THE REVEREND GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

June 2, Friday: George Mills Houser was born in Cleveland, Ohio to a Methodist missionary couple, the Reverend Otto Henry Houser and Ethel Mills Houser. He would be with his parents at Manila in the Philippine Islands and turn eight while the family was in London on its way back to the United States. Influenced by Henry David Thoreau and his theories on how to use nonviolent resistance to achieve social change, he would join the War Resisters League and in November 1940 while studying at Union Theological Seminary in New York become a war protestor, and join with other ministerial students in conscientious objection to draft registration. After release from the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut with a felony record, he would find himself unwelcome at the Union Theological Seminary because he had in that principled stand somehow discredited this Christian institution, and would need to complete his ministerial training instead at the Theological Seminary in Chicago.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1916

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

George Mills Houser turned 8 while the family was in London, on its way back to the United States from an extended missionary tour at Manila in the Philippine Islands.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1924

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Richard Bartlett Gregg’s THE POWER OF NON VIOLENCE, which in 1960 would be revised as THE POWER OF NON-VIOLENCE and republished with a foreword by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

George Mills Houser matriculated at the University of Denver.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1934

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Lin Yu-t’ang’s MY COUNTRY AND MY PEOPLE.

In Shanghai, during this year and a portion of the following one, he would translate Shen Fu’s early 19th-Century masterpiece FU-SHENG LIU-CHI as SIX CHAPTERS OF A FLOATING LIFE. (This was, it goes without saying, very much a labor of love.)

During this school year, George Mills Houser was attending Lingnan University as an exchange student.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1935

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Having attended the University of Denver for several years, George Mills Houser matriculated at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1938

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Fall: Eight students at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan, although eligible for deferment, refused to register for the draft. William Lovell, Richard Wichlei, Meredith Dallas, David Dellinger, Joseph Bevilacqua, George Mills Houser, Donald Benedict, and Howard Spragg would spend a year in prison.1

“Hell no, I won’t go.”

In a Columbia University laboratory on Manhattan Island, in what would become “the Manhattan Project,” Enrico Fermi’s team of physicists split the atom.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1940

1. Michael Meyer has asserted that “There was not one American analysis of even article length on “CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE” ... prior to the 1940s.” However, at the Library of Congress there are about 17,000 books concerning Jesus (the second most favorite topic, Shakespeare, having merely some 8,000+ titles). You don’t suppose therefore that these students had been reading in one or another of the many books about Jesus, and that reading had turned them into subversives?

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

ATOM BOMB

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

October 16, Wednesday: Tres Piezas op.6 for piano by Alberto Ginastera was performed for the initial time, in Montevideo.

This was “Registration Day” for the 1st peacetime draft in US history. Over 16,000,000 American men lined up as demanded by the Selective Training and Service Act. The Union 8, eight seminarians of the Union Theology Seminary in Manhattan, young men who anyway would be immune to the draft, refused to register and were taken into custody. Among them were Dave Dellinger and George Houser.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

MILITARY CONSCRIPTION

Reverend George Houser “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Elbert Russell retired as dean of the Duke School of Religion in Durham, North Carolina (he would continue to offer classes until 1945). The Divinity School Alumni Association established the Elbert Russell Scholarship in his honor.2

Dr. David Tillerson Smith’s DISEASES DUE TO FUNGI. He would serve as consultant to the Secretary of War (until 1945). Susan Gower Smith, David Tillerson Smith, and Jasper Lamar Callaway’s DYSFUNCTION OF THE SEBACEOUS GLANDS ASSOCIATED WITH PELLAGRA.

When, in the wake of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Friend Bayard Rustin’s co-workers in the Young Communist League did an abrupt about-face on the issue of segregation in the American military, the young black man became aware that their antiracism was merely a ploy, that what mattered to them was their theology, and he broke ranks with them. Soon he would become involved with A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and would head up the youth wing of a projected march on Washington that Randolph was envisioning. When Randolph cancelled that demonstration because President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had issued Executive Order #8802 forbidding racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries, Rustin transferred his organizing efforts to the peace movement, at first as Race Relations Secretary with the Fellowship of Reconciliation and later as the first field secretary of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, with the American Friends Service Committee, with the Socialist Party, and with the War Resisters League.

The 18th Anniversary dinner of the War Resisters League.

