Extremely wealthy landowners, merchants, and slave-owners held political power both long before and long after independence from Britain.[1] As we have already seen, many of the founding fathers battled to keep religious power out of government,[2] but they saw not the need for separation of State and business interests. Most of these wealthy men opposed democracy, and designed the Constitution to ensure the aristocracy would continue to rule society.

Historian Howard Zinn wrote, “The Continental Congress, which governed the colonies throughout the war, was dominated by rich men, linked together in faction and compacts by business and family connections”[3] and that the Constitution

illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law—all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity…

When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support.[4]

The aristocrats made their desire for political power quite clear, in their pre- and post-Revolution repression of poor people’s revolts (Bacon’s Rebellion, Shay’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion) and democratic movements aimed at redistributing property or abolishing debts. (Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising against debts and taxes, took place at the time the new Constitution was being written, in 1787, and certainly influenced its formation; see Zinn, Truth Has a Power of Its Own.) Further, Anti-Federalists (the Federalists wrote the Constitution) were enthusiastic about the seizing of Loyalist property and screwing over British creditors to benefit American borrowers. Dangerous ideas were on the loose. The wealthy would seek to contain them. Nathaniel Bacon said, “The poverty of the country is such that all the power and sway is got into the hands of the rich, who by extortious advantages, having the common people in their debt, have always curbed and oppressed them in all manner of ways.”[5] The rich also structured their new government in a very specific way. Most of them believed the wealthy, the “well-born,” deserved decision-making power, not the common man. Alexander Hamilton revealed the common sentiment of class hostility and prejudice against the poor when he wrote:

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well-born, the other the mass of the people… The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government… Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the common good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy…[6]

So only rich representatives could determine what was best for the common American people, not the common American people themselves. As Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin wrote, a “representative system, far from being a guarantee for the people, on the contrary, creates and safeguards the continued existence of a governmental aristocracy against the people.”[7] Many other founders echoed Hamilton, as is to be expected from those in the same socioeconomic stratum. John Jay, who helped write the Constitution and later served as the first Chief Justice of the United States, often said, “The people who own the country ought to govern it.”[8] James Madison argued senators should “come from, and represent, the wealth of the Nation.” He wrote the “turbulence and contention” of pure democracy (the people voting on public policy) threatened “the rights of property,” and sneered at politicians who supported giving all men “perfect equality in their political rights.”[9] He worried a growing population of laborers would “secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of [life’s] blessings.”[10] “The danger to the holders of property can not be disguised, if they be undefended against a majority without property,” dangers including “agrarian laws” and “leveling schemes” and “the cancelling or evading of debts.” It was important to “secure the rights of property agst. the danger from an equality & universality of suffrage, vesting compleat power over property in hands without a share in it.”[11]

He warned that in a democracy,

When the number of landowners shall be comparatively small…will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.[12]

In other words, if you give democratic decision-making power to the landless, to the poor, to the majority, they might come for the wealth of the opulent (“agrarian law” is explained further below). John Adams believed, writes David McCullough, that

inequalities of wealth, education, family position, and such differences were true of all people in all times. There was inevitably a “natural aristocracy among mankind,” those people of virtue and ability who were “the brightest ornaments and the glory” of a nation, “and may always be made the greatest blessings of society, if it be judiciously managed in the constitution.” These were the people who had the capacity to acquire great wealth and make use of political power…[13]

To his credit (not really), Adams believed these men should serve in the Senate but the executive branch should be protected against their interests.

