Interviewees

Shaun Illingworth: This begins the third interview session with Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., on March 7, 2019, in Lawrence Township, New Jersey. Thank you very much for having me here again.

M. William Howard: Well, thank you for coming.

SI: To begin, we want to delve deeper into your work on the anti-apartheid issue. You shared, last time, the story of how the Reformed Church got more involved, but you had been interested in the issue before that. Can you talk a little bit about how your interest and work on the issue had grown and where it started?

MWH: Well, as I recall it, remember now, I'm living as a young person in the segregated South. Though we had many wonderful leaders, the national figure that we related to most was Dr. King, in the South. In the North, maybe it was Malcolm X, but, in the South, Dr. King was the standard-bearer of our cause.

In the early '60s, we learned that Dr. King had had a meeting at the United Nations with a South African who was not known to us. It turns out that this man won the first Nobel Prize of any South African. He won the prize as the head of the African National Congress, which, for many years, was patterned, to some degree, after the NAACP. It was a non-violent sort of civil rights advocacy group. It developed a military wing later on, the Spear of the Nation--in English, it would be called that--but, in the earlier days, it was a non-violent protest movement. Some have linked it to the Indian National Congress that was led by Gandhi in South Africa.

[Editor's Note: Albert J. Luthuli, President of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967, earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960. The African National Congress opposed the system of apartheid, the legal segregation, forced resettlement and oppression of black South Africans by the white Afrikaner minority in South Africa, and attempted to unite native South Africans. Formed in 1921, the South African Indian Congress represented the Indian minority in South Africa during apartheid. Mohandas Gandhi served as a prominent leader in the Congress during his twenty-one years in South Africa before returning to India. There, he led the Indian National Congress, the leading Indian political party opposing British colonialism.]

Dr. King went to the UN to meet--and I'm not going to call his name immediately, but that's something we can easily find out--this head of the ANC in South Africa, who was an opponent of something called apartheid. That was a new word to us. Of course, at that time, Dr. King was trying to make international connections between what was going on in other parts of the world and what was happening in the rural South.

Because he met with this man and it was reported to us, I became interested in this subject, "How was that similar to our situation?" I think I was maybe a junior in high school when I first spoke on this subject, apartheid in South Africa. I'm not sure what the occasion was, but it was in a church--not a sermon, but maybe it was some kind of special program. As a young person, I was invited to speak on a subject of my choice, and I remember speaking on apartheid.

Now, then, I went on to Morehouse College and issues like apartheid were very much in our minds. We, at that time, had a number of African students. I specifically remember students from Zimbabwe, which was, at that time, Southern Rhodesia. So, the issue of apartheid [in] South Africa, it's coming along through these years, right on through my days at New York Seminary. [Editor's Note: Southern Rhodesia, a British colony, became the independent Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980. Reverend Howard served as President of New York Theological Seminary from 1992 to 2000.]

So, when I arrived as a member of the staff, after graduating seminary, at the Dutch Reformed Church, that had special meaning, because the Dutch Reformed Church's cousins were the sponsors of apartheid in South Africa. I always say that apartheid was a theology before it became a political philosophy. There was biblical support, theological support, for the idea of racial separation.

Allan Boesak, who was and still is a prominent South African theologian, who had come out of the Dutch Reformed Church, but earned a Ph.D. in Holland, spent a year in the United States studying with James Cone, who was a prominent architect of black theology. So, he was really a recognized scholar on the question of liberation theology, black theology, theology of freedom against oppression, you might say. He wrote a very important book; I'm thinking the title of his book was Farewell to Innocence. It was a bold attack on the theological assumptions of apartheid.

[Editor's Note: Dr. James H. Cone (1938-2018), a distinguished professor at Union Theological Seminary, advocated in his 1969 work Black Theology and Black Power for African Americans to embrace Black Power as a means of restoring the agency and dignity denied to them by the white hegemony in much of American Christianity. Dr. Allan A. Boesak, co-recipient of the 1985 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for his anti-apartheid efforts, served as President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (1982-91) and held political positions in the African National Congress. He published Farewell to Innocence in 1976.]

So, the Reformed Church in America had actually denounced apartheid in the late '60s and sort of offered its own critique of the theological assumptions, based on Reform theology, but it hadn't done very much. It had made it clear that …

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SI: We are back, and I thank you very much for bearing with me. We had a technical malfunction, for the record. Where the audio cut off, we were talking about the theological challenges to the underpinnings of apartheid in South Africa, which was leading into, I think, talking about the different leaders that were invited to speak to the Dutch Reformed Church.

