Question:
Dick, can you tell us when you began at CRS?

Answer:
I began in June 1968, just before the Democratic Convention in Chicago. I was hired to be Midwest Regional Director in Chicago. At the time, there were only four regions; this was the fourth.

Question:
What were you doing before you came to CRS?

Answer:
Immediately before, I was regional director of the Washington D.C. office of the U. S. Small Business Administration.

Question:
What kind of work did that entail?

Answer:
I managed an office that provided financing and management assistance to small businesses in that region. I came to SBA a couple of years earlier from a career in journalism; I had been covering SBA for my own publication. At SBA I worked in what was called Lyndon Johnson’s Poverty Program. It was the economic opportunity loan program nicknamed the minority loan program to provide loans to businesses that weren’t owned by white males. That led me to the job of regional director of the local office in Washington DC.

Question:
What got you interested in CRS?

Answer:
I heard of it many years earlier actually, and had explored working for the agency when I was in Washington in the media, but there was nothing available there for me at the time. In 1968 my CRS was looking for someone with experience in race relations and running a federal office. My name came out of the Civil Service Commission computer. I got a call asking if I was interested in the job in Atlanta or Chicago. I said I was interested because you always say that when someone offers you an opportunity, but we were pretty well settled in Washington at the time. My family had just bought a home in the District of Columbia and we had no thoughts of moving. So I didn’t take this too seriously. I scheduled the interview, but didn’t do the usual preparatory work that I would do if I was seriously interested. Just before the interview Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, and the city went up in smoke. I was in the middle of it because many of our borrowers’ stores were going up in flames. We had a major roll in responding in the days and weeks after the riots, and all of a sudden the immensity of the work that had to be done came down on me. I felt that SBA wasn’t the best place to be doing it. So I went to that interview. It was postponed because of the riots, but I went to the interview and ultimately I was offered a job in Chicago.

Question:
How long did you stay there at CRS?

Answer:
Well I was the Regional Director for fourteen years.

Question:
Why did you leave?

Answer:
Enough was enough. When I went in, Ramsey Clark, a liberal was the Attorney General. Lyndon Johnson was President. By the time I arrived in Chicago, and got my certificate of appointment, it was signed by John Mitchell, President Nixon’s conservative Attorney General. But interestingly, those politics didn’t affect us directly for a while. Nixon let the agency function and grow for about five years before they cut it back. Late4r President Reagan was there, and I decided it was time to move along. I had never been in a job for as long as three years before then, so I went back to my ways of moving around.

Question:
Can you tell us about a case that typifies your work at CRS?

Answer:
As Regional Director, my typical work was in supervision and management. But I did have the opportunity to take cases from time to time. Either I would choose one, or occasionally, I would be assigned to one. One case that I developed was a mediation at St. Cloud Reformatory for men in Minnesota. The agency started a mediation program in 1972. When civil rights protests began moving from the streets to negotiations tables, there was a need for mediators and CRS was in the vanguard of the community mediation movement. CRS was established under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in 1972 moved into mediation. Mediation training was provided for one mediator and the regional director from each region. We spent two weeks training in New York and Washington, with former labor mediators who had moved into the community field through a Ford Foundation-funded program with the American Arbitration Association. We were trained for two weeks, returned to our offices and the new mediators were assigned a supervisor out of Washington. Regional Directors were told to find one case to "get your feet wet.”

Question:
Now when you say "we,” are you saying the Regional Directors were the mediators, or were the Regional Directors and other people trained to be mediators?

Answer:
There were two rounds of training. The first was for the mediators in the field. The second round of training was for the Regional Directors, so they’d be equipped to do the work as well. Then mediators were told to identify a case suitable for mediation for themselves. The case I found and developed lasted for the better part of the year. It was an extraordinary experience. You don’t want to hear it all, but just for the record, I wrote a detailed chapter about it for the book, "Restorative Justice, _________________, by Galloway and Hudson, published by Criminal Justice Press in 199_. I want to say at the outset in discussing this case that prisons have changed considerably since I did this mediation. Gangs and drugs were not a major factor in those days. So what we accomplished in the early 1970’s might not be possible today. Minnesota had a very progressive system which focused on community corrections. Whenever they could, they would put people in community settings rather than behind bars. So the people behind bars were the most serious offenders. The youthful ones were at the State Reformatory for Men in St. Cloud, about 75 miles from the Twin Cities. The background is that in an effort to change with the times, the reformatory superintendent did some things to recognize racial differences, and in the process, he inadvertently exacerbated racial tensions within the institution. St. Cloud had about 450 confined youths. white males predominated. There were about 25 American Indians, about the same number of African Americans, and five or six Hispanics. To help compensate for their minority status, the inmates of color were permitted to organize "culture” groups that had certain privileges. They had outside advisors who came in and worked with them. They could maintain a cultural organization with an office, telephone and staff person within the institution; observe ethnic and cultural holidays and conduct a banquet with outside visitors once a year. This would in some ways compensate for the Alcoholics Anonymous and Junior Achievement chapters, or other activities in which only white inmates participated. Everything that moved in that reformatory moved racially. There wasn’t much crossing of lines.

Question:
Why did this cause a problem?

Answer:
At first the culture groups worked fine. Then the white inmates, seeing the esprit, cohesiveness and sense of community enjoyed by racial minorities, decided that they needed some organizations. So all of a sudden there was a German culture group, and then there was an Italian culture group, and they were granted culture group status by the administration. The German American group was actually a block of inmates devoted to racist activity and they provoked fights with the black inmates. Rioting broke out on several occasions and some of that found its way into the Minneapolis newspapers where I learned about it. I placed a call to the Minnesota Director of Corrections in St. Paul and suggested that the Community Relations Service might be of assistance. He greeted me profusely, and the next week I was meeting with him in his office, telling him all the wonderful things our agency could do. We had a corrections specialist in Washington, we had a mediator in Dallas, Bob Greenwald, who had just completed a very successful mediation in the Louisiana prison system. The commissioner apologized when I met with him, because his deputy commissioner, who had oversight of St. Cloud, wasn’t present. I told him that we could assessment conditions at St. Cloud and that we had a training capacity and mediation capacity and we would be pleased to go on-site and work with them. He said he was interested and that I would be hearing from his deputy within the week. But two weeks passed and there was no call. When I called the commissioner he was surprised, and the next day his deputy phoned to tell me he thought they had the situation at the reformatory under control. But he called me back two weeks later and said, "We’ve had some more racial problems. Can you send us a team? I think we need some training.” So Jim Freeman, the corrections specialist from our Washington office went in with Efrain Martinez from my office and they did an assessment. Jim found deplorable conditions there. Institutional policies and procedures were unclear and management was weak. There were plans to make major structural and programmatic changes in the institution which Jim felt the staff was not trained to handle. He felt it would be inappropriate to provide training at this juncture. Until the policies were sorted out and certain other things happened, training would not be productive. That was his report.

Question:
Stop a second and go backwards and tell me how he went about this assessment.

Answer:
Well, the way he did it (the way it was often done) is the team went on-site. Remember, we had the commissioner who was at the top in St. Paul and very supportive of our work. Then came his deputy who was following his instructions with little enthusiasm, and then the superintendent of St. Cloud and his administrators. The structure beneath that was the corrections officers. They were union members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). They are the lowest-paid state civil servants and probably the least educated. This is significant because they are often outwitted by the inmates, who may not be well educated, but have great street smarts and are very clever. Then you had the administration and the inmates. The team went in and interviewed administrators, staff and the counselors. They asked questions and kept their eyes open and developed some understanding of what was happening there. Jim had worked in the Washington DC jail system and he knew what to look for.

Question:
Did they talk to residents?

Answer:
They probably did, but I do not recall. This was to assess training needs and the appropriateness of training. The reason administrators wanted the training was to prepare staff for a major restructuring of the institution that would segregate the inmates by their job or school assignments, rather than what they had, which turned out to be largely by race. They did not isolate inmates racially, but common sense told them that the five Hispanics should be in the same cellblock. Most of the American Indians stayed out of trouble and were able to live together in the honor cell house. Blacks were lived in three cellblocks, but most were in one. whites obviously were scattered throughout.

Question:
Okay, so they didn’t assess much?

Answer:
CRS conducted an assessment and found out that it would not be wise at this junction to make this major change ion the reformatory structure. Staff and inmate morale was low. The new structure would disperse and in many cases isolate inmates of color. There were policy issues and underlying management questions which needed resolution before the changes were made and the training took place.

Question:
So what did they recommend?

