00:00:11.000 - 00:03:26.000

Bill Sutherland:: OK— Interviewer #1:: Start by introducing yourself. Bill Sutherland:: Well, my name is Bill Sutherland. I live in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, East Africa. I've lived in Africa for well over thirty years. And I've come back to United States to collaborate on a book with a young colleague. Interviewer #1:: What's the name of the book? Bill Sutherland:: Well, one possible title that we've tried is _Guns and Gandhi_. It's really a series of dialogues with different African leaders who were involved during the time of the liberation movements, and a discussion of the methods that were used, methods of struggle, to attain independence and to see whether that had any effect upon what happened afterward. And, also, a long range view of how these people, who were very often fathers or mothers of the nation, see the future, not for just nations, but for ordinary people in Africa. Interviewer #2:: So, Bill, let me jump in, we're doing this film as— [[cut]] Interviewer #2:: OK. Interviewer #1:: [laughs] Bill Sutherland:: I think I am. Interviewer #2:: So Bill we're, we're really talking about stuff that happened fifty years ago, and, I hate to start on a big philosophical note, but what does conscience have to do with conscientious objection? What does that, what does that mean to you, to be a conscientious objector? Bill Sutherland:: Well, I think that conscience is something which we all have, whether it, how much of it is acquired and how much of it is God-given, as they say, is a debate, but that we all have certain feelings that we know when things are right and when they are wrong. And, the conscientious objector concept I think developed when people said that it was justified not to go to war, not to kill, if your, if your, if you consci-, conscientiously felt opposed to it. However, I must say that, as far as I'm concerned, that's only just one aspect of my own position, and then my own position has much more to do with the whole question of the, the way in which we have a society of justice and peace, and that the, the, the conscientious objection to war is just a, an objection to one method of struggle. But I am very firmly of the belief that life is struggle, and that we are constantly trying to develop a society in which people have a chance to live in, with dignity and, and have opportunities to do creative things.

00:03:27.000 - 00:10:34.000

Interviewer #2:: Go ahead Judy. Interviewer #1:: I, I'm just worried about the sound. There's a plane, there's a dump truck, and there's kids playing— Interviewer #2:: Well let's, let's Camera Crew Member #1:: [unintelligible] mostly, constantly, but— [[cut]] Bill Sutherland:: Mm-hmm Interviewer #1:: OK, so was it, would you say it was your conscience that lead you to prison in 1942 is it you go to prison, is it, or '41? Bill Sutherland:: Yes, yes. Well, when I went to prison during the time of World War Two it was 1942. And, at that time, I have to say that I was a Christian pacifist, and therefore conscience played a good part of it, in that idea of being opposed to war and opposed to violence on the basis of Christian teaching. However, another very important aspect of it was the fact that, being an African-American, and being in this country, I felt very, very strongly that if I believed that the, armed struggle, or violence, or war was a way to solve problems of fascism and oppression, I would not have gone to Europe, but I would've gone to Mississippi or Alabama in this country, because that's were my own people were suffering a real fascism and Nazism, in attitude and society. Interviewer #2:: And, and last time you were talking about, about— Bill Sutherland:: Mm-hmm Camera Crew Member #1:: Speak up. Interviewer #2:: —your sister experiencing more problems than you did when you were little, and I don't wanna talk about your sister too much, but, but there was a phrase that really struck me from that last interview in terms of how you felt as an African-American you said, you said it, it was our Africaness that made us outcasts. Talk about what it meant to be African-American in a, in this country that believed in liberty, but didn't practice it in the 1940s. Bill Sutherland:: At the, at the time when my family went to a all-white community in 1918, we were an African-American family, my father was a dentist, and he was one of those who bought into the American scene and felt that his family ought to have the best that America had to offer, and Lindridge, New Jersey was the place to be. So we moved in and then the entire white community ostracised us, they offered my father a lot of money to, to, buy the, buy back the house, but this was a very, very difficult time. I had two sisters. One sister was much older, and she was a person who bore the brunt of all of this ostracism, and she was the one who had a very, very difficult time psychologically. In fact, I would say that this experience, in essence, broke her psychologically. However, by the time that my youngest sister and I were coming along, things had mellowed a bit. However, in, in, in the case of my younger sister and myself, still we had very serious problems of, of not being accepted. And, at the time of my sister's death, I spoke at her funeral and I said that, in the case of my sister and myself, we discovered that it was our African ancestry which caused us to be ostracized and, and to be ill treated. And I used a biblical term in that funeral talk in which I said that the stone that the builders rejected became the cornerstone of our lives. In other words, it was the fact that we were of African ancestry which caused us to participate and, I, I guess the other best word is, best way to put it is that is that the direction of our lives were determined by this— [[cut: End of Camera Roll]] Interviewer #1:: Boy those kids sound really loud— Interviewer #2:: Don't worry about it. Interviewer #1:: —OK, how you made the decision that that was where you were gonna draw the line. That you were gonna, you know, that— Bill Sutherland:: Mm-hmm Interviewer #1:: —you, you had at one point decided that you were going to apply for conscientious objection status, and then you decided you weren't willing to cooperate even that much. Could you talk about how that changed— Bill Sutherland:: Mm. Interviewer #2:: —for you, what your process of where you would, how you made that choice, and where you were willing to draw the line in relation to conscription for yourself? Bill Sutherland:: Mm-hmm, OK, mm-hmm, alright, well, mm-hmm, well the process of my thinking at the time of World War Two, as to what I would do, took a kind of circuitous route, because some of my friends, like Dave Dellinger and others that I'd worked with at the time of the New England Christian Student Movement, had decided not to register for the draft, and that they wanted to make clear their opposition to conscription as a system as well as to the participation in the war. On my own ac-, my own feeling at that time was that I would call, cooperate to the extent of doing everything that they wanted me to do up to the point where they actually were going to take me physically out of society, that is there were four, four processes, one was registration, second was a physical examination, third was filling out the questionnaire, and fourth was a, an actual participation in the, in the conscription system. And, I, I made, I made a decision that I would take my stand at the time when they were going to put me out of society, from my point of view, into the Civilian Public Service camp and that, then I would, I would refuse. I think, of course, today I would have, I, I would definitely refuse to register because that's a much more clear position, but that was my, that was my thinking, the way I looked at things at that time. [[sound of children playing]]

