REMEMBERING A “9/11” ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

By
George M. Houser, September 11, 2006

These remarks were prepared for the 9/11/06 RCNV program. Unfortunately, due to illness George Houser was unable to travel to California from his home in New York.

“On this occasion it is well to remember that 9/11 commemorates not only a tragic attack in New York, but the inauguration of a positive method of struggle against injustice and for peace with universal application.”

Please see the end of this article for more information about George M. Houser.

8888

It is a little over three years since I was last in Santa Cruz at the invitation of the Resource Center For Nonviolence. This was just a few days before the United States invaded Iraq and the beginning of the war of “Shock and Awe” which was to last only a few days, according to George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. Now, after years, not days, and after more than 2,600 American lives have been lost, more than 18,000 wounded, an untold number of Iraqis {blocked}ed well above the 100,000 figure, upwards of one trillion dollars in direct and indirect cost, a loss of American influence in the region and worldwide, there is still no end in sight. Supposedly this conflict is the focus for the war on terrorism that was announced after 9/11/01.

This being 9/11/2006. it is most appropriate to recall an event that happened exactly one hundred years ago today that has played an important part not only in my life, but indeed in the life of the world. We think of the code words “9/11” as an attack on the World Trade Center in New York. This tragic event has been used as an excuse for policies of our government which many of us oppose in Iraq and is threatening civil liberties in our own country. But the 9/11 of 1906 was an event which spawned movements leading to positive changes in the way injustice is confronted worldwide. We should all be reminded of this historic 9/11.

It was brought forcefully to my attention early this year through a communication from Ela Gandhi, the granddaughter of Mohandas K. Gandhi, along with an announcement of a program honoring an event so important
in the life of her grandfather. I was invited to a conference to be held in Durban, South Africa, which I was unable to accept, to commemorate the event. We should remember that the event to be commemorated occurred before the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910. South Africa was formed from the union of two British colonies (The Cape Of Good Hope and Natal), and two Afrikaner (Dutch) republics (the Transvaal and the Orange Free State). The commemorative event took place in Johannesburg, after the Boer War and when the minority of Europeans ruled over the majority of nonwhites ( the Africans, the so-called Coloreds and the people of Indian origin) in all four of the units that would soon form the Union of South Africa.

Mohandas Gandhi was a young lawyer at the time who had already lived for 13 years in South Africa and was well acquainted with the indignities suffered by the majority of the people well before official apartheid was inaugurated. In 1906 legislation was proposed in the Transvaal Legislature imposing pass laws on the Indian community. Thousands of Indians had been in South Africa working mostly in the sugarcane fields of Natal since the 1860s. The adoption of this legislation would mean that Gandhi’s people would not be lawfully permitted to move around the country, or across borders, without a permit to be granted only by the white government, thus greatly limiting their freedom.

On September the 11th, 1906, Gandhi convened a mass protest meeting at the Empire Theater in Johannesburg. Gandhi writes about this in his autobiography: “The old Empire Theater was packed from floor to ceiling,"” he wrote. “I could read in every face the expectation of something strange to be done or happen. The most important among the resolutions was the famous Fourth Resolution by which the Indians solemnly determined not to submit to the Ordinance in the event of its becoming law, and to suffer all the penalties attached to such non-submission.”

And then Gandhi went on to write: “all present standing with upraised hands, took an oath with God as witness not to submit to the Ordinance.... I can never forget the scene.” This was a life-changing experience for the 37 year old lawyer. It
was the beginning of his transformation from lawyer to “Mahatma," Great Soul. The movement in opposition to the pass laws, after they were adopted, gathered momentum. Later Gandhi wrote: “None of us knew what name to give our movement... a small prize was therefore offered in Indian Opinion (his publication) to be awarded the reader who invented the best designation of our struggle. Thus the word ‘satyagraha’ was coined. Truth (satya) implies love and forgiveness, and (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force... the Force which is born of Truth and love or nonviolence." It is this “9/11” that was the conscious beginning of a creative, nonviolent means of struggle against injustice.

One of my themes in life comes from the hymn “Lead Kindly Light." It was Gandhi’s favorite Christian hymn. A verse goes like this:

Lead kindly light amidst the encircling gloom
Lead thou me on.
The night is dark and I am far from home
Lead thou me on.
Keep thou my feet, I do not ask to see the distant scene
One step enough for me.

