Shaking Hands with China’s Second Most Powerful Man (430)

26:10Bill Hodes:today and much of it again going all the way back to the full journey that I had come on. Later learned, and that's really what pushed me into the legal field as well, is that other than literacy and helping to register. The whole Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party effort that I just described was designed by lawyers, by the guy actually who later became my law professor, was designed for the sole purpose of going to Atlantic City and saying to the convention, no, they don't represent Mississippi. We represent Mississippi because we are not segregated. They are. And so we demonstrated that they held full hearings on which delegation from Mississippi should be seated.

27:14Bill Hodes:They eventually offered a compromise, which was that our delegates, which included Fannie Newhamer, famous. When she was a young kid, she was a sharecropper. Now she's head of the freedom, Mississippi Freedom Democrat, were offered a sort of observer status. And so there was a big meeting in a little black church in Atlantic City, like two blocks from the boardwalk. And Atlantic City is like that, too. It's checkerboard. It's a block of white houses, a block of black houses, a block of white houses, a block of white and this little black church. and all of the top civil rights leaders and a lot of people from who have been in Mississippi debated, should you accept this?

28:08Is half a loaf better than nothing? And eventually it was turned down largely because, no, we've been in the back of the bus before. Unacceptable. And one of the

28:25Bill Hodes:The key moments when they were debating this, and this was all the head of the NAACP that I mentioned before was there, the head of CORE, Congress on Racial Equality was there, all of the young students were there, all debating it out. ultimately this tiny little quiet white woman who was the widow of Mickey Schwerner who had been murdered in Philadelphia she came up and said no and that was so powerful among other things but that was just an incredible moment and I later went to law school with her. She was the class ahead of me at the same law school studying under the same law professor who was the mastermind behind the Atlantic City demonstrations and presentation.

29:26Basically, what we were doing, although all of us didn't know it, I was lucky enough that I was with a law student when I was in, we were gathering evidence. The whole summer, we were gathering evidence to take to Atlantic City. And so I presume like the founders of the SDS, the Students for a Democratic Society, were involved in these events as well. Did you know many of those people?

29:54Bill Hodes:I knew some of them. They were spread all over the elite campuses. I knew the ones who were at Harvard. A lot of them were at Michigan, you know, and then a few other places. I was still in the Communist Party. And, you know, and since going to Mississippi was sort of my, what they called in the Communist Party, your mass work, you know, you have your party work, we write articles and we prepare for the revolution. Didn't really mean very much, But but then they join in the unions and they join in civil rights. And so I was doing this. SDS was, again, the beginning of a very, very different anti-communist new left, or some might say not communist enough, that claiming that that the that the that the CPUSA was just a bunch of old fogies who even though I was only I was in it, but they didn't know that probably.

30:55But they, you know, sort of a new way. And that was true not only in the U.S., but in Europe, you know, and everywhere. So, yeah, I knew them as friends, went to some of the meetings, some of the discussions. Yeah, but not super close. What wasn't definitely part of that movement because I was, we were all, just as it was starting, we were all getting close to graduation and move on to other things as well. So the summer of 65, you're working in the National Office of the Communist Party USA. What are you doing there? Well, it's funny to think of it now, because I mean, now and we probably don't have time to get to all that story.

31:42But now I'm a a after law school and after been teaching law school for 20 years. I am now a very dedicated constitutional conservative, very anti-communist, very anti-Trump, very anti, you know, this crazy populist new

32:05Bill Hodes:right. But the sort of the traditional constitutional, you know, the Scalia type, you know, middle of the road and not middle of the road, but I mean, you know, traditional liberal with a small L. conservative. But in 1965, I was back from China, finished high school, been to Mississippi, but I'm still making the revolution, making the communist revolution. And so I worked in the very small little office of the National Communist Party USA. And I worked on that. They had a a journal called Political Affairs, which I think they still have. And I wrote an article for that about the new left, as a matter of fact.

