David Hartsough and Jan Hartsough

[00:00] DAVID HARTSOUGH: And we'll go.

[00:03] JAN HARTSOUGH: Okay. My name is David Hartsoe I'm 73 years old. Today is February 13, 2014. We're in the San Francisco Public Library, Western Edition branch. And my partner today is my wife, my spouse, Jan Hartsoe

[00:25] DAVID HARTSOUGH: And I'm Jan Hartsough age 72. It's also the day before Valentine's Day, 2014, San Francisco Public Library, Western Edition branch. I'm here with my hubby. So we've had quite a long life together and an exciting one. And I'm interested in sort of what you see as highlights of your life.

[01:01] JAN HARTSOUGH: Well, I had the good fortune of meeting Martin Luther King when I was 15 years old in Montgomery, Alabama, during the Montgomery bus boycott and was deeply impressed by them actually practicing nonviolence, not just as an idea in a book, but with their lives challenging the injustice and the segregation and the oppression that they were living with their churches being bombed, being fired for speaking out or even trying to vote, that kind of thing. And responding not just with courage, but even in the face of violence, of facing that non violently. And as we saw, it really made a difference. It's really what started the whole civil rights movement in the South. And so I see my life has been inspired by Martin Luther King and the people, Rosa Parks and the people of Montgomery, Alabama. So most of my life has been experimenting with the power of nonviolence to try to help bring about a more peaceful and just world.

[02:35] DAVID HARTSOUGH: So what was your first big encounter with this experiment?

[02:45] JAN HARTSOUGH: Well, I had decided to go to Howard University, which was a largely black University in Washington, D.C. to be a part of challenging segregation in this country. And obviously there was. I had actually tried to get blacks invited to be a part of or to be students at Swarthmore College, where I had started my first year. And I just thought, well, you know, I should actually be practicing what I preach. And they were open to having whites come to Howard University. So I transferred to Howard and happened to be there the spring of 1960 when the four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, black students went to a Woolworths drugstore to get something to eat. And instead of being given any food, they were arrested. So within a week or so at Howard University, we were picketing the Woolworths drugstores, probably less than a mile from Howard University. And in less than three weeks, we had done a little checking around. And in both Maryland and Virginia, all the eating facilities were segregated. Even ambassadors from African countries could not eat in the state of Maryland. Driving between New York city and Washington, D.C. so we started going to lunch counters in the state of Maryland to get something to eat. My black friends and me from Howard, invariably they would close the lunch counter, refuse to give us anything to eat or drink, and call the police. And we were arrested and spent the weekends in jail singing freedom songs and getting to know each other better, building community. And usually we'd be let out first thing on Monday morning and we'd go back to classes until the next Saturday when we went back to another drugstore. Well, in the state of Virginia, they passed a law saying that you could get six months in prison and a $500 fine for challenging the segregation laws. And so we kept going to Maryland. It was a much easier way out and it needed to be done there. Also, it happened that the American Nazi party, Lincoln Rockwell was the head of it at that time, was also living in northern Virginia and was challenging anybody that was threatening anyone who challenged segregation they would do good violence to. After our final examinations In June of 1960, still nobody had challenged the segregation laws in Virginia, so we felt somebody had to. So we did some extra nonviolent training and went across the bridge to Arlington, Virginia, and went into a people's drugstore, a so called people's drugstore.

[06:22] DAVID HARTSOUGH: And were you the only white person or was it a mixed group of whites and blacks?

[06:27] JAN HARTSOUGH: There was another white woman who I think her home was Arlington, but she'd been an exchange student at another university or college. And they closed the lunch counter as they had in Maryland. But the owner apparently didn't want the bad publicity, so he did not call the police. But the American Nazi party did come and had pictures of swastikas. I mean, had swastikas and pictures of apes behind us and said, is we or is we ain't equals? And calling us threats, all kinds of threats. People threw cigarettes, put cigarettes down our backs. People punched us in the stomach so hard we fell on the floor. And then they would kick us. People call us every name in the book. And we had committed ourselves to nonviolence. So each time something like this would happen, we would try to respond in a friendly way that not you are our enemy, but trying to love them. And it was a challenge. And we got hungry and thirsty and we actually stayed there two days. We stayed there until 10 o'clock that first day. And when the store closed and then came back the next morning, were there the second day? Well, toward the end of the second day, I was just meditating a little bit on the. On the sermon on the Mount, loving Your enemies and doing good to those who hate you. And a guy came up from behind me with a switchblade in his hand. And he looked. I was looking forward. And he came up and says, you nigger lover. And in his hand was a switchblade. And I looked at his face. It was the most terrible look of hatred in his eyes I've ever seen. And the switchblade, by that time was about half an inch from my heart. And I just looked at him. I had two seconds to think about it, but we'd had a lot of practice. And I just said. I looked at him and I said, friend, do what you believe is right, but I'll still try to love you. And it was kind of a miracle, this face contorted with hatred. His jaw began to drop, and his hand that was shaking began to fall. And he left the store.

