Coach Glaze Writes a Book!

I will always think of Tom Glaze as "Coach Glaze" and assume the highlight of his life was coaching summer baseball in Fayetteville.  He came from Missouri to the University of Arkansas to play baseball (a picture of him as a catcher on the team is in the 1960 yearbook), and while a student, volunteered his time to coach little league.  He got his undergraduate degree in 1960 and law degree in 1964, then accomplished a few things such as successfully battling for election law reform and getting elected to the Arkansas Supreme Court (1987 - 2008).

I have always assumed that much of his success came from what he learned teaching towheaded kids like me how to field a grounder.

I look forward to reading his new book from the University of Arkansas Press. He picked an excellent co-author, Ernie Dumas, who knows more about the history of Arkansas politics during the past 50 years than anyone around. The book is illustrated with political cartoons by the Great George Fisher.

Coach Glaze was on the front line of investigating election fraud beginning in 1965, when he was headed the "Election Research Council," created by Winthrop Rockefeller.  His trips to Conway (home of Marlin Hawkins), Perry, Phillips, Crittenden, and Searcy Counties were not always pleasant:  the entrenched regimes did not welcome scrutiny of their election practices.

Tom was instrumental in the late '60s, as an assistant Attorney General, in writing a revision of the state's election law, which was adopted by the state legislature.  He continued his work with election reform as head of the Election Law Institute from 1970 - 78.  After serving as a Arkansas Court of Appeals judge from 1981 to 1986, he was elected to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1986.  He retired in 2008.

A summary of the book is found that this website link:
http://www.uapress.com/titles/sp11/glaze.html

The Good Old Days? Pioneer Tales of Arkansas' German Immigrants

[Note:  the following is a translation of the first Pioneer Tale published in the German-language Arkansas Echo newspaper.  In April 1892, the newspaper's editor had asked readers to send him their stories about their lives as settlers in the state. In all, the paper published seventeen stories.]

Pioneer Tales 1:  The Good Old Days?

Arkansas Echo

November 3, 1893

All kinds of things, funny and sad, happened to the first settlers and the Echo will relate some of them to our readers. At the same time, everyone is challenged to send in his own contribution to these stories.

When our first German settlers arrived, there was as little clear land in the state as you could have. Usually most of them followed tradition and nature and cleared their farms themselves.  Many of the old Americans did not take kindly to this disturbance of their long accustomed solitary life.

Often we hear people talk of the good old days. The thought comes to me that these people are not, perhaps, entirely wrong. One thing is sure:  People then did not need to worry and be troubled as today. And why not? At that time, the necessities of life were not as great as now; therefore, a person did not have a huge charge-account bill to pay in the autumn. He didn't need much cash. When the Americans prayed, "Give us today our daily bread," he meant it literally. When he had his daily cornbread and slice of bacon, he was satisfied, and if he now and then also had biscuits or pie or roasted chicken, then he was sitting fat, and could take things easy for a while.

With five or six acres or corn, he had enough bread to also feed his horse. The pigs did not need much corn, they always had enough acorns and nuts from the woods and the cattle had knee-high grass for the whole year.  And how was it with cotton? Well, people did not bother much about it.  Three, at most four, acres were planted.

This was enough to pay off the store since then an acre yielded as much as two or three do now, and a bale brought as much by today's prices as three. A person did not, as now, need to scratch around a cotton field until Christmas and catch a cold and fever.

And also, a person made himself comfortable in the picking of cotton. An American once told me how his parents had gathered cotton. They let the cotton bolls get ripe, and when they all had bloomed, all of the cotton plants were cut down. The parents then went into the cotton field on a beautiful day with the whole family. The wife would find a beautiful place under a shade tree and the husband would drag all of the cotton plants there. They were plucked by the wife and kids. Exceedingly comfortable, rlght?  Of course then all the cotton bolls had to be separated by hand, what in any case must have been very boring work, since there were not cotton gins on every corner as there are now.

If a person wanted then to build a house or something else, there was not as much fuss as today. All the material was fetched from the woods -- doors and windows were extraneous -- and the cost for the project was at most only for the nails for the shingles of the roof. And this cost would often be saved by laying a few cross-bars or stones on top to serve the same purpose.