After release with a felony record from the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, George Mills Houser found himself unwelcome back at the Union Theological Seminary (administrators at that Christian institution considered that he had by his principled stand against war and against draft registration brought discredit upon them). To complete ministerial training, this student would need to transfer to the Theological Seminary in Chicago.

June: The Reverend George Mills Houser helped the Reverend A.J. Muste and A. Philip Randolph organize their March on Washington against racial discrimination in the armed forces (the demonstration would be called off when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25th, using the Fair Employment Act to bar discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus.

1941

2. At this point he was editing a diary written by his aunt Rebecca Russell, who had been a schoolteacher in their home neighborhood of West Newton south of Indianapolis, Indiana.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

June 25, Wednesday: Japan announced a protectorate over Indochina.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, using the Fair Employment Act to bar racial and religious discrimination in defense industries and federal bureaus.

The President refused to invoke the Neutrality Act regarding the USSR. This allowed American ships to carry war materials to the Soviet Union.

Finland decided to declare war on Russia.

This night, Lithuanian partisans in Kovno (Kaunas), without any urging from the Germans, killed 1,500 Jews, burned several synagogues plus 60 houses in the Jewish quarter. Over the next few nights, 2,300 Jews would be killed.

Irving Fine got married with Verna Rudnick, from a wealthy family and a recent graduate of Wellesley College, at the Kenmore Hotel in Boston.

WORLD WAR II

ANTISEMITISM

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Lyndon LaRouche, Jr. dropped out of Northeastern University in Boston.

George Mills Houser completed ministerial training at the Chicago Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Methodist elder, deacon, and minister. He married there in Chicago. He and his wife would produce a son, Steven Houser. He became Youth Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and would work closely with the Reverend A.J. Muste, the leader of the organization. He, James Farmer, and Friend Bayard Rustin established the Congress on Racial Equality (members of this “CORE” had been deeply influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent civil disobedience campaign that he used successfully against British rule in India and had convinced themselves that the same confrontational methods of nonviolent civil disobedience could be employed by African Americans to obtain civil rights in America).

German students from the White Rose resistance movement against the Hitler regime distributed thousands of leaflets exposing the nature of the Nazis and their treatment of Jews. They urged “obstruction of the war machine by passive resistance, including sabotage.” Several of its leaders would in 1943 be tortured to death, and several guillotined.

1942

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

May: Paula Hitler, Adolf Hitler’s weak-minded younger sister, was living in Vienna when she was interrogated. She pled with the Americans: “He was my brother.” She would continue under the name Frau Wolf — a name her famous brother had asked her to adopt after his 1938 Anschluss with Austria.

For the journal Equality, the Reverend George Mills Houser explained his views on non-violence:

A person trying to practice non-violence will refuse toretaliate violently. He merely absorbs the physical punishment.This sounds crazy to the average person, who has been taught toprotect himself by retaliating when attacked, even if he doestake a beating in the process. Why, then, is non-retaliationessential to the non-violent approach? From the negativestandpoint, if non-violence is forsaken by the minority groupit means the police can be called to arrest them. From thepositive point of view, non-retaliatory action may make possiblethe winning of the support of the public, of the police, and ofthe opposition.

The Croatian armed forces, as well as hordes of civilian refugees, were fleeing the triumphant Yugoslav communist partisans of Tito. On the border between Austria and Slovenia, in a field at Bleiburg crowded with an estimated 100,000 Croatian troops and civilian refugees, negotiations were proceeding for the Croatian troops to stack their arms for the British forces when, from the wooded hills surrounding this field, Titoists opened up with machine-guns. Densely packed, incapable of fleeing or taking any sort of cover, as the machine-guns swung back and forth people were falling in windrows. Within minutes thousands lay dead or dying, and panicked horses were dragging their wagons over the bodies of the fallen. Those who survived this would be driven back across the border to be dealt with by the waiting Titoists. At other roads along the border, masses of Croatian soldiers and civilians were being turned back after being disarmed by the British Army. They were being reassured that they were being transported to camps in Italy, but actually they were being forcibly repatriated, and at the town of Maribor the Titoists would be shooting them down by the thousands in a continuous slaughter that would be going on for more than a week. Under the direction of Serbian officers, the 17th Partisan Assault Division executed approximately 40,000 in the Tezen Forest at Maribor, while at Sestine approximately 5,000 were executed, and at Vrgin Most approximately 7,000. The naked corpses of thousands of Serbs and Slovene Home Guard (Domobranci) from the camp at Viktring in Austria were heaved into a deep chasm at Kocevje, and then out of an awareness that in the top layers of such a pile of bodies, somebody might still be able to breathe while playing dead, grenades were thrown down — but this was not entirely effective as there would indeed be three or four survivors who would after the fall of darkness would be able to claw their way out from underneath other bodies and up the sides of the chasm. In total, 12,196 Croats, 5,480 Serbs, 8,263 Slovenes, and 400 Montenegrins were being handed over to the Titoists unarmed for their execution. The estimate is that around 180,000 Croatian soldiers and civilian refugees were executed by the Titoists. (In 1999, during the construction of the Slovenian section of a highway between Nürnberg and Zagreb, between Pesnica and Slivnica the bulldozers would plow a swath 60 meters wide across an anti-tank ditch containing the remains of 1,179 Croatian soldiers. This count of 1,179 was made in but this 60-meter

