The Golden Willow (14 page)

It had been in all the newspapers all over the country, with editorials supporting the rising tide against the black singer. Ruby and I had read about it and couldn't help but be influenced by it, though not completely. It did look to us as if Robeson, if not a Communist, was a sympathizer, and we had no love for Communists and couldn't agree with Robeson's assessment that the Soviet Union had greater freedom than the United States.

How could anyone say that? We had discussed it between ourselves. Russia was under the rule of Stalin, as cruel a dictator as Hitler or Mussolini, and it could not be compared to the United States, despite the fact that we knew the blacks had never been treated fairly here. People here were at least allowed to say what they wanted about things, just as Myra was doing now, but in the Soviet Union they could be sent to prison for speaking openly about anything they disagreed with.

Yet listening to Myra now, Ruby and I began to feel uncomfortable.
We wanted to contradict her, but we knew that would spark a political argument, and we did not want to spoil our day. It was bright and beautiful and there was much to look forward to, so we remained silent, and soon anyway the topic changed to something else, and perhaps also Fred and Myra knew how we felt. We'd had discussions before on similar subjects concerning the Communists and there'd been some very serious arguments. They were not, as they assured us, Communists themselves, but they felt there were ample reasons to side with them at times.

We liked them both just the same, and our liking had grown with the years, and they had been out to Laurelton to visit us several times. Nothing could spoil that friendship. We all felt so on that day.

I
N THE MEANTIME
, we had driven a good part of the way. We had left the city behind and were driving north on the parkway through the rolling hills of Westchester, and now and then we caught glimpses of the Hudson River glittering through the trees. Both Fred and Myra were familiar with the area, having visited friends often in the summer colonies that surrounded the Peekskill area. In addition, they had been here only a week ago, so Fred knew the roads well and pretty soon he turned off the parkway and onto a back road that would enable us to reach the picnic grounds without having to go through Peekskill.

It was a narrow, bumpy dirt road that wound among the hills, with heavy woods on either side, and occasionally here and there a clearing with a shack showing and a clothesline strung across a yard and some ragged kids staring at us. I thought of Tobacco Road but didn't say anything.

After a few miles of this road Fred turned onto a wider main road and said we had only another mile or so to go. I felt some apprehension as we approached the entrance to the picnic grounds. We were not the only ones arriving, even though it was early. There were many cars ahead of us and several buses loaded with people, most of them African Americans and all singing and in a gay mood. Still, a distance from the entrance we slowed down and the line crawled bumper to bumper, and then we saw the mob gathered around the entrance and heard their ugly shouts and threats. For a while it seemed as if my apprehension was justified, and I could feel Ruby's alarm as she moved closer to me and put her hand in mine.

However, we were reassured by the sight of the police at the gate, who were seeing to it that the cars and buses got through. Later we learned that some of the arriving people fell into the hands of the mob. These were largely African Americans, and some of them were pulled out of their cars and beaten.

However, not knowing that at the time, we felt once we were inside the grounds that there was nothing to worry about, and indeed it was a reassuring sight to see so many people there already, thousands of them, with buses and cars already taking up many of the parking spaces. Furthermore, guards, most of them volunteer union men, were posted all around the perimeter of the grounds, and additional guards were lined around the sound truck from which Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger would sing. Then, too, we were further reassured when we saw a small army of state troopers arriving.

Nothing could happen to us, we thought, and having found a comfortable spot on the side of a hill, we began to enjoy our Sunday picnic. Others were doing the same thing around us, and Fred and Myra knew some of them and waved to them, and several came over
and we were introduced to them, and all felt as we did that things looked promising for the concert to be heard this time without the interruption that had taken place at the previous week's attempt.

And then, as we were talking, we noticed that the sound truck was being moved from its position where it was most visible to the huge audience to a spot nearby under a huge oak tree whose branches would obscure the view for most people.

We were all puzzled. Why would they want to do that? One of the men went to find out, and came back with the answer. Several scouts from security had found two snipers hiding behind bushes on a hill overlooking the sound truck where it had been before. They were armed with telescopic rifles and obviously planned to kill Paul Robeson. They'd been driven off, but there could be a further attempt, and to protect Robeson as much as possible they had decided to move the truck to where the singer would be less of an easy target.

It brought back a lot of the uneasiness Ruby and I had felt before, but Fred and Myra made light of the matter, pointing out that with the arrival of the state troopers nobody would take a chance on killing Robeson out in the open and in broad daylight. And there was so much fun and laughter going on around us. Children were scampering around playing games, reminding me of the baseball bat I had brought and left in the car. I reminded Fred of it, and he said there wasn't enough time left for a ball game. It looked as if the concert was about to begin.

A tall man wearing a jacket and tie came out onto the sound truck to announce the singers and the program, and the picnic grounds grew quiet and the children went back to their parents. Fred whispered to me that the man was Howard Fast, a well-known writer whose books I had read and admired. I found out later that he
was chairman of the concert and had been in the forefront of the battle with the mob the previous week. Nevertheless, even though he knew he was risking his own life, he had organized this concert, determined to show the mob, whom he called fascists, that he and the audience were not afraid of them.

He spoke briefly and in a quiet, firm voice, giving a short background of the performers, and then the concert began. Whatever uneasiness might have remained in our minds vanished as we listened enthralled first to Pete Seeger's folk songs and then to the spirituals in Robeson's voice, which had the deep, rolling quality of an organ.

Suddenly there came an interruption, the loud, throbbing noise of an engine, and everybody looked up to see a helicopter flying low over the sound truck. There were police markings on it. Fury swept over everyone as the helicopter, apparently quite deliberately, went back and forth. But a smile came over Robeson's face and he went on singing, and someone adjusted the volume on the microphone system to make his voice more audible to everyone. Apparently realizing that their attempt to drown him out had failed, the helicopter eventually left.