[09:17] DAVID HARTSOUGH: Wow.

[09:18] JAN HARTSOUGH: And that was kind of what I said. This nonviolent stuff, maybe it can work. But then we did something even more challenging. There was about 500 people outside threatening us because it had been the front page of the newspaper. And we read a statement that we had written appealing to the religious and community political leaders of Arlington to use their influence to get the eating facilities open to everyone in Arlington. And then we said what was most difficult. If nothing changes in a week, we'll be back. And after all we'd gone through, it was a challenge. Can we really do that? And some friendly media people whose cars were parked right in front of the drugstore offered to take us back to Washington, D.C. and luckily, we got out of there alive and then literally shook for six days, whether we had the courage to go back and do this again. And on the sixth day, we had a phone call that the religious and political leaders had met and that they had talked with the business leaders of the people's drugstores and the other eating facilities, and that there had been agreement that the eating facilities would be open within about 10 days. So we breathed a deep breath of good air and appreciation. And from my perspective, that was maybe the most important lesson I've learned in my life. That a few students. We had 12 students with some courage and. And commitment to nonviolence could somehow touch the hearts and consciences of people in that community to do what could have been done 50 years earlier or 100 years earlier. And that rather than just kind of cursing the television set or what's going on, people can make a difference and help create history. So I'm very grateful for that experience. Not only that, I'm still alive, but that we were a part of a very powerful movement in the South. I mean, there was thousands of students like us, many that going through much more horrendous stuff than we were challenging the segregation laws at that time.

[12:21] DAVID HARTSOUGH: I know I met you after that and was impressed by your courage. But I also know that you've continued to experiment with nonviolence. And I'd be interested in what you feel is another major sort of turning point in your journey to apply nonviolence to your life.

[12:57] JAN HARTSOUGH: Well, I mean, there were many. I mean, I don't know whether there's a major turning point, and that was certainly a major turning point, but examples of some of the other things that I've been doing during the Vietnam War. In December of 1971, the United States started to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong in Vietnam. And up until that time, at least, from what we were told, they're bombing mostly the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And the soldiers from North Vietnam and the Viet Cong, as we called them, but started around Christmas time, they started bombing Hanoi and Haiphong and the surrounding communities, and including threatening to bomb the dikes, which would have meant a massive death for many, many people. Some of us in the community where we were living in West Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, had a little worship service. And we just tried to imagine what this meant to the people of Vietnam. And my beliefs are that we're really all interconnected. We're all brothers and sisters. We're one human family. And these people, including women and children, old people who lived in Hanoi and Haiphong and everywhere the bombing was happening, these were also my family. And that's what most of us in this community felt. And so rather than just say, oh, this is horrendous. We're going to go get drunk, or we don't have to think about this, or something like that, we somehow decided we have to try to put our lives, our bodies, between these bombs and the people that are going to get killed to try to stop this madness. And so we didn't know what that was going to mean, whether it's going to Vietnam and just being in Hanoi or Haiphong, whether it's going on a boat, try to be just off the coast, or what it would be. And people that in the community committed themselves that people that might be imprisoned or might even be killed, that they would also help in their families, helping bringing up kids, helping pay the rent and that kind of stuff. So that was very important. Well, we did a little research and found out that Leonardo, New Jersey, which is about an hour and a half drive from Philadelphia, was shipping bombs to Vietnam every week, lots of bombs. And so we went up there and checked out the situation. And there was a long pier and we took a couple canoes so we could canoe out along the pier. When we actually looked up on the pier here were anti personnel bombs and napalm on the crates. And some military police threatened us over a bullhorn, said, you actually have to leak. Get out of here or we'll charge you with criminal conspiracy and you can get 20 years in prison. We looked up at these crates of bombs and said to him, well, thank you for warning us, but if these bombs reach their destination, it will be much worse than 20 years in prison. And kept on paddling. Well, we were out there in front of the ship each day for six days. On the sixth day we met with some of the sailors and they told us it was leaving at 6 o'clock the next morning. So we were out there especially early. It was called the USS Nitro. And the bombs were being. And the crates of bombs were being loaded very high on the decks. I mean, they were already inside, the ship was full up. And these guys were not only worried about what's going to happen when they get dropped on the people of Vietnam, but what was going to happen to them. That it was from what they said was dangerous for them going across the ocean that way.