These men wrote of the need to protect the minority against the tyranny of the majority, but saw no threat in a minority of wealthy men withholding political and economic power from the majority. No great surprise, as they themselves were the rich, enlightened few. Though the Constitution and Bill of Rights granted unprecedented individual rights, the common citizen had little political power. Popular vote had almost no place in the government they designed. The popular vote did not appoint judges (it still does not), nor the president (it still does not, as the Electoral College has yet to be dismantled), nor Senators (until 1913; Madison himself said that “the Senate, therefore, ought to be this body” that protects “the minority of the opulent against the majority”[14]). The people only directly elected members of the House, yet only property owners were allowed to vote, further disenfranchising the poor and keeping power in the hands of the better off. Only in 1856 did the last state, North Carolina, do away with property requirements to vote. And of course, most aristocrats had few qualms about failing to protect the groups they were personally subjugating, such as black slaves, free colonists of color, and women. In fact, with Britain beginning to dismantle slavery, its preservation was a motivating factor for independence among the colonial elite — another instance protecting their wealth.

Granting decision-making power to the masses was out of the question. The founding fathers had interests to protect, their own minority interests. Thomas Jefferson noted that

Where not suppressed by the rod of despotism, men, according to their constitutions, and the circumstances in which they are placed, differ honestly in opinion. Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats etc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, & wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competents. This is the division of sentiment now existing in the US.[15]

Jefferson, perhaps the most democratic of the founders, also denounced “the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country”; the aristocrats wanted to create for themselves a “government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations.”

As James Madison wrote, “Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.”[16] He wanted “representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice” to check the “rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project” the rabble might think up.[17] For Madison and others, it was vital for presidents, congressmen, and justices to come from the upper class, which was and is overwhelmingly the case.[18] The most dangerous ideas circulating in the poor majority were those of redistributing property and wealth, forgiving debts, and so on, to end poverty and suffering—the “agrarian law” Madison feared. Thomas Paine supported such redistribution—he wrote in 1795 in Agrarian Justice:

To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which poverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe. Poverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufactures…

Civilization, therefore, or that which is so-called, has operated two ways: to make one part of society more affluent, and the other more wretched, than would have been the lot of either in a natural state…. The first principle of civilization ought to have been, and ought still to be, that the condition of every person born into the world, after a state of civilization commences, ought not to be worse than if he had been born before that period…

It is a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural, cultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal…. Cultivation is at least one of the greatest natural improvements ever made by human invention. It has given to created earth a tenfold value. But the landed monopoly that began with it has produced the greatest evil. It has dispossessed more than half the inhabitants of every nation of their natural inheritance, without providing for them, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss, and has thereby created a species of poverty and wretchedness that did not exist before.

In advocating the case of the persons thus dispossessed, it is a right, and not a charity, that I am pleading for…. Every proprietor, therefore, of cultivated lands, owes to the community ground-rent (for I know of no better term to express the idea) for the land which he holds…[19]

Paine then suggested the creation of a national fund that would grant each person, man or woman, 15 pounds sterling at the age of 21, to compensate for his or her loss of a share in the common property of the earth. He also called for social security, suggesting 10 pounds be granted to each individual per year after the age of 50. Paine envisioned a one-time guaranteed income payment, social security, taxes on the rich, free public schooling, child welfare programs, public housing, and public works programs. His thoughts later inspired many socialists, like Charles Fourier and Robert Owen.[20]

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Notes

[1] See Zinn, The Politics of History, p. 57-71, for a discussion on the rule of the rich in pre-Revolution America

[2] See Kramnick and Moore, The Godless Constitution

[3] Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 81

[4] Zinn, People’s, 99, 97

[5] Zinn, Politics of History, 61

[6] Zinn, People’s, 96

[7] Geurin, Anarchism, 17

[8] Frank Monaghan, John Jay, chapter 15, p. 323 (1935)

[9] James Madison, Federalist No. 10, “The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection (continued),”  Daily Advertiser, November 22, 1787

[10] Chomsky, Common Good, 7

[11] http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s26.html

[12] Yates, Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787

[13] McCullough, John Adams

[14] Yates, Notes of the Secret Debates of the Federal Convention of 1787

[15] http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/mss/mtj.old/mtj1/054/054_1139_1141.pdf

