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Richard Clark after receiving lifetime achievement award at 2005 Peace Arch celebration.
Photo © Blaine Clark
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Richard Clark, author of Sam Hill’s Peace Arch: Remembrance of Dreams Past, was born April 16, 1930 at Wenatchee, Washington. He authored Point Roberts, USA: The History of a Canadian Enclave in 1980. With the exception of one year in Toronto, two in Oregon, two in Missouri, two and one-half in Alaska, three in California, and ten in Alberta, he has lived in or near Blaine, Washington since 1932. He holds a BA in music and an MA in sociology from Western Washington University, a Master of Divinity degree in homiletics from the American Baptist Seminary of the West, and an MA in the humanities from California State University. He is a former professor of sociology and religion with Chapman University, and a retired editor of the Westside Record-Journal. While serving his community as a nationally certified piano teacher, he founded a classical music movement in 1990 that became known as the Pacific Arts Association ten years later.
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"I, for one, will oppose in every way I know how, any designs to fence off the Blaine Peace Arch."
Washington State Representative Jack Westland
With postwar endeavors of the Soviet Union vis-à-vis the United States, the birth of the Cold War, and the Korean War, activism reared its political head, only to be exacerbated by the Vietnam War and those late 1960s “flower children” so involved with “the greening of America.” In ways sometimes dramatic, this succession of historical events also impacted the Peace Arch.
A Controversial “Left-Wing” Rally
Controversy and contradictions dominated the Canadian press when a peace rally, judged to be pro-Communist according to some, was held at the Peace Arch Sunday, June 4, 1950. As for the United States, the press appeared silent.
Even attendance was disputed at a demonstration sponsored by the LPP (the Vancouver Sun didn’t unravel the initials). The Sun encountered opposition after setting a headline: “Less than 1,000 at Peace Arch Rally.” In came angry letters to the editor. “I attended the peace meeting at the Peace Arch at which there were 2,000 to 3,000 people, only to read in the Sun that there were only a scant 1,000. But I suppose that was as high as you could count. Yours for a free press that will tell the truth, JEFFREY J. POWER.” Dick Allen, chairman of the Vancouver Committee for Peace Arch Rally, submitted the most convincing evidence. “The rally was attended by over 1,500 people of whom 1,200 signed the pledge under which the rally was called,” he wrote.
Attendance accuracy aside, it was the Sun that came closest to describing the demonstration. Prior to the rally, a May 31 story stated, “Vancouver United Church Young People’s organization will attempt to salvage the international peace movement from Communist domination.” Frank J. Patterson, youth councilor for Vancouver Presbytery, who wanted readers to know University of British Columbia’s Student Christian Movement neither organized nor backed the rally, supported the United Church Young People’s strategy. “We are going into this with our eyes wide open to Communist backing of the rally,” he reportedly said. Dick Allen, continuing his letter to the editor, objected. He said Quakers took a stand for peace. Even Patterson himself was privileged to present “a distinctively Christian contribution.” A young PTA worker who was a mother from Renton, Washington “took an independent stand” according to Allen. Communist participation didn’t preclude contrastive positions.
Canadian sponsors, according to the Sun report, were “Peace Council representatives, trade union officials and churchmen. They were topped off by Dr. James G. Endicott, probably Canada’s most outspoken ‘make peace with Russia’ exponent.” Regarding the United States, “the American cavalcade which trouped to the Peace Arch was sponsored by the U.S. Communist Party.” George Starkovitch, Seattle, “led the U.S. contingent.”
Refusing to sponsor or approve the rally was the United Nations Association in Canada, Vancouver Branch. “Because we believe you cannot achieve a lasting condition of peace except under law, we regard peace movements unrelated to law as designed to distract public attention from real issues,” wrote Prof. Geoffrey Andrew, association president, on behalf of the executive committee.
So far as speeches and substance were concerned, the press shed little light.
Paul Robeson’s “Fight for Peace”
May 1952 was a musical month. Western Washington University’s new music auditorium was dedicated. The concert choir, led by Prof. Bernard Regier, sang “Der’s no Hidin’ Place Down Der.” An audience of parents, relatives and friends listened happily, perhaps proudly.
Nobody knew the trouble vocalist Paul Robeson had seen May 18, 1952. As he sang “Ol’ Man River” at Peace Arch State Park, his audience was laced with FBI agents, state patrolmen, border patrolmen, Blaine policemen and other authorities, according to a somewhat guarded report published by the Bellingham Herald the next day. There was no place for Robeson to hide.
Meanwhile, United Nations forces were being shoved out of their strongholds north of the 38th parallel as the Korean War raged on. Whittaker Chambers’ Witness was in the bookstores, Alger Hiss was in jail, and the Rosenbergs, convicted of spying for the Communists, were awaiting execution.
It was an unlucky time to be black or red. Paul Robeson was both. He was an African-American, or, in that day, a Negro. Too, he was a communist sympathizer, if not a “pure communist,” and so deeply dedicated to world peace that he had been awarded a Stalin peace prize that year. However, he couldn’t enter Russia to receive it because the feds had cancelled his passport two years earlier.
January 1952 had been even worse than the musical month of May in Robeson’s life.
The Canadian Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers had invited him to address their Vancouver convention. Because no passport was required for American citizens to enter Canada, he accepted the invitation.
Stopped at the Peace Arch border crossing that winter, he was threatened with a five-year jail sentence and a $10,000 fine. The border patrol had been instructed to stop him “by any means necessary.”
Undaunted, Robeson addressed the convention anyhow—over the telephone.
Thus, it was in defiance of federal authorities that he returned to the park the next spring and, standing on a flatbed truck parked at the border’s edge, sang Negro spirituals.
Thousands were present, mostly Canadians. “I shall always remember that concert, when 30,000 Canadians came from many miles away to hear me, to demonstrate their friendship and protest against all barriers to cultural exchange,” wrote Robeson in Here I Stand, his autobiography. His Peace Arch concerts continued yearly, until 1955.
Paul Robeson was born in Princeton, New Jersey, April 9, 1898. His father fled slavery in Virginia at age 15, thanks to the 1860 Underground Railroad. The third black to enter Rutgers University, he became their star athlete, lettering in baseball, basketball, football, and track. He was Rutgers’ first all-American football player. Later he earned a law degree in Columbia, but his deep baritone voice led him to music, destined to become a Broadway star playing lead roles in productions like Othello and The Emperor Jones.
“Paul Robeson’s advocacy of world peace, which he believed could come only with total democracy and racial equality, coupled with his resonant voice and friendly demeanor, made him the perfect ambassador of peace throughout the world,” wrote Blaine high school junior Isaac Gilman in the spring of 1998. “He used his music as a tool to unite nations for a common cause—his cause—and though denied proper recognition in his own country because of ignorance and fear, became a link between ‘his people’ and the rest of the world.”
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Richard Clark
© Jerry Gay photo used with permission
Jerry Gay
Photo ©Blaine Clark
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