[18:12] DAVID HARTSOUGH: You mean overloaded?

[18:14] JAN HARTSOUGH: Way overloaded. Illegally overloaded. And so anyway, as we paddled the next morning to try to stay right in front of the ship and they were raising anchor here, all these sailors appreciating, giving us the, you know, cheering us on. And as we were paddling madly to stay in front, seven of the sailors jumped off of the ship into the ocean and began paddling toward our boat, our canoes, we had 28 canoes with people in them. And that they were picked up by the navy and put back in the ship and put in the brig. But that was on national television and New York Times and not only what we'd done, but what the sailors had done. And the sailors told us later that when their ship went through the Panama Canal, the word had gone out all over the world about these sailors on the USS Nitro resisting going to Vietnam. And so all the other navy ships, the sailors were all giving them the fist of solidarity. Well, I like to believe that our courage gave courage to these sailors to do what they really, their heart and their conscience was telling them to do. And their courage gave courage to A lot of other soldiers around the world to do what they felt deep in their hearts they needed to do. That was an important part of ending the war, that even soldiers were refusing their orders. They call it search and avoid instead of search and destroy. And then as a result of that action in Leonardo, New Jersey, we call it the people's blockade. This spread all up and down the east coast and then up and down the West Coast. And so in at least seven or eight different military bases on both coasts on an ongoing basis, people were attempting to block the armed ships. And I think when your country is in a war dropping bombs on innocent men, women and children, people have a responsibility to try to stop that. And I think this was an example of people literally saying, you can't do this. And to be condoned by my silence, we have to act. And I think in a democratic country, that's our responsibility. And our government was lying to the people about this war. And so it's our responsibility to find the truth and then to act on it.

[21:58] DAVID HARTSOUGH: You mentioned that that particular incident started with a worship service. Is religion or faith a key component of the courage that it took to do that action, or is it a key element in your own life? Your religious.

[22:21] JAN HARTSOUGH: Well, I'm a Quaker, and we attempt not only to have. It's not just something you do for one hour on Sunday, but something you try to live. And, you know, we see all people as children of God. And so if any person is hungry, if any people, any person is suffering because of war or oppression, you know, it's our responsibility to try to alleviate that suffering or to try to prevent that suffering or to try to end war, which is just. War is an outlandish and outmoded way of resolving conflict.

[23:16] DAVID HARTSOUGH: It seems to certainly be still with.

[23:18] JAN HARTSOUGH: Us, Robert McNamara, who was secretary of War, or they called it defense during the Vietnam war, he says 180 million people died in wars in the last century. He said, well, certainly there must be a better way to resolve conflict. And so, anyway, I don't know if that answers your question, but part of our responsibility, I think that we've outlawed slavery, you know, in this country. We've outlawed the fact that only men could vote, you know, through women's suffrage. We have outlawed cannibalism. You know, war is at least as stupid as any of that stuff. And if you look at it, wars haven't resolved anything, you know, for decades. I mean, things just get worse. I mean, the Afghan war, the Iraq war, we just keep creating more enemies. We're not liberating anybody. We're not resolving any conflicts. We're pouring gasoline on fires. And so anyway, part of our responsibility, I think, as Quakers, as. As people that care about human life and about future, not only of this generation, but future generations, is to try to put an end to war. And there are more effective ways to resolve conflict. So some of us have started what we call a movement to end war, a global movement to end all war. And we already have people in 52 countries that are, you know, have committed to work with us on this. So that's part of. I mean, I think Quakers believe in trying to act on our faith.

