I stare at a newspaper image from sixty years ago.
Young men wear sports jackets and white shirts.
A young woman, sweatered,
stares at the floor. Another seems asleep, her head resting
on a steel filing cabinet.
A reporter seems to ask questions, a microphone held by another.
The headline blares “39 arrested
in draft board sit-in against the war,”
a message repeated at the anniversary celebration
five decades later on.
I do not remember the sports jackets. I am pretty sure I wore
a flannel shirt on that Michigan October day.
The photo does not capture our chatting, our singing freedom songs.
After so many years, few of the faces seem familiar,
though once many were fellow SDS’ers, and dear friends.
The story does not mention being carried roughly down the stairway
by outraged cops, nor the drunk tank we men spent the night in,
on a filthy floor, packed like corpses on an airplane home from ‘nam.
But I do remember the number arrested, arraigned, convicted.
Fifty-four, not 39. Thirty-nine were men. Fifteen were women.
These numbers are fixed in my memory,
since my fiancé and I, and the wife of my professor who also was busted,
handled the bail.
Thirty-nine is the message of history, no women
need apply.
Non-persons hold up the sky.
*SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), founded in the early ‘60’s. It went through rapid changes
politically, particularly from about 1966 onwards.
