Are we down South? (How much more north can you get than Michigan?)
Isn’t this illegal?
My dad was clearly confused about the situation. “Well, I don’t think I can sign this piece of paper,” he said.
“No, you can’t,” I said. “Don’t worry. We can still golf at the I.M.A.”
He would occasionally go back to the Elks course if invited by friends, but he would not join. He was not a civil rights activist. He generally didn’t vote because he didn’t want to be called for jury duty. He had all the misguided racial “worries” white people of his generation had. But he also had a very basic sense of right and wrong and of setting an example for his children. And because the union had insisted on integrating the factories as early as the 1940s, he worked alongside men and women of all races and, as is the outcome of such social engineering, he grew to see all people as the same (or at least “the same” as in “all the same in God’s eyes”).
Now, here I was, standing there in front of this Elks Club poster next to the vending machine. The best way to describe my feelings at that moment is that I was seventeen. What do you do at seventeen when you observe hypocrisy or encounter an injustice? What if they are the same thing? Whether it’s the local ladies’ club refusing to let a black lady join, or a segregated men’s club like the Elks that has the audacity to sponsor a contest on the life of the Great Emancipator, when you’re seventeen you have no tolerance for this kind of crime. Hell hath no indignation like that of a teenager who has forgotten his main mission was to retrieve a bag of Ruffles potato chips.
“They want a speech?” I thought, a goofy smile now making its way across my face. “I think I’m gonna go write me a speech.”
I hurried back to my room, sans the bag of Ruffles, got out my pad of paper, my trusty Bic pen, and all the fury I could muster.
“How dare the Elks Club besmirch the fine name of Abraham Lincoln by sponsoring a contest like this!” I began, thinking I would lead with subtlety and save the good stuff for later. “Have they no shame? How is it that an organization that will not allow black people into their club is a part of Boys State, spreading their bigotry under the guise of doing something good? What kind of example is being set for the youth here? Who even allowed them in here? If Boys State is to endorse any form of segregation, then by all means, let it be the segregation that separates these racists from the rest of us who believe in the American Way! How dare they even enter these grounds!”
I went on to tell the story of my dad going to join the Elks and refusing to do so. I quoted Lincoln (my mother’s continual stops at Gettysburg whenever we drove to New York would now pay off). And I closed by saying, “It is my sincere hope that the Elks change their segregationist policies—and that Boys State never, ever invites them back here again.”
I skipped dinner, putting the final touches on the speech, rewriting it a couple times on the pad of paper, and then fell asleep listening to Sly Stone.
The next morning, all speech contestants were instructed to show up in a School of Social Work classroom and give their speech. There were fewer than a dozen of us in the room and, much to my surprise (and relief), there was no one present from the Elks Club. Instead, the speeches were to be judged by a lone high school forensics teacher from Lansing. I took a seat in the back of the room and listened to the boys who went before me. They spoke in laudatory tones of Lincoln’s accomplishments and his humanity, but mostly how he won the Civil War. It was the type of stuff the mayor might say at a town’s Fourth of July picnic. Sweet. Simple. Noncontroversial.
Few in the room were prepared for the barrage of insults about to be hurled at the Elks Club. Take William Jennings Bryan, add some Jimmy Stewart, and throw in a healthy dose of Don Rickles, and I’m guessing that’s what it must’ve sounded like to the assembled as I unleashed my invective disguised as a speech.
About halfway through my rant, I looked over toward the teacher/judge. He sat there without expression or emotion. I felt my heart skip a beat, as I was not used to being in trouble—and the last thing I wanted was for my parents to have to drive down to East Lansing and haul me home. I occasionally glanced at the other Boys Staters in the room to see how this was going down. Some looked at me in fear, others had that “boy-is-he-gonna-get-it” look on their faces—and the black kid in the room… well, what can I say, he was the only black kid in the room. He was trying to cover the smile on his face with his hand.
