January 2011

Sir: A number of your readers have brought to my attention the statement from “The Gra-a-nd Parade” [February, 1969], about the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York, which reads: “A bill was proposed to the City Council by a member with the obviously un-Gaelic name of Woodward Kingman, asking that all parades be moved to a Sunday or a legal holiday.”

This is a serious misstatement of fact. I enclose a copy of my bill along with a copy of the existing ordinance, from which you can clearly see that my amendment would merely prohibit the holding of parades after 9:00 P.M. in residential areas or after 10:00 P.M. in congested areas. Furthermore, my bill would not alter the existing “Grandfather Clause” which (as pointed out in your article) excludes the St. Patrick’s Day Parade from any restrictions of the ordinance.

Besides being untrue, the above-mentioned statement in your article carries the unfortunate implication that I am anti-Irish. For anyone involved in politics in New York City (as I am), this is obviously very damaging. …

Sir: I enjoyed mightily “Captain of the Franklin ” [Before the Colors Fade, April, 1969]. Perhaps I can partly explain why the Franklin “became the most-decorated ship with the most-decorated crew in naval history.”

It is true history and will add another hero, namely Samuel Wolf. Sam Wolf was a very able if not so young attorney who during the latter years of World War II as a lieutenant commander faithfully performed the duty of permanent defense counsel of the General Court Martial in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. These duties and a small office on the second floor of an ancient sail loft in the yard occupied by the General Court Martial were shared with me. We worked well together at the task of defending an almost endless number of young officers and enlisted men who had fouled up under naval discipline and regulations.

Sir: … To say that I was astounded to find an article by Galbraith in your publication is putting it mildly. I have no use for such Extremists, either to the Right or to the Left, and certainly no knowledgeable person would deny that men such as Galbraith and A.D.A. represent the extreme Left just as the Birchers represent the extreme Right. In addition to not wanting my children exposed, and under the guise of the implied approval of a respectable publication to the onesided viewpoint of Extremists, the criticism, actual and suggested, in this article, of respected persons—some living and others unable to defend themselves because of recent deaths—is in the poorest possible taste … and for you to publish a purely propaganda item such as this that has no historical or current value, purely for the aggrandizement of the author, is unforgivable. …

Sir: We were pleased to see that A MERICAN H ERITAGE has such active interest in the preservation of historical source materials [“The Case of the Vanishing Records,” August, 1969]. Deterioration is, of course, an archenemy of history—an extremely serious matter that deserves increased public attention, particularly from historians: You performed a valuable public service by publishing the article. At the same time, we should point out a few facts that the article did not adequately reflect.

Included in what you call documents are manuscripts and archives. Being the holder of more such material than any other depository in the Western Hemisphere, at least, our primary concern—like that of archivists and curators everywhere—is the preservation of unique documents. Unlike most books, photographs, and motion pictures, documents do not normally exist in multiple copies. Your “case,” then, fails to encompass the entire problem or to direct more than passing attention to what could be considered the most dire aspect of the problem.

Sir: I hope that you will shock a good many people into a realization of the problem facing us. …

Sir: I have just read the extraordinary and marvelous “Plain Tales from the Embassy, or with John Kenneth GaIbraith in India,” in your October issue. …

I have been a subscriber to AMERICAN HERITAGE since your very first issues. I have all of them. None, before, has ever delighted me so much.

Sir: … The article on the 1938 hurricane [August, 1969] brought back so many memories to me and my friends that I have let many people borrow this issue. One of these people, a Negro neighbor who had never read the A MERICAN H ERITAGE before, enjoyed the article, but he was upset as he returned the copy with the remark, as he looked at the cover, “Is that America’s heritage?” I missed his point at first, so he pointed out the Negro servant, on his knees, while the Rev. William H. H. Murray is standing in “full ambiance.” He is far from a radical, in fact he is the typical “Uncle Tom” to his militant friends. He feels more should be done to get the Negro “off his knees,” and as Mr. Chew’s article on black history pointed out, perhaps the Negro has not made more history or progress because he did spend so much time on his knees. With so many other beautiful illustrations used for the Adirondacks article might not one of these have been in better taste?

Sir: I was alternately sickened and infuriated by Mr. Peter Chew’s high-flown sophistry about the alleged perils of “black mythology” until I realized how devastatingly his argument was demolished by your cover illustration. Was this deadly irony intentional? Or are you, and Mr. Chew, and the rest of us, simply the dumb, unwitting victims of a racism we profess to despise?

Sir: The article on black history is timely and addressed to a growing volume of error and indiscriminate injustice based on ignorance, prejudice, and unjustified self-esteem. The blacks in America have done some great things, but they have neither been so ignored or concealed as is hinted. This article will do much to cause reflection on those black and white historians who prefer good myth or bad myth to truth.

Unfortunately, however, I think the author has been somewhat unfair to Crispus Attucks.

The Boston Gazette of Tuesday, October 2, 1750, has the following advertisement:

“Ran away from his master William Bowen of Framingham on the 3Oth of September last, a MULATTO Fellow, about 27 years of age, named CRISPUS , 6 feet and 8 inches high, short curl’d hair, his Knees nearer together than common etc.”

Sir: … The article “Lament for a Lost Eden,” by Eliot Porter [October, 1969], affords an excellent example of what I feared in connection with your publication going “conservationist”… In the last paragraph, the author says: “This is the monument men have built —you and I —not to the lost Eden so few knew, but to their engineering ingenuity and ruthless ability to transform the land, to remake it simply for the sake of remaking it, thoughtlessly, improvidently.” This is pure fanaticism and unworthy of publication in A MERICAN H ERITAGE . I hate fanatics on either side of a question.