The Memory Police, a Japanese Dystopian Orwellian novel was published in 1994.  Finally, it has been translated into English and available. I read about the novel in the ‘Briefly Noted’ section in the 9.9.2019 The New Yorker.  The Memory Police fits in well with the just released “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood. 

 

This is the premise of Yoko Ogawa’s quietly devastating novel, “The Memory Police.” The setting is an unnamed island controlled by a faceless authoritarian government. Our narrator and chief protagonist is a never-named female novelist who is struggling to complete her latest manuscript.

Her parents are dead. She lives alone in the house where she grew up. Her social circle is small, consisting of a handful of neighbors, an old man who lives on a decaying ferryboat and her editor, known only as R. “The island is run by men who are determined to see things disappear,” R tells her. “From their point of view, anything that fails to vanish when they say it should is inconceivable. So they force it to disappear.”

It is the job of this novel’s titular organization to ensure these disappearances take place. The officers of the Memory Police, in their “dark green uniforms, with heavy belts and black boots” operate “efficiently, thoroughly, systematically, and without any trace of emotion.” If they find a toaster hidden in your house, you will be arrested and interrogated. You may also find yourself disappeared.

It’s a grim existence, a fascism of forgetting. But not everyone succumbs to the mass amnesia. A handful of people are able to retain memories of the vanished objects. Some of them become fugitives, hiding in a network of underground safe houses. The narrator’s mother, a sculptor, was one such exception. She kept a cache of disappeared objects in her studio until the Memory Police arrested her. The narrator recalls, “her body came back to us a week later, along with her death certificate.” The editor, R, is another exception. Fearing for his life, he takes up residence in a secret room in the narrator’s house. Keeping him safe from the Memory Police becomes the focus of her life for the remainder of the novel.

Ogawa writes with a direct, understated style that enhances the uncanniness of the events she describes. Her flat tone matches the passivity of most of the island’s inhabitants, which in turn suggests a capitulation to deeply buried personal and societal trauma. “The disappearances are beyond our control,” a character says to the narrator. “They have nothing to do with us. We’re all going to die anyway . . . so what’s the difference?” The lack of names and other proper nouns gives the book the quality of a supernatural parable. When calendars disappear, the island becomes stuck in an endless winter. As the losses mount, life there becomes increasingly unbearable.

Fortunately, Ogawa’s wry humor keeps “The Memory Police” from drowning in its own gloom. Consider, for example, how many writers would jump at the chance to keep their editors locked up in a secret room!

Excerpts from the narrator’s work in progress are spliced into the book’s main text, providing a welcome change of pace. The novel-within-the-novel is a gothic tale about the relationship between a typing teacher and one of his students, a young woman who loses her voice. It starts out romantic but soon turns sinister. She winds up his captive, locked in a tower with a roomful of broken typewriters. On one level, it’s a funny nightmare about writer’s block; on another, it’s a horror story that harmonizes with the novel’s major motifs — control, captivity and loss of self.

“The Memory Police” alludes to a host of storied works of dystopian fiction, positioning itself in the lineage of George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451.” It also calls to mind Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl.” Yet Ogawa finds new ways to express old anxieties about authoritarianism, environmental depredation and humanity’s willingness to be complicit in its own demise.

Late in the book, R desperately tries to convince the narrator that she still has access to the memories of all those disappeared objects. “I can never remember anything that can satisfy you,” she says. “It’s not about satisfying me,” he replies. “It’s about waking up your sleeping soul.” To which the narrator responds, “I wish it were just sleeping, instead of completely gone.”

Jon Michaud is the author of the novel “When Tito Loved Clara.”

The Memory Police

By Yoko Ogawa

Pantheon. 288 pp. $25.95

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/in-the-memory-police-an-authoritarian-government-tries-to-erase-the-past/2019/08/15/9cc3a7ea-be9a-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html

Two of my favorite political films are “Z” and “Missing. Both are political thrillers putting into Cinema the world of government oppression and tyranny.  “Z” told the story of the assassination of a Greek politician in the 1960’s.  “Missing” is a true story. It recounts the execution by the Chilean military of an American Citizen in Santiago, Charles Horman.  He was caught up in the tyranny following the Augusto Pinochet Coup which overthrew the elected government of Salvador Allende on 9.11.1973, a Coup which was actively promoted by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 9.28.2019

The new film from Costa-Gavras about the Greek financial crisis, ‘Adults in the Room,’ will celebrate its Greek premiere on September 29. The film is based on the book by former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis.

