Staff Revolt
The SISS Hearings into Pacifica accomplished their main aim. They punished and almost destroyed an institution that had dared to broadcast a dangerous truth outside the orthodoxy. Of course, it’s not that simple. SISS did its dirty work, but Pacifica self-destructed as it fought bitterly over how to respond. Most of the staff believed there were solid legal and moral grounds on which Pacifica could have resisted the SISS investigation. We thought we were in a unique position to establish a principle of the right of non-co-operation. We were never consulted, and it was therefore a shock to staff and listeners when the Foundation announced that despite its doubts about the legitimacy of the hearings and its belief that they might constitute a threat to freedom of speech, Pacifica would co-operate with SISS. The decision was made somewhat precipitously when, in the midst of discussing its appropriate response, a San Francisco newspaper unexpectedly broke the story. Although the Foundation itself agreed to co-operate, it also announced that it would: "also respect the rights of an individual compelled to speak under subpoena to respond to purely personal questions in the light of his own conscience and understanding of his constitutional rights." Pacifica's decision was a compromise that board members thought was financially necessary. Although the Levine broadcast had generated a huge amount of support from Pacifica's listeners, the Foundation's leadership feared that it could not sustain the cost of the lengthy legal battle that would follow non-co-operation. The staff believed that Pacifica's non-co-operation, its resistance, would ensure vast public support and help promote Pacifica’s financial growth. We believed that Americans were looking for unequivocal civil liberties cause to mount a final attack on McCarthyism and Pacifica was, for a moment, in a position to provide that cause. Dick Elman and I talked to the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). They agreed that Pacifica could make a good legal case for non-compliance. The board's unwillingness to accept the challenge deepened a growing division between the board -- those vested with ownership and overall policy -- and those of us who produced the programs. SISS and then the FCC requested Pacifica to file affidavits of loyalty (a loyalty oath) for all staff members. The board prepared a statement declining to file such affidavits, and suggesting instead a positive statement of support for the US constitution. The FCC refused that language and asked to confer privately with two members of the board and the Executive Vice-President, Jerry Shore. Pacifica's board met again on December 14. Board members agreed that if the FCC did not obtain sworn statements of loyalty from the three people in question, Pacifica’s licenses would be designated for hearing, with possible revocation as the result. Two of the three were willing to testify. Shore was not. Such testimony could set him up for a full inquiry into his friends and associations prior to 1952. Although Pacifica never admitted it publicly, the "private conversations" were to be on the record and under oath, and the principal question was going to be "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? FCC Chairman E. William Henry made clear at a meeting with Pacifica that if the three co-operated, Pacifica’s licenses would be forthcoming on January 8th or 15th. The station managers (present at the Board meeting as advisors) urged the board to reject the FCC's request as an unwarranted invasion of the Foundation's privacy. The board sought a compromise. A minority of the Board asked Shore to resign. After an acrimonious meeting the board finally issued a statement which left the responsibility to each individual's conscience. Although it affirmed its "support for any such person who refuses to answer such questions," it qualified that support by adding that "it will proceed as necessary to try to preserve its broadcasting licenses." The language was equivocal because the board was equivocating. It wanted above all else to avoid confrontation. Realizing the doubtful nature of the Pacifica Board’s support, Shore resigned. On January 22. 1964 Pacifica received its licenses from the FCC. Pacifica’s Survival
Pacifica survived but it was licking its wounds. Jerry Shore’s resignation was devastating. Like almost all the ex-Communists I met, Jerry was a superb leader, who led by empowering those doing the work, creating the organization structure that helped them work productively, and raising money to support them. He was good at all these things. We urged Jerry to stay and fight. We threatened to shut down WBAI and KPFK, but Jerry urged us to stay and continue our programming. Fred Haines, then station manager of KPFK in Los Angeles, resigned and Dick Elman, who did the Levine broadcast with me, left as well. Those of us who remained were distraught. You must understand that country was exploding. James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time had rocked the nation, the folk music revival was in full swing with Joan Baz on the cover of Time and Bob Dylan holding his first major concert. Bette Frieden published The Feminine Mystique, launching a new woman’s movement, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert got kicked out of Harvard starting a psychedelic movement, Malcom X was kickout of the Nation of Islam, young men committed 200,000 draft card violations, there were massive arrests in Birmingham and Dr. Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. The times were changing. Anything was possible. Pacifica had squandered a rare moment.