00:10:35.000 - 00:21:09.000

Interviewer #1:: You ended up in prison and you ended up, could you talk about the prison, this, the way you organized in prison, the hunger strikes that, and the chronology of what happened in the prison, and how you used nonviolent resistance in the prison to make change there? Bill Sutherland:: When a number of us were sentenced, and I was sentenced to four years in prison and at that time that was twice as long as anyone else, because I unfortunately had a visiting judge in Newark, New Jersey from Tallahassee, Florida who, who felt that as, well as he would've said, a Negro, educated Negro, that my education had been my undoing, and therefore he gave me twice as much time, at that time, as anybody else. And we went, and I went into prison and I was sent to a place called Lewisburg Penitentiary. Now Lewisburg Penitentiary is a medium custody prison, which is for people who have sentences longer than, say two years, or that kind of thing. And when we went, when I went there, and of course this was something where I was very much a-, physically alone but, nevertheless, I'd had all the discussions with my, with my, my friends and associates outside and we followed the concept of a man named A.J. Muste, who of-, often was known as number one pacifist of The United States . And A.J. Muste had said there is no way to peace, peace is the way. And, on that philosophy, no matter where you were, if you found out that there was something wrong you took a position against it. And, while I was in prison, although I was in a segregated setup, because at that time the federal system had a very strange kind of segregation of people according to races, it became, it became clear to me that the work that I'd been done, been doing outside against race segregation was not enough, that I should carry on that, that position within the prison system. And there were large numbers of prisoners who agreed with me, these were not conscientious objectors or war objectors, they were just other African-Americans, and we started off our protests against racial segregation and the prison system simply by refusing to eat in a segregated dining hall [Interview Gathered for The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It: The Story of World War II Conscientious Objectors]. And, as time went on of course, we became weaker and then there was the question of taking the next step, of refusing to work. Now many of my prison friends who were African-American said Bill we have to stop at this point, because you have all this support and your people have all this support from outside, we're in here for other reasons, and we just wish you godspeed. And, they, they, they no longer carried on the strike, but those of us who were war objectors and who had this position, carried on this protest by refusing to work. And then we were put in the, the punishment cells, but there were so many of us that we filled up all the punishment cells of the, of the prison so they had to do something else with us. And so, we became the beginning of an integrated setup within the prison because they put us in a, a, a d-, large dormitory together, black and white. And so, although we weren't integrating the entire prison system, we were integrating the punishment area of it. Now— Interviewer #1:: [coughs] Sorry. Could you put some numbers on that? Camera Crew Member:: [coughs] Bill Sutherland:: Hmm? Interviewer #1:: Could you put some numbers on that? How many— Bill Sutherland:: Yeah. Interviewer #1:: —approximately were there, at the begging and how many after the, the non-war resisters dropped out? Bill Sutherland:: Mm, yes. Well when we started out the, the, when we started out the, the, the strike against racial segregation, I would say that probably there may have been as many as forty or fifty people involved. When we came to the point where we had to make the decision as to whether or not we would refuse to work, and those who were not conscientious objectors said we will have to— Interviewer #1:: [coughs] Bill Sutherland:: —leave you at this point, there were about nineteen, eighteen or nineteen of us who were war objectors. Now, within the Lewisburg Penitentiary there were two sections. One was the farm, and one, one was the, one, the prison within the walls, and the, a number of the conscientious objectors were in the farm outside, and when they refused to work then they were brought in, and we were all put in the punishment cells there together. Interviewer #1:: Are there other— Camera Crew Member #1:: [coughs] Interviewer #1:: —are there people we may have heard about who were there with you? Was Dave Dellinger there with you at that point, or he was at Danbury, was, was he with you? Bill Sutherland:: Yes. Well now some of the, some of the people who were involved in the strike in the beginning were people like Payton Price. I'm trying to remember some of the other names, William Lovitt, these were people who were in Lewisburg, but there were others who came in later. For example David Dellinger, whom you may know of course, had already served a prison sentence in Danbury, and, the, then he was a victim of what we call the cat and mouse game, because the, the government could always repeat the charge against him and if he refused to register then he would be sentenced again. So, on the second sentence, Dellinger was sent to Lewisburg, and they had put him in, in an isolation cell far away from us in the dormitory, but we, we communicated by yelling across the yard to one another and he, he decided to join us and he, he came in at that time. Other people who were known in the movement was, were people like Ralph DiGia for example, and I believe that, for a short time, Bayard Rustin may have come up from another prison into Lewisburg, because Lewisburg, being a, a, a medium custody prison, was a prison where you were sent if you were a little recalcitrant. Interviewer #1:: How long did that strike go on? Camera Crew Member #1:: [clears throat] Bill Sutherland:: Well the, the, the interesting part, the, the, the, the whole question of, of, of the strike it, it changed, it, it actively changed in direction, that is, it originally started out as a racial segregation strike, then some of those who were in the, in punishment status because of that, also felt that our, our hope of doing something about it depended upon our a-, being able to get information out. And, when there was, since there was censorship— Interviewer #1:: [coughs] Bill Sutherland:: —they increases, or they changed, they, they changed the issue and they, they talked about censorship as being important. I think Dave Dellinger led this. Now, after a while, then them, there were some of the people, like Dave and a few others, who were very very strong on opposition to the total system, who then decided that they would go on a hunger strike as well. I had gone in there on, originally on, the racial segregation issue, so I was not one of those who, who partic-, participated in the hunger strike. They separated those who were in the hunger strike and put them in another part of the prison, and one of the things I remember so clearly was that, one of the people who went along with Dave was a young man, a Quaker, named Tom Woodman. And, after these few had been on a hunger strike for a while, we requested the opportunity, those of us who had been in the dormitory, to speak with them, and we were granted it. But, I remember that when we went up to the cells where David was in punishment status with Tom and a few others, and the prison officials were with us, and Dave outlined the basis upon which he would stop the hunger strike, young Tom's face just fell. He, he said is this why I'm on a hunger strike, I'll never eat again. So, he was very unhappy, but what happened was that, that after a certain length of time, they took these people and force-fed them and they allowed me to be in the hospital with them at that time, technically as a nurse, but I mean, I think that there was some understanding that it would, might be good for me to be with my colleagues.