The new film from Costa-Gavras about the Greek financial crisis, Adults in the Room, has its Greek premiere on September 29. The film is based on the book of the same name by the former Greek finance minister and political dissident, Yanis Varoufakis, which recounts the strained circumstances around the 2015 Greek financial bail-out.

Costa-Gavras is the winner of two Oscars for Z (1969) and Missing (1982). With this new movie, he has created a furious, insightful and at times funny political thriller centering around the audacious Varoufkis. The veteran Greek director aims to offer some explanation of a financial world gone mad — and one of the worst crises to emerge out of the EU financial crisis. DW asked the director a few questions about the new film.

“Z” 1969

DW: Adults in the Room is based on the non-fiction book by Yanis Varoufakis. What made you think that this book would make a good movie?

Costa-Gavras: The book had a strong main character speaking about a specific period of time and what happened to him. It was really helpful that Varoufakis had made a lot of recordings and a lot of notes. So I was able to verify everything he says in the book by reading his speeches and by listening to what others have said.

There are two main characters in the movie: Greece and Europe. Each defends their side forcibly, aggressively and, in my opinion, violently. And in a way I think that everyone is right. Even people who look like the bad guys are right because they’re defending something very serious.

You’ve been in the film industry for decades. What do you think the future of cinema will be like?

Cinema is going through a huge revolution. Look what’s happening with Netflix, for example. A positive part of this is that everyone can watch movies. Everyone in their own homes, in small villages or big cities, everywhere. And we don’t pay much money, which wasn’t possible before. On the other hand, this means the movies are hidden away and can be forgotten about very quickly. You don’t hear anything about them again and it’s difficult to find out information like how many people have watched those movies. That is the negative part of services like Netflix.

“Missing” 1982.  Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemon

But on the plus side: everyone can make a movie. If you have a camera and a couple of friends you can make a movie.

What do you want the viewers of Adults in a Room to take home?

That’s up to them. I don’t want to teach them. I tell stories in my movies just like I would with friends: I just tell the story, I don’t tell them when to laugh. It’s exactly like that as a director. We ask questions about this and that. And if we have good questions, then that’s even better. We don’t have the solutions.

https://www.dw.com/en/filmmaker-costa-gavras-on-politics-cinema-and-his-new-film-on-the-greek-financial-crisis/a-50595598

All the News may be about the impending collapse of Trump.

There are other stories reflecting on the current state of American culture. This murder trial in Dallas is one to which I am paying close attention. It meets at the intersection of Police behavior, black & white relations and women in law enforcement facing the criminal justice system to answer for their actions.

Most disturbing  in this tale is that an innocent black man is dead

The Guardian 9.27.2019

Amber Guyger, who fatally shot Botham Jean in September last year, says: ‘This is not about hate’

Amber Guyger, who is white, was off duty but in uniform when she shot Botham Jean, a 26-year-old native of St Lucia who was black and worked as an accountant in Dallas. (pictured below).

The Dallas police officer started to cry and shake Friday as she began to testify about the night she killed a neighbor in his own home, which she has said she mistook for her own unit one floor below.

Amber Guyger broke down while recalling approaching her neighbor Botham Jean’s door, leading the judge to call for a brief break so she could compose herself.

Guyger, who is charged with murder in the killing last September, was the first witness that her lawyers called in the high-profile case. She told jurors about how she grew up in a small house in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, how she played in the school band and how she aspired to become a police officer.

“I just wanted to help people, and that was the one career that I thought I could help people in,” said Guyger, who was fired from the police force after the shooting.

Guyger’s testimony marked the first time the public has heard directly from the 31-year-old since Jean’s killing last September.

The basic facts of the unusual shooting are not in dispute. Guyger walked up to Jean’s apartment – which was on the fourth floor, directly above hers on the third – and found the door unlocked. She was off duty but still dressed in her police uniform after a long shift when she shot Jean with her service weapon. Guyger was later arrested, fired and charged with murder.

“I hate that I have to live with this every single day of my life and I ask God for forgiveness, and I hate myself every single day,” Guyger told the packed courtroom.

She said she wished “he was the one with the gun” and had killed her. “I never wanted to take an innocent person’s life. And I’m so sorry. This is not about hate. It’s about being scared that night,” she said.

Guyger’s attorneys say she fired in self-defense after mistaking Jean for a burglar. Her attorneys also say the identical physical appearance of the complex from floor to floor frequently led to tenants parking on the wrong floor or trying to enter the wrong apartment.

Guyger told the jury that when she put her key in what she thought was her apartment door’s lock, the door opened because it hadn’t been fully closed.

