A Friendly Letter, The Blog.

Copyright © By Chuck Fager

Part One: Trying to Catch the Bus

San Francisco - 2006

Kate was racing the Muni bus toward the stop at the corner. She was wet and out of breath. It was bad enough, she thought as the bus slowed, that the skinheads had ripped up her peace poster. But why did they have to drench her with ice water?

The bus stopped and the doors flapped open. Kate leaped onto it, flashing her bus pass and shivering her way toward the back. A sudden San Francisco fog had rolled over the peace rally just as it was breaking up, quickly turning a sunny afternoon chill and dreary. The skinheads had jumped her when she rounded a corner, away from the others, headed for the bus and home.

Kate was used to quick changes in weather here; the variability was part of San Francisco’s appeal. But she wasn’t accustomed to being out in it soaking wet.

She also hadn’t been afraid of the skinheads, at least not at first. There’d been a lot of that trouble since the election, and the rise of the “Surge” in Iraq. She’d taken nonviolent self-defense workshops at school. The training kicked in automatically, and she didn’t resist when they surrounded her and grabbed the poster. She backed up when they called her a “stupid Commie bitch,” but didn’t see the one crouched behind her and fell over him, sending them into harsh laughter. Kate was still scrambling to her feet when they dumped a bucket of icy water over her, and pushed her down again.

Then she was scared. The shock of the water left her gasping, but energized. Jumping up, she shoved the nearest skinhead aside and ran past him. He snatched at her and caught hold of her backpack. But she slid out of it and raced back around the corner. They started to give chase, but she was fast and had a good lead. By the next corner she saw the bus coming, and knew she could get to it with time to spare.

The bus was only half-filled. Kate sank into an empty double seat near the rear exit, leaned against the window, and watched her breath make small foggy ovals on the glass. Traffic was slow, and the bus lurched along fitfully, rubbing Kate’s skin against her sticky damp shirt.

She wasn’t sure what bus line it was, hoping it was the 28, headed out past Golden Gate Park and toward home. But it didn’t really matter; there would be a transfer stop coming up somewhere, or she could ride downtown and catch the M-Ocean View trolley there. She needed to get changed and over to SF State by seven, to meet Sal and get to their women’s history class. She was behind in the reading and had hoped to catch up today. Not very likely now; the textbook was in her lost backpack.

A flurry of motion outside shifted her gaze through the glass, and then Kate drew back. The skinheads were trotting along the sidewalk, still trying to catch up to the bus. She crouched down, shivering now with fear. The bus had seemed like a refuge, but it could easily become a trap. Why was the traffic so slow?

The bus swung around a corner, and the pursuers disappeared. Kate scrunched down in the seat; still cold. She felt the bus slow for a stop, shut her eyes and held her breath; she couldn’t watch.

The brakes hissed and the doors thumped. After standing for what seemed like an hour, the bus jerked and rumbled slowly on. Kate stretched to glance quickly out the window: nothing. She lowered her head again; don’t take any chances.

There was a rustling sound, and someone sat next to her.

Part Two: Scratchy but Warm

. . . There was a rustling sound, and someone sat next to her. Kate squeezed away, toward the wall of the bus; the metal was cold against her wet shirt.

“My goodness, Friend,” said a voice, “Thee’s soaked. Here, take this shawl. Thee’ll catch thy death of cold.”

Kate’s eyes blinked open. Beside her was a woman in a flowing gray dress, carrying a canvas tote bag, with salt-and-pepper hair tucked into a small white bonnet. She was sliding a woolen shawl off her back, and in another second had deftly wrapped it around Kate’s shoulders. It felt scratchy, but warm.

“I-uh, thank you,” Kate stuttered.

The woman’s dress looked like it came from a museum. By itself, Kate knew, this was nothing to wonder at — in San Francisco you could run across people in any kind of strange getup or antique costume just about anytime, or anywhere. But this woman seemed different; it didn’t feel like she was role-playing or camping it up, despite her odd form of address.

“There,” the woman said, “that’s a bit better, til thee gets home. What on earth happened,” she added, “if thee don’t mind my asking?”

Under the warming shawl, Kate found herself mumbling something about the peace rally and the attack. As the woman listened, shaking her head and tut-tutting sympathetically, she dipped into the tote bag, pulling out long wooden needles and a large cream-colored ball of yarn. Fingers moving expertly, it seemed she knitted half a square before Kate had finished.

“Good for thee, standing up against the war,” she said when Kate finished, nodding approvingly. “And beat them to the bus, too? Quick thinking. And fine running, too, um –?” Her gaze was inquiring.

“I’m Kate,” she said. And you?”

The woman smiled. “Call me Lucy. All my sisters did. And we had our share of close scrapes too.” She lifted a needle to pull some yarn from the ball, and furrowed her brows. “I believe it was `43 when I almost got tarred and feathered. Near Wilmington. And then, of course, that dreadful business with Pennsylvania Hall. Burned it to the ground, they did.”

She shook off a memory. “But then, those were all steps along the path of progress, I suppose.” She paused again, her needles going as she pursued some thought.

Kate’s curiosity was stirring now. “What are you making?” she asked, touching the nearly-finished square. The stitches were neat and tight.

“Oh, this,” Lucy said, waving one hand dismissively. “Just squares. Make a stack, and stitch them into baby blankets for AFSC to send overseas.” She smiled again at Kate, then tied off the square, dropped it into the bag, and started another one. As the needles began moving again, she lapsed back into her reverie. Soon she was shaking her head.

“What?” Kate asked, feeling a little bold.

Lucy glanced up, one eyebrow raised. “I was thinking of those poor boys,” she said.

“Which–?” Kate began, but then she knew. “The skinheads? What about them?” Her voice was rising. “They were pigs!”

Lucy’s head was still shaking. “Yes,” she said, “I can see how thee feels. But think of it: what has been done to them, to fill them with such hate and anger? How can that ever be healed? It never ceases to trouble me, after all these years, how society can twist and pervert perfectly fine human beings, bury the light in them, in them all, under so much muck.”

She sighed. “Where is the radical reform? But,” she added, turning to Kate again with the beginning of a smile, “we must never lose hope.”

Kate began to wonder if Lucy was about to launch into a sermon, and still wasn’t sure she liked her sympathy for the attackers. But then the bus stopped again and she heard the doors open. Loud voices came from the front.

She looked up — and there they were, three of the skinheads.

Part Three: A Very Challenging Climate

. . . She looked up — and there they were, three of the skinheads.

“What–?” thought Kate, and shot a glance out the window. They were passing an orange construction sign, its yellow warning lights flashing, and she realized that the bus had hardly been moving the whole time she had been talking. Now what?

She started to shiver again, and turned to Lucy. “It’s them,” she muttered, and tried to shrink down behind her capacious skirt.

Lucy put down a needle and patted her shoulder. “It will be fine,” she whispered.

Kate didn’t believe it. The bus rocked forward, and the voices in the front started again, this time in a raucous chant: “USA! USA! USA! USA!”

They made their way slowly down the aisle, shouting their three-syllable manifesto at one row of passengers after another. A few joined weakly with their chant; most moved away, alarm on their faces.

Then the chant stopped, interrupted by one skinhead poking another with his elbow, and gesturing toward the back. Toward Kate.

She grasped Lucy’s arm. “They’ve seen me,” she hissed. “Lucy, I’m–”

The older woman signaled silence with a finger to her lips, and then abruptly stood up. As she did, the ball of yarn fell off her lap and bounced unrolling down the aisle.

“Oh, dear,” she said, and began following it, needles aloft and waving, right up to the skinheads.

“Excuse me,” she said to the first one, “Can thee help me, please? My yarn–”

Behind her back, Lucy’s free hand was gesturing at Kate, pointing toward the rear exit.

“Here,” an alert passenger said, coming up with it. “I got your ball, Miss.”

“Oh, thank thee,” Lucy said, and then turned to the lead skinhead, holding out her needles to him. “Would thee mind holding these for a moment?” she said. “This ball’s almost completely unraveled, and I must get it back together.”