00:21:10.000 - 00:36:25.000

Interviewer #1:: Did we get to— Interviewer #2:: Let's switch gears— Interviewer #1:: —I just want to get the end. What I was thinking was— Interviewer #2:: That's the end of that. That's the end. Interviewer #1:: No. Because there's this question of whether we end up, what, I've, we've heard that this was the first successful, that within the prisons, that the actions of the COs is the first successful integration of a federal institution in The United Sates, is that correct? Bill Sutherland:: Hmm. Interviewer #1:: And, just one, just a clarification— Camera Crew Member #1:: [clears throat] Interviewer #1:: —did you, Camera Crew Member #1:: [coughs] Interviewer #1:: —was that the first time you knew about, had hunger strikes happened for other purposes, did you know of strikes of— Camera Crew Member #1:: Can you sync both channels over there? Interviewer #1:: —that kind elsewhere, or was this a new idea in The United States at that period? Bill Sutherland:: Now the question of whether or not there were strikes by war objectors in other parts of the, of the world, or, or in other, in other situations, was something that I, I don't think that we were particularly conscious of. I, I'm, I'm thinking back now and it, of course, it may be true that there were other protests before the Lewisburg one in Danbury on, on rather smaller issues, but, but it's my rec-, it's my recollection that we, we did this just on the basis of, of, of what we, what we felt was the, the way to go in Lewisburg, the idea always being that, was that you just don't, you just don't carry on a struggle to a certain point, get convicted, and then you forget the struggle. No matter where you go and under what circumstances, you, you, you, you, you, you try to carry on and live according to your beliefs, whether in prison or out. Interviewer #2:: Right. [[cut]] Interviewer #2:: —switch gears a little bit, Bill. Camera Crew Member #1:: Speak up. Interviewer #2:: Back at the moment of decision, you know, when people say I'm gonna go, I have these choices, I can go in the armed forces, if I believe in that, and that's serving my country. Or people say, I'm gonna go in the Civilian Public Service, because I don't believe in war, but I believe in serving my country. In both cases, you know, those are choices that involve acknowledging that you have a responsibility to a society. How do you feel about that responsibility, and how did you see your actions carrying out your responsibility to society. Bill Sutherland:: [pause] The whole question of responsibility to society and taking a position of war objection depends upon, to a great extent, on what you feel is your society. The society which had most meaning to me in my life, up to that point and, and, and continued to be was the society of people of African ancestry. And, as far as that society was concerned, and, and the, and the way I looked at it, it was that our experiences of oppression had very little to do with the, well, I am, I'm gonna backtrack on that. Our experiences of oppression were a part of a much broader experience of oppression that was going on within the world, but the struggle was not against the oppression that we were experiencing, and I felt, I felt that, at that level, and, and that's just one, one, one community, that I had no problem about going to prison and, and being a war objector in those terms. Now, we're always members of more than one society. The, the, the next question is, what is primary? What is primary in, in the, in, let's say, in the world today? Is it, is it the nation-state? Or if you, if you, if you are, if you feel that you are, have a responsibility in terms of the people of the world, in terms of world society, is it not true that sometimes that responsibility comes into conflict with the conc-, with the idea of, of responsibility to a nation-state? I think it's become an old saw now practically speaking where people say, you know, think globally and act locally. I remember our, our friend Gary Davis in those days he was world citizen number one. He said that, you know, people very often can feel a real sense of, of community and loyalty to those immediately surrounding them in a small community, he said, but the next step is, is, is the world. And so that, I have come to believe, I don't know how I, how I would've phrased it in those days, but I have come to believe, along with a number of, of thinkers who have thought through this things much more than I, is that the modern nation-state has become an anachronism in the world, and this one of the, one of the biggest problems that we have is a continuation of that kind of loyalty and responsibility. So, I would say that, myself that, not only did I feel no responsibility, and I don't feel any responsibility today, in those terms, I actually think that that's one of the major problems of the world; the problem of a loyalty to nation-states, which along with certain kinds of loyalty to formalized religion, has represented some of the, some of the biggest problems of the world, and resulted in some of the worst atrocities that the world has ever known. Interviewer #2:: You know, I think we— [[pause]] [[cut]] Interviewer #2:: —things he said was very simple, but it really struck me. He said, he said, you know, I was talking about his position on militarism and he was a pacifist too right? Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, yeah. Interviewer #2:: He said, you know, it was, it was hard enough being a black man without being a conscientious objector, and I guess what that made me think about was that, for many minorities, especially African-Americans— Bill Sutherland:: Hmm, hmm. Interviewer #2:: —they also saw this as an opportunity to prove that they were equal to everyone else, you know— Bill Sutherland:: Hmm.

