By William “Meatball” Douthard
The Summer of 1963 was very hot in the South, especially Gadsden, a northern Alabama city of 75,000 of which 28-30,000 are Negroes. It was there that local and state law enforcement officers waged their most vicious and brutal assault upon negroes protesting the inaccessibility of public facilities, voting rights and public […]
I first mentioned William Douthard in passing here. At the right is a flier from a civil rights rally I think my father organized, where William spoke (click on the image to enlarge).
William Douthard was a student demonstration leader in Birmingham, Alabama, which was where he and my father met. To many in the […]
Sorry it’s been so quiet over here. Had a bad cold last week and was also working on some writing for print publication (more on that soon).
Over Memorial Day weekend we visited my mother, and I spent some more time with my father’s papers. I brought a bunch of new papers back home, some […]
Two Fridays ago (4/8), my mother called to tell me she had just talked with a retired journalist, named Jeff Prugh. Apparently Jeff had come across my posts on the Roosevelt Tatum story, and he wanted to talk with me. Between my father’s name and the mentions of Delmar, NY in the Tatum series (I […]
Or, Why My Father Despised Rudolph Giuliani
The following is from an important history of Republican voter suppression tactics. Citations follow, below.
Mayoral Politics in New York, 1993
The 1993 New York City mayoral contest was a bitter rematch between incumbent Democrat David Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor, and Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Four years earlier, Dinkins had […]
My father graduated from the eighth grade of Public School 89, Elmhurst, NY (Queens), in June of 1941. Like other kids graduating PS 89, he planned to go on to high school about a half mile away, at Newtown High School. According to his 8th grade autograph book, my father’s favorite author was Jack London, his favorite book The Sea Wolf ; Stardust was his favorite song; he loved baseball and worshipped Mel Ott.
Thursday, September 2, 2004
Maybe it was 1937 when my oldest brother and I were in a local WPA theater production of Waiting For Lefty. I remember thinking that a union organizer was the noblest of all jobs even better than playing right field like Mel Ott. I also thought that Jewishsocialist was one word and that Jews who were not socialists were the exceptions even though my mother’s family was among the exceptions.
We were a decidedly secular family. Judaism was some old fashioned thing that my paternal grandmother held onto and it was sort of embarrassing. I did love seders at my Aunt Beck’s house because my Uncle Sam made Exodus come alive. To me Moses was a union organizer and socialist revolutionary and John L. Lewis all rolled into one.
Also filed in Paul Greenberg 101, alabama, civil rights movement, disarmament, document, family, frankie newton, hungry blues, jazz, labor movement, nyc politics, old left/new left, proportional representation, writings of PG
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Wednesday, March 24, 2004
. . . on June 22, 1963 at around 9:00 AM, Roosevelt Tatum appeared at A. D. and Naomi King’s house. By Tatum’s own account, “I was crying and I told Rev. King that I had something in my heart and I wanted to tell somebody. . . . I have had this thing on my conscience since the date it happened, and I wanted to tell somebody about it so I would feel better”
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