The other necessities that people had, like clothes, were also not very expensive. Everyone had a few sheep, therefore wool. The sheep were sheared, the wool spun, then colored (but not with color out of the store, rather with bark from trees), then they would weave the wool into pants, shirts, and other clothes. By this means, the clothes, in addition to being inexpensive, had the advantage of lasting significantly longer because they were stronger than those which we now pay good money for.

In any case, a person had to buy a hat, a pair of shoes  and perhaps a cotton suit. The hat was such that it was usually used a couple of years and then passed on from father to son unit it finally became tattered. Similarly, the shoes would be made with nails so that they must last at least a year. Yes, there were even a few who did not permit themselves even these luxuries. I myself have known such an artist who made all these things himself.  If he needed a pair of shoes, he went into the woods and took the bark from a hickory tree and wrapped it around his feet and ankles, and the shoes, or more likely, sandals, were finished.  He had made a jacket from a piece of leather such as is used to cover the cars of a train. A hole for the head and a couple of holes for the arms and the jacket or coat was finished.

        

Above all, this man was an extraordinary eccentric, truly an original. He usually had an entire menagerie in his house. If in winter or during bad weather, a cow had a calf or a sow had a litter, he would carry them into his house, thereby saving the poor animals from staying out in the cold and dampness.

Such was then, in general, life in the good old days. They may have had their own attractions for the Americans, but also for Germans? I think not and I believe that most of us would happily decline such a scrubby life. All of us who began here in the woods didn't have such a bed or roses in the beginning, in fact our whole effort and endeavor was aimed at extracting ourselves from that first situation.  And after tireless work, most of us have succeeded in having comfortable, if not rich, existence.

We thank God that the prized "good old days" lay behind us, and we really do not yearn to return to them. There is only one aspect that could be taken and imitated with advantage, namely the way we handle the cotton fields. If everyone would plant not more than 5-6 acres, then soon the talk of overproduction would end and the prices would soon be at a level that the farmer would be satisfied with.

That will remain a harmless wish for a long time, increasing from year to year, and where it will all end, only God knows. I won't get any grey hairs over it; they are appearing anyway, and I will always believe: Our God has seen to it that trees don't grow in the sky and everything has a beginning and also an end.

(Signed) W. S .

Introduction to the Pioneer Tales of Arkansas' German Immigrants

By the 1890s, many German immigrants in Arkansas had prospered and were understandably proud of their status as solid, successful citizens of the state. The largest wave of Germans had departed their homeland in the 1870's and early 1880's. Those who made Arkansas their final destination had found the cheap land they wanted, but also hardships as they coped with the vagaries of weather, dealt with a different language and culture, and, in some cases, faced the enmity of their neighbors.

The Germans persevered, establishing successful colonies along the Arkansas River from Fort Smith to Little Rock, and in scattered outposts such as Pocahontas and Stuttgart.  As Germans became fully integrated into the affairs of their adopted country, they fought a long battle to keep alive their native language and culture. 

One way the Germans maintained their separate identity and nourished their culture and values was through German language newspapers.  In 1892, two German-language newspapers were being published in Little Rock for distribution throughout the state.  One was the Arkansas Staatszeitung, the other the Arkansas Echo. These newspapers reflected some of the divisions in German society that had been brought to America. The Staatszeitung (published from 1877 to about 1918) was oriented toward German speakers who were Lutherans; the Echo (published from December 1891 until 1932) was aimed at Catholics.  In parts of Germany and in Austria, the two churches had long battled each other for primacy. For example in 1870s Prussia, Otto von Bismarck initiated a Kulturkampf to reduce the rights of the Catholic Church and Catholics.  In preceding centuries, the Hapsburgs had enacted anti-Protestant policies to insure the dominance of the Catholic Church in its empire. Those divisions, in much reduced form, came with some Germans who settled in Arkansas. 

Only a few issues of the Staatszeitung have survived, but, fortunately, a complete set of the Arkansas Echo still exists. This newspaper provides a valuable chronicle of German life in Arkansas in the 1890's and beyond. 

