who had never been around whites. So both groups grew.

Some of the blacks had never known whites. If a white person would come up and say “Will you come to register to vote?”, they would say “yes, sir” because the person was white and they had never said “no, sir” to a white person. So some of the students would come back and say “I got so-and-so to register to vote and the people never came.” They didn’t realize the reason they didn’t come is that the people, just said “yes” to them because they were white.

There were a lot of things that the people had to learn. And everyday somebody was getting beaten or something was happening. Emmett Till had already died. So we had a lot of death already in Mississippi and across the South.

Not only in Mississippi was there a lot of activity. There was activity across the South at the same time. People don’t know that, because people are so tied into Mississippi because the white civil rights workers got killed there. Therefore, there’s a lot of writing going on about Mississippi. But that’s because people still move in racist lines and they don’t realize. They don’t realize that they are really not interested in other sections of the South, even though they’re interested in Mississippi because three civil rights workers got killed, two of them white, and a lot of whites worked there. But a lot of whites worked in other sections of the South. But we don’t have a history of those sections.

But some of the white students from the South had more extensive training because they had gone to schools in the South and they also had worked. And they understood the people. So they could move better. People like Bob Zellner and Sam Shirah. And these people could move a lot better than the Northern whites. They knew the area. They knew the blacks and the whites. So they could just move. They couldn’t work in the white community, but they could work in the Black community. They understood the people and the conditions they were working with.

And you find that those of us who worked in Mississippi will never be the same. It changed our lives. Working with SNCC changed my life. It’s changed everybody’s life. Everybody I’ve met that ever worked there, it changed their life. Some people try to forget it, but they can’t ever really forget it. You know it always stays upon them because they were living on the edge of death. It’s like when you’re almost in a car accident and you can see your whole life before you. They could see their whole life before them. They didn’t know whether they were going to die or not, but they knew what they were doing meant something.

And that’s why I, at this age, at 57-years-old [in summer 1994] still move in a freedom kind of way, because of what happened to me during those formative years in my life when I was in SNCC, in the Freedom Singers and also a Field Secretary for SNCC in Tennessee, Virginia, Mississippi and Georgia. So I can remember those different areas.

What have you been involved with since Freedom Summer and in recent years [prior to 1994]?
Jones: Well, after Freedom Summer I was going to go back on the road with the Freedom Singers. But I got caught in a Ku Klux Klan rally July 4, 1964, which caused me to be laid-up for a month or two, until I got better. [Segregationist Alabama Democratic Governor] George Wallace had a political rally. And we went there because we didn’t want the whites in the rally to think that they could meet like that and we not be there.

But when we got there, we found out it was a meeting of all the heads of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Councils in the South. And so when we got in there, we found out that we were in a lynch mob. When a policeman turned his back on me, I was saved by a Japanese photographer that took a picture of the policeman with his back turned. And that action itself caused the policeman to jump across me and save my life.

But that experience made me realize how sick racism was in the South. I had a direct personal confrontation within a lynch mob situation. Somehow I lived to talk about it.

So after then, we continued to work in the Freedom Singers, and go around the country and sing, and raise money for SNCC. After I left SNCC, I came to New York City and got involved—during the Poor People’s Campaign—in the “Hey Brother! Coffeehouse” movement with F.D. Kirkpatrick. And we began to sing freedom songs and get involved here in the late 1960s and the very early 1970s. And I continued to do that. I also helped to free the Birmingham Six in England. And also did some work with an African nation called Sierra Leone. Then finally, I set up the Open House Coffeehouse in the Fall of 1986. And I’ve been going with that since then.

Where does that coffeehouse meet? And how can readers check it out?
Jones: That Open House Coffeehouse meets at 93rd and Broadway at Advent Lutheran Church on Monday nights. From 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Now we try to encourage people to write songs with a message. Some people have been able to write freedom songs. Other people don’t. But we make it open, so that people will do whatever they want to do. But, hopefully, they will write songs with a message.

Now you had a record, Matt Jones: Then And Now? Is it still possible to get that record? In which you sing some of your freedom songs?
Jones: Yes. My record is called Matt Jones: Then And Now. People may contact me and I’ll be able to get it to them. Also, some of my music can be found in Peter Seeger and Rob Reiser’s book Everybody Says Freedom, and in the prize-winning documentaries: Eyes On The Prize, BBC’s Murder In Mississippi and a prize-winning student video: Road To Mississippi. And in the recent film: Freedom On My Mind. Also two of my songs can be found on a new [in 1994] CD, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle, along with some of the greatest singers of the 1960s such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Peter, Paul and Mary, Tom Paxton, the Freedom Singers.

But the main thing that people need to know about the Freedom Summer is that it was a time when young people all over the United States got together and there was a way for them to express themselves in a Movement. And a lot of them took advantage of it.
(end of interview) (Downtown 9/21/94)

Next Posting Will Appear On August 6, 2007: U.S. Admiral Leahy: `Wrong To Use A-Bomb’