Fearing it was a break-in, she drew her service weapon and stepped inside, she said.

Seeing someone inside, Guyger said she said: “Let me see your hands! Let me see your hands.” But she said she couldn’t see the person’s hands and he began coming toward her at a “fast-paced” walk. She said he yelled “Hey, hey, hey!” right before she opened fire.

Guyger told the court she intended to kill him when she pulled the trigger, which she said is what she had been trained to do.

“I was scared he was going to kill me,” she said under questioning by her lawyers, who called her as their first witness.

When prosecutors asked why she didn’t back away and radio for help once she suspected a break-in, Guyger said that entering the apartment “was the only option that went through my head”.

Prosecutors have questioned how Guyger could have missed numerous signs that she was in the wrong place, and suggested she was distracted by sexually explicit phone messages with her police partner. Prosecutors also say Jean was no threat to Guyger, noting that he was in his living room eating a bowl of ice-cream when she entered his apartment.

In a frantic 911 call played in court earlier this week, Guyger says “I thought it was my apartment” nearly 20 times. The shooting attracted intense national scrutiny for the strange circumstances and because it was one in a chain of shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers.

The trial began Monday.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/27/amber-guyger-trial-botham-jean-dallas-officer-apartment

When the Disgraced criminal buffoon Trump is driven from office there will be a woman with integrity and brains in power.

The Guardian 9.25.2019

New Quinnipiac survey finds Massachusetts senator polling at 27% with Biden on 25% and Sanders 16%

Elizabeth Warren’s surge to the very top of the Democratic primary field is continuing, after the Massachusetts senator topped a national poll for the first time on Wednesday.

A survey by Quinnipiac found Warren polling at 27% among Democrats and Democratic leaning voters, with Joe Biden on 25%. Bernie Sanders, previously seen as part of a top three of Democratic presidential candidates, had 16%.

With margin of error factored in Warren is essentially tied with Biden, but the poll represents a major boost, coming after a slew of recent surveys in recent days found her leading or tied in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.

The Quinnipiac poll contained bad news for the California senator Kamala Harris, who was at just 3%, and the New Jersey senator Cory Booker, who was the choice of 0% of Democratic leaning voters. South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg was at 7%.

On Sunday a survey of likely Iowa caucusgoers, carried out by the Des Moines Register, Mediacom and CNN, put Warren at 22% in the state, with Biden at 20%. Sanders had the support of just 11% of respondents, with Buttigieg on 9%.

Two polls released on Tuesday showed Warren also surging in New Hampshire and Nevada. The New Hampshire survey, carried out by Monmouth University, found Warren at 27% in the Granite state, to Biden’s 25%. The margin of error was 4.9%. That survey was a particular blow to Sanders, who was at just 11%, despite winning the New Hampshire primary with 61% of the vote in 2016.

A Suffolk University/USA Today/Reno Gazette-Journal poll in Nevada found Biden at 23% and Warren at 19%.

The release of the Quinnipiac survey comes after Warren announced that she will spend at least $10m on advertising in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina – the first four states to vote in the Democratic primary.

Warren’s national support has increased dramatically since Quinnipiac’s August poll. In that survey Biden had 32% support, with Warren at 19%.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/25/elizabeth-warren-biden-national-poll-democrats-bernie-sanders

Yet another stranger than fiction tragedy, the result of  Police killing a totally unsuspecting, innocent man in his own apartment.

Wall Street Journal 9.24.2019

DALLAS—The trial of a female white police officer who shot and killed her upstairs black neighbor after accidentally walking into his apartment began with prosecutors saying sexual banter between her and her work partner showed that fatigue wasn’t the problem when she failed to recognize it wasn’t her home.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/murder-or-mistake-cop-on-trial-for-shooting-neighbor-in-apartment-mix-up-11569334278?mod=cxrecs_join#cxrecs_s

Normally I avoid anything Trump on this Blog.  Giving this horrific liar any time just validates his outrageous persona.  There is always an exception.  Mitch McConnell is the most craven, enabler of this awful man.  His unflagging kow towing and lapdog behavior is beyond disgraceful. The Kentucky Senator is a vile, evil person whose conduct as Majority Leader has done more to destroy American democracy than Trump ever imagined would be possible.

Talking Points Memo 9.23.2019

Reports that President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son have roiled Washington for days, after news of an intelligence community whistleblower complaint about the incident surfaced last week.

But on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested he was upset that Democrats were even discussing the complaint publicly.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Democrats were the reason the story was front page news, McConnell said.