The Echo also published many articles that looked back on the history of German settlements in the state.  In the April 21, 1892 edition of the paper, the editor asked readers to send in their own stories about settling in Arkansas to tell "how things often were so difficult for the first settlers and what effort it has cost to make progress..." 

It took some time before the stories were printed, but at the end of 1893, a series of tales about German immigrant experience in Arkansas began to appear in the paper. They were called "Pionier Geschichten," which can be translated as "Pioneer History" or "Pioneer Tales." The latter is a more accurate description of the stories that were told.  In all, sixteen installments in this series were published. These stories -- part history, mostly folklore -- introduce us to some hardy pioneers who settled the state.

In the comfort of their hard-won prosperity, the Germans writing these tales could chuckle at their naiveté in those early days, brag about the hardships they had survived, and evoke the characters they had encountered as they settled into the state. Their stories contribute to the mosaic of the state's history.

  

I first encountered the Pioneer Tales nearly forty years ago.  At the time, I had my first job, in Arkansas state government, and I spent some of my spare time doing research in the archives of the Arkansas History  Commission. Because I was doing research on German immigration into Arkansas, the staff there -- Russell Baker in particularly -- generously provided me with photocopies of all sixteen of the Pioneer Tales, plus several other Echo articles on the history of Germans in different parts of the state. I translated the Pioneer Tales in the years that followed, but never published them. As far as I know, the translated stories making up the Pioneer Tales have not been previously published.  

I will be posting several of the Pioneer Tales in this blog during the next two or three weeks, and afterwards I will post them together as a document available through the Scribd website.

As background for the Pioneer Tales, the Arkansas Encyclopedia has a good entry on German immigration into Arkansas.  See

 http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2731

That entry also has a listing of interesting books and articles on this topic.  

Life and Politics of Fayetteville's J.D. Eagle

Northwest Ark.Times, July 15, 1975

As soon as I was old enough to roam around by myself, I was a weekend denizen of the Fayetteville, Arkansas downtown square. I watched most Saturday double features at the Palace Theater, bought fountain cokes at the nearby F.W. Woolworth store, checked the bone structure of my feet in the x-ray machine at Lanier’s shoes, smelled the new tires at Oklahoma Tire and Supply, shopped for gifts at Penny’s, and listened to the latest 45’s at Guisingers Music.

Like any person who spent time on the Fayetteville square in the 50s and early 60s, I often ran into Mr. J. D. Eagle, who had his real estate office in the Craven Building. As I remember him, he was a grumpy, intense, white-haired man always neatly dressed in a suit from another era. He usually seemed distracted and in a hurry. During those years, he was well-known as a long-time realtor, active in civic affairs, who had a reputation for being a bit of an eccentric.

My dad told a story about J.D. Eagle, which, true or not, I found hilarious. One day my dad and a friend were standing and talking on a Fayetteville square sidewalk when J.D. Eagle rushed up to them in an agitated state. He angrily pointed to a car parked in front of them that apparently had been recently hit or scraped by another car, and he asked with an urgent voice, “Did either of you sons of bitches see the gentleman who hit my car?”

J.D. Eagle came to mind a few months ago when I bought at Dickson Street Books a reprint of an advertisement that he had written and paid to have published on June 4, 1954, in the Northwest Arkansas Times.  The advertisement was in the form of a long letter addressed "To the Reader -- whether observant or casual," and was entitled Re Segregation:  A Plea for States Rights and a Return to Local Self Government.  I have posted a copy of the reprint of this letter at the following website:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/55301224/J-D-Eagle-Fayetteville-Arkansas-Businessman-States-Rights-Advocate-and-Segregationist

The context of Eagle’s advertisement is crucial for understanding his motivation for publishing it.  On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka decision, which ruled that the segregation of schools was unconstitutional.  Five days later, on May 22, 1954, the Fayetteville Board of Education announced plans to integrate Fayetteville High School (it was more than ten years later before grade schools were integrated). The story of the peaceful school integration is told well by Andrew Brill in an article entitled “Brown in Fayetteville: Peaceful Southern School Desegregation in 1954,” published in the Arkansas Historical Quarterly (Winter 2006) and in a book Civil Obedience: An Oral History of School Desegregation in Fayetteville, Arkansas, edited by J. L. Adams and T. A. Black (University of Arkansas Press, 1994).