[16] Federalist 10

[17] Federalist 10

[18] See Zinn, People’s, 260-261 for information on how class interests affected Supreme Court decisions

[19] Paine, Agrarian Justice

[20] Nichols, The “S” Word, 33, 46, 53; https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/thomas-paine-american-revolution-common-sense/

Finding a mate just isn’t what it used to be. Back in the “good ol’ days,” the parents were more parental, the sexism was more sexist, and the hysteria over sex was more hysterical. The courting rituals were truly bizarre, and we can thank our lucky stars they no longer exist. Of course, most of these rituals were only practiced by white straight people, and some only by wealthier colonial or Victorian-era Americans. But today we can all mock them relentlessly together. Let’s get to it.

WHEN YOUR DAD PICKS WHO YOU’RE GOING TO BED WITH FOREVER

Gone are the days when your old man could get together with his buddy at the tavern, kick back, down a few cold ones, and decide who you’re going to spoon for the rest of your f*cking life. Yes, if you were unwise enough to be born in colonial times, dorky dads would arrange your marriage for you, hearing not your sobs but rather the jingling of cold hard cash wrought from your dowery or inheritance (depends on your gender). End up with some ugo disgustor? If you didn’t have any Freudian reason to think of your dad during business time, you certainly had this reason.

WHEN THE GIRL SEDUCES YOU WITH A FAN

When you see a well-to-do Victorian gal cooling herself with her fan, she ain’t cooling herself with her fan, son. She’s engaged in a complex system of signals ranking somewhere between the high-step strut of the Blue-Footed Booby and the third base coach of the New York Yankees. Is she fanning herself slowly? Sorry, she’s engaged. Quickly? Single. Fanning with the right hand? Oh my God / look at that face / you look like / my next mistake. Left hand? F*ck off. Fan open, then shut? Kiss her, bro. Fan open wide? She loves you. Fan half open? You’ve just been friend-zoned. Legs shut — I mean fan — fan shut? She hates you. Good luck remembering all that. Don’t mess this up.

WHEN AGE REALLY WAS JUST A NUMBER

The age at which most colonial women married hovered around 19-22 (men were usually in their late twenties). So not too different from modern times. But remember, that’s an average. Some girls did marry when they were teenagers (others were married off as children). The age of consent in the American colonies was usually 10, though sometimes 12. Eventually, states started raising it. California raised it to 14 in 1889, then 16 in 1897. Others followed suit after that, though one technically kept the age at 7 until the 1960s (looking at you, Delawarean sickos).

WHEN YOU HAD TO DO ALL YOUR FLIRTING IN FRONT OF HER MOM

Remember your middle school and early high school dances and the agonizing embarrassment of the ever-present, complex surveillance apparatus made up of moms, dads, older siblings, teachers, and Principal Bacon? Well, back in the olden days, chaperones weren’t something you could just wait out as the years ticked by. When a man came a-calling, he had to sweep the girl off her feet in front of the potential mother-in-law. There was no one-on-one time. You went over to her house and, if f*cking Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightly is any indication, make boring conversation while drinking tea, playing cards, or abusing a piano. Want to come back again? You’ve got to impress the ‘rents.

WHEN YOU COULD GET MARRIED LITERALLY BY JUST SAYING YOU WERE

Yes, one courting ritual was called “handfasting” or “spousing.” If you wanted to be married (by law, mind you), all you had to do was just hold hands and say you were married. You could do this anywhere and at any time, during this age that now sort of sounds like a Libertarian paradise. Apparently (to absolutely no one’s surprise), men would often be all for this, getting married on the spot to a nice yet sexually repressed girl, having sex, and disappearing into the night. Then daddy had to hunt you down — not to kill you for sleeping with his little angel as might happen today, but to force you to actually be her husband.

