THE VIGILANTES KNOCK AT MY DOOR

By-----

Langston Hughes

They were having a strike in San Francisco and all along the West Coast. The longshoremen went out. Then the seamen. They wanted a living wage, control over the hiring and firing of themselves, and the recognition of their unions.

Where I live in Carmel, on the Monterey Peninsula, a pretty little village of cypresses and sea, (where Robinson Jeffers lives, too, and a grand old man named Lincoln Steffens) nobody at first was very much excited about the strike except the members of the John Reed Club. We were excited because some of us knew the physical meanings of hunger and insecurity; others of us understood what happens to labor when capital calls on the police department; and some of us had gone to the San Joaquin Valley during the cotton strike of 1933 and had seen there the cost of profits in terms of blood and terror. We had also experienced the fishermen's strike in Monterey four miles from our doors.

So when the longshoremen and the sailors went out, we wanted to help them. A great many people in California did not want to

help them, or were indifferent, or merely read the papers, but we
wanted to help them. We were a hundred and twenty-five miles away
from San Francisco, mostly artists and writers, and pretty poor.
But some of us in the John Reed Club were able to give money, and
others of us were able to beg it. So we sent cash and food and
clothing to the strikers. We sent telegrams to Mayor Rossi, to
Governor Merriam, Frances Perkins, and to the President asking them
to protect the strikers. And we got other people to send tele-
grams or write letters requesting the officials not to use their
strikers and tear gas and guns against workers seeking to make their
lives a little better.

So far as I know, there were no answers from Mayor Rossi, the
Governor, Merriam, Frances Perkins, or the President. (And very
shortly the President went on his vacation to Hawaii that year.) And the
police, having a hard time because the dockmen and sailors wanted
strong security, were presently joined by three thousand pat-
riotic young men in the uniforms of the National Guard, and by
machine guns were pointed at the strikers. And in Carmel, a
hundred and twenty-five miles away, we felt them pointing at us,
too. Nobody said they were pointing at us, but perhaps being
strong artists and writers, and therefore oversensitive, we felt
them pointing at us.

Meanwhile, the John Reed Club secured the Greenroom of the
Community Theatre for our public meetings. Our first meeting

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there was a successful strike program at which Lloyd Stroud spoke, an organizer directly from the strikers' front. We had a big crowd, interested and sympathetic. They asked questions; we took up a good collection; and the next day gathered more food and clothing for the strikers. Summer vacationists, clerks, retired actors, rich old ladies, Negro maids and working men, little merchants, artists, and college graduates without jobs, came to our meeting. There was a spirited discussion. Some were against the strikers, of course, and it was obvious that a number of Carmelites believed the papers when they called the strikers thugs, hoodlums, aliens and traitors. You could tell, too, that a few people were from aristocratic Pebble Beach where Mr. Crocker, the San Francisco banker, maintains a residence. But as long as they did, they helped to make it a good meeting. Lots of people talked about the strike, and some understood it better. At the close, we announced another strike meeting for the following week.

In the meantime, the American Legion had organized a post in Carmel, and, in conjunction with nearby Peninsula cities, (according to the papers) they began to practice getting together in a hurry. About that time, too, in San Francisco, the police ordered on gas masks--although only the police had gas to throw. Presently they threw it at the strikers and, of course, themselves wore the masks.

Our second strike meeting, where Delaney Shoemaker and Sam

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Telford spoke, was crowded. This time even more people were in-
terested; more people sympathetic. They gave us a good collection.

**But more people were antagonistic, too.** Questions and comments were sharper. In the ~~loose~~ streets of Carmel that week, smelling of cypresses and sea wind, people stood and discussed the strike, heatedly for or against. The newspapers screamed, all of them, against ~~strikers, hungry people, workers~~ who dared demand better wages, control of hiring and firing, and recognition of their unions. Such demands would cause the foundations of America to fall! ~~and a great many Carmelites believed the papers.~~

About that time, a city councilman of Carmel (who was also the Police Commissioner) began to inquire among the few Negroes of the village, mostly domestics, just which ones had been at the John Reed Club strike meetings, and why? Didn't they know it was dangerous to associate with Communists?

And a business man of Carmel (secure and not hungry himself, nor very sympathetic with hunger) is reported to have said to a poor old man in charge of a little cooperative food exchange, "I hear you are sympathizing with those strikers and going to John Reed Club rallies. Well, I ~~just~~ want to warn you that if I had my way, I'd drag everyone of ~~them~~ out in Ocean Avenue and shoot you."

Clearly, the good Americans were starting to intimidate the weakest first---the Negroes and the very poor. They were working

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up their courage.

Near July Fourth, with patriotism running high, the San Francisco Industrial Association declared that it would move trucks off the docks ~~whether or no.~~ The Mayor agreed, the Governor, too. The guns barked, the police clubs fell, the gas bombs flew. Two men were dead. There was a mass funeral. And the National Guard put snipers on top of the piers to pick off more workers.

