Book offers example, hope to beleaguered Americans

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues. or Wed., June 25, 26 or 27, 2018

Sometimes, “resistance is futile” seems worse than a “Star Trek” line.

Today, the atmosphere seems dark and dank. A “Space Force” is proposed in apparent violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty; the U.S. withdraws from the UN Human Rights Council; and President Trump reverses his zero-tolerance mandate separating and jailing thousands of children from parents who are refugees or other undocumented immigrants to imprison them together indefinitely – if they can be reunited.

Trump’s retreat came after widespread criticism, from former First Lady Laura Bush to musician Bruce Springsteen, from six major airlines refusing to transport “detained” kids to Republican leaders in statehouses and Congress. Eleven governors (Republican and Democrat) defied Trump’s call for states’ National Guard troops to go to the southern border, and even Ill. Gov. Rauner and six of seven GOP lawmakers from Illinois gave at least mild objections to the cruel practice.

However, a new book can be a reminder that even against overwhelming power, it’s possible to fight fear and frustrations by working with others.

“Forty Gavels: The Life of Reuben Soderstrom and the Illinois AFL-CIO” (named for the symbols Soderstrom received annually during his tenure as Illinois AFL-CIO president) is more than a biography or a study of one family’s patriarch. It’s a chronicle of a movement and progressive effort.

An accomplished man who lived to be 82, Soderstrom knew hardship as a youngster growing up in Minnesota and moving as a teen to Streator, Ill., his home the rest of his life. He worked at the Streator Independent Times, joined the Typographical Union and became a Linotype “traveler” working throughout the Midwest. Back in Streator, he became more engaged with unions and in 1918 was elected as a progressive Republican to the legislature. After a 1920 loss, he was re-elected as a State Representative in 1922 and served for 14 years, pressing measures to help working people.

In 1930 he took the helm of the Illinois State Federation of Labor as a 42-year-old peacemaker amid divisions among unions, and he united rival factions and competing federations through decades of diligence.

This is also more than a dry compilation of facts and dates. Instead, the encyclopedic effort (a three-volume, 1,054-page package) was produced by Andrew Burt, Robert Soderstrom and Peoria-area writers Dr. Carl W. Soderstrom and reporter Chris Stevens, who produced a readable narrative.

Volume I (1860-1930) covers Soderstrom’s childhood and determination to provide for his family, even as a child, and then his experiences in the General Assembly and in society. Volume II (1930-1949) continues through the Great Depression, New Deal, World War II and the post-war recovery – monumental challenges of economics and politics. Soderstrom rejected authoritarianism, whether fascist, Communist or even organized crime, and he opposed war before Pearl Harbor. Afterward, he helped ensure that Illinois was key to wartime manufacturing. Volume III (1950-1970) traces his rising in the ranks of national importance, helping with the merger of the AFL and CIO, working in political campaigns and with Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson – and embracing the drive for equality shown by his admiration of and cooperation with Martin Luther King, Jr. and allied interests.

Throughout, the full account of this extraordinary figure reveals the evolution of the labor movement he helped construct, primarily through his “12 pillars,” which remain relevant: child labor, workers’ compensation, the right to strike, credit unions, ending unemployment, old-age pensions, workplace safety, women’s rights, religion, education, civil rights and family.

The exhaustive package (weighing 24.7 pounds) has first-rate production values, too, featuring glossy, heavy-stock paper and fascinating full-color photos that blend archival pictures, news clippings and scrapbook nuggets.

Finally, organized labor was never a top-down pursuit, and the grassroots is responsible to be active. As Soderstrom said, “A working man of any kind who earns his bread in the sweat of his face has not done his full duty to himself and to his fellow workers and to those depending on him until he has joined the labor union of his calling, and he becomes one of those who strive for the uplift of the masses.”

For more info, go to www.reubengsoderstromfoundation.com. To order the $295 project for a school, library or office, contact www.FortyGavels.com.

Former area student became novelist, writer for film, TV

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri. or Sat., June 21, 22 or 23, 2018

Jonathan Latimer was a 1929 graduate of Knox College in Galesburg and is remembered in some quarters as “one of the best Golden Age authors of the hard-boiled school you’ve probably never heard of,” according to one critic, and much of this prolific writer’s work is available online and on reruns of CBS’ old “Perry Mason” series cablecast on FETV (Family Entertainment Television) and other networks.

Latimer, who died 35 years ago this week, had a writing career that went from covering Al Capone to working with filmmaker Frank Capra, adapting novels by Dashiell Hammett to penning novels.

After earning his bachelor’s degree from Knox, Latimer biked through Europe, then returned to Chicago, where he worked for the Herald-Examiner and Tribune newspapers, mostly covering crime at a time when there was a lot of it there.

“I knew Al Capone, George ‘Bugs’ Moran and assorted other gangsters, as well as whorehouse madams, pimps, dope peddlers and con men,” Latimer said years later.

He left journalism after writing a news story about FDR’s Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, who liked Latimer and hired him to ghost-write a book. In 1935 Latimer turned to writing novels, starting with a series of mysteries featuring private eye William Crane, where Latimer introduced his distinctive blend of hard-boiled crime fiction and screwball comedy.

“Murder in the Madhouse” was Latimer’s first novel, one of five in the Crane series (also including “Headed for a Hearse,” “The Lady in the Morgue,” “The Dead Don’t Care” and “Red Gardenias”). His first book became so popular that three were made into movies starring Preston Foster as Crane.