Shore’s resignation left a vacuum in our management structure, precipitating the unionization of KPFA and KPFK in Los Angeles. Pacifica staff members had already formed an employee association to deal with the traditional issues of job security and the unlikely union issue of preserving our programming policies. On January 7th the staff at KPFA in Berkeley voted to join NABET (The National Association of Broadcasting Employees and Technicians). On January 13, Elsa Knight Thompson, was fired. After preliminary negotiations, Acting President Trevor Thomas managed to delay the inevitable strike until after the Licenses were granted on January 22nd. The staff walked out on March 23. Thomas told the press that the strike was part of a larger fight “which has torn Pacifica apart for a year and a half.” It was, he continued, part of the “coercion from the left” which aimed at tying KPFA to a rigid “kind of orthodoxy.” The strikers prevailed on the narrow issue of Elsa Knight Thompson. She was reinstated. But it seemed to us to be a pyrrhic victory. We knew that our program policies would inevitably invoke the wrath of the authorities. Isn’t that what journalism is supposed to do? Only now it seemed clear that in a fight with the authorities, Pacifica’s leadership would collapse and throw its staff to the dogs. In September of 1963, the Pacifica National Board met with key personnel from the three stations to discuss overall policy. The meeting was held at the luxurious Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbera along the coast above town and headed by Robert Hutchins. The board did their best to make us understand that they had our best interests at heart, but it was clear that the growing movement was a threat, and feared our programming would. Really, they weren’t prepared to deal with the consequences of the vast changes sweeping across America. Nothing quite so dire actually happened. Pacifica stations went on to do great programming in the sixties and Seventies. However, I believe the potential of Pacifica becoming an enduring institution of the highest broadcast standards was lost when the foundation accommodated SISS without a fight and allowed Jerry Shore to leave. The compromise tarnished Pacifica’s integrity, necessitated the loss of an Executive with a vision of growth (he was never replaced by anyone), alienated the staff from management and led to the unionization of the stations. WBAI Broadcast Day
This post may be long and tedious for many of you, in which case you should skip it. I wanted a record of Pacifica’s programming during the Elsa era. My notes were prepared by reviewing WBAI’s program guides for all of 1965, but they generally reflect Pacifica programming during this era. The range of topics and interests is astounding. There is simply nothing else remotely like Pacifica at its height. (For a quick, good sense of Pacifica Programming listen to the BBC Documentary posted on my Web site.)
A WBAI Broadcast Day
7:00 am - news, weather, parking information, music, “New York happenings for the day.”
8:00 am - classical music concert
9:00 am - rebroadcasts of previous evening’s programming.
10:00 am - classical music concert
11:00 am - radio stories (for example): a performance of Stringberg’s Pariah from the BBC; a reading of Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf a sixteen-part series; dramatic portraits of George Orwell, Dylan Thomas, D. H. Lawrence; a thirteen part reading of Thackeray’s novel Pendennis and another of Richard Huges' High Wind in Jamaica).
12:00 am - more adventuresome music programming (for example): works by the serialist musician Ginastera, experimental music by Lejaren. Anthony Boucher’s long running, knowledgeable series on Opera, called Golden Voices. Charle Hobson’s “Negro” music, from Jamaican Calypso to high church gospels.
1:00 pm - poetry by (for example): Denise Levertov, Steven Spender, Jackson MacLow, Richard Eberhardt, Jean Valentine, Charles Oldson, Robert Creeley, Cecil Hemley, Randal Jarrell, Aaron Kramer, Galway Kinnel, Jean Garrigue, John Ciardi, C. Day Lewis, Marianne Moore, Langston Hughes, Ann Sexton, X. J. Kennedy, and Lee Hatfield.
2:00 pm - Classical and folk music.
3:00 pm - more radio stories (a dramatized murder trial, a portrait of King Henry II, five women criminals, all from the BBC. Isaaac Singer reading his own short stories. A lengthy series on insects. A series on Yoga from an Indian guru).
4:00 pm - more classical music (only a tiny portion of our classical music reflected standard play lists of classical music stations).
4:30 pm - a kids show.
6:00 pm - a final music concert.
7:00 pm. - a news hour with commentaries and reviews by (for example): Catholic layman Thomas Francis Ritt, Soviet apologist William Mandel, conservative Ayn Rand, Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker, a Wall Street commentator, Neo-liberal Seymour Martin Lipset, a regular UN correspondent Betty Pilkington, press reviews by Nat Hentoff, and Leroi Jones with a series called Tell It Like It Is.
8:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Prime time where we premiered our major programs (see below).
11:00 pm A variety of late night programs (for example): Poet Paul Allen did a series with American poets. A folk music program with Irwin Silber, editor of Sing Out, the folk music magazine. The premier show featured a new-comer, Bob Dylan. Frank Brady began a show in April on “The Hip 400 that included Ralph Ginzburg.” One night, Friedrich Durrenmatt gave an inspired performance in German from his play, Herkules und der Stall des Augias.