1945

WORLD WAR II

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

swath, out of an anti-tank trench that had once stretched a kilometer and a half in each direction! Since the collapse of the communist regime in 1990, around 110 such sites have been discovered in Slovenian territory. Who was ultimately responsible for these forced repatriations? Winston Churchill had expressly forbidden the sending back of any who were unwilling to go, but the Resident Minister at Field Marshal Alexander’s headquarters, Harold MacMillan –later a Prime Minister of Great Britain– seems to have ignored the instructions — he was never interrogated about this denial of Geneva Convention protections to POWs because, before his involvement was discovered, he had already died.)The population of the Crystal City, Texas wartime detention camp peaked at 3,326.

In Russian-occupied zones of Eastern Europe and Germany, hundreds of thousands of civilian men and women, Poles, Czechs, Romanians, and Germans, were being transported to the Urals where they would be used by the USSR as slave laborers until their release in the late 1940s.In a merciless revenge perpetrated upon the entire German civilian population of Eastern Europe during the closing stages of the war and for many months afterward, the lives of over 2,000,000 ethnic German men, women, and children were being sacrificed. For generations these Germans had lived and toiled in areas that today are part of central and Eastern Europe. Around 15,000,000 such “Volksdeutsche” were being driven from their homes and ancestral lands back into the Allied occupied zones of Germany. Blind to the political consequences of allowing the Soviets to be the ones to liberate Czechoslovakia, our American armies halted at the Karlsbad-Pilsen-Budweis line in strict accordance with the agreements into which our leaders had entered at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. The Soviet Army would be unconcerned and thus the Sudeten Germans would have no protection whatever from the Czechs with their raw memories of the Lidice massacre

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

(what goes around comes around, you know). Soldiers were being disarmed, tied to stakes, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Wounded soldiers obtained at the local hospital were strung from the lampposts in Wenzell Square with fires beneath them so they might suffer maximally while roasting slowly. Note that although these ethnic Germans had been living for years in fear of Russian savagery — the Soviets were merely allowing this to happen, and it was being performed on them by people who were their former neighbors. Thousands of the German residents were being murdered in their homes by Czechs, while others were being forced into interment camps to be abused and maltreated before being expelled. While you might have been supposing that religion would be a moderating factor in such exigencies, it is on the record that Bishop Beranek of Prague declared “If a Czech comes to me and confesses to having killed a German, I absolve him immediately.”

Whatgoesaroundkeepscomingaroundandaroundandaround...

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Upon his release from federal penitentiary, Bayard Rustin began to direct A. Philip Randolph’s Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service, which would be instrumental in securing President Harry S Truman’s July 26, 1948 order eliminating racial segregation in the United States Armed Forces and would then change its name to League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience. He had also of course gotten involved again with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The 1946 court decision in the case of Irene Morgan had indicated that American black citizens were within their rights in resisting Jim Crow segregation in interstate travel. Early in this year the Congress of Racial Equality therefore sent out nine black/white male teams for a “Freedom Ride” or “Journey of Reconciliation” by public bus conveyance through the states of the upper south, with the black man sitting in a seat reserved for whites at the front of the bus and the white man sitting in a seat reserved for blacks at the back of the bus. Organized by the Reverend George Mills Houser and Friend Bayard, this “Journey of Reconciliation” was to be a two-week pilgrimage by Trailways Bus through Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Thurgood Marshall, head of the legal department of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, warned that a Journey of Reconciliation might result in “wholesale slaughter with no good achieved.” Walter White of the NAACP therefore opposed any such direct action, although during the campaign he would volunteer the service of its southern attorneys. Toward the end of this year and at the beginning of the next, therefore, Friend Bayard and other black protestors would spend 22 days on a chain gang. He would report on this in a series “22 Days on a Chain Gang” in The New York Post. Taken off the Trailways bus with him would be Igal Roodenko, his white teammate. North Carolina Judge Henry Whitfield verified with Roodenko that he was indeed a Jew, and then said:

