A Graphite Reminder To Vote...

I've been hard at work on the Levy book proposal, which wrapped today.  This required talking to the great man last weekend about his involvement in registering black voters in 1965 rural South Carolina - voter registration being the activity that got him pink-listed by military investigators, which eventually got him court-martialed.  

But I didn't actually get to ask the questions I intended because in the middle of the call I got another earful of fantastically funny and nearly unbelievable stories about his time at Leavenworth post-court-martial.

Can I say it? Howard's the only dermatologist I know who could disarm a potential psychopathic ex-Green Beret cellmate (who was rumored to have threatened to kill Howard) by sitting him down and saying in all seriousness, "I'm sure you didn't do whatever it is you're in here for.... why don't you start from the beginning? Tell me what REALLY happened..." with the end result that the Green Beret was, legitimately, exonerated with the help of one of Howard's attorney friends.  And of course, they became good friends and wrote a book together on political dissent.  You can't make this stuff up. 

Howard's also the only Leavenworth prisoner to start, as he jokingly put it, "the original farm-to-table prison restaurant."  This involved one of the two prison farms where Howard performed the hard labor part of his sentence, and an unlikely alliance with Leavenworth's mafioso "diners", who had access to contraband substances - specifically, olive oil and vinegar.  (You maybe don't think about these things when you think about Leavenworth, but sure, one of the glaring deficits might be the absence of tasty fresh salads.)

I made the pencil drawing above in a haze of stale coffee, it's based largely on information I found in an iconic Flip Schulke photograph of Alabama voters.  If you don't know who Flip Schulke is, treat yourself and go visit the website of the late great Minnesota farm boy who became a trusted friend of Martin Luther King and who took great photos for Time and Life. 

It was a great era, full of heroic men and women.  And despite what you hear on the nightly news, there are still lots of heroes, struggling to do the right thing by their conscience, even if all it gets them is three years hard labor at Leavenworth, and more interesting pals than you could ever want.

Enough of all that (for now). Don't forget to vote next month.  So many good men and women died for that privilege - it's kind of a sad joke that we can't find candidates that the majority of American people actually trust.  Okay, try not to think about that.  Even if you only vote down-ballot, at least you're voting.  Please?

A Graphite Reminder To Vote...

I've been hard at work on the Levy book proposal, which wrapped today.  This required talking to the great man last weekend about his involvement in registering black voters in 1965 rural South Carolina - voter registration being the activity that got him pink-listed by military investigators, which eventually got him court-martialed.  

But I didn't actually get to ask the questions I intended because in the middle of the call I got another earful of fantastically funny and nearly unbelievable stories about his time at Leavenworth post-court-martial.

Can I say it? Howard's the only dermatologist I know who could disarm a potential psychopathic ex-Green Beret cellmate (who was rumored to have threatened to kill Howard) by sitting him down and saying in all seriousness, "I'm sure you didn't do whatever it is you're in here for.... why don't you start from the beginning? Tell me what REALLY happened..." with the end result that the Green Beret was, legitimately, exonerated with the help of one of Howard's attorney friends.  And of course, they became good friends and wrote a book together on political dissent.  You can't make this stuff up. 

Howard's also the only Leavenworth prisoner to start, as he jokingly put it, "the original farm-to-table prison restaurant."  This involved one of the two prison farms where Howard performed the hard labor part of his sentence, and an unlikely alliance with Leavenworth's mafioso "diners", who had access to contraband substances - specifically, olive oil and vinegar.  (You maybe don't think about these things when you think about Leavenworth, but sure, one of the glaring deficits might be the absence of tasty fresh salads.)

I made the pencil drawing above in a haze of stale coffee, it's based largely on information I found in an iconic Flip Schulke photograph of Alabama voters.  If you don't know who Flip Schulke is, treat yourself and go visit the website of the late great Minnesota farm boy who became a trusted friend of Martin Luther King and who took great photos for Time and Life. 

It was a great era, full of heroic men and women.  And despite what you hear on the nightly news, there are still lots of heroes, struggling to do the right thing by their conscience, even if all it gets them is three years hard labor at Leavenworth, and more interesting pals than you could ever want.

