WEBVTT - BONUS: William Pepper 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.880 Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of iHeartRadio and 0:00:04.920 --> 0:00:08.720 Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast 0:00:09.000 --> 0:00:12.560 are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:15.800 in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia, 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:23.000 Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener discretion is advised. I 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:26.239 went back to Saigon for a break. I was at 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:29.720 a party with some other journalists and friends, and the 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:34.040 government was increasingly suspicious because I didn't go to any 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:36.559 of the press free things, and I was out in 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.600 the country all of the time, not really under anyone's control. 0:00:41.440 --> 0:00:45.680 So that's a party. A young Vietnamese woman approached me 0:00:45.840 --> 0:00:51.519 and tempted to set up a conversation and become social. 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.600 I was just so angry at that point in time 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.400 by what I was seeing that I told her what 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.320 I was seeing. And the next morning I was called 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:06.360 down to Commander Madison's office. He was CIA, obviously, and 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:10.679 he said to me, I understand, we're a bit worried 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.240 about you. You're ound in the country a lot, you've 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:17.920 been injured, you probably have some severe pain. Maybe maybe 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:25.840 it's time for you to go home. I called the 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.559 Union Hall. I said a matter of life and death. 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:31.680 I said, I think these people are planning to kill 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:36.280 doctor King. The authorities would parade. Oh, we found a 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.479 gun the James L. Ray bought in Birmingham that killed 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.479 doctor King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed doctor King. 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:50.720 James Lvy was a pawn or the official story from 0:01:50.720 --> 0:01:54.560 My Heart Radio intended for TV. The plan was to 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.000 get King to the city because they wanted it handled 0:01:59.000 --> 0:02:02.440 in Memphis four day and named Catlet. And I've lived 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.800 with it alone. Monsieur and the base care for me. 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:09.320 The lawd told me to not the word. I've been 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:12.320 willing to tell it all my life. I'm Bill Clayburg 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:22.640 and this is the MLK tapes. At the top of 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:25.200 the episode, we heard Bill Pepper telling how he was 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:28.800 invited to leave Vietnam. Pepper did heed the warning, and 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:31.640 he did leave, but he took with him photographs of 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.639 horribly burned children that were published in Rampart's magazine, along 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:39.119 with Pepper's accusatory article on the American conduct of the war, 0:02:39.520 --> 0:02:41.560 which is how we came to meet Martin Luther King. 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:45.519 Throughout this podcast, we've come to know of Pepper's forty 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.880 year investigation into the murder of his friend. In this episode, 0:02:50.160 --> 0:02:52.480 we will pull the camera back a little and take 0:02:52.480 --> 0:03:02.320 a look at his extraordinary life. Bill Pepper was the 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.560 only child of a pair of Irish immigrants from County Monaghan. 0:03:06.120 --> 0:03:08.720 They settled in Yonkers, New York, where his father worked 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:11.720 as a repairman on the city's trolley line. Bill went 0:03:11.760 --> 0:03:14.480 to public school and one day, when he was fifteen, 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.320 he was pitching in a game and in the stands 0:03:17.400 --> 0:03:20.360 was a wrestling coach from the elite Trinity School in 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:24.160 New York City. He was impressed by Bill's curveball, which 0:03:24.200 --> 0:03:27.160 for someone his age was a thing of beauty. So 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:29.960 we approached Bill after the game, saying that he thought 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:32.680 the Trinity could use a player like him. Of course, 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:34.920 the Pepper family didn't have the money needed for a 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:38.240 school like Trinity, but this man thought that something could 0:03:38.240 --> 0:03:42.280 be worked out. He introduced me to the headmaster and 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.280 we talked, and I ended up pitching for Trinity and 0:03:45.480 --> 0:03:48.560 captaining the baseball team, the basketball team, and the cross 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.600 country team at Trinity. Pepper was good at every sport, 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:57.240 but where he really stood out was baseball, specifically his pitching. 