“Well, it’s about time you Jews from New York learned that youcan't come down here bringing your nigras with you to upset thecustoms of the South. Just to teach you a lesson, I gave your

1947

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

black boys thirty days, and I give you ninety.”

Bad Nigra = 30 days

Bad Jew = 90 days

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

In the Durham Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends:

Clerks of Meeting

1943-1947 Edward K. Kraybill

1947-1948 William Van Hoy, Jr.

1949-1949 John de J. Pemberton, Jr.

1950-1951 Harry R. Stevens

1951-1952 John A. Barlow

1952-1957 Susan Gower Smith

1957-1960 Frances C. Jeffers

1960-1961 Cyrus M. Johnson

1961-1965 Peter H. Klopfer

1965-1967 Rebecca W. Fillmore

1967-1968 David Tillerson Smith

1968-1970 Ernest Albert Hartley

1970-1971 John Hunter

1971-1972 John Gamble

1972-1974 Lyle B. Snider (2 terms)

1974-1975 Helen Gardella

1976-1978 Cheryl F. Junk

1978-1980 Alice S. Keighton

1980-1982 John B. Hunter

1982-1984 Edward M. Arnett

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

April: The Journey of Reconciliation, the first freedom ride through the American South, was organized by CORE founders and WWII conscientious objectors the Reverend George Mills Houser and Friend Bayard Rustin.

If you are a Negro, sit in a front seat. If you are white, sitin a rear seat. If the driver asks you to move, tell him calmly and courteously:“As an interstate passenger I have a right to sit anywhere inthis bus. This is the law as laid down by the United States

1984-1986 Calhoun D. Geiger

1986-1988 John P. Stratton

1988-1990 J. Robert Passmore

1990-1992 Karen Cole Stewart

1992-1995 Kathleen Davidson March

1995-1998 Nikki Vangsnes

1998-2000 Co-clerks J. Robert Passmore& Karen Cole Stewart

2000-2002 Amy Brannock

2002-2002 Jamie Hysjulien (Acting)

2002-2005 William Thomas O’Connor

2005-2007 Terry Graedon

2007-2009 Anne Akwari

2009-2012 Joe Graedon

2012-2013 Marguerite Dingman

2013- Co-clerks Cathy Bridge & David Bridge

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Supreme Court.”If the driver summons the police and repeats his order in theirpresence, tell him exactly what you said when he first asked youto move.If the police ask you to “come along,” without putting you underarrest, tell them you will not go until you are put under arrest.If the police put you under arrest, go with them peacefully. Atthe police station, phone the nearest headquarters of the NAACP,or one of your lawyers. They will assist you.

The Reverend Houser and Friend Bayard wrote in Fellowship Magazine that:

On June 3, 1946, the Supreme Court of the United States announcedits decision in the case of Irene Morgan versus the Commonwealthof Virginia. State laws demanding segregation of interstatepassengers on motor carriers are now unconstitutional forsegregation of passengers crossing state lines was declared an“undue burden on interstate commerce.” Thus it was decided thatstate Jim Crow laws do not affect interstate travelers. In alater decision in the Court of Appeals for the District ofColumbia, the Morgan decision was interpreted to apply tointerstate train travel as well as bus travel.The executive committee of the Congress of Racial Equality andthe racial-industrial committee of the Fellowship ofReconciliation decided that they should jointly sponsor a“Journey of Reconciliation” through the upper South, in orderto determine to how great an extent bus and train companies wererecognizing the Morgan decision. They also wished to learn thereaction of bus drivers, passengers, and police to those whononviolently and persistently challenge Jim Crow in interstatetravel.During the two-week period from April 9 to April 23, 1947, aninterracial group of men, traveling as a deputation team,visited fifteen cities in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,and Kentucky. More than thirty speaking engagements were metbefore church, NAACP, and college groups. The sixteenparticipants were:

Black Bayard Rustin, of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and part-timeworker with the American Friends Service Committee; WallaceNelson, freelance lecturer; Conrad Lynn, New York attorney;Andrew Johnson, Cincinnati student; Dennis Banks, Chicagomusician; William Worthy, of the New York Council for aPermanent FEPC; Eugene Stanley, of A. and T. College,Greensboro, North Carolina; Nathan Wright, church social workerfrom Cincinnati.