WHEN YOU PARTOOK IN SLEEPOVERS AT HER MOM AND DAD’S

It was a simpler time, when religious parents knew that kids would mess around and knew there was nothing they could do about it, so they decided to pretend to do something about it while willfully facilitating it. We’re talking bundling, people. When parents said Yes, you kids can have a sleepover as long as you promise not to have sex, let ma sew boyfriend up in bag, and let pa install an impervious one-foot-tall bundling board between your sides of the bed. Not letting Nathaniel sleep over was, apparently, deemed an ineffective way of preventing two lovebirds from engaging in smash game in the room adjacent to mom and dad’s.

WHEN THE “COURTSHIP STICK” WAS HOW YOU SEXTED

Just like today, when lovers send texts to each other while snuggling on the couch together after Christmas dinner so relatives can’t overhear them, colonials found a way to keep things spicy with secretiveness. The courtship stick was a six-foot-long hollow stick that allowed young men and women to whisper some sexy messages to each other in a world of zero privacy. Small homes with parents or parents-in-law, especially those that think touching is a no-no, mean there’s just no way to tell your gal her butt looks great in that dress she wears daily or your man that his plowing is an incredible turn on.

WHEN YOU COULD SKIP THE ENGAGEMENT RING AND GIVE HER A THIMBLE INSTEAD

If you lived among the Puritans, you didn’t have to get your woman an engagement ring. Instead, you could give her a helpful piece of sewing equipment. Puritans weren’t showy people, so a little thimble could be offered to the woman (in their defense, it would later be fashioned into a ring; cheap-ass Puritans), presumably as a sign of all the trousers she will have to repair over the course of her lifetime. That’s how you really blow away the ladies.

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First off, let me say there are many folk who could give a speech better than I. On top of that, there are many better men and women who walked the halls of this fine institution who should be standing here before you instead. Highlander Folk School shines on as a beacon for equality, a garden that continues to grow the best civil rights activists and labor organizers in the country. I am very happy to be back here and honored to speak on the bus boycott that occurred in Montgomery just a few years back. Seems people are under the impression these days that the boycott happened because of me. I would like to assure you this is untrue. I can’t take credit for the crusade that occurred in Alabama. I was just the last straw. There were others who would not give up their seat on a bus and were arrested long before me. On the day it happened to me, I just couldn’t bear the thought of giving up my seat on a city bus to another white man and standing in the back for the rest of the long ride home. I would rather be hauled off in handcuffs than face that humiliation and degradation again. As Mrs. Virginia Durr once wrote to you, Highlander gave me a taste of freedom and equality; I thought of this place while the officers dragged me off the bus and to the station.

Look ahead a single year, and our world is changed for the better. A boycott occurred, and it succeeded. After a single year, no black man or woman has to feel the burn of embarrassment or the injustice of segregation on a city bus again. The boycott didn’t succeed because we were organized, though that was part of it. It didn’t succeed because we were angry, though that was part of it as well. It succeeded because we had perseverance. Organization defines the road, anger gets you on the road, but making the long journey to the end of the road, that is perseverance.

Activists like Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women’s Political Council, demonstrated what perseverance really is, and indeed so did her members. Mrs. Robinson wrote Mayor of Montgomery W. Gayle in 1954, with a polite request for more fair policies on city buses. She did not even ask for desegregation, but instead requested that blacks begin sitting at the back of the bus and whites begin sitting at the front, and when they meet in the middle and all the seats are occupied, that would be it. She asked that the buses make more stops in black neighborhoods and that we wouldn’t have to pay at the front of the bus and make the humiliating trudge to the back entrance.

Her message fell on deaf ears, for that same “honorable” judge she wrote to would two years later speak at the rally of the Central Alabama Citizens Council about how to preserve segregation. His presence supported and offered legitimacy to ten thousand angry white racists encouraging the killing of black men, women, and children. Jo Ann Robinson would not take no for an answer, however. Briefly mentioning the possibility of a boycott in her letter, she later organized it and made it a reality in December of 1955. She and her WPC members worked tirelessly into the early morning of the fifth to distribute tens of thousands of leaflets calling for a boycott all over Montgomery. Mrs. Robinson and fellow activists were arrested quickly after the movement began, but even in the face of harassment, imprisonment, and threats of violence, they did not yield.

