00:00:11.000 - 00:06:12.000

Interviewer:: Let me start by, oh, I've got so many questions today— David Dellinger:: en-, endorse my book, I have to look down to see who the author is so th-, 'cause I can remember my name. You know, wait till you get to be eighty-one. Interviewer:: [unintelligible] David Dellinger:: You can't remember anything. Interviewer:: You're eighty-one, huh? David Dellinger:: Yeah. Camera Crew Member #1:: Judy, you're going to have to sta- Camera Crew Member #2:: I think you're going to have to move back a little bit, because you do lean forward. It is in your nature. Interviewer:: Back, yeah, you're right, and it won't make any difference. David Dellinger:: When I get interviewed on the radio I always say, well, wait a minute, I've got to be made up first. [laughs] Interviewer:: [laughs] I think that's only fair, you want to look your best when you're on the radio— David Dellinger:: [laughs] Interviewer:: I always say. David Dellinger:: But I had no idea that you did any of that. Interviewer:: He did it very casually— David Dellinger:: I can't believe it. Interviewer:: He snuck up on you and powdered your head. There you go. Why don't we— Camera Crew Member #2:: And pierced your ears, put the fake earring in, and [laughs] — David Dellinger:: Say it again? Interviewer:: [laughs] He pierced, he pierced your ears too. David Dellinger:: [laughs] Well, I have a hearing aid in this one. Camera Crew Member #3:: [laughs] [unintelligible] You're early. Interviewer:: [laughs] Why don't we start by, would you talk— Camera Crew Member #2:: Wait, hold on, we're rolling. Elizabeth (Dellinger's wife):: First, give me some money. You're rolling? I thought you said— Interviewer:: That's okay. We won't, we're starting— David Dellinger:: Oh, you want to go get the paper? Woman (Dellinger's wife Elizabeth?):: Mm-hm. David Dellinger:: Yeah, I thought— Camera Crew Member #2:: All right— Interviewer:: Self-reliant, we're modern. He can do sound, lighting, and camera. We got the right guy. Camera Crew Member #3:: Judy why don't— Camera Crew Member #1:: That's what we're doing, and this is the ninth take— Interviewer:: Yes, yes, we're interviewing David Dellinger, it is September the thirtieth today, isn't it? Is it the twenty-ninth or the thirtieth? It's the twenty-ninth. September twenty-ninth, we're in his home in Peacham, Vermont, and this is for the film _Against the Tide: Those Who Refused to Fight._ Camera Crew Member #1:: Great. And, any time. Interviewer:: Good. So, and we're really happy to be here. [laughs] It's great. So, if you could talk a little about your early experience that motivated you, that, that, and, and how you interpreted those experiences to make a life-long commitment to nonviolence. David Dellinger:: Well, certainly a key point in my life was in 1936, I graduated from Yale, and I had already received a fellowship to study at Oxford. And I went over on a ship in early summer, and w-, ships took quite awhile in those days. And while I was going on the boat, the Spanish Civil War broke out. And it took me awhile to get to Spain, because for one thing I was an anti-Fascist, an anti-Nazi at a time when the United States was re-arming Hitler. Not only that but as much as it, the corporations today are establishing plants in Latin America and South Korea and Thailand and all kinds of places where they have the support of dictators, many of whom are actually in league with the United States. So, General Motors and Ford and IT&T all established it, established plants in Hitler Germany, for his protection. David Dellinger:: So, although I was upset by the Civil War in Spain, the first thing I did was to go to Germany, where I stayed with, in the ghetto with Jewish families who held bread-, bed and breakfast. Well, actually even before that I went to bookstores and asked for the works of Heinrich Heine, who was Jewish and forbidden. And I think that perhaps that the first time that I stayed in the ghetto was when one of the people in the bookstore j-, was Jewish who had followed the Nazi orders and not displayed the book. But he went down in the basement and got one for me. But then, the first of September, I think, I met a fellow by the name of Bob Rosenberg who later became president of Wesleyan College, I think, during a, one period quite a bit later. And he had been in a tour of the Soviet Union with a group that I didn't totally agree with because I thought it was kind of soft on Communism, but, although he himself wasn't, that much. Anyway, I met him in Geneva and he said we have an invitation to go to Spain as student delegates to s-, observe the Civil War. And so we flew to Marseilles and then flew to Madrid. And, step by step I became passionately supportive of the loyalist regime and we, well, we visited student, free universities in Barce-, Barcelona. Boy, I'm, I'm really—

