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lists of what had to be done, of whom to see; they had the dead–
lines of all the major college dailies and knew how to write a
press release. They were in touch with congressmen and senators;
they could talk with both Ann Froines of Panther Defense and Police
Chief Ahern. They were quietly omnicompetent, and they made me
think that my generation's assumption, at that age, of silence and
the intractability of social reality was a form of psychic damage suf–
fered somewhere during the Eisenhower years or earlier, with the
start of cold war.
There was a good atmosphere at Coffin's house, the sense of
a control center where you had more contact with the reality of the
situation than anywhere else. But you also felt the limits of this com–
petence as the rumors, some verified, some simply persistent, came
in. Students from Cambridge who had heard people saying they were
going to New Haven "to get their first pig." Reports from several
campuses that the shock troops - November Action Committee,
Weathermen, Youth Against War and Facism - would be present
in force. Arms stolen from a truck in East Haven, presumably to
arm some white vigilante group. Mysterious fires set in the Law
School. At least one assassination threat to a faculty member. And
then the news that the National Guard would probably be deployed
around the Green, where the rally was to take place, and that 4000
federal paratroops would be standing by in Massachusetts and Rhode
Island. A member of our committee saw five tanks rumbling down
the streets of Branford, just outside New Haven. There was at least
the conceivable possibility that we were heading toward a first act
in
a great American showdown.
The student body ranged between intense activity - the best
therapy - and real fear. Like most faculty members, I continued to
meet my classes that week, to find out what the few students who
came were thinking, what they wanted to talk about, how they
thought we should finish out the academic year if we got through
the weekend. They were mainly the nonactivists, but not unconcerned.
Sometimes we talked about literature, with a kind of intensity brought
by the alienation effect. A few students asked if they should leave
for the weekend. Since they had come to that point in their thinking,
I always said yes. The lambs to slaughter image was hard to avoid:
they looked so young, and it seemed that they were being asked to
bear, directly and concretely, the burden of all the wrongs and vicious
stupidities of American society and policy.