As an ardent states’ righter and segregationist, Eagle was adamantly opposed to both the Brown decision and Fayetteville’s action to quickly integrate its high school. It is clear that he published his letter to make his argument against forced integration.

Apparently, Eagle was one of few Fayettevillians who opposed the integration plans. According to Brill, the integration of Fayetteville High School did not encounter strong opposition from people living in the city, though others living in Southern Arkansas and elsewhere wrote to express their opposition. For example, a publication called Arkansas Faith, issued by Jim Johnson and the White Citizens Council of Arkansas” wrote:

As Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ for financial reasons, the Fayetteville, Arkansas, School District betrayed the South, and gave the same excuse as their reason for the integration of their school system. As a result of their integration this fall several negro [sic] students are members of the Fayetteville High School Football squad.  Rather than betray the South, the Fort Smith school and the Russellville School have cancelled football games with Fayetteville. (November 1955, p. 17)

Briefly summarized, Eagle's letter, written in a ornate nineteenth century style, is a plea against government interference in racial matters. He wrote, “The Government may make no law that contravenes the economic, social, or religious beliefs of the individual, whose conscious and his God must be the sole arbiters in such matters.” This assertion buttressed his argument that segregation should not be ended by the national government because, in many states, it is based on social beliefs of the majority of people in a state. His calmest argument was that segregation is a choice provided by the U.S. constitution and supported by local ways. He maintained that problems related to segregation would gradually be solved over time, just as -- he asserts -- slavery would have faded away if left alone.

His article veered into the demagogic when he wrote that opposition to segregation is used by the “agitator” and “do-gooder” to “sew seeds of discord and potential disruption.” He also suggested that efforts to end segregation were communistic:

Make no mistake, neither White, nor Negro, who thinks, is being misled by the Communist “line,” that in order to to defeat Communism you must ape its methods by wiping out all distinctions, whatsoever. Thus pursuing the same tactics which have proved so effect elsewhere in destroying Democracy -- “Divide and kill.”

The article ended with a plea for whites and blacks to unite -- while maintaining segregation -- to stand against the “alien elements, now crowding many of our large cities, the slums of which are bursting at the seams with the representatives of a myriad breeds, many with ideologies inimical to our form of government.”

When Eagle wrote this article he was about seventy years old and had been living in Fayetteville for around thirty years. He was born John D Eagle (the D is not an abbreviation) on April 5, 1885 in Bellefont, Arkansas (in Boone County, just down Highway 62 from Harrison). He was the son of J.B. and Mattie Walters Eagle. His uncle, James Phillip Eagle, had been an officer in the Confederate army and, after the Civil War, a farmer and Baptist minister; he served as Arkansas’ governor from 1889 to 1893.

In the first decade of the 20th century, J.D. Eagle attended the University of Arkansas, then returned to Bellefont, where he became a Realtor. The 1910 census showed that he was living in Bellefont with his parents, and a younger brother (Hugh D.) and older sister (Virginia C). Ten years later, the 1920 census listed him as still living with his parents in Bellefont, working in real estate. At some point when he was living in Bellefont, Eagle married a woman named Marie; they were divorced on December 2, 1925.

In 1925, J.D. Eagle moved to Fayetteville, where he started his own real estate firm. The 1930 census shows him living in Fayetteville, married to Mildred R. (she was 26 at the time; he was 44). They were divorced sometime in the 1930s, and Eagle married Ruth Myers. According to his WWII registration (undated, but likely completed in 1940), he and Ruth lived at 24 Duncan Street in Fayetteville and had telephone number 616.  They had a son, John Phillip, in February 1941.

Eagle had a long career in real estate; his advertisements starting appearing in the local newspapers soon after he arrived in Fayetteville and they continued nearly until his death in 1975. In 1974, he received a 50-year service citation from the Fayetteville Board of Realtors.

