WEBVTT - The Other Rockwell 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:12.560 Col Zone Media. Hey there, Molly here, I wanted to 0:00:12.600 --> 0:00:17.320 take a second to talk about a different Rockwell. We've 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:21.520 been talking in circles for weeks now about George Lincoln Rockwell, 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:25.480 the founder of the American Nazi Party, But there are 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:30.280 some other famous Rockwells. His own father, George Lovejoy Rockwell, 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:35.000 was a pretty famous vaudeville performer. But it isn't Doc 0:00:35.120 --> 0:00:39.320 Rockwell I want to talk about. There is another Rockwell who, 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:42.800 like the Nazi we've been talking about, is most famously 0:00:42.840 --> 0:00:46.600 pictured with a pipe in his mouth. Another Rockwell who 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.200 lived in a city called Arlington in his forties. Another 0:00:50.280 --> 0:00:53.599 Rockwell who came out swinging in the nineteen sixties with 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:58.240 some strong public statements about the civil rights movement. But 0:00:58.360 --> 0:01:02.680 George Lincoln Rockwell the Nazi and Norman Rockwell the illustrator 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:06.640 don't really have much else in common, so there's never 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.160 really a good reason to talk about both men in 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:17.360 the same breath, unless it's by accident. As I was 0:01:17.400 --> 0:01:20.440 researching the story of Frank Smith and his involvement in 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.240 both the American Nazi Party and the New England Mafia, 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.360 I was reading through the file the FBI kept on 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:32.120 Raymond patriarcha a mob bosson Rhode Island. About four thousand 0:01:32.160 --> 0:01:35.720 pages into that eight thousand page file, there's a memo 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:40.200 addressed to J. Edgar Hoover. It's from the Special Agent 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.640 in charge of the Boston Field Office, and it's dated 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:47.240 January of nineteen sixty five. The memo was to notify 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.680 Hoover that a patriarchic crime family associate who'd just been 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:54.560 released from prison was meeting with a man called George 0:01:55.280 --> 0:02:02.240 Norman Rockwell. The typewritten memo has a handwritten correction, so 0:02:02.280 --> 0:02:05.880 someone took a pen and circled Norman and then wrote 0:02:06.160 --> 0:02:12.360 Lincoln in the margins. It's a funny little artifact, but 0:02:12.440 --> 0:02:14.919 it reminded me of the time I heard someone make 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:20.560 that exact same mistake in a federal courtroom. Back in 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:23.160 twenty twenty one. I was covering a trial in the 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:27.400 civil lawsuit of Siins vs. Kessler, a suit filed against 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.200 the organizers of the Unite the Right rally by a 0:02:30.200 --> 0:02:32.600 group of people who'd been injured at the Nazi rally. 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.680 Towards the end of that trial, when the plaintiff's attorney 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.520 had Jeff's Scoop on the stand, the one time leader 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:43.240 of the National Socialist Movement, Scoop was asked about some 0:02:43.400 --> 0:02:48.079 terminology that he used with his group. The National Socialist 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:51.400 Movement referred to their members who engage in street level 0:02:51.440 --> 0:02:55.960 activism as stormtroopers, and that was a nod to their 0:02:56.040 --> 0:03:00.680 shared history with the American Nazi Party. When the attorney 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:05.919 rephrased that answer back to his witness, he accidentally said 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:12.240 George Norman Rockwell instead of George Lincoln Rockwell. And I 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:16.320 remember this moment. I remember it because it was one 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:19.560 of the only times I laughed that day, and I 0:03:19.600 --> 0:03:23.280 remember it because I wrote it down, and I remember 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:26.920 joking about it in person with another of the plaintiff's 0:03:26.919 --> 0:03:32.360 atorneys a few days later. I remember it. But when 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:34.280 I went back to look at the transcript this week, 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:41.000 it isn't actually there. And this has honestly really shaken 0:03:41.040 --> 0:03:43.960 my faith in the sanctity of court reporting. I mean, 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:47.800 the transcript is supposed to be this perfect, indelible record 0:03:47.840 --> 0:03:49.960 of the words that were spoken aloud in a court room, 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:54.279 and normally I would default to believing what's in the transcript, 0:03:54.320 --> 0:04:01.200 but I know the transcript is mistaken. Here. I typically 0:04:01.280 --> 0:04:04.200 take all my courtroom notes by hand, but because of 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.600 the ongoing COVID pandemic back in twenty twenty one, the 0:04:07.680 --> 0:04:10.400 judge made the decision to close the courtroom to the public, 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:13.960 and so this trial was broadcast over a telephone line 0:04:13.960 --> 0:04:17.200 that you could call into to listen. And since I 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:19.919 was able to listen in from home, I decided that 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:23.080 instead of taking my notes privately and then writing about 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:27.800 them later, I would live tweet the trial, all four 0:04:27.800 --> 0:04:32.880 weeks of it. It was a nightmarish undertaking, but one 0:04:32.920 --> 0:04:36.800 I took very seriously, and when that trial finally ended, 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:40.800 I got perhaps the finest compliment I'll ever get about 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:44.680 my notes. Some of the attorneys for the plaintiffs told 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:46.800 me that when they had to leave the courtroom for 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:50.000 a bathroom break or something during the day, they would 0:04:50.000 --> 0:04:52.680 pull up those tweets to see what they were missing. 