00:36:26.000 - 00:49:17.000

Interviewer #2:: —about this, this man you met in jail— Bill Sutherland:: Hmm. Interviewer #2:: And in fact, you were saying about that in the last interview, but I wonder if you could just go over it again, that, the fact that, that in prison you associated with African-Americans who were there, and instead of being rejected by them, you really felt that they said well you're fighting in your way and our, we're fight, talk a little bit about that. Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, OK— Interviewer #1:: You mean non, non war resisters— Interviewer #2:: Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah 'cause everyone was resisting the system. Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, yes. When I was sent to Lewisburg Penitentiary, after a period of quarantine which is the usual procedure, I was put into a, a dormitory, a segregated dormitory, of, of African-American prisoners. And, I, I found out that, whereas many of the white conscientious objectors faced difficulties because they were looked upon as yellow bellies and cowards and so on, that, in my dormitory, very often the people who were prisoners said that they understood. I was, they were fighting the system, they were fighting the system by being bootleggers, or, perhaps, or by trying to, trying to, to get what, what the system should've given them in their own way, and that I was also a, a, a part of that. However, there was another aspect of this which is very interesting, and I, I feel, I feel very fortunate because I discovered, after some months being there, that being, having come in as a young twenty-two year old, that there were some also, in that dormitory, who had planned to gang rape me. And that there were others, who said you're not going to do this, I mean this, this, this person represents something to us which is good, and so the people who were let's say the bootleggers, who were really highly respected members of their own community, and other groups protected me until I was able to be aware of what was going on and I could make my own way. So that I had those two aspects, I had, I had, on the one hand, a, a large number of people who, who, who understood while I, why I was there, and at the other, on the other hand, I, I did face some dangers and risks. Interviewer #1:: Did you, were you ever frightened in prison? Were you ever frightened in prison? Bill Sutherland:: I'm frightened all the time. I mean, I said [laughs] , sorry. [laughs] . No the, the question of being frightened, whether you were actually afraid in prison, yes, I mean, there's no, there's no question that you have fears for any number of reasons. The main fear, of course, is of the, of the system itself, and whether or not it, whether or not you can mentally take the kind of, of methods they use in order to control you, because, the, the, the, the standard, the standard methods within a federal penitentiary is not the one of the brutality of the chain gang, it is that you, you are, you are put into the prison population with various kinds of privileges they call them. You have the privilege of writing to your family, you have the privilege of going to the library, you have the privilege of going to the movies, and, and it's, it's on the basis of your cooperation whether you continue to have those privileges, and very, and, and they take them away one by one. When I was in the, when I was in the, the punishment cell in what we call a, a monkey suit, I guess it, you would've called it a mechanic's coverall and there was a light shining on me twenty-four hours a day, and you had two pieces of toilet paper and this was it. I, I wasn't in there for very long, but that is a rather very frightening experience. As far as other prisoners are concerned, I did have a, I, I did have this experience I told you about of, of being threatened with gang rape when I wasn't really conscious of it at the time, but outside of that, interestingly enough, I don't think I ever had any great problem with the prisoners, and towards the end of my term, one third of Lewisburg was composed of people who were military prisoners. They had gotten into trouble because of riots overseas or something like that, and they came in, and the administration was very afraid that, that these military prisoners would beat up the war objectors or something like that. Military prisoners came in, man said, I wish we had done what you had done, I, we could. You know, there was no problem at all with them they, they, so, so as I recall, just off the top of my head in thinking about my fears within the prison system, that's all I have to say. Interviewer #2:: Let's switch gears a little bit. [clears throat] I think last time we talked, you talked a little bit about your old friend Bayard Rustin? Bill Sutherland:: Yeah. Mm-hmm Interviewer #2:: And Bayard's dead, but, but we think he's an important figure for, for what he represents in terms of his connections between the world of pacifism and the world of civil rights. Bill Sutherland:: Mm-hmm Interviewer #2:: And, you know, I know you were out of the country by the time the movement had started, you were in Africa by 1956. But Bayard was, was, was that emissary. Muste sent Bayard to help Dr. King, and to strengthen, you know, I'm not saying that, I'm not saying that was a violent movement, but what did, what did someone like Rustin contribute to the birth of the civil rights movement. Bill Sutherland:: Yeah well I mean, I'm going, I'm going to talk about Bayard Rustin, but when, when you said that you, you knew it wasn't violent, I mean I don't quite, what, what is the import of what you're saying that, because I don't understand that. Interviewer #2:: Well, what I'm saying is, is that we've ready accounts that, that, that the Montgomery boycott was, was a bunch, was somewhat improvised, that they needed some guidance, that they needed people to come in who, who— Bill Sutherland:: Yeah. Mm-hmm Interviewer #2:: —knew about Gandhism and nonviolence who knew about what, how you organize pacifism, how you— Bill Sutherland:: Mm-hmm. Interviewer #2:: —worked with it. And that, and that even though they were headed in that direction, someone like Rustin or Glenn Smiley— Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, oh. [coughs] Interviewer #2:: —brought something to the movement, or contributed to, and, and I wonder if that's fair to say, that, that, not that they created it, not that the movement wouldn't have been successful or grown, but that they helped it really understand itself at the beginning. Interviewer #1:: And helped it, helped it to define itself as a nonviolent movement. Bill Sutherland:: How? Interviewer #1:: That, that, that Rustin helped to define the civil rights movement as a nonviolent movement, just gave them some techniques and some strategies— Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, so, yeah. Interviewer #1:: —to do that more effectively. Would you agree with that? Do you think—