If any two men showed us true strength of character and steady perseverance, it was the two reverends, Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr. They held Montgomery Improvement Association meetings every week until the boycott succeeded. Dr. King was unequivocally our leader. If I was the spark, he was the fire. He, under the same death threats and mistreatment we all faced and experienced, ignited a passion in our hearts that helped us see this thing through. At one MIA meeting, Dr. King said, “With every great movement toward freedom there will inevitably be trials. Somebody will have to have the courage to sacrifice. You don’t get to the Promised Land without going through the Wilderness. You don’t get there without crossing over hills and mountains, but if you keep on keeping on, you can’t help but reach it. We won’t all see it, but it’s coming and it’s because God is for it” (Martin Luther King, Jr. Speaks to the Crowd). We did what Dr. King called us to do. We kept on keeping on. We braved the wilderness. Dr. King, in his wisdom and his own depth of perseverance, inspired us to stay the course.

Then there was everyone else; every man, woman, and child who refused to ride the Montgomery buses. This boycott began as a one-day movement. Instead, it lasted a year, because the black folk of Montgomery united and persevered together. At the first mass meeting of the MIA, Dr. King and Reverend Abernathy had to fight their way into the church through a joyous crowd of seven thousand people. In February 1965, activist Bayard Rustin noted that “42,000 Negroes have not ridden the busses since December 5” and that two men “walked 7 miles and the other 14 miles” to work each day (Bayard Rustin’s Diary). They weren’t the only ones walking those distances, either. Moreover, during this period dozens of taxi drivers and car-pool drivers were arrested. Yet we did not yield. All the while white folks talked about using “guns, bows and arrows, sling shots and knives” to “abolish the Negro race” and act on white people’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers” (Handbill from Central Alabama Citizens Rally). Yet we did not yield. We persevered together. As one black maid said during the second month of the movement, “When you do something to my people you do it to me too” (Interview About the Boycott). That is true unity of spirit.

 Our spirit went unbroken, and in November 1956 the Supreme Court upheld what we fought for in Browder v. Gayle. Bus segregation was rejected as unconstitutional and the next month buses in Montgomery were integrated. It was a glorious day when I again road a city bus. True equality is still a long way off. We are not out of the wilderness yet. However, the boycott victory has kept us going. As Dr. King said, “Let us continue with the same spirit, the same orderliness, with the same discipline, with the same Christian approach” (Martin Luther King, Jr. Speaks to the Crowd). There will be a day when prejudice and hate are not tolerated in this country. It is only a matter of time. Until that day, we will continue to persevere. We draw closer to the Promised Land.

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In this month of January 1935 Congress will vote on the Social Security Act. While the debates are waged in our national legislature, in barbershops and department stores, and at kitchen tables across the country, it is the intention of this paper to shed light on several key areas of the bill in drastic need of revision. The Social Security Act, if passed as-is, would create an unjust burden on American workers in trying times. By implementing change to the means by which we achieve a noble end, working men and women can look forward to a brighter future rather than a darker.

The Social Security Act will enact much-needed care for our underprivileged countrymen. The elderly, the unemployed, the handicapped, and dependent children will all benefit greatly from welfare. This paper has no bones to pick with President Franklin D. Roosevelt concerning the admirable and necessary measures this bill will take. The act will create insurance, a pool of money that can be tapped into for relief to the poor, dependent, and unemployed.