Northwest Arkansas Times, Oct. 22, 1948

A man with strong views, Eagle was also attracted to politics. In the 1940s, Eagle became actively involved in the Democratic Party and was elected in 1942 as Committeeman for the 1st Ward, a position he held for several year. In 1948, he bolted the Democratic Party to head the Washington County States’ Rights Democrat Party that had nominated Strom Thurman and Fielding Wright for President and Vice-President. This party was strongly pro-segregation and anti-civil rights.

Eagle’s name appears as “Temporary Chairman” on two large display advertisements published by the “Washington County States’ Rights Democrats” in the Northwest Arkansas Times.  The first ad, dated October 22, 1948,  was headed in large letters, “THIS is the last FIGHT for STATES’ RIGHTS and your way of life as you know and like it.”  It provided a form to complete and return with a contribution to the presidential campaign.

The second ad, dated November 1, 1948, proclaimed, “Thurman-Wright are the ONLY hope of Southern Men and Women,” and stated the party’s opposition to legislation that would end the poll tax, prohibit lynching, promote the intermingling of the races, and end racial discrimination in hiring.

Northwest Arkansas Times, Nov. 1, 1948

The Thurman-Wright ticket got about thirteen percent of the votes cast by Fayetteville residents, coming in third behind Truman, who received about 46% of the vote and Dewey, who got nearly 40%. Statewide, Thurman-Wright garnered 16.5% of the votes for presidential candidates, and Truman received Arkansas’ electoral votes after getting 61.7% of the popular vote.

Although Eagle continued to be associated with the States’ Rights Party for a couple of years after the 1948 election, I can find no newspaper or magazine articles that indicate that he again was publicly active in electoral politics.

During his fifty years in Fayetteville, Eagle was engaged in many civic organizations in the city; for example, he was a Rotarian for 48 years.  Also, he was a long-time member of the local chamber of commerce.  His wife, Ruth, was energetically involved in different music, arts, and social groups in Fayetteville over a long span of time. For over three decades, she played the viola and violin at many of the city’s musical events. Both J.D. and Ruth Eagle were active members of the First Baptist Church.

J. D. Eagle died on July 14, 1975.  He was 90 years old.

Review of Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst

Spies of the Balkans

By Alan Furst

Random House, 2010

Costa Zannis is a super competent fixer for the head of the Salonika, Greece police department. He quietly and efficiently gets things done for his boss. He is also a man of extraordinary integrity and courage and action.  

He will need all of his good traits because he will soon be tested.  Salonika, a coastal town on the Aegean Sea, is a short train ride from Bulgaria, Serbia, and Italian-controlled Albania. It is 1940. War-driven chaos is about to break loose in the Balkans and Greece. This town of intrigue is about to be drawn into the furious violence of WWII.

Mussolini has ineffectually attacked Greece in his search of glory; with his failure, the Germans will come next. Neighboring Bulgaria will yield to German demands to become allies, and the Wehrmacht will quickly sweep through Bulgaria and easily fight its way through weak Yugoslavia to reach Greece. Most certainly, the war is coming to Salonika.  

Zannis is a Greek patriot who will help resist the invaders. Before they come, he agrees to help a German woman in Berlin, the Jewish wife of a high ranking army officer, arrange for the transportation of several Jews from Berlin to Salonika, where they will be able to continue to safety in Turkey and other locations. He also assists British intelligence by helping an important scientist escape from Nazi-controlled Paris. The Germans are looking for him.

In this satisfying novel, Furst again creates a rich historical backdrop for events that test his characters, and he captures the atmosphere of people caught up in desperate times beyond their control. The strong plot is amplified by evocative descriptions of a time and place that stir the imagination. This book is not his best, but is good enough to make you want to read it from beginning to end as fast as you can. It seems that Furst, like Costa Zannis, never disappoints.