Talkback began in 1965 in the late evening, our first show in which the audience could call in and be on the air with a new technology we had installed.
Prime time ended with a daily news report by broadcaster Edward P. Morgan.
1:00 am - By the end of February, 1965, Bob Fass was on the air with Radio Unnamable, beginning at 1:00 am and running through the night. It was throw-away time to serious radio people. We had no idea what we had unleashed!
It would be impossible to give a comprehensive list of WBAI programs. Here are highlights from 1965. Some of the programs had been produced earlier. We did a lot of rebroadcasting.
Documentaries. Big blockbusters, 60 to 90 minutes programs on major events
• Freedom Now! Dale Minor’s documentary on the 1963 Montgomery Movement.
• The Winds of the People on the Spanish Civil War.
• My 12-part series This Little Light on Mississippi in the summer of 1964.
• Prison reform.
• The Rebellion in Berkeley broadcast on January 19th, 1965.
• A documentary on The Quebec Independence Movement,
• A dramatization of the life of Simon Bolivar.
• Charlie Hayden whose program Big Head, Obituary for a Junky caused waves. Hayden followed it up with a series on underworld homosexuals, heroin addicts, child molesters and sex changers.
• A remarkably intimate series on the Ku Klux Klan produced by our folio editor, Marsha Tompkins, after a visit to her home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
• Five nights in the Ghetto, produced from tapes made by Leonard Brown in Los Angeles.
• A retrospect on Malcolm X that I produced from tapes we’d recorded over five years. We followed retrospect with a panel discussion with historian John Henrik Clarke and James Forman, who was then the leader of SNICC.
• A series on the Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley. The series ended with a debate between Hal Draper, who supported the students, and Nathan Glaser who did not.
• A commemorative piece on the anniversary of the Sharpsville Massacer in South Africa.
• Vietnam including interviews conducted in Paris with Jean Lacouture, a correspondent for Le Monde and Phillipe Devilliers, another French southeast Asian expert.
• Richard Lamparski began his series, Whatever Happened To …, which he later parlayed into a successful television franchise.
Additional Public Affairs programming
• Excerpts and interviews from the Asilomar Negro Writers Conference.
• A tribute to 1st Amendment Advocate Alexadner Meikeljoihn.
• We read Jean Paul Sartre’s refusal to accept the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1964.
• A regular series on the rights and responsibilities of college newspapers.
Interviews with (for example):
• futurist Alvin Toffler;
• General S.L.A. Marshall on Vietnam;
• author Bernard Fall on the French in Vietnam;
• Che Guevara;
• Richard Albert and Timothy Leary;
• Felix Green on his return from China;
• Paul Krasner of the Realist;
• one of the first interviews ever with a new group called Amnesty International;
• a seven part series called Cyberculture, that anticipated the future computers would release twenty years later.
• a conversation with Bayard Rustin and Dinah Shore on the Negro Revolution;
• a tribute to Albert Schweitzer;
• New York Times journalist Harrison Salisbury with guests talking about the Soviet Union.
• Robert Williams on a trip to Cuba.
• an interview with a series by the director of the Hayden Plenetarium
• Marcus Raskin
• Paul Goodman
• James Baldwin
• Robert Theobold, author of Free Men and Free Markets
• Charles Silberman, whose provocative book Crisis in Black and White had just come out
• Rolla May
• David Bazelon, author of the Paper Economy
• John Dos Passos, author of Manhattan Transfer among others
• Diana Arbus talking about her photography
• Linus Pauling
• Jacques Barzun
• Irving Howe who attacked the student movement
• Ernst Van der Gaag who defended the Vietnam War
• Alduous Huxley
• Jules Feiffer
• Ruby Dee
• Susan Sontag
• Helen Gurley Brown, who had just been made editor of Cosmopolitan
• Arthur Koestler
• Jacques Ellul,
Recorded talks and lectures
• Dr Bruno Bettleheim on raising children;
• Saul Bellows on the contemporary novel;
• Indian mystic J.Krishnamurti on Intelligence and Hatred;
• Lectures on the Greek classics.
• Talks by Alan Watts
Drama and Literature
• Dylan Thomas reading Return Journey
• David Ossman in an LA produced biography of e.e.cummings.
• A documentary montage on the last days of Hart Crane,
• An original WBAI production of The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus.
• An evening with Carl Sandburg.
• An original production of Gogol’s The Overcoat, followed by the complete version in the original Russian.
• A production of Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of a Gunman.
