<Begin Segment 10>

KU: You were saying that you were an assistant professor, you got the job with one interview, and there were lots of things going on at that time.

BS: Oh, yeah. The whole country was exploding with the Civil Rights Movement, the urban riots, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, all of those things were happening during that period of time. So there was tremendous social ferment, and both Agnes and I got deeply involved in all of that.

KU: Can you talk a little more about your involvement? Like what did you get involved in?

BS: Well, the first thing was the Title II repeal campaign. I was appointed chair of the Southern California Committee to Repeal Title II. And so I had to first mobilize people to get involved in that, and one of the things I thought I would do is to go to the JACL chapters and enlist their support and help in that effort. So one of the first places I went to was the East LA JACL. And so I met with them in somebody's home and started talking about the campaign and why we were undertaking this campaign and so forth. Then I asked for questions, and one of them said, "Why are you crying over spilled milk? That's past history." And another one said, "Besides, I had a good time in camp. Why do you want to bring it back up?" and so forth and so on? I realized, my god, they have to be educated themselves, because it wasn't really the JACL chapters that supported this repeal campaign, there were some Young Turks up in northern California who forced them to pass the resolution to support the repeal of this act. And so I learned a lot from that experience, and went on to talk to various other groups. I even went to give a sermon at the Unitarian church in Pasadena, they asked me to talk about the repeal campaign. And we also (solicited) resolutions passed by various city councils all over the place. And so that was a very intense activity on my part for a couple of years.

KU: For those who, a lot of the young people don't know what Title II really was and why it was important to repeal. Can you talk a little bit about that?

BS: Yeah, good question. Title II came up because during the urban riots of that period, the House Un-American Activities Committee conducted a hearing supposedly into the root causes of the riots, and they published a report called "Guerilla Warfare Advocates in the United States," in which they claimed that it was a Communist conspiracy that was behind all these riots, and that in future riots, they should round up all the rioters and place them in concentration camps. And they cited Title II of the McCarran Act of 1950 as their legal authority to do that, and that was caught up by Japanese Americans, these Young Turks, who said, "This is outrageous, we ought to repeal this law." That's what started the whole campaign. But as I say, I became very deeply involved in that, and got a whole lot of other people involved. It led, in fact, to forming the Greater Pasadena Area JACL, which consisted mainly of people like myself and others who had been involved in the Title II campaign.

KU: What was Title II exactly, in terms of the legal...

BS: Title II was part of the legislation... I can't remember now exactly, I think it had to do with civil rights. And Title II was part of that law which allowed the government to take action against people who would get involved illegally with the Civil Rights Movement, civil rights activities. And so there was Title I and Title II of the Civil Rights Act.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.