00:06:13.000 - 00:13:47.000

Interviewer:: I'm trying to think, but how did that influence your thinking about pacifism. Because you— David Dellinger:: Well— Interviewer:: —became passionately supportive of the loyalists. How do you [unintelligible] — David Dellinger:: Actually it was in Barcelona. Well, when I was in Madrid, I was inspired by these students who were fighting for justice and for a lot of the things that I believed in. And Franco's forces were approaching the city of Madrid, and there were bombings while I was there too. But the soldiers were, j-, going out, I mean, the students were going out and you-, we could hear the gunfire in the distance. And they were picking up the guns, 'cause they were lacking in guns, the guns of dead soldiers, and going out and continuing the fight. And I was really tempted to join them. But by then I had not only read and had so-, some experiences at home in terms of nonviolent action, and Gandhi was very prominent in the news and I'd read, not [clears throat] necessarily, not so much Gandhi but there was a book, _War Without Violence_ by an Indian associate of Gandhi, Shridharani, and I'd read that. And also, I had been long enough in Spain at that point, and observed a lot, so that I knew that the Communists were fighting with the Trotskyists and, and both were fighting with the anarchists and I had actually, one time when we took a wrong turn, in a s-, section of, I think, Barcelona, we'd been fired at by the anarchists. David Dellinger:: And, so anyway, I just decided that it was not, that although I supported the revolution, that, that all of that squabbling amongst the people who thought that their sect was better than the other one, you know, that it wasn't going to lead to what I wanted. So I ha-, was strengthened with the idea that I had to do non-violent action. Also, actually, before September first when I went to Spain, I had been, early in my life, influenced by Francis of Assisi a lot. And in a certain sense, I was trying to act like he had acted, that is, I was born in a well-to-do suburb of Boston, in a richer section of it, and Francis had, was born well-to-do and he gave it all up, and shared his life with the poor. And actually, during some of the time in New Haven, I had gone on the road and, to find out more about the poor and stayed in Salvation Army hostels and municipal lodging houses and in hobo jungles, and so forth. So I was very much influenced by, by Francis. In, in a way I was more influenced by Francis than by Gandhi, [laughs] although Gandhi certainly influenced me with his attempt to do away with the untouchables, and with his hunger strikes and, so forth. Interviewer:: Is that still, his thinking still influence you? Is that still something that you think of in your life, the, the teachings of St. Francis? David Dellinger:: Oh, absolutely, yes. [clears throat] Interviewer:: Could you say that? Rather than, my, my question isn't going to be there. David Dellinger:: Yes, well, I, I've, actually the, before I went to Geneva and to Spain, I, traveling alone, I went to Southern Spain and I followed the routes, in reverse order, probably, that Francis had followed, and I went to each of the little communities that he'd established, or churches where he had, where there was a picture of him by Giotto and that was a very spiritual experience for me. Interviewer:: Do you mean Southern Spain, or Southern Italy? D-, you said — David Dellinger:: In Italy. Interviewer:: Southern Spain. I, would you say it again and say Italy? I think you said Spain. David Dellinger:: I went to the southern part of Italy and I followed his route north— Interviewer:: S-, I'm sorry, start one more time and say, sa-, squeeze in there Italy and St. Francis of Assisi. David Dellinger:: Say it again? Interviewer:: Say, tell us Italy and St. Francis of Assisi in there. David Dellinger:: [Coughs] So I went to Italy as a person who had, you might as well say, fallen in love with Francis of Assisi, and so I went from village to village where he had been, carrying out his work of loving the poor and sharing his life with them, and would go to the little church where Giotto would have a picture of Francis, in many cases, and so that was a major influence in my decision. But that also combined with Gandhi, and I had had those experiences before I went to Spain. So even though I was tempted, because of the idealism and the love of, of the students at the free university that, that we stayed at, they had taken a, a, a nobleman's house and turned it into a free university for others. But I'd also unfortunately known [equipment beeps] that be— Camera Crew Member #1:: It was perfectly fine up until the beep. Interviewer:: It wasn't till that, was it? I think what, it was right between words I think was fine— Camera Crew Member #2:: "Even though I was tempted," was okay? Interviewer:: Yeah, I think it, I think all of it was fine, up 'til there 'cause it just— Camera Crew Member #1:: Up to the beep. Interviewer:: —we can cut out those little bits. [[equipment beeps]] David Dellinger:: Yeah, even though I was tempted to pick up the gun and join them, I knew that in addition to these egalitarian soldiers and so forth, there were at least three political groups with differing high ideals of their own, and more sectarian, and that the Communists were actually shooting the Trotskyists who had come over there, or, or been Spanish fighting for the Civil, for the Loyalists, and the Trotskyists were shooting the Communists and the Anarchists had actually fired at me when I was probably in a car driven by [equipment beeps, clicks] What is that? Oh, that's— Interviewer:: Just the answering machine, sorry. David Dellinger:: Some- Camera Crew Member #1:: Judy, you're going to have to stay way back and avoid the hissss— [[equipment beeps, clicks]]

00:13:48.000 - 00:22:08.000

Interviewer:: Oh, I'm— OK, fine. And we already have that part, so we're OK. You know, I had— Interviewer:: I had one of the real seminal experiences of my life in Assisi, just, visiting the, the— David Dellinger:: In Assisi? Interviewer:: Oh, that, the whole, the whole feeling that— David Dellinger:: Yeah. Interviewer:: —the whole village you feel this presence of St. Francis. David Dellinger:: Yeah. Interviewer:: It's really astounding. Beautiful. It's a wonderful place. I think we've got, that's really not, I'm like, will you take us now from, from, so, not too many y— David Dellinger:: [clears throat] Interviewer:: —years later, to deciding not to fight in World War Two, and how at that point— Interviewer:: —there's two parts to this. One is why you didn't fight. And the other is how what you said to people at the time who said, How can you not fight Hitler? Maybe, and I don't know if those are separate or you know, I mean [unintelligible] — David Dellinger:: Well, I've already told ab-, yeah, all right. Interviewer:: You already told us about the fact that you had, that we had re-armed the Germans. David Dellinger:: Yeah. Interviewer:: But, but was that— David Dellinger:: Yeah. But— Interviewer:: Was that the really seminal reason of why you didn't, or was it because you just didn't want to fight any war, and Hitler was, you know, I want you to answer the question, but why, what motivated you specifically not to fight World War Two? [pause] Are you ready? Camera Crew Member #1:: Rolling. Interviewer:: OK. [[production discussion takes place in background until 14:50]] [[production discussion ends]] [[pause]] David Dellinger:: Well, I, I'll give it a little more than, but you can always cut and so— When I got to Oxford after my visits to Nazi Germany and Spain, there was a German Rhodes Scholar who was in my college, New College Oxford, and I assumed that he was a fascist. And to my great surprise he turned out to be an anti-Fascist. And so when I went back to Germany later, he gave me names and addresses of people to get in contact in the anti-Nazi movement. And just as the Jews had done earlier, these people said to me, you should go back to the United States which is turning away the refugees. This doesn't— it has a quota on Germans. And so after my first year at Oxford, I decided that I wouldn't stay for the second year to get a degree. And I would go back and fight for the refugees, [laughs] you might as well say. But also I had gotten in touch with the anti-Nazi movement, and I knew people inside the foreign office of the German government who were anti-Nazi. And they came over to the United States and tried to negotiate with the, the top American officials, and they would not encourage them at all. So anyway, there, it was a combination, I believe that there can be no peace without justice, and if you're gonna be non-violent, you have to be against the violence of society. So I was not tempted to fight in the war, because I knew the United States supported Hitler, and until it, it was afraid that Hitler might do away with some of their selfish possessions and so forth. David Dellinger:: Also, after the first semester at Union Seminary, which was on, high on a hill overlooking the slums of Harlem, five of us had moved out of the seminary to Harlem, in order to try to establish some kind of community with those people. And it was a very complicated thing, but, and the president of the seminary threatened to s-, to, to fire us from the, the seminary if we, if we moved out. He said that we're a community, a Christian community, and you're breaking the bonds of love. And I said, well, it's not a Christian community to me if the black people are basically excluded and doing the service work, and all of the rest of it, and we want to go down there. So then when the draft was passed, draft law, in September, or at least that was the time that you were supposed to register, we were exempt from military service, but I felt that that was a kind of bribe that I didn't want to accept. And a lot of other Union students felt the same way, particularly those of us who had lived in Harlem. And when we announced that we weren't going to register, and originally there were twenty of us who announced that, we were suddenly besieged by almost all of the peace leaders whom we liked, or had served as, to some extent had, had enlightened us on some of these issues. And, but it was a little bit like the president of the seminary who I, I'm sure that believed in his own way in Christian love. Actually, I had a much revered and likeable, loveable man from the American Friends Service Committee who told me that if I would register for the draft, he would see that I would become director of one of the civi-, civil public service camps. And he said, there and you can set up a model of nonviolence. And it was like the president saying a model of community love. And I said, well I'm working with gangs in an inter-racially divided section of an inner city, and I think that that's where I should be practicing my nonviolence. And going off and raking leaves with other pacifists is not to me a proper model. Interviewer:: That was Clarence Pickett? Was that Clarence Pickett— David Dellinger:: Yes, It was. I didn't— Interviewer:: Could you just say that that was— David Dellinger:: Yes. Interviewer:: Clarence Pickett? David Dellinger:: Actually, the much beloved, and in many ways inspiring leader of the Fr-, the American Friends Service Committee who offered that to me, was Clarence Pickett. And, you see, I had enough examples of that kind of thing to teach me that all even loveable idealistic leaders are, have feet of clay, including myself and an-, any-, anybody else that I work with, that we're all capable of, of blindness. And especially, and my wife in particular which was later, because I did a year and a day before I met Elizabeth and married her, but she wrote a very perceptive article saying that the, the problem was that when people became bureaucrats in, in good peace organizations, after awhile, there was a kind of blindness that came into them. And that she advocated in this article that she wrote, that after a few years there, they should leave their office, have somebody else come in, and they should go out and, and g-, and work with ordinary people, in order to keep their inspiration alive.