MWH: Right. Yes, so, we talked about Reverend Elia Tema, who had been invited by the President of New Brunswick Seminary, Dr. Hageman, at that time, just for a year of study, a year out of the country, exposure. Toward the end of his stay, he invited, with the support of the Reformed Church, Dr. Sam Buti, Jr., who was head of the black wing of the Dutch Reformed Church, to address the Reformed Church's Annual Meeting, which took place on the campus of Rutgers.

This gentleman, Mr. Buti, spoke on the 17th of June 1976, which was the day following the big rebellion in Soweto over the teaching of Afrikaans in the schools. So, that morning, when he stood up to speak, the front page of The New York Times was all about that rebellion. So, that influenced what he said to us a great deal. [Editor's Note: Dr. Howard Hageman served as President of New Brunswick Theological Seminary from 1973 to 1985. Dr. Hageman met Reverend Elia Mashai Tema in South Africa in 1974 and invited him to study at the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, where Tema earned a Masters in Theology degree in 1976. Reverend Sam Buti served as President of the South African Council of Churches from 1975 to 1981. On June 16, 1976, in Soweto, the largest black community in Johannesburg, South Africa, approximately twenty thousand students protesting the exclusive use of Afrikaans in their schools were met with violence from police, resulting in 176, or possibly up to seven hundred, deaths.]

The Reformed Church, I think, at that time, was convinced that it had to do more. I think at some point in the course of the ensuing period, it expressed its solidarity with the black church, as opposed to the white church. That was a source of real consternation in South Africa among white Dutch Reformed people, who really looked to the churches of the United States for succor and affirmation, which they weren't getting.

By '86, I believe, so, roughly ten years later, the Reformed Church had severed its economic ties to the regime. It had actually had a delegation, a small delegation, a black man and woman, had gone, but, by '86, we went as an official delegation of the denomination, an interracial delegation, led by the Secretary General, the CEO of the denomination.

One of the things that we insisted is that the blacks in our delegation would not be characterized as "honorary whites." This was a practice in South Africa, so that a black American could go to South Africa and enjoy all the privileges of any other person, but black people in South Africa, of course, could not. So, we did not want to be a part of that.

So, we lived in the home of Dr. Tema and his family. I think maybe some others lived in other homes, because we were a nice-sized group, I'm not sure how many of us, but too many to stay in one home. We were well-received. We met with a varied assortment of black church leaders. We met with the white church leaders. We spoke in congregations, that kind of thing. Of course, this led to--that was in 1990, when we eventually went on that trip.

In the interim, I think in '86, ten years after the New Brunswick experience, we hosted Dr. Alfred Nzo, who was the Secretary-General of the ANC [from 1969 to 1991]. That was quite a departure because churches--the Reformed Church, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church--all these churches had invited prominent South African religious leaders who were against apartheid to address them. By having Nzo, the Reformed Church had crossed a line.

They invited a political leader to come, and that was with the strong support of church leaders from South Africa, Bishop Tutu, Dr. Boesak. They said, "We’d love to come and talk to you, but these are our leaders in the vie toward empowerment in the government. Why don't you invite a representative from that group?" We did. It went very well, even though in this country there were people who characterized the ANC as communist, and so on, and so on.

[Editor's Note: Desmond M. Tutu of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa served as the Bishop of Johannesburg (1985-86) and the Archbishop of Cape Town (1986-96), becoming the first black African to hold those titles. Earlier in his career, he served as dean of St. Mary's Cathedral in Johannesburg and the Bishop of Lesotho, before serving as General-Secretary of the South African Council of Churches (1978-85). He used his appointments to bring international attention to the campaign to end apartheid, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. After apartheid's end, he served as Chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.]

Mr. Nzo was the personification of something a bit different from what the people expected--he was a very warm and personable gentleman. They received him. He gave a great talk, explained things. We had informal sessions, people sitting around on the floor having a dialogue with him. That informed our trip in 1990 as well.

SI: You had also described, in the portion we lost, about how you had additional issues that you faced in going there, due to your work with the World Organization of Churches.

MWH: Yes. I mentioned that I visited South Africa twice in 1990. That first visit, the one we're talking about here, the entire delegation was allowed to enter, pass through the port of entry, clear customs as we say, except for me. I was held back, and there was a lot of protests by my colleagues on the other side of that line. They held me there while they looked through the computer. That happened on two occasions during my visits. Each time I went, I was separated from the delegation.

I think it is related to the Programme to Combat Racism, a program in the World Council of Churches, that I moderated from '76 to '78. That program provided humanitarian assistance to all kinds of groups opposing racism in the world, South Africa, well, Southern Africa in general, among these places, but Koreans in Japan, Algerians in France, Maoris in New Zealand. These are all groups that had anti-racism movements that we supported. The South African government responded quite negatively to that, and so, I guess I gathered some kind of reputation from that. That fed into the Reformed Church's efforts, because I was an employee of the Reformed Church.