0:03:58.240 --> 0:04:01.680 It wasn't overpowering stage, so I had to be able 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:05.800 to move the ball around, change speeds. Pepper doesn't remember 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.840 now his record at Trinity, but he won all his games, 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.120 and that attracted the notice of the World Telegram and Son, 0:04:12.520 --> 0:04:15.440 an old New York daily, which each year gave an 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:18.320 award for the best young baseball player in the Tri 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:21.960 state area. Pepper won the award that year and it 0:04:22.000 --> 0:04:25.560 was presented in a small ceremony at home plate before 0:04:25.560 --> 0:04:29.160 the game at Yankee Stadium. And who would hand him 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:33.880 the award the Yankee star player Mickey Mantle. Mickey gave 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:36.479 me the award, and Mickey said to me at the 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:38.839 stadium when he was given he said, Bill, I understand 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:41.320 you're gonna be up here with us soon. I love 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.440 not on your life. You got more talent in your 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.240 little finger, got my whole body, so I've got to 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.080 find a day job. And he looked at it was 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.440 short of nut because all he heard was, you know, 0:04:54.520 --> 0:04:58.320 I threw one hitters, two hitters, no hitters. I had 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:00.880 a batting average over five hundred most of the season. 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.280 Perhaps it was being handed an award at Yankee Stadium, 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:08.760 but somebody at Trinity apparently knew somebody out in Brooklyn, 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:12.640 and one day Bill Pepper received an invitation to go 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:15.640 out to Ebbott's field and pitch batting practice for the 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:20.239 Brooklyn Dodgers. Bill remembers pitching to Don Newcombe, Pee Wee Reese, 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.960 and Gil Hodges, among other legends. He called it a 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:28.880 lesson in humility. They had it hard. There were another level. 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.839 With his athletic abilities now out there for all to see, 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:36.479 a scholarship for college was a near certainty. But where 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:41.400 turns out that along with his physical prowess, Bill had smarts. 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.000 So the scholarship that he accepted brought him to Columbia University, 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:49.479 where he played baseball and basketball. Pepper loved basketball, and 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.279 he had modeled his game after Boston Celtics star Bob Kuzi, 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:57.320 who was the master of ball control. At that time 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.200 in college basketball, there was no such thing as a 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.839 shot clock. Teams could freeze the play and the entire 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.880 game by keeping the ball away from opponents and not shooting. 0:06:07.480 --> 0:06:12.120 It was positively awful to watch. Like most teams, Columbia 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:14.680 had his own plan for freezing the ball, and it 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.720 required a lot of passing. But Bill had his own 0:06:17.760 --> 0:06:22.160 ideas on how to do this, I got into a disagreement, 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:24.440 shall we say, with Lou Rossini, who was a coach 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:28.839 at the time. I was an avid student of Bobby Kozis, 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:31.840 and I learned how to freeze the ball myself. So 0:06:31.920 --> 0:06:34.560 I froze in one ball game. I froze a ball 0:06:34.600 --> 0:06:37.160 for a couple of minutes, and he got furious, pulled 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:39.480 me out of the game and said, we don't play 0:06:39.480 --> 0:06:42.880 ball like that in the Ivy League. But the truth was, 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.200 they did play ball like that in the Ivy League. 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:49.039 Princeton in particular was famous for it. But Pepper didn't 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:51.160 much like being talked to that way, so he left 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:54.479 the basketball team. But come springtime he was back out 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:58.559 on the pitcher's mount. Usually in baseball, the catcher calls 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:01.119 the game, that is the your signals to the pitcher 0:07:01.360 --> 0:07:04.400 what pitch he used to throw. Pepper thought that was silly. 