Fred Starr: Ozark Folklorist, Writer, and Teacher

Probably most students who attended Fayetteville, Arkansas public schools in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s remember Fred Starr as “Mr. Starr,” the substitute teacher.  Mr. Starr and Mrs. Shepard were the two most frequent substitutes during my years at Hillcrest Junior High School, and others knew them as substitute teachers at Woodland Junior High and Fayetteville High School.  They were quite a contrast:  Mr. Starr was quiet and dignified, a bit aloof and very sober.  Mrs. Shepherd, as sweet as ice tea in August, overwhelmed you with the deepest Southern accent imaginable.  

When encountering Mr. Starr in the classroom,  I knew that he was a minor local celebrity who wrote a weekly column in the Northwest Arkansas Times (NWAT), but I did not fully realize or appreciate the extent of his accomplishments.  By the late 1950s, he had already had been writing a newspaper column for thirty-or-so years, had authored several books, had served two terms in the state legislature, had been principal of a Farmington school and superintendent of the Elkins school district, and was a well known and respected amateur folklorist.

NW Ark Times, 5-21-38

Saving the details of his life for a longer biographical article, the following is a brief sketch of his life.

John Fred Starr was born on September 11, 1896, in Waco, Georgia and spent his early years in nearby Flint Corner, a small settlement in Carroll County, located in Northeast Georgia near Alabama.  His father was William David Starr (1861-1950) and his mother was Alice Irene Murphy Starr (1863-1937).  His family moved around quite a bit as he observed in a column published in the NWAT on July 30, 1940:

When I was but a child my father contracted itching feet and there has always been much moving in the family. Why, I can remember we used to move so often when the chickens saw us coming to catch them they just walked up and crossed their legs.

The family moved to Oklahoma three times and returned to Georgia twice.  The final move was in 1911, and the Starr family stayed there until 1915, when it moved to Columbia Country, Arkansas, near Magnolia

In 1918, Fred Starr -- he dropped "John" from his name early on -- married Fannie Markham (who was about 16 years old at the time). They lived for awhile in Wyoming. Their daughter, Martha Loyce Starr, was born in February 1920. The couple were divorced in July 1928.  (In 1938, Martha married Fayetteville native, Charles Morrow Wilson, a nationally known author.)

Starr moved to Northwest Arkansas sometime in June, 1935 and made a living as a writer and an educator.  He married Florence Lillian Clark, and they made their home in Greenland until the early 1940s. They had three children, Jon Larry, Joe Fred, and girl who died in infancy (he wrote a moving "Letter to Heaven" soon after her death; it was published in his book Gifts from the Hills (pp. 22-25).

Fred Starr must have spent much of his time roaming the Ozarks collecting stories and wisdom from folks living in the mountains. The focus of his writing was on their life, speech, music, beliefs, customs, superstitions, and ways. The information in his columns was often cited by the famed Ozark folklorist Vance Randolph and others.

I am not sure when he started writing a newspaper column, but a search shows his columns were published in the NWAT in 1937 (I don't have access to earlier issues of the paper). According to Randolph, Starr's early columns appeared in the Fayetteville Democrat, which existed until the late 1920s His column was first called "Plain Tales of the Hills," then "Plain Tales of the Ozarks." In 1940, the name was changed to "Hillside Adventures." His columns were published not only in the NWAT, but also in the Tulsa World and other papers in Arkansas and Missouri. He continued writing a column, on and off, for the NWAT until his death in 1973.

I do not have information on Starr's educational background, but his work as an educator began in the 1940s.  Starr taught at Farmington's new school in the early '40s, and was principal of that school from 1944 to 1947. In the middle 1940s, he taught commercial law, English, business math, and accounting at the Fayetteville Business College. In 1948, he was appointed to be superintendent of the Elkin’s school district, a post he held for several years.

In 1954, Starr was elected to represent Northwest Arkansas in the state House of Representatives. He served two terms in that office.

From the later 1950s until his death in 1973, Starr wrote several books, including a couple of novels. Most were about, or set in, the Ozarks. In addition, he continued to write his column and other articles for periodicals, His published books, including shorter "booklets," were:

From an Ozark Hillside (compilation of columns), 1938

Plain Tales from the Ozarks (compilation of columns), 1940
Pebbles from the Ozarks, (complication of columns), 1942
Of These Hills and Us, 1958, 1960, 1971
Gifts from the Hills, 1960
Climb the Highest Mountain, 1964
To Keep at Promise, 1969
Of What Was, Nothing is Left, 1972
High Hills, Deep Hollows and Tale Tales of the Ozarks, 1968 (24 pp)

 As I mentioned at the beginning, Fred Starr was often a substitute teacher in the Fayetteville school system, and perhaps others, in the late 1950s and in the 1960s.  These years were also his most productive as a writer.