Answer:
I don’t recall their recommendations, except that the training they wanted would not help the staff address the underlying problems that were leading to disruptive inmate behavior. So nothing further happened then. I did not know whether we would hear from then again. It was about two or three months after my first meeting with the commissioner that I got another call from the deputy commissioner in St. Paul. It was a Friday afternoon and I was in a judge’s office in Cleveland where we were working on that city’s school desegregation case. I received an urgent message from my office to call the deputy in St. Paul. When I reached him he tried to sound relaxed and casual as he told me " said, I’ve got a few problems, do you think you can get out here Monday morning?” He told me the reformatory was in "lock up,” because there had been another racial rioting incident. I went in the following week with Efrain Martinez from my staff and with Bob Greenwald from Dallas and a young African American program specialist from the Federal Department of Corrections. We spent a week there doing an assessment. That’s really where the story begins about the mediation. I told you about the inmate groups. We went to see the superintendent and his top staff. They gave us the run of the place throughout the week the reformatory was in lock up, which is very dangerous because tensions become very high. But they insisted it was too dangerous to let the residents out of their cells. The administrators felt they had been very progressive and fair in their treatment of inmates of color. The administration had disbanded the German American group because it was clearly there to cause racial problems. The superintendent also denied permission from inmates who wanted to form a Scottish cultural club. The administrators supported staff and would not end the lock up. So we proceeded to interview the inmate groups. Each also had outside advisors. The Italian American group’s support came from Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners (LAMP) from the University of Minnesota law school. LAMP had students who would provide assistance to the culture group. Every other week, this very attractive young law student in a mini skirt would sit with her legs crossed while a dozen gawking, very light-haired and light-complected Italians with names like Smith, and Larson, would sit and listen to her talk about Italian culture or give Italian lessons. This got them out of their boxes. They weren’t making any trouble for anybody, but they obviously didn’t have anything beyond that which bound them together. So we interviewed the corrections officers. We interviewed each of the ethnic groups, and the leadership of the groups. Many of them came together and we spoke to white inmates as well. Also the state’s Ombudsman for Corrections and the director of the St. Cloud Human Rights Commission.

Question:
And what were you asking?

Answer:
We were trying to get a fix on the place. We wanted to know why were they still in lock up. The guards were saying tensions were too high, that it was too dangerous to end the lock up. But that was not our perception when we talked to the residents. When we met with the American Indian group, as I said, they were mostly well behaved within the institution. They avoided overtures, they said, from the Black Brotherhood Development and Cultural Organization (BBDCO), to partner with them. They wanted to be left alone.

Question:
The BBDCO was another organization within the prison?

Answer:
That’s the black group. This is the American Indian group. And they were just concerned that their people be taken care of and they wanted no part of the violence. There were half a dozen, 5 or 6 Hispanic inmates, Mexican American, and they too, would align with the American Indians. They didn’t want any part of any violence.

Question:
And, in fact, hadn’t been part of it earlier?

Answer:
Probably not. I don’t remember, but probably not. There were only a few and they stayed to themselves. There was a segment of the white population that was overtly racist and would attack the blacks. The blacks were quick to respond. Keep in mind, virtually everybody in that place was there for a crime of serious violence. Murder or serious assault. Otherwise you could get out and work a community program.

Question:
And these were teenagers, I gather?

Answer:
Up into their early 20's

Question:
So after you talked to them all what did you decide to do?

Answer:
Well, then we had to sit down and see what we could come up with. It was difficult to get in to see the black inmates. They were a Muslim group. I was the "white devil", (which they later called me in their newsletter) who could not be trusted. They verbally abused me. You know, you expect some of that. The BBDCO said "we can’t end the lock up," and it became apparent to us that they were using the lock up, as leverage against the institution. Nobody in the reformatory wanted to be in lock up, but the BBDCO was using it politically. Creating a scare by saying it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t clear why they did this, but perhaps it gave them some power. As I walked out of the room I remember a BBDCO leader pounding on the table and waving his fist at me and saying, "there ain’t going to be no mediation in this place and if there is, it’s going to be in front of television cameras.” So that told me that the only question we had to resolve ultimately would be the openness of mediation to the press. I had the good fortune some weeks earlier to meet a women named Gwen Davis who ran the Antioch Minneapolis Communiversity, an affiliate of my alma mater, Antioch college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. We coincidentally met on an airplane. I remembered that she had told me that her husband, Syl, worked with prisoners. I called Syl from St. Cloud, told him what I was doing there and he came out to the institution with Raymond Johnson, an ex-offender, who regularly worked with the BBDCO.

Question:
And were they black?

Answer:
Yes. They were also teaching courses at St Cloud. When they agreed to support ;the mediation effort, it gave CRS credibility with the inmates. Eventually the black inmates agreed to come to the table. There were conditions, but basically everyone finally agreed to come to the table. I also enlisted the help of T. Williams, the Ombudsman for Corrections.

Question:
And I’m presuming he was white?

Answer:
No, T. Williams was black. I also had support from Phyllis Janey, director of the St. Cloud Human Rights Commission who at times would intervene in problems at the reformatory. I also gained support from groups such as the Minnesota Legal Assistance Program, a reservation attorney and an Hispanic attorney who occasionally worked with the culture groups. So they all knew we were there and we kept them advised of what we were doing. Most of them could not give us much time, but their support was important. Their involvement gave credibility to the process. We finally gave our report to the superintendent and we told him we thought the lock up should end and that an effort should be made to bring people together and start to talk about their concerns.

Question:
You made this report before you had gotten people to the table, correct?

Answer:
Oh yes. There had been no meetings, except that everyone had met with us. Along the way we learned that the corrections officers were angry at the way the place was run and were very angry at the administration. "If there is a table, it’s going to be a three sided table," they told us. They were upset at unclear policies and inconsistent procedures that made their work more difficult and endangered their safety. They didn’t want mediation, but they didn’t have a better alternative. After listening to their frustrations, I said to the union leaders, "You know, it sounds as though you’re in prison too.” And they felt that way.

Question:
What made you decide that getting people to the table was the direction that you wanted to move?

Answer:
I could facetiously say that my office sent me out to get a mediation. But it just seemed that there was a lot of misunderstanding and need for change and I didn’t know any better way to get change than to get everyone involved in the process. It had to come from within the institution. They didn’t want advice from the outside. So the superintendent accepted our report and said he wanted us to present it to his team of corrections officers the following morning. What I didn’t tell you earlier is that when we arrived at the institution he had set up what he called his mediation team. These were young officers, including the three black officers in the institution. Again all men, although there were a couple of women who worked there.

Question:
So when you say officers, do you mean guards?

Answer:
Guards. Yes, corrections officers. So he had set up this team and we had interviewed its members as well as the others and they had told us how bad things were and how dangerous it would be to end the lock up. And these were younger, more progressive members of the staff. Well, we came back the next morning to give them our report and we walked into the room where they had asked us to meet with them. It was a conference room. Maps and plans were spread out on the table. They said, "we appreciate what you are saying, but we think that before we open up this place we need to reorganize, so that the whole institution will never be together again. We’re going to change the dining areas, we’re going to feed in shifts and in different places, recreation and visiting will be in different places too. People will live together by job, and by school assignment. This was the original reorganization plan they had on the table when we first intervened months earlier, a plan to decimate the inmates of color. They said ,"We feel that this is necessary.” I said, "But I thought you told us that you had to wait for more money from the legislature so you could do the construction and provide the training?” They said, "We think we can manage. We figured it out and we can squeeze through until the legislature appropriates the money. It’s imperative that we do it now.” It became apparent that we were a threat to them. There was no place for negotiations in their plan. They were determined that the lock up would not end until the reorganization was in place. I went back and told the superintendent, "I understand what you are doing and there is no way we can pursue mediation under these conditions.” I wished him well and told him to let me know if we might be of assistance in the future.

Question:
Had you suggested that it would be helpful to get everybody to sit down at the table at that point?

Answer:
When we met with him the previous night and met with his mediation team, we suggested that we engage in a mediation process. But they didn't want that. They had this other plan. So I called the deputy director in St. Paul and told him we were withdrawing. To my surprise he urged me not to make a hasty decision. He asked me wait until he could be there in the morning. He obviously was feeling squeezed by the superintendent on the one hand and the commissioner on the other. By this time my team had disbanded and only Martinez and I were in St. Cloud. The next morning when we met with the superintendent and the deputy they said they wanted mediation to proceed. They agreed to suspend plans for the reorganization and end the lock up. They said they would not pursue the reorganization until they saw what happened at mediation. So we started planning for mediation. We asked the office of the Ombudsman to help us select who would come to the table. The first question was who would b e at the table. We could not have less then two from any one party because people needed support. So if you start with the Hispanic group you have to have at least two. And you needed two from the so-called Italian group. The BBDCO needed six seats at the table for political reasons within the group which meant there had to be six from the American Indian group. We ended up with sixteen from the ethnic groups plus sixteen from the general (white) inmate population, four representatives from each of the four cellblocks. The culture groups would select their own representatives, the white inmates would hold elections. The Ombudsman’s office agreed to conduct the cell block elections. The administration and corrections officers could bring as many as they wanted, which we knew would be fewer than the 32 inmates.

Question:
So how many people all together were around the table?

Answer:
We also agreed that not everybody would sit at the table. Some of the 32 would participate as observers behind the table, but if they wanted to speak, they could move up to the table. That gave us workable numbers at the table. We then conducted the elections which were absolutely wonderful. The greatest leadership qualities came out in some of these cellblocks. Young men encouraging their fellow inmates to participate, "This is your chance to have a word, a say on how this place in run,” they implored. We found that the prison residents wanted more then anything else, to get out of the box, and this election would give them the chance to get out of their cells. Also, they want to confront "the man." They were going to sit across the table. They were going to elect their representatives, they were going to caucus, set up agendas. They all finally came together when we had everything set. They had the elections, paper ballots, the whole bit. It worked. The place was just running like a top at this point. There was a high level of anticipation and then the group started working on their agendas.

Question:
All the groups together?

Answer:
No, they insisted on doing it separately. There was no trust between them. You maybe could bring the Indians and the Hispanics together, but every group insisted on working on their own.

Question:
Were you working with them?