00:49:18.000 - 01:06:21.000

Interviewer #2:: Do you think that's true? Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, OK. Well, the role of, of, of Bayard Rustin in the, in the civil rights movement and the, and the, the struggle for racial justice before it was called the civil rights movement, was significant in that he was a pioneer. It was during the time, before the war, that Bayard, and even some of the others of us, were engaged in the activities which later on became famous, and Bayard participated in, in, in sit-downs in the north against segregation, trying to integrate amusement parks and those things, even before the, the war came. And then during the, the war period, Rustin participated in these strikes that we talked about against race segregation within the prison system. When he came out, he and George Houser were instrumental in the formation of the Committee of Racial Equality [sic] and what was called the Journey of Reconciliation in the, in the late forties immediately following the war, which were all techniques and methods of, of opposing racial injustice and oppression that happened before Martin Luther King Jr. ever came on the scene. However, when there was the bus, Montgomery bus boycott, which I, as re-, I recall, took place in 1955, then Martin Luther King, because he had associations with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, interestingly enough, was a matrix out of which so many of these movements came, not only movements against war, but the, but the Committee of Racial Equality had its headquarters there, and, and so many others, and Martin Luther King Jr. was a, was a part of that. I, I think that the Fellowship of Reconciliation officials actually sent down people like Bayard Rustin and Glenn Smiley to work with Martin Luther King on, on nonviolent techniques because Martin Luther King, from his Christian ministry point of view, had taken the position that the Gandhian nonviolent approach was really the, the Christian way to carry on the struggle against racial injustice. And, Bayard Rustin was a key figure in, in, in working along with Martin Luther King. However, I think we've often talked about what a complex personality Rustin was. He had a, a, a, a brilliance in, as far as the use of, of, of tactics and strategy to combat injustices within the system. At the same time, at a personal level, he was a homosexual, and therefore his homosexuality often caused some troubles and if, and oftentimes, I, I think it was the case with his work with Martin Luther King, that the FBI and the other people were passing on this kind of information about his, about his sexual orientation. [rustling sound] And that, at one point, King had to say well, you, you don't, you know, he would say Bayard the, the pressures are too heavy and therefore I, I, I can't have you working with me as you have been before. And so, Bayard had to retreat from that position. However, he, he never, he never stopped being a very important contributor to the, to the movement, and particularly the 1963 March on Washington. And, at that time, it wasn't, it wasn't Martin Luther King Jr. so much as it was A. Philip Randolph, who selected him to be the main organizer of the ma-, of the March on Washington. And that was a highly successful endeavor. Again, howe-, again there, there was a problem, because the old bugaboo of the homosexuality had been brought up in the Senate of The United States by Senator Strom Thurmond and at, at a time it looked as though, once again, Bayard would be, would be smeared and, and the movement along with it. However it was, they were able to keep that under control, and the, the March on Washington, as you know, was a, a huge success. But the, there, there were very interesting overtones to this, for example, some of the civil rights leaders of the more conventional organizations, like the NAACP and the Urban League and so on, were saying we can't, you know, we can't, we can't have this man working with us. But, there were other people, like A. Philip Randolph of the Sleeping Car Porters and who was very, very, and where I remember that, that, that when all of this publicity was happening then Bayard went to the meeting and he put in his resignation to A. Philip Randolph, and he said, and, and A. Philip Randolph said what is this, and he said well I feel as though I'm a, I'm a detriment to the movement, and I'm a, and so, according to the story A, A. Philip Randolph said well Bayard, you know, have you finished talking? And Bayard said yes, he said well I'll tear this up, and now can we get on with the business of the meeting? Interviewer #2:: [laughs] Bill Sutherland:: And it was very clear that he was not going to, he was not going to desert Bayard or, or let this, some, it was a very touching moment I think for, for, for Rustin that he, he never forgot. However, I, I do think that this affected the way he decided to, to work thereafter, because he, he could see that anytime he would be making progress, and, and, and getting, an, and making a, an advance, this would come up. Now that brings up a very interesting point, because Bayard wrote a very, very cogent argument. I think it was in the, very soon after the March on Washington, in a magazine I think called _Commentary_, in which he, he, he this was, there was an article he wrote called "From Protest to Politics," in which he said, that you successfully integrate restaurants, you can, you can take care of, of integration in transportation and so on, by these methods