Starr died on November 24, 1973, at the age of 77. His obituary is below.

 A few days after his death, the NWAT published an editorial tribute to him that stated, in part, the following:

Fred Starr was a remarkable gentleman.  We shall miss his weekly column, Hillside Adventures, which graced this page so well, so long....

Fred Starr's roots were deep in the tradition of these Ozarks he loved and wrote about so delightfully.  True to the tradition of the hill country, he had a heap of sayings, and a heap more common sense.  These stood him in good stead as an accomplished teacher, author, and lecturer...

Although proficient at a great many callings, Fred Starr's real vocation was the Ozarks.  He liked nothing better than to spread the word about the richness and beauty of the simple life in these Ozark hills...

...[T]hese hills of ours are grander, more satisfying for those who know them, thanks to Fred Starr's having taken the time to help us understand them.  In that respect, he was a teacher of uncommon perception, a conservationist ahead of his time, and a folk artist of all too rare a quality.

Prague Spring, May 1, 1968

Dubcek's Picture at '68 May Day Parade

Some journalists and commentators have been referring to the citizen uprisings in the Middle East as the "Arab Spring," adapting the term "Prague Spring," which referred to the liberalization of Czechoslovakia in the first half of 1968.  While the "Prague Spring" and the "Arab Spring" differ in important ways, they do have one important element in common:  one sought and the other seeks to peaceably inject elements of democracy into deeply authoritarian systems.

Unlike the present Arab citizen uprisings against long-time rulers, the Prague Spring was initiated by newly selected leaders of Czechoslovakia.  The efforts were widely supported by citizens, but raised the concern of the leaders of the Soviet Empire into which Czechoslovakia had been thrust after World War II.

The Prague Spring was initiated by Alexander Dubcek, who became First Secretary of the Czechoslovakian Communist Party in early January, 1968.  Dubcek's actions were supported by Ludvig Svobota after he became President of Czechoslovakia in late March 1968.  The proposed economic and social reforms came after a long period of stagnation, and they followed calls for changes by several brave intellectuals who risked jail by speaking out.

Prague, May 1, 1968 

Dubcek's action program called for more freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of movement.  He suggested that multi-party government would be possible in the near future.  He proposed  re-orienting the economy to give consumer goods more priority.  Dubcek called his reforms, "Socialism with a human face." He and his government began to implement this reform plan in April 1968.

When the Prague Spring was taking form, I was a student in Vienna, which is about a four-hour train ride from Prague.  The changes in Czechoslovakia were exciting for Austrians, but also created anxiety:  they remembered what had happened in Hungary in 1956 when the  Hungarians had rebelled against the Communist system.

In late April, my university, the Institute of European Studies, arranged for interested students to travel to Prague to see the city and to observe the traditional May Day Parade, a big celebration in communist bloc countries. I eagerly signed up for the trip, and thus was there on May 1, 1968 for the happy celebration of the early days of the Prague Spring. While there, I took the pictures shown in the post.

Lining up in Prague for the Parade, May 1, 1968

I am no expert on what usually happened at May Day parades in communist countries, but from what I was told by people in Prague, this parade generated much greater excitement among the participants than the usual May Day parades.  While it had a plethora of red flags, they did not have a hammer and sickle.  Many marchers had signs with the word "Demokracie" on it.  Some marchers carried signs with Dubcek's picture on it; very few or none (I didn't see any) carried signs with pictures of Brezhnev or Lenin.