White George Houser, of the FOR and executive secretary of theCongress of Racial Equality; Ernest Bromley, Methodist ministerfrom North Carolina; James Peck, editor of the Workers Defense

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

League News Bulletin; Igal Roodenko, New York horticulturist;Worth Randle, Cincinnati biologist; Joseph Felmet, of theSouthern Workers Defense League; Homer Jack, executive secretaryof the Chicago Council Against Racial and ReligiousDiscrimination; Louis Adams, Methodist minister from NorthCarolina. During the two weeks of the trip, twenty-six tests ofcompany policies were made. Arrests occurred on six occasions,with a total of twelve men arrested.

April 9, Wednesday: The Freedom Riders of the Journey of Reconciliation, Friend Bayard Rustin, the Reverend George Mills Houser, James Peck, Igal Roodenko, Nathan Wright, Conrad Lynn, Wallace Nelson, Andrew Johnson, Eugene Stanley, Dennis Banks, William Worthy, Louis Adams, Joseph Felmet, Worth Randle, and Homer Jack, put their lives on the line by boarding their initial Trailways Bus, having no real clue of what the outcome of this action was going to be for them personally — whether they were going to be able to complete the trip without being strung up and lynched in one or another southern byway. Jesus hadn’t been afraid so why should they be afraid, etc.

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

February: The Council Against Intolerance in America gave the Reverend George Mills Houser and Friend Bayard Rustin, for their attempts to bring an end to segregation in interstate travel, the Thomas Jefferson Award for the Advancement of Democracy.3

1948

3. Shouldn’t it be a prerequisite, for receiving a “Thomas Jefferson” award, to have engendered at least one mulatto noncitizen? –Just asking.

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

September 1, Thursday: The family of the Reverend George Mills Houser moved to the Skyview Acres Cooperative in Rockland County, New York.

Aboard a US Air Force weather reconnaissance flight, filters picked up an unmistakable indication of (somewhere, somehow) a sudden large release of nuclear radiation into the atmosphere of the planet.

1949

A-BOMB

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Kenneth L. Carroll’s “Martha Simmonds, a Quaker Enigma” (Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society 53:1, pages 31-52).

The Reverend George Mills Houser was interviewed by Jervis Anderson for his A. PHILIP RANDOLPH: A BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT:

“We in the non-violent movement of the 1940s certainly thoughtthat we were initiating something of importance in Americanlife. Of course, we weren’t able to put it in perspective then.But we were filled with vim and vigor, and we hoped that a massmovement could develop, even if we did not think that we weregoing to produce it. In retrospect, I would say we wereprecursors. The things we did in the 1940s were the same thingsthat ushered the civil rights revolution. Our Journey ofReconciliation preceded the Freedom Rides of 1961 by fourteenyears. Conditions were not quite ready for the full-blownmovement when we were undertaking our initial actions. But Ithink we helped to lay the foundations for what followed, and Ifeel proud of that.”

1972

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

The old Quaker meetinghouse in Conanicut or Jamestown, Rhode Island was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Rather than having a School Committee of the New England Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends overlooking a single board of overseers for both the Moses Brown School of the Religious Society of Friends and the Lincoln School on the East Side of Providence, there would in the future be two separate boards of overseers, plus a Coordinating Committee of the New England Yearly Meeting. (The Schools Committee, which had been in existence since 1780, was to be laid down.)

There was formed an “Ad hoc Committee on the Long Range Future of the Relationship of the New England Yearly Meeting to the Moses Brown School and the Lincoln School.”

Calhoun D. Geiger left off being a director of Quaker Lake Camp in the piedmont region of North Carolina to become a teacher at the Carolina Friends School in Durham. He would initiate the Upper School Service Learning Program. After retiring as a teacher, he would continue to serve on the school’s Board, and teach basket weaving.

Clerks of Meeting

1943-1947 Edward K. Kraybill

1947-1948 William Van Hoy, Jr.

1949-1949 John de J. Pemberton, Jr.