When the speeches were over, the teacher/judge went to the head of the class to issue his verdict. I slunk down in my seat, hoping that he would simply announce the winner and not issue any rebukes.
“Thank you, all of you, for your well-thought-out and well-written speeches,” he began. “I was impressed with each and every one of you. The winner of this year’s Elks Club Boys State Speech Contest is… Michael Moore! Congratulations, Michael. That was a courageous thing to do. And you’re right. Thank you.”
I didn’t realize it, but he was already shaking my hand, as were about a third of the other boys.
“Thank you,” I said somewhat sheepishly. “But I really didn’t wanna win anything. I just wanted to say something.”
“Well, you sure said something,” the teacher replied. “You’ll receive your award tomorrow at the closing ceremonies with all two thousand boys in attendance.
“Oh—and you’ll have to give the speech to them.”
What? Give what to whom?
“It’s the tradition. The winner of the Elks Club speech gives his speech at the closing assembly, where they announce the election results and hand out all the awards.”
“Um, no, I don’t really wanna do that,” I said, distressed, hoping he would take pity on me. “You don’t really want me to give that speech, do you?”
“Oh, yes I do. But it’s not up to me, anyway. You have to give it. That’s the rule.”
He also told me that for my own good, he wasn’t going to mention to anyone the content of the speech before tomorrow. Oh, yes, that’s much better, I thought. Let them all be hit with it fresh, like a big surprise, the kind which has the speaker being chased from the great hall, his prize in one hand, his life in the other.
After winning the speech contest, my night went something like this: “Fire and Rain,” bathroom. “Across the Universe,” bathroom. “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” bathroom. And when you’re seventeen and you don’t have a car and you aren’t prone to walking long distances—and you live in a state where mass transit is outlawed—there is a sense of imprisonment. That’s it—I was in Boys State Prison! By morning, I had said my final prayers and made a promise to myself that if I got out of this alive, I’d never cause trouble like this again.
The time came and thousands of Boys Staters were ushered into the university hall. On the stage sat various officials, including, I believe, the real governor of Michigan. I took a seat near the front, on the side, and quickly scanned the place for guys who enjoyed being white. There was virtually no long hair here in 1971, and way too many of them had that clean-cut, disciplined, aggressive look that would probably serve them well after a year or two in the Hanoi Hilton, if not the U.S. Congress.
You will have to forgive me for the order of what came next because the event became a blur. My basic survival instincts had kicked in, and that was all that mattered. Someone was elected lieutenant governor or attorney general or Most Likely to Be Caught in the Senate Bathroom Someday. Somewhere in the middle of those announcements I heard my name. I lifted myself out of the chair (against the better advice of my excretory system) and made my way to the stage. The few boys I made eye contact with had that bored “Oh, shit another speech” look on their faces. For an instant I felt like I was soon going to be doing them a huge favor. This was certainly not going to sound like anything they were used to in third-hour civics class. That much I knew.
I ascended to the stage and walked past the dignitaries settled in their comfortable chairs. As I looked at them one by one,
I noticed a man who was wearing antlers. A hat with antlers. It was not Bullwinkle and this was not Halloween. This man was the Chief Elk, the head of all Elks, and he held in his lap the Elks Club Boys State speech trophy. He had a big, wide smile, a smile more appropriate for a Kiwanis or a Rotarian, with more teeth than I thought humanly possible, and he was so proud to see me take the podium. Oh, man, I thought, this guy is about to have a very bad day. I hope they did a patdown.
Unrolling my pages of paper, I peered out at the mass of newly minted testosterone. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds who should have been doing anything right now—shooting hoops, kissing girls, gutting trout—anything but sitting here listening to me. I took a deep breath and began the speech.
“How dare the Elks Club…” I remember it was somewhere around that point when I could feel a whoosh of tension in the room, hundreds murmuring, snickering under their breath. Please God, I thought, could some responsible adult come up to the podium immediately and put an end to this!
