An Act Surprising: Friday Evening

 

The days are short in February and it was nearly dark when we unloaded our gear at Stonehenge. Stonehenge was a student rental house made of stone. It was a couple of stories with two or three bedrooms. The Stonehenge name stuck because it was very old, nearly as old as the university itself. The house was hidden on the eastern slope of Mt. Oread in a very small wood between the Chancellor's residence and a row of fraternity houses. It had been a coop for a long time, before hippies, before beatniks. Through the years I have known several people who lived there. Nancy was one of the occupants in 1972. She didn't come with us to the action. I don't know else lived with here. It burned several years later and now is gone.

There were three or four sisters waiting there along with a few other folks, people who lived there, friends, etc. We sat around the living room and speculated. It was here that I first heard about the Affirmative Action Office announcement. We listened to music...Carol King's Tapestry or perhaps Janis Joplin. We wondered what the action might be, where we would be by the end of this evening, by the end of next week. No one knew anything about it, but everyone was up for it.

My two were the only children a Stonehenge. They played around the house, up and down the staircase. Nancy was one of my son's teachers at preschool. The wind picked up, the sun and the temperature went down.

It was totally dark when the telephone instructions came. "Be ready. Cars are on their way to pick you up." The destination was still a secret but the disembodied voice asked how many cars we would need and were we ready.

It was hardly five minutes from the call until the arrival of the cars. Loading would have taken only a few minutes but would have seemed like forever. The cars took us to the alley between Louisiana and Ohio streets - high on the hill a block east of the main campus. As the cars pulled into the alley, they shut off their lights. We ran silently. Behind 1332 Louisiana the cars stopped. Instructions were to get out of the car very quietly and someone would be waiting at the back door. No talking. Even the children understood this rule and followed it. There was not even nervous giggling as we took our back packs and in utter darkness made our way to the basement door. We did not need to knock. Sisters were watching and waiting.

The entry into the building provides my second most vivid memory of the February Sisters experience. There were no lights lit. We went from cold darkness to warm darkness. A sister greeted us at the door with not quite whispered words and she held a flashlight towards the floor to light our way to the staircase that ran up the front of the structure. It was cave like, womb like.

We walked up the stairs past the front double doors which had chains wrapped around the crash bar opener. A big padlock held the chains in place. Mary felt quite empowered by the fact that women and only women had planned and carried out this action. The chains made her feel in control. Late, she volunteered for front door duty, perhaps just to stand by those thick chains and feel their power.

All the images of oracular caves sacred to Demeter and Isis rushed through my consciousness and became part of my personal experience. The images of ancient women, fresh from rigorous spiritual and physical cleansing, sleeping on the stone cold floor of Athena's cave or Persephone's temple were clear before me in he darkness above the pool of light. And since that day, every time I read something new about the caves, the womb of the goddess, I relive that entry again. It could not have taken a full minute to cross the blackness to the front of the building but it was centuries of culture that we walked through.

We bury our dead in the western world because it is a replacing of the person into the womb of our mother Earth. So we can be born again into the land of the shades, Valhalla, Hades, Sheol, Annwn. The evening turned out to be a death and rebirth of a most valuable kind for me, at least.

The stairwell was lighted with emergency lighting. Upstairs and to the side of the building away from the street house lights were lit in what seemed like a blaze after the darkness through which we had come.

The building was an old Victorian house that had been purchased by University Endowment. It was being used by the East Asian Studies program until the construction of the new Wescoe Hall was complete. It was three or four stories with an attic above that and sat on the east side of the crest of the hill. At least the university had left it looking like a residence on a street of large, old houses. It was across the street and down the block from the United Ministries building where Women's Coalition had it office. Because of the slope one could enter the basement at ground level and exit a floor up also at ground level.

The house had been broken into classrooms and offices. Home like this that were close to campus were often boarding houses with many bedrooms. Those were divided by partitions into smaller cubicles. The classrooms were on the lower levels where the rooms were larger, parlors and common rooms originally. The upm most floor was totally offices. Outside on the southern wall ran a metal fire escape that terminated at ground level and at t small window on the fourth floor. Windows led onto this staircase at each floor.

The front steps wandered through a small yard full of frozen bushes and grass. It made its way up to the sidewalk running along Louisiana Street. The front door, on story up from the basement opened onto a small porch hardly more than a stoop. Inside there was a small landing with stairs leading up to the main flower half a story above and stairs leading down to the basement. Because it was built as a residence, it was not cut neatly into little boxes. You had to go through some rooms to get to other rooms. Bathroom, however, were large.