0:07:04.760 --> 0:07:06.640 He was the one who would throw the ball, so 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:08.279 why shouldn't he be the one to say what it 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.400 was going to be? So he turned to practice upside 0:07:11.400 --> 0:07:15.800 down at Columbia. I called all my games myself. I 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:18.640 gave to catch a two signals what the pitcher was 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:21.640 going to be, and wherever's going to go. The kind 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:25.000 of success that Pepper was having didn't go unnoticed. He 0:07:25.080 --> 0:07:28.560 began to get feelers from scouts representing major league teams, 0:07:29.200 --> 0:07:31.960 but Pepper was good enough to know that he wasn't 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.240 good enough, and the White Shocks did want to sign me. 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.200 At one point, I realized if I took that I'd 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:41.640 be down in the miners, probably in c or d 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:46.760 for three four years and never make it. So I 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:49.600 figured I'd better find out something else to do with 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:53.040 my life. Pepper would go on to find many things 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:55.880 to do with his life, but baseball was to open 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:59.720 one more door. I continued to play baseball at Columbia, 0:08:00.560 --> 0:08:04.720 and in May of nineteen fifty nine, myself and one 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.960 other player from the team were chosen to go to 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:12.960 Cuba the Cuban sports festival that Fidel Casha was running, 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.800 and so I played in Cuba in that festival. But 0:08:16.920 --> 0:08:19.880 I used to come to all the games. He's a great, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:22.800 great baseball fan, and of course a great picture. Fidel was, 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:27.720 in my view, far better picture than I was. So 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:30.559 I stayed in Cuba after the team left. I spoke 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:35.000 the language, I spent some time with Fidell and minimum 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:38.760 amount of time with che Guevara. He was not forthcoming 0:08:39.360 --> 0:08:43.160 outwards the way that Fidel in particular was, but he 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:47.040 was a very serious guy and you had no doubt 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:51.120 that he was committed to the revolution. The following year, 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.080 Pepper went for graduate studies to the University of London. 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.080 When they found out that he could play basketball, he 0:08:57.200 --> 0:08:59.880 was quickly put on the team. They then won most 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:02.880 their games and all of the important ones until the end. 0:09:03.840 --> 0:09:07.480 We won the national championship. That year. We played in 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.240 the internationals and didn't do very well. We didn't win, 0:09:11.320 --> 0:09:15.680 We lost in France. In London, Bill had occasion to 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.920 hang out with journalist Clark Mullenhoff, who would tease Bill 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:21.600 about coming from the most corrupt city in the country, 0:09:21.960 --> 0:09:25.920 his hometown of Yonkers. This surprise Pepper because he was 0:09:26.000 --> 0:09:27.960 just a kid when he lived there. So when he 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:30.240 got home, he went to the editor of the local 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:33.800 newspaper and asked if it were true. He said yes, 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:36.600 he said, this is one of the most corrupt cities 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.440 in the East Coast. Has been run by a boss, 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:45.240 Tommy Brogan, for about fifty years at that point, and 0:09:46.120 --> 0:09:51.160 his alliance with organized crime is very clear. Pepper asked 0:09:51.240 --> 0:09:54.240 if there was anything that could be done. He said, well, 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:57.120 it used to be a citizens union. If you want 0:09:57.160 --> 0:09:59.360 to look into it. Why. He gave me all the 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:03.800 details and I did, and I restarted the Citizens Junior. 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:08.520 At the time, Pepper was attending the University of Pennsylvania 0:10:08.600 --> 0:10:11.440 Law school and he was coming home on weekends to 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:15.880 work on Yonker's public life. Eventually, the politics became so 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.280 consuming that Pepper had to drop out of school, but 0:10:19.360 --> 0:10:23.199 the work paid off, at least for Yonkers. I worked 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.600 on the Citizens JUNI and we eventually took control of 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:29.199 the city of Yonkers, and I refused to run for office. 