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:58.000 So transcript be damned. That attorney made the same little 0:04:58.040 --> 0:05:01.719 mistake in twenty twenty one that an FBI agent made 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:06.440 in that memo in nineteen sixty five. They both accidentally 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:11.600 dragged poor Norman Rockwell into Nazi business. So those were 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:14.159 the two examples of this that I had in mind, 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.480 But I hadn't realized the extent to which this mistake 0:05:18.600 --> 0:05:21.240 was happening until I sat down to write about it. 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:24.760 Apparently it was a frequent enough occurrence that it was 0:05:24.800 --> 0:05:28.760 a source of great pain for Norman Rockwell, particularly in 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.320 the nineteen sixties when both men were active in their 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:36.520 respective careers, one as America's leading neo Nazi and the 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:41.839 other as a beloved illustrator of Americana. Despite their differences, 0:05:42.480 --> 0:05:45.039 this similarity in their names has been a source of 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:50.000 confusion for decades. A lot of people are making this mistake. 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:57.760 Most often it's that same mistake the FBI agent made. 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:02.119 People are writing George Norman Rockwell when they mean George 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.760 Lincoln Rockwell. So they have the first and last name 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:08.280 of the Nazi correct, and they know it's a three 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:11.719 named deal, but some part of their brain is just 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.159 inserting the name of the other famous Rockwell into the middle. 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:21.240 I found dozens of instances in old newspapers where stories 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.200 about the American Nazi Party refer to the group's leader 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:29.680 as George Norman Rockwell. I found papers containing apologies and 0:06:29.760 --> 0:06:32.960 corrections for having made the mistake, and letters to the 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:36.239 editor from readers who are outraged on the artist's behalf 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.880 and I also found articles that used both the correct 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:46.360 and incorrect form interchangeably from paragraph to paragraph, and this 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:50.040 middle name mix up accounts for most of the examples 0:06:50.080 --> 0:06:54.800 I found, but there were a few notable instances where 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:59.400 they just switched the names entirely. In nineteen sixty four 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.200 of the local Young Republicans Club led the effort to 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:07.159 invite George Lincoln Rockwell to speak at Western Washington State College, 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:11.760 and when the day finally arrived, that student Terry Gallagher, 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:16.200 was so nervous that he accidentally introduced the Nazi to 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:22.160 the audience as Norman Rockwell. In nineteen sixty six, when 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:25.680 George Lincoln Rockwell was arrested in Chicago, a newspaper in 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.600 Alabama ran a photo of men in white powered T 0:07:28.760 --> 0:07:34.000 shirts with Swastika banners under the headline Nazi chief Norman 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:39.600 Rockwell arrested. That same year, before the Senate killed what 0:07:39.640 --> 0:07:42.160 would have been the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty six, 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.480 a Florida congressman introduced an amendment to the bill that 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:51.520 would quote deter professional agitators by making it a crime 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:56.280 to cross state lines to participate in civil disturbance. According 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.880 to a write up in the Atlanta Journal, Constitution Representative 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:03.480 William Kramer said his amendment was intended to keep people 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:07.760 like Norman Rockwell from traveling from state to state, fomenting 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:12.880 civil disorder and again shaking my faith in the sanctity 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:17.320 of transcription. This is actually missing from the congressional record, 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:20.760 but the reporter who wrote it up says that Kramer 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:26.080 said Norman Rockwell several times before he was interrupted by 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:30.320 a colleague who suggested that he probably means George Lincoln. 