32:53Bill Hodes:But then one of the things that I was assigned to was not every day, but but often I chauffeured a black communist guy called Henry Winston, who was blind. he had been one of the I think it was 10 who had been imprisoned during, it was actually pre-McCarthy I believe under the Smith Act and while he was in prison he had some kind of a brain tumor or something or other, was not given sufficient appropriate medical care and was blind and so White drove him home and drove him pick him up and take him into the Communist Party USA office from time to time. And of course, we would talk politics and making the revolution.

33:42Bill Hodes:And then it wasn't too long after that, that I'm now going to graduate from college and go on to law school. And I was very distinctly told or ordered or whatever you want to call it by the party to resign from the party because, and this, this again is, is a link back to the McCarthy period to the cold war. I mean, nowadays it would be the opposite that gives you cash a few who wants a commies. But in those days, they did not want anybody be able to say, Oh yeah, I mean, you know, McCarthy was right. And there's still not, and McCarthy's dead, but you know, these commies are still trying to take over our law schools and stuff like that.

34:27Bill Hodes:So I nominally formally left the party just before I went to law school, which was in fall of 66. But I was still very left wing. And as I said, I studied with this guy called Arthur Canoy, who was really the brains behind much of the legal side of the civil rights movement, strategizing the Mississippi summer of 64 not only led to the demonstrations at Atlantic City, it was the evidence that led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the single most significant civil rights act, in my opinion. That came to a great extent from thinking and scholarship by Arthur Kenoy. I also, one of my other professors was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was just starting her career as one of the early feminists.

35:35I was in her first seminar. I was one of the first men who was part of her brand of feminism. And later, I actually clerked on the Supreme Court for her. So, you know, there's so many circles are following up. And that's because after law school, I worked in the, I went back, we're talking about closing circles. My first year out of law school, I went back to New Orleans. And I worked in the tiny little law firm of Ben Smith, the guy who had defended my father in the hearings of Tulane. And then after that, I came back north. I worked on the Chicago 7 case that people have heard, you know, the Abby Hoffman and the movie, all that.

36:28I worked in the city law department of the city of Newark, New Jersey, which had just elected its first black mayor. I worked in a project on school law reform, and then I went to teach law school at Indiana University. I took a year off, taught at the University of Chicago, taught it for 20 years at Indiana University Law School in Indianapolis. Wow. Wow. And what was your involvement with the Chicago 7 trial? What were you?

37:05Bill Hodes:Oh, I, I, I, first of all, I knew Bill Kunstler quite well because he was partners with my law professor, Arthur Canoy, that nominally they had a firm called Kunstler and Canoy. And so anything that Bill Kunstler was working on, our Arthur knew about, and, and he, and often he would get, if he was having a seminar, we would work on case, you know, work on the briefs work on things that Bill Kunstler was working on. Chicago 7 came up then. I worked on the, there's a famous case called the Jackson Swimming Pool case, where rather than Jackson, Mississippi, when they were ordered to integrate their public swimming pools, they just closed all the pools.

37:52And we tried to litigate that that was just another form of segregation because all the white kids will just go to private, you know, private clubs and do their swimming there.

38:03Bill Hodes:But I also knew the Rutgers Newark community. We all, in addition to being close to Arthur Canoy and therefore to Bill Kunstler, the other guy that's not, he's in the movie, if people have seen the movie, but was also very much involved in trial was a somewhat younger lawyer named Leonard Weinglass. And we all knew Lenny very well. His office was right across the street from the law school. He was a young, progressive, really bright guy. And so we were helping them write the briefs, one to one who was up on appeal. Wow. Wow. Incredible connections. Just so many strands here. Were you involved in the draft for the Vietnam War?

38:51Were you called up at all?

38:52Bill Hodes:No, I was just by age and by luck, just as they were beginning to expand the, you know, they were changing the age. At one point it was up to 26 and or only up to 26 and then it was down and up and whatever. whatever. And before the lottery came in, I was just towards the end of the age where I would even be eligible to be drafted. I got one notice from my draft board, which was to appear for a physical. I think I was already a lawyer. I had been to New Orleans and back. I was practicing law back in New Jersey, in the North. And I said, okay, report for your physical, which is step one. And then maybe you have to report, maybe you don't.

