Yesterday I found in my mother’s files a leaflet for the peace walk I was busy with when HUAC opened its hearings in San Francisco on May 12, 1960: _____________________________________________________________________ walk with us —for the Human Race —to End the Arms Race To urge our representatives at the Summit to take positive steps toward a nuclear test ban and disarmament. walk with us To demonstrate to the governments and peoples of the world your belief that peace can and must be achieved. walk with us and the ...Ten million Japanese who marched in the Hiroshima Day Peace Festival, August 6, 1959. ...One hundred thousand British people who held a March for Life, April 17, 1960 ...Growing numbers of Americans who are walking for peace in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco. MEET AT THE OPERA HOUSE Birthplace of the UN SATURDAY MAY 14, 1:30 P.M. for walk to Union Square UNION SQUARE RALLY 2:30 P.M. Wm. DAVIDON, physicist, Argonne Nat’l. Laboratory Albert BIGELOW, skipper of the “Golden Rule” Public rally of SAN FRANCISCO LITTLE SUMMIT CONFERENCE a citizens’ group including representatives and members of religions, labour, civic, professional, peace and student organizations. ____________________________________________________ The Summit referred to was a meeting to be held May 16 between Eisenhower, De Gaulle, Macmillan and Kruschev. The meeting came to nothing, however, as the USSR had shot down the US U-2 spy plane in Soviet air space on May 1, and neither The US nor the USSR was in a mood to negotiate. The Opera House is across the street from City Hall, so we passed the anti-HUAC picket line as we gathered for the peace march. The leaflet included contact information, illustrations from the Graphic Arts Workshop, a union bug, and this 1959 quote from President Eisenhower: “...I like to believe that people in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our government. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.” It was in my mother’s files because she had used the back to make a carbon of a letter to the editor. Here are two letters to the Chronicle from my parents, one four days before the HUAC hearings started and the other three days after the washing down the stairs. 2027 Parker Street Berkeley 4, Calif. May 9, 1960 Editor San Francisco Chronicle Dear Sir: When we try to tell the southern die-hards about human rights and integration, they tell us that we are outsiders, that we don’t understand the South. I think Representative Willis (elected by less that 9000 votes in the populous State of Louisiana) will find that he doesn’t understand the West when he comes here to impose the punitive rituals of the Un-American Activities Committee on the State of California. Yours, Malvina Reynolds 2027 Parker St. Berkeley 4, Calif. May 16, 1960 San Francisco Chronicle Gentlemen: Please cancel our subscription to the Chronicle at once. Your editorial today on the demonstrations against the House Un-American Activities Committee was, in view of your position as shaper of public opinion, even more shameful than the police action there. Yours, William Reynolds ©2010 by Nancy Schimmel
Picasso’s dove created for the 1949 International Peace Conference in Paris.
Friday, May 28, 2010
DID THEY WASH YOU DOWN THE STAIR? (part 3)