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:38.960 One particularly messy example came shortly after George Lincoln Rockwell's death, 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.800 when his assassin, John Patler, first appeared in court for 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.280 an arraignment. Another member of the American Nazi Party had 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.360 an outburst in the courtroom. So a man in the 0:08:49.400 --> 0:08:51.960 gallery stood up and he's screaming at John Patler, and 0:08:52.000 --> 0:08:56.440 he lunged toward him, and he was arrested. And after 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.599 Eric Wenberg was arrested, it was discovered that he was 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:04.800 an aust Araelian citizen who'd overstayed a tourist visa. Before 0:09:04.840 --> 0:09:08.000 authorities in the US could deport him, he traveled to Canada, 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.119 and Canada too wanted the Nazi out, but the Canadian 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:19.400 deportation proceedings were delayed by an embarrassing clerical error. One 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.160 of the reasons the Canadian government gave for his removal 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:25.439 was that he'd been arrested in the United States at 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:32.560 a demonstration against the assassin of Norman Rockwell. John Beatty, 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:36.080 the Canadian Nazi who represented Wenberg at his deportation hearing, 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:39.840 showed up to court in a swastika armband and argued 0:09:39.880 --> 0:09:44.000 that clearly this record is full of errors. Norman Rockwell 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:49.320 is still alive. Weinberg was eventually sent home to Australia, 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.480 and in nineteen seventy two he died in a car accident. 0:09:53.920 --> 0:09:58.000 That doesn't sound particularly notable, but the car accident happened 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.640 in Rhodesia, and it was reported at the time that 0:10:01.640 --> 0:10:04.360 there was a million dollars in cash found in the 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:07.400 car with his dead body. So we'll have to come 0:10:07.440 --> 0:10:10.920 back to that some other time. We're talking about Norman Rockwell. 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.800 But in all of these examples, people are accidentally slipping 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:21.680 Norman Rockwell's name into stories about the Nazi. I couldn't 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:24.320 find a single instance of the mistake happening in reverse. 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:42.280 Now you might be wondering, are these two men related, 0:10:43.480 --> 0:10:49.440 they're not. I did find one completely unsubstantiated claim published 0:10:49.480 --> 0:10:51.800 in two thousand and three in the journal Holocaust and 0:10:51.840 --> 0:10:57.680 Genocide Studies that Norman Rockwell was George Lincoln's uncle. There's 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:01.480 no citation. The article was a review of Frederick Simon 0:11:01.520 --> 0:11:05.679 Elli's biography of George Lincoln Rockwell, and I've read that book. 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:10.400 It makes absolutely no mention of Norman Rockwell at all. 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:14.920 So that strange parenthetical claim in the article that the 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:18.280 illustrator is the Nazis' uncle seems to be just entirely 0:11:18.320 --> 0:11:23.079 made up. Norman Rockwell is about the same age as 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:27.440 the Nazi's father, and they're both from New England, so 0:11:27.480 --> 0:11:31.000 it's a reasonable question to ask, but the answer is no. 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:35.080 I did some of my own genealogical research on both 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:39.280 families and I found no connection. Back in the days 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:43.080 before Google, sometimes newspapers would have a feature that answered 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.720 factual questions submitted by readers, and I found a bunch 0:11:46.760 --> 0:11:49.560 of those over the years where readers asked variations on 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:55.040 this question and the newspaper always answered no, sometimes citing 0:11:55.080 --> 0:12:00.320 Norman Rockwell himself. This association was a troubling one for 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:05.200 Norman Rockwell. His granddaughter, Abigail Rockwell, still runs a Facebook 0:12:05.240 --> 0:12:08.760 page dedicated to his memory. In a post just a 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.720 few weeks ago, she wrote, my father told me Pop 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:16.400 was very upset to be sometimes confused with George Lincoln Rockwell, 0:12:16.679 --> 0:12:19.720 the founder of the America Nazi Party. He was so 0:12:19.920 --> 0:12:23.959 unsettled and perturbed by this he considered taking legal action, 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:31.040 but was dissuaded from doing so. It's not just embarrassing 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:35.560 to be mixed up with someone else, especially someone so unsavory. 0:12:37.120 --> 0:12:42.600 Norman Rockwell wasn't just not George Lincoln Rockwell. He was 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:50.560 against everything the other man represented. The name Norman Rockwell 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.839 probably puts some images into your mind's eye right away. 0:12:55.160 --> 0:12:57.480 You might be picturing his painting of a family at 0:12:57.480 --> 0:13:00.240 the dinner table with a big turkey, or the one 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.520 of a man standing up ready to speak his mind. 