Outside Looking In Read Free Page B

with da Silva and the writer Martin Duberman. The harried Duberman asked us to go first to Union Station, where he had put his luggage in a twenty-four-hour locker (he had not expected to get arrested). The locker held the only copy of his latest book’s typescript (this was before computers), and he was terrified at the thought that the time had run out and someone had taken his luggage. Happily, he found the luggage with the book still in it.
    We went back to the Dupont Plaza Hotel for breakfast. Da Silva opened the Washington Post and found a tiny notice of our arrest. “I’ve had better reviews, I must admit.” The last time he had been in Washington, it had been in Nixon’s White House, where he performed his Ben Franklin song from the musical 1776 . We learned from the New York Times why Papp had been so urgent to get back to New York—he was being given the state’s cultural medal by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His wife had to take it in his place, and she announced that he could not be there because he was in jail.
    A couple of weeks later, much the same group assembled again at the hotel to plan the same protest, this time at the entry to the Senate. As we crammed ourselves to block the way in and out, Karl came over and sat by me: “I hope we end up in the same cell again.” I asked why. “I’ve been studying Greek, and I want to go over verb forms.” Unfortunately, we got separated at the fingerprinting stage and did not share a cell that night. While we were talking in the Capitol, Senator Goldwater moseyed up to the bunch of bodies. Someone told him, “Your old speechwriter is in that crowd.” Goldwater said, “Really?” He picked his way through the bodies and pulled Karl up on his feet, shaking his hand, to say, “I haven’t seen you in ages. Why don’t you come visit me?” Karl, by this time booted and bearded and wearing camouflage garb, said, “I’m afraid your staff would be pissed at me.” “Well, piss on them. You’re my friend.” Later, at the Institute for Policy Studies, I asked Karl if Goldwater was always so warm and gracious. “Always. He is the most loyal and truthful politician I have ever met.”
    Then he told me something from the 1964 campaign. Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act that spring, and some right-wing crazies thought that if they could stir up race conflict in the summer it would show that Goldwater was right in saying that the civil rights movement should not be caved in to. Word of this got to Goldwater and he called in his top staff—Clifton White, Denison Kitchel, Karl, and others—and told them: “You guys know me well. I want you to get word to the troublemakers that if there are race riots this summer I am pulling out of the race.” I asked Karl if he thought Goldwater would have done that. “Of course. He gave his word.” Politically, Karl could not differ more from Goldwater by this time. But personally he could not have admired him more.
    Karl died before he could carry his study of Greek very far. But another political figure was more successful. I met I. F. Stone at Kent State University, just after the National Guard had shot four students. We were there to write about the event. Stone knew that I taught ancient Greek at Johns Hopkins, and he told me that his fondest wish was to read Plato in the original. “When I retire, I am going to study Greek.” We got to know each other well at the Institute for Policy Studies, and he repeated his pledge over the years. When the improbable occurred, and he actually did retire from writing I. F. Stone’s Weekly, he plunged into the study of Greek. He took some courses at American University, and got some coaching from my old teacher at Yale, Bernard Knox, then director of the D.C. Center for Hellenic Studies. Since I was a night person then, and he had always been, he would