One component of the bill that must be revised, however, is who will be included (or more importantly, excluded) from the benefits of social security. The act primarily benefits white males. What about the other factory workers? What about the other farmers, and working women? Mr. Roosevelt is leaving them in the dust, to fend for themselves. The NAACP criticizes the Act, pointing out occupations such as cash tenants, sharecroppers, and domestic servants will be excluded from social security, simply because blacks dominate those jobs. Mr. Roosevelt has bowed to the wishes of prejudiced southern congressmen, and as a result most blacks, and especially black women, will never see minimum wages, unemployment relief, or money for retirement. This, in our view, is unacceptable.

A graver issue is how Mr. Roosevelt plans to pay for this pool of relief money. Employers and employees will both pay a one percent tax on the first annual $3,000 earned. This will allow the Federal government to send monthly checks to retirees. Meanwhile, unemployment hovers at 25 percent. Millions of Americans who are bringing in a small income still live in poverty. The shacks in Hooverville did not disappeared when Hoover did. The United States economy has never been more severely crippled. And Mr. Roosevelt wants to take money from workers’ paychecks? From businesses? A business that is not burden with such a tax will have more money for innovation that could stimulate the economy, or can hire a new worker and get someone off the streets. A worker with a bit more discretionary income will spend it during these hard times, saving his or her family from starvation and kick starting the economy at the same time. The Los Angeles Times has declared that the current method of funding will slow recovery. The American people want reduced taxes, and have written Mr. Roosevelt pleading for such a motion. Now is clearly not the time to burden the American family, nor American business, with an extra tax.

Instead, consider the views of Huey Long and Francis Townsend, who thought it would be better not to burden the poorest, but the richest. Does that not sound more reasonable? Redistribution of national income continues to receive huge numbers of supporters. The Townsend Plan alone has five million members, with a petition of 20 million names. People see this plan as their salvation. Long suggests capping an individual’s income at a few million dollars and collecting the rest to use for the welfare system. The top one percent of America owns a hefty percentage of the nation’s wealth. Those millionaires would do right to give more. Mr. Roosevelt says that a worker paying into the system gives him (and in this case, it is almost certainly a him) the moral right to receive money once retired or laid off. This paper would ask, what about the moral right of the rich? The moral right of Mr. Roosevelt? In our view, the wealthiest would be immoral to say five million a year is not enough, immoral not to care for the elderly and the poor when the common man, the forgotten man, cannot. Long, Townsend, the Congress of Industrial Organization, this newspaper…we do not ask that millionaires give up their millions. Just their discretionary millions.

The Social Security Act should be passed, there is no question. However, it must be made more inclusive, refusing to stoop to the levels of older generations by enforcing Jim Crow laws on welfare. The plan must also be funded not on the backs of those suffering, but by those in mansions with new cars, who never have to fear for being out of work, out of money, or out of food. The common man deserves freedom from such fear. Mr. Roosevelt understands this. If Mr. Roosevelt wishes to drive the money changers from the temple, as it were, it is the opinion of this paper that he do so not with a stick, but with a sword.

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Learning a new language can be very difficult. There is grammar to learn and tenses to master. Becoming fluent is an even greater challenge. Some day I hope to speak Spanish fluently; I think that would be impressive. But have you ever met someone fluent in five languages? There is a man I know who has unique talents and skills, and lived through amazing history. He is George Sakoulas, my grandfather (“Popoule” in Greek).

“Everyone has a hidden ambition,” George says. His own was to work with words. He had a dream of being a freelance writer. George came to speak English, Spanish, Greek, Italian, and German fluently, with a little Portuguese on the side. He says English was his best language—not bad for knowing no English at all for years, speaking only Greek with his family and community. The inspiration for the remarkable achievement of becoming a master linguist? He flunked kindergarten. He could not speak English, and he couldn’t go to a Greek school—there were none. After that, his pursuit of languages began.

His father was an impoverished Greek immigrant who sailed to America in 1910. His father opened a restaurant in downtown Kansas City, called the Triangle Grill, because of its location between three streets. It no longer exists, but curiously a sculpture of many different triangles is erected where it once stood. George’s mother immigrated later. She was about thirteen when they married. George’s father left his wife for America and lived there for eleven years before he had enough money to send for his wife (and, unexpectedly, his preteen daughter Nicoletta, George’s older sister).