00:22:09.000 - 00:30:48.000

Interviewer:: Have you, how have you keep your inspiration alive? And you, you've done a lot of different things along the way, I mean, it's been a long, long process of playing different roles and being in different organizations and, has changing roles been important to you, or has that— David Dellinger:: Well, I think that probably, [clears throat] you know and I've made kind of, mistakes and bl-, had blindnesses along the way, but I think that the inspiration to me is that— Interviewer:: Is the cat eating? Excuse me, is the cat eating picking up much, is it alright? Camera Crew Member #1:: I can't hear it. Interviewer:: OK, fine. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I didn't want to— David Dellinger:: But I, I think that the thing that has saved me from some other mistakes has been that I have never gotten my income from running a pacifist [laughs] organization, or a, another idealistic thing. And when I was in Lewisburg during World War Two, I decided that when I got out, that we are body, soul, and mind, and that I would try to combine all three of them. And I was doing a lot of writing and thinking and feeling, and so I decided to become a printer, where I could work with my hands to produce materials, a magazine it turned out, and, so, or books, so that it would be the whole person, and I would not become isolated as a bureaucrat. [[clears throat]] Interviewer:: Mm-hmm. And that, have you felt that was a good decision? David Dellinger:: I've basically followed that ever since. Now, actually, now that I'm living in Vermont, technically it's not quite true, but I'm growing an organic garden, my wife and I, and I have a chainsaw and a maul and split wood and, and mow the lawn, and, and all of these other things, and, and I often speak, for nothing, [laughs] you know, I don't, don't say, Oh, how much you gonna pay me if I'm gonna go to a conference. And so we're living a relatively simple life, which does combine body, soul, and, and mind. Interviewer:: Yeah, I think I didn't get back to the question I asked you before which is, What, what did you say to people when they said, "Why aren't you fighting? Why, how can you have the nerve not to fight against Hitler? This is a good war." And, and what, what would you say then and has that, has your thinking about it changed at all now, would you say something different now in retrospect all these years later? David Dellinger:: Well, I, I think that my experiences amongst the anti-Nazis, and my experiences in Spain where even idealistic people were taking a sectarian approach, not all of them, not the grassroots Spanish people, but, but the political leaders and so forth, so that I knew that it was not a good war, I knew that that was not the way to destroy Hitler, and that the United States had played footsie with Hitler as long as it possibly could, until, actually, the Nazi Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact. The United States had wanted Hitler to de-, to go eastward and destroy Communism, and Communists wanted, the Soviet Union, wanted Hitler to come westward and attack the capitalists. And when it lost that diplomatic war, that was the only time that the United States began to speak against Hitler, and against Nazism. And I had observed enough in the racial prejudice of the United States, and in the class prejudice against poor people, both white and black, to know [door squeaks] that the idealism of, with which they were supposedly getting rid of the, this evil person and evil system, did not exist basically in the United States, even though a lot of grassroots, ordinary Americans believed that. And, and thought that it was an idealistic war. Interviewer:: How hard was it to be, I mean, you obviously suffered a lot for your position taken in that period. In ge-, could you make a comparison between what it was like being a conscientious objector in World War Two versus what it's been the experience of being a conscientious objector to Vietnam or Korea, well, let's not talk about Korea, but is there, in a concise way, to make a comparison? David Dellinger:: Well, I [pause] See, after World War Two [pause] oh, let's hold it a minute. Interviewer:: That's a, that's a, maybe, I don't know. David Dellinger:: I mean, see, I don't want to, it's, it gets so complicated— Interviewer:: Yeah, I don't want to get into David Dellinger:: —and, and lengthy. Interviewer:: Yeah, yeah, let's, let's— Go ahead, Kim. Camera Crew Member #3:: I'll ask this question, but could you answer it to Judy? David Dellinger:: [laughs] Camera Crew Member #3:: You gave a political answer to What about Hitler, it wasn't the right way to, to do away with Hitler. Is there also a pacifist answer, in other words, a, a, an argument grounded in pacifist non-violence that doesn't have to do with the efficacy of fighting a war in this particular situation, because that wasn't the right way to deal with this particular situation? Usually, "What about Hitler?" means one would have to resort to violence and you said, no, in this situation you wouldn't have to. But is there a kind of, another kind of, kind of spiritual pacifist answer to that you would give? Or did it really feel to you like it was primarily that analysis of what was effective? [unintelligible] David Dellinger:: I think it, I think it's clear that from the influence of Francis of Assisi, from studies that I had read, b-, actually by a Belgian anarchist called Bartolome De Leet, showing that when people entered a war idealistically, that the violence that they committed gradually corrupted them, their, some at least, of their idealism. All of these things taught me that nonviolence was the most effective way of fighting, and that even if you lost a particular battle, that nonetheless you were living by the spirit, you know, and fallibly living by it, but nonetheless keeping alive the spirit which will only in the end get rid of the violence in which people, greedy people try to get more property, power, prestige than other people, or in which idealistic people say, "No, I don't believe in that kind of greed, but I'm gonna get rid of the people who are practicing it", and then in the process they become more and more narrow and they don't succeed because they, it's like the United States, for all its claims of being against Hitler's cruelty, they actually made a point of bombing civilian areas, supposedly, you know, even idealistic pilots, some of whom I've talked with afterwards, and say, "I actually bombed people's homes and, and, and, civilian areas in order to defeat Hitler, and I realized that I was acting like Hitler when I did it." [[pause]] [[pause]] [[brief production discussion]]