“I’ve been disappointed to see our colleague, the Democratic leader, choose to politicize the [Senate Intelligence] Committee’s ongoing efforts with respect to a recent whistleblower allegation, the specific subject of which is still unknown,” McConnell said.

The complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, is now being blocked from release to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire.

McConnell contrasted Democrats’ alarm about the complaint — and Maguire’s handling of it — with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which, he described as working “on a bipartisan basis, in secure settings, out of the public spotlight, to conduct critically important oversight of classified and sensitive matters.”

Noting that the committee was working to get Atkinson and Maguire before the committee this week, McConnell suggested Democrats, not Maguire, had broken the rules.

“I believe it’s extremely important that their work be handled in a secure setting, with adequate protections, in a bipartisan fashion,” he said of the intelligence committee, “and based on facts rather than leaks to the press.”

Maguire refused to comply with a House subpoena to hand over the complaint last week. Before that, he wrote to both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that he was withholding the complaint from Congress, despite the Atkinson’s belief that Congress should see it.

“It is regrettable,” McConnell continued, “that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff and Senator Schumer have chosen to politicize the issue, circumventing the established procedures and protocols that exist so the committees can pursue sensitive matters the appropriate, deliberate, bipartisan manner.”

 

San Francisco voters passed the measure to provide tenants with legal counsel.  

Nearly 16 months have passed.  The City has provided only a portion of the necessary funding. A bigger problem, as explained to me by a well known and respected tenants attorney, is a lack of “experienced litigators” versed in housing law who can represent tenants.  

The low starting salary of under 60K per year discourages attorneys from applying for a job which requires both professional legal skills along with political smarts in high action San Francisco and its rent control ordinance.

 Finally, explains the attorney, “There is little in terms of support staff in the funding; paralegal, social workers.”  

Excerpted from San Francisco Examiner 9.22.2019

A 2018 measure guaranteeing every San Francisco tenant facing an eviction the right to legal representation is not yet living up to its promise due to funding gaps and a shortage of attorneys able to do the work, the San Francisco Examiner has learned.

Fully funding the Right to Counsel program as quickly as possible is a matter of priorities, according to Prop. F’s author, Dean Preston, the former executive directors of Tenants Together who is a current candidate in the District 5 race for supervisor.

“What I’m hearing from providers is that there is a funding gap that hasn’t been filled and that prevents the full hiring,” Preston told the Examiner on Friday. “At best it’s a matter of priorities. I hope it’s not a political football. I hope there’s a shared commitment to making sure it’s fully implemented.”

In the June 2018 election, 55 percent of San Francisco voters supported Proposition F, or the Right to Counsel program, making San Francisco the second city nationwide to establish a “universal right to counsel” for tenants. An initial $5.8 million was secured to implement the measure, and a city spokesperson confirmed the program has received a total of $9 million so far.

But the 10 service providers who have received funding to provide the expanded legal services report that they are struggling to hire enough attorneys to meet the current demand.

The budget includes funds for a total of 47 new attorneys to be hired by July 1, but only 37 had been hired by that date, according to Cary Gold, director of litigation and policy at the Eviction Defense Collaborative. The organization was selected as the lead partner for the program under the supervision of The City’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.

“[Tenant litigation] isn’t the most popular area of law for lawyers [and] a lot of the organizations are having to hire new attorneys without experience. So even if they have reached their total hiring goals they may not be at full capacity [because the new attorneys need training],” said Gold. “It’s a shaky start.”

But even if all 47 attorney positions had been filled by July 1, the current funding still wouldn’t be enough to provide every tenant eligible for full scope representation with the service, according to Gold.

According to the new law, full-scope representation — meaning representation throughout the eviction proceedings — is triggered 30 days after an eviction notice is served or once an unlawful detainer lawsuit has been filed. The representation is supposed to continue until the notice is withdrawn or the lawsuit is resolved.

Before Prop. F’s passage, only a handful of nonprofit organizations provided pro-bono attorneys for tenants. Some 80 percent of tenants were undergoing eviction proceedings without representation, according to the law’s proponents.

In an effort to describe the demand for legal representation in eviction proceedings, Gold said that EDC has 15 cases “on the settlement conference calendar” on Wednesday, of which seven have full scope attorneys. On Thursday, clients in only six of 11 cases scheduled for a settlement conference have full-scope representation.

According to the law, “they should all have full scope attorneys,” Gold said.