1950-1951 Harry R. Stevens

1951-1952 John A. Barlow

1952-1957 Susan Gower Smith

1957-1960 Frances C. Jeffers

1960-1961 Cyrus M. Johnson

1961-1965 Peter H. Klopfer

1965-1967 Rebecca W. Fillmore

1967-1968 David Tillerson Smith

1968-1970 Ernest Albert Hartley

1970-1971 John Hunter

1971-1972 John Gamble

1972-1974 Lyle B. Snider (2 terms)

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

1974-1975 Helen Gardella

1976-1978 Cheryl F. Junk

1978-1980 Alice S. Keighton

1980-1982 John B. Hunter

1982-1984 Edward M. Arnett

1984-1986 Calhoun D. Geiger

1986-1988 John P. Stratton

1988-1990 J. Robert Passmore

1990-1992 Karen Cole Stewart

1992-1995 Kathleen Davidson March

1995-1998 Nikki Vangsnes

1998-2000 Co-clerks J. Robert Passmore& Karen Cole Stewart

2000-2002 Amy Brannock

2002-2002 Jamie Hysjulien (Acting)

2002-2005 William Thomas O’Connor

2005-2007 Terry Graedon

2007-2009 Anne Akwari

2009-2012 Joe Graedon

2012-2013 Marguerite Dingman

2013- Co-clerks Cathy Bridge & David Bridge

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

The United Nations enacted an Optional Protocol to its International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This contained a provision optionally banning the execution of any person under 18 years of age (China would be abolishing such executions in 1997 and Pakistan in 2000, while the United States of America would remain in unity with Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia — the nations, of this bluegreen planet with chocolate, that still have not enlisted in support of this optional rule against killing children).4

The Reverend George Mills Houser’s NO ONE CAN STOP THE RAIN:

My introduction to the African liberation struggle began with

1989

May 18, 1990 Dalton Prejean Black Male Louisiana

February 11, 1992 Johnny Frank Garrett White Male Texas

July 1, 1993 Curtis Paul Harris Black Male Texas

July 28, 1993 Frederick Lasley Black Male Missouri

August 24, 1993 Ruben Montoya Cantu Latino Male Texas

December 7, 1993 Christopher Burger White Male Georgia

April 24, 1998 Joseph John Cannon White Male Texas

May 18, 1998 Robert Anthony Carter Black Male Texas

October 14, 1998 Dwayne Allen Wright Black Male Virginia

February 4, 1999 Sean Richard Sellers White Male Oklahoma

January 10, 2000 Douglas Christopher Thomas White Male Virginia

January 13, 2000 Steve Edward Roach White Male Virginia

January 25, 2000 Glen Charles McGinnis Black Male Texas

June 22, 2000 Gary Lee Graham Black Male Texas

October 22, 2001 Gerald Lee Mitchell Black Male Texas

May 28, 2002 Napoleon Beazley Black Male Texas

August 8, 2002 T.J. Jones Black Male Texas

August 28, 2002 Toronto Markkey Patterson Black Male Texas

April 3, 2003 Scott Allen Hain White Male Oklahoma

4. In 2005 the US Supreme Court would (with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist with Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O’Connor dissenting) prohibit state execution of offenders who had been under the age of 16.

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

the “Campaign to Defy Unjust Laws,” sponsored by the AfricanNational Congress. The year was 1952. Word about plans for theforthcoming massive nonviolent Defiance Campaign to resist theapartheid laws came to me from my friend and co-worker BillSutherland through a South African editor whom he had met inLondon. Sutherland and I were both pacifists, and had workedtogether on numerous projects to combat segregation in theUnited States by non-violent methods.

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

July 19, Monday: Charles W. Sweeney, pilot of the B-29 “Bock’s Car” that on August 9, 1945 had dropped a bomb pretty close to Nagasaki, died at the age of 84.5

The Reverend George Mills Houser gave an interview to the editors of NO EASY VICTORIES.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

2004

5. The plutonium “Fat Man” had been the 1st bomb he had ever dropped on any enemy target. He wasn’t the bombardier — it’s not his fault the device not only failed to damage in any way any portion of its industrial target, but also killed more American prisoners of war than Japanese soldiers.

ATOMIC BOMBS

WORLD WAR II

NO EASY VICTORIES

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>.

Prepared: January 26, 2015

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER GEORGE MILLS HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.

GEORGE MILLS HOUSER REVEREND GEORGE HOUSER

HDT WHAT? INDEX

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.