"Shoot to kill," said Lieutenant Colonel Mittelstaedt.

The Industrial Association brought in professional strike-breakers from the East, gangsters and thugs. But strangely enough, the papers called them true Americans, and praised them for what they were hired to do. In our charming village by the sea (where Robinson Jeffers lives and a by now suspicious character named Lincoln Steffens who favored the strikers) lots of Carmelites kept on believing the papers. And they began to agree with the man who would like to shoot all the members of the John Reed Club. Surely we could not be Americans. We had not yet killed anybody.

In San Francisco the workers called a general strike. They SEEK TO OVERTURN AMERICA, yelled the California papers. And in Pebble Beach, a hundred and twenty-four miles from the strike centre (the rich district of homes and castles next to Carmel, where the banker Mr. Crocker keeps one of his residences) some

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folks thought the Revolution had come. A butler in one of the
wealthy houses reported that his mistress had stored in great
quantities of food and had warned the keeper at her gates to
let pass no strangers.

Ultra-patriotic Citizens' Committees were formed in San
Francisco and nearby towns to help protect the government and
the Constitution. Sympathizing greatly with the imported thugs
and hired strikebreakers, these committees were praised by the
newspapers and urged to commence upholding law and order. So
they immediately began to act under the protection of the police
department---to smash workers' halls, the Western Worker offices,
the Marine Workers' Union headquarters, the Polish Workers' Hall,
the Workers' School. They began to break furniture and crack heads.
They began to throw bricks through windows, to frighten radicals,
intimidate liberals, and dare anybody to take the side of the
strikers. And more than ever they began to talk about America,
Americanism, the Constitution, and the Flag.

Following in their wake, the police smashed, too, broke heads,
and made in one day, four hundred arrests of people poor enough to
be vagrants even if they were employed, or sympathetic enough to
favor the strikers.

In fear of arrest or violence, a number of sympathetic liberals
fled from San Francisco. They were middle and upper class liberals
who had helped all along, had given money or sent telegrams of pro-
test to Frances Perkins and the far-off President. Now, if they

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and charming bypaths, ominous rumors began to fly: _The patriotic citizens will not allow the John Reed Club to meet tonight._ _The hall will be raided._ _The Legion will get together!_ _The protest will be broken up._

When I got to the meeting about eight the street before the theatre was blocked with cars, the hall was crowded. A police car focussed its headlights on the door, and the Chief of Police stood at the entrance. Inside the Legion had gotten together. Rows of them in front, at the sides, around the meeting. A stenographer was taking down everything that was said: Ella Winter's speech on 1776 and the right to strike; Dan James' talk on eye-witness views of the raids; and every word the chairman uttered. Some of the citizens applauded the speeches, and some of the citizens were very silent. The hall was divided. The vigilant Legionaires sat grim and unsmiling: one's laundry man and one's druggist, real estate men and hotel keepers, and the young man who sold papers in front of the Post Office and probably believed everything the papers said---there they sat, gathered together to protect America. They were against the John Reed Club, and against the strikers.

I was the only Negro there.

CLASH THREATENED AS WAR VETERANS ATTEND REED CLUB MEETING, said the local paper the following day. And the next morning the town seethed. Vile names were flung at the John Reed Club, traitors, agitators, un-American, and so on.

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phrases proper to indicate only by ___

Had we not helped the strikers?

A Citizens' Committee, Sons Of The Legion, Company A, Special Deputies, and other auxiliaries to aid the police in combating radicals were organized. The Carmel Council ordered tear gas and began to drill citizens with riot guns on the polo grounds. Two or three hundred villagers got together to fight the John Reed Club. (We had twenty members.) Our hall was taken away from us, its owner, a leading Carmel citizen, was threatened with boycott, destruction of his property, and possible personal violence. Threatening anonymous letters were sent through the mails by but an unsigned devoted Americans. A postcard demanded why Lincoln Steffens had been christened Lincoln!) And wilder than ever, ominous rumors began to fly through Carmel as the papers announced new vigilante raids on workers' homes and headquarters in nearby cities and towns. Headlines told of groups of workers being driven South from one county line to another, and editorials in our leading papers praised the vigilantes and called for a stop and destruction to those speaking out against them.

In Carmel—(our charming village by the sea where lives the poet Robinson Jeffers and a gentleman named Lincoln Steffens who abetted the strikers)—the vigilantes began to speak. Mr. Jo Mora, a sculptor, headed Company A, a group of 107 sworn enemies of the John Reed Club. Mr. Byington Ford, a

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realtor and a <u>Pebble Beach</u> neighbor of the banker, Mr. Crocker, took charge of the Citizens' Committee. Mayor Thoburn <u>spoke</u> his <u>th</u> against freedom of speech. The city council took its stand--but hardly on the American Constitution. The papers poured out editorial attacks on the John Reeders as a group and as individuals. Monterey Peninsula began to take on the color and tone of Hitler's Germany.