00:30:49.000 - 00:42:26.000

Interviewer:: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. When you think about that period, wa-, would you tell a little bit about how you used non-violence when you were in prison to— David Dellinger:: [coughs] Interviewer:: —to dissipate some of the violence that was, that was, that you experienced, or the threats of violence that you experienced? Give a concrete example of how nonviolence can confront violence? David Dellinger:: Well, I had a lot of interesting experiences in prison where I acted non-violently, and then when the prisons tried to get violent prisoners to attack me or kill me because my non-violence was against segregation, against the whole of the, the, treating other prisoners as subhuman and so forth, but it was all linked together, and I think of one time when on, on my way to Lewisburg, I was put in the Jersey City Jail, County Jail, whatever, and when I was g-, being put on an elevator to go upstairs to my cell, there was somebody else there who was being roughed up by a guard, and I stepped between them and said you can't treat a human being that way. And I had no idea who the inmate was or who the guard was, but I did that, and then when I got upstairs, because people who would not fight in World War Two were c-, thought to be yellow, I was put in a cell which probably had two bunks in it, and there were ten people there who were murderers. And then, you know, and the guards, as they often did, you know, said, "Take care of this guy." He, well, I quoted from another instance where that happened after I got to Lewisburg where they said, "He's a Nazi who spits on the flag, and says that the, quote, niggers," as, he didn't say it in quote, but, "says that the niggers should share the same toilets and showers and, and eat with you folks and everything." So in Jersey City when that, something like that happened, I got word, or the other in-, inmates were told that I had protected one of the inmates who had actually turned out to be a member of the Mafia. So he sent word, he said, "Don't touch that guy, he's a good guy, he's, he defended me." And that happened again in, in Lewisburg where I was, after I got out of one of my strikes, an-, actually the longest hunger strike that w-, five of us took in prison, I was p-, p-, sent out to the [pause] well, I'm wrong. [[pause]] Interviewer:: Actually, I'm just thinking, will you go back— David Dellinger:: Anyway, after one of my strikes, I was put out in the construction gang, and again when I was there, a guard struck a prisoner. And I stepped between them and said, "You have no right to do that." Well, that prisoner turned out to be the leader of one of the two prison gangs. And then there came a time, not immediately, but another time when, actually after I'd gotten out, out of another strike and was back in segregation finally, and I was out in the prison yard, and this guy came up to me and said, "Dill, get your boys together." And I said, "What do you mean, Moon?" And he said, "Well, I just got called into the captain's office and the captain offered me parole if I got my boys together and took care of you." And I had known, I'd seen pe-, this happen where people were actually killed by other inmates in that case. And he said, "I told him to shove it up his ass." I knew he hadn't done that, 'cause he'd be in the hole if he had, but I knew he had said something like, "Well, I'll think about it," or I'll, or, or one thing or another. And he said, then he continued, and he said, "And meanwhile, Tippy's in there, and you know Tippy's got thirty-five years, and he's a low-down, son-of-a-bitch, and so he'll accept it." So, he says, "You better d-, protect yourself." Well, Tippy didn't do it either. Interviewer:: So they protected you. David Dellinger:: Yes! Interviewer:: They told you that, I mean— David Dellinger:: They told me that— Interviewer:: These were the guys that you had defended their leader. David Dellinger:: Yes. Interviewer:: Of the gang. Camera Crew Member #3:: Or had defended somebody. David Dellinger:: Actually, w-, each one was a leader of the gang. Interviewer:: Oh, I see. So Tippy was the leader of a gang? And so was Moon? David Dellinger:: Yes, and Moon was the leader of a gang. Interviewer:: Uh-huh. So the one that you came in between the prison guard and the person who was being beaten— David Dellinger:: Who was the leader of the gang, Moon. Interviewer:: That was Moon, I see. Okay. So that was Moon, and then later he came to you and tipped you off. David Dellinger:: Yeah. Interviewer:: So what could you do about it, though? Do you, should we go on? David Dellinger:: I didn't do a- Camera Crew Member #2:: Yeah, when we say, when you say strike, could you say— Interviewer:: Yes. Camera Crew Member #2:: —hunger strike? Because that won't be clear to everybody, that you're actually talking about— Interviewer:: And you might want to go back and explain about hunger— David Dellinger:: Well, the thing is— Interviewer:: —strikes, yeah. Camera Crew Member #1:: Judy Interviewer:: I'm sorry, am I back? Let me sit back. Is this better? OK. Camera Crew Member #1:: Scoot your chair, OK, good. David Dellinger:: Well, the reason I changed it was that after the longest hunger strike, I was put in the, what was called the fuck up dormitory, which was mostly southern white military prisoners, and actually, the guards said, "This is one of those guys who says he's too good to be in prison with the rest of you." And that was a lie because, although there were people outside, members of pacifist organizations, who, in, in my first imprisonment, had argued that I should be treated as a political prisoner, I said, No, I, I, I sent word out to them, Please don't do that, because these people have had a tougher life than I have, and, and I don't want to be in a privileged position here. And so that was the, untrue, I had never asked to be a political prisoner. And secondly, they said, "And he's, he's one of the ones who says that the niggers should use the same toilets and showers and, and eat at the same table as, as you guys." And then he, the third thing he said was, "And he's a Nazi who spits on the flag, so we want you to take care of him." And the second guard hadn't said a word, then, but when they got to the door and he, he had his hand on it and it, it was, opened it to go out, he turned around and he said, "We'll be gone for a couple of hours and when we come back, we want you to hand him to us with his head in his hands." Well, I will condense what happened, but that, I luckily had been in prison before and knew some things. And so I said, "You don't believe those hacks, do you?" I never called them "hacks" myself, but in this case, to protect my life, I did. "You don't believe those hacks, do you? You've been in the hole. We've been fighting against the hole. And they, you know what it's like, they're the ones that are acting like the Nazis, not me." And, even so, nobody spoke to me. They had, they gave me the silent treatment. And then when I, I was still groggy from a sixty-five day hunger strike, and I couldn't hear well, and I c-, was unsteady on my feet, and so after awhile I just lay down on the bed, and then the lights went out, and I heard them marching, bang, bang, bang, coming down the corridor between the beds. And I said, "Well, this is it." And to my surprise they went right on past me. And, and I was just conked out. When I woke up the next morning, I found out that they'd gone down and they'd pulled a little guy named Red out and took him to the john and r-, gang-raped him. And when he got out of the hospital and came to the kitchen, which is where we did our work, and I was still groggy and hard to work, but I went up to him and said, Gee, Red, I didn't know what they were doing, and if I had, I would have tried to help you. And I, I'll, you know, if they try th-, something like that again— and he grabbed a big kitchen knife and he held it right up against my chest and he said, "You fuckin' Nazi, don't ever speak to me again or I'll shove, shove this through your chest." And, so I don't want to over glamorize it, but I think that having that attitude gradually communicated to the other prisoners t-, along with the fact that the reason that the guards wanted to get rid of me was bec-, and other people, not just me, was because we were fighting for prisoners' rights. And actually it was at least a month, maybe six weeks before, even though I hated it there in the dormitory, it was so noisy, and so much going on, but I didn't dare ask to be transferred to a cell, because that would have been an indication that I was running away from the threats. Interviewer:: Could you talk a little bit about the progression of the hunger strikes? And how— Camera Crew Member #3:: We're out. Interviewer:: You're out? Camera Crew Member #3:: Fifty-seven, fifty-eight minutes. Interviewer:: Okay. Maybe we should start a new tape.