that we are using, but when it comes to the economic side of life, the real development of whether people get fair housing, fair employment, and so on, you le-, you have to leave the streets. And, and you have to, you have to engage in the political process. I, I disagreed with him, I, I said look there, that's true, I mean there are a lot of people that, that, that should be doing this, but your genius is on the streets. And he, he would say, you know, no, but my, my conviction is that, that this intellectual argument had behind it, his realization that he could be destroyed and his movements could be destroyed, and if, if, if he continued on in the radical way. And that's, you know, and that, that, that's why, that's why he changed. And, and I, I, I, I think he, you know, he continued to make some contribution, and I also think that it's, it's, it's, it's too bad because certain people, what can I say, they, they bad-mouthed him, that's one of our way we used to say in my s— [[rustling sound]] Interviewer #2:: Well people , people disagreed with him on a lot of stuff for many years— Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, yeah, but, but, but they bad-mouthed him, and, and I, I would say look, you say he's manipulator and, and so on, I said he, he, I said Bayard was always a manipulator, but when he was manipulating for you it was OK, I mean [laughs] , but now, now that he's, now you're giving— So, so I, I really strongly objected to the way that people within the movement of-, often really, not just disagreed with him, but they were, they, they, they were say-, saying he sold out or he did this or the other thing. And, the other thing I, I, I said, and think this is also very true, and that is that, in my experience with Bayard, and I'd known him all the, all these years, that whatever he did, he did it two-hundred percent. So, if he was a radical two-hundred percent that was one thing, but when he decided to do some conservative operations, he, he was always, unfortunately, enthusiastic about whatever he went into, whether, from my point of view, it was right or wrong. Interviewer #1:: OK Bill Sutherland:: But, I, I think that he was, that he, he made tremendous contributions, and that he was a, a multi-talented, talented person. He could have, not, he wasn't a Paul Robeson, but he wa-, he, he was able to sing, he was able to act, he was able to be an organizer, and I, I wrote a letter once where, with, with all these acquisitions against him I, I did a little bit of Shakespearean quotation where I said you know, Julius Caesar, the evil that men do lives after them, the good is often interred in their bones, so let it be with Bayard. But, I, I, I, I think that, I, I hope that his, his work and his person will be appreciated in, in the long run of history. Interviewer #1:: Do you wanna add just a little more about what, it, specifically— Interviewer #2:: —what— [[cut]] Bill Sutherland:: —let, one of the ways in which Bayard was a pioneer, would, and, and, and would have been seen to be very courageous, was at the time of the Journey of Reconciliation, when, when he and a number of others refused to pay their fines and decided to take the punishment, which was work on a chain gang which was a, a not a very easy thing to do. And I know that Bayard in the early days, and now, now I'm talking not about the time of the civil rights movement of the, of the mid-fifties on, but I'm talking about even before Word War Two when he would make certain kinds of individual protest, for example he would, he would telephone for a reservation in a hotel, and those of you who knew him he had kind of a very British clipped accent that he adopted from his West Indian father, and he would make this reservation. And then he would go to the hotel and they would see who he was, and he was a black, tall man, and they would say, you know, I'm sorry that's a [unintelligible] . He said, well I made the reservation [unintelligible] and then he would, he would sit down on the, on the, on the sofa in the lobby and then he'd take off his hat and coat, and wait a little while and then he'd take off his tie, he'd take off his jacket, and when he was unbuttoning his pants, they, all of a sudden they found a room, you know, I mean [laughs] he was, I mean, he, he w-, he had, he had great imagination in terms of how to, you know, how to, how to deal with these things, and that was in, in, in the early days and he faced, he was, he was, he faced real danger, but at the same time he was quite, you know, human and realistic. For example, I understand, I wasn't there at the time, but they were carrying on a, on a campaign against race segregation within Chicago in a Polish district. And Bayard usually, in his, you know, in the method of reconciliation and so on, would often go to speak to the opponent and so on, and Bayard told me that he went into, he went into this, this, this church where there was a Polish Catholic priest, you know, and he walked up to him and started to talk and the pr-, priest reached under his ca-, cassock and brought out a gun and said, if you don't get your black ass out of here and so on. He said, and I left, you know, very, very rapidly, I mean [laughs] . But, but the point is he would put himself into these situations and, and he would take, he would take risks. I think it, it was partly for the cause and partly his sense of drama, but I, I, I think on the whole he, he was a great person. [laughs] Interviewer #2:: Ah. Gotta change. [[cut: End of Camera Roll]]

