Around midnight on May 8th, several hundred fellow students began our campaign to again urge drivers to “Honk for Peace.” We milled around in the front of the University, just inside the low rock wall which designated its boundary from the rest of the world. The fabled Rotunda framed the area in which we were standing. Across the street were the police. They had deployed on three different sides. They wore white riot helmets and carried Billy clubs cradled in both hands.
They were silent. We weren’t.
They were focused. We were, too, just trying to get folks to honk their damn horns.
We were dreaming. They were wide awake.
Over a period of time University officials negotiated with designated “student marshals.” For the life of me, I have no idea how I became part of that group. But I clearly remember the two-part goal of those on-going conversations and what appeared to be an agreement, at last. We would move out of the area near the street and gather inside on The Lawn - the grassy quad that centered the University. The Police would pull back away from The Corner – a surreal version of “out of sight, out of mind.” Turns out we were out of our minds thinking it would actually work. And they had us in their sights all along.
We left the meeting and trotted back towards our fellow protesters to share the good news. It was never delivered. By the time I reached the stone wall, the students en masse began running away in every direction. I had no idea why, so I stopped, turned around and realized that the police were charging across the street.
I don’t remember what route I took but I ran into The Grounds and headed towards a friend’s room on The Lawn. I practically leaped through the door thinking I was at some sort of a free base but screaming for help from the students inside. Lord knows they tried. It just didn’t stop the physical tug-of-war that took place – my friends holding on to both arms trying to keep me in the room and two policemen pulling at my waist dragging me out.
The cops won.
They yanked me through an exterior pillar, pulled me around it, ripped my shirt, bruised my head, hauled me out to the street and up the ramp into a waiting Mayflower Moving Van. I wasn’t alone. By the end of the night, another sixty-seven assorted souls – none dangerous – were stuffed in. Yes, there were fellow protestors, but also very well-dressed men and their dates pulled from frat houses or off of the nearby streets, a caretaker and a pizza delivery guy on his way, apparently, to the President’s home. I don’t remember the kind of pizza, but we ate it as we waited. It was nervously silent in that van. I honestly thought we would be reprimanded and then sent on our way. I really wasn’t all that worried.
Wrong again.
The doors on the eighteen-wheeler slammed shut and were locked from the outside. I knew that sound quite well. Two years earlier, I spent the summer in Los Angeles with five close friends and worked moving furniture for Bekins Van and Storage. I had spent time riding inside many trucks before, but none of them opened up at the Charlottesville Police station.
We were herded inside and seated in an area with pew-like rows. Law school faculty members were already there, and I particularly remember the attention and demeanor of Charles Whitebread who would become a famous criminal law expert. One by one, we dangerous lawbreakers were brought up to stand in front of a designated judicial representative and had arrest warrants sworn out. I still have mine. Here is what it says:
“Whereas W. E. Jordan, state trooper of said city, has this day made complaint and information on oath before me, Ethel Irwin a Justice of the Peace of said city, that Arnold J Magid in said city or within 1 mile of said city on the ninth day of May 1970, did unlawfully, (sic) a member of persons being unlawfully or riotously assembled, the sheriff of the county and live deputies and the police officials of the city having gone among the persons assembled and commanded them in the name of the State to disperse, did fail to disperse in violation of the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia 18.1-254.8.”
After the obligatory photographs and fingerprinting, just about everybody was released on bonds of $500-1,000 paid personally or from a variety of different sources. I wasn’t and I have no idea why. Over a 35-year career as a congregational Rabbi I visited many individuals in facilities ranging from local jails to maximum-security Federal prisons. The sounds that the electronic locks make in them are significantly louder than the ones heard on television or movies. The loudest one I ever heard was in that cell in Charlottesville.
A few hours later, in the early morning, I was released. I called my parents to tell them the news. My father was furious. My friends’ responses ranged from concern to congratulatory to teasing. Me? I felt angry and betrayed, not only personally but in some sort of communal way in that “outsiders” had invaded the nominally sacred space that was/is Mr. Jefferson’s academical village. But it was not over, not by a longshot.
We graduated June 7 and “walked the Lawn” but the hearings on the arrests were actually scheduled to take place on June 22nd when I would theoretically be on my way to Jerusalem to begin my five years in rabbinical school. Somehow, though, the city changed its mind about us. Not only were we free, we were informed that the arrests had been nul pros - not prosecuted – and therefore not a part of our record.
Wrong yet again.
In 2015, I applied for a federal GOES card which would allow me to avoid passport control upon returning from overseas. As part of the procedure, one needs to have a personal interview with a TSA officer. I made the appointment, waited about two months and eventually found myself sitting in front of uniformed investigator. She entered my name in the computer, quietly read the screen, then turned to me and asked: “Are you the same Arnold Magid who was arrested in Charlottesville on May 9, 1970?”
I actually began to perspire and stammered out a response which ended in something like “but it was nul pros.”
The agent looked back at me and said: “So you are the Arnold Magid who was arrested in Charlottesville on May 9, 1970?”
“Yes, ma’am,” says I.
“We’ll get back to you,” she said. “Thanks for coming in.”
I remember going home and telling Annie that I was never going to get a pass. But, I did.
Maybe one day my arrest on May 9, 1970 will be erased from digital memory.
But it will always be a part of mine. Always.