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.040 I was able to put good people into office. I 0:10:33.080 --> 0:10:37.320 was twenty four years old when we did that. The 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:42.040 successful fight against an entrenched political machine made people take notice. 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.600 One of those was Robert Kennedy, who had decided to 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:48.040 run for US Senate from the state of New York. 0:10:48.960 --> 0:10:52.320 Bob Kennedy came to me and asked me to run 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:57.720 his Westchester County campaign, so I became his Citizens Chairman. 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.040 I have to confess I didn't like the Bob Kennedy 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.680 I knew in nineteen sixty four and was going to 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:09.520 break with the campaign because he was arrogant. He ended 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.959 up dealing with the local political machine that we had 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:17.640 overturned to take control. So Pepper told the Kennedy people 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.680 that he wanted to quit, but the campaign had a 0:11:20.679 --> 0:11:23.560 good thing in him and they knew it. So they 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:25.840 sent in a heavy hitter, a man who had been 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.680 very close to JFK when he was president. They sent 0:11:29.720 --> 0:11:33.160 Teddy Sorenson. They sent Teddy in to convince me to 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:37.840 stay in the campaign. Then sixty four I handled Bobby's 0:11:37.880 --> 0:11:41.320 campaign in Westchester County. But I was getting at that 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:46.760 point in sixty four sixty five increasingly aware of the 0:11:46.880 --> 0:12:07.720 Vietnam War and concerned about it. So Pepper decided to 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:10.640 go to Vietnam. He took a leave of absence from 0:12:10.640 --> 0:12:14.120 his position teaching political science at Mercy College. He still 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:16.560 didn't have the money, but when he described to a 0:12:16.600 --> 0:12:19.640 wealthy friend what he wanted to do, she offered to 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.320 pay for the journey. She was also well connected, and 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:26.400 on her say so, managed to get letters of endorsement 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:30.400 from the very Catholic Cardinal Spellman and the equally conservative 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.400 Dewitwallace of The Reader's Digest. Those letters provided the mona 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:39.120 fines Pepper would need when he arrived in Nam, I 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:43.320 got my credentials as a journalist that gave me access 0:12:43.440 --> 0:12:48.200 to the entire country by means of military C one 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:52.160 thirty aircraft, and I would fly to various points of 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:55.280 the country that I wanted to see. I saw more 0:12:55.320 --> 0:12:59.480 than I bargained for, farmers and rural people burned to 0:12:59.559 --> 0:13:03.719 the ground. I was seeing children badly injured by the 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:07.720 napalm and the white phosphorus burning. And I was seeing 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:13.480 total devastation among the civilian population who themselves were not 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:17.360 involved in the war. I made a lot of tape recordings, 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.400 took a lot of photographs. At one point, Pepper was 0:13:21.440 --> 0:13:24.440 in an army transport flying into the central Highlands town 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.800 of Plakup when his plane was hit by groundfire and 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.080 the pilots suddenly lost control of the aircraft. It made 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:34.280 a crash landing, and Pepper sustained injuries to his back 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.800 that had plagued him the rest of his life. Pepper 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:40.280 was in pain and went back to Saigon for a break. 