Were you raised with much of a Jewish orientation in the family? Did you hear Yiddish around the house?
My parents spoke Yiddish occasionally, but only to exchange their thoughts privately. The Reform synagogue had a congregation of upper-class, educated, second- and third-generation German Jews. And there was a second congregation, in the Orthodox synagogue. It was a conventional Orthodox shul, with a bimah [altar] at its eastern end and a mikvah [ritual bath] in its basement. I had my bar mitzvah service in that synagogue. These were two distinct communities: the merchant community that went to the Reform synagogue and the Orthodox Eastern European Jewish immigrants. As a twelve-year-old, I became the organist in the Reform synagogue. I wasn’t trained, and I didn’t know how to work the pedals, but I could play the keyboard. The rabbi was a gnome-like man of advanced age; he would cue me and I would play the hymn. Once, during a sermon, I mischievously pressed a pedal that emitted a squawking sound.
What kind of musical education did you have in Plattsburgh?
I had weekly piano lessons from the age of seven until I was thirteen. My teacher was one of three daughters and a son of the late Charles Hudson, a sea captain who had married a Chinese woman on one of his voyages. The Hudsons were tall, handsome, distinguished individuals, none of whom married, living during their later years in the shadow of the father whose memory they detested and suffering the racism that characterized popular attitudes during that era. They lived together throughout their lives in a stately, white frame house on Court Street, in which they ran the Hudson School of Music. All were highly accomplished musicians. They taught string instruments and provided cultural life to the town. They created a string ensemble that would rehearse there. The smell of rosin was pungent in the living room when I came for my piano lessons. Their parlor was full of Chinese screens and art objects, which their father had collected in his travels. The environment had a profound influence on my outlook regarding music.
How old were you when the family moved to New York? Did the change affect you much?
When I was sixteen, my parents bought a house in Forest Hills, Queens, but couldn’t occupy it yet. I rented an apartment with my next younger brother, and for eight months we attended Forest Hills High School, living on our own. The year was 1945.
While I was a high school student in Plattsburgh, trains would come up from New York City with two daily newspapers: the New York Post, which was a very different New York Post from the Rupert Murdoch one of today, and PM, the radical left newspaper. I observed the Second World War through the lens of these publications. I read Max Lerner and I. F. Stone. They prepared me for the move to New York City.
How did you fare in college? Did you remain a diligent student?
When I attended Columbia, on a scholarship, the teachers were highly rated, but I was bored with sitting in the classroom. I lived in the dorm and then in rooming houses off campus. I would show up regularly to work in my parents’ business, now based in a loft on West 36th Street in the garment district, from which they shipped merchandise to their stores. At Columbia, all around me were veterans of World War II, who were very serious about obtaining a professional education. The only courses I enjoyed were French literature of the nineteenth century, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and Chaucer. I tried campus radio, and then found a berth at the campus humor magazine, the Jester. In the spring of my third year, I was suspended from school in midterm for flunking Soviet Economics, poor grades, and cutting classes. I went west and found a job as a laborer in a Wyoming tunnel construction project, surrounded by strong silent men, and lived in a tiny cell with a slatted wooden door. At the end of two weeks, it was clear to me and the foreman that I was not strong enough to maintain the pace. I went on to Los Angeles, where I worked briefly at various jobs, including as a stock clerk in a drug store and as a gas station attendant. In the fall, I returned to Columbia, where I was readmitted. I took the law aptitude exam and scored in the top 2 percentile. My faculty adviser suggested that I enter Columbia Law School on professional option, which meant I would not have to finish college.
Was there anything in particular that made you think of law school?
It was the prospect of being drafted for the Korean War. I don’t know if I ever would have chosen medicine as a career. A Jewish youth is expected to choose law or medicine or commerce. I was comfortable with law, assuming that the training would be useful in whatever career I undertook. Cutting classes, I would digest three texts for each course prior to the exam. This required a periodic frenzy of reading, but it freed me to continue my self-indulgent practices. As graduation day approached, the dean called me in. He said, “Bernard, we can’t let you loose on an unsuspecting society. Your professors have no idea what you look like.” He insisted that I take an extra term and attend class diligently. I graduated in January 1954 and then in March I was drafted. The Korean War was now in an armistice phase.
Were you ever tempted to enter the family business?
No.
So then you allowed yourself to be drafted….
I could have avoided it. At my physical, the examining doctor offered me an out and said, in effect, “Do you want this?” Being drafted, I didn’t have to take the bar. I didn’t mind that at all. Also, I was curious about the world. The war was over, and I hadn’t traveled outside the United States, except to Montreal.
I was assigned to Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, to learn teletype operator skills and spent much of the hot summer in the base swimming pools. Visiting a large barbershop on the base for my first haircut, I studied the barbers and noted that one young black barber clearly took pride in his work. When his chair was free, I sat in it. The barber quietly informed me that he could not cut my hair. I asked him to identify the shop owner. The barber pointed to a short, elderly white man who was unloading barber supplies from his van. “Hold the chair,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
I approached the proprietor. “I care about my appearance, and that barber is good. I would like him to cut my hair.” He adopted a confidential manner. “Look, son, in our shops, white barbers cut white boys’ hair and black barbers cut black boys’ hair. You wouldn’t want to catch a disease, would you?” I ignored the comment and reiterated my request. The owner, sensing an impasse, changed his tone. “You will have to sign a paper, releasing the barbershop from responsibility for anything that might happen to you.” I stated that I would sign the release, returned to the chair, and directed the barber to proceed. I noticed that all of the eight barbers, white and black, were staring. The barber’s hand trembled slightly from nervousness. When the haircut was finished, I signed the statement in a notebook that was proffered to me by the proprietor.
Recognizing that this practice was in violation of Defense Department regulations, I visited several base barbershops the following Saturday and interrogated the barbers. I learned that the white barbers would cut the hair of black soldiers if directed to do so, using a shaver attachment for this purpose. A white barber informed me that the preceding year there had been three days of rioting at a Virginia military base over barbershop segregation, and one man had been killed.
I collected statements from barbers and also from my black teletype instructor. He had been refused service by two white barbers, and they told him to wait for the black barber, who did not materialize. He had to return to his classes without a haircut.
Visiting the base recreation center on Saturday, I prepared a report titled “Integration of Camp Gordon Barbershops: Report and Recommendations.” I attached the various statements, plus my own statement decrying this breach of law and policy. I made multiple copies and on Sunday delivered one to the office of the commanding general, and others to those of his subordinates in the chain