Enough of all that (for now). Don't forget to vote next month.  So many good men and women died for that privilege - it's kind of a sad joke that we can't find candidates that the majority of American people actually trust.  Okay, try not to think about that.  Even if you only vote down-ballot, at least you're voting.  Please?

What NPR Left Out

I just heard the Kitchen Sisters' segment on the Farallon Egg Wars, which was, in audio terms, beautifully wrought.  And yet it's disappointing, though not necessarily surprising, how cliched their telling of the story (which relies largely on Gary Kamiya's account) was.

The actual political backdrop of the "war" is far more interesting than you would glean from hearing the segment on NPR. 1850's San Francisco wasn't just about bar-room brawls and desperadoes - it was also about a significant amount of progressive political action on the part of the very ethnic group blamed most for the egging. Which was a point I'd hoped to impart to Nikki Silva over the course of a two-hour radio interview. Alas....

Moreover, few would know about this story were it not for Susan Casey, the author of The Devil's Teeth. Ms. Casey widely revived the history from Peter White's account, with Ms. Casey placing a particular and penetrating focus on the actual letters sent by Lighthouse Keeper Amos Clift. Casey's rendering is how I myself learned the story.  And after working on my particular focus of the story for over a year, I in turn imparted the story to an unaware Kamiya over drinks with David Talbot in 2011; Kamiya subsequently mined the material himself in his own book. That the NPR segment neglected the fascinating sociopolitical forces behind the story, and elided Casey's lively telling altogether in favor of Kamiya's is... why I get my news from the BBC these days.

From NPR to the Levy Project

Nearly two years ago I did an interview about the Farallon Egg War with Nikki Silva, which is airing on NPR's Morning Edition on August 15.  If so, I still have no idea what part of the two-hour interview that she conducted will actually make it into the brief audio segment, but in the event you stumbled onto this site after hearing that segment, welcome - you'll find plenty of material about the egg wars on this blogspot.

More recently, I've been working on a short comic about what has often been called America's version of "L'Affaire Dreyfus." That's right - I'm working on a graphic history about the 1967 court-martial of Dr. Howard B. Levy.

Levy, a conservative Brooklynite who developed an acute social conscience during his medical residency in the early 1960's, became clumsily but earnestly involved in the civil rights movement. And, after he was drafted into service during Vietnam, he became, somewhat accidentally, the genesis of the G.I. anti-war movement.

Levy's story is frankly among the weirdest, funniest, most inspiring tales I've ever heard.  It's like a Coen Brothers comedy, but with a wise-cracking Jewish Jeff Bridges in the lead.

Levy's court-martial was, at the time, a closely watched trial, with over 100 journalists descending upon Fort Jackson, S.C., for the sentencing.  The reporters included Pulitzer Prize-winning war reporter Homer Bigart, of The New York Times; the ever-shrewd Green Beret-turned-journalist Donald Duncan, who founded Ramparts; and the legendary Andrew Kopkind of The New York Review of Books.

But today, who remembers?

I'd like to fix that, while the great and funny Howard Levy is still alive, kicking, and able to recall so many Proustian details of his experiences. Talking to Howard on the telephone is like having someone take your hand and guide you through an intimate and very funny film about a truly galvanizing moment in history. The problem is, Howard Levy can talk faster than I can draw. What he really deserves is not just a comic book, but also a great video biographer.  That said, I am honored to get to draw the man and will continue to do so until the project is finished.

Here are a couple of pages, the proposal gets sent out next week.  The thin man is Levy, the fat man is the great civil rights attorney Charles B. Morgan, who represented not just Levy, but also Muhammad Ali in his own fight against the U.S. Army.  Levy's case was the first to invoke the Nuremburg Defense (in a manner quite different than its subsequent use during the Lt. Calley/My Lai court-martial.)

All the text balloons below contain actual quotes from actual people involved on base during the court-martial. I have to apologize in advance that someone I've quoted used the N-word. (In short, I'm sorry that most historical accounts might include some ugly language and ugly acts, but it's our responsibility to try to portray it accurately.)