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:42.600 And we will repeat here what he said at the 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:45.480 top of the episode about how he had aroused questions 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:51.240 about his loyalties the government was increasingly suspicious because I 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.880 didn't go to any of the press frey things, and 0:13:54.080 --> 0:13:56.000 I was out in the country all of the time, 0:13:56.600 --> 0:14:00.319 not really under anyone's control. I was at a party 0:14:00.360 --> 0:14:04.679 with some other journalists and friends, and a young Vietnamese 0:14:04.760 --> 0:14:10.679 woman approached me and tempted to set up a conversation 0:14:10.840 --> 0:14:14.640 and become social. I was just so angry at that 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:17.480 point in time by what I was seeing that I 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.320 told her what I was seeing. And the next morning 0:14:21.360 --> 0:14:26.280 I was called down to Commander Madison's office. He was CIA, obviously, 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:31.120 and he said to me, I understand we're a bit 0:14:31.200 --> 0:14:33.240 worried about you. You're ound in the country a lot, 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:38.200 You've been injured, you probably have some severe pain. Maybe 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:42.160 it's time for you to go home. Pepper agreed it 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:44.760 was near time to go home, but he first wanted 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:47.560 to see what was happening in a certain rural province. 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.360 Could the military get him there by Chopper The answer 0:14:51.400 --> 0:14:54.760 was no, but they would agree to achieve. Pepper said 0:14:54.760 --> 0:14:57.640 he'd let them know. When I talked to some of 0:14:58.080 --> 0:15:02.040 my colleagues, they said, Bill, the last guy took good 0:15:02.120 --> 0:15:05.960 cheap from them, was found dead by the side of 0:15:06.000 --> 0:15:10.120 the road. So we suggest you read the handwriting on 0:15:10.200 --> 0:15:13.000 the wall and you get out of here, because they've 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:18.000 obviously worried about you. And by worried about him, they 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.040 didn't mean they were worried about his health. They were 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.080 worried about what he was doing, who he was talking to, 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.880 what he was taking pictures of. So Pepper decided to 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.280 heed the warning, and he left Vietnam carrying a satchel 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:34.600 with his trove of tape recordings and undeveloped film. But 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.640 who in the US would care to do anything with them? 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.760 Certainly not the Reader's Digest, and as it turned out, 0:15:40.920 --> 0:15:44.600 not Cardinal Spellman either. Pepper returned to his post at 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.440 Mercy College and talked to the president of the college 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:51.600 into sponsoring a debate on the war. I pressed for 0:15:51.720 --> 0:15:58.440 Mercy College to hold an event on Vietnam, and we 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:03.040 scheduled at large debate eight that involved that anti war activist, 0:16:03.600 --> 0:16:08.760 myself and the ambassador to the United Nations from Vietnam. 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:12.040 He came up from New York, and when it was 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:17.080 my turn to speak, I just destroyed everything he said 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:23.680 about legitimacy of the effort anti communist and efforts and 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:28.480 all of that, and I just destroyed them. Very shortly thereafter, 0:16:29.240 --> 0:16:34.280 Cardinal Spellman called the president of the college and insisted 0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:38.440 that I be fired from my teaching post. She called 0:16:38.440 --> 0:16:42.080 me in and she was virtually in tears. Mercy College 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:44.880 in those days was just beginning, and I built the 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.320 political science department, and when I handled a Kennedy campaign, 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.840 I brought the Kennedy sisters and the mother there, so 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:55.440 they had a high regard for what I was about. 0:16:56.240 --> 0:16:59.360 She was in such a plight because she had been 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:03.720 directly ordered by the cardinal to fire me, and she 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:06.400 didn't want to do it. But she said, but Bill, 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:10.359 they give us eighty percent of our budget. I said, Sister, 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:14.520 her name was Atheldreda, said sister, Etheldreda, don't worry about it. 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:19.520 I'll just resign. After Pepper returned from Vietnam, he gave 0:17:19.520 --> 0:17:21.639 a few lectures and did a little writing on the 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.440 war about the crimes he felt that were being committed. 