Dustin Helmer, an attorney with the Aids Legal Referral Panel, which is among the organizations now tasked with providing tenants with representation, said that part of the problem is that “there is not enough attention focused on retention.”

“Everyone acknowledges the housing crisis and knows its a problem. The city and tenants want a solution, and there’s a lot of money put into studies about homelessness and finding additional housing, but the people doing the actual work themselves need a bit more support from The City,” said Helmer.

“I expected things to get worse. I didn’t expect The City to have its act together,” he said. “People passed the measure, but how do we implement it? Where do we get the money from? Housing and everything that goes along with it is such a multifaceted issue,” he said.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/voters-approved-a-measure-guaranteeing-tenants-representation-but-theres-not-enough-money-to-fulfill-its-promises/

Elizabeth Ann Warren will be the 2020 Democrat’s Presidential nominee and she will be elected President in November. I have been writing about the Senator from Massachusetts since the inception of this Blog in late 2018. She is very electable and carries none of the baggage which the White House incumbent shamefully and dishonestly used against Hillary Clinton.  Senator Warren will take Trump to the cleaners.

Wall Street Journal 9.21.2019

While candidates have tangled publicly with Joe Biden, they are being more cautious with the Massachusetts Senator.

WASHINGTON— Elizabeth Warren is building a broad coalition of Democratic voters, and her rivals are taking notice. But so far, they are still testing out ways to undercut her appeal.

Ms. Warren’s steady rise has prompted primary opponents such as Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg to search for ways to blunt her momentum at a time when the leading contender, Joe Biden, has weathered a series of stumbles and direct attacks.

While candidates have tangled publicly with the former vice president over everything from his age to his agenda, they are being more cautious with Ms. Warren, often criticizing her indirectly or homing in on her policy proposals rather than her record.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democratic-opponents-search-for-a-plan-against-elizabeth-warren-11569067200?mod=hp_lead_pos7&mod=article_inline

I am watching the six part Netflix series, The Spy.  It is definitely well done, absorbs my attention and tense.  I came upon this article which provides a more sobering spin on the Israeli spy planted in Syria during the 1960’s and his ultimate fate.

Arutz Sheva 7.19.2019

Widow of Eli Cohen (pictured above), Israeli spy executed in Syria, attacks Mossad conduct and Netflix series creators for how character is portrayed.

Nadia Cohen, widow of Israeli spy Eli Cohen, launched a fierce attack on senior Mossad officials whom she says continue to bear responsibility for her husband’s death 54 years ago in Syria.

In an interview with Chanan Greenwood in the Shishabbat supplement of Israel Hayom that will be published this Friday, Cohen claims they gave inaccurate information to the creators of The Spy series that this month went streaming on Netflix.

“A very senior man in the Mossad admitted that Eli was used like they squeeze a lemon. He told me there was no intelligence body in the country – military, civilian, Mossad, GSS, Air Force, Navy – who didn’t want information from him. They exposed him too much.”

She says the head of the Mossad at the time, Meir Amit, sent him back to Syria one last time, even though it was real life-threatening danger, and contrary to Cohen’s own judgement.

“They told him he was in no danger, that they were behind him, and Eli went back to Syria certain that they had betrayed him. The Syrians did the work, but Eli was murdered here in Israel; here they sentenced him to death.”

In 2015, then-head of the Mossad Tamir Pardo admitted that it was a mistake to send Cohen to his last assignment, saying: “To this day, officials at the Mossad continue to lead the line that Eli himself was to blame for being caught, not the fact that serious mistakes were made in the organization’s understanding of the realities on the ground. They’ve betrayed us and lied to us.”

Since Cohen’s public hanging, she has been fighting for the return of his body to Israel, when, among other things, last year she addressed Syrian President Assad with a public request for mercy. Asked if she believes they will return him, she says: “I want to believe. I think the State isn’t doing enough to bring him back.”

Asked if they had forgotten the bereaved family, she replied: “We haven’t got blue eyes. We’ve got no elites behind us. We asked dozens of times the defense ministers, prime ministers and presidents to mention Eli when talking about the prisoners and the missing. But we never heard it.”

Cohen is working to perpetuate his legacy, but says the education system could be doing more: “We try to pass on his legacy. Religious Zionists learn about him, but in the general education system it isn’t enough. There are so many figures in the country that you can admire and grow up on, and Eli is among them.”

Cohen also fiercely attacks the new series created by Gidi Raf (“Abducted” and “Homeland”) for Netflix, in which Sasha Baron Cohen plays the character of Eli Cohen. She says they should have acted in a more educational way.

