"CHANGING MY LIFE - 50 YEARS OUT"

 “CHANGING MY LIFE – 50 YEARS OUT”

This month marks the 50th anniversary of my becoming a conscientious objector (CO) to the Vietnam War.  I grew up in what John Hope Franklin called “the militant South,” the violent culture that emerged from white supremacy in order to maintain slavery and neo-slavery.  So, I had a winding path to travel, so I want to take a bit of time to get there.  

    Those were tumultuous days in 1970, a time similar to now.  The human rights gains of the 1960’s had been repudiated by the election of Richard Nixon as President in 1968.  Nixon had designed the “Southern Strategy,” by which the white supremacists had discerned that they could no longer use overt racist language to win elections.  So, he decided to use covert signals on race, using what are now called “dog whistles” to let those classified as “white” know that he was their man on race.  It is a strategy that the Republicans have continued to use on a covert level since then, until 2016 when Donald Trump made it much more overt that he was the white supremacist candidate.  

       Nixon had inherited a war begun secretly under President Kennedy, which had been significantly expanded in a huge act of hubris by President Johnson.  Nixon further expanded it, but the Vietnam War generated a huge protest in the country and around the world.  It became a lightning rod that divided the country, and many of us searched for ways to protest it and to end it.  

    I began to think about it on a personal level at a conference for seminarians in New Hampshire in the summer of 1969.  I had just completed my first year at Vanderbilt Divinity School, with the intentions of either going for a PHD in theology or becoming a minister.  As a seminary student, I was automatically exempt from the draft which fed the Vietnam War.  Seminarians and ministers were exempt by the nature of our calling.  Every man in my age bracket will have their own story of relating to the draft at that time. There was no way around it, because the war machine was eating young men up, especially poor men and men of color.  And, when I say ‘men,” I mean ‘males,” because women were not allowed as fighters in the military at that time and were not eligible for the draft.

      The leaders of the conference in New Hampshire challenged all of us to think about giving up our draft exempt status and challenging all ministers in religious bodies to do the same.  The idea was that if all ministers and seminarians could be drafted to fight the war, then the religious bodies such as churches and synagogues would rise up in opposition to the war and end it. Mosques were not yet on that radar, though there were certainly many of them, and some of the strongest opposition to the war came from them (e.g. Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali).  It sounded like good strategy to many of us, but few of us were willing to risk it.  If we gave up our draft exemptions, there were few options to keep us from going to try to kill Vietnamese in the war: a high lottery number for the draft, a conscientious objector status, a medical exemption, fleeing the country, or going to prison.  Of course, that was the point.  Would there be enough people willing to go into that risky status in order to end the war?  I was not one of them.

    My life changed, however, in early 1970 when my fiancée broke off our planned summer wedding and ended our relationship.  It shattered my world and made me think of suicide – thanks to my mother and to my housemate David Kidd, I entered the mental health unit on Vanderbilt’s campus for a two week stay.   My mother always gave thanks for David (who was in his last year of VDS), and so do I.  He is now a retired minister in Nashville.  

    I returned to Vanderbilt classes, but my heart was not in it.  I was uprooted, and I was deeply troubled by the Vietnam War.  The call from the 1969 conference began to resonate in me, and I began to consider the alternatives:  I had a low draft number, so a CO or prison or flight were the only options if I gave up my draft exemption.  I am so grateful to Don Beisswenger on the faculty at Vanderbilt and to Ed Loring, who was finishing up his PHD in American church history at Vanderbilt at that time.  Both of them were friends and counselors and assisted me in working out my thoughts.  The CO seemed to me to be only an “educated” man’s exemption, but they helped me find a rich tradition in American history, and I began to think about it.  Could I give up my draft exemption?  Did I have the courage and stamina to do it?

    Then, another set of events – the USA officially bombed and invaded Laos and Cambodia in May, 1970, and National Guard troops killed protesting students on Jackson State campus in Mississippi and Kent State campus in Ohio.  Those events did it for me and for other seminarians.  At a mass protest in DC (in which I joined others in being tear-gassed), some of us formed a pact and agreed to give up our draft exemption and to challenge the Vietnam War head on.  I had made my move.  

    I will pick up the rest of the story next week, and while I recognize that this may not be a cliffhanger, forming it and sharing it has been very helpful to me – thank you!