Page:The Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist.djvu/52

CHAPTER 3. MARRIAGE—TRAVEL IN 48 STATES 39 So was I, but I admitted it; the others generally said they were teaching "the truth." As we did not know for sure about yesterday, let us try and find out about today, for this would be the history of tomorrow soon. Accordingly I told the students I would have the following papers on the rack for them to look at and every Friday we would have an hour discussing current events with absolute freedom of speech. They had the regular conservative Mobile daily, the Single Tax COURIER at home, the others I ordered: The CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, AMERICA, the catholic weekly, The Milwaukee LEADER, Socialist, The DAILY WORKER, Communist, FREEDOM, the London Anarchist paper, FELLOW WORKER of the I.W.W., The NATION, The WORLD TOMORROW, pacifist, the ARMY AND NAVY JOURNAL, and the WALL STREET JOURNAL.

The first day Sam lay down on a bench. Everyone looked to see what the new teacher would do. I had never studied pedagogy but I had had a good course in pacifism these past few years, so I picked up a dictionary and gently placed it under Sam's head and told him to sleep on. He wanted an argument and there was none. The next day he mumbled half audibly to George. I waited a minute and then told him to hurry up and tell George all the good news and when he was finished we could talk about history. He suddenly had nothing to say and from that time on was no bother.

A Disciple Church minister was head of the Boy Scouts and of the KKK in Fairhope. One Sunday he openly said from the pulpit that I should be tarred and feathered and drowned in Mobile Bay, for there was no room in that town for a person who was a traitor, a jailbird, a man who did not attend church, and who was not legally married. They burned a cross by our house. Some folks wanted me to have a guard when I went the lonely mile home from the folk dances at night but I felt my Celestial Bulldozer made way for me. Next week I went to see the minister and invited him to come to my Friday class and give a talk on the KKK. He promised to come and didn't. Three weeks later he was "called" to preach in another town. If I had started to run from such cowards I would be running yet.

Some of the students wanted to skip other classes and attend my history class for they had never had it taught in this interesting manner. I told them they couldn't do that and they had better figure out some other method. Accordingly about half of the high school met in a special history club where all kinds of questions were asked every Wednesday night from 8 to 11; no credit. This was the Organic method with a vengeance.

There was a Shakespearean group and Selma played the part of Autoculous in an outdoor presentation of "The Winter's Tale." During a vacation between semesters I shoveled manure for a Quaker farmer and graded tangerines at a packing shed. I still remember the wonderful lunch at the Quaker farmer's: whole wheat bread, honey and a pitcher of cream. That was all and you could have all you could eat of it.

There was an old fashioned silent Quaker meeting house nearby Fairhope. Selma and I went several Sundays. I found they were of the same Hicksite group as my great-grand-parents, Ashford, in Ohio. Later some of those Quakers went