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.320 Both of those Freedom from want and freedom of speech 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:10.320 were painted in the same year as part of a 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.880 four part series of paintings for the Saturday Evening Post 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:17.320 in nineteen forty three, and if you're only familiar with 0:13:17.360 --> 0:13:22.920 his earlier work, you might be thinking, well, Norman Rockwell 0:13:23.000 --> 0:13:27.080 was just painting the America that George Lincoln Rockwell was 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:33.439 trying to create a whitewashed conservative America with traditional white 0:13:33.640 --> 0:13:39.000 Christian suburban family values. You're probably picturing his paintings of 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:42.440 a white family on their way to church, a pretty 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:45.400 blond white woman at the soda counter, a white couple 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:48.840 at the courthouse getting a marriage license, boy scouts, soldiers, 0:13:49.320 --> 0:13:54.000 the iconic image of Rosy the Riveter, classic mid twentieth 0:13:54.080 --> 0:14:03.320 century Americana, images of peaceful suburban living, and notably images 0:14:03.360 --> 0:14:09.720 with only white faces. And that's true. Those are Norman 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:13.559 Rockwell's most famous works. Those are things that he painted. 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:18.240 Most of the ones you're probably thinking of were illustrations 0:14:18.240 --> 0:14:21.920 he did for The Saturday Evening Post. Over the course 0:14:21.920 --> 0:14:25.720 of forty seven years, he illustrated hundreds of covers for 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:31.000 that magazine. According to art critic Caroline Marling, the Saturday 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:36.280 Evening Post explicitly forbade Norman Rockwell from painting black subjects 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.880 in his cover art unless they were depicted performing some 0:14:40.040 --> 0:14:45.040 kind of menial task. By the nineteen sixties, though, he 0:14:45.160 --> 0:14:48.880 felt drawn to paint the world as it was, and 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:53.000 that meant acknowledging the struggle for civil rights, so he 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:58.920 parted ways with the Saturday Evening Post. In the nineteen sixties, 0:14:59.440 --> 0:15:03.360 Norman rockw Well painted for Look magazine, and it was 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:07.360 for Look that he created some of his most moving paintings. 0:15:08.600 --> 0:15:12.320 In nineteen sixty four, a painting called The Problem We 0:15:12.360 --> 0:15:17.720 All Live With was published in Look Magazine's centerfold. It 0:15:17.760 --> 0:15:21.080 shows a six year old Ruby Bridges flanked by federal 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:26.880 marshals on her way to integrate her elementary school. The 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:30.920 following year, Look published a painting called Murder in Mississippi, 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:34.640 and it was Norman Rockwell's depiction of the murders of 0:15:34.680 --> 0:15:38.640 civil rights workers James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:43.800 During the same years that George Lincoln Rockwell was criss 0:15:43.800 --> 0:15:48.560 crossing the country disrupting and mocking civil rights marches, Norman 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:54.640 Rockwell was painting that struggle. He was quietly insisting through 0:15:54.680 --> 0:15:58.080 his work that people like Ruby Bridges were every bit 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:00.800 as much a part of the fabric of America as 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:06.240 the subjects of his kitche classic illustrations of Suburbia. When 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.160 his Nazi counterpart was making a mockery of the struggle 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:11.800 for equality in Mississippi by sending a storm trooper in 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:16.480 blackface into the Capitol Building to disrupt Congress Norman Rockwell 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:21.080 was memorializing the civil rights activist who died fighting for 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:27.400 racial justice there. In July of nineteen sixty seven, Norman 0:16:27.520 --> 0:16:31.640 Rockwell spoke at the National Press Club in Washington. Gossip 0:16:31.640 --> 0:16:36.240 columnist Leonard Lyons reported that the artist was overheard rehearsing 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.240 the opening line of his speech in a hotel shortly 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:48.080 before the event. I am not George Lincoln Rockwell. Just 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.200 a few weeks later, the other Rockwell was shot in 0:16:51.200 --> 0:16:55.760 a strip mall parking lot. That bullet didn't end the 0:16:55.760 --> 0:16:59.720 confusion between the two Rockwells, but it did end the 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:11.240 night life. Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool 0:17:11.280 --> 0:17:15.280 Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded by me, 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:19.840 Molly Kunger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:23.280 The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:26.840 The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.359 email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. 0:17:30.440 --> 0:17:33.480 I will definitely read it, but I almost certainly will 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:36.440 not answer it. It's nothing personal. I don't answer any 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.680 of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:42.440 show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:45.040 Just don't post anything that's going to make you one 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:46.080 of my Weird Little Guys.