01:06:22.000 - 01:16:49.000

Interviewer #2:: —more significant later on, that's when it finally builds momentum. I think, you know, I mean even, even though you're a pioneer in it, right? Bill Sutherland:: Mm. Interviewer #2:: Whereas, whereas the anti-nuclear movement really takes off in the fifties, you know that's, the peace, those, those— Bill Sutherland:: Well, yeah, I mean, that part of it is true— Interviewer #2:: Yeah. Bill Sutherland:: —that part of it is true, but you, you wanted different things or you wanted just the concentration on, I mean there are several, well I'll start and— Interviewer #1:: Yeah, start and we'll see where we go— Bill Sutherland:: —you can always interrupt me— Interviewer #1:: —Yeah go ahead, yeah. Bill Sutherland:: Yeah. [laughs] OK. [[long tone]] Interviewer #2:: [inaudible] you said? OK, go ahead, yeah. Bill Sutherland:: In the 1950s, I belonged to a, an organization called Peacemakers. I've often thought later on that that was sort of a presumptuous title that we had. But, nevertheless, it was composed of the, what we like to think of as a radical pacifist group, or, or individuals primarily around A.J. Muste, David Dellinger, Bayard Rustin, and some of the others. And it was during the time of the, of the Korean War, 1951, we were on the streets protesting against the United States involvement in the Korean War. And, as we would be speaking from the soap boxes, the hecklers would say, why don't you go and tell that to the Russians? And, in our later meeting, we would say, well that's a valid position, and we should take them up on that. So, four of us were selected to go on a trip to Europe and to go through what was then known as the Iron Curtain and to speak to people of both the ea-, the west and the east about, about being against violence, and calling upon, calling upon soldiers everywhere to refuse to fight and to refuse to recognize the curtains that were, were, were placed between peoples. And, the, the four people selected, David Dellinger, Ralph DiGia of the War Resistors' League, and Arthur Emery, and myself went on this, what we called the Peacemaker Project, which was to go from Paris to Moscow, that was the objective. In the beginning it wasn't by bicycle, but that's how it developed. I was never enthusiastic about that idea, but the, the group decided on that. And, and that project seemed to have captured the imagination, of, of, of peace groups all over Europe. The, the, the project was successful, not in our getting to Moscow, but to the extent that it, it, it, it gave publicity to the idea of, of, of, of refusal to, people refusing to, to take arms against one another. And, after the project was over, many o-, or several of, of my colleagues had previous commitments and they had to go back to the United States, but the, the peace movement in, in England, primarily Peace News, which was the major publication, of, of, of, of the, of the movement, with a man named Hugh Brock as editor asked for one of us to come over and tell the story. And, I was selected and I went to England, and spoke in various places, in London, and at the, at the, at the Quaker colleges at Selly Oaks and Birmingham and other places. And then, according to Brock, our direct action project was responsible for the idea of the first Aldermaston March, that was a march which, which was done first by a small pacifist group where they were marching to protest against Nuclear disarmament [sic], and, and this march was successful again from the, in, from the point of view of publicity, and it was the beginning of what became a gigantic movement called CND, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Now, while I was at the Selly Oak colleges of course, I also ran into people from South Africa, but, and perhaps we should talk about that at another time? Interviewer #1:: No, no that's good, go ahead from there, so it does, yeah— Interviewer #2:: Yeah, let's go on with South Africa, yeah. Bill Sutherland:: Hmm? Interviewer #1:: That's fine, go ahead— Interviewer #2:: Go ahead, go ahead. Interviewer #1:: —Actually, but would you say what you said before without saying according to Brock. Can you just say my understanding is that, that people were influenced, 'cause people aren't gonna know who Brock is. Bill Sutherland:: Oh, oh yeah. Interviewer #2:: We're probably not gonna talk about Brock— Interviewer #1:: Yeah. Interviewer #2:: —so if you could just say, what we did in the peace movement was, we were told what we did as— Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, Yeah. Interviewer #2:: —peacemakers helped start the, these march, something like that, go ahead. Bill Sutherland:: So, we were told that we did, our project of the Peacemaker Project in Europe, was an inspiration for what became the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in England and then spread all over Europe. Interviewer #1:: And, at the time, you then ran into people who were anti-apartheid movement people from Africa visiting right? Bill Sutherland:: Yeah. Interviewer #1:: Maybe you could talk about that. Bill Sutherland:: OK. Now, at the time I was in England, and I was speaking at the Quaker colleges, the Selly Oak Colleges, there was a man there from South Africa. His name was very difficult to pronounce, but I'll try, it was called Jacob Nhlapo and Jacob, who had been the, and was the editor, of _The Bantu World_. When we were having conversations together, because he was speaking and I was speaking, he told me, at that time that, in South Africa, and this was 1951, that the African National Congress and other people had decided that they were going to challenge the Apartheid system, by a, a campaign called the defiance against unjust laws, and this defiance against unjust laws would have entailed the burning of passes, just as people burned their, their draft cards here. It would, it would have involved [shuffling sound] protest marches. It was also going to, it was also going to involve protests against segregated areas and so on. And, Jacob gave me the names of the people who were the officials of the African National Congress. And, when I came back to the United States, and this was, this was now the end of 1951, I brought all of these names to Bayard Rustin and George Houser, who were working out of the Fellowship of Reconciliation for the Committee of Racial Equality. And, at that time, I was having difficulty convincing them that this was something that they should tie into, because they were so concerned about the racial situation in the United States that they didn't think they could take anymore on their plate, but I double-crossed them. I, I took all the CORE literature and I sent it over to South Africa, and then the South Africans began writing back and expressing their interest in working together. And, we then formed Americans for South African Resistance, and this was a, a very important development, because the, the, the, the black churches of, of, of Harlem and so on, they, they, they, they joined together, Adam Clayton Powell of Abyssinian Baptist Church, and Charles Treig of the Presbyterian church, and, and then various other community groups and we had a, a we had a picket line at the South African consulate in, in New York. And this was actually, a, a, again a pioneer movement in the sense that, there had, that although there had been before, a connection with South Africa through Paul Robeson and the council on African Affairs, at that particular time, because of the McCarthy period, these people were, the council on African Affairs, were neutralized, and we were able to carry on this, to, to carry on this, this struggle which, as, as you know then became a very great anti-apartheid movement, but there was this pioneer effort in, in, in, in that, in that field by, by our group. [[shuffling sound]]