The skinhead hesitated, then took the needles. Lucy gave him a big smile, and began turning the ball in her hands, wrapping the loose yarn back around it, talking as she wound.

“These squares I’m making are for refugee children in Afghanistan,” she said to him. “It’s a very challenging climate there, as thee must know; so hot in summer, bitter cold in winter. Has thee been there, friend, with the army perhaps?”

The skinhead opened his mouth to answer, but Lucy rushed on.

“My sewing circle makes these blankets for Iraqi babies, too. It’s the same there, I’m told, extremes of temperature. And so much destruction from that awful war.”

She paused for a moment in her winding, and fished a square from the tote bag. “Does thee think this color is satisfactory?” she asked, handing it to a second skinhead. “My sister Martha tells me my yarn is always too dull, and I should try some scarlet or even black. But plain is all I really know, I guess.”

Kate was watching this one-sided conversation unfold with such fascination that she didn’t feel the bus stop, just saw the rear exit door light blink on. She quickly got up, pushed through it, and then was out on the street.

Instinctively she started to run, up the sidewalk. Then she slowed, and stopped as the bus rolled slowly past her. Through the window she could see Lucy’s white bonnet, bobbing to one side, as she continued talking earnestly and cheerfully to the baffled skinheads.

Kate thought she saw a gray arm rise in a gesture of farewell, but she couldn’t be sure; then the bus turned the corner and was gone.

Part Four: I Thought You Liked This Class

. . . Kate thought she saw a gray arm rise in a gesture of farewell, but she couldn’t be sure; then the bus turned the corner and was gone.

Kate stood for a moment, trying to take in what she’d just been through. But the metallic wheeze of trolley wheels snapped her back to the present. There, just ahead, was the M-Ocean View trolley car, waiting for a tractor trailer truck to make its tortuous way across the next intersection.

Kate wanted to cry with relief. This car went straight to San Francisco State, so she could make it to class, even if she might be still be a little damp. She climbed on gratefully, and looked for a seat.

And there, even better luck, was Sal, waving to her. “Kate, babe, hey!” she called through the milling riders.

Kate pushed through them and plopped down next to Sal, who looked closely at her, brows furrowed. “Kate, babe, like what hit you? Your hair is a wreck.”

Kate found herself grinning. “I ran into a skinhead shower,” she said, ready to tell her the whole story. But then she had another thought. “Tell you in a minute. Do you have the book for women’s history?” she asked. “I need to so some cramming for class.”

“Sure,” Sal said, and reached for her backpack.

Kate took the book. “What chapter was it?”

“What chapter?” Sal teased. “Chapter Ten. Hey, girl, I thought you liked this class.”

Kate grinned sheepishly. “I do!” she protested. “But I’ve been — well, I got distracted.”

She paged through the book until she found it. “Chapter Ten: The Road to Seneca Falls.” Facing the first page of the section was a photo of a woman, in a grey dress, and a white cap.

“Omigod, it’s Lucy!” Kate almost shouted.

“What?” said Sal.

“I just –” Kate started to explain, then stopped. No, Sal would just tell her she was nuts.

Kate gazed at the photo again, and the caption underneath it:

“Lucretia Mott, 1793-1880. This outspoken Quaker woman somehow managed to combine raising a family, helping her husband in business, and acting as a nationally-known advocate for woman’s rights, antislavery, peace, and other reforms. More than an eloquent speaker, she was also fearless, and faced down mobs that burned down Pennsylvania hall in 1830, and threatened her with being tarred and feathered.”

Kate closed the book and looked off into space. How could this –? she wondered. Then she shrugged. Well, San Francisco was that kind of place: anything could happen here.

Sal tapped her arm, breaking the trance. “Hey, babe,” she said, “this is like a very cool shawl you’re wearing. What thrift store did you find it at?”

Startled, Kate glanced down at the wool, and fingered it. “Oh,” she stumbled, “an-an old old friend from Pennsylvania gave it to me. I’ll tell you about her sometime.”

She stroked the shawl again; scratchy, but so warm. “I know it’s kind of plain, Sal, but it works for me. And every time I put it on, you know, I get this irresistible feeling that it’s time I learned how to knit.”

Story copyright (c) by Chuck Fager

A story by Chuck Fager
Copyright © by Chuck Fager

Note: While this story is fiction, it is built around actual history. Nothing described below is beyond the range of real events of the time among Quakers.

I: One Committee Too Many

Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, 1828

When the Committee from the Women’s Meeting emerged from the parlor, they stopped to collect their long shawls and say goodbye to Esther Swain’s mother before leaving the house. Esther followed the two older women out, then went toward the stairs to go up to her room.

As she turned she saw a slice of grey skirt sticking out of the closet under the stairway. No dresses were hung there, and at once Esther knew it was her sister Piety, trying to hide. Piety, the little brat, had been listening to her interview with the committee!

Bristling, she stepped off the stairs, whirled around the bannister and pulled the closet door open. “All right, Magpie,” she muttered using the nickname her sister disliked most, “what does thee think thee’s doing?”

With a muffled squeal, thirteen-year old Piety slipped past her, followed by a brown-clad bundle of arms and legs topped with a curly red fringe, brother Jonah, eleven.

The pair raced behind the parlor, through the corner of the kitchen to the back stairs, then thumped frantically up its winding flight; but Esther, lifting her long skirts with one hand, was close behind, and followed them to Piety’s room. Jonah tried to slam the door behind him, but Esther forced it open, pushed through the doorway, then shut and stood blocking it as she confronted her puffing, red-faced siblings.

“What did you two think you were doing,” she demanded, “listening at the door down there to what was none of your business?” The fury in her voice was more than the offense warranted, but these two smaller Quakers were convenient targets for her first reaction to the Committee’s message, which was just beginning to sink in.

Jonah, who had yet to assume the sprouting bravado of adolescence, shrank away from his eldest sister, who at twenty-one and brimming with anger looked very imposing and grownup to him. But Piety was too full of what she had heard downstairs to be intimidated.

“Oh, Esther, we couldn’t help it, we had to know what was happening,” she admitted. Then, ignoring her sister’s ire completely, she stepped up and caught Esther’s hands in her smaller ones. “Esther,” she said, looking up at her gravely, “they can’t make thee do it, can they? They can’t make thee refuse to marry Will Macy just because of the trouble in Meeting. They wouldn’t dare. I won’t let them.” Her tone was as firm as her declaration was irrelevant.

This unexpected expression of support and affection caught Esther completely off guard, and instantly dissipated her wrath. She moved away from the door and sat down on Piety’s bed, staring at the floor.

“I wish thee could stop them, Piety,” she replied weakly, “but thee can’t. They are right, I suppose. To marry an Orthodox would be the same as marrying a Presbyterian, or even a Catholic.” She was now speaking as she had in the parlor with the Committee, flatly and submissively, overwhelmed by the authority they represented.

Jonah, emboldened by the sudden change of atmosphere, spoke up, imitating their father’s most solemn tone, the one he used for discussing weighty matters in Meeting for Business. “Yes, Esther, I’m sure thee will find true peace in resignation to the Divine leading,” he affirmed soberly. “Besides, as they told thee downstairs, thee must think of the reputation of Truth and the Meeting.”

Now Piety flared. “Oh hush, Jonah,” she snapped, “thee doesn’t know what thee’s talking about.” She mimicked his tone: “‘The reputation of Truth’, ‘Resignation to the Divine leading.’ Thee doesn’t even know what the word resignation means.”

Jonah, who was vain of his wide reading and vocabulary at such a young age, and especially his familiarity with Quaker history, retorted quickly. “I do so know what resignation means. It’s when you quit something, like when many Friends in the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1756 resigned rather than vote to support a war against the Indians.”

Piety rolled her eyes elaborately at his misconstruction. “Oh, please, that isn’t the meaning here at all, Jonah. And spare us thy sermons. Thee isn’t old enough to be a recorded minister yet.”

Esther looked up at them, her voice still soft. “It is all right, Jonah,” she said. “Thee was partly right about the word; but it also means, in this religious sense, to submit or yield to a higher power.”