[25:30] DAVID HARTSOUGH: I know that you've had a lot of experience in meeting and interacting with people in other parts of the world. Sometimes you called it citizen diplomacy. Is that a way to prevent war, perhaps?

[25:54] JAN HARTSOUGH: Well, I think at least for as long as I've lived. You know, we're always told that there's an enemy or enemies out there. And during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, we were ready to use nuclear weapons, and we're threatening our nuclear weapons, which could have put an end to life on our planet. And they still can. Well, in my 20s, early 20s, I got to understand this quite much more thoroughly by studying it and by talking with people from Hiroshima who had experienced the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And one of the women who had been terribly burned by that bomb was still alive, came to a high school where I was going to school and said, we of Hiroshima are committed to try to help assure that this never happens to anyone else, what happened to us. And that deeply impressed me that rather than wanting revenge or to get back at whoever it was that the United States that had dropped this bomb on her city was committed to trying to help build a world where that never happened again to anyone. Well, so some of the things that I did, I studied in east and West Berlin, which at that time was a focal point for the Cold War. So I was going to school in East Berlin and in West Berlin and in the east, when I would challenge their propaganda, I was called a capitalist warmonger. And when I was in the West, I'd be called, and I challenged their propaganda, I'd be called a communist conspirator. I mean, the wall was not just a physical thing which was actually built while I was there. It was two different worldviews. And on each side, people saw the world as divided between black and white, good and evil, and they are the evil, and they are inhuman, and they are less than human. And it's worth blowing up the world to deal with that threat. And so there I was on a small basis, trying to help develop opportunities where we could get to know each other on a grassroots level, and hopefully that trickles up. Well, I heard that you could go camping in the Soviet union. So for three different summers in the early 60s, I led groups of American students to the Soviet Union camping. And we'd get invited into people's homes and. And we talked with people in the Soviet Peace Committee and the universities, etc. But again, it was what we now call citizen diplomacy, but it was before that was really happening much at all. Our governments tell us that we're enemies, but let's get to know these people. And after you get to know them, it's hard to think, well, we're going to blow them up because we don't like their government. A little bit later, there was a play called the Children of War, which was by children from the Soviet Union, the United States. They found that they could love each other, they could really appreciate each other's humanity, and ended up actually talking with their governments, with the presidents of their countries. And so that's.

[30:11] DAVID HARTSOUGH: The students in the play did.

[30:12] JAN HARTSOUGH: Yeah, yeah. And actually did the play for both Gorbachev and for. I think it was Reagan at that time in this country. And more recently, I've been taking. I've taken a couple delegations to Iran. Again, the evil of Iran. Our governments tell us that these. I mean, our government tells us that Iran is a great threat to our security and we're ready to start bombing them the way we did to Iraq. So again, we felt we want to get to know the people. So the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which is an interfaith group committed to peace and justice around the world, organized a couple delegations that I led. And again, we're just trying to get to know the people. We also met with people in the government, people in the religious leaders, students, et cetera, and then came back and told the story. We'd done that with the people I met in the Soviet Union. I wrote a couple little booklets, Getting to Know the Russian People in Backyard Russia, because unfortunately, our media doesn't get the truth about these things, often to the people. I mean, the Vietnam War would have never happened if the American people and the American Congress had known the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin. And here we are threatening to bomb Iran because their government is even thinking about having nuclear weapons. Well, we have the total right when the United States is the only country that's ever used nuclear weapons. But anyway, so we found out, among other things, in addition to the Iranian people deeply want peace, and it's very, very important for their children and their families. But Iran has not invaded another country in over 200 years. And the US back in 53, overthrew their democratically elected government.

[32:43] DAVID HARTSOUGH: And we surround them with military base.

[32:45] JAN HARTSOUGH: And we have military bases, you know, in Afghanistan and Iraq and off the coast, you know, are our aircraft carriers and battleships. But we say they're a threat to us. So, anyway, I think we have. I mean, everybody has the opportunity to say, well, let's start building the peace from the grassroots up. We also have a responsibility to talk with the people at the top. And I had the good fortune of meeting with President Kennedy back in June of 1962. He was sitting in his rocking chair next to his fireplace, like you like to do, and we had about half an hour where we encouraged him to challenge the Russians to a peace race and to stop.