Literature suggested that this building was chosen because the program would be moving and the house could then be used for a daycare center. I do not think it was suitable at all. The fire escape alone ruled out such a possibility. The thought of carrying a couple of small, wiggling, frightened toddlers down that clanking metal monstrosity amid smoke and flame was horrible to contemplate. Besides, there were more compelling reasons to choose East Asian. The action committee had a key.

Actually, they obtained a key from an East Asian staff member. This made accessibility extremely easy. It was also off the main campus and therefore seemed to be part of the town. The alley behind was used by actual citizens of the city to get into and out of garages. This made access in the middle of the night less obvious. Students resided on the street; this was comforting and it was thought I might provide some protection in case the administration got rough. Also, being a relatively small building, as university sites go, it was relatively easy to secure.

Already, one of the classrooms had been designated as a pantry and table laden with a variety of food were laid out. This is the most vivid image that my son has retained of the event. He was almost six years old. The quarter mistress committee had walked the alleys of Lawrence smeckling restaurant workers, many of them students and hippies, into donating the leftover food. (Thank you, sisters) I don't know if any of that committee was in the house. The two women I met later were not. Their work was much appreciated. We could have stayed longer than a week without replenishing our food supply. There was most likely a lounge room with a small stove and maybe even a small refrigerator that would be helpful in the long haul.

Another of the large rooms was declared a nursery and pallets, toys and children were deposited there. We took turns at child care. My daughter (2 and 1/2 years) Kirsten's best friend Kevin was also in the house. This helped entertain them both. Kevin's very infant sister came into the building but was later handed out a basement window into the arms of someone who took her to the designated baby-sitter, Jo. Jo had a couple of children already and the baby's father came and picked her up before the night was through. I don't know why the baby was removed; perhaps fear that we might actually be there a whole week.

Some rooms were declared sleeping rooms. Bedrolls were left there. Obviously, someone would have to be awake at all times, but if we stayed long, we would also obviously need to sleep. I don't know whether anyone actually slept that night - including the children.

In the corner of a smaller room a tiny piece was partitioned off into a reception office with a secretary's desk. There was a sister whose name I do not know who was on phone of this desk every time I looked that room. I assumed that she was talking to the women at the Coalition office across and down the street. She had a biological sister among the larger family of sisters although they were not twins. I imagined them talking to one another. Phone contact was constant. Also on that desk there were a number of walkie-talkies so that we could stay in tough even if the administration cut off the telephones. The other half of all these machines was in the Coalition Office. It seemed like there were a lot of them. I never saw them in use.

The largest and most centrally located room was our living room, our meeting room. This was where we came to wait until everyone who was entering the house arrived. We did not have to wait long. Some women were there before us, other followed. We were 35 women and 4 children. (Accounts in the media said there were 20 women in the house. There were 35, we counted.)

As soon as we were all inside and the basement door was chained and locked, we held a meeting. I have far more memories of meetings in the 1960s than of actually actions during the same period. It was at this meeting that we received our name, The February Sisters. There is some discrepancy of memory about the name. I thought the name was printed on papers being handed out on campus as we met. Mary rem3embers voting on the name. Both could be true.

In many cultures the naming of a new child is a major rite of passage. It endows the child with the characteristics it will carry throughout its life. We all loved the name, February Sisters, immediately. It was empowering and elating. We said it over and over - February Sisters, February Sisters...

This initial meeting was led by women who had secured the building. After the naming we began a discussion of consequences. Students could be suspended or expelled, various kinds of probations existed all of which, apparently, included notification of parents. There were some student women for whom this was a real fear. I was not a student. I thought most of these possibilities to be remote. But they were possibilities nonetheless. Staff could be fired; I was staff. I did not consider this a real threat, unless I actually missed a week or more of work. I enjoyed my work at the library, but it was just a data entry job. Faculty wives had to live with their own private consequences. No one thought they would be affected at all.

 

Anyone in the house was subject to arrest on charges of criminal trespass. If the administration decided to carry us out bodily, injury was possible, of course. After all student had been gunned down in the streets of Lawrence a year earlier. On the other hand, the university would not want brutality charges printed in the media.

During the discussion there were women who said that if we were still in the building come Monday morning, they would leave to attend classes. Whether or not allow them back in was another point and discussion of it was postponed.