No one did. I motored onward, and near the end I could hear the cadence in my voice and I thought this wouldn’t be half bad if I were singing it in a rock band. I finished with my plea that the Elks change their ways and, as I turned my head to see the crimson tide that was now the face of the Chief Elk, his teeth resembling two chainsaws ready to shred my sorry self, I blurted out, “And you can keep your stinkin’ trophy!”
The place went insane. Nearly two thousand boys leapt to their feet and whooped and hollered and cheered me. The hollering wouldn’t stop and order had to be restored. I jumped off the stage and tried to get out of there, my escape route having been preplanned. But too many of the Boys Staters wanted to shake my hand or slap my back locker-room style, and this slowed me down. A reporter began to make his way toward me, notebook in hand. He introduced himself and said that he was astonished at what he had just seen and was going to write something and put it over the wire. He asked me a few questions about where I was from and other things that I didn’t want to answer. I broke away and headed quickly out a side door. Keeping my head down and avoiding the main campus path, I made it back to the Kellogg Dorms, checked the vending machine for Ruffles, rushed to my room and bolted the door.
The machine was out of Ruffles, but there was the Guess Who, and I turned it up so I could have some time to figure out what in hell’s name I’d just done.
At least two hours passed, and it seemed like I was in the clear. No authorities had come to take me away, no Elks militia had arrived seeking revenge. All seemed to be back to normal.
Until the knock on the door.
“Hey,” the anonymous voice barked. “There’s a call for you.”
The dorm rooms had no phones.
“Where’s the phone?” I asked without opening the door.
“Down at the end of the hall.”
Ugh. That was a long walk. But I needed Ruffles, and maybe they had restocked the machine. I opened the door and headed down the long hallway to the one public phone. The receiver hung dangling by its cord, like a dead man swinging from the gallows. What I didn’t know was that on the other end of the line was the rest of my life.
“Hello?” I answered nervously, wondering who would even know where I was or how to reach me.
“Hello, is this Michael Moore?” the voice on the line asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m a producer here at the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite in New York. We got this story that came over the wire about what you did today, and we’d like to send a crew over to interview you for tonight’s newscast.”
“Huh?” What was he talking about?
“We’re doing a story on your speech exposing the Elks Club and their racial policies. We want you to come on TV.”
Come on TV? There wasn’t enough Clearasil in the world to get me to do that.
“Uh, no thank you. I have to get back to my room. Bye.”
I hung up and ran back to the room and locked the door again. But it didn’t matter. This became my first-ever media lesson: I don’t get to decide what goes in the morning paper or on the nightly news. That night, I was introduced to the world.
“And today in Lansing, Michigan, a seventeen-year-old boy gave a speech that took on the Elks Club and their segregationist practices, shedding light on the fact that it is still legal for private clubs in this country to discriminate on the basis of race.…”
The next day the dorm phone rang off the hook, even as I was packing up to leave. I didn’t answer any of the calls, but I heard from the other boys that there were reporters phoning from the Associated Press, two TV networks, the NAACP, a paper in New York and another in Chicago. Unless it involved them offering me free food or an introduction to a girl who might like me, I did not want to be bothered.
My parents were waiting outside in the car to take me back home. This much I’ll say: my parents were not unhappy with my actions.
When I got home, the phone continued to ring. Finally, a call came from the office of Michigan senator Phil Hart. He wanted to talk to me about coming to Washington. The aide said it was something about a bill that would be introduced, a bill to outlaw discrimination by private entities. A congressman would be calling me about testifying in front of a congressional committee. Would I be willing to do that?
No!! Why were they bothering me? Hadn’t I done enough? I didn’t mean to cause such a ruckus.
I thanked him and said I would discuss it with my parents (though I never told them; they would have wanted me to go!). I went outside to mow the lawn. We lived on Main Street, on a corner, across the street from the town fire station and kitty-corner from the town bowling alley. Over the din of the mower’s engine I could faintly hear the honk of a horn.