• A Memorial to T.S. Eliot.
• Lillian Smith reading from her new novel Our Faces, Our Words, an ode to the non-violent resistance of the civil rights movement.
• Dale Minor and New York Times book reviewer Maxwell Geismar explored the work of the emerging Austrian writer Jokov Lind.
• Theater and drama critic John Simon leading a panel discussion on the challenges of translations.
• A complete production of Euripides, The Hippolytus.
• British critic Kenneth Tynan on American theater,
The Music Department
• A study of the preparation and performance of a major work by Stockhausen in Buffalow, New York.
• Music Director John Corigliani;s interviews, with the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola in his hotel room,
• a documentary on the Stride Piano,
• a continuous presentation of the uncut performances of the entire Wagner Ring Cycle from the 1964 Beyreuth Festival.
• Judy Collins in a prime time series with the Clancey Brothers, Malvina Reynolds, Charles Ives and Charles Ruggles.
• Gunther Schuler’s Contermporary Music in Evolution.
• Phil Ochs in a show about the involvementy performers and artists in political life, “The Age of Involvement.”
Civil Rights Movement
While the struggle with the FCC went on, we continued programming. The civil rights movement, particularly in the South could not be stopped, red-baited or intimidated. In 1963 nine hundred and thirty civil rights demonstrations took place in 115 cities in 11 southern states. 20,000 people were arrested. In May Martin Luther King & Reverend Ralph Abernathy were jailed in Birmingham for marching in defiance of an injunction. A few days later Birmingham Chief of Police “Bull” Connor turned fire houses & dogs on children marching in support out of the 16th St Baptist Church to keep them from leaving the "Negro section.” Almost a thousand children were thrown into jail. In June Medgar Evers, a NAACP field secretary, was murdered.
That August, one of the largest demonstrations in American history took place in Washington DC. Pacifica was there when 300,000 people converged on the capitol to demonstrate for Jobs and Freedom for African Americans. This is where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
The demonstration brought a range of organizations together in a common progressive cause. The group included a traditional union leader, A. Phillip Randolph, and young radicals like James Farmer (president of the Congress of Racial Equality) and John Lewis (chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee). Roy Wilkins (president of the NAACP), and Whitney Young (president of the National Urban League) objected to the inclusion of Bayard Rustin on the grounds that he was a homosexual, a former Communist and a draft resistor. Martin Luther King was instrumental in changing their minds. Only Malcolm X stayed away.
The August demonstration didn’t change anything in the South. In September, Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. Four young girls were killed and twenty-two people were injured. Martin Luther King returned to Birmingham to contain the rioting that broke out after the bombing. We sent Dale Minor with him. The result was an intense documentary from the pool halls and streets of Birmingham called Freedom Now!
For those of us living in New York City, the demolition of Pennsylvania station that began in October of 1963 was heart rendering, the loss of one of America’s great architectural masterpieces to make way for an ugly box. WBAI did a series on historic preservation, as an invigorated campaign to save historic buildings began to mobilize.
On November 22nd, President Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas. Whether we like or dislike a president, an assassination of a national leader is traumatic. Two days later, his alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was shot. Both events were captured on film and broadcast endlessly for three days, through Kennedy’s funeral on November 25th.
Less well remembered but much talked about at the time was a comment by Malcolm X. Shortly after Kennedy’s funeral, on December 1st, he gave a long speech in New York called God’s Judgment of White America, essentially a statement of Nation of Islam policies. In the question period following, Malcolm was asked about Kennedy’s assassination. He replied that it was a case of “the chickens coming home to roost.”
Reporters were present and the New York Times published an article about the remark the next day, adding that the audience applauded. Mainstream media was shocked, and a huge hullabaloo followed. Malcolm was forced to resign from the Nation of Islam. His explanation was ignored. Malcolm pointed out that two weeks before Kennedy was killed, he had authorized the killing of South Vietnam Premier Ngo Dinh Diem who he viewed as an impediment to U.S. aspirations in Vietnam. Malcolm’s comment was the equivalent of “if you live the sword you may die by the sword.”
Kennedy’s death put his vice president, Lyndon Johnson in office. In his first State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, the new President declared a "War on Poverty.” We were dubious about his sincerity, but Johnson reprioritized the ambitions of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Philadelphia Mississippi
On June 21st 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner disappeared in Neshoba County, Mississippi. The three civil rights workers were among hundreds of students who volunteered to work in Mississippi Freedom Summer, registering Blacks to vote in a famously violent culture. SNNC had been trying to register African American voters in Mississippi since 1961. Out of 70,000 attempts only 5% (4,700 citizens) had succeeded. SNNC reasoned that if white students faced the same intimidation, the Mississippi voter registration drive would get national attention.
