Insight into the power of symbols helps one
to understand a man and his relationship to
himself, to other men, to life, death, history
and the future.
Martin Grotjahn
Only when lions have historians will hunters
cease to be heroes.
African proverb
September 9, 1996
Dear President Jischke:
The September 29th Movement regrets your decision to meet with us only if we would do so without moderator Frances "Francie" Kendall present. We feel strongly that the presence of a skilled moderator like Kendall would facilitate a productive meeting. We also believe that a meeting between you and Movement officials is inevitable simply because the issue of Carrie Chapman Catt Hall is not going to disappear, it's only going to grow bigger and bigger until the building is renamed. We're determined, we're inventive and we're patient. We're also growing.
Your spokesman, John Anderson, made remarks to the The Des Moines Register (Sept. 4, 1996) that were unfortunate and revealing. He said you felt a meeting would be "counterproductive," and that you wanted "to find out what's on [The September 29th Movement's] minds." He went on to say having a moderator "raises the level of this meeting and possibly the tenseness of this meeting ... beyond what it could be."
Let's address these comments because they show we're diametrically opposed to you on these issues as well as the name of Catt Hall. Meeting with you alone would be counterproductive for one simple reason: you're the president of the university and you would work overtime to control the meeting and keep anything from happening except "finding out what's on our minds." Then you'd pat us on the back, thank us, and tell everyone how you'd taken a step for diversity by meeting with us. No, thank you.
Yes, we wanted a more formal meeting because we're dealing with a serious issue. (If you don't think it's serious yet, you will.) Was Anderson suggesting that these issues only merit an informal meeting? Finally, what does he mean about "rais[ing] ... the tenseness?" Good moderators attempt to lower tensions; that's why we wanted one.
Each step you make on diversity makes us question your commitment more. For instance, you have just appointed Prof. Derrick Rollins to serve as your advisor on diversity. We admire Prof. Rollins, both for his outstanding academic achievements and as a person. Not many people have a Ph.D in statistics and another Ph.D in chemical engineering.
On the other hand, Kendall, who we wanted to moderate the meeting, is also a Ph.D and has more than 20 years experience in the field of diversity, yet you didn't want to sit in the same room with her. We've been told you're a logical man. Where is the logic in having a scientist advise you on diversity at the same time you're shunning an expert on diversity?
Let's say it out loud: We think you appointed Rollins because he's an African-American, not because of any expertise he has on diversity. We don't believe you know how to make a serious commitment to diversity, and your actions - such as allowing Old Botany to be named after Catt - say that you're only interested in cosmetic changes. We're starting to believe that you don't even know when you're being offensive to people of color.
We knew you would be problematic after The September 29th Movement's Silent March to Catt Hall last March 6. Following the march Anderson made offensive and insensitive remarks during an interview with Channel 8 reporter Virginia Huie and no correction came from you, probably because you agree with him.
"The leaders of the [women's suffrage] movement had to make some difficult choices, and they did indeed employ some strategies that would be construed racist by today's standards," Anderson said. "But that was in yesterday and that was not today." He (and by extension, you) didn't even seem to know he was rendering people of color invisible with his unfeeling statement. Has he (or you) read about this condition of invisibility Ralph Ellison eloquently described in his novel, Invisible Man?
Racism was no more acceptable to people of color or progressive white people in Catt's time than it is now. Racism has never - ever - been acceptable to people of color or progressive white people. It's a covert abomination now; it was an overt abomination then. But we understand what Anderson meant. Implicit in his remark, "that was in yesterday," was the opinion that only the views and feelings of white supremacists counted then.
Do our opinions count to you today, Dr. Jischke? Do our feelings count? Do you realize that, to people of color and progressive white people, Catt Hall is a burning cross on this campus?
From the very beginning, The September 29th Movement has said that we find the ideology of white supremacy repulsive and, in every way, unacceptable. However, we must be clear: our position is not an attack on white people because white people can stand opposed to white supremacy, too, if they choose. The September 29th Movement wants students, faculty and staff of all colors, races and ethnicities to look long and hard at this issue and decide where they stand concerning the ideology of white supremeacy.