Life’s experiences proceed one step at a time. One step or decision leads to another, almost like venturing into the unknown. I remember so well being in Chicago in 1941 where a group of us began a study of nonviolence. We studied Gandhi’s autobiography, Krishnalal Shridharani’s War Without Violence and Richard Gregg’s The Power of Nonviolence, and asked how all of this applied to our lives. We found out through our own experience. Ours was an interracial group. At a lunch in a restaurant near the University of Chicago one day, the group was refused service because there were black members in the group. This was a challenge to these young people that led to long and thoughtful discussion. The idea of the sit-in was born. (We then called the action a “sit down,” taking a leaf from the notebook of the United Automobile Workers in their sit-down strikes in Detroit). Discussions with management would take place, but if no satisfactory resolution was reached, we would sit in a restaurant until everyone was served. And it worked, not without difficulty. Sometimes police were called and occasionally arrests occurred.

Thus the Chicago Committee Of Racial Equality was born, soon to become a national organization called the Congress Of Racial Equality, or CORE, as the idea of nonviolent direct action, an adaptation of satyagraha, spread. Chicago and then Cleveland, Washington, New York, Los Angeles and other cities became a training ground for us as we applied nonviolence to challenging injustice in swimming pools, theaters, housing, all kinds of public facilities. The lesson of 9/11, 1906 became real for us as we challenged segregation in the White City Roller Rink, at Jack Spratt’s Coffee Shop, at Stoner’s Restaurant, an interracial residence in a segregated housing area in Chicago, at the Translux Theater in Washington, at Bimini Baths in Los Angeles, and so many other places.

Another major step in my own experience was initiated when the Supreme Court of the United States in 1946 rendered its decision in the Irene Morgan case ruling that segregation in interstate travel was “an undue burden on interstate commerce." Irene Morgan, Africa-American living in Baltimore, was arrested in 1944 in Virginia on her way home for defying the Jim Crow laws of the state by refusing to give her seat to a white man at a bus driver’s demand. This was eleven years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama which had such far-reaching effect. But on the basis of the Morgan decision, CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation sponsored what was called in 1947 the Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride Sixteen participants traveled interracially for two weeks in Jim Crow states of the Upper South, on buses and trains without honoring segregated seating, testing bus and train adherence to the Supreme Court decision. Twenty-six tests were made, and twelve of the freedom riders were arrested. Three of the group (Bayard Rustin, Igal Roodenko and Joe Felmet) spent thirty days on the prison road gang in North Carolina for arrests in Chapel Hill. We won most of the other cases. The Freedom Rides of 1961, much more highly publicized, extended the testing of Jim Crow facilities into the Deep South, with manifold arrests and brutal violence which demanded the attention of the whole country and even reluctantly, the Kennedy administration. The recently published book by Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders, details both the Journey of Reconciliation and the ’61 campaign. As Arsenault reports, about 400 volunteers participated the Freedom Rides. that led the way to subsequent mass actions such as the Voting Rights legislation, the March on Washington, the campaign for voting registration in the summer of 1964 eventuating in the murder of CORE workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. This all had a major effect on the pattern of race relations in this country. This is part of the legacy of the Gandhi event of 9/11/1906.

Another step that had a major effect on my own life, was the Defiance Campaign sponsored by the African National Congress of South Africa in 1952. In the tradition of Gandhi, the ANC carried out its nonviolent defiance of the apartheid laws of South Africa with over 8500 arrests. As Executive Secretary of CORE, I wrote to Walter Sisulu, Secretary General of the ANC, asking how we could support their nonviolent campaign. This opened up a whole new area of action and concern. We organized Americans for South African Resistance to support the ANC with funds for legal defense and aid to families whose breadwinners were spending time in prison. The American Committee On Africa grew out of this effort to become part of one of the great movements of the 20th century -- the struggle against apartheid and colonialism. I am reminded of the truth of Margaret Mead’s famous words: “Never doubt that a small group of dedicated and committed people can change the world. Indeed nothing else ever has.”

What relevance has this to us in our world today? We might well ask if the world is falling apart? One even resists opening the morning newspaper or listening to the evening news. Repeatedly we hear of the unending conflict in the Congo, in Sri Lanka, the despotism in Burma, the continued fighting in a divided Somali, the genocide of Darfur. On top of all this comes the bombing of Lebanon. An Amnesty International report details how through the Israeli aerial bombardment “the country’s infrastructure suffered destruction on a catastrophic scale . . . and pounded buildings into the ground reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble and turning villages into ghost towns as their inhabitants fled the bombardments.” Hezbollah sent thousands of rockets into Israel in retaliation. As both Israel and Hezbollah claimed victory in the as yet localized war, it led Jon Stewart in his wry way on TV to comment, “it seemed to be a win-win proposition." In reality has been a “lose-lose” situation.