Now she sounded as well like the friendly but precise schoolmistress she was during the day. “And thee is also correct that we must weigh our impulses according to their effect on the Meeting and the Society of Friends in the world. Our own creaturely desires will often tempt us to do things that would injure ourselves or others.”

Piety, scowling under her plain white bonnet, took her sister’s hand again and stared into her face. “Thee said it, but I don’t think thee believes it,” she whispered. “What’s that got to do with getting married, anyway? It isn’t as if thee was trafficking in slaves or joining an army at war.”

“Joining an army?” scoffed her brother. “A girl?”

“Thee hush!” Piety exclaimed, cutting off his snicker. “Thee understands what I mean, doesn’t thee, Esther? We have known the Macys all our lives. They have been Friends on Nantucket for a hundred years. And now just because of tiresome notional arguments in Meeting, some old women want thee to treat Will, thy own true love, like he was some heathen stranger.”

“‘Her own true love,’” Jonah now mimicked. “Talk about tiresome notions, that’s one for sure.”

Piety simply glared a response to his boyish cynicism. But Esther smiled wanly at it, then spoke to her sister. “I am afraid that however airy and notional the arguments have been, their effects have been very real. Most of the elders are Orthodox, and it is said they plan to disown everyone like us in Meeting who will not join them. They even want to keep us out of the Meetinghouse and force us to worship elsewhere.”

She stopped and sighed. “And Will’s father Thomas Macy is one of the hottest heads among them. To him and the other elders it is we, the ones they call Hicksites, who are the heathen.”

Now it was Jonah’s turn to be shocked. “Put us out?” he questioned. Unlike many other boys his age, he liked Meeting, and the big old Meetinghouse had been part of his life for as long as he could remember. “Could they really do that, Esther?”

“I don’t know, Jonah,” she replied. “But I believe they are going to try. It is said they are even ready to go to law to get rid of us if they have to.”

Jonah’s eyes widened, as if his soft-spoken sister had suddenly blasphemed. “Go to law? They wouldn’t, would they?” He had not suspected that this silly dispute over someone’s “true love” could possibly end up with Quakers, especially elders, dragging other Quakers into a worldly court. That would be a public violation of one of their oldest, most honored customs. That prospect suddenly made this discussion a much more serious matter than it had been to him.

“I don’t know if it will actually come to that,” Esther replied, “but the Orthodox in Philadelphia have already gone to the law. They even had some of the other Friends arrested in a quarrel over use of a burial ground.”

She shook her head. “It is an ugly business. That’s why the Committee came. A separation here is now certain. Our elders are already setting up another Meeting, and the women came tonight to say they are simply not comfortable with a marriage between members of the two groups. They say the Orthodox have shown themselves to be no longer really Friends at all, so it would be the same as marrying out.”

She paused again. “There is a session tomorrow night of the two sets of elders to see if they can agree to divide the Meeting property without going to court. Thomas Macy is sure to be there, and Will too most likely. You probably heard that they want me to go and tell him privately that under the circumstances our plan to marry is no longer wise. They are sure his father has said as much to him.”

“What about mother and father?” Piety asked. “do they agree with the Committee?”

“I’ll bet they do,” Jonah put in. “I have often heard father tell other grownups how much he dislikes the Orthodox notions and their high-handed ways. Just last month he told Reuben Starbuck that he figured there was trouble coming because of them and it had been coming for a long time. I didn’t understand what he meant then.”

He smacked his lips in anticipation of an exciting fight. “Don’t worry, father won’t let them turn us out of the Meetinghouse.”

“I hope not,” Esther said, “but Jonah is right about our parents, Piety. They met with the Committee last First Day informally, and are in unity with them. They have been doubtful about Will anyway for awhile, and not only because of the separation.”

“Then what about thee?” Piety wondered. “After all this, does thee still think the two of you could be happy together?” Now the younger girl was beginning to see how complicated the situation was.

“I-I don’t know anymore,” Esther confessed. She frowned, put her hand to her forehead, and looked at the floor again.

“We have talked about this more than once,” she said from behind her hand. “While Will agrees with his father on matters of belief, he has often told me that love among Christians is more important than uniformity of doctrine among Friends, as Jesus taught. And he assures me that he loves me, whatever my own notions might be. He says he feels it is God’s will that we should marry.”

“Does thee think so too?” Jonah inquired curiously. He was less interested in the marrying than the part about God’s will. He had not, in truth, ever felt much of anything that he could identify specifically with that mysterious supernatural motion which was supposed to provide a Friend with clarity and energy. To him it was like the hidden mechanism of a grandfather clock, and held much the same technical fascination.

Before Esther could answer, there was a knock at the door. “Esther?” came her mother’s voice. “Is thee in here?” She opened the door. “Come out now, Esther, it is time thy brother and sister went to bed.” Both Piety and Jonah started to protest, but she waved their complaints aside and ushered Jonah and Esther out into the narrow, candlelit hallway. “Go on now, Jonah,” she coaxed, shoving him gently toward his room.

“But mother,” the boy objected, “it’s not that late.”

“Go on,” she repeated firmly.

“Oh, all right,” he murmured reluctantly. “Goodnight.”

When the door to Jonah’s room had closed behind him, her mother turned to Esther and said, “I know this must be hard for thee, dear. Would thee like to share a cup of chamomile tea with me and talk about it before thee retires?”

Esther looked at her: the greying hair neatly tucked under the creases of her bonnet, the lines of worry and love that rayed out from the corners of her eyes and lower down framed her mouth from nostrils to chin.

It was probably the most familiar face in her world; yet when her mother spoke, Esther suddenly realized that the evening’s events had left her feeling distanced from her mother, guarded, as if the offer of tea and counsel came from a stranger, or someone she once trusted but could no longer. The awareness made her afraid, but it was inescapable.

“Thank thee, mother,” she heard herself saying carefully, “but I think I would rather think about this alone for awhile and then go to bed.” She turned toward her room to avoid the disappointment that began to cross her mother’s features. “Goodnight,” she said quickly.

“Goodnight, Esther,” her mother said.

In her room, Esther sat down at her desk, opened a wooden drawer and pulled out a large ruled ledger marked Journal. Jonah’s last question still rang in her mind. Opening the book, she read quickly over a few entries, then marked the date: “Tenth Month, 7th, 1828.” with a pen and began to write:

“Tonight I was asked to break off with Will because of the separation in Meeting, which is now underway. I told the Committee I would tomorrow evening.” Here she stopped, the pen still poised in her hand, unable to go on. Again she looked back at several previous entries, then pulled down from the shelf above her desk a copy of the New Testament. It had been given her by the same Meeting which was now splitting apart over, among other things, the meaning of that little book. But after leafing through it restlessly, she still found nothing that spoke to her.

Finally an impulse came. Putting back the New Testament, she picked up the pen and resumed writing, this time with more energy:

“O God and Father of us all,” she wrote, “can it really be that the following of Thy leadings by Friends has brought us, and me, into this confusion? If so, then what will lead us out of it? Amid the contentions and even hatred, how am I supposed to find the right path for me? Yet I am told I must now leave the path I had chosen for my life, and take another one, and be on that strange new path before I sleep again tomorrow. I have agreed to do it. but is that really Thy will for me?”

She hesitated here a moment more, and then continued: “I have been taught all my life to seek out Thy will for me, and then to follow it as early Friends did, no matter what the cost or hardship. I want to know that will tonight. My parents and the elders think they know it, but I have no real clearness in my heart about it. Am I simply to accept their word, as I always have? I am not a child any more. Will Thee not guide me now Thyself? Let me know thy will and give me the strength–”

She weighed the next phrase, then decided to put it down:

“–And the resignation to do what thee bids me, disregarding any obstacle, including my own will. I ask this in the name of Thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ.”

She underlined the last “Thee,” then laid the pen down and closed the book. For a moment she felt an impulse to cry, but she quelled it. Now was not a time to give way to emotion, she told herself; she would need all her composure for the day to come. There was school to face, and her parents at dinner before the meeting, and Will after that. And then?

