GROWING UP IN KLAN COUNTRY
President Lyndon Johnson had claimed we'd been attacked twice at a place called the Gulf of Tonkin. He had run for President promising peace and Barry Goldwater had come out and called him a liar. Goldwater said the plans were already in the works to fight in Nam, that Johnson knew this and was lying. Goldwater had promised to wage a full military campaign, not a piecemeal struggle, and if by 1965 the war was not won we would leave Viet Nam, as it had little strategic importance.
Sometimes I wonder to this day what would America be like if we had left Nam in 1965.
Goldwater questioned LBJ going around the Constitution for civil rights legislation and warned that by doing so we set a standard for imperial Presidencies for decades to come. Goldwater warned that Social Security could only keep going if each succeeding generation had increased in size, and he doubted the baby boomers would have kids the way their World War 2 parents did. All of this sounded bizarre to the American public, who were offended that Goldwater called LBJ a liar.
Years later it was discovered the Gulf of Tonkin incident had not happened the way LBJ told the public it had. There was never a "second attack", and the first was dubious at best. The man who had run promising there would be no war, launched a war that would tear apart families and plunge America into a cynicism it has yet to shake. Somehow most went from believing everything the President said, to almost nothing.
So my first awareness of the war was that it was LBJ's war. A man named Hubert Humphrey would form a student group I would later join called STUDENTS FOR A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY, but for now I was trying to discover who in Atlanta, Georgia agreed with me. The south was reluctantly giving up segregation, and a gay man named Lester Maddox became a folk hero for closing down his Pickwick Restaurant rather than serve blacks. Thousands of Georgians would line up to have him sign axe handles, meant to scare blacks with. Of course none of the rednecks would know he was gay until he died of AIDS years later.
There were no articles questioning the war, and no TV station dared have on civil rights leaders without segregationists in attendance to argue their cause. Usually freely allowed to use the word nigger as well. Today everyone claims they were against the war all along. It is a lie.
LBJ had come to power after JFK was assassinated - I still remember sitting in class when a class monitor came in crying and took the teacher outside. The teacher returned also crying. We were told to leave class and go home. The buses weren't running yet, I didn't want to wait in the long line at the payphone and walked home. I walked by student guards crying, and had no idea why. Had the nuclear war finally happened? What was going on? When I got home and my surprised mom told me the President had been shot, it was almost anti-climatic compared to the thoughts I'd been having.
I was still in ASFO, the Atlanta Science Fantasy Organization when a fanzine produced by one of its members hurled abuse at blacks who had written to Marvel comics asking for a black superhero. The title of the article was I'M A NIGGER AND I WANT A NIGGER SUPERHERO. Shocked I wrote a letter saying it was wrong to use the word, and Blacks should have heroes to look up to.
I received in the mail an envelope with a letter written on toilet paper threatening "my nigger loving life" and the author had enclosed human shit in the letter. The editor of the fanzine had actually put his return address on the envelope. Today he is famous for art about the civil war, but he's just a racist to me. This however, would be the least of the attacks that would happen to me in the years to come. It was only the beginning. ASFO however, had lost its appeal to me. I was reading underground papers and magazines on the new culture and that's what I wanted. I was reading less and less science fiction. None of the people in the group had even smoked pot, some members actually showed up to meetings drunk. Everyone drank in those days. I was into other things.
The first flyer I ever wrote against the war I passed out at Grady High School, after leaving military school. One day later, three adult men showed up at the door of class and told the teacher they had to see me. I went to the door. One man handed me a card with a man atop a horse in KKK robes holding a burning a torch. It read,
YOU HAVE BEEN VISITED BY THE KU KLUX KLAN
Contrary to popular belief, the original Klans and offshoots didn't carry the Confederate flag until the 1980's. The Stars and Stripes was their flag of choice.
and then they walked away. That day after school I went to my friend in the principals office and had him mimeograph for me a flyer describing the incident and promising to continue speaking out against the war. Students surrounded me baffled, wondering why I was against the war.I learned to argue when surrounded by dozens of people telling me I was wrong then. Johnny Reb was a singer out of New Orleans who sold loads of records in those days, and many students quoted his lyrics to me:
You niggers listen now
I'm gonna tell you how
To keep from getting tortured when the klan is on the prowl
Stay at home at night
And lock your doors uptight
Don't go outside or else you'll find those crosses aŽ burning bright
Now i know you won't believe me
So i'm gonna tell you why
The cajun ku klux klan is gonna get you by and by
I'm warning you that when i'm through you gonna change your tune
This story is 'bout a nigger
His name was Levy Coon
He walked into a cafe
He thought he'd get a bite
He thought that they would serve him since they passed the civil rights
The waitress told him no
And that he'd better go
He said: "no mam, my uncle sam say i don't have to go!"
So he sat there in that cafe
Being stubborn as a mule
No matter what she said he wouldn't get up of that stool
He sat their like a jackass
And i'm gonna demonstrate:
"I came in here to eat and i ain't leaving 'til i've ate."
The waitress had enough
She said i call your bluff
She said if we can't treat you right we'll have to treat you rough
The phone was in her hands
She gave him one more chance
He wouldn't go and so she called the Cajun Ku Klux Klan
When he saw them Cajuns coming
Levy knew it was too late
His eyes popped out his head and his kinky hair got straight
He said: "oh lousy white folks
I didn't mean a thing
Why did i have to listen to that demonstrater King?"
Now niggers understand
They tied up both his hands
He was at the mercy of the Cajun Ku Klux Klan
I knew just what they do
Levy knew it too
I knew what kind of torture they would put that nigger through
Now the moral of this story
As plain as it can be
Niggers mind your buisness, and let us white folks be
You better heed my warning
And try to understand
Don't you demonstrate around the Cajun Ku Klux Klan
(Here is the story behind the above singer: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2003-07-01/commentary.html
But I was listening to someone else, and hoping to find someone who agreed with me. And though I was young, I knew a girl would be fun, too. So I listened to these words over and over. The words on this album were my only hope.
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.
BOB DYLAN
And I saw a girl at school, older than me, and I knew I wanted to lose my virginity to her.......... I still had high hopes.