The Iraq war continues, developing into a civil war. And now there is the threat of a military conflict with Iran. The United States has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, spends 47% of the world’s expenditures on the military according to the International Peace Institute in Stockholm. (Britain only 5%, Russia 2%). What would be the response in Iran in its defiance of a UN resolution if the United States offered to begin dismantling its own nuclear weapons instead of just making threats. Why should the United States and the few other nuclear powers have a monopoly on nuclear power?. Is the US so pure? Bob Herbert in a recent column in the NY Times wrote that under American policy “people have been sent off to foreign lands to be tortured. People have been condemned to secret dungeons run by the CIA. People have been put away at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with no hope of being allowed to prove their innocence.”(in August 20, 2006)

Even as protests against the war in Iraq have grown, so also has the fear of the American people. The possibility of terrorism is used as a threat to keep people in line. For more than three years, even before the beginning of the Iraq war, in our community we have had a coalition that has regularly vigiled every Saturday against the war as has been done in so many other communities around the country. The honks in support have increased, as have the threats. Just a few weeks ago the local newspaper picked up some of the taunts: “Islamic supporters, Islamic beheader supporters. They’ll behead you next. Traitors! Child {blocked}ers! The dirty bombs are coming.”

Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Bill Coffin, former pastor of Riverside Church in New York, outstanding preacher, peace and civil rights activist, died very recently. I knew Bill and my wife and I called on him in Vermont where he was fighting his illness, just a couple of years ago. He sent me a copy of his recent book, CREDO. On the fly leaf he wrote, “see p. 18." There was a quote from one of his sermons: “Hope has nothing to do with optimism. Its opposite is not pessimism, but despair.... Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts.”

We can be given hope because there was a Rosa Parks who refused to give up her seat and challenged Jim Crow in Montgomery, Alabama. Congressman John Conyers of Michigan commented “Very few people can say their actions changed the face of the nation. Rosa Parks is one of those individuals.”

We can take hope because there is a Cindy Sheehan who called attention to the evil of the war in Iraq by leading the vigil at Crawford, Texas.

We can take hope because there is a 1st Lt. Ehren Watada who faces a court martial because he refused to go to Iraq in what he calls an illegal war.

I like the well-known spiritual “The Lord Gave Me a Little Light And Told Me To Let It Shine.” On this occasion it is well to remember that 9/11 commemorates not only a tragic attack in New York, but the inauguration of a positive method of struggle against injustice and for peace with universal application.

The struggle continues and we must always be looking for the next step, the next challenge. Maybe it is with ourselves. “Let there peace on earth and let it begin with me,” the hymn goes.

I think of A.J. Muste, long the head of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who, one day when picketing the White House in opposition to the Vietnam war, was asked by a journalist: “Why do you demonstrate in the rain. Do you think you will change the country this way”? “No," replied Muste, “I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t change me.”

8888

About George M. Houser

George M. Houser attended both Union Theological Seminary in New York City and Chicago Theological Seminary, from which he received his Master of Divinity Degree. He was ordained a Methodist clergyman and became a member of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1943. In 1938, Houser joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a national and international religious peace organization founded during the First World War. In 1940, he was, out of religious pacifist convictions, one of eight students at Union Theological Seminary who refused to register for the peacetime draft. He served his year and a day prison sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury, Connecticut. For thirteen years he was on the staff of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Houser was one of the founders, with James Farmer, of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and served as Executive Secretary for ten years, combining this with his work with the FOR. The main thrust of this work was the application of nonviolent techniques to challenge racial discrimination and segregation. In 1947, along with Bayard Rustin, he organized the first Freedom Ride into the South to resist segregation on buses and trains.

Houser has visited all parts of Africa and since his first trip in 1954 and has worked closely with the national movements that have brought about independence in Africa. He helped found and served as executive director of the American Committee on Africa 1966 to 1981.

George Houser has written numerous articles, pamphlets and booklets on Africa, peace and race relations. His book entitled No One Can Stop the Rain, Glimpses of Africa’s Liberation Struggle (1989) deals with thirty
years of his own experiences and activities in African affairs. His book I Will Go Singing (1989) on the memoirs of Walter Sisulu, a major figure in the struggle for a democratic South Africa, was co-authored with Prof. Herbert Shore of the University of Southern California and published in South Africa in 2000.

More recently George Houser’s life and work has been featured in several PBS documentaries: “The Good War and Those Who Refused to Fight It” about WW II military refusers, “You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow” about the 1947 “Journey of Reconciliation,” the nation’s first Freedom Ride to challenge racial segregation in public transit, and “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin.”

Houser was nonviolent activist in residence with the Resource Center for Nonviolence in 2003.

return to top