She rose, and turned down the counterpane on her bed. Once tomorrow was finished, she concluded, then there would be time enough to grieve, if she must.

Next: The Dangers of The Unseemly Practice of Mirth

II: The Dangers of The Unseemly Practice of Mirth

Dinner the following evening was a somber and largely silent affair. Esther’s parents seemed ill at ease and said little, never mentioning the evening’s plans. Jonah wolfed down his food as usual, but punctuated his gulps with significant glances at Esther. Piety had developed an unspecified stomach distress and stayed upstairs.

Afterward, her father offered to drive her to Meeting in the wagon, but Esther declined, saying she preferred to walk. She threw her long knitted shawl over her cap and went out quickly, before her parents had a chance to say anything further.

It was autumn on Nantucket. Out on the island’s moors the heather and scrub oak had carpeted the low hills with deep red, magenta and brown. In town, the street Esther walked up was flecked with the fallen yellow and orange leaves of the young maple trees that line it. The evening was cool and still, and the dusk gave a purple tint to the grey cedar shingles on the plain houses.

Two blocks from home a lane cut across to the next street, on which the Meetinghouse stood several blocks further down. The lane was quiet and shaded by thick bundles of shrubbery that climbed over the back fences of the houses along it. Esther liked this lane, and she often walked it when going to town or to her school, which was a few blocks beyond the Meetinghouse. She and Will had taken it many times too on their way home.

She took it now, thankful for its secluded course. It fit her frame of mind; she was still deep in thought, waiting for clarity about the task before her.

At its far end, the lane rambled past the new Unitarian church. As she approached the corner, Esther heard singing, and the clean white clapboard building was made brilliant by the many glowing candles reflected off the brass chandeliers and shining through the big clear windows. The Unitarians were just beginning their midweek Meeting; by the doorway she saw the minister, her own cousin Seth Coffin, greeting people as they entered.

Something about the scene made her stop. She stepped to the side of the lane, near a large clump of ivy overhanging a fence, from which she could observe the church unseen. What drew her was not the music, though she had always, somewhat guiltily, enjoyed hearing the hymns that so often filled the air around Nantucket town’s other churches. Rather it was the people who were walking up the street and turning into the gate, pausing at the door to shake hands with Seth Coffin and let the men take off their hats.

Esther had suddenly put together two incongruous pieces of awareness about the figures in this scene: first, they were heathens; both parties in her Meeting, Thomas Macy and her father Micah Swain alike, agreed on that. But second, she, Esther Swain, was personally acquainted with many of them, and was related to most. This combination was what made them suddenly fascinating to
her.

As she watched, another feature of the group struck her: many of these people had been raised as Friends. Some still wore a modified but recognizable version of the plain dress. It must be hard, Esther mused, to change suddenly from three or four generations of Quaker grey, brown and white to the gaudy and sinful colors of the world.

Hard, yes, but perhaps exciting as well. Seth Coffin’s congregation was growing steadily, that much was evident. Maybe the singing made the transition easier.

The minister went inside, closing the door behind him. The singing swelled to a final chorus, then died away. Esther waited another moment in the ivy until she heard Coffin’s deep voice begin to speak to the group; then she stepped out and turned past the church toward the Meetinghouse.

At that point a man emerged from the shadows across the street and came toward her. “Esther,” he called. It was Will.

Without thinking, she raised one fist in a gesture of mock anger. “Will Macy, was thee spying on me?” she demanded.

The tall, slender man, his face shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, grinned broadly. “I most certainly was,” he affirmed. “I had a leading thee would come this way, and waited for thee.”

“And as usual, thee was rightly led,” Esther said.

He fell in step beside her, still smiling. “As usual,” he agreed with feigned modesty. “How is thee, Friend Esther?”

This would not do at all, Esther told herself, even as she smiled back. All he had to do was say her name, and at once she was giggling and wanting to play, forgetting why she was on that darkening street. But then, it was Will’s ability to be playful with her, without neglecting the serious parts of life, that had as much as anything drawn them together in the first place. “After all,” he had said when they first talked of marriage, “what good is a husband who thinks that all of life should be like Meeting for Worship?”

“Or a wife,” she had added, and they both had laughed.

Indeed, from the looks her mother sometimes gave her, it seemed they spent altogether too much of their time together laughing. If there was nothing in the Discipline specifically warning against the practice of mirth, still there seemed to be an unspoken limit to how much it might properly be engaged in, a limit they seemed regularly to transgress. But, she realized, I haven’t laughed since I last saw Will.

Esther put out her hand to take his arm; but then she hesitated and drew it back, instead catching the bottom of her shawl and twisting it between her fingers.

Will understood the nervous gesture, and with only a slight change in tone spoke her thoughts. “A committee visited thee, did they?”

She looked at him, startled. “How did thee know?”

He grinned again. “Ah, our Orthodox spies are everywhere,” he bantered. Then, more soberly, he said, “It’s a small island, Esther. Besides, father has spoken to me, too. And that is Committee enough for us Orthodox.”

Esther’s stomach suddenly felt hollow. The lightness and pleasure of their meeting vanished, blown away by Will’s last words like a scud of cloud in a gale. She walked in silence for a moment, her thoughts tumbling over themselves and blocking her words inside her. Finally she forced some out, in barely more than a whisper: “What is thee led to do, Will?”

They had arrived at the Meetinghouse gate. Will swung it open for her, then followed her through. “I have prayed on the matter,” he said, “and my leading has not changed, Esther.” He opened the big oak door, and she moved past him.

Inside, the unadorned Meeting room seemed more severe than usual in the yellow light of the spermaceti candles. Esther was unsure at first where she should sit; the two groups of elders had each taken one side of the aisle, with the Orthodox, which Will joined on the women’s side.

Esther felt strange sitting down in the section which had, all her life, been a male preserve. But that was where the Hicksites were clustered. It was evidence of how deeply the group was split that they were now divided by faction rather than by gender.

The meeting was already underway, and the tension was tangible. She slid onto a bench behind her father and Reuben Starbuck. Reuben was just rising to speak.

Next: Not Within The Walls of This Meetinghouse

III: Not Within The Walls of This Meetinghouse

“I don’t think we need to waste any more time on formalities,” Reuben Starbuck declared in a deep gravelly bass. “Our canvass of the members shows that at least two-thirds are among those that have been called ‘Hicksites,’ although that name is not one we choose. The fairest settlement, in our view, would be to sell the Meetinghouse and the surrounding property, except the burial ground, and divide the proceeds according to the numbers in each party. The burial ground could be transferred to a separate corporation, which interested people would join and maintain through their own contributions. What say you to that?”

Thomas Macy stood to answer. The proposal did not seem new to him, and his reply also seemed prepared. “Thee is right, Reuben Starbuck,” he said coolly, “we should not waste time. So I will say plainly that among the world’s people such proposals might make some sense. But among Friends, who are charged with preaching and preserving the gospel of Jesus Christ in a world of darkness, they carry little weight. The Meeting’s property is in the charge of the elders. And it is our duty to see that it is kept for use in Christian worship and service. We have no intention of selling it to anyone for any other purpose.” Beside him the wide hats of the other elders were now nodding; and under their brims, their faces were set and stern.

Esther’s father got to his feet, anger showing in his cheeks and in the way his hands gripped the bench in front of him. “Do the beliefs and feelings of more than half the members of this Meeting carry no weight, either?” he demanded. “Who appointed thee pope over us, Thomas Macy?”

Obed Gifford, an aged elder, answered him curtly. “There are no popes here, Micah Swain. Thomas Macy speaks for the body of elders, according to the practice that has long been used among us. This Meetinghouse will not be sold. Nor will it be made over into a platform for the unsound and unbiblical doctrines of freethinkers like Elias Hicks and others so misguided as to be taken in by him.”

A Hicksite woman, Mary White, was now standing. “By that last remark, I assume thee is referring to us?” she fumed.

“‘Thou hast said it,’” Gifford answered sourly, quoting the Scriptural text with satisfaction.