Where do you stand, Dr. Jischke? Outstanding Iowan or no, Catt took some ugly positions. Whether she was being an opportunist or a venal racist is really beside the point. Dedicating a building to this woman after unilaterally deciding that her views should be overlooked and didn't have to be discussed on campus was a major mistake.
A faculty member with the Movement made a trenchant observation. Suppose you had come to the ISU community and said something like this: "Folks, we know you won't like some things this woman stood for, you can't possibly like them because they are repulsive views. But she's an Iowan who accomplished some important things in her lifetime and we want to honor her. Is there some way we can make it right and maybe atone for the horrible things she said about African-Americans, American Indians, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, other Latino/as, immigrants, and poor people of all colors? If we make the cultural studies programs full departments, and provide the financial resources to make them quality disciplines of study, will that show that we really have a substantial commitment to diversity, even though we're naming a building after a woman who got the vote for white women on the backs of your people?"
If something like that had been said, we would have known you respected us. Reasonable people could have found a reasonable way to work the issue out. Instead, you did what was politically expedient and ignored us, because $5 million was being raised, and possibly because raising money was more important than we were.
Now, the name must come down. You haven't felt our pain and, if your actions are any indication, you don't even know we're in pain. If you do know, your actions say you don't care.
We can move toward healing - on both sides - or we can allow rage to consume us - on both sides. The September 29th Movement wants to move toward healing, and every action we've taken since our inception supports this. We work very, very hard at transforming the rage that burns within us into civil discourse. Dr. Jischke, this rage has burned for centuries under the corded whip built from imperialism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, segregation and, presently, a nationwide attempt to rescind the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement. Suppressing or transforming rage only lasts for so long.
We will say it again: Catt Hall represents a burning cross to people of color and progressive white people, inextricably linked to Catt's infamous comment, "White supremacy will be strenghtened, not weakened, by woman suffrage." This is what she was stemgthening:
One. The Holocaust of Waco in 1993 was preceded by the Horror of Waco of 1916, when 10,000 white people lynched a 17-year-old black illiterate hired cotton picker and mule driver named Jesse Washington. His ears, fingers and toes were cut off; he was unsexed; he was chained and dragged around town by a car; he was stoned by the mob until he was bloody. Next to the mayor's office he was hoisted upon a tree by means of a chain around his neck and repeatedly lowered into a fire. Later, his teeth were sold for $5 each. In 1916, 10,000 peeople killed one person; in 1993, one person killed a congregation. "Which is worse?" may be left an open question, though it is useful to remember that the point about decimation, the Roman military punishment, was not that one soldier in ten was randomly killed, but that the nine others deliberately did it. Murderers are created. Endnote1
Jesse Washington was lynched while Catt wooed the Southern vote to get the 19th Amendment passed, Dr. Jischke.
Two. Diamond Dick Rowland, an ordinary bootblack, accidentally stepped on the foot of a young white elevator girl in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May of 1921. A few days later he was indicted for rape, and the newspapers urged lynching. "But when his life was threatened by a mob of whites, every one of the 15,000 Negroes of Tulsa, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, was willing to die to protect Dick Rowland," reported Walter White, the NAACP investigator writing in The Nation. In response, the police, National Guard and Ku Klux Klan together besieged Tulsa's Little Africa. Machine guns, armed men in automobiles, and dynamite dropped from planes destroyed 1,000 homes, killed at least 200 and led to the internment of 6,000 black people in "concentration camps." White concluded, "Perhaps America was served sleeping pills." Endnote2
This law and order campaign occurred the year after the 19th Amendment was passed, and seems to indicate that Catt got her wish of seeing woman suffrage strengthen the noxious codes of white supremacy. This is the behavior your spokesman suggested was racist only by today's standards.
If you choose to keep her name on the building, we will continue our campaign to tell the world - on every news program and on the front page of every newspaper - that a cross burns on this campus, just south of Osborne Road and west of Bessey Hall.
For The September 29th Movement,
Milton McGriff
Que Vive?: The Farce of the Death Penalty, by Peter Linebaugh. In Defense of Mumia, S.E. Anderson and Tony Medina, eds. New York: Writers and Readers Publishing, Inc., 1996. p. 166.
Ibid.