I never felt personally threatened by any of this. I did not expect to lose my job or to be arrested. But there was still a thrill of danger about the experience. Paranoia did lurk in the corners of our minds.

It was decided that we would use only first names. That way we could not narc on each other even, I suppose, under torture. This was a group decision and was strictly kept throughout action. Even the negotiating team introduced themselves to SenEx with only first name.

Next up was Security. All doors were locked, chained and padlocked. All windows were closed and latched. The only access would be the fire escape. Traffic could be monitored easily from the upstairs entry. There would always be someone awake at that window and at each door. No one would be allowed entry for the duration. Doors were not barricaded, but could be if we felt someone was "coming in to get us". The whole thing was a little paramilitary for my taste, but it was not heavy handed or oppressive in any way. We decided on these rules mutually.

The last item was life in the house. We set up work schedules for child care, food preparation, clean up and security. We set watches. There were plenty of us to do the tasks at hand and we all had time to sit and talk as well as work. The schedules would be more necessary as the days wore on. This night anyone would have done anything at anytime to keep it all together. This night, most like, no one would be sleeping.

Before the meeting really broke up, the siege force arrived.

Meanwhile Outside: I believe that a registered letter or perhaps a telegram was delivered to the chancellor, Lawrence Chambers, informing him that the building was occupied and listing the demands. Deliver to his home where he was hosting his all male bridge party, to his home that was a stone's throw from Stonehenge. Rumor was that he first received a phone call, believed it to be a hoax and hung up. Press releases were also given to the University Daily Kansan (the university paper). Flyers were passed out to students on campus.

Among the first to menace the building was a group of young men who claimed to be from Building and Grounds. Through the locked and chained door they told the front door guard that there was a snake in the building and if we would let them in they could catch it for us and take it away. I think was a new slant on what they believe to be a panty raid.

A professor of East Asian studies showed up at the front door. He was very worried about his research and asked if he could just get it from his office and take it home where it would be safe. Fortunately, he was a neighbor of Mary's and she was able to reassure him that there was no destruction going on, no rifling of desks, and no vandalism. She promised him that no one would eat sitting at his desk or touch his papers or especially open his drawers. He went away but was still worried.

Reporters pounded on the door. They shouted questions. They also climbed the fire escaped and tried to take pictures through the windows. Of course, we just closed all the shades. They should questions through closed and shaded windows. They waited in sub zero weather. They were Paparazzi not journalists. For a while the fire escape became a constant source of background noise--clanking, shouting, footsteps, shouting. They were so annoying that I have had a prejudice against all the press since that time. I see more and more women in the ever present throng of reporters at any news event. I see that they too are annoying and ruthless. You've come a long way, baby. The pounding and shouts came and went all night long.

When we were not on a work shift, we sat in small groups around the main meeting room talking about the demands, the thrill of being there and the affirmative action announcement. We no longer recited the weary list of slights and lies, of action taken and rejected. That was finished. We had done the right thing. We were sure of that. We had moved on. We looked to the future now. I remember a lot of laughter and elation.

Children came through now and again, running and laughing, eating and not yet sleeping. We had packed toys and the environment was new and everyone there was in a great mood so they were treated with great respect. They were doing alright. I don't remember any tantrums or crying jags. Blessed be!

Of course, there were telephones in every office. Several people called friends from these phones. "Guess where I am?" Word must have spread quickly through the community outside. Calls home let everyone know where we were and how we were. And the sister on the receptionist desk remained on the phone the whole time.

For a while traffic on the fire escape became constant. The metal clanged, voices rose and fell. Thumps and bangs and flashes of light existed behind the shades. Shouts ricocheted off the steamy glass. So many noises, so constant, soon we were able to ignore it like living near a railroad track.

One of the phone voices reported that colorful Kansas Attorney General, Vern Miller, and his men were on their way to throw us out of the building. But someone told them that there were pregnant women in the house so they turned around and went back to Topeka. Miller once hid in the trunk of a car and jumped out to arrest someone buying marijuana. He boarded trains to stop the diner car from serving drinks while traveling across the dry state. But we remembered him best for attempting to revoke suffrage for women. He declared that any woman who married and changed her last name between cut off time for voter registration and Election Day would not be allowed to vote. Everyone from brides to judges admonished him and he never enforced this rule.

Then the call came. SenEx wanted to negotiate.