“If you are not willing to sell the Meetinghouse,” asked Reuben Starbuck, “then what do you propose to do with it? Share it with us, as a few divided Meetings are doing?”

Obed Gifford smirked. “We will be more than happy to welcome into the Meetings of Friends convinced and faithful Christians. We will also unite with any Hicksites who admit the error of his obnoxious notions and are ready to accept the blood of Christ. But we will have neither unity nor fellowship with any others.”

Reuben Starbuck had flushed red as Gifford spoke, and his voice in retort was even deeper.

“The Society of Friends never had a creed, or any ruler besides the Light of Christ within its members,” he said loudly. “George Fox could see that Light in everyone, Catholics, Jews and Mohammedans, as well as other sorts of Christians. I daresay he could even see it in us so-called Hicksites, Obed Gifford, which is more than thee is able to do. And anyway, who set thee up to decide what and who is worthy of sharing fellowship with thee in this Meetinghouse?”

He pointed at the shuttered window. “I have been a member here since birth, and my parents and grandparents before me. They are all buried in our cemetery, without even a stone to mark their graves. I have contributed to the Meeting’s stock as I have been able, and borne its Testimonies as faithfully as I could.”

He thumped the top of the bench with a big, gnarled hand. “Am I now simply to give up my Christian liberty to a group which uses the cross of my Saviour as a cover for nothing more than their own pride and love of power?” He raised a shaking finger at Gifford. “I say no, I will not!”

Micah Swain was now up again, and Esther could see his lips pulled thin and tight. The fury in his expression was greater than she had ever seen, and it frightened her. “I have sat here silently long enough,” he shouted, “in meeting after meeting for many years now, listening to such as thee condemning innocent faithful Friends as infidels and freethinkers.”

He shook a fist. “It is not Elias Hicks who is changing the ancient doctrines of this Society. It is thee, Obed Gifford, and the rest of you who have yielded to the spirit of domination and division. If you have your way, there will no longer be a Friends Meeting here, but a church with creed and bishops and an inquisition to enforce it. Fox and Penn would not even be welcome, because they preached and suffered against just such powers.”

Gifford was shaking a fist now. “George Fox and William Penn and all the First Publishers of Truth affirmed the blood of Christ as the purchase of salvation,” he cried. “It is you Hicksites, with your rationalistic and freethinking notions who would deny Christ and the Scriptures any value for Friends.”

In his agitation his raised arm knocked the broadbrim hat from his hear. There was sweat gleaming on his temples. “ If these corruptions are not stopped now,” he said, “there will be nothing left of our religious profession but an empty shell, open to all the atheist and heathen doctrines that are now undermining our Christian civilization.”

He stooped to retrieve his hat. “And stop them we are determined to do,” he said more quietly, “at least within the walls of this Meetinghouse.”

Next: Where Such Damnable Trash Belongs

IV: Where Such Damnable Trash Belongs

Micah Swain turned to Thomas Macy. “Does thee have the papers?” he asked. Macy nodded, and pulled from a folder on the bench a sheaf of thick vellum sheets.

“What are those?” demanded Mary White. “Your new creed for us to kneel and swear to? Does thee have a ring for us to kiss as well?”

“We neither have nor need any creed but the blood of Christ,” Gifford insisted. “These certificates only help us determine who else has received it.”

He took one from Macy. “Mary White,” he intoned, “is thee ready to affirm thy unity with us through the atonement of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Scriptures and testified to by Friends?”

“What is thee asking me?” the woman retorted. “Does thy inquisition begin now? I will not answer any such examination.”

Gifford looked down at Macy and nodded; Macy, who had a pen ready, scribbled something on the top sheet, then stood up with it.

“Mary White,” he announced in a loud voice, “by refusing to answer our query, thee shows thy lack of unity with the Meeting, and it is my sad duty to inform thee of our Testimony against thee, recorded in this Minute, disowning any further religious fellowship with thee in our Monthly Meeting.”

He walked slowly over and extended his hand toward her, the vellum sheet protruding from his fingers like a weapon.

Mary White hesitated, then took the sheet. She looked at it for a moment, scanning it quickly, her mouth open in disbelief. “Well I never,” she said finally, “I never thought it would ever come to this, that I would be served with a Minute of disownment in the Meetinghouse where I have worshipped all my life.” Shaking her head, she sat down, uncertain what more to say or do.

Obed Gifford was not listening to her. He was now facing Reuben Starbuck. Esther heard him begin repeating the query about unity, then she glanced around at Will. The young man was staring fixedly at his father, who was again scribbling on the vellum. Will’s face was pale, and Esther could see a corona of perspiration on his forehead, just under the crown of his hat. He looked even more disturbed than Mary White. Esther felt an impulse to go to him, but before she could even reprove herself for the thought, Reuben Starbuck’s angry rejoinder pulled her attention unwillingly back to the front of the room.

“What does thee think thee is doing, Macy?” he shouted. “Thee has no authority to write up a disownment Minute against me or anyone else without the approval of a Business Meeting. This procedure is completely un-Quakerly and spurious. It will never stand up on appeal to Yearly Meeting.”

“Oh, yes it will stand up at Yearly Meeting,” Gifford said grimly, shoving the sheet at him. “Has thee forgotten that I am a member of Yearly Meeting’s Committee of Elders? So is Thomas. This Minute is signed by a majority of the elders of this Meeting, and that is sufficient. It will stand up at Yearly Meeting, and it will stand up in court too, if necessary.”

“In court!” Starbuck shouted hoarsely. “I knew it would come to this. You are so determined to steal our property from us that you’ll stop at nothing, not even taking other Friends to law. Thee won’t get away with this, Gifford. Nor will thee, Macy, thou scribbling snake.”

Thomas Macy’s head snapped up from his writing. “Thee’ll curb thy heathenish tongue if thee knows what’s good for thee,” he said coldly.

Esther’s hand came involuntarily to her mouth and she shut her eyes. She had never seen her seniors behave this way, especially in the open setting of a Friends Meetinghouse. Her head hurt. She wanted the words and anger to stop, or at least slow down.

But they didn’t. In fact, Obed Gifford was reciting his unity query to her father. She heard him rise and opened her eyes to see him, his cheeks crimson and his lips drawn even thinner.

“Damn thee, Obed Gifford,” came his voice between clenched jaws, interrupting his interrogator in mid-sentence. Esther saw that he was trembling as he spoke, and his words made her shake as well; she had never heard him curse before.

“Damn thee,” he repeated, even more venomously, “I will not let thee defile me with that filthy document before God and my own daughter!”

His voice rose to a bellow: “Get away from me with it! Get away I said!”

Gifford finished his recital, but faltered on the last sentence. Esther could see that the intensity of her father’s rage had momentarily daunted him. But he recovered almost immediately, took the paper from Thomas Macy and proffered it to her father with a gesture of triumph.

Micah Swain took the minute of disownment from Obed Gifford with a slow, deliberate motion, held it in both hands and looked down at it. Then, just as deliberately he pursed his lips and spat on it, crumpled it up, and threw it on the floor.

“That is where such damnable trash belongs,” he said more quietly. “There or in hell, and thee with it.”

The yellow wad bounced against Thomas Macy’s shoe. Macy leaned over and picked it up. “Profanity and blasphemy are poor substitutes for the gospel, Swain,” he said, unfolding the paper. “This Minute still stands, regardless of what thee does to this sheet.” He stood up and carried it across to Micah Swain again.

Esther’s eyes widened as her father suddenly reached up, jerked off his hat and, throwing it down on the bench beside him, put up his two fists, the fingers clenched so tightly that the knuckles were pale. “If thee touches me with that vile sheet, Macy,” he hissed, “so help me God, I’ll break thy jaw.”

The elder took two more steps toward him. “Try it,” he breathed. He let go of the paper with a slight push, so that it brushed Swain’s coat as it fell to the bench.

Micah Swain grabbed both Macy’s lapels and wrenched him forward and off balance, til their red faces were but two inches apart.