About the “twisted” way in which the character was portrayed in the series, she said “The last two weeks have brought me back decades, to Eli’s capture, to his hanging. It brings me back to the darkness.”

Disgusting rampant Racism. I knew nothing of this horrible, yet typical, 1969  incident of American racism.  The 14 players  wanted to meet with the Coach and discuss wearing black armbands. Why?  The team was scheduled to play Brigham Young University, deep in the heart of Mormon territory.  The players were upset over the racism they experienced during earlier games against BYU. For even bringing up the issue the 14 players were summarily dismissed from the team and lost their scholarships.

Associated Press printed in Chicago Sun Times  9.13.2019

University officials planned to unveil a plaque at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The players were kicked off the Wyoming football team for seeking to wear armbands to protest racism.

LARAMIE, Wyo. — Fifty years after 14 black football players were kicked off the University of Wyoming football team for seeking to wear armbands to protest racism, eight of them returned to the Laramie campus to commemorate the anniversary as the school takes another step toward reconciliation.

University officials unveiled a plaque Friday at War Memorial Stadium commemorating the so-called Black 14. The marker joined an alleyway mural in downtown Laramie that was dedicated last year, and the ceremony capped five days of ceremonies and discussions about the infamous dismissal of all the university’s black players in 1969.

They are now being recognized as leaders in the tradition of protest in sport. It’s a pantheon that includes U.S. track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who raised their fists on a 1968 Olympics medal podium to protest racism and injustice.

More recently, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick accused the NFL of blackballing him for kneeling during the national anthem before games to protest police violence against African Americans.

Protest is appropriate for athletes who want to use their fame and visibility to be heard, Black 14 member Tony Gibson said.

”You can judge them any way you want. But when they’re saying things that matter or are trying to draw your attention to things that might need addressing, I think it’s very important,” Gibson said.

On Oct. 17, 1969, Wyoming head coach Lloyd Eaton summarily dismissed the players and revoked their scholarships after they met with him to propose wearing black armbands during an upcoming game against Brigham Young University.

Eight of the 14 were starters. Eaton’s legacy isn’t confined to the Black 14 episode, Black 14 member John Griffin said.

”He destroyed the Cowboys football team for a decade or so. He is the one who prevented blue-chip players from coming here,” Griffin said. “That was on him, not us.”

The players wanted to protest racism some of them experienced in previous games against BYU and how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the time barred African Americans from the priesthood. Eaton would have none of the idea — and was backed up by the university’s board of trustees and Gov. Stan Hathaway.

They never got a chance to mention the armbands before Eaton lit into them about coming from fatherless families and saying they would only be accepted by traditionally black colleges if they weren’t at the University of Wyoming, they said.

”Our side is coming out. All these years everybody thought we protested and stuff, and we never did,” said Black 14 member Ted Williams.

The healing and reconciliation is not complete for some of the men who came back to campus this week. Some struggled for years after they were labeled as members of the Black 14.

Lionel Grimes said the episode repeatedly came up during job interviews, and he wondered how many job opportunities he missed because of it. The anger has taken years to overcome, he said.

”I was angry about the fact that I had to pay to go to school. I was angry at how the coach had insulted not only me, my fellow teammates, my ancestry,” Grimes said.

Most of all, not being able to learn why Eaton acted as harshly as he did bothers Black 14 members. Eaton could have defused the situation simply by telling the players they couldn’t wear the armbands, Grimes said.

”We would’ve just played football. He never gave us the opportunity to sit down and talk to him,” Grimes said. “We were very respectful then.”

Wyoming had made it to the Sugar Bowl after the 1967 season, losing to LSU 20-13, and went 7-3 in 1968. They were off to a 4-0 start before that day. The now all-white Cowboys went on to beat BYU and San Jose State but lost their last four games.

After Wyoming finished 1-9 in 1970, Eaton was demoted to assistant athletic director. He died in 2007, leaving the Black 14 without an apology or explanation.

”To me, the disappointment, my greatest disappointment, is I never had a clear understanding of his mindset. I never had a clear understanding of what compelled him to act against, as I understood years later, some of the wishes of his coaches,” Black 14 member Guillermo Hysaw said.

Griffin and some of the others have been back to campus over the decades, including for a 1993 event honoring the best players from each previous decade, but until the past several years reception for the Black 14 was lukewarm, Griffin said.

”Now it’s (a) very sincere welcome back: ‘We’re glad to have you back and we’re sorry,’” Griffin said.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/9/13/20864376/wyoming-dismissal-of-black-players-anniversary