Kerry Thornley - The Dreadlock Recollections

Today that whole area is an industrial park; the site of Brother-in-law's cottage is a concrete parking lot.

Standing at Brother-in-law's front door in the gravel parking space that comprised his front yard, I had an unobstructed view of the majestic bridge that by this time was so much associated in my mind with the discussions of Nazism that went on inside the house.

After we entered and took our seats, he provided the usual weak coffee. Lighting his briar pipe, he stood and walked up and down in thought in front of his chair.

Looking at me, gesturing with his hand for emphasis, he said, "Kerry, do you believe in vengeance?" His motion was one of almost lunging in my direction and pointing at the floor with the final word. Today he was excited.

"Yes! I have just read The Count of Monte Cristo , and it has just occurred to me recently that revenge is one of the great, ignored motivations. In economics we talk about quota systems and profit systems, but only in literature do we deal with vengeance as a motive for human action."

By this time Brother-in-law had again crossed the room and was sitting on the very edge of the sofa next to Slim. "Well, you know, Kerry, many of the men who participated in the Bay of Pigs were left stranded on the beach in Cuba with no air support by John F. Kennedy."

"Yes. I've heard about that."

"They are very angry."

"I don't blame them."

"Do you think they deserve to be avenged?"

"Yes I do."

"Are you aware that Albert Einstein wound up saying he wished he had become a plumber instead of a great scientist, because the government does not permit brilliant men to live in freedom? Because they've got access to classified information, they are treated as slaves. I don't think that's fair, do you, Kerry?"

"Certainly not. A society that persecutes genius is like a plant that tries to slay its own root stem."

"You know, there are others, besides Einstein who, to this very day, are being treated just as he was. I'm thinking, for example, of German scientists such as Werner Von Braun. Watched over everywhere they go; never given any freedom."

"What a horrible way to have to live!"

"I think something should be done about it. Don't you, Kerry?"

"Yes, of course."

"Kerry, remember the Reichstag fire? You know, that's how the Nazis took over Germany. They created an emergency and then blamed it on the Communists so they could clamp down. They accused Van der Lubbe of burning the Reichstag and said he was a Communist agent. Because most people believed them, the Fascists were able to rule Germany for all that time."

"Yeah, the Reichstag was their government record building, wasn't it?" I said so as not to seem ignorant.

"Kerry? What if Van der Lubbe had had a friend who realized he was innocent? Think of what would have happened! If that friend had come forward and exposed the truth, then Germany would have been spared all those years of suffering under the Nazis." Brother-in-law seemed inappropriately excited about such an academic speculation.

I didn't know what to say.

"Kerry, you know, you aren't going to be able to trust Time Magazine."

"A professor at the University of Southern California used to say that Life is a magazine for people who can't read, and Time is a magazine for people who can't think," I commented in agreement.

Peter Batty's book, The House of Krupp , informs us on page 253 that"…Luce too was to be a good friend of Krupp's, for in August 1957, on the occasion of Alfried's fiftieth birthday, a largely complementary cover-story entitled "The House That Krupp Built" appeared in Time magazine. Time 's proprietor was also believed to be instrumental in Alfried's getting a visa to attend a conference for statesmen and international businessmen, and which his magazine was sponsoring in San Francisco that same autumn, at which Alfried had been invited to speak on 'The Partnership Approach.' Strictly speaking Alfried should have been denied a visa, since he was after all a convicted war criminal and such people were beyond the pale so far as the United States immigration laws were concerned. To the New York Herald Tribune , the whole ploy was 'one of the slickest advertising promotional schemes yet devised.' Nor did it escape the attention of certain senators, many of whom began to get angry. Alfried in the end preferred not to go, and his visa application has never been renewed."

At moments like this it was typical of me to make what seemed to me like quite relevant contributions, such as, "You know, there was something in The National Observer that I read once and have been thinking about ever since," speaking of Fascism. "Why do we discriminate against people we think are inferior, and protect people we know are inferior?" I was feeling brave enough to risk an argument. "Like the mentally retarded."

"Hitler did not protect the mentally retarded," Brother-in-law said curtly. "He exterminated them."

"But in this country we discriminate against Negroes and yet we call homes for the mentally retarded schools for 'exceptional children.'"

"I haven't got anything against niggers, as long as they stay in their place. There is a nigger at work I like. He knows his place."

"There was a time," I said, "when the use of the word 'nigger' used to make me so mad I would shake, when I first got to New Orleans. But I've been in the South long enough now to see that there really are some people who should be called niggers."

I was thinking of precisely the blacks that Brother-in-law said he liked, guys who stood wringing their hats in both hands and mumbling "yazzuh" when you asked them for directions. I didn't say that, though. I was ready to drop the subject.

"Now a nigger who does not know his place is Martin Luther King."

Late in 1961, after Ola and I had not seen one another for months, she sought me out to invite me to attend a Martin Luther King, Jr., speech at the municipal auditorium. Mayor Victor Schiro obtained a restraining order at the last minute barring King from using the building.

So we ventured nervously into the adjoining park and stood with a flock of Negroes singing spirituals, under direction of a young white CORE activist who appeared to me both paternalistic and condescending.

"The only thing that we done wrong," they sang, "was let segregation stay so long… standing like a tree by the river, we shall not be moved… "

Rednecks in hot rods roared past us on the nearby road, gunning their engines. How vulnerable we were to a casually tossed bomb.

"There he is," someone shouted, pointing to a car pulling up at the other end of the park. "There he is! That's him!" We continued our singing as we ran together through low-hanging clouds of foggy mist and gathered near the fountain, where Martin Luther King now stood in silence, grinning courageously, as a spokesman explained that Doctor King would deliver his speech at such-and-such a Baptist church.

Neither Ola nor I, nor her mother, who was with us, wanted to go to the church, so we drove to a drug store near the Garden District for coffee.

There Ola and I got into an argument about States' Rights versus Federal Civil Rights, about whether there could be a conflict between human rights and property rights. "Property rights are human rights," I insisted, echoing Ayn Rand, "because only humans own property."

To me it seemed that Ola was implying that because of this belief, I was a racist, and I grew more and more angry.

"Racism," I insisted, "is the most irrational form of collectivism there is. I think a Negro who owns a restaurant is entitled to refuse service to anyone for any reason, no matter how irrational, just like a white property owner. Property rights are absolute."