“Thou bastard,” Swain swore, “I will do it, too.”

Esther let out a muffled cry and buried her face in her hands. As the two men scuffled noisily, the room seemed to reel around her; she felt almost as if the ground beneath the floor was moving, splitting open, ready to plunge them all into some horrible dark pit.

Into her anguish, the next voice came only dimly. “Stop it!” someone cried. “Stop it, both of you!” The voice was closer now and louder.

“For God’s sake, stop it!”

It was Will.

Next: Away With All Thy Rantings

V: Away With All Thy Rantings

Esther lowered her hands. Will had left his seat, moved around behind his father and pulled him roughly out of her father’s grasp, and now stood between them. His hat had been knocked off and his black hair tousled. Sweat stood out more boldly on his forehead. But he was no longer pale; there was passion in his face, and in his voice as well.

“What is happening here?” he cried, looking from one older man to the other. “What are you doing to each other? Will it be knives and pistols next?”

“Get out of my way, Will,” muttered his father, breathing hard. His eyes were still fixed on Micah Swain’s now ashen face. But Will only pushed him back further.

“No, father, I won’t,” he insisted. “I won’t let thee brawl like a drunken sailor, not here in this Meetinghouse over some words on a piece of paper. It is not worthy of either of you.”

His father looked at him now. “Who is thee to judge that?” he demanded, and pushed forward again.

Will shoved him back once more. “I have to judge for myself, father,” he grunted. “And I can’t abide this stupid meaningless quarrel another minute. You are all making a bad joke out of everything you ever tried to teach me in this building, everything I ever heard preached about here. You make me ashamed of you and myself for being here.”

“Curb thy tongue, young man,” Thomas Macy snapped. But he quit pressing toward Micah Swain and refocussed his anger on this unanticipated challenge from his son. “This is God’s work we are about here,” he went on. “However unpleasant it may sometimes be, especially in this time of trial. It is not thy place to interfere.”

“The Lord’s work?” Will repeated incredulously. “Thee calls this tavern brawl the Lord’s work? Once I believed it was, father. What I have seen here tonight has changed my mind; I don’t believe it anymore. If anyone is working here, it is Satan.”

“Will!” roared his father. “What is thee saying? Has thee been taken in by their false doctrines now too?”

“Stand up to him, Will,” called Micah Swain, wondering if he had made a convert. “Maybe thee can show him that we are right.”

Will whirled to face his fiance’s parent. “But I don’t agree with thee either,” he exclaimed. “Thee and thy rantings about popes and inquisitions and damning people to hell! They disgust me just as much. All of you here are destroying everything that the Society of Friends has meant to me, right here before my eyes, with your hate and your meanness and your plague of disowning.”

The two fathers were now fully diverted from their physical confrontation to this unexpected one. Will bent down and picked up his hat. Dusting off the brim, he spoke again. “I don’t know which side here, Orthodox or Hicksite, will win this shameful squabble,” he said slowly, “but whichever faction gains control of this Meetinghouse need not expect to see me in it again, disownment or not.”

He put his hat on his head and walked down the aisle to the big oak door, opened it and went out.

As the door swung to, Esther sprang up. “Will!” she cried out. “Will, wait!”

“Esther, sit down!” commanded her father. But she ignored him. She was going down the aisle too, faster, pulling on the door, then striding through its arch.

“Esther!” her father called again. “come back here! I won’t–”

The rest of his words were cut off by the door’s closing.

Next: The Conclusion

VI: Conclusion - Clearness & Chamomile

The night was cold now, and her breath billowed faintly over her shoulders as she hurried after the dark figure walking ahead up the quiet street. “Will!” she called again. “Wait for me!”

He stopped and turned. “Esther?” he called. “Is it thee?” He clasped her hands in his as she came up to him. “Esther, I–” he began. “Thee is shivering,” he interrupted himself. “It is cold. Thee has no coat.”

Esther shook her head. “I am not cold, Will. Let’s walk.” She took his arm now, firmly. They went on in silence for a few moments. Then Esther heard singing.

They were approaching the Unitarian Church again. The service was concluding with another hymn. Esther stopped a few houses away, and motioned for Will to listen with her. She couldn’t make out the words, but the rise and fall of the melody was enough.

They stood there, breathing out vague cones of mist, for only a few minutes, through no more than two verses of the hymn. But in that brief span of time, clarity came to Esther.

In her careful schoolteacher’s way, she observed the process with a certain professional detachment, making mental note of how to describe it to her brother Jonah, in answer to his last question of the evening before, as well as for recording in her Journal.

It was nothing spectacular or miraculous, she realized: more like seeing a glass full of muddy water become transparent as the sediment settled to the bottom, or watching a distant ship change suddenly from a hazy blur to a sharply-defined image as she refocussed her father’s old spyglass. There was no new thought or impulse in her mind; rather, she was now able to pull what was already there together in a new way, a way that made new and compelling sense.

“Esther, what is it?” Will perceived that something was happening; she had stopped trembling and was standing quite still, staring into the night. At his question she seemed to return from far away, but then she looked at him intently and tightened her grip on his arm.

“Will,” she began, “I have seen that thy leading was true. It is God’s will that we should marry, no matter what any elders may think of it. I have also seen,” she continued, “that thee was speaking to my condition in the Meetinghouse. It is no longer a spiritual home for me either, regardless of which party ultimately takes control of it. Their contention has driven me, has driven us, out.”

She was speaking very calmly. “Yet in another way, Will, I see that we have been led out of the Society, though for what purpose I don’t yet understand. We will find a new home, perhaps here in Seth Coffin’s church, perhaps in some other. And we will have work to do there, concerns to witness for, children to instruct, a community to join and build. We will be heathens, Will, at least in our parents’ eyes, but life will go on anyway, we will still worship God, and we will be happy.”

Will was slow to respond. “Esther,” he said at last, “is thee–is thee sure of this?”

She nodded firmly. “I am sure of it,” she answered.

“What thee says frightens me,” he admitted. “I am not used to the idea of being anything but a Quaker. But I can feel that thee is right. I could not go back there, not even if it meant losing thee.”

She squeezed his arm. “Thee needn’t worry about that anymore. What we have to figure out now is how to deal with our parents about this. That will take some skill, and doubtless some persistence.”

The door of the Unitarian Church swung open. Seth Coffin stepped out and turned to begin his farewells to those who were leaving early as the hymn swung into its closing Amen. Esther began walking again, toward the church. As she passed the doorway she called out, “Good evening to thee, Seth Coffin.”

The minister smiled down at the pair, but could not conceal his surprise. Friends rarely spoke to him, particularly in public. “Why, good evening to you, Esther,” he replied. “And is that Will Macy? Hello, Will, cool night, isn’t it?”

They nodded and passed on, not stopping to watch the parade of cousins, uncles and old schoolmates that was now emerging from the church. Esther turned and went down her leafy lane again, walking slowly as she talked with Will about how to handle the arrangements for a secular wedding, and what to do in the event of various possible parental stratagems to prevent it. Of the two, Esther was still the more calm and inventive.

By the time they turned the final corner near her home, they had agreed on a series of options, down to eloping to the mainland if necessary. As they approached the house, Will suddenly stopped and announced, “Esther, I must tell thee that I have had another leading.”

She paused and turned to him. “What is it, Will?”

“This,” he said, and drew her to him for a kiss.

After a moment, she pulled away a little, and stroked his stubbly chin with her finger. “As usual,” she whispered, “thee was rightly led.”

“As usual,” he murmured, and tried to kiss her again.

She drew away coyly. “But also as usual, Will Macy, thee needs a shave. Or is it true what they say, that the beard, like the theology, grows thicker and tougher on Orthodox men?”

He laughed and stole a kiss. “No, my love,” he parried, “it is as they told me–the cheeks of Hicksite women are like their beliefs: too soft and fuzzy to abide any chafing at all.”

Again she raised her hand in mock anger, but he stepped lightly away, just out of range. “Now, now,” he admonished, “there has been enough fighting among Friends for this night already. Besides, I just saw a curtain move on the upstairs window which makes me think thy sister Piety has been watching us. If so, she has seen plenty by now, so let’s not give her more to gossip about. Goodnight, Esther. I will see thee tomorrow.”

