INDEX & ANNOUNCEMENTS
This injunction [June 6, 1963] is my graduate degree in militant, radical community organization. I take much pride in it and in the deeply committed human company with whom I'm named -- and in the many thousands of courageous grassroots Black people who were the hard-rock foundation of our great crusade for social justice. I was Chair of the Strategy Committee of the massive Jackson Movement of 1962-63. This is considered the most sweeping anti-demonstration injunction issued anywhere in the United States during the 1960s. Of course we defied it. Jackson Movement highlights are listed in this Index. This link takes you to the full injuction. Hunter Gray [formerly John R. Salter, Jr.]
"An Injury To One Is An Injury To All"
-- From the Preamble of the I.W.W. and Mine-Mill
"Takes more than guns to kill a man..."
-- From Joe Hill
And this statement which, when I get downright ticked at the world, does strike my fancy: "[He] is thin, ascetic and a fanatical devotee of logic. He reads Machiavelli, Ignatius of Loyola, Marx and Hegel; he is cold and unmerciful to mankind, out of a kind of mathematical mercifulness. [If a setback occurs] he shrugs his shoulders; he is thin and ascetic; he has seen many weaken and creep out of his ranks with pompous pretexts. . ."
Ivanov to Rubashov in Darkness at Noon [Koestler]
Or, perhaps better yet:
"There was a season of feasting and scalp-dancing at the Abenaki towns. . ."
Count Frontenac and New France Under Louis XIV [Parkman]
New: My radical essay, "Unfriendly Forces, Mountain Lions, and Our Rattlesnake Friend [Reflections on Idaho]" in the January/February 2001 issue of the excellent socialist magazine, Against The Current. It's also available on the Net.
SPECIAL REPORT: Our experiences at Pocatello, Idaho have, for the going on four years that we've lived here, been quite mixed. Some have been very strange indeed. Because of all of this, we are placing a section of our Website -- dealing with the historical background of the Red Scare and, much more specifically with our contemporary situation, right here at the fore of our site. We live far, far up on the western "frontier" of Pocatello -- above most of the rest of the town -- and coyotes, deer, and mountain lions are among our immediate neighbors. They're fine. And so are virtually all of our surrounding human neighbors -- who could not be friendlier.
NOTE: See my analytical addition (July 11 2000) with regard to current Federal (and, in conjunction with Federal, selected local/state lawmen) repressive and generally covert attacks on the activist Left -- in the immediately forthcoming "Our Strange Experiences" etc. section.
But [Red Scare Repression, Courageous Mine-Mill Ad, Our Strange Contemporary Idaho Experiences]
AND THIS NEW NOTE -- January 28 2001: Very late in 2000, at the genuinely progressive city of Portland, Oregon, it was publicly revealed that the FBI had entered into a concordant with the city council to set up and implement a "task force" -- made up, interestingly, of various Federal, state, and local "lawmen." The ostensible purpose of this creature was (is) to monitor "terrorism" -- very much including alleged "Left terrorism." Portland is a very sophisticated town, with well established democratically radical and labor and human rights traditions -- and a wide range of sensibly dissident forces arose immediately to attack this so-called task force: ACLU, NAACP, National Lawyers Guild, many unions, the Oregon branch of Socialist Party USA [one of whose activists immediately forwarded the info to me] and many more solid individuals and groups concerned with the obviously inherent violations of civil liberty involved. The folks there -- and in many other parts of the country -- who know their American history, are very well aware [to cite only a few comparatively recent examples] of the sorry and consistently anti-civil libertarian role played by FBI from its earliest origins to the very present [including its successful blockage of a pardon for Leonard Peltier]; the fact that the "Espionage Act" of the World War I period had nothing at all to do with "espionage" -- but was used almost solely [as were the related state "criminal syndicalism" statutes], to break the strikes of militant American working people [e.g., copper and lumber workers in the Far West and much more] and to imprison over 150 major leaders of the IWW and to jail Gene Debs, and again much more; and that the Smith Act, ostensibly aimed at "sedition" and the alleged "advocacy" of violent overthrow of the government, was viciously used against very effective and non-violent labor activist Trostskyists at the beginning of the 1940s and then, after World War II, was used just as viciously against the also non-violent and effectively radical Communist Party activists - and to establish a broad and destructive Red Scare ethos that persisted openly and repressively for many many years.