SI: You also mentioned that you met with Archbishop Tutu during your trip.

MWH: Well, Desmond Tutu and I have known each other for a very long time, long before I was allowed to enter South Africa, which, as I mentioned earlier, I was disallowed visas for fifteen years. I met Desmond Tutu before he was a bishop. He was living in Lesotho as a priest. I think he became a bishop, eventually. Was it Lesotho? But [it was] someplace other than South Africa. He's a South African, but he was serving in a different country.

I knew him all that time. Then, eventually, he became President of the South African Council of Churches before he became Archbishop of Cape Town. So, I knew him throughout that period. Yes, when we went, we did visit him at the Archbishop's residence in Cape Town, but, here again, he's someone that I knew, I knew his wife well, yes.

SI: I want to ask about, first, the divestiture movement within the Reformed Church. You said it was the first among the churches. Was that already in some way in process when you joined the church or were you part of the movement to get it off the ground?

MWH: Well, sometime in the late '60s, the Reformed Church had issued a statement from one of its committees making clear that it did not agree with the theological application that led to apartheid. The South African government was so impacted by that simple declaration that it published a book called A Plea for Understanding, and that book is available. If you read the book, they were basically, I would say, saying, "If you only knew our situation." I mean, that was basically the rationale. [Editor's Note: A Plea For Understanding: A Reply to the Reformed Church in America by W. A. Landman was published in 1968.]

It was not something that was persuasive to the Reformed Church, but they didn't have a program of action. They didn't have a program of action until the African-American Council, the organization within the Reformed Church that hired me, began to connect with the black South African element in the Dutch Reformed Church. So, no, I mean, the Church, there might've been individual pastors, and so on, who did things. They'd travel back and forth, but there was no real force in the denomination to really deal with this and become a significant player in the anti-apartheid efforts.

Now, the Reformed Church was not the only church in the United States focused on apartheid, trying to do things to oppose apartheid, but it was the first to completely divest its holdings. Because of its Dutch background and because of its adherence to Reform theology, the fact that it had taken this position, maybe, carried more weight than some other American churches might've.

Remember, after two years as moderator of the Programme to Combat Racism, I was elected President of the National Council of Churches. So, I resigned my post as moderator of PCR, so as not to confuse the two missions, and the National Council of Churches withdrew its holdings from Citibank at the time. So, that was a movement led, to some extent, by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, but, also, some other anti-apartheid organizations, some of which were organizing in support of sanctions, economic sanctions. [Editor's Note: Reverend Howard, elected as the youngest President of the National Council of Churches in 1978, led the removal of the organization's funds from Citibank, then a significant lender and operator in South Africa, in 1980.]

Some were organizing to put pressure on the South African government. For example, Dr. Leon Sullivan of Philadelphia was a member of the Board of General Motors. He came up with something called "The Six Principles," which was essentially meant to pressure South Africa from within, staying in South Africa, but insisting on certain hiring policies and certain other kinds of things that would loosen the grip of apartheid. [Editor's Note: Reverend Leon H. Sullivan (1922-2001) served as Pastor of Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia from 1950 to 1988. Dr. Sullivan became the first African American to serve on a major corporate board in 1971 when he joined General Motors. He developed the Sullivan Principles in 1977.]

Then, there were those who were saying, "No. That kind of economic engagement is not going to work. You have to sever ties and deprive South Africa of economic linkages to the outside world." So, these two schools were running sort of on parallel paths. Very often, churches were involved, not just the Reformed Church, but its historic link to the Dutch Reformed Church made its actions have, I think, greater reverberation inside the country.

SI: Were you mostly working within the church circles, in your position as President of the National Council of Churches and your work for the Reformed Church, or were you speaking to other groups? I know for universities, this was a big issue. What about other types of groups that had investments related to South Africa?

MWH: Yes. I served as president of an organization called the American Committee on Africa. That organization was founded by a group of pacifists who actually served time in prison because of their pacifism. One of the leaders of that movement was a man named George Houser, a United Methodist pastor. [Editor's Note: George Mills Houser (1916-2015) helped found the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. During World War II, he refused to serve in the military and spent a year in prison. The American Committee on Africa (ACOA), founded in 1953, lobbied for African causes in the United States and at the United Nations. Houser served as ACOA Executive Director from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. In 2001, ACOA merged with the Africa Fund and the Africa Policy Information Center to form Africa Action.]

That organization was very friendly to the churches, but it was not of the church per se. It was a very important forerunner, in many ways, of the anti-apartheid movement because, for example, at Town Hall in Manhattan, it had hosted anti-colonial leaders like [Tanganyikan/Tanzanian leader Julius] Nyerere and [Kwame] Nkrumah, who became the head of Ghana. They offered public platforms for these people to talk to the American public about their aspirations. The American Committee on Africa was a forerunner in that respect.