She blew a final kiss at him and turned to the door. When she opened it, her mother was standing in the hallway, clearly waiting for her.

Esther came in and took off her shawl and outdoor bonnet.

The sense of clarity was still with her. It overcame the sense of distance she had felt the night before, brought back her affection without diluting her determination. When she finished hanging up her wraps, she turned and faced the older woman.

“Mother,” she said, “I think I am ready to share that cup of chamomile tea with thee now.”

Copyright (c) by Chuck Fager

I - Blocking the View, Blocking the Road

That morning, I was too tense to eat. Keyed up and ready, my thoughts were full of armies marching to battle.
It was February 1, 1965. I was part of a nonviolent “army” – or at least a battalion – set to march in Selma, Alabama that day. Our objective, the territory we hoped to occupy, was downtown, the Dallas County jail; we planned to capture it by getting arrested.
I had been in Selma less than a month. Perhaps because I was raised on military bases, comparing the movement to an army was came easily to me: Dr. King was the general; I, white and fresh from college in Colorado, was a private, a grunt.
Although our commander had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, his ragtag force was ready for combat and bent on conquest. For us, victory meant nothing less than the overthrow of centuries of black exclusion from public office, the ballot, and the jury box in most of the American South.
Of course, the military parallel is wildly inexact: for one thing, we aimed at a bloodless coup; more mundanely, even in 1965 a real army private earned considerably more than my pittance of $25 per week. One didn’t join the movement to carry a gun, or get rich.
On the other hand, the comparison was not wholly fanciful; after all, both groups demanded real discipline, and suffered real casualties.
Our ostensible destination that morning was the Dallas County Courthouse downtown, to renew a demand that the county voting rolls be opened to all its citizens. No one expected to get that far, however. Everybody knew we wanted to provoke arrests: the staff knew it, black Selmians knew it.

Dr. King’s Alabama mugshot & rap sheet.
The cops knew it too; and presumably the Klan, along with some of the people who kept sending Dr. King death threats, threats that came in practically every day, by mail, phone, and other media. I had seen a few of the threatening letters, and knew that many of them were quite credible.
In the years since Dr. King’s murder, I have been bemusedly tolerant of the plethora of conspiracy theories offered in explanation, tending to believe and disbelieve them all, in equal measure. The CIA? The Klan? The Mafia? A redneck hit squad? A lone bigot? All are plausible. Yet I’m evenhandedly skeptical too, because while one of the conspiracies finally succeeded, I know well enough that there were numerous others which were foiled only by chance, by timely police intervention, or –
– or, well, because someone like me was walking near Dr. King at just the right moment, and blocked a sniper’s aim.
That was one of my early tasks as a rookie civil rights worker: to stay close to Dr. King when we filed through the Selma streets. There were three or four of us who shared this duty, and we kept him pretty much surrounded.
We were the point men, his bodyguards. Unarmed, of course, and in my case at least, no great physical threat to any direct assailant. But without weapons and muscle, how were we supposed to provide protection?
Simple: our bodies were visual obstructions, blocking the aim of any sniper crouched on nearby rooftops, trying to draw a bead on Dr. King through the scope of a high-powered rifle.
The job was explained to me by big James Orange, who had been around the movement a lot longer. I grasped its function at once. But I also had a question: What if the sniper fired anyway, hoping for a lucky shot, and hit me instead?
James Orange answered my query first with a characteristically broad, hearty grin. Then he shrugged, slapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, don’t worry about it, Chuck. If you get killed, we promise – Dr. King will preach at your funeral!”
“ Hey, thanks, Jim,” I retorted, “that makes me feel so much better.” But the comeback took a couple seconds longer to come up with than I wanted.
(Five years later, researching my book Selma 1965, I found references to a police report which said that on one of our marches there very likely was a rifleman on a rooftop, poised to do just what I was there to prevent. Dr. King, it turned out, learned of this much sooner; he had spoken calmly about it to reporters a few days later. Reading in a quiet library about the report made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But I wasn’t really surprised.)
Barely nibbling breakfast that morning, frightened and exhilarated at the same time, I donned my movement uniform: still-stiff denim overalls, a matching jacket and, incongruously, a yarmulke. Another staff member, who understood the importance of Jewish support to the movement, had passed them out to us not long before. Knowing little about either Judaism or black Baptist Christianity, it was all the same to me. Properly decked out, I headed across town for Brown Chapel AME Church.
Brown Chapel was red brick, with two squat steeples. It sat on Sylvan Street in the middle of the George Washington Carver Homes, Selma’s neat, generally well-kept black housing project. People were milling around on the steps, and inside the benches were full.
There was a “mass meeting” underway, led by various key staffers, to get everybody into the right frame of mind for the day’s events. Even at that early hour of the morning, the crowd was ready; and the intensity and fervor of such meetings are beyond my powers to describe.
The elements were basic and familiar: preaching, praying, singing, clapping; but the combination, in those days, in that place, produced an uplifting energy that was unique, unforgettable, and overwhelming. I have known nothing quite like it, before or since.
Our marching orders were boomed from the pulpit, along with reminders of the need for strict nonviolent discipline, and reassurances that going to jail or being hurt in the cause of justice was nothing to be ashamed of. There was tension in the church, because we knew anything could happen; but there wasn’t the cold fear I knew on other days, when violence hung in the air like heavy mist.
After a concluding prayer and a round of “We Shall Overcome,” we were soon lining up outside, watching our breath in the chilly morning air, then stepping off, clapping and singing, headed up Sylvan Street toward the courthouse, about ten blocks away.
As planned, I ended up near Dr. King, at the head of the column. We hadn’t gone far, barely a block, before we were stopped by a white man in a light raincoat and a fedora hat, standing in the middle of the street with his hands in his pockets.

This was Wilson Baker, Selma’s Public Safety Director.

Next: The Clash of the Titans

II - The Clash of the Titans

Baker was a good and smart man, a worthy opponent to Dr. King. If we had faced him alone in Selma, it’s a fair guess that he would have routed us.
Baker would have beat the movement not with force, but with brains. He was a disciple of Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, his counterpart in Albany, Georgia, who had outsmarted and outmaneuvered a vigorous protest campaign there three years earlier.
Albany’s movement had had everything: marches, protests, new freedom songs, and many arrests. Dr. King had come too, and even faced jail. But in the movement’s still-fresh folklore, Albany was the archetype of disaster.
This was because Laurie Pritchett had figured out how to handle the pack of Yankee reporters who showed up wherever Dr. King entered the fray. Told of a crisis bedewing, they swarmed into southern towns with their cameras, microphones, notebooks and expectations. Above all, they expected to see crude redneck cops and club-wielding sheriffs beating up and brutalizing peaceable, noble Negroes.
Pritchett understood the reporters’ stereotypes, and was careful not to reinforce them. Instead, he spoke politely to the reporters, and made sure that when his police arrested the marchers, they did so quietly and without fanfare. (There were, of course, stories of beatings inside the jail. But those happened out of sight; Pritchett stoutly denied them, and the allegations could not be confirmed.) Instead of officially-sponsored mayhem, what Pritchett served up looked like a model of seemingly civilized southern restraint, upholding law and order against a disorderly crowd of black insurgents.