Through the 1940s and ‘50s his books also included mainstream novels “The Search for My Great Uncle’s Head” (under the pseudonym Peter Coffin) and “Dark Memory,” and crime novels with protagonists other than Crane: “Black Is the Fashion for Dying,” “Sinners and Shrouds” and “Solomon’s Vineyard,” a rather steamy book suppressed in the United States for a time. (Here’s a hint why: Its opening line start, “From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress…”).

After serving in the Navy during World War II, Latimer shifted to Hollywood, where he aimed for realism, as he explained in an interview about his 1948 adaptation of Cornell Woolrich’s best-selling “Night Has A Thousand Eyes.”

“What I hoped to establish,” he said, “was a real sense of terror that these things were coming true.”

Besides “Night Has A Thousand Eyes,” Latimer’s screenplays are impressive: “The Big Clock” (based on Kenneth Fearing’s novel), “The Glass Key” (from Dashiell Hammett’s book), adaptations of “The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt” and “Plunder of the Sun,” “Topper Returns” (an original script), four educational films in Frank Capra’s "Wonders of Life" series airing as Bell Telephone Science Hour TV specials in the late ’50s, which were later used in science classrooms), “The Unholy Wife” (co-authored with William Durkee), and two splendid film noir movies, “Nocturne” (1946) and “They Won’t Believe Me” (1947).

For a while Latimer lived in Key West, Fla., where befriended Ernest Hemingway, and after starting to work for Hollywood, he moved to LaJolla, Calif., where his neighbors included legendary hard-boiled author Raymond Chandler, who also had turned some of his attention to working for the movies.

Latimer eventually settled into a routine of writing for television, contributing more than 30 episodes of “Perry Mason” from 1958 to 1965 (with tantalizing, alliterative titles such as “The Case of the Fugitive Fraulein,” “The Case of the Capricious Corpse” and “The Case of the Lavender Lipstick”).

However, his best scripts may have been “Nocturne” and “They Won’t Believe Me.”

“Nocturne,” produced by Alfred Hitchcock associate Joan Harrison and directed by Edwin Marin, stars George Raft in a story about a determined cop (Raft) who won’t accept that the death of a Hollywood film composer was suicide. He begins looking for “Dolores,” a name in a song by the victim, then discovers the dead man had a list of girlfriends – and that 10 of them had motives for killing him.

“They Won’t Believe Me” is an often-unheralded crime classic starring Robert Young (eventually in TV’s “Father Knows Best”), cast against type as a playboy on trial for a murder he didn’t commit. Also produced by Joan Harrison, the movie was directed by Irving Pichel and co-stars Susan Hayward. Somewhat foreshadowing Latimer’s fascination with trials that he demonstrated in “Perry Mason,” much of it is set in a courtroom, where Young testifies about his innocence – and his adultery, foolishness and stupidity.

That’s a long way from downstate Illinois. (At least, it’s hoped.)

Understanding by walking in others’ shoes

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues. or Wed., June 18, 19 or 20, 2018

When I had long hair (OK, when I HAD hair), I was at a late-night diner with some buddies in a band, and we ordered and got our food – in paper sacks.

“Out,” the owner said.

Trudging across a gravel lot to a van, I said, “We were just discriminated against.”

An African-American friend said, “You can always cut your hair.”

I remembered that when I read the following comment from Navy veteran Travis Akers, who posts as “Top Rope Travis”:

“I’ve never been black, but I understand the need for equality in the justice system. I’ve never been gay or transgender, but I understand wanting to be loved for who I am. I’ve never been a woman, but I understand wanting fair pay and advancement opportunity for equal work. I’ve never been Muslim, but I understand wanting to worship without fear.

“I’ve never been a victim of gun violence,” he continued, “but I understand not wanting to be shot in school. I’ve never been a refugee, but I understand wanting to protect my family and provide them a better life. I’ve never been diagnosed with a terminal disease, but I understand wanting to afford health care. I’ve never defaulted on student loans, but I understand wanting an affordable education. I’ve never been homeless, but I understand honoring our nation’s veterans with care.

“I’ve never been raped,” he added, “but I understand wanting to feel safe and making decisions over my own body. I’ve never had a prescription for marijuana, but I understand wanting to live pain-free. I’ve never been asked to leave somewhere because of my skin color, gender or religion…

“There are lots of things in life I have not faced because I am a white, straight, middle-class, Christian male,” Akers wrote, “but I can understand and relate to being a human who desires love, acceptance, equality, safety, health and happiness.”

Aker’s empathy for Others echoes in other texts. First, a disturbing drift toward a weird “dictatorship of dishonest democracy” recalls the reflection by Lutheran minister Martin Niemöller, a German and one-time supporter of Adolph Hitler who wrote, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Today, of course, authoritarianism comes for refugees, separates children from parents, and confines kids to holding areas like diseased cattle; for who report facts or opinions that disagree with Powers That Be; and even for long-time allies in other republics.

Next, Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 2007 wrote the verse “Pity the nation whose people are sheep and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars whose sages are silenced and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the world by force and by torture. Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no other culture but its own. Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the too well-fed. Pity the nation, oh pity the people, who allow their rights to erode and their freedoms to be washed away… My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty!”

Finally, different faiths all have their own versions of humanity’s universal message known as the Golden Rule:

“Hurt not others with that which pains yourself.” (Buddhism)

“Therefore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” (Christianity)

“Do not do to others what you would not like yourself.” (Confucianism)

“Wound not others, do no one injury by thought or deed, utter no word to pain thy fellow creatures.” (Hinduism)

“Not one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother what he desires for himself.” (Islam).

“Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Judaism)

“As thou deemest thyself, so deem others. Don’t create enmity with anyone as God is within everyone.” (Sikhism)

That sure beats the perverted version, “He who has the gold makes the rules,” and can help Us all think of Others as ourselves.