My
mother met my father, William Reynolds, at a dance at the Jack London
School on Market Street in San Francisco. She was in high school; he was
seven years older and working as a merchant seaman. He saw her home and
soon got serious, but she wasn’t ready. She wanted college and a
career. He had left school after eighth grade graduation, picked up a
semester or two of junior college somehow, but was continuing his
education on the road and reading a lot. They read poetry to each other
in Golden Gate Park. I suspect, from their later tastes, that he read
American poetry to her, and she read English poetry to him, but I don’t
know. I do know that they said goodbye and he went back home to
Michigan. She went across the Bay to the University of California. In
the middle of graduate school she dropped out, went to Long Beach (where
her parents were living by then), and married a guy named Ben Goodman.
In
1932, jobs were hard to find even with a master’s in English--well,
they are always hard to find with a master’s in English, but during the
Depression especially--plus she was probably already a member of the
Communist Party or at least her parents were, plus she was Jewish, so
finding an academic position was about impossible for her, and she ended
up working in her parents’ tailor shop and feeling pretty dissatisfied
with herself.
This
Jewish Communist family had come to the attention of the local Ku Klux
Klan, which had been in the news eight years earlier with big marches
and rallies in Long Beach and was still active. On the night of November
17, 1932, the Klan raided my grandparents’ home after a fund-raising
party for the International Labor Defense, which was appealing the conviction by an all-white jury of the Scottsboro Boys,
a group of African-American youths (the youngest twelve) accused of
raping two white women in Alabama. My mother was there that night, so
were my uncle and his wife
So
I am researching this story in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, reading
about the raid itself, the police response, the community opinions, and
writing the story for the book. Then I rewrite it as a story to tell in
the concerts of Malvina’s songs that I give with Judy Fjell.
Then I find, in the issue of the Press-Telegram ten days after the
raid, a front-page story about the grand jury session indicting the
raiders. Banner headline: SECRET RAID INDICTMENT, sub-head: Veil
of Secrecy Hides Identity of Persons Accused, story in the far
right-hand column. My mother’s name (then Malvina Goodman) is not in
this report though it was in earlier ones. My eye catches the headline
directly to the left of and in slightly smaller type-size than the “veil
of secrecy” sub-head. It reads: Washington Says ‘No’ to Demands of
Communists. Its sub-head is: Hunger March Promoters Make Requisitions
for Food, Lodging, Parking. I know my father took part in the hunger marches
in the thirties, but I am unprepared as I read further to find in the
third paragraph “These [demands] were presented by William Reynolds of
Detroit, chairman of the Committee of Unemployed Councils, said by
police to be a Communist organization...”
I
don’t know if my mother and father were in touch at that time, but I
suspect not--they had both moved around a lot and both married other
people. I have to assume that my mother, like me a compulsive reader,
had also noticed that next-door headline and read down to see...and
found my father’s name. Hmm. November 1932. I do know they were together
again by 1934 because I was born in February of 1935.
I am reading this in the Sisters’ Choice
office and go to show the report to Gabrielle, whom we share the office
with, but she has stepped out. I am desperate. I call my friend Carole;
luckily she carries a cell phone with her and answers and is properly
astounded.
© 2006 by Nancy Schimmel
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
RED-STAR-CROSSED LOVERS?