“Hey, Mike!” shouted Jan Kittel from the car that had just pulled up to the curb. With her was another girl from our class. I had known Jan since fifth grade in Catholic school. In the past year she and I were partners on the debate team. I loved her. She was smart and pretty and very funny. I waved.
“Hey, c’mere! We heard about what you did at Boys State!” she said excitedly. “Man, that was something! You rocked it! I’m so proud of you.”
I was ill equipped to handle the range of feelings and body temperature I was experiencing. I had absolutely no clue where to go with this other than to stutter out a “thanks.” They got out of the car and she made me tell them the whole story, complete with the near riot I caused, which resulted in a lot of “right-ons!” and “farm outs!”—and, yes, a big hug for my efforts. They were running an errand and had to get going, but not before she said she hoped to see me again that summer.
“You and I will kick ass in debate this year,” she offered, as I glanced in relief at the EMS unit parked in front of the fire station. “It’ll be fun.”
They drove off and I finished the lawn. It dawned on me that doing something political had brought me both a lot of grief and a girl who stopped by to see me. Maybe I was too harsh on the class officer types who populated Boys State with their geeklike love of all things political. Maybe they knew a certain secret. Or maybe they would all just grow up to populate Congress with their slick, smarmy selves, selling the rest of us out at the drop of a dime. Maybe.
The following year was not a good one for the Elks Clubs of America. Many states denied them their liquor licenses (the unkindest cut of all). Grants and funds became scarce. Various bills in Congress to stop them and other private clubs were debated. And then the federal courts in D.C. dealt them a death blow by taking away their tax exempt status. Facing total collapse and the scorn of the majority of the nation, the Elks Club voted to drop their Caucasians Only policy. Other private clubs followed suit. The ripple effect of this was that now racial discrimination everywhere in America, be it public or private, was prohibited.
My speech was occasionally cited as a spark for this march forward in racial fixing in the great American experiment, but there were other speeches far more eloquent than mine. Most import
ant for me, I learned a valuable lesson: That change can occur, and it can occur anywhere, with even the simplest of people and craziest of intentions, and that creating change didn’t always require having to devote your every waking hour to it with mass meetings and organizations and protests and TV appearances with Walter Cronkite.
Sometimes change can occur because all you wanted was a bag of potato chips.
Zoe
HER BOYFRIEND CALLED ME from the hospital.
“The abortion, Mike. They botched it. We never made it to New York.”
Abortion was illegal, a crime, in Michigan in 1971, as it was in most states. If you got pregnant, nine months later you had a baby. And that was that.
I was closer to Zoe than I was to perhaps any other girl in high school. She was what you would call a best friend. She had a big curly fro of hippie hair that landed wherever it damned well pleased. She played piano but was also a prodigy on the violin—which she would only play while barefoot. She smoked pot on occasion in her parents’ house, and on rare nights would take LSD “to free myself from the Fascist cop inside me.” Zoe was a free spirit, well read, and not afraid to speak her mind. I thought, some day she will change this world.
Which made her choice of a boyfriend in Tucker all the more puzzling. Tucker was completely clueless and looked like he’d be happiest sticking a blade between your ribs, or drag racing. He was from the “tough neighborhood” in town (such as it was for Davison). His favorite pastime was picking fights, and though Zoe tried to reform him, his love of fisticuffs kept his dance card filled with numerous school suspensions. He treated basic common sense as if it were a “sissy thing,” and he knew little of the world outside his trailer park; I’d be surprised if he had ever traveled more than five miles from his home in his lifetime.
But Tucker had the smile of the Sundance Kid and the eyes of James Dean, and Zoe loved him madly. He wore leather shit-kicking boots and had a chain attached to his belt loop—but with nothing on the end of it, as he was too broke to afford a wallet and poorer still to have anything to put in it. A cigarette was always dangling out the side of his mouth, and he had the uncanny knack of being able to inhale and blow out the smoke without ever touching the Camel.
Here Comes Trouble Page 16