Answer:
Yes, Efrain and I would come back every other week to work with them. Now we had some problems with Washington because here's the Regional Director having the time of his life, working on this wonderful case. But I had enough background in media and the Washington world to know how to handle this. I was able to get the support from the commissioner, getting a letter when I needed it. We got an editorial in the Minneapolis Star praising the process, saying maybe this is what's needed. As long as we had this support, my own director in Washington supported the effort.

Question:
So when you said "background in the media,” it suggests that you placed the editorial or you encouraged it?

Answer:
As a former newspaper reporter for Sun News, I know how to work with the media.

Question:
Feed them information?

Answer:
No, I didn't feed them information. But what is appropriate, and what I often had my staff do in high visibility cases, was to offer background briefings to newspaper editors. I routinely did this when we had a school desegregation case to let the media know what we were doing and understand how we worked. This helped assure accurate reporting and sometimes resulted in favorable editorials. Also, the inmates were free to talk to the press. That was one of their rights in Minnesota. It took the inmates weeks to get their agendas completed. Meanwhile, some of the most constructive and effective leaders were being paroled. Others were having problems and were put into segregation, which means they were isolated from the general population. A few times BBCDO charged racism when its leaders were put on segregation and the organization refused to work with us until they were out. The agenda process started in winter and now we're getting into spring and summer.

Question:
Were you working with the entire group at this point, meaning the entire group of blacks, or just the two?

Answer:
The culture groups came together as culture groups, or those who were interested in working on the agenda.

Question:
All the people in the culture group, or those elected to represent the group?

Answer:
That's right. Elected or designated because of power plays. But whoever ended up in the group wrote its agenda. The white inmates were making great progress with their agenda.

Question:
When you're talking about agenda...

Answer:
Each was making up their laundry list of the things they wanted to bring up at the table.

Question:
That translated into their interests?

Answer:
These were their interests, and they covered the waterfront. They were very serious ones, primarily from the racial minorities, related to disciplinary actions.

Question:
That seemed to be racially oriented?

Answer:
Yes. Everyone agreed there was a disproportionately large number of blacks going to detention, there was no question about it. Guards said it was because of the way people behave, blacks said it was because of racism. This had to be addressed. Issues went all the way down to whether inmates should have rugs in their cells. Also, whether television sets, which had to arrive in a new box, could come from a repair shop, where drugs or other contraband might be smuggled in with it. Censorship of the inmate newspaper. Visiting times and places. Food, Canteen issues. Scores of items found their way onto the agenda. Let me now get us to the table. It took a lot of prodding to get the inmate groups to complete their agendas. The BBDCO didn’t really buy in, and they loved the time out of their cells. They were negotiating, and a coffee cart or donuts would come to the room where they were putting their agenda together and they’d be sitting with their feet up doing no work. It took forever, but with the help of the outside groups, we finally got some agendas together. One day the Hispanic inmates came to Efrain Martinez and said, "Hey can we trust that guy Salem?” He said, "Ah, what do you mean?" "He’s white, how can you trust him?" "But what do you have to lose?” I was the white devil.

Question:
That never changed?

Answer:
I doubt it. I wouldn’t expect it to change in a prison environment and sometimes its true outside. It is hard to tell how much is real and how much is rhetoric. When Mandela was negotiating with deKlerk, one of them, because his constituency demands it, stands up and blasts the other ruthlessly over an unacceptable position or statement. This happens, and then you figure out how to make it right. They understand what is going on, so they can see their way through it, and this was happening here. For some of the BBDCO members, I was white and had to be the enemy. Ok they needed an enemy and I was the target at that point. We finally got the agendas, and we called a meeting of all of the residents.

Question:
Did you contribute to the agendas, or did you just record what they tell you?

Answer:
No, we took what they said I took their agenda items and then I rewrote and organized it for clarity. I started with some simple, easy to resolve issues including those where I knew the inmates would win. Censorship matters, food issues, creature comfort matters. I put some of the heavy duty ones further down. I wanted them to see they could reach agreement on some issues. Pretty standard text. Along the way, the Italian American group could not come up with anything meaningful for its portion of the agenda. They wanted sick leave for the work program. That was their issue, sick leave. That’s all they could think. Their leader said, "We really don’t have anything here,” and during the course of the mediation, the Italian Americans acknowledged they weren’t a culture group. They had no issues and they were beginning to feel awkward. It didn’t really manifest itself until later at the table when they basically said, "We’re dissolving, because we have no reason to be here.” While listening to others at the table, they came to understand and appreciate the plight of the racial minority groups, and they didn’t want to be there.

Question:
Now are you saying you created a black agenda and a white agenda?

Answer:
No, no. I merged all of the agenda items, but the cultural items were often grouped.

Question:
So how do you decide who’s issues go above who’s? Did that ever become an issue?

Answer:
No it didn’t. I started off with easy ones to resolve and then moved along. Those were mostly creature comforts proposed by the general population. So now we come to the table. We start talking about some of the creature comfort issues. One of the first issues, for example, was censorship of the newspaper. They had a very credible newspaper. Censorship actually violated the state law. So at the first session, the deputy, the assistant commissioner, and the assistant superintendent agreed this was something we could work out. Censorship of mail was an issue. The administration agreed, "We don’t have to open all incoming mail. We don’t have to read every outgoing letter.” Delivery of books and magazines brought by visitors; it would sometimes take 48 hours to get the package to the residents. "We can do better,” the administrators agreed. We were making progress. Even though these were relatively minor issues, they began to build credibility into the process. These were agenda items from the white residents, but that was okay. The inmates of color were at first untrusting of the process and were laying back, waiting to see what was going to happen. The Indians were sitting there saying, "Our only issue is that we want a reservation in the prison.” That was the last agenda item because I knew where that was headed. With each issue, the inmates were articulating their case and doing it well. Then they got to the problem of hair in the food. This was a wonderful story. This was at a time when a lot of guys were wearing long hair and that included servers on the food line. The resident negotiators were complaining bitterly and the corrections officers and administrators were sitting there contributing little. One of them says, "Yeah, we noticed the problem but we don’t know what to do about it.” An inmate leader reached into his pocket, took out a hairnet, and dropped it on the table. "Would you wear that?” a corrections officer asked. The inmate reached over, picked up the hair net, removed the cellophane wrapper and placed on his head. . Nothing else was said. He wore the hair net all morning. The matter was resolved. Canteen items was an issue. What can be sold in the canteen? And then how is the money spent? Money from the canteen went to a social fund. Some of the profits from the canteen went back to the inmates, and they didn’t trust how it was being used. We were fortunate because the husband of the head of the St. Cloud’s Human Relations Commission managed canteens for the VA hospital. So he came in as a consultant and would review the operations and confirm that everything was on the up and up. What could be sold in the canteen? Hispanic residents wanted salsa. "Well, we can’t allow salsa in the canteen because that’s a weapon,” an officer said. "You can throw that in somebody’s eyes and blind them." "Well, you let us carry our Zippo lighters and you let us buy lighter fluid,” was the response, "and you give us these cans of varnish spray for the arts and crafts shop. You think that’s not a weapon?" "Ok you can have salsa and other foods." Playboy magazine was an issue in the canteen. The rugs in the cells. The doors wouldn’t close properly if the rugs weren’t set back properly, so they had removed all floor coverings and that created a fuss. They resolved that issue, but it was not included in the written agreement; nobody wanted the public knowing that they were negotiating over rugs for the cells. As we solved each issue, I’d write it up, bring it back the next time for everyone to approve.

Question:
How often were you meeting?

Answer:
Every other week. We had a problem which almost capsized mediation very early in the process. Residents got a hold of a confidential memo that said in two weeks, construction of a new dining room was to begin as the first step of the reorganization. This was in total violation of our agreement. I had assured the inmates that this wouldn’t happen. I phoned and called the deputy director who said, "No, this shouldn’t be happening. I didn’t know that they were going to head that way, but I guess they plan to.” I then phoned the commissioner and said, "It looks like we are going to have to stop mediation. What I’d like to do is meet with you and the support team to the inmates.” I rented a room at the Holiday Inn for the next morning and we met there at eight o’clock. The BBDCO support group from Minneapolis was there. The lawyer for the Hispanics was there, about seven of us. We met with the commissioner and we told him what had happened. He was furious. Now I’ll tell you what was going on. The deputy commissioner was an alcoholic. I suspected something when I saw him dancing with a young blonde one night at the tower of the St. Paul Hilton, where I used to stay when I was in St. Paul. I foolishly said hello to him, and he didn’t even acknowledge me. I figured something was going on. He’d been on health leave a few times. The Commissioners said, "I’m going to fire him and I’m going to remove the superintendent too." As we left he said, "I want mediation to continue, so I’m going to remove them. I’m going to appoint Orville Pung acting deputy and his only job is going to be to supervise this. I’m going to remove the superintendent and who else do you recommend go?" I said, "Don’t remove the superintendent." Let Orville Pung decide that one. There I was giving him advice, which seemed to be appropriate at the time. He was so angry he was going to fire half of them. Orville Pung came in and we continued mediation without a problem. The mediator was finally controlling the process. Pung, incidentally, went on to become Commissioner of Corrections.

Question:
So what happened about this document?

Answer:
They stopped everything.

Question:
Was the document valid at the time?

Answer:
Yes, there was a document out there. Someone found it. No one denied it. The other piece of this is the deputy commissioner reportedly had been involved in a hit and run accident in the St. Cloud area. The incident was hushed up, but they were holding this over his head. Okay, on with the agenda. Everyone wasn’t happy up there, and I remember scheduling a mediation for the opening day of duck hunting season. Only a fool plans any business in rural Minnesota on that day. But nobody alerted me. The mediation was a long and tedious process. Some of these issues move quickly and easily, but throughout there were tensions. There was one point when BBDCO complained that they were being harassed, people were being put in lock up. They refused to come to the table for a while.