When organizers lost touch with the three young men who were investigating a burned-out black church near Philadelphia, they became worried and spread the news.
Dale Minor and I flew to Mississippi to cover the story for Pacifica. Dale had been with Martin Luther King when he calmed the streets and pool halls of Birmingham, Alabama, after the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed on September 15th, 1963. Dale had learned how to work in the South.
Our plane landed outside the capital of Jackson. We gathered our bags and walked to the Hertz rental agency. The man behind the counter was instantly hostile. He asked, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” We told him we were reporters. “Now what would you find interesting to report here in Mississippi?” he asked. We mentioned three civil rights workers who had disappeared four days earlier. He assured us they had run off and hid to create an incident.
We drove the seventy miles to Philadelphia and checked into a motel off Main Street in the center of town. The next morning, we drove to the burned out ruins of the Mt. Zion Methodist church in Longview, twenty miles away. The last three miles were down a narrow, dirt levee road. We were heading toward the homes of two local Black families who we had been told might talk to us on tape. No one else we’d met would go on the record.
We were poking through charred timbers when a sheriff’s car drove up and parked behind us. The deputy asked us who we were. We told him. He was courteous but brusque. He complained that he was unable to protect civil rights workers, because there were so many of them and they were acting in such provocative ways. Dale asked about the deputization of 150 Neshoba County white men the day before. The deputy explained that they were there to protect the local citizens against any and all outsiders. He added that he wouldn’t want to protect outside agitators anyway. Then suddenly he said he had to go and drove off.
Dale and I were nervous and debated leaving as well. We turned toward the church for one final picture. Dale saw the dust of a car roaring down the dirt levee road toward the church. We ran back to our rental and climbed in as a four-door sedan pulled into the circular drive behind us. Four men piled out carrying iron pipes and baseball bats. Dale drove out to the road. The men behind us returned to their car and pulled their doors closed as the driver started the engine.
Dale asked if we should go left toward the unknown or right, back the way we had come. I said left but he turned right, despite the danger of a backup car blocking the narrow levee road. It was the correct decision. We later learned the other direction led to a notorious redneck enclave, likely the homes of the men in the car following us. They peeled off as we roared into the outskirts of Philadelphia.
Somewhat shaken, we drove back to the motel, left our recording gear, and went to the press information office that Mississippi had set up to handle reporters. Art Richardson a tall, rugged looking man wearing a Western hat, scowled as soon as he saw our credentials and suggested we go down the street to a coffee shop where he would meet us. It was a dark place with dirty windows and Formica booths, aluminum strips along the sides, jukeboxes on the wall and high, red plastic seats that stuck to your clothes.
Art slipped in. “Now I been hearing some things about you boys and they ain’t too complimentary,” Art began. We asked him what he meant, and as he talked on it became clear that his information was based on private letters and telephone conversations between me and people in Mississippi. He’d also read articles Dale had written, including one in an obscure Berkeley journal, The Liberal Democrat, and he was able to quote from them in detail. He knew about the SISS hearings into Pacifica’s loyalty and the FCC’s delay in granting Pacifica’s licenses because of possible “communist infiltration.”
“Now Mr. Minor, I’ve seen that you is a veteran of the Korean war, but that you was busted twice for insubordination, failure to follow orders, and busted back to private, so you was a real trouble maker in the army, is that correct Mr. Minor? And how did you manage to get an honorable discharge?”
“And you Mr. Koch, I’ve seen correspondence between you and a Mr. Clinton Jencks of Berkeley, California, a well known member of the communist party.” It was the kind of detailed information Richardson could only have been given by the FBI. “That kind of behavior may be okay in New York City, but it ain’t okay in Mississippi.”
Dale asked him for the bottom line. Was Richardson trying to frighten us? “Not at all,” he said. He was simply warning us that our job of reporting was going to be uphill all the way. I asked him if he’d shared his information about us with anyone in town. “Some folks asked me what I knowed about you boys, and I done told them.” Dale asked if this included members of the White Citizen’s Council. Richardson said he didn’t know, but admitted that he had no idea what the people he had told had done with the information.
He advised us not to walk on the streets of Philadelphia without a police escort. “I’d say it would be best if you boys were out of town by sundown.”
I later learned that Richardson, like many in the Mississippi Highway Patrol, was both racist and militantly anti-communist. He was well known for publicly announcing that the 1961 freedom rides had been "planned and directed by the communists." "We have known for some time that the communist party is behind the freedom rider movements," Richardson said.