00:42:27.000 - 00:53:50.000

David Dellinger:: But be sure you— Interviewer:: Yes, we left half an hour for— David Dellinger:: For Elizabeth. Interviewer:: Absolutely. So we might, if everybody— Interviewer:: Camera's rolling? Camera Crew Member #2:: Tell Judy. Camera Crew Member #2:: Hang on, hang on, hang on. Interviewer:: Tell me everything. David Dellinger:: You know, I never call myself a pacifist, because I, it's hard for me to explain, but I think that people con-, concentrate on what I'll call theology or divinity to the exclusion of everyday life. Sometimes they become, in a certain sense, fanatics. And I, I hate to use that word actually, but I think that, see, I cannot separate my unwillingness to kill any human being, which I feel because I feel that there is something of divinity, of the divine presence in every human being and that it, that it would be arrogant of me, be [burps] anti-spiritual and arrogant both, [burps] for me to kill another human being because I disagree with him or because I think he's doing terrible things. So I cannot separate everyday life and the grassroots situation or the political situation from my sense of love, I don't know what else to call it, love of the divinity. And I found that especially true in prison, in a certain sense, when, as I said, I was always put in with the most violent criminals and they were turned, they, the prison tried to turn them against me, but I found out that if you treated those people with love and understanding and respect, that they were capable of being amazingly, of showing that divine side of themselves, as, for example, the people who were offered parole or other privileges if they would kill me, and they did not do it because I had helped them when they were being beaten up, or because they had, they knew that I had done that kind of thing. And I don't mean to make it sound any simpler than it is, but I think that one has to look at the whole of life and not in some abstract way like sitting in one's, in a church pew, or in one's room saying I couldn't kill a person. I say that, but I cannot separate it from the nature of s-, the socie-, not only the nature of [laughs] divinity but the nature of the society and, and, and the sufferings or, or the, the, the reasons that the people have done terrible things. Interviewer:: When you say you couldn't call yourself a pacifist, how do you define being a pacifist? It sounds like you fit that description pretty well to me. Camera Crew Member #2:: Or what do you call yourself? David Dellinger:: Well, you see, what happened was that in— I've had a number of instances where the pacifists have washed their hands off a struggle of people who are oppressed whether racially, economically or in other ways. They, they're struggling to, to, to get justice and to, to get their rights. And because they are not pacifists or not totally nonviolent, people wash their hands off them. And a, a, a, a good example is, well, when I visited Cuba shortly after the revolution. First of all, when I came back and described the good things that I observed, the elements of nonviolence in the Fidelistas for example, when they, when the U.S. supported Batistaites captured a prisoner, they would kill him. Captured an opponent. But I found out that the Fidelistas, when they captured a, a soldier who was against them, they would attend to his wounds, feed him, r-, r-, explain why they were fighting, what they believe in, justice and so forth, and eventually they would release him. And, but it wasn't only that, it was the fact that they were, as-, doing so, so much to help people, after they had, won the revolution. Now there were things that I didn't agree with in it, but, but I tried to tell the things that I thought were positive about it, and I wrote an article about it after my first trip, and actually Dorothy Day published it on the front pages of _Catholic Worker_. I, al-, it also appeared in _Liberation Magazine_. And immediately, all kinds of people who called themselves pacifists said, say, "You can't praise what they're doing," or, "You can't speak about that, because they fought a violent revolution and they've been corrupted by it." Actually I had that same experience when Daniel Berrigan went to Vietnam. I had been in North Vietnam and I was really impressed by the people over there, and whe-, after I got home, and I spo-, expressed my disagreements with them on, on, on some aspects, but after I got home I got a Telex asking me to come over and, and negotiate the release of some POWs, American POWs. And I felt that other people should have the experience that I had just been there within a month or two, and so I worked out con-, con-, working with other people, that Daniel Berrigan and Howard Zinn went over. And I thought of having women, but I had already arranged for a women's group to go over there and so, anyway, the male prisoners and so forth, and traveling with them, so the two of them went over, and Daniel Berrigan wrote an article for _Liberation_ saying that I thought that people are always corrupted when they fight for, use violent methods. And they are defending their homeland and I have to say that it's not quite as simple as that, if you're fighting against oppression and fighting invasion by a superpower who wants to control the area, then it's, you have to, you have to grant them some credit. Interviewer:: Now, couldn't you, couldn't someone have said that about the potential Nazi invasion of the western world at the time of World War II? David Dellinger:: I was just thinking that there were people who were so enraged by what Hitler was doing, and by the Jews, that they went over there in that spirit of feeling that we have to do this. So I never condemned people who went over as GIs. But the interesting thing is that on the other hand, I never was condemned by friends who did go over there. I mean, we would stay up late at night and say, you know, you're going to prison, you're going to war, and who knows which one of us is right. But w-, we'll find out how it works. And some of them, as I say, became disillusioned by being ordered to bomb civilian areas and all the rest of it. Many of them of course didn't. But one of the things that I have written about a bit is that veteran's organizations that generally looked down on by peace people, or by pacifists, and I say no. That was the one time in their life when they risked everything for what they had been told was the good of humanity. And therefore, one should understand why they look upon that as the high point of their life, and why they try to get together with other people. Now I think beyond that, that, well and it's hard for them to, to have peace people explain that they were lies, some of what they were told, and fought for. But, so there's, again we need to reach out to each other, and, and, but not in a condemnatory way, or in a self-righteous way.