The current controversy at Portland has forced FBI to admit that it presently -- right now -- has several dozen of these Federal/state/local "task forces" in full operation in various parts of the United States!
Here at Pocatello, Idaho, we are not at all surprised at these Portland revelations -- I've forwarded material relating to our own experiences to very receptive civil libertarian forces; and we continue, as always, to maintain all-around vigilance -- without in any way slowing up or giving an inch on anything. -- Hunter Gray
NEW! Contemporary Activist Thoughts [Hunter Gray] -- Keep Fighting; Incendiary Religious Thoughts And Secular Comments; Letter To Younger Radicals; Natives, Resistance, Nader etc. et al.; Radicals -- And Troops -- In The South, And Other Things; Hunter Gray's Self-Defense Against '60s White Supremacists; A Word On Cochran And The American Socialist.
Contemporary Activist Thoughts #2
New Addition [ 1/22/01] Eastern North Carolina Black Belt Follow-Up Material [Freedom Fighter Willa Johnson Cofield, Halifax County]
INTRODUCTORY NOTES [JHG Mini Bio and DSA
WOBBLY BOY -- The I.W.W. -- FRANK H. LITTLE
JHG [JRS] YOUNG RED PORTRAIT -- FRANK DOLPHIN
PHOTO OF ME FROM MY HUGE FBI FILE
BACKGROUND NARRATIVE [PERSONAL, DETAILED]
Note -- 7/21/00: Narrative Substantially Expanded
NEW! The University of North Dakota [My very interesting and sometimes strange experiences]
A BRIEF NOTE ON MY ACADEMIC EDUCATION
[New addition, 9/00, Our Annance family Wolf Robe]
My father's excellent Native American art
My mother's family [Canadian Scottish origins, Dakota Territory, North Idaho, Washington State etc]
MORE FAMILY STUFF [John Gray: Mohawk Ancestral Activist/Culture Hero; Our Native Genealogy]
FAMILY CONTINUITY [Children & Grandchildren]
NEW: A BIZARRE 1979 FBI EFFORT TO SMEAR ME
AND ITS WEIRD RECENT RAMIFICATIONS
WITCH HUNT CONTINUES (4 DOCUMENTS)
MAINSTREAM: A REMEMBRANCE AND APPRECIATION
A PIECE OF THE SCRAPBOOK (BITS AND PIECES OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT)
A) Mississippi Saga: [JRS/JHG as Advisor to
Jackson Youth Council of NAACP and
Chair of Strategy Committee of Jackson
The Jackson Movement of 1962-63 was the most
massive upheaval in the history of blood-dimmed
Mississippi and one of the most significant move-
ments of the 1960s. Because it was radical in its
origins, nature and intent, some "mainline"
historians -- including several avowedly "liberal"
ones -- have sought to marginalize it. Here are a few
"snapshots" of this bloody struggle: The Boycott of
Jackson and rise of Jackson Movement: 1962-63;
our "Gauntlet Letter" of May 12 '63 to the Jackson
-- and Mississippi -- power structure; our large-
scale demonstrations and vicious repression -- and
the sweeping anti-Movement injunction [ City of
Jackson v. John R. Salter, Jr. -- which we, of course,
defied]; huge demonstrations and bloody repression
following the murder of Medgar Evers; I go into full-
time grassroots civil rights work for the radical
Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) as its
My book on the Jackson Movement: Jackson,
Mississippi: An American Chronicle of Struggle
And Schism [1979 and 1987.] Excerpts from
several of its many positive reviews.