“I was just a boy on my bicycle,” George once told me, summarizing his childhood. His bicycle story always makes me wonder at life fifty or sixty years ago. He had a bicycle delivery route. Helping those in need, he delivered medicine all over the Kansas City. He was paid 50 cents a week, and was paying off his bicycle, which cost $22.50. His mother was worried a car would hit him. He was hit twice, but did not quit.

The Great Depression dominated George’s boyhood, when money was scarce, foodstuffs, oil, and materials were strictly rationed, and unemployment was high. George spent a good deal of time making his own toys. He remembers making a scooter from roller blades, a two-by-four, and an orange crate. He made toy guns using wood, clothespins, and rubber bands.

George was athletic, and was one of the fastest runners in track, which he did at school and at a junior college in KC. He played basketball in grade school. He remained very small in high school, and was therefore unable to participate in many sports. We Greeks are not known for our height. He later got into boxing, and was a champion in his weight division. “I got a lot of respect,” he says.

His generation was into Frank Sinatra and others. He felt too old for Elvis when “the king” became popular, telling me he considered Elvis to be a “weirdo” and a “hillbilly.” When the Beatles came over to the US, he thought they “looked like girls,” and made fun of them. George says, “So many changes come” and that modern singers “sound like they’re dying.”

When World War II began in September 1939, the age for new recruits in the United States dropped from 21 to 20. Years later, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the age dropped to 18. In January 1943 George Sakoulas joined the army, interrupting his junior year in college. In 1943 the Allies invaded Italy, and the US began shipping Italian prisoners to stateside POW camps. Some were sent to a camp in Tooele, Utah, near Salt Lake City, which had been holding German prisoners already.

George was put in the infantry at first. There his linguistic skills were discovered and he was reassigned to the POW camp in Utah before he saw any fighting. “I hated it,” George tells me. While he was there he made applications to leave. He wanted to fight, not stay in the US. “Everyone wanted to fight,” he says.

“Other forces kept me from the war,” George says.

The army sent him to language school at Stanford (where he wishes he had finished, since Stanford is a prestigious school nowadays), where he improved his Italian. After that he was taken to Utah. As a translator, his primary job was to translate the commander’s orders. When he arrived at the camp, only Germans were being kept there—no Italians had yet arrived. George’s “baptism of fire,” as he calls it, came when a troop of Italian prisoners was finally brought into the compound. An old colonel who stood by him as the column of soldiers marched through the games.

The colonel pushed George towards them and ordered him to make them halt. George ran out in front, but did not remember the word for “halt.” So instead he shouted out “Stop!” in Italian, and the column obeyed. He later realized “halt” would have done fine; the Italian equivalent is “alt.”

Popoule wants it to be known how well the prisoners were treated. They were not abused in any way. He remembers life at the POW camp well. The Italians were allowed to cook their own food, and he would sometimes go down and eat alongside them, because their food was better than his own. He said he became friends with a lot of nice men.

The POWs were given tools for activities, and George received gifts like paintings. He was amazed to see a few Germans had constructed a small radio. The prisoners, if they attempted to escape (which happened rarely), were locked up for a whole week, with nothing to eat but bread and water. This was the only time prisoners were not treated well.

George oversaw a company of 200 Italian soldiers for the rest of the war. While the Geneva Convention prohibited hard prison labor, the Italians had plenty of tasks to keep them busy.

George never became a freelance writer. When he got back from Utah, he finished college at UMKC, receiving a degree in history and language. He then went into the restaurant business, where he was needed by his family. He married Goldie, my “Yia-Yia” (grandmother) who was also Greek. They met at a picnic at the Greek Orthodox Church, which they now attend regularly.

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