Question:
And did you proceed without them?

Answer:
We did on some issues, with their concurrence. I suggested they send an observer in the room to sit and watch without participating. I don’t remember if they did, but I would not have proceeded without consent. There was also one incident when a white inmate got so ticked off that he verbally abused one of the guards. "You don’t know what it’s like, you s.o.b.” The officers all walked out and we had to wait a half-hour until they came back. There was a continuing problem at the institution that cut across mediation. The attorneys from the university could be discourteous and abrasive with the staff when they came to meet with residents. The officers disliked them. One of the attorneys caught me one day and said, "We are having trouble gaining entry. They hold us up till the superintendent is here or his associate is here. Then, they hold us up at the gate, then they don’t escort us downstairs and we are losing an hour every time we visit. We aren’t going to stand for this.” I asked them if they had talked to the superintendent about it?" "We shouldn’t have to talk to the superintendent," they said, but they agreed to do so and I said I would work with them to get the matter resolved. The legal assistance attorneys were not participating in mediation at this point, but when we opened the next session that afternoon, one the attorneys and a student stormed into the room and announced that they were not going to represent the inmates any more if they were going to be harassed by the staff. "This is an issue which I want resolved here and now or we aren’t coming back to this institution” he said. You can image the response of the inmates. They then caucused with the legal team behind a locked door for 45 minutes. They hadn’t been there for three weeks and all of a sudden they came in and made this announcement and caucused across the hall. Eventually they came back and the issue was resolved. I don’t remember the details, but there were assurances given and then they disappeared again.

Question:
What were you doing while this was going on?

Answer:
I was cooling my heels. What can you do when the group caucuses and they don’t want you there? Usually, you wait awhile and give them some time and stick your head in to see if you can be a positive factor. But they wouldn’t let me in. Oh, they were furious. That ended and we got through that. We were making progress on the agenda. Finally we got to the culture groups. Throughout this, there was some wonderful understanding going on. Let me just back up and talk about one of the other general issues - visiting hours. There was insufficient space for visitors, but there was no money to expand the visiting area. The request of the inmates was to have more visiting space. The administration agreed to include money to expand the visiting area in their next budget submission to the legislature and they would arrange outside visiting facilities when the weather permitted. They also said that if the residents would agree to move out quickly and return to their cells promptly after visits, an additional 15 to 30 minutes would be added to the visiting day. So they were able to work together on some of these issues and come away with a better understanding of the problems. A number of the answers were "we don’t have staff to supervise this, that and the other thing." From the inmates perspective, at shift change they would see double shifts standing around for 30 minutes with hands in their pockets. Well, the reality was that it was important to have both shifts present when head counts are taken at shift changes. That requires overlapping. So again, the best they could do there was to say, "If after your culture group meets, you can get back to your cell within fifteen minutes, we’ll give you an extra fifteen minutes of meeting time." So they were able to work out some of that. They gave them an inmate staff for their culture groups, they gave them certain telephone privileges for the culture groups, so they really got some benefits from that.

Question:
So was this going primarily one way, where the inmates are saying, "We want this," and to the extent that they could comply, the administration would?

Answer:
The inmates were really effective and articulate in expressing the problems and helping come up with ideas. They are creative and intelligent guys, as intelligent as anyone else in the room. They just took another path in their life.

Question:
And the administration was...

Answer:
Open to anything reasonable. Oh yeah. I think they were all legitimate. They were under pressure now. Orville Pung was in the room much of time, not always, but much of the time. They gave more then they had to in some cases, and then the union got upset that they did. So at the union meeting, they denounced what was going on to some extent, but they hung in there. More training for staff came out of this, human rights training, civil rights training. When new staff was hired, inmates from the culture groups would have an opportunity to brief them. Then they had the hard issues. First, was the disciplinary procedures. The African American inmates brought in not only an outside advisor, but also a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist talked about what happens when you deprive inmates, for example, of showers, or calls home. They used behavior modification, and that’s quite controversial.

Question:
Now how did the inmates have connections with the psychiatrist?

Answer:
An outside support group. Pro bono assistance. A young psychiatrist came up and helped.

Question:
Did you facilitate this in anyway?

Answer:
No, that wasn’t necessary in this case. The Ombudsman undertook a study of the disciplinary procedure, and it was agreed, that his office would review every disciplinary procedure for racism. A black lieutenant, Westbrook, was put in charge of disciplinary procedures. Inmates were granted hearings if racism was alleged. There was some increased understanding of why the black residents were so loud when they came down the hall after their meetings. Have you ever walked by a black church on Sunday morning and heard the joyous singing? Well that’s another side of the coin to the pain, too. Some of this came out at the sessions. The American Indians’ need for solidarity came out when we talked about their issues. So good things happened. Meanwhile, guys are getting paroled, guys are locked up, and things are dragging along. The main issue remaining was the reservation. The American Indians wanted a reservation within St. Cloud. They knew it would not be allowed, but in lieu of a reservation, they wanted to be able to provide their own Indian counselors when an Indian inmate was in trouble. So a guy could be taken from his cell and counsel his friend or the other inmate. The corrections officers absolutely refused to consider the matter. They drew their line. "That’s our job, we are correctional counselors.” And the administration stood with them.

Question:
Stood with who?

Answer:
The guards. Now the Indians, I think, the leadership knew they would not get a break on their reservation. They knew better. But not because they didn't have an eloquent plea. And the sad part is that the guards or administrators were unable to come up with a single argument against the proposal for peer counselors.

Question:
So did they get any of their major issues?

Answer:
Culture group issues, but the American Indians did not get the one thing they said was most important, well, the two things really. One was the reservation and the other was the Indians counseling Indians. To me, it sounded like there was great logic to that issue, but the administration would not budge and that was its concession to the guards, who felt that the administration was giving away the institution. I didn’t even make a serious effort to intervene, because I know the logic was there and it was so clear. You’d cry to hear this guy make his plea. "The Indians are in trouble, no one is going to help them like a brother. Let us help our brothers.” "Ah, forget it. That’s our job.” So they the Indians didn’t come back to the table after that. The last issue, and we were saving this one, was the Inmate/Staff Advisory Council, ISAC, that would be established to deal with future problems on any matters unresolved from our agenda. ISAC would be there, and the question was who would be represented. Everybody agreed the culture groups should have representation. Nobody felt they shouldn’t have special representation. Every cell block plus culture groups. That’s when the Italian leader said, not the Italians. He understood. He'd grown some in that process and there was a lot of that kind of transformation. An angry Hispanic inmate said to Charlie Davenport, the associate director who was viewed as compassionate and a friend of the inmate, "You don't even know my birthday. You don't care about me. You deserted me, you took a promotion to be associate director. You used to handle programs, now you're associate director. You deserted me. You don't care about me. You don't even know my birthday." That was a stinger. People saw how they were seen. So they set up ISAC, and the big controversy was if there is a reorganization of the institution, will they still permit the inmate groups to come together in culture groups? The answer was yes. The administration yielded on that critical issue. That was a big concession, but it also was the last issue.

Question:
So reorganization, per se, was not to be decided by this case mediation, or was it?

Answer:
No it was not. That wasn't to be decided there. The arguments were made by the inmates about the need to keep racial groups together, give them support. There was a wonderful article along the way in the inmate newspaper. It said something to the effect, "at least people are listening to each other, and that was sort of nice." A little bit of the best side came out of these kids. Some of them lost patience. Some lost interest, but that you'd expect too. So we had all the issues there, everything was neatly typed up and now we're going to have the signing ceremony. I did call the media and tell a reporter what was happening. So in the morning paper, there would be an article in the Star or the Tribune. The morning paper said that an agreement has been reached on ten issues and included this and that, and didn't mention rugs or televisions. We did talk about some other things and the important things, such as the review of disciplinary procedures. I arrived at the reformatory found that very few people wanted to bother with the signing ceremony. The administration was there, but the Indians boycotted it. That meant the Hispanics are boycotting it. Reluctantly, the blacks sent one guy and one of the support groups was there.

Question:
Now why were they boycotting?

Answer:
The Indians? Because they felt it was useless, they didn't get what they wanted despite the logic of their argument. Hispanics are their supporters. The Hispanics had only one issue. A room had been promised them for arts and crafts. They had a kiln which had been donated, and they wanted a crafts room. It had been promised to them prior to mediation, but somebody reneged on the promise. I believe there were only three or four Hispanics at St. Cloud at this time. So nobody came to the signing ceremony, and with as much grandeur as I could muster, I walked over to the one black in there, out of the eight who were usually there, and his advisor who was there and he signed. And the whites were there, and they signed, with the administration and the guards and me as a witness. Then I got a call from the afternoon paper asking me, "Did it really matter that everybody didn't sign?" The residents had been talking to the press. I said "Absolutely not, the agreement stands." We actually delayed the signing for two weeks because of the state’s gubernatorial election. We signed after Election Day. That's because no governor wants either corrections or mental health in the newspapers. They just don't want any publicity on those issues at election time. I didn't have to be told that. About two years later, I sat on the panel with one St. Cloud resident and two administrators at an international corrections association meeting in Minneapolis. We did a panel on the mediation and that's where I found out that they'd reorganized the institution. "Yes, the mediation helped, but we really think it was our reorganization." I got wondering fifteen years later, and I went back again to St. Cloud, and that was a wonderful experience. First I met with Commissioner Orville Pung in St. Paul and he arranged for the superintendent to see me. I drove out to St. Cloud, and as soon as I got there I was told he had just left for lunch; he stood me up for an hour and a half just like he always had. He came back and we talked. He said things were going well. He said, "Yes, the inmates-staff council is still meeting. In fact, they're meeting this afternoon, do you want to go?" So I went down, and they were just starting their meeting. There was the same psychologist who had been there fifteen years earlier; he was now associate superintendent. Lt. Westbrook was still in charge of disciplinary actions; he later told me things were going well. At the meeting, an inmate representative complained about guards shining flashlights in the eyes of residents at night, and about sheets coming back torn from the laundry, It all sounded familiar, but now there was a forum to address and discuss things.