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:29.320 But nobody, even in the alternate or progressive media, wanted 0:17:29.359 --> 0:17:31.919 anything to do with the utter horror of what he 0:17:31.960 --> 0:17:35.920 had witnessed and recorded in Vietnam. The stories that were 0:17:35.920 --> 0:17:38.520 printed were ones that had come out of press briefings 0:17:38.720 --> 0:17:41.919 and had to do with strategic hamlets, body counts, and 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:46.119 the ever hopeful light at the end of the tunnel. Finally, 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:51.160 Warren Hankel of Ramparts came to me and I guess 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:55.320 autumn of sixty six, and he asked me to do 0:17:55.400 --> 0:18:00.200 a piece for Ramparts magazine. I was closeted for two 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:04.840 weeks at the Algonquin Hotel in New York and I 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.800 wrote that piece, and I provided them with all of 0:18:07.840 --> 0:18:12.320 my photographs. The article that Bill Pepper wrote for Ramparts 0:18:12.440 --> 0:18:16.080 was titled The Children of Vietnam. It was virtually the 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:18.600 first time that the horrors of the war had been 0:18:18.640 --> 0:18:21.919 put on display in the United States, and the horrors 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:24.640 belonged to us because we were the ones who used 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:27.800 the undiscriminating weapon that would bring fire from the sky. 0:18:28.640 --> 0:18:32.520 As reported by Pepper, the official US position was quote 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:36.280 napalm is used against selected targets, such as caves and 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:41.760 reinforced supply areas. Casualties are predominantly persons involved in Communist 0:18:41.840 --> 0:18:49.360 military operations. But as Pepper would document in his travels 0:18:49.400 --> 0:18:53.240 about Vietnam and his visitations to what hospitals were still functioning, 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.600 these terrible things did not fall upon the unlucky few, 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:01.320 but upon civilians in great numbers. Tens of thousands of 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:06.080 children were either killed or horrifically scarred. As Pepper said 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:10.280 in his article Napalm and its more horrible companion, white 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:15.080 phosphors liquidized young flesh and carve it into grotesque forms. 0:19:15.760 --> 0:19:19.800 The little figures are afterwards often scarcely human in appearance, 0:19:20.359 --> 0:19:23.439 and one can not be confronted with the monstrous effects 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:27.720 of the burning without being totally shaken. I never left 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:31.800 the tiny victims without losing composure. The initial urge to 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.000 reach out and soothe the hurt was restrained by the 0:19:35.040 --> 0:19:38.880 fear that ash like skin would crumble in my fingers. 0:19:40.200 --> 0:19:42.440 If he were not to be remembered for anything else, 0:19:42.760 --> 0:19:46.200 Bill Pepper should be remembered and honored for sending himself 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:49.159 the Vietnam and coming home with the truth about what 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.840 we were doing there. But the article on Vietnam began 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:55.920 a whole new episode in Bill Pepper's life. It brought 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.520 him into the presence of another man who was wrestling 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.600 with his moral duty. So the Ramparts piece came out 0:20:02.720 --> 0:20:07.720 in January of nineteen sixty seven. That was what Martin 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:12.680 King noticed as he wasn't going on a trip to photographs. 0:20:12.680 --> 0:20:15.359 I think caught his attention, and he read the article 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:20.360 later and asked to meet with me. Pepper and King 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:23.440 first met in Providence, Rhode Island, where King was speaking 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:27.040 at the chapel of Brown University. Both men were continuing 0:20:27.040 --> 0:20:31.360 on to Boston, so King asked Pepper to ride with him. 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:35.080 I rode to Boston with him. I showed him whatever 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.560 additional material that I had at that time, and he wept. 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:43.119 He literally wept in the car. He saw all of 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.840 this horror that was being done by his government. He 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:52.160 couldn't believe it. Because his article and photographs had finally 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:56.159 been published in a national magazine, Bill Pepper suddenly became 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:59.640 a voice for the anti war movement. And I don't 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:02.399 remember that date, but I then agreed in April of 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:07.639 nineteen sixty seven to be a keynote speaker at a 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:12.400 march that went from Central Park down to the United Nations. 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:15.960 It was a huge marsh quarter of a million or 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:20.240 so people. Pepper was also chosen to introduce Martin Luther 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:24.600 King at that rally, no small honor. I was there 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:28.800 that day. I don't remember Pepper's introduction but I do 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:35.879 remember King's booming voice, stop the bombing, Let us save 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:41.480 our national honor, stop the bombing, and stop the wall. 