The Carmel Pine Cone stooped to the vilest piece of journalism I have ever seen---a sneering attack on <u>nine-year old boy</u>, Pete Steffens, and his <u>son</u>, because his parents are Lincoln Steffens and Ella Winter. (The Heywood Broun column commenting on this <u>article</u> of writing appeared in the Eastern papers, but was <u>dropped</u> not published, as are his daily syndicated pieces, in the <u>San Francisco News</u> out here. Similarly, a column of Mr. Broun's sympathetic to the strike some weeks earlier appeared in only one edition of the <u>News</u> and was cut out of all the later editions that day.)

In Carmel there was no actual physical violence, but there were anonymous letters, open threats, "warnings", and verbal and printed attacks against the John Reed Club and persons known to have been sympathetic to the strike.

I, as a Negro member of the Club, seemed to be singled out as especially worthy of attack. Rumors of malicious intent filled the town: <u>that</u> <u>had a number of white residents</u>, <u>that I was</u> frequently seen on the beach and in cars in company of white

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women, that I called them by their first names, that I was a bad
influence on the Negroes of the town, that I aspired to social
equality with the white race, that I ought to be run out of the
village, tarred and feathered. On the basis of these rumors,
irresponsible youths and street corner cowboys were aroused.

Very early one morning an excited young artist hurried to
the house of one of the John Reed Club members with the information
that certain of us were marked for physical violence by the patriots
of the town, and that for our own safety, we should leave at once.
All that day Carmel bubbled with a kind of hysteria. Telephones
of John Reeders kept ringing and friends inquiring for their
safety. A few members left town, and writers were advised to
hide their manuscripts in case houses were stoned and raided. The
papers were bellowing for the good citizens to rid the Peninsula
of reds and all others not sympathetic to the American Constitu-
tion--meaning all who had sided with the San Francisco
strikers.

the banker,

In New York, Mr. Crocker, said to the press: "The strike is
the best thing that ever happened in San Francisco. It's costing
us money, certainly, but it's solving the labor problem for
years to come, perhaps forever. Mark my words. When this non-
sense is out of the way and the men have been driven back to
their jobs, we won't have to worry about them anymore. They'll
have learned their lesson. Not only do I believe we'll never

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Labor is licked."

In Carmel, Mr. Dyington Ford, a neighbor of Mr. Crocker's, began to make extremely patriotic speeches in which he called upon all persons in the name of his one-hundred percent American Citizens' Protective Committee to sign pledges of loyalty to the government and constitution "and make this town one-hundred percent American." He also approved the council's buying of tear gas.

Whereupon, a member of one of Carmel's newly formed vigilante organizations came to a Negro employed on the main street of the town and told him to quietly advise me to leave the village, that I was in physical danger, and that there was no way of assuring anyone safety during the hysteria. Unable to write under such conditions, I went away for a month.

I am back in Carmel now, however. (Charming little village by the sea where Robinson Jeffers lives and an utterly seditious American alien named Lincoln Steffens—for during the hysteria he stated to the press, "If communism is a crime, I'll plead guilty. I'd rather have them send me to jail than to the White House. It's more honorable.") The John Reed Club has not stopped meeting, although, being denied a hall, we can no longer hold public lectures. We are limited at the moment to a printed bulletin—whereas the vigilantes, protected by the police department, and praised by the Mayor, hold all the public meetings they choose, and continue to interest themselves greatly in the technique of throwing gas and promulgating their own kind of Americanism. For Negroes, according to the *Carmel Sun*, this means: "free, unhindered social intercourse between the races is a very difficult subject. So difficult as to have been in the past odorous, to say the least."

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A week earlier the Sun had stated in a long attack on me:

"Langston Hughes has been a very 'distinguished' guest in Carmel—not that the town is proud of it. He has been the guest of 'honor' at parties. Whites were invited—a 'select' few—to bask in his wisdom. White girls have ridden down the street with him, have walked with him smiling into his face....Russia would be a good place for Hughes."

In spite of these deliberate appeals to race hatred, it is interesting to note that on the Peninsula Citizens' Committees there are four Negro members—political opportunists hoping for a ruke-off from somebody after elections—who solemnly declare it a crime to associate with white folks, or to take the side of the strikers. In spite of the fact that our John Reed Club raised several hundred dollars for Scottsboro, and that one of the express objectives of the San Francisco strike was the opening of the longshoremen's union to Negroes without discrimination, these four colored citizens eagerly and toastfully side with the most reactionary elements in the community—which must make even the vigilantes laugh—contemptuously.

Langston Hughes

Carmel, California,
September 28, 1934.