Question:
Were these mediated at all, or were these agreements self-negotiated?

Answer:
They were all self-negotiated, but there certainly was a collaborative discussion with the psychologist who had been there all these years. That was their style anyway. Right after the mediation closed, the Indians went on boycott and had a sit-in and were put in segregation for a few weeks.

Question:
When you say put in segregation, separated?

Answer:
Disciplinary action. They put them in a certain area with isolation. The nature of prisons has changed, and you can't do that through mediation today.

Question:
Why not?

Answer:
You have gangs, more toughness, you have out-of-state prisoners who come in, you have drugs, and you can't stop it. So that's my story.

Question:
So what can you do today if this sort of thing doesn't work?

Answer:
Different population groups, different techniques. In Washington State there is a mediation program that is working in a state prison. They are doing some mediation of inmate disputes, I don't know how it's working, but they were actually teaching conflict resolution, teaching the inmates better ways to talk and solve problems. In another program elsewhere, the guards and staff were given training and conflict resolution skills, and they lived in settings with inmates where it was safe to do so. They tried to change the culture of the corrections officers. So you do what you can do, basically. I think the most difficult thing is finding a way to treat people as human beings. You take the edge off the prison experience and the edge off the intent of leaders who want to keep a hostile environment of guards and prisoners at all times. That's humanity. The thing Mandela did in Robin Island is to get his jailers to love him, and to respect him, and that way he and his colleagues survived. If you can find ways to make it more humane, it is better. But everything dictates against it. One of the problems in St. Cloud was that Minnesota had such a good corrections system that most of the best talent was drawn to the community programs. The worst assignment would be an institution like St. Cloud. Mostly local people work there. To attract the person of color from the Twin Cities is very difficult, because who would want to be there and live in that community? It was basically a white community. There were so many natural barriers, there has to be an extraordinary effort and the public just doesn't care enough. The whole plan of today is incarceration and take away the human factors. Who cares? Take away the television sets and the movies. He committed a crime, lock him up. But if you can get the staff, you need leadership, in a place where there is leadership, you can do these things. I was able to do it there, they wanted it in Louisiana because there was interest. But there are a lot of places where there is not.

Question:
You don't think there are places where you could get that now?

Answer:
Yeah, there probably are. But whether these techniques would work there, I don't know. Also, CRS was a little unrealistic because I was on the government payroll, as were my people, so nobody had to worry about who paid us. That's a real factor when you're doing these kinds of disputes and this kind of work outside of a government setting. Who pays you? You need a foundation, you need to find out, and instead of haggling or figuring out who gets what, that adds a dimension that makes it more difficult.

Question:
Why did you send four people up originally? That sounds like a higher number than our other interviewees in the initial assessment.

Answer:
The first assessment that I did, we sent Jim Freeman from the Washington staff and one field worker from my region with him. That was about par for the course. I might have even sent Greenwald up because he was a specialist, too, having done Louisiana. When I went in, I just figured I needed all the help I could get. Greenwald was available, and that just made me stronger, I wouldn't have known how to interpret anything up there. The guys could help me, and then I just winged it after that.

Question:
Were you ever able to do anything to improve your credibility with the blacks?

Answer:
Oh sure, but they just couldn't acknowledge it. They got good things out of this, just like everybody else did, and they were intelligent. You don't expect people to trust you because they are still incarcerated and you are outside. When you leave them, you go and meet with the man upstairs and they know that. So I don't make any pretenses. I try to gain their trust, but I expect only limited success. At St. Cloud, mediation was the best thing the residents had going for them at that point in time. And their trusted outside advisors told them that. That's why they were ready to discontinue the lock in. If you have no credibility whatsoever, then you might as well pack it in and leave.

Question:
Is there anything else you did to build credibility that you haven't mentioned?

Answer:
At one point, I brought in Ellis McDougal as a consultant. He was corrections commissioner in Georgia at the time and a consultant to CRS. He met with Orville Pung. Being able to bring in that kind of guy is useful. You never know if that helps or doesn't help the credibility, but I think it does. I think one thing that was very important was always doing what I said I would do, when I said I would do it. I found judges appreciated this, amazingly, when we did a court-referred mediation. If I say I am going to call on Thursday afternoon, then I call on Thursday afternoon. No postponements, no delays, and they do appreciate that. In this case too, if I said I was going to do something, I did it.

Question:
Was your impartiality ever questioned?

Answer:
I assume so. I assume when I came in, I was the guy there who cared about race relations and human rights, so what do I know about the real world. And I'm sure the residents questioned it much of the time. Not because of what I did, but because I was from the outside and the superintendent had the key. If absolute trust was required, I never would've gotten near the place. It's just that what did they have to lose? The African American inmates, whose support I gained, began to trust me and the process because people they trusted, their lifeline to the outside, advised them that it was safe to do so.

Question:
What did you do to diminish tensions between the parties?

Answer:
When we entered, tensions were exceedingly high. I could observe no level of trust whatsoever. The game for inmates was to taunt the corrections officers, who didn't want to be there in the first place, but had to be there because that was their job. Many of the inmates didn't resent every counselor, but they wanted to make life for most of them as unhappy as they could, and they were masters in brinkmanship. There was no trust at those levels, and between inmates there was no trust between groups. During the course of mediation, when people were talking and began listening, tensions were eased. Within the reformatory, the parties at the table had to learn to know each other a little better. There was some transformation as they listened and there was credibility to what was being said. Everybody has certain basic needs including being acknowledged and understood. Those instances that I cited, with the salsa and the hairnet, guards and administrators came to see that the inmates were bright, at times eloquent. The inmates got a sense and understanding of why the place was run the way it was. Some of it was unforgivably sloppy and poor. But there were reasons why there had to be twice as many guards on a given hour, during the head count, and there were reasons why there wasn't more visiting space. So they were able to understand each other's problems and that eased tensions.

Question:
Did anything happen to humanize the guards?

Answer:
Less, because the guards didn't involve themselves. They were pretty quiet, and they may have agreed not to say very much. No one waited for them to say very much, so there was relatively little input from the corrections counselors. It is hard for me to know the impact of mediation on them.

Question:
Did you find yourself wanting to do anything to strengthen the parties' capacities to deal with the conflict, or did they pretty much do that themselves?

Answer:
They really did that themselves. The great fortune here is that this had time to run it's course. It didn't happen in two visits. It just took a life of it's own. That administration was very poorly run and bright inmates helped the administration figure it out. So there really was very little need. The one time I felt intervention was needed was with the Hispanic inmates. They were just waiting and waiting for their kiln and their room, and they started with six of them and two of them went home. In the preliminaries, Martinez met with them to bolster them and encourage them. With the Indians too, who could relate to them? You really need a person of color in that setting to maximize your credibility, or to get as close as you can to build something.

Question:
Did you two co-mediate the whole time?

Answer:
Martinez had to leave before we got to the table, or maybe after the first or second session. I just had to cut him because there were other assignments in the region and Washington told me to cut back. So there was just no way to keep him involved.

Question:
But at that point, you presumably had the credibility to carry it by yourself?

Answer:
From the administration point of view, they were under the gun from the commissioner. The deputy was appointed, a guy was pulled out from under them and reassigned, so they had no choice. They were passively cooperative. The guards would complain. I would hear stories about the union meetings, and after a few beers they would start complaining that they had given away the store. But they knew the place was poorly managed and wanted to see some changes.

Question:
Were there ever internal conflicts within a group?

Answer:
Well, there would have been in terms of whether they should continue, get involved, or to what level. I couldn't read those. They didn't come to my attention. I'm sure there were certainly conflicts among the African Americans as to whether they were going to get involved at all. There was never enough cohesiveness among the white general population to call it a group. The members couldn't form a group. The attacking group just disintegrated, people drifted away. I think people liked what was going on. They got out of the box, they could sit across the table from "the man," and some better things were happening. Even if they were only creature comforts, and weren't the most important things in their lives, by the time we were done they got some attention to some of their critical issues as well.

Question:
Did confidentially ever become an issue, other then the leaks of these documents that we talked about before?

Answer:
No, it never became an issue in this at all.

Question:
One thing that you mentioned at the beginning was the blacks said they would come to the table only if the media was there. Obviously, the media wasn't there until the end. How did you get them to the table?

Answer:
We agreed that we would tape the sessions, but those tapes could only be used internally, so they could play them for their own people. Also, they would have to handle the taping. It became so cumbersome that it lasted about half of one day. It wasn't realistic.

Question:
And when you say, "played for their own people," you mean inside the prison?