Laurie Pritchett & Dr. King in Albany Georgia

Pritchett’s strategy succeeded brilliantly, on two fronts: with no exciting violence to film and write about, the Yankee reporters were thrown off-stride. They quickly became bored, and moved on to some other, more exciting event. As they did so, the divisions in the local black community – there were always divisions in local black communities – flared up into recriminations and sapped the movement’s morale and momentum.
The defeat of the Albany campaign made Pritchett something of a hero to many southern officials. He traveled the region giving speeches about how he had whipped the agitators and sent Dr. King packing.
Among his hearers, none had been more attentive than Selma’s Wilson Baker.
Baker had the Pritchett mild-mannered demeanor cold, right down to the non-threatening title of Public Safety Director he had chosen himself, and his civilian-style suit and fedora, which matched and blended with Dr. King’s typical attire.
As the march approached, it was evident that if King was now determined to get arrested, Baker was ready to accommodate him – but he would also make sure that the crowd of reporters hovering and getting chilled, saw nothing more exciting in the process than a lot of colored people milling around outside the back entrance to the three-story City Hall, where the city and county jails occupied the upstairs floors.
Yet Dr. King had learned from Albany too, and he planned both to outmaneuver Baker and use him at the same time. He wanted Baker to make the arrests, because King would feel safer in Baker’s city jail. And at the same time, Baker’s own restraint, however successful with the Yankee media, would work against him with a crucial local constituency.
Selma, fortunately for us, was not Albany. Here, for all his outward composure, Baker lacked Laurie Pritchett’s control of the situation in white Selma, as we knew well enough. In particular, Baker couldn’t afford to let us get past him to the courthouse, because his rival, Dallas County Sheriff, Jim Clark, was waiting there.

Wilson Baker & Jim Clark in Selma: colleagues and rivals

Sheriff Clark was a walking stereotype: a tough-talking, head-cracking Deep South lawman, who had no patience with civil rights protests, or with Baker’s “coddling” of agitators. Further, besides his deputies, Clark was backed by a volunteer posse. The posse had first earned notoriety for helping beat up and banish labor organizers in various parts of this so-called “right to work” state. Just the year before, they had been turned loose on earlier civil rights marches, with predictably bloody results. But Dr. King wasn’t there then, and the beatings attracted only minor outside notice.
All of us who were marching had seen the possemen on earlier days, hefting long unpainted homemade billy clubs, and looking anxious to get at us. Their uniform consisted mainly of various shades of ill-fitting khaki work clothes, and white plastic hard hats bearing small metallic foil “Posse” stickers. Most possemen also had a large pistol hanging from one hip, and an electric cattle prod dangling from the other. These latter were battery-filled cylinders, like overlong flashlights, with metal prongs at one end. The cattle prods produced a nasty shock; the longest ones were said to sear bare flesh.
No question about it: the posse looked feral and dangerous. Compared to them, Baker’s black-uniformed policemen seemed like pillars of professional restraint, protecting us from the sheriff’s troops more than they were protecting white Selma from us.

Possemen in Selma; if they don’t look dangerous, clean your glasses.

When Clark and the posse broke up the marches a year earlier, they had gotten away with it. Then in November, 1964 a young appliance salesman named Joe Smitherman won a very close mayoral election, promising to bring in new industries and jobs. But Northern companies weren’t interested in Clark’s version of law and order, so Smitherman hired Baker to polish up the town’s image.
Ever since, Baker and Clark had been jockeying for control of the city’s streets and image. When Dr. King announced his plans to come to Selma, their struggle was ratcheted up several notches.
With the usual retinue of reporters and cameras in his wake, Dr. King had been playing on this tension and planned to raise it carefully but relentlessly to a fever pitch. That struggle would keep the Yankee press interested, and maintain movement solidarity. The fact that on this February morning the tension between the two law enforcement units was almost palpable suggested that Dr. King’s plan was working at least as well as Baker’s
Our earlier marches had stayed on the sidewalks. This time, though, we were proceeding brazenly down the middle of Sylvan Street. That made us a parade, and a parade without a permit. Baker couldn’t ignore this challenge. It would look to Clark’s supporters as if he was giving in to the country’s most notorious agitator, and bolster the sheriff’s contention that white Selma was being sold out to lawless black invaders.
Baker followed the script, testily reminding Dr. King that he didn’t have a permit, and warned that if we didn’t return to the sidewalk immediately, he’d have to arrest us.
Taking his cue, Dr. King quietly demurred. Baker stepped aside, and we resumed walking. Two blocks up, we turned the corner at Alabama Avenue. Ahead lay City Hall, and a few blocks further south, the courthouse.
But this was as far as we could be allowed to go. Black-uniformed police fanned out across the street ahead of us, and Baker drove up, got out of his patrol car and announced our arrest.
Dr. King asked if we could pause for a prayer, and we all knelt on the cold, nubbly asphalt.
Everything was going like clockwork.

Next: The First “Quaker-Type” Meeting

III - The First “Quaker-Type” Meeting

There were about 250 of us in the march, and it took hours to book us. The police herded us into the parking lot behind City Hall, and we stood there shivering in the cold, waiting our turn to go inside.
Eventually I was led in, fingerprinted and had a mug shot taken. Then I filed upstairs to the third floor, to what I now learned was the county jail. The city jail, too small to hold us all, was on the second floor.
Here the cells ran along two walls; above them, out of reach, was a row of small windows. Across from the cell block was a large day room, bare except for a couple of steel tables bolted to the floor, and a toilet in the corner. The marchers were crowded in the day room, and I moved in to join them.
There wasn’t much for us to do but mill around, talk, and try to rest on the steel floor. We were all waiting for Dr. King to arrive, and tell us what to do next.

Busted: The author’s Selma mugshot

Finally, after what seemed hours, he and his right hand man, Ralph Abernathy, appeared. Later we found out that Wilson Baker had kept them till last, hoping they would decide not to be arrested after all. We greeted Dr. King with applause, expecting something like a resumption of the mass meetings at Brown Chapel.
But Dr. King was very subdued. He told us he was feeling hoarse, and would rather not preach. He suggested, instead, that we have “a Quaker-type meeting,” in which people would speak simply “as the spirit moved,” and he would listen along with the rest.
This was the first “Quaker-type meeting” I was ever part of, and it was like none of the thousand-plus Friends meetings I have attended since becoming involved with Quakers a year or so later.
It was, for one thing, much noisier. The spirit not only moved some of us to preach that afternoon; it also moved all of us to sing, several times, both freedom songs which I knew and gospel hymns which I didn’t.
Being in jail added a special intensity to our voices and rhythmic accompaniment; the result was more than just music. Those of us pressed up against the walls soon found that if we slapped them in rhythm, they resounded like muffled calypso drums. When enough of us did it, the whole floor began to vibrate, as if the building itself was rocking and reverberating in time with us. And perhaps it was, because through the walls we soon heard an answering chorus from the other end of the third floor, where the women were being held. How I wish someone had recorded us!
Another intriguing feature of this meeting was that, notwithstanding Dr. King’s invitation to anyone so moved to speak, the spirit nonetheless seemed to move rather directly and carefully down the local status hierarchy, until all the local dignitaries and preachers among us had had their say. Finally ordinary folks chimed in, and I even spoke up at one point, though I can’t recall my message.
This meeting also went on longer than any “regular” Quaker meeting; two to three hours, it seemed. But finally, after one more heartfelt chorus of “We Shall Overcome,” sung in muffled, echoed harmony with the women in their cell block, the meeting finally broke up, and we sank into a happy, exhausted disorder within the confines of our pen. Glancing up, I noticed that the windows above us had all been steamed over by our lusty exhalations.
As the group relaxed, Dr. King reverted to his pastoral role, and began moving along the edges of the day room, speaking through the bars to the regular county prisoners in their cells. Our coming had deprived them of access to the day room and the little chance to stretch that they had. Dr. King talked with each of them, listening sympathetically to their tales of woe and injustice, which carried a special poignancy on this afternoon.
He was still, I think, making these rounds when there was a clanging at the far end of the cell block, and the heavy barred door suddenly rolled back a few feet. We turned at the noise, and recognized Sheriff Clark’s grim visage.

His eyes swept over the group, and then he began pointing and calling out: “You – King. Abernathy. Over here.”
He peered some more and pointed again, first at another staff worker. Then he pointed at me. “You.”
All at once I felt cold. It was safe in that crowded day room. Where would they take us now? We had all heard stories of people who disappeared from southern jails, never to be seen again, unless to turn up floating in the river.
I moved reluctantly toward the door, aware of the suddenly sober expressions on the faces of the men I passed.

Next: What’s Gandhi Got To Do With It?