00:53:51.000 - 01:01:45.000

Interviewer:: You said you don't, you don't feel comfortable calling yourself a pacifist. Is there something you do feel comfortable calling yourself? You didn't say the word "comfortable," but, but is there something you do call yourself, or do you feel, you know, that it's appropriate to call yourself anything, I mean, is there a— David Dellinger:: In a way, like I say, that we have body, soul, and mind. If you emphasize the soul to the neglect of the body or the neglect of the mind, I think you can become self-righteous and narrow-mindedly religious. And in the same way, I think that very often, people who call themselves pacifists, you know, I don't object to anybody calling themself a pacifist, but I feel more, I feel more at ease saying myself, I am a nonviolent activist for justice. And when I am introduced at, to, as, as I often am, as being, this is a peace activist, I always, or often say, well, there can be no peace without justice, so I am first of all a justice activist [laughs] . Interviewer:: You know, there's an interesting point I picked up in a few places, Jim Tracy talks about it and you do, in your book as well. But there's a point where the American Peace Movement made its priorities militarism and racism rather than labor organizing, which was more true in Europe at that point. And do you have any understanding why that happened then, and do you think that it was a, I mean, it seems like it's obviously influenced your thinking along the way, that both of those, those n-, those priorities have linked to one another, I don't know exactly. If you could talk a little more about it? David Dellinger:: See, my feeling, my feeling is that there can be no peace without justice, and the danger of calling one's self a peace person, or a pacifist is that one can concentrate on war and the military, which I believe that one should be opposed to, but one can do that and, and overlook or, or minimize the daily violence of society. And one way to kill people is to shoot them, and another way is to believe that success and happiness comes from getting more power, more money, more privilege than your neighbors. And I think that, as, as a matter of fact I often use the example, of the fact that there were, there are more people who die every month in the United States, particularly children, as a result of pov-, their poverty, or, or sicknesses and various things that come from their poverty, more children that die every month from that, than the total number of GIs killed during the entire Vietnam War. So it takes more than a gun to kill people. It takes an attitude toward life which says that we want to get ours and we don't care what happens to other people, even though they never, w-, people don't say it quite that boldly, that we don't care what happens to them. But, if they weren't lazy, or if they were, you know, one thing or another, then, then they would get theirs too. Interviewer:: Do those numbers include violence, do you think? Street violence, that sort of thing, in, in those numbers, or are you just talking about, do you know, what that statistic is? That's an interesting figure. David Dellinger:: Well, the interesting thing is that, see, when a kid picks up a gun and shoots somebody, then some people argue against guns. And I'm not in favor of guns either. But they also should argue against the fact that if you're a twelve- or fifteen-year-old in the inner city, and have, you know, lack everything, and you don't have adequate food, shelter, anything, then how can you get a few dollars? Maybe by running some drugs. And then as you run drugs, then you, you get into conflicts with other people who, who want to get your customers. And pretty soon you pick up a gun, maybe just to protect yourself from the other people, and then you end up shooting people. But it's the whole economic nature of the society, which, which produces that. Interviewer:: Can you— David Dellinger:: I think we better stop. [laughs] Interviewer:: Yeah, I wanna, I want you to answer one question. David Dellinger:: [laughs] Interviewer:: I mean to say, it's a, it's a, a, kind of complex one, but it's all, I think that may be, and then we can stop. David Dellinger:: [laughs] Interviewer:: Which is, if you could sort of give, how, when you look back, can you sh-, think about how— Camera Crew Member #2:: Sorry [unintelligible] Interviewer:: What, I, I'm, I'm just answering, asking the question. When you look at what came out of World War Two— David Dellinger:: Yeah. Interviewer:: How the, you and the other people who were the leaders in the nonviolence movement in World War Two, what your legacy is. What, you know, how that led into the, not, into the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-nuke movement— David Dellinger:: But you know, despite saying that I want to end— Interviewer:: Yeah. David Dellinger:: I will get to that. Interviewer:: Okay. David Dellinger:: But, but first I want to say something more— Interviewer:: Okay. David Dellinger:: On the previous subject. Interviewer:: You were just kidding, then. [laughs] David Dellinger:: Yeah. I often use the example that when the war in Vietnam began to take a serious term [sic] in terms of numbers and deaths and, and so forth, that the official pacifist movement said, "They're both using guns and we're ag-, we're pacifists, we're against that." And they did not work adequately to get the United States to withdraw its troops and, and its assaults. And in December of 1964, when SDS, Students for Democratic Society, called for the first national demonstration against the war, there were actually twenty-eight peace leaders, many of whom I loved and admired, in, in other situations, who actually signed a statement asking people to boycott that national demonstration in April 1965, because they did not criticize sufficiently the Communists in Hanoi and in Peking. And to me when the gr-, the most powerful nation in the world was invading a little underdeveloped country in Vie-, well, Vietnam, in order to gain control of that whole area, the whole, barely Asia, so forth, then, and they saw no other way than to pick up the gun to defend themselves, I was not to say, well, the both parties are evil, are equally evil because they are both using guns.