Answer:
Yes, within the walls there. The tapes would only be played for their constituents within the walls. It just became too cumbersome, and again that's face saving. That was designed to help them save face. They had access to the media, they could place a phone call to the media. They didn't do it very much. When they did occasionally, we got wonderful press out of it, because they said things were happening, changes were coming a little bit here and there.

Question:
Did you do anything to enforce the agreement beyond that committee who's name I'm now forgetting?

Answer:
ISAC.

Question:
Yes, that one. Did you do any other long term planning or any sort of constituency work to try to make sure the changes that were agreed upon really happened?

Answer:
Well part of the commission of ISAC was that it would review, it would serve as the enforcement mechanism if anyone had any complaints. The Ombudsman was also there for that purpose. I don't remember the wording of the agreement, but that was the enforcement mechanism built in.

Question:
And did it work?

Answer:
I don't know if anybody ever took a complaint. I think the real answer to that came 15 years later where the same procedures were still in place and I asked McCray, "Why did you leave them there?" He said, "Well they worked." Everything that came out of that was their design. I might have suggested some things or pushed some things in certain directions, but I believe that all came right from them.

Question:
Reading between the lines, it sounds as if you would deem this mediation a success.

Answer:
Oh sure. I said it, if you read between the lines and you come back to 15 years later and you go down there and they are negotiating torn sheets in the laundry...

Question:
Did CRS deem this successful? You were regional director so we're talking about the Washington director. Did they consider this to be successful?

Answer:
Well, I must say as a regional director, I always try in important cases to bring it to the director's attention. So a letter was written either to my director or to the attorney general from the Commissioner of Corrections and we got a favorable editorial, coincidentally. I didn't promote that, but they gave us a nice boost and I made sure that Washington appreciates that. Then my boss can send it to his boss, and sometimes it gets to his boss. So that's useful.

Question:
What I'd like to do now is go back through the interview schedule and talk in more general terms, discussing lots of cases, opposed to just one. We might start with a question about how cases routinely came into your office. Did people most often call you? Did you most often read things in the newspaper or hear them on the radio or TV and go out after them? What was more common?

Answer:
A combination of methods. At one point we went so far as to have United Press news wires in our offices. Half of it was to be sure if Washington saw something, we knew it first. The worst thing was to get a call from Washington saying what's happening in Peoria, and we didn't know, but they had received a call, or something of that sort. Typically a mediator or a field representative, conciliator (different titles at different times during the agency's history), would have some geographical responsibility. A regional director would determine who would be responsible for what geographical regions or areas, and they would have links into those communities. This might have been done ethnically in some places. If you had people on your staff who were American Indians or Hispanic in some areas of the country, sometimes it might be divided that way. For example, it was understood that if there were issues in Chicago coming out of the Hispanic community, the two or three Hispanic staff members would handle those. We had a Hispanic in Detroit though, and he was responsible for everything there. Typically, we would get newspapers from the major cities in the region. People would make periodic phone calls if they thought something might be coming up. People kept their own "future files" to follow up on events, if they knew something might be happening. We had strong links to the state NAACP chapters. State chapters of La Raza, and at times, cold calls would come in from someone who had been referred to us. Sometimes another federal agency would call with a problem that was not in their domain. It might be the US attorney's office, it might be a HUD office, EEOC Employment Opportunity Office where they had something unique and they brought it to our attention. So it could be any combination. But certainly we were alert to the media. Our people listened to the radios and we had newspapers and when there was a hint of anything happening we would respond. Now how we responded would depend in part on what was going on. If we had a very heavy case load, if we had no travel budget, if we had people out on other assignments, or sick, or on vacation, then we might discourage a response or hope the problem would go away. These are the realities, the human elements that come in. Let me add one other thing. Occasionally another region would alert us to a problem that would overlap, or that they heard about. Regarding alerts, I should say we would formalize activities at the Community Relation Service so that there were categories of things that we did and one of them, perhaps the first one, was alerts. When people were evaluated, we reviewed responsibilities, and how many alerts a person brought in. After each alert was received, a one page report was written. Just a few scribbled lines that indicated who called, when they called, what the issue was, and what the follow up would be.

Question:
Explain what an alert is.

Answer:
An alert is a notice to the Community Relation Service providing information that there was a matter, a case, that came to our attention that demanded that we take a look at it to see what to do. Then we would determine what the next step would be. It could be something that we closed on receipt for any number of reasons. We might not have been able to respond, it may have been very low priority, but very likely it was out of our jurisdiction. We would typically refer it to somebody or give some quick phone advice or information. Or it might move to the next phase, which is obtaining more information and beginning an assessment. So the alert typically would be something within our jurisdiction and it would mean some report of some type of problem, conflict, differences, disagreements in a community.

Question:
And you encouraged your staff to go out and get as many of those as they could?

Answer:
Well not go out, but from behind a desk usually, or receiving phone calls or making phone calls. It was imperative that we knew what was happening in our regions.

Question:
Now how did you do prioritize when you had more on your desk then you could handle?

Answer:
I should refer you to that article I sent you a year ago, the one I wrote for Peace and Change Journal on CRS’s methodology. *[find and insert relevant section with footnote.] It has the CRS model, and there I categorize each of these areas. Okay, number one was potential for violence. Assuming it's within our jurisdiction, the mandate of the agency. Number two, is it likely we can have some impact? How many people are involved? Another is, who's asking us? Is it a school superintendent, is it the head of the NAACP, is it a congressman's office, is it the director calling from Washington? This all had a practical impact on whether we responded or not. That had an impact on how effective we could be. It had an impact on how important the matter was, and the political consequence to the agency of responding or not responding, which obviously is a matter that you had to take into consideration. That wasn't overriding, but it could have some impact. How long had the problem been persisting? Have we ever been in that matter before? What other efforts had been undertaken? Was this intractable, or was this something that was new and fresh? Was this something we had experience in? Do we have a higher expectation of success based on our experience? Did we have the money to respond? Did we have the personnel to respond? What were the negatives? Was there someone who didn't want us to respond. Maybe there was a good reason not to. That might not be pretty always, but there well may be a reason why we should not respond. I think that probably covers all of the things we considered.

Question:
This is a difficult question to answer probably, but what percentage of the cases that got to be alerts did you actually end up handling at the end?

Answer:
That is an impossible question to answer. There was one point, for example, where staff began missing alerts so we adjusted our internal evaluation system to give more credit to identifying alerts than we had been. We started to do some counting and everybody in the office had to focus more on alerts. Now there was one person on the staff who probably was our weakest conciliator. He started grinding out alerts like you wouldn't believe and by the scale we created, he was the most effective person in the office. Also there were cases when we would respond to an alert by phone and close it out, make no more of it, only to learn later that you really helped somebody. At an Ohio NAACP conference one year, a women from Lima, Ohio, came up to me and said, "Oh, are you Mr. Salem? Mr. McKinney was on your staff and he was so helpful when we called him. He got us started and sent us some materials and that got our organization going." This was a case recorded only as an "alert” four years earlier. When the call came in, it was an incipient group that had no real organization, they had difficulty defining their problem, didn’t know where to go. It was not the type of case we would respond to, so Howard McKinney provided some advice on the phone, perhaps referred her to some local community leader, and sent her some materials. We never heard from them again, but she couldn't have been happier. It was very helpful to her. It's hard to gauge effectiveness, even to measure things that never got beyond the alert stage. The report probably said "I sent her some materials, discussed the problem, and closed the case.” So I don't know, and I don't think anybody knows, how many such "cases" moved along. Let me add another thing about alerts. When we would go to meetings or conferences of state organizations we would get a lot of alerts. You'd meet people and they would tell you they have a problem in their community. You would take that back to the office and then get back to people later. So that was another heavy source of alerts.

Question:
On your more major cases, when there isn't a phone call that comes in, but you are the initiator, who do you decide to talk to first?

Answer:
Typically it was an aggrieved party who would call. And in all of these cases you have people who were aggrieved, victims of an injustice, in their perception. So you would typically talk to that person and obtain information. You would then want to verify what was being said so you might call the local person in the local leadership who you could trust to get a view of that person's complaint. Typically, for example, if a parent called about a school problem, you might go back and check with the local NAACP or urban league or human rights commission, someone you knew in that community who could give you a good reading with a sympathetic perspective, who might even know that person. If CRS initiated the calling we would start by calling somebody in the community we knew and felt we could trust. We would try to get a reading before contacting the disputing parties.

Question:
But you don't go to the person against whom the charges are being made?

Answer:
You asked me where you start. I'm saying you start with people who can give you more information.

Question:
So you're starting with a person who is neutral?

Answer:
Not necessarily. For example, someone might call and say we are having this terrible problem and I might pick up the phone and call the head of the local NAACP who certainly would not be neutral. He or she would say, "oh yeah, that's a problem and we've been dealing with that for a long time." They just never thought of bringing it to us for any reason, or maybe they'd say, "Well, yeah, that's a problem, but that's really an isolated case. They have a new principal over there and we are working on that." Then we get some sense of whether it is appropriate for us to intervene or not, based on our scale. Now if the NAACP director said, "Wow, now this is a real problem and am I glad you called," you probably would respond differently. Or if the aggrieved person was part of an organization rather than being just a parent it would influence our response. Was it a committee? A coalition? Is it a new committee or an established committee? We would ask, "Who have you talked to? What have you done?” You just try to flesh it out a bit.

Question:
So when you make this first phone call what kind of questions do you ask?