NOTE: This section on the book is a
B) Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers (including JRS/JHG's
militant defense of Mine-Mill focusing on "red-scare witch hunting/
C) Red Scare Repression/Courageous Mine-Mill Ad
-- Concentration Camps in America (McCarran Act)
NEW ADDITION: Our Strange, Contemporary Idaho
Experiences -- Reminiscent of the '50s and '60s
D) Mine-Mill: Militant Advocate for Racial Equality and Justice
( Steward's Manual, Asbury Howard, Maurice Travis,
Salt of the Earth, Big grassroots JRS/JHG Mine-Mill
E) The Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF): JRS/JHG as
Field Organizer; Attacks by Southern segregationists (media,
Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee, U.S. Senate
Internal Security Subcommittee, Mississippi State Sovereignty
F) The Major Multi-County Northeastern North Carolina Black Belt
Civil Rights Project: Backed by SCEF and directed by JRS/JHG;
Northeastern North Carolina Black Belt Conference; United Klans
G) A Sampling of Photos from the Historic Northeastern North Carolina
Black-Belt Conference (with some historical discussion.)
H) Follow-Up Material: Eastern North Carolina Black-Belt
MORE MATERIAL FROM MISSISSIPPI SECRET POLICE FILES ON ME
A PIECE OF THE SCRAPBOOK:
NATIVE RIGHTS SAMPLING --
HUNTER GRAY [JRS/JHG] ACTIVITIES:
Uranium/Nuclear Issues; Native American
Organizational Training Center
The Great Canadian Algonquin Migrant
Fighting -- Successfully -- Police Racism
Fighting Racism -- Successfully -- At
DEFEAT RACISM, DON'T CENSOR IT [FIGHTING RACISM ON CAMPUS]
SOCIAL ACTIVISM/SOCIAL JUSTICE -- POCATELLO NEWSPAPER
VARIOUS LINKS [ JRS/JHG Oral Histories; Democratic Socialists of America/Anti-Racism Commission; Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism; Workers Education Local 189/United Association for Labor Education/CWA/AFL/CIO; Labor Party; Socialist Party USA; Woolworth Sit-In at Jackson; National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981/AFL-CIO] NOTE: The foregoing organizations -- DSA, CoC, UALE (189), LP, NWU, SP-USA -- are affiliations of mine and strong commitments. I endorse them vigorously.
DEVELOPING ISSUES AND CONTEMPORARY COMMENT
Material And Libertarian Well-Being -- And Firearms
Very Good Words That I Appreciate [University of North
Dakota, Mississippi, Grand Forks ND]
JRS(JHG) Review/Essay of Mine Mill: The History Of The
International Union Of Mine, Mill And Smelter Workers
In Canada -- Since 1895 (Mike Solski and John Smaller)
John Hunter Gray's Review/Essay of Big Trouble: A Murder
In A Small Western Town Sets Off A Struggle For The Soul
Of America (J. Anthony Lukas)
Bio Sketch (by JRS/JHG), Ralph H. Chaplin ()
[Industrial Workers of the World]
Bio Sketch (by JRS/JHG), A.S. Embree ()
{Industrial Workers of the World/International
Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers]
Continued Reflections On Hate Groups And Other Sicknesses
Interlude: "The Wild Wild Wobblies" -- And My Great
Personal Appreciation And Respect
The Protector Of The People
Note: This site is constantly being up-dated. In addition, we experiment with such things as font size, colours, and other technical facets. The complicated tech matters are handled primarily by my oldest daughter, Maria H. Salter [Maria Gray] -- with on-going assistance by my oldest grandson, Thomas Gray Salter, and with frequent help by my youngest daughter, Josie Heath Salter. These able souls, with Maria's youngest, Samantha, live here at Pocatello, Idaho with Eldri and myself. From some distance, critical suggestions are made by my oldest son, John R. Salter, and my youngest son, Peter Gray Salter. Eldri and I stand in awe of the foregoing -- truly priests in the new and mysterious Faith of Cyberspace. -- Hunter Gray