01:01:46.000 - 01:14:18.000

David Dellinger:: And as a matter of fact, I had a very interesting experience after one of my trips to north Vietnam when I was go-, coming home through China, and when I got to the airport in Beijing, I was met by a car from the Vietnamese embassy, and was taken to the embassy to spend the night before I t-, got my plane for, well, but, and indirectly to the United States. And the ambassador was making a toast and then he said, "You know, we know of your heroic world work against the Korean War and we know of your heroic work against the present war, what were you doing against the fascists in World War Two?" And I thought, holy smokes. [laughs] So I first said that, that, I told some of my experiences with, with the United States supporting Nazism and, and lying about what they were trying to accomplish in the war, and you know, when I say lying, even though there's part of it in, in, you know, it would be people's justification, 'cause they were against some of what Hitler was doing and so forth. But anyway, and then I sa-, and he, it was not hard for him to understand that, since the United States had invaded Vietnam for its own selfish imperialist reasons, but then I thought, well, I have to be honest and tell him the truth, that I am against all violence, and I mentioned the word Gandhi, and suddenly he interrupted me right in the middle of a sentence, said, "Gandhi, yes! Did you know that when the Japanese were advancing in the Pacific during World War Two, and it looked like they were gonna land in India, that Gandhi had a whole plan for the nonviolent defense of his country against the Japanese invaders?" And to v-, be honest, as I was with him, I said, "No, I didn't know that, but I'm not surprised." And I looked it up later, and of course, it was true. But from then on he didn't say, "We must lay down our arms," and I didn't say, "Why don't you lay down your arms like Gandhi did?" But we agreed that we had to develop nonviolent resistance to evil, to a point where, when people were invaded as India was, thought it would be and had been, by the British, that they would choose that method rather than the other method. And that is part of why, ever since, inspired by him, I have been exploring and, and consulting with other people on more creative methods of nonviolence where we can not say, "I'll never b-, carry a gun," but say, "We've got to get rid of this inequality and oppression and injustice in the world by ever more imaginative ways so that wh-, so that people will understand that there is another way," it's what William James called for, you know, of a, an alternate method of fighting than non-, than violence. Interviewer:: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Camera Crew Member #2:: Hey Judy? Interviewer:: Yes? Camera Crew Member #2:: Did— [[cut]] David Dellinger:: Yeah. Interviewer:: ...people know about what came out of World War Two that's gone on to today's world that have, you know, have been influences in, in Civil Rights, and in the Anti-nuclear Movement, or, and in, in the Peace Movement, since, since World War Two and how, how this group of people who fought World War Two have continued to be important in the history of what follows. David Dellinger:: You know, I think that my greatest good fortune in World War Two was to go to prison, and being treated as a coward who was thrown in with the most violent criminals. And I put with that the experience of walking in on my first Saturday night in prison with a black man and being sh-, ushered into the white section and refusing to go and sitting next to him and being put in segregation. I think that all of those things taught me more about human nature and about the evils of the society, which while fighting a war supposedly to protect the Jews, was treating the Negroes as inferiors and as a matter of fact, there was a lot of lynching and a lot of that going on too, you know. So it wasn't just a, a matter of, that Hitler was worse than them, but you know that it was all going in the, in the same unfortunate direction that Hitler finally went to. Anyway, I think that from the prison experience of the hunger strikes and the fight against segregation, and the fight against the treating of people as sub-humans, I was encouraged to keep up that battle and know that there's no way that they can hurt you. You can hurt yourself by giving up. You can hurt yourself by saying, "Oh, I don't want to go to prison," or, "I don't want to be killed." But you, you. you learn that there are worse things than death, and there are worse things than gettin' beaten up. That the worst thing is if you can't respect yourself because you're not really expressing the love that you feel for other human beings, and including, including both the oppressors and the oppressed. Interviewer:: Mm-hm. [pause] Talk a little about how working with other people has influenced you, and how that group of people, have, the legacy of the group of people who fought against World War Two, if you could talk a little about how other people have influenced you, and how you think your influence together has, has been a force— David Dellinger:: See, one of the things that followed from those World War Two experiences was that when I went to the South early, actually before the Montgomery bus boycott, because I was living in an intentional community and we had a fellowship of intentional communities, and the Koinonia Community took in a black family, Koinonia, Georgia. And so some of their white neighbors rode by and fired in to their place and threw smoke, fire bombs in, and so forth. So Elizabeth and I went down there and stood nonviolent guard with them. And there were certain ways in which that was like a hunger strike in prison, that you didn't know if you might either die or be killed as a result of it. But on the other hand, when you stood there as, as we did with our hands open like this to show that we weren't armed and we put on, there were lights that, to show that. And the people came by, they actually did, they stopped throwing the fire bombs in, and so forth. [[pause]] David Dellinger:: But I'd have to say that in prison, [clears throat] actually in Danbury Prison, after I'd been warned by the, the head of the Bureau of Prisons who came from Washington especially to, because the warden described me as the chief agitator, which was unjust, but they always think of one person as being responsible, and practically everything would have been taking place if I had, weren't there. We were all, well, we didn't always have the same personalities and do exactly the same things, but we all had the same basic attitudes. Anyway, there, James V. Bennett, the head of the Bureau of Prisons, came and told me that if I didn't stop, that he was going to move me to a prison where I would definitely be killed. And I, we, we conducted the strike that he was against, at the time, and I was in solitary confinement, and one night I began to be frightened. And I didn't know what it would have been, but I was just in a sw-, a cold sweat, that I could see that the rest of my life, my life might not be safe. Or whatever else I, it's hard to get the words for it. But finally, maybe after two or three hours, I had the experience which I'll have to put into the words that I used at the time. I felt that I had died in the course of that, and that, an-, that, but I wasn't physically dead or spiritually dead. And that I felt that any months or years that I lived after that would be like a bonus. And so forth. And so actually when I got out of prison I really lived that way. I felt that nothing c-, that can happen can kill me, because I'm already dead [laughs] and it's, it's, I've survived and it's wonderful. And I can remember, just I, the one example of, in Albany, Georgia, when a man was, threatened me with a big knife and I temporarily talked him out of it, but then when I was doing certain things, he followed me with his knife still open, and I expected he might kill m-, stab me in the back, and I think that was the first time I felt a little uneasy [laughs] as if I wasn't quite ready to die, I wasn't already dead. But I actually, so a couple times I turned around and tried to approach him, and one thing or another, and I survived. So I think that the deeper we go into living by what we're experimenting with, because it's always an experiment, and it doesn't mean that, that I didn't make mistakes and that it wouldn't have been better if I had found out some of those mistakes earlier. But the deeper we go, the more it stays with us. But I finally, one final example of what I'm talking about, and I referred to being in Albany, but I can remember going down to Georgia and other places, and staying with negro families, and taking some of the risks that they did, like when cars would ride by to intimidate them and me and other people like me who were there working on a particular issue, there was a phrase used, "the beloved community." And I felt that the most wonderful thing in the world was to be a member of the beloved community, of people who didn't necessarily agree on everything, but who were dedicating themselves to, and at least as best they can-, could, to making all people, r-, treating all people as if they were part of the divine. [[clears throat]]