Answer:
Take a look at the article I mentioned in Peace and Change Journal. It has a chart in the back describing the information we seek in the alert and assessment stages. What you want to do is find out what happened and you start an assessment once you start asking these questions. I mean, you're in the case from the first phone conversation. You might close it in a minute, but right then you're in it, so you are doing all those things a good mediator has to do. The listening, drawing out information, taking good notes. At the outset you are more likely to be doing this on the phone. What is happening? Who is involved? You want to know what happened - - the history of the conflict. What are the issues? How long has it been going on? What has been done to date to resolve the problem? It's probably on any academic's list, any conflict map. Those sorts of questions are used to assess the situation.

Question:
How many people then do you contact by phone before you go on-site?

Answer:
Anywhere from one to a dozen, depending on a variety of circumstances. You might never get on-site or it may take a while to do so. You usually don't know whether you are going on-site until you have the information and then can place it in the context of your other priorities, the budget, your schedule, and your personal factors will inevitably come into it, even though we don't like to talk about it. You know, if you had a long weekend vacation planned you might try to put it off for a week. It depends on how critical the situation is.

Question:
Are there certain situations where you prefer to talk to people in person rather then on the phone to do the assessment?

Answer:
That was not feasible. The assessment, by necessity, has to start on the phone unless someone walks into your office or you are in their community. Typically it starts on the phone and at a certain point it continues on-site if the case warrants it. After talking to the person or people involved in the matter and making some preliminary judgements, you might give them some initial advice. I'd suggest you talk to the assistant principal and call me back. If he is unaware that this is happening in the classroom and this teacher is doing this to your child, here are some things you might do to move this forward. Here are some people locally you might call, someone we know we'd refer them to. Or depending on the state of the matter I might call the assistant principal, or the school superintendent. Very often when talking to establishment officials I would start at the top with my Justice Department credentials to get their attention and worry them a bit. They seldom want the Justice Department to come into their school, police department or community. Many people with grievances do, but no public official wants anyone from the Justice Department coming in. So we don't say this is a Community Relations Service mediator governed by a confidentially clause. We say, "this is the Justice Department.” So, we would have to be careful in determining who to call first and let them know we are coming in. We wouldn't start with the assistant principal. We might call the principal or the superintendent of schools and say we've heard there is a problem at the George Washington School, and there have been some protests, we're wondering if we can be of any help. We offer our services and ask if we can be of assistance and try to get some information. I guess everybody would approach it differently, but we try to create some rapport so this person will be willing to talk to you. You begin to build your information base, your assessment about what’s happening. Also during this time, you try to build some trust and get some indication whether they would be receptive to your coming in. Or you might just say, "we’re coming in.” You might say, "we’re coming in for this matter," or you might say, "I’m going to be in the area anyway, I’d like to drop by and chat with you about it when I’m in your city." When Gerald Ford, unexpectedly acceded to the presidency of the United States, I checked on Grand Rapids, Michigan - - his home town - - where we’d had little activity. We had one case there over the years regarding a museum that was unearthing an Indian mound, and there was a conflict over the bones, whether they go to the museum or the Indian group. Other than that, we hadn't had a Grand Rapids case in a dozen years. All of a sudden we wanted to know what was happening in Grand Rapids. So I took my senior mediator and we went to Grand Rapids to meet with the head of the Human Relations Commission and the head of the NAACP to establish some relations in the President’s home town. That was a practical, political, but also programmatic response. We never did very much there after that because there wasn’t a call to. When there was a volatile Indian fishing rights dispute in remote northern Wisconsin, we took information on the phone and Efrain Martinez and Werner Petterson made an initial site visit. Martinez stayed with the case. It was one of the best he ever did when he was working out of Chicago. The reservation was in the district of a congressman who was on our Appropriations Committee. So that made it easier for me to commit our sparse funds for travel to a remote area. The congressman was essential to CRS’s funding and survival, so this was a way to be sure he was aware of the important work we were doing. So, getting back to your questions, during the alert stage, we always would talk to people who were involved on all sides of the conflict and then let them know if we were coming in. Only rarely would be go on-site without an initial phone assessment.

Question:
Is that because violence was happening or you think that it’s about to?

Answer:
Yes or some other critical reason. For example, we had a call from rural Ferris State College in Michigan, where they had been recruiting black students for the first time. The black students were being intimidated by white students who kept their hunting rifles in their rooms. There was some serious intimidation, and it was apparent to call that this was a serious matter. The alert came from the state NAACP, I believe. The handful of black students on campus were being intimidated, their parents were on campus and the college president had refused to meet with them. C.J. Walker, in our Detroit office, phoned the President and told him he was coming in. We stayed close to C.J. on the phone then, because he was new on the job. He just went in there to get the parties talking, to get something happening. There was no time to fool around there. We had the resources, we had the person, he was nearby, he got in there, and he got on the job. That’s the way we would operate when there was high tension or a crisis. What he did there, incidentally, was to get the parties talking. He got the president to meet with the parents.

Question:
Why did he refuse?

Answer:
He would not meet with them because they hadn’t made an appointment. It was one of those things where "If you want to meet, just make an appointment, but don’t just show up.” Or "We have this under control, there is no need for a meeting.” The main job of CRS was to get him to meet with them. Not to carry the message of what was happening, but to get the president to sit down with the parents, hear them out and give them a response. That was the appropriate role for us. When the president told us he was too busy to meet, C.J. said, "I only need five minutes of your time,” and that five minutes was spent convincing him and trying to help him understand the necessity of meeting with the parents.

Question:
Do you find that it’s easier to gain trust if you meet in person rather than trying to form a relationship over the phone?

Answer:
Face to face sounds better, but we didn’t have a choice. You just have to do it every way. Sometimes people don’t know who you are, what color you are, how old you are, and sometimes it’s better if they don’t see you. That way you can talk to them and build rapport. So I don’t have an answer. I’m thinking of another emergency where we got a call from Flint, Michigan. This was also C.J.’s territory. He worked out of Detroit. In Flint, Michigan, there had been a policeman shot and killed by someone believed to be black. Police then rampaged through the black community, breaking into houses during the night and pulling people out of their homes. I got on the phone from Chicago late in the afternoon. C.J. was unable to get into Flint until the next morning. It turned out that the police chief was on vacation, his assistant chief was in control and clearly couldn’t control what was happening. I called the assistant chief at 4 p.m. and said, "Mr. Walker is coming to Flint and should be there this evening. If he gets there in time, he’ll call you and let you know he’s in town. But he’ll definitely call you in the morning.” I knew C.J. wouldn’t be there until the morning but I wanted police to think the Justice Department was on their back that night. I don’t know whether it worked or not. This was a case where our first concern was getting somebody on the scene or at least to have the police chief think somebody from outside was there observing. Once we confirmed the likelihood of police violating the rights of citizens in the black community again that night, we did not need a further assessment to know we had to be there.

Question:
Were there ever cases where a party did not want you involved in the case but you went anyway?

Answer:
Oh yes.

Question:
Can you give an example?

Answer:
As I said, public officials seldom want the Justice Department to come in. The school superintendent has a contract coming up in two months, he doesn’t want the Justice Department in there saying to the world that he can’t handle his job.

Question:
But does he tell you that he doesn’t want you in there?

Answer:
Well, you can read it pretty quickly. He may not say, "stay away," but he conveys the message. Mayors of big cities seldom want the federal government intervening in local racial conflicts involving police or schools. They want to believe they have the resources to handle it. Sheriffs, as you know, are elected at the county level and not subject to the dictates of governors, state legislatures, congressmen, presidents. Sheriffs run their own fiefdoms in rural areas; they are often a political force in the county. During one period, we were having trouble gaining cooperation from sheriffs in Ohio. They did not want CRS involved, and we could make no headway. Within the year, the Justice Department, unbeknownst to us, indicted about twenty sheriffs in Ohio, for embezzlement, gambling or some other felonies. Each case was separate. No wonder they didn’t want the Justice Department in their counties, even CRS. Sometimes people don’t want us, but they know that they have to have us, because they have no choice. We don’t need anybody’s permission to intervene. An untoward police act, people protesting, major protests in the city, the police chief doesn’t have it under full control, the police commissioner or mayor had to do something. Again, he may not want us, but he knows something has to happen and maybe we can help. So he works with us. We worked in Cairo, Illinois, which is closer to Birmingham, Alabama than Chicago. Nobody in the establishment wanted us, as there was blatant discrimination going on. The city lost every case in the courts over the years, but they dragged it out. The political establishment did everything it could to resist change. It was a black/white issue, straight up. At times there was violence, at times it was more subtle. The public officials often refused to talk to us. I remember the Chicago office of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, wanted to hold a meeting down there, so we worked with them. It was a request they made in conjunction with local black leaders and I couldn’t say no. So we scheduled a meeting, and the governor’s office sent some people in. City officials, the county officials, the sheriff’s office all refused to show up. They knew we were sitting around a table. And there I am, and there’s the Civil Rights Commission, which also has no enforcement power. The governor’s people flew in on a private plane. But the other chairs were empty because they just wouldn’t come. So no, they didn’t want us.

Question:
Did you ever manage to get them involved anyway?

Answer:
One of my last mediation CRS was a voters rights case in Cairo involving some of those same individuals, a beautiful case because it settled, and that was through the court. The case had been in the courts for years and finally, when the handwriting was on the wall, the city agreed to settle and the judge asked CRS to mediate it.

Question:
But that was forced by a lawsuit rather than...