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:46.320 After the rally in New York, Pepper was asked by 0:21:46.440 --> 0:21:49.359 King and others to become the executive director of the 0:21:49.440 --> 0:21:54.159 National Conference for New Politics. Pepper accepted the purpose of 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.600 the NCNP was to be an umbrella group that will 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:01.000 unite the many peace and justice groups into a formidable 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:04.920 political force. Towards that end, a convention was proposed in 0:22:05.000 --> 0:22:08.760 Chicago on Labor Day weekend. Pepper spent his entire summer 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.440 organizing that event. We built this convention and it took 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.360 place in Chicago over Labor Day, and doctor King agreed 0:22:17.400 --> 0:22:21.280 to give the keynote address. We were very naive, very 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:25.040 naive at that time. I was barely thirty years old, 0:22:25.680 --> 0:22:29.920 with rough and ready political experience in the from Yonkers 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:35.040 in New York, but nothing significant beyond Yonkers. And when 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:38.600 a Black Caucus was formed, we thought that was a 0:22:38.600 --> 0:22:42.480 good thing because all black delegates would unite, there would 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:46.680 be a positive force. What we didn't realize was that 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:50.879 the Johnson administration, working with Richard Daley, the Mayor of Chicago, 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:56.879 would put together a very sophisticated disruptive team whose whole 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:00.440 purpose was to break up the convention, and they seated, 0:23:00.880 --> 0:23:03.680 And we would learn later that many of the members 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:08.359 or members of the Blackstone Rangers, a gang and Chicago 0:23:08.440 --> 0:23:14.320 who daily brought onto the scene greatly discouraged by what 0:23:14.359 --> 0:23:17.600 had happened in Chicago. Pepper would continue with his anti 0:23:17.600 --> 0:23:21.359 war activities, and so did King, but he also began 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:24.199 to plan for Poor People's March on Washington to be 0:23:24.240 --> 0:23:28.520 held the following summer. King wanted economic justice to take 0:23:28.560 --> 0:23:31.679 its place alongside of civil rights, and the energy that 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:34.959 was building around the sanitation workers strike in Memphis was 0:23:35.000 --> 0:23:37.679 the kind of force that King hoped to harness for 0:23:37.720 --> 0:23:41.719 his march. But Martin King was murdered, and for Bill Pepper, 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:46.040 that was the day the music died. I heard on 0:23:46.080 --> 0:23:49.800 the radio that he had been assassinated. I went down 0:23:49.840 --> 0:23:55.040 to Memphis with Benjamin Spock. We went for the purpose 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:58.439 of the memorial and also trying to keep the torch 0:23:58.480 --> 0:24:02.600 alive for a movement that was going to try to 0:24:02.640 --> 0:24:06.960 go on without him. Pepper and Spock followed the fallen 0:24:07.080 --> 0:24:10.240 King to Atlanta, where he would be buried. There he 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:13.200 ran into Bobby Kennedy, on whose Senate campaign he had 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:18.000 worked four years earlier. Bobby asked me and others to 0:24:18.040 --> 0:24:21.119 come up to this hotel to discuss his presidential campaign, 0:24:21.480 --> 0:24:33.000 and I said, no, I'm through his politics. So after 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.520 turning a baseball into an IVY league, education, cleaning up 0:24:36.520 --> 0:24:40.040 the city of Yonkers, working for Bobby Kennedy, hanging out 0:24:40.080 --> 0:24:44.960 with Fidel Castro, sending himself to Vietnam, pissing off Cardinal Spellman, 0:24:45.359 --> 0:24:48.520 and working for Martin Luther King, Bill Pepper decided to 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:52.840 leave politics, sit back, and devote himself to education. But 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:55.840 even in that he couldn't keep from stirring the pot. 0:24:56.600 --> 0:24:59.800 In nineteen seventy three, he wrote a book on education 0:25:00.000 --> 0:25:03.200 titled The Self Managed Child that was published in hardcover 0:25:03.400 --> 0:25:07.000 by Harper and Rowe. In the book, Pepper joined the 0:25:07.040 --> 0:25:10.000 schooling debates at that time by warning about what he 0:25:10.040 --> 0:25:14.520 saw as education's most common mistake, it's suffocating feeling of 0:25:14.560 --> 0:25:17.920 self importance. And Pepper had some learning of his own 0:25:17.960 --> 0:25:21.119 to continue for. As you may remember, he had dropped 0:25:21.119 --> 0:25:23.800 out of law school at the University of Pennsylvania in 0:25:23.880 --> 0:25:26.919 nineteen sixty one to devote himself full time to the 0:25:26.960 --> 0:25:31.119 political fight in Yonkers. So in nineteen seventy five he 0:25:31.200 --> 0:25:34.240 went back to law school, this time at Boston College, 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.760 where he graduated with honors a year later. So he 0:25:37.760 --> 0:25:40.600 had barely become a licensed attorney when he got the 0:25:40.600 --> 0:25:43.720 phone call from Ralph Abernathy asking if he would join 0:25:43.800 --> 0:25:47.000