[33:40] DAVID HARTSOUGH: That's a Quaker delegation right there, small Quaker delegation.

[33:44] JAN HARTSOUGH: And to stop nuclear weapons testing. And the Chinese were dying of starvation at that time. We invited him to give food that was stored in silos in Kansas to the people that were starving as a symbol of, you know, we're all humanity and we can overcome this cold war fever that is threatening us all. And essentially he said, you know, I'd like to do many of the things you say, but you have to build a movement that's going to enable me to do this. The military industrial complex is pretty darn strong in this country.

[34:24] DAVID HARTSOUGH: This was in the 60s, that was.

[34:27] JAN HARTSOUGH: 62, still pretty darn strong. It's still even stronger. But it was interesting Kennedy, among other things, said to us, and he was an avid reader, he says, you know, I've been reading. I think it's Barbara Tuchman on the Guns of August. The Guns of August. And it's worrisome how similar the situation was then 1914 to what it is now. Everyone is arming to the teeth with the hope that this will prevent war and define security. And it was what led us to war. And just a tiny little one person getting shot somewhere can lead to this conflagration. So anyway, that was a very. So I think it's important for all of us to be working at the grassroots level and then where we can to try to work with leaders like Kennedy.

[35:27] DAVID HARTSOUGH: And people are saying now that Obama is saying that we have to have a people's movement to push him, to give him wind behind his sails, hopefully to sail off in the right direction.

[35:47] JAN HARTSOUGH: I think that the challenge is very similar. I mean, I think there are tremendous pressures on the president. And the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about in 1953 have gotten 1000 times stronger, and they're buying politicians and all the rest of it. And so the only thing that can counter that is a massive grassroots movement. Doesn't it seem like that we're demanding that our members of Congress and the president listen to us, not to the big contributors to their campaigns?

[36:31] DAVID HARTSOUGH: It seems like we're also in this Internet world now, where people all over the world are more aware of what's happening in a given country or more aware of the role that America is playing, that maybe it'll be easier. Do you think it'll be easier to enlist worldwide support or to build a movement that's broader than just the peace community in this country or the religious community in this country, but really a broad international movement?

[37:08] JAN HARTSOUGH: I think the Internet gives us the opportunity to communicate instantaneously all around the world in the fact that people from 52 countries have said they wanted become active in this movement to end all war. And several of us suggested this idea just last September, and it's now early February. So, I mean, word spread, and we haven't traveled all those countries through the Internet is the way this communication has happened. And people all over the world are suffering terribly from wars. I mean, not only are the people that are getting killed, but the millions of refugees that have had to flee their homes. We have on our website World beyond War, what we call the $2 trillion question. The world is spending $2 trillion a year on wars and preparations for wars. And we ask, what do the people of the world want? And my guess is that 99.5% of the people of the world don't want would vote to have that $2 trillion spent on schools for our kids, for good medical care, for free university tuitions, for eradicating poverty around the world. And then I think we'd be much, much safer. And that would mean real security, not the security of nuclear weapons and having military bases in 160 countries, whatever it is. So I think there's hope. And I think we have found people all around the world are not only experimenting with nonviolence, but are using nonviolent movements to overthrow dictatorships and to bring about major change when governments don't listen to the people. And so people are discovering that power of nonviolence is more powerful than the power of guns and weapons and war.

[39:26] DAVID HARTSOUGH: Thank you both.

[39:31] JAN HARTSOUGH: So, David, what's next for you? Well, there's two things. One is I've just written a book called Waging Peace, Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist where I share many of my life experiences in working for peace and justice. And I hope that that will be an inspiration to people in this country and around the world that they can make a difference. And that will be available starting next September, September of 2014, published by PM Press. And the other place I'm putting significant energy right now is around helping build this movement world beyond war, a global movement to end all war. I mean, it gets tiresome fighting one war after another, which is not benefiting anybody and it's stealing all our resources.

[40:34] DAVID HARTSOUGH: Benefiting the military industrial complex.

[40:37] JAN HARTSOUGH: Well, if they look at their children and grandchildren, I'm not sure. But anyway, so those are two of the major places that I'm putting energy now. And as you can see, I haven't quite decided to retire yet.

[40:54] DAVID HARTSOUGH: And you have hope.

[40:56] JAN HARTSOUGH: Yes. Thank you for sharing that.