39:48Bill Hodes:And there were a whole bunch of us who were in this sort of progressive left-leaning, but no longer communist coterie, who were part of what our work that we were doing is we were draft counseling. We were helping people who didn't want to go, you know, to go through all of the steps that are required and say, no, no, no, no, but first I want to, you know, do this. And so I knew a lot about the draft laws. And one of the things that there was was that in any step of the proceedings, you are entitled, if you want it for the draft board or the draft people, select the service to give you legal counsel to answer any questions.

40:37Now, I was a lawyer and I knew more than their people knew, but I said, well, I tell you what, I know that according to regulation so-and-so, I'm entitled to, you know, this.

40:51Bill Hodes:I want you to appoint me that person. and then but by the time just between us if you look at the counter by the time that person gets to talk to me and then we go back and then you issue me a new order to report for physical i'll already have passed my whatever birthday it was and so you might as well just save your time and mine and so they were sensible i said okay okay and so i i never even had to do the physical I was lucky. My brother, who was quite a bit younger, he was born in 1950. He was in the draft lottery, but he got a number that was okay enough so that he never had to record to anything.

41:36So in 1989, you get an invite back to China. Can you tell me about that? Because obviously 1989 is quite a pivotal year. I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more. Botox, on a botulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition.

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43:12and only at 7-Eleven. Followed through 825-26, participating stores only while supplies last visit store for full terms. Oh, yeah. By then, I was a full-time law professor at Indiana University teaching constitutional law, legal ethics. And a year or so before that,

43:33Bill Hodes:our law school had started, as many law schools had, because this was before the crackdown, This was the sort of flowering of the during the Zhejiang period, the beginnings of a thaw of Sino-U.S. relations. And so our law school had started a summer program in Shanghai where American students would go to China and study some some facets of Chinese law. Some of the people there would, you know, would meet with us and then, and, and we would do some comparing, you know, how was their constitution different. And so obviously I was the obvious person. I was the first professor to represent our law school.

44:21found at the Chinese law school. A year and a half later, it's now I've been teaching for quite some time. It was time for my seven-year sabbatical.

44:32Bill Hodes:And so I made an arrangement to go teach American law at a Chinese law school in Beijing for most of the year. and then the plan was I would be in Beijing teaching at the Chinese law school and my wife by the way was also a lawyer also taught there and then the plan was that after that semester was over we would then whole family and our young young son who was only then about five or six, I think, would then go back to Shanghai and do the summer program again for American students coming over. Well, that was that was the spring of 1989. And demonstrations started happening. Hong died. There was the encampment that was long before June 4th.

45:30Bill Hodes:schools started shutting down and they they were the demonstrations were massive but they were you know very peaceful they were sort of it was sort of almost like teach-ins that we had had in the u.s back in the 60s and 70s um believe it or not during all during all that gorbachev came for a state visit right in the call of the people right across from where there were 200 ,000 students just sitting in there in, you know, in, in their encampment. I was able to, and of course nobody was going to school anymore. They were all, you know, demonstrating and putting up posters and making demands. Um, and my wife and I, and sometimes even our son, Ivan went to Tiananmen Square, talk to people some of our students who we know we could talk to in English my Chinese was still good enough so that I could talk sort of half and half with some of them but I was able to but those early days this was before May 27th American journalists CBS and ABC were there and I was able to go to, there was one, I can't remember which one it was, but one of the fairly famous U.S.

