Gene Bluestein
Bad Old Times at California State University, Fresno

Nathan Heard and the Big Crackdown

Nathan was a guy who had been a gangster and from the age of fifteen, had been in jail of one kind or another. When he got out of jail he decided that he wanted to be a writer. He said that when he was in jail, they used to pass around these pornographic books. He read them and said, "Jesus, I could do better than that." So when he came out he wrote this terrific novel which is called Howard Street. It was a knockout.

He was being interviewed on one of the morning television shows from New York. One of my colleagues, Bob O'Neill, saw him and said, "This is a terrific guy and we should hire him to be in the English department." They called him in New York and he came out for an interview. And when he came out they said to me, " Gene, you have to take care of him because he's your kind of guy. He's a gangster from New York and you're the only one who can handle him."

So he came to our house and he was a monster, huge guy and he stayed with us. He looked around town and he looked around and said, "Where are all the people? There are no people in the streets." He was from New Jersey and New York and there were always people in the streets. I said, "They're all in their back yards barbequeing."

But we hired him and he was terrific. He won an award for the best teacher. He knew nothing about teaching. He would go to his class--he was teaching creative writing and a Black Studies type class. But he was not in Black Studies, he was in English. That was our approach. We always wanted to have black people in our department. He came up to me the first day and he said to me, "Gene, what's a term paper?" Whenever something came up he would say, "I'm sorry, I never heard of that but I'll find out about it." So he used to ask me. But he was great, just terrific.

The firing of everyone was calculated to force the students to respond. And they did. There were many activities all over the place and demonstrations. Nathan was one of the guys who was fired.
Protest poster after firings. Gene points to the sealed office door.

It was also the time when the English department was invaded. I think it's the first time in the history of education in this country that an academic department was invaded by the police. That came about because one of the guys who took Dale Burtner's place, an acting dean, (we had nothing but acting guys around) spoke to the new president. Falk was only here a year. He did his work and left. The new president was named Baxter. He was the worst. He told the new president, "If you give me permission to invade the English department, I will give a list that is the Maoist conspiracy in California." So the guy said, "Of course, go ahead." The cops came with him. The came in to the office. They changed all the locks. They commandeered Gene Zumwalt's file cabinet where ostensibly these files of the communist conspiracy were supposed to be. What they found was an old lunch and a jockstrap. Nothing else. In the meantime we were all locked out. I remember I was in the office when the guys came in to change the locks. I called the head of the American Association of University Professors. AAUP is one the groups that is supposed to be in charge of things like this.

I called them on the phone and I said I think you ought to get her fast because the English department has just been invaded and they're changing the locks on the door." And the guy said, " I don't believe you." and hung up. He's still in the history department. In the meantime the chair was fired, Roger Chittick was the assistant chair. He was also fired. They never found anything, but the whole place was turned completely up-side down. For many years it was very difficult to function. There were huge demonstrations. We spoke there and we sang. They marched down Shaw Avenue. English Department Softball Team: Gene is in the center. Nathan Heard is 3rd from left, standing.

That was when they tried to get Nathan Heard. We had emergency meetings every other day.  I was sitting at a meeting and some guy came running in and said, "The word is out that they're about to arrest Nathan Heard." We said, " What for?" He said, "Nobody knows."

I called the District Attorney, downtown. I said, "We just had a report that you're planning to arrest Nathan Heard. What's going on?" The guy said, " Yeah, " you're right. I have the warrant right here. We're about to arrest him." I said, "What for?" He said, " Well, we have a photo of him watching a demonstration on Shaw Avenue." I said, "That's it? You have a photo of him watching a demonstration? And you're gonna arrest him on that charge?" He said, " Yeah, we're thinking about it." I spoke to that guy for about two hours. I said to him basically, "If you really want to blow the lid off this place, if you think you don't have enough trouble yet, arrest Nathan Heard. Because Nathan has been terrific." Generally his guidance to the students was, "Don't get arrested. You don't need to be in jail. Do everything non-violently." The District Attorney said, " Well, maybe you're right." They never arrested him.

The next day Nathan caught me and was furious. He said, " You son of a bitch! I was planning to be in jail. I was planning to be Martin Luther King, Jr. I was gonna write all kinds of wonderful things. I've been in jail before. I know what it's like." He was only kidding, pretending to be furious that I got him off.

From here Nathan got a job at Rutgers. Rutgers at that time, had one campus where all their ethinc studies were. He got a job in the Black Studies Department, with all kinds of hotshots there-- Leroy Jones, many black writers. But he didn't like it. He didn't like teaching in a Black Studies program so he quit and he got a job doing public relations for New Jersey. He also published a couple of other books.

That was the terrible thing about what happened. There were some wonderful careers that were just nipped in the bud. Many of those people never recovered. They never were able to pick up where they left off. Many of the guys in black studies and ethnic studies in general, never came back. Later on when things settled down, they hired more people in Black Studies and Chicano studies. But you can imagine the people who would take those jobs. Anyone who had any respect for himself would never take a job when he realized that all the other guys were fired. So we got a bunch of finks. The guy who took over in black studies, a man named, Keyes, was a terrific guy who was fired. He became a consultant. The guy who took his place was a former ROTC guy. So black studies and Chicano studies never became anything of significance.

Just at this time there was the big action at San Francisco State, with Hayakawa. San Francisco State was never as far out as we were here. But because it was San Francisco, it got all the publicity. Most people never knew about anything that happend here because we were dumped in favor of San Francisco. It was a really unfortunate situation because of many things that occurred. The experimental college was totally destroyed. It never came back. There were also many other programs that were shelved or not funded in one way or another. Continue