01:16:50.000 - 01:28:10.000

Interviewer #1:: Would you clarify something? I thought it was called the American Committee on Africa. Is that different? Is that yet another organization? Bill Sutherland:: Ah. OK, OK. Interviewer #2:: [inaudible] Interviewer #1:: —that's later? Bill Sutherland:: Yeah, yeah. Interviewer #2:: Yeah. Interviewer #1:: That's later. That's a later development, or? Bill Sutherland:: Well, yeah. They, well, I'll just say very quickly because you don't need— Interviewer #1:: Yeah, yeah— Interviewer #2:: Yeah, yeah— Bill Sutherland:: —you can have this as your background. The Ameri-, The American for South African Resistance became very successful. People were saying, we're pawning our diamonds that came from South Africa to give you money for this, I mean it was going great guns. And then, we had a problem, because, the movement in South Africa, at that time, the African National Congress was headed by some very conservative people. There was a Dr. Moroka, a man named Bukwe [sic - Robert Sobukwe] and some other people, who never anticipated that there would be the, the, the, the, the great response and also the great repression of the South African government. Now the youth group, which had Mandela and Walter Sisulu were prepared to go on, but the, but the, the, the, the top people had said, you know, please stop helping us. So there we had all of this momentum going. Now, at that time, I was getting ready to go to Africa so that, in Donald Harrington's church the Americans for South African Resistance met and they said well what can we do, these people are saying please don't, please don't help us right now because we don't want to go to jail in South Africa. And, at that time, it was decided that the, the Americans for South African Resistance should be expanded to cover Americans really supporting independence of the entire continent and then it was at, at this church in, the Community Church in, in New York that they formed out of that, the American Committee on Africa. Interviewer #1:: And then George Houser became the secretary of that— Bill Sutherland:: And— Interviewer #1:: —and you went to Africa. Bill Sutherland:: And, and, at that time, George Houser was still Committee of Racial Equality and he couldn't leave it a minute, couldn't leave it at that particular moment, but there was another man, his name is George Shepherd. George Shepherd was a, an academic who was in Uganda and he came back and he was secretary for the time being. And then, a little bit later on, George Houser then decided to make this his major work. Interviewer #2:: So— Interviewer #1:: You know what, we might ask is— Interviewer #2:: Let's stop for a minute. Let's stop— [[cut]] Interviewer #2:: Looking back, what, what is that common thread, that common direction that you followed, that, that got you from there to your work in Africa, to where you are today? Bill Sutherland:: Hmm. Interviewer #2:: Is it a question of values, or your view of the world, or what, what is it? Bill Sutherland:: Well, as I look back and I try to evaluate what I've done with most of my life and what I'm continuing to do, I, I think, first of all, that one must admit that a good part of the continuation of a certain way of life is an investment that you make at an earlier period of time. It, it's, it, it's good to talk about the philosophy and even the religious concept behind, and I think that's all very true, but I also think that once I made my decision during the time of the war to take a position which put me in prison, that ended the idea that I was going to be labor lawyer and, and go to the University of Michigan. It, I, I, I had been active in the movement when I got out, this, this determined it, because I had, I, my choices cut me off from going in certain directions, but, in addition to that, I mean, I won't say in addition to that, but that's not the primary thing, that's just one thing I want to, to admit from the beginning, but, over and above that, I think that there've just been two primary streams that I, have affected my life. One has been my African ancestry and those experiences that I had which made me go more and more in the direction of wanting to carry on the struggle against this particular type of oppression, because as the former president of, of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere said at the Sixth Pan-African Congress he said, this is, there are all kinds of different oppressions and people are, have suffered all over, but this oppression on the basis of African ancestry over the five, last five hundred years, because of slavery and colonialism and, and the rest, has been a peculiar kind of oppression. And, and that, that it has affected people and people will continue to feel that it's, it's a very strong aspect of, of, of, of how the world views them and how they view the world. Now the second aspect of, or stream has been the conviction that the Gandhi method of struggle is the right way, the, the, the way that I see to, to, to carry on our efforts and struggle for social change. One of the main reasons for, for that is that I think that Gandhi, although he was in practice sometimes very authoritarian, his biography says, the story of my experiments with truth. I, I like the approach that you're not going to, you know, you're not going to have this absolute self-righteous position. So, I mean those are, those have been two main streams. Over that period of time, I have developed one or two laws for myself, that I'm going to propagate, and one of them has been that the intensity of the cry of hatred is in inverse proportion to the experience on the revolutionary battlefield. Because, what I have discovered with people who are really concerned with revolution and social change is that nobody, whether its Fanon or anybody else, glorifies violence, they do not glorify, they may think its necessary. It's only people, I discovered myself, when I, when I deal with the ultra-left people, wherever they come from, who, who, who say that if you are not for armed struggle you're not then you're not for revolution. And then the second law is that, just as a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, I've found out that a little suffering is a dangerous thing, because many, many people if they get slapped in the face on, on a picket line one time, become martyrs for the rest of their lives, and that people who are really concerned with, with revolution do not behave in that way. But, I have felt very, very privileged to have been connected with the struggle for the political independence of the African continent. I think that, I think that it has been just a small step and its a great unfinished revolution. I have been inspired by the new developments that have come in this new age of, of, of technology and the way in which different groups, whether its Amnesty International or Greenpeace or the Pan-African movement itself. I think that, that the future lies with, not with merging these groups, but that they cooperate along parallel lines, but I do not minimize for one moment the tremendous odds that people, eighty percent of the people throughout the world are facing as far as actual warfare, and also as far as institutionalized violence, and that, and that there, there are monumental tasks to be done, but the old saying that I saw on a t-shirt, love life enough to struggle, that is the answer, there. You, there's, there's no way out, you, you con-, you continue to struggle and that that is part of, of living. Interviewer #2:: It is. Interviewer #1:: It is. Is that it? Interviewer #2:: I think we're done. Interviewer #1:: I think we're done. [[cut]] [[end of interview]]