46:51reporters, I was able to point out two roving U.S. journalists and this massive group of people, oh yeah, you know, in that little circle there, those two guys or that gal, somebody, you know, they speak English, they're university students, they're, you know, law students so they can give you a pretty good interview. And I'm pretty sure at least a couple of them got onto, um, US TV and those early, and those early days. Then we, we, I moved down with the Fowl Wife and Son to Shanghai on May 27th, I think was to start the summer program

47:35Bill Hodes:because everything was actually, you know, it was, there was a lot, you know, a lot of tumult, but everything was fine. And as a matter of fact, before we left, they declared martial law, but it was a very, let's put this up somewhere, it was a very friendly martial law. You know, there was, there was a bunch of people, they weren't armed, I'm pretty sure, but the soldiers lining up and the little woman came out of the crowd and gave, you know, gave a cup of water because it was very hot, gave water to the soldiers, you know, to our uncle, you know, so soldiers, everything's fine, you know, up until it wasn't fine.

48:19And so we started our classes

48:23Bill Hodes:in Shanghai. June 3rd happens, June 4th happens. And it was, I had, I was able to call Beijing, talk to people there. We decided that we would continue the classes in Shanghai because nothing, you know, like that. And there was nothing we could do about anything except we didn't watch the news. And so we continued for another couple of days, but then things got a little bit more, a little bit. And parents back home in the U.S. and then finally the law school put pressure and said, no, we're canceling the program. But several of the U.S. students stayed on throughout the summer at Ishan Ha. But yeah, that's how that trip ended.

49:12And then maybe just to cycle back and finish up with just one more last thing. And it was only two years later that I was back in the U.S. and back at law school. I got an invitation from my old high school, not not my students that I've been teaching who were older, but but people who were who were younger, but people who were my age, who I have gone to junior high with. I got an invite because it was the 90th anniversary of the school. So it wasn't a reunion. It was like a 90th reunion for the whole school. And so I said, yeah, you know, I'll go back. And so it was sort of over a weekend. I flew out to Beijing, went to school.

49:59Bill Hodes:All the kids were there. We sang some old young pioneer songs in Chinese. And the young kids were like, oh, you know, here's this Chinese. We still could sing and speak in Chinese, you know. and then we went out the the people the people in my class uh not the current students there we went out to the famous peking duck restaurant uh to have a you know a little dinner and we were talking and they're bringing you know the wine and the duck comes up in the little elevators that it comes up in and they're all talking to each other they many of them hadn't seen each other for a long time because they're their old high school buddies and now they're you know into middle almost middle age middle age and if they're saying all sorts of things that got me kind of nervous you know like they're they're not quite you know they're not and you know they're not anti-government in the sense of you know we're going to make a revolution or you know it's 1949 all over again or whatever but it was definitely critical hi this is ronda in virginia and i support cold war conversations because I think the work that Ian is doing is critically important.

51:10I think it's vital to record the firsthand accounts of people who lived and experienced the Cold War because it illustrates history in a way that a book never can. So thank you so much for the podcast. It's my favorite podcast and I look forward to it every week. To be like Rhonda and help to preserve these incredible stories of the Cold War, as a monthly or annual supporter you'll be able to listen ad-free you'll become one of our community get the sought after cold war conversations drinks coaster as a thank you and you'll bask in the warm glow of knowing that you're helping to preserve cold war history just go to cold war conversations.com slash donate to find out more and they were all speaking in chinese to

51:59Bill Hodes:each other and I'm sitting at one of the other tables and one of my friends from when we were you know young kids there he saw that I was you know worried you know that I looked as a man you know isn't anybody gonna get arrested or you know is that safe to say that and I think he I think he addressed me in English you know you know or he said but but anyway when my friend said well yeah, wow, you know, June 6th was only a year and a half ago, you know. And he said something really interesting that I absolutely will not forget, which is he said, oh, yeah, he said, nowadays in China, you can say anything you want.

52:47Bill Hodes:You just can't do anything. And I thought that was a pretty good coda on, you know, we're all about company. the episode extras such as videos photos and other content are available via a link in the episode information the podcast wouldn't exist without the generous efforts of our financial supporters and i'd like to thank one and all of them for keeping the podcast on the road the cold war conversation continues in our facebook discussion group just search for Cold War Conversations in Facebook. Thanks very much for listening and look forward to seeing you next week.

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