01:14:19.000 - 01:20:57.000

Interviewer:: That phrase comes from, from the folks in, in Georgia, that you met, the black people in Georgia that you worked with? David Dellinger:: Well, it b-, the phrase "beloved community" probably came the first time to me in either Alabama or Georgia when I was staying with a black family, and apologizing for the inconvenience of, that I was causing them, but also worried about their risks and, and their daily treatment, and I remember a woman who had a young son who she explained that she couldn't take him shopping because there was, that Negroes weren't allowed to go [laughs] int-, into the white toilets and so forth. And she said to me, Well, you are becoming part of a beloved community. And it's always inspired me ever since. [laughs] Oh, I think I was terrible. I over-talked. [laughs] Camera Crew Member #2:: No, No, I think. Camera Crew Member #1:: We're rolling. Camera Crew Member #2:: In, in, in, during the Vietnam War, we spent a lot of time trying to con-, convince people not to go into the war, and not to, we, we did try to get GIs to leave, and, the GI Cafes and everything. If you weren't trying to con-, if you didn't condemn them, did you try to ever convince people not to go, or and if not, why was it different? What, were you trying to convince GIs not to go, and, and why? David Dellinger:: Is he ready? Camera Crew Member #2:: We're rolling. David Dellinger:: One of my experiences early in the Vietnam War was when three soldiers at Fort Hood, Geor-, Fort Hood, I'm trying to think, w-, doesn't, the state isn't important, but in the South, refused orders to go, and they were court martialed. And one of them came to see me and talked about it. And I helped organize something in which we got A.J. Muste and James Farmer of CORE and various other people, we held a press conference and they spoke their words to the press about why they didn't want to go. And then other GIs that we didn't know came to the press conference, ex-GIs, that is, people who had already been over there, and then they told about the terrible things that they had been ordered to do, things similar to My Lai, where they were just, were to shoot innocent people, just blanket fire, and so forth. So I think that as a result of that, I encouraged people not to be, themselves-, but I tried to publicize those facts as much as possible, including at the GI Coffeehouses, which Fred Gardner and other people helped organize. David Dellinger:: But I never feel that you should tell anybody else what to do. You might supply him with some facts, such as this is what you're apt, they're apt to order you to do if you are over there. Or in particular talk to one of, you know, try to bring together some people who are hesitating whether to go over or not, together with GIs who had had those experiences. But I think that the worst thing that we can do is ever guilt trip anybody else into doing what we think we would do in that situation. Because if they're not ready for it, if it doesn't come out of them and their own convictions, then it turns out against them. Actually, I just spoke at a conference last night in which I talked about that one of the things that wasn't that rife, but nonetheless when people got impatient with Vietnam, people in the anti-war movement, and also with civil rights, then they would guilt trip people saying, "You're not gonna go out and ge-, and face the police dogs and the c-, and the clubs and so forth tomorrow, then you don't give a damn about the rights of black people," or, "You don't care about the GIs who are getting killed and the Vietnamese blowing to smithereens." And I found out that a few people who were guilt tripped into doing something of that kind, it turned out to be not a positive experience, whether it was jail or clubs. And, and they retreated after that. On the other hand, if you came out of, it came out of yourself and your own feelings and whatnot, and you were not over-influenced by anybody else, then prison could be a marvelous experience. Or even [laughs] I hate to say it, but getting beaten can turn out so that you can feel more positive about it spiritually, even though you ache. [laughs] Camera Crew Member #2:: Thank you. Interviewer:: Thanks for your time. Great, OK, good, now let's switch for lights— [[cut]] [[end of interview]]