Answer:
Most changes in Cairo, Illinois were forced by lawsuits. The black community had good legal services from lawyers coming out of Chicago doing pro bono work with the civil rights groups out of Chicago, and the Land of Lincoln law firm out of St. Louis. But these cases would hang in the courts for years and years and only when the handwriting was on the wall would the city would turn around and agree to settle. When the cases went to trial, the city would lose. So yes there were many times we were not wanted in the community. The other side of the coin is that many times we were welcomed in the community. I’d like to give you another example of a time we got a call from Kellogg community college in Battle Creek. A Hispanic leader phoned and Efrain Martinez took the call. He told us how terrible things were at the community college. Martinez went on-site. There was a problem here and he felt we could do some good. He met with this community leader and some students. I don’t remember whether the community leader was a student or not, but then there were some students and they had what you might say is a traditional list of problems. Admissions of Hispanics to the community college, curriculum problems, faculty problems, advisors. Then you get down to other issues like the food, the respect people were receiving and those types of things. There were maybe eight items on their agenda that needed addressing. Martinez went over to see the President of this college. He greeted him with open arms and agreed the list of complaints was valid. He said the group had not approached him and he asked Martinez to arrange a meeting.

Question:
And was it genuine?

Answer:
Martinez had no reason to think it wasn’t. He came back very enthusiastic. So I saw that report, talked to Martinez and stayed on his back when the case began to drag out. "What’s going on?" I asked. I thought you had this thing moving along. Well what happened is the community leader disappeared. You had a President ready to give the Hispanic students most everything they wanted and more perhaps. He was responsive, socially responsible. The students had been motivated by this community organizer from Texas who came up to Battle Creek, probably on the migrant trail. He suddenly pulled up stakes and returned to Texas. There was no organization, no cohesiveness, not even serious interest on the part of the students. So Martinez returned to the school but was unable to pull the student protesters together. It fell apart. There were changes made because the awareness of the President was heightened, but there was no Hispanic community organization. It was just one leader who pulled some people together. He could have pulled off great things if he hung around. So it works that way too.

Question:
Going back to the earlier conversation where there were officials who did not want the Justice Department in there, did you ever start working just with the minority community, figuring that you could get the officials, the administration to go along later?

Answer:
A lot would depend on the community where we were working. Many times you get a call from a smaller community, Xenia, Ohio; Evansville, Indiana or Peoria, Illinois, away from the big cities, where there were very few resources. When you worked in Chicago or Detroit there were resources galore and, incidentally, strong mayors never wanted CRS. They played at it, played with you, but they seldom wanted you there. And they seldom needed you as such, those communities had resources on every side of the dispute. But you get down to Evansville, and there weren’t that many resources. And when you got to smaller cities yet, say Xenia, and by the time you show up there, someone from the Justice Department more likely than not a black or Hispanic, someone they could relate to, they’d never seen this. I mean they knew it was there, but here you are. This guy they met at the state NAACP meeting is now in their town to help them with their problem. Wow. You start working with that group. Yes, you go and see the school superintendent or the city manager or the police chief too. When the establishment doesn’t want us there? We work with them within the limits of our authority and ethical questions about what our role is, but I think everyone in CRS recognizes that very often, especially in smaller communities, you’re dealing with establishment vs. aggrieved communities that have damn good reasons for their concerns and complaints, and they’re on the short end of the stick much of the time. So to help empower them is important and appropriate, and in many cases the establishment understands this and agrees. If the mayor has a problem in the community, if he doesn’t have a cohesive group to work with across the table, he’s not going to get that problem solved. We will tell him we are working with this group so they can get an agenda together to bring to you that goes beyond "freedom now”, that specifically says what they need so that you can address them. This was often seen and accepted and understood, even appreciated.

Question:
What about when it wasn’t?

Answer:
Well, a lot of things would happen that I wouldn’t know. The field representative who had a very high sense of justice and was doing something that perhaps went over the line. They weren't going to come back and tell me exactly what they did to help the community.

Question:
Did you hear about it though? Would people call up, city officials or somebody call up?

Answer:
Not too often. There may be things that were said about an individual or a place or a time but typically that did not happen. I remember Bob Lamb and I went to see the police chief of Richmond, California. It was a special project that the CRS Director put together when police were having problems with Black Panthers in the ‘70s. When police would try to serve a warrant at a Black Panthers headquarters they risked being turned away by gunfire. So we had a plan that tried to find intermediaries in these communities where perhaps someone who was trusted in that community, could help serve a warrant, so that a routine legal matter could be taken care of without police being blasted away. And in discussing this with the police chief of Richmond, California it seemed to work fine. The chief listened to us and he thanked us. He then wrote a scathing letter to Attorney General John Mitchell expressing surprise that "You would have people like this working for the Justice Department who would not have police do their required work in a required manner.” So we got complaints that way when they disagreed with what we were doing. But, you know, when we talked about empowerment I mentioned earlier that Howard McKinney just sent some stuff in the mail or gave some advice over the phone to someone. That certainly was helping one side of the conflict. There was another case, for example, involving Reggie Turner who was the police chief of Cleveland, Ohio, a black who had been a high ranking officer in Detroit. There were some community problems with the police firearms policy in Cleveland following some shooting incidents. Our only role there was to provide technical assistance, they didn’t need mediation. There was good communication between the police chief and the black leadership. What they needed were some good firearms policy models and our organization pulled together half a dozen of these, got them to all the parties so they could work together, and that empowered the community, but it also empowered police because locally they just didn’t have what was needed and we could provide them with what they needed to work together.

Question:
Who decides what they need, do you or do they?

Answer:
We always start with what the group says it needs. It would be nice to sit here and say they tell us and we respond, but the reality is when you do enough of these for enough years you can sort of pretty well see what’s needed and what’s happening and you can lead the community group into knowing what it needs very often. One simple thing is helping a group understand it needs a good agenda if is going into negotiations, with or without a mediator. That grievances should be presented in a way that they can be responded to. If the agenda is fire the school superintendent, or fire the police chief, you know that's not likely to be achievable. You encourage them to shape an agenda that puts that at the bottom and started with some of the substantive changes they want to see. So you put the achievable at the other at the top of the agenda and push "fire the police chief” to the bottom. When they make enough progress at the top and middle of the agenda, they realize that you don’t have to fire the police chief, if he’ll abide by what you’ve agreed to up above on the agenda. So that’s empowering, helping the group understand the negotiation process. And you’re leading the group that way, certainly. You’re saying, "I know what’s best for this group in this negotiation.” I’ve never seen a group when we suggest resources that are available that wouldn’t be eager to accept them, if they were serious about resolving problems. Sometimes it was a consultant we identified who could help them, someone who had resolved a similar problem in another community, or an expert in policing or schools. We could pay plane fare and honorarium. "We’ll pay this guy’s plane fare to come over to talk to you and sit down with you.” In one case, I brought three Hispanic parents from Chicago into Washington DC to meet with the Civil Rights Division (CRD) during Chicago’s school desegregation suit. There they had a chance to meet with the attorneys who were working with the city and putting a plan together. So they felt they had their voices heard in Washington. That is providing technical assistance -- knowing that’s what the group wanted in that case. It was hard to tell whether anyone was listening, but the community members felt they had their voices heard. Now that’s another way of building credibility for ourselves. Before that, trust levels were really low. There was at a big public meeting and CRD had asked me to go; the US attorney had asked me to go. Nobody else in the Justice Department wanted to go near it. So what I brought to that public meeting was the idea that we would pay the fares for three people in your group to go to Washington to talk to the Civil Rights Division and be sure their voices were heard. There was so much skepticism that somebody raised their hand from the audience and asked, "Are you going to pay our plane fare back too?”

Question:
Did you ever get pressure from Washington to stay out of things in Chicago because the mayor didn’t want you intervening there?

Answer:
No. But I started at CRS in June 1968, and the democratic convention was in August. This was not a racial matter, primarily, but there were a lot of civil rights issues and there were marches from downtown Chicago out to the amphitheater where the convention was that went through black neighborhoods. And police would deter marchers by throwing out tear gas which would waft into apartments and there were racial overtones. So we intervened.

Question:
And what did you do?

Answer:
The guys who responded were on the street, I wasn’t doing that. Primarily this was, with one exception, a black staff; three people from Chicago and one sent in from Washington. What they did, I suspect, was confront police and alert them to the problem. I don’t know whether they asked them or told them or what they actually said. We were also on the street observing the horrendous police behaviors. I can’t say what everybody did, because I wasn’t there, and I know they weren’t telling me, nor were they telling Deputy Attorney General Warren Christopher when we reported to him at his suite atop of the Hilton. What I do know, is when it was all over, five or six of us were sitting in the office when the phone rang and it was Roger Wilkins, the director of CRS. I’d only been out there about four months; they’d just opened the office. I was the regional director. They did not consult Mayor Daley on my appointment, which federal agencies usually did when they appointed regional directors. Often Mayor Daley would make the appointments himself. But we did not control the flow of federal funds and he had no use for us, we were like flies on the wall. Roger said on the phone, "Dick put me on the speaker.” So I pushed the speaker phone button, "I want you guys to know that whatever happens, you acquitted yourself very well.” It turned out that police had complained to the FBI and the FBI complained to the white House that we were running around telling police what to do in Chicago. That's how Roger started the conversation, "Dick, did any of your people tell the police what they should be doing?” And I said, "Guys?” "No.” So who knows what happened in the