Waiting to March in May Day Parade, Prague, 1968

This 1968 May Day was impressive for the numbers of people with flags and signs who paraded through the city of Prague.  Several of the marchers carried young children on the shoulders. The atmosphere seemed jolly. This apparently was a time of great hope for the marchers.  They had a government that offered freedoms that had been missing since this country had been sold out to the Nazis in 1938.  The new government held out the possibility that Czechoslovakia would be able to rejoin Europe and regain the level of prosperity that it had had in the 1920s.

Child with Czech Flag, 1968, Prague May Day Parade

Of course, all of the hopes were smashed on August 20, 1968 when 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 2,000 tanks rolled into the country. The invasion -- which was not resisted by the Czechoslovakian military -- removed Dubcek from power and reversed the democratic reforms.

(Most of the tanks entering Czechoslovakia on August 20th and 21th came through Uzhgorod, a Ukrainian border town.  I later came to know that city well because I managed a project that linked Uzhgorod State University and the University of Georgia in a training program from 1995 to 1999.  I visited the city often during this time, and some residents told me their memories of the great noise and confusion created by the massive build-up of tanks for the 1968 invasion.)

Reading Newly Free Press in Prague

The Prague Spring experience makes me a bit pessimist that the Arab Spring will, in the short run, achieve the desired democratic changes and liberalization of society.  However, we can hope that the citizen uprisings will, as with the Prague Spring, contribute in the longer term to better lives for those who desire more freedoms and fuller integration with the rest of the world.


Update, May 1, 2013:

I have found a couple of additional pictures of the May 1, 1968 May Day Parade in Prague. One of the pictures contradicts a statement above that the Lenin's picture was not carried in the parade. As the picture below shows, at least one picture of Lenin was in the parade.

The second picture shows a boy sitting on the shoulders of his dad, holding dearly onto his hair.

Prague May Day Parade, 1968 with Picture of Lenin and other Communist Heroes

Young Boy at May 1, 1968 Parage in Prague

Early German and Dutch Immigrants in Humorous Postcards

Old postcards provide a glimpse of history, often reflecting the life, culture, and values of people at different times and places. A good example of how postcards can be used to provide insights into interesting aspects of history can be found in an on-line University of Cincinnati (UC) exhibit. It was created by the head of the UC archives and rare books library, Kevin Grace.  

This exhibit shows how German immigrants in the U.S. were depicted by postcards during the early years of the 20th century. The exhibit is entitled "Gemutlikeit, Schnitzelbank, and Kitsch:  German American Caricature in Vintage Postcards."  It can be viewed and downloaded as a .pdf file at this website location:
https://www.libraries.uc.edu/content/dam/libraries/arb/docs/german-americana/gemutlikeit-schnitzelbank-and-kitsch.pdf

The postcards in the exhibit are humorous takes on German stereotypes with heavy emphasis on jokes related to beer, wurst, lederhosen, and speech.  Mostly, they caricature Germans as fat beer-drinking, sausage-eating, English-mangling buffoons.  Most were created in good spirit, but some were clearly negative, reflecting times of economic and social stress when Germans were viewed by some as a threat to American values and jobs.  Also, the post cards (reflecting American views of Germany) changed when the U.S. entered World War I.

This exhibit is worth a view, partly to see some funny postcards and partly to recall the history of German immigration into the U.S. as viewed a century ago.

Stimulated by this exhibit, I  purchased some related postcards in a March visit to a Tontitown, Arkansas antique mall.  These cards -- published in 20th century teen's -- present a positive and wholesome view of Dutch immigrants in the U.S..  For example, the postcard at the top of this posting, mailed from a city in Ohio in 1912, has a pleasant image of a Dutch kid (see wooden shoes) with humor based on contorted English.

The postcard to the left is undated (but likely posted before WWI) shows a young Dutch girl (wooden shoes again), using broken English to praise the town on Bucklin, Kansas.


The postcard to the right was mailed in 1916 to an address in Grand Island, Nebraska.  It shows a Dutch girl and Dutch boy (both with wooden shoes) swinging together and has an inscription with imperfect English










The final two cards are again positive, and even endearing, pictures of Dutch immigrants.  The Valentine postcard on the left was sent from Lexington, Missouri in 1914.  The postcard below is undated, but about the same age as the one on the left, was sent to an address in Kansas.