Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2019 September 11 • Wednesday

Here's an interesting book: Strong as the People by Emily Parker Simon.

It was wrapped in plastic when I picked it up in the book shop and I didn't know what was inside it. Neither did I know the year of publication.

The New York Times printed an obituary of this book's author on May 17, 1978:

Emily Parker Simon, a peace activist who was director of the Committee for World Development and World Disarmament from 1952 until her retirement in 1968, died in a nursing home here yesterday. She was 74 years old and lived at 30 East End Avenue.

She had also been a member of the executive committee of the American section of the Friends World Committee in New York City and Baltimore, and for many years was chairman of the national policy committee of the Women's International League.

Survivors include two sisters, Mildred Candler and Mary Hodgin, both of Richmond Ind.

The inside of the book has a more detailed picture, but only up until 1943, the date of publication.

EMILY PARKER SIMON was born and grew up in Richmond, Indiana. In 1926 she graduated from Gordon College, Boston, Massachusetts, with a Th.B. degree. For the next two years she taught in the Weekday Schools of Religion in Dayton, Ohio, and in 1928 she became the Educational Director of the West Richmond Friends Meeting, a position she held for five years. Two summers were spent in home mission work, 1933 in Tennessee and 1934 in Kentucky, and a year in study at Woodbrooke College, England. In 1934 Emily Parker was elected Secretary of the Board of Young Friends Activities and Executive Secretary of the Young Friends Fellowship. She gave leadership to this work until 1937, interrupting field work for study at Pendle Hill during the winter term of 1936. 1938 and 1939 were spent in Spain doing relief work under the American Friends Service Committee and as the special representative of the United Christian Youth Movement. Upon her return to America, she served for two years as Field Worker for the Foster Parents' Plan for War Children. In 1941 the author married Albert Simon of Baltimore, where she now lives. Mrs. Simon at present is the Executive Secretary of the Maryland Peace Conference and of the Maryland Branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She is a Field Secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Chairman of the Wider Quaker Fellowship.

There seems to be much to admire here. There's more when you turn the page and you see this:

This was more than 75 years ago. We could quibble about this map from our present-day vantage point, but this is really pretty great, isn't it, for 1943? We were in the middle of World War 2. The page with Simon's bio on it also had this note: "THIS BOOK HAS BEEN MANUFACTURED IN COMPLIANCE WITH ORDERS OF THE WAR PRODUCTION BOARD FOR CONSERVING PAPER AND OTHER MATERIALS".

The first chapter is called "This Land of Ours" and starts like this:

Tea was in full swing; everybody was talking about everything. Soon enough all the loose ends began to be tied into a knot of current problems. A refugee ship had just landed; the morning papers had been full of stories.

Suddenly one voice rose a little above the hum. "Refugees! Refugees! Foreigners and always more foreigners! I wish we could get back to the good old days when we weren't always bumping into foreigners, the good old days when we were all Americans."

A slight silence followed this outburst. It was broken by, "How remarkable—I didn't know you were interested in the Indians."

"Indians? Indians? Who said anything about being interested in Indians, Helen?"

"You did," answered Helen. "You said you wanted to get back to the good old days when there were no foreigners, but only good old Americans. Well, the good old Americans were the Indians and nobody else because everyone who came to this country was a foreigner, even the ones who came in the Mayflower; in fact, the ones who came in the Mayflower were really refugees. You belong to the D.A.R., don't you, Louise? I've always wanted to ask you if that stood for Daughters of American Refugees."

An explosive silence followed, broken at last by Louise. "Well!—Well!—I must say—Well!"

Helen thought as she walked toward home, "Americans! Good old Americans! My word, I wonder what they thing an American is, anyway. Talk like that rouses my Irish!—Only I'm really Scotch, I guess," she reflected.

That's a pretty marvelous beginning. The value of the content is clear enough but the writing quality is also rather excellent. Louise begins all her sentences by saying the same word twice: Refugees, refugees; Indians, Indians; well, well.

"Explosive silence" is a devastating and perfect phrase.

And she's such a good writer that she wraps up this episode with a wonderful little joke, both relaxing and disarming the reader and gracing Helen with humility. This isn't a smirking know-it-all destroying a straw man.

Later on you get this:

Generally speaking, persecution for religious ideas is not a part of the American plan. This has not always been so. Although religious freedom was a prime factor for many who came to America, they found it difficult to permit religious freedom to other religious groups. Quakers swung on Boston Common, so-called witches were hanged by order of religious councils, stocks and pillories were kept filled by religious tyrants who felt the people needed such "examples." The ghosts of such leaders have come back occasionally in the Ku Klux Klan or Native Sons of the Golden West or similar fanatical and misguided organizations. Sometimes the ghosts are more subtle and carry on in respectable religious circles, encouraging discrimination against religious minorites, especially the non-Christian and non-Protestant groups. While professing to defend the American way of life, they succeed only in violating the real American tradition of religious freedom.

Do we still have people like Emily Parker Simon in this country? Do they get heard? Did she, in her day?