So once more we were caught up in the magic of the great singer's voice, and when it was over there was thunderous applause. We all rose, satisfied that we had accomplished what we came for and that the mob had been defeated this time.

By this time I had begun to feel as Fred and Myra did, as so many of the audience did, that this was more than just a concert. It was a challenge to the rednecks and Ku Klux Klan, who made up the largest part of the mob, an assertion that we had the right to free speech and we were willing to fight for it. I think Ruby felt the same way, although in the light of what was to follow, we would wonder if
this same thing could not have been accomplished in a simpler, more peaceful fashion.

But we were not thinking of that as we left. We were jubilant over what we considered a triumph, and we joined the crowds heading for the parking lot, and got into the car, looking forward to a pleasant ride home, to coming up to Fred and Myra's apartment for coffee, and then home to our kids.

“Glad you came?” Fred asked as he got behind the wheel.

“Yes,” I said, “damned glad,” forgetting all about the earlier fears when we first came and saw the mob at the entrance, then the shift of the sound truck to the oak tree, and the helicopter.

It was still early, only about five o'clock, the sun lower in the sky but still blazing. The car had no air-conditioning, and so the windows were wide open. As we got into the line of cars heading for the entrance, now the exit, a security guard went from car to car saying, “Keep your windows closed as you leave.”

He did not explain why, but Fred obeyed and told us to close our windows in the back. I think he knew why but did not want to alarm us. It took quite a long time to reach the gates, and we crawled forward behind the cars ahead of us at a snail's pace. Finally as we reached the gates we understood why the windows had to be closed.

The mob that had greeted us as we came in had increased by hundreds, and the state police who were stationed there did little to prevent them from surging forward toward the departing cars and blocking their way out, shouting curses, epithets, and profanities, fists banging on the doors and windows. But that was only the start. Fred managed to crawl past them only to find that the road to the right on which he had intended to turn had been blocked with piles of stone, making it necessary for him to turn left onto a narrow
road. All the cars had been forced to do the same thing, and once on that road the horrors really began.

From the distance there came to us the sounds of splintering glass, screams, shouts, and the crying of children. Soon a rock came crashing through our side window, showering us with fragments of glass. We all let out cries and tried to brush ourselves off.

I remember yelling to Fred, “Can't you turn off somewhere?”

“No, I can't,” came Fred's desperate answer.

We were all trapped on this road and compelled to run a gauntlet that had been cunningly set up for us. Stationed at intervals on either side of the road were groups of men, women, even youngsters gleefully joining the attack, all armed with piles of stones and bricks that they hurled at the slowly passing cars and buses. Their taunts sounded in my ears clearly above all the other clamor, the smashing of glass, the thumping and beating of fists and clubs against the metal of the cars.

“Nigger bastards.”

“Jew sons of bitches. Go back to New York.”

“Hitler didn't do enough.”

Yes, I heard that too, and it gave a clue as to the makeup of the mob. I heard this: “We're going to finish where Hitler left off.”

The destruction was terrible. Some cars were turned over and their occupants beaten as they lay on the ground. Children were screaming and crying, but there was no mercy for anyone—the children were beaten too. I remember looking around desperately for the police. They were there, all right, I saw them, but they were doing nothing to stop the onslaught. In fact, I saw them take part in it. When Fred was forced momentarily to a halt, a fat trooper beat on our window with his club and yelled, “Get going, you Jew bastard.”
And when we couldn't, he smashed another one of the windows with his club and then laughed.

If I ever felt like killing someone, it was at that moment. And yet until then there could not have been a stronger champion of the police than I was. I'd believed we relied on them for the safety of our lives, that they were our only means of protection against the criminal element, and that they were brave men who put their own lives on the line to save other people. But all that changed after I witnessed what was going on there, with state troopers actually taking part in the riot against people who had done nothing more than attend a concert. I saw them throwing rocks at the cars and buses and laughing as they did so.

But as sick and furious as I felt then, the important thing was to get out of the trap we were in—and also, as we discovered, to get some medical attention for Fred. He had been badly cut in the hand from flying glass and was bleeding all over the steering wheel. Myra had received cuts too, but she did not know how to drive a car even if it had been possible for her to take over for Fred. Fortunately, Ruby and I had escaped any injury and either one of us could drive. But if we stopped to change over, they would pounce on us like hunting dogs on their prey.

Fortunately, we did not have much farther to go before the nightmare was over and we were able to drive without any more injury. But now as we got back onto the main road, I was able to take over at the wheel, and we began to look for a hospital because we had nothing that could stop the bleeding of Fred's hand, and Myra's cuts needed tending to also.

There was a policeman directing traffic at one corner and I stopped and asked him if he could direct us to a hospital. He looked at me before answering, he looked at the car and saw the damages on
it and guessed where we had come from. Word of the riot had spread all over by now and was headline news in newspapers all over the country, in fact, all over the world.

A look of contempt had come on the officer's face, and he said, “We got no hospitals 'round here.” He meant “for you.”

“But there's got to be one,” I argued. “There's a man seriously injured.”

“If you don't get going,” he said, “I'll give you a ticket.”

We drove on, and only two blocks away I saw the hospital and drove into Emergency. We were not the only ones coming from the concert. The place was filled with others who had been caught by the mob, and the one nurse on duty was cold and unpleasant.

“Why don't you people stay home where you belong?” she said.

This, in addition to the long wait we'd have to suffer made Fred decide he didn't want their medical attention. We did get the nurse to give us some bandages and we at least managed to stop some of the bleeding, which obviously needed stitching. Ruby did the bandaging well enough for the time being, and we left.