Then, it majored in apartheid after a while, especially after, I would say, the Sharpeville Massacre. Sharpeville and other kinds of things happened in South Africa that brought the issue of South Africa to the world's attention. That positioned the ACOA to work more toward the anti-apartheid effort. So, I chaired that group. Most of what I did was as a reverend though. [Editor's Note: During apartheid, pass laws required black South Africans to use an internal passport when traveling within the nation, as a means of controlling their movements. On March 21, 1960, tens of thousands gathered at a police station in Sharpeville, Transvaal, South Africa, to surrender their pass books in a mass protest. The police killed sixty-nine unarmed protestors and wounded 180 others, including many children. The incident drew international attention to the plight of those fighting against apartheid.]

I mean, even on the Board of the American Committee on Africa, there were scholars, there were judges. My predecessor was a judge from the State of New York. So, there were people from different walks of life, but everyone understood that I was sitting in a chair not as a delegate from the churches, but I was a reverend. They understood the religious meaning of apartheid. Apartheid was a theological conviction before it was a political philosophy and they knew that.

SI: Let us see…

MWH: You remember that town I couldn't think of on the Indian Ocean?

SI: Yes, yes.

MWH: Durban.

SI: Durban, yes.

MWH: Durban, yes, Durban, beautiful place, right on the beach there. We had the privilege of visiting Durban.

SI: It looks like there were other groups you were involved in, here and abroad, like the Human Rights Advisory Group. Was that a similar effort?

MWH: The Human Rights Advisory Group came after I served on the Programme to Combat Racism. It was a prominent committee of the World Council of Churches and it advised the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. So, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights derived its perspectives on the human rights situations in the world from different sources. Particularly around the issue of freedom of religion, they regarded religious bodies as authoritative sources. So, the Human Rights Advisory Group of the WCC was the group to whom the UN turned often for insight into, "What is happening in the persecution of religious groups around the world?" of whatever faith, you see.

SI: Yes.

MWH: That's what that was about. I think that there was a gentleman from Holland who was the executive of the UN's Human Rights Commission at that time and we consulted with him. I was thinking it might've been Ahtisaari, who was from Finland. Maybe he played some role in that, too, at some point, but he was also the custodian of the Namibian sovereignty. That's a whole other story, so, I mean, maybe we shouldn't necessarily get into that. [Editor's Note: Nobel Peace Prize laureate and UN diplomat Martti Ahtisaari served as President of Finland from 1994 to 2000.]

SI: Yes.

MWH: That's the Human Rights Advisory Group (of the World Council of Churches), and that came later. I'm not sure if I was still President of the National. What are the years for that?

SI: For the National Council?

MWH: National Council of Human Rights.

SI: 1985 to 1989.

MWH: Yes, that was following my conclusion of; I'd served. My term ended in the WCC as President in 1981. So, that was a few years after concluding that term. That's a separate assignment altogether.

SI: Apartheid was obviously a major issue, but were there other issues that stand out in your time with the Council of Churches?

MWH: Well, I mean, maybe the most prominent, probably, is my role in the visitation of the Americans held hostage in Tehran in 1979. [Editor's Note: The Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, an Iranian student group, took over the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, capturing sixty-six Americans. On the 17th of that month, they released thirteen people, including women and African Americans. The Iranians held over fifty Americans hostage for 444 days until January 20, 1981. The students did so to show their support for the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Ayatollah Ruhollah Mūsavi Khomeini, who served as Supreme Leader of Iran until his death in 1989.]

SI: Okay.

MWH: When Dr. William Sloane Coffin of the Riverside Church and Bishop Gumbleton of the Roman Church, the three of us traveled from the United States, meeting Cardinal Duval in Paris. The four of us journeyed to Tehran. We were the first to see the Americans who were being held hostage in the embassy after they were taken. That was in Christmas of '79. [Editor's Note: At the time, William Sloane Coffin, Jr. was the senior minister at the Riverside Church, Thomas Gumbleton was the Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, and Léon-Étienne Duval was Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church in Algeria and the Archbishop of Algiers. Like Dr. Howard, all three were well-known for their work on international humanitarian and justice issues.]

In '83-'84, in December of '83, I helped to organize a delegation that traveled with Reverend Jesse Jackson to Syria to appeal for and, ultimately, to obtain the release of the US Navy pilot, Robert Goodman, who had been shot down over the Beqaa Region in Lebanon, which was controlled by Syria. Then, he was imprisoned in the Syrian prison until we went to make this appeal. [Editor's Note: On December 4, 1983, US Navy officers and aviators Mark Lange and Robert Goodman were shot down during a bombing mission. Lange perished, but Goodman survived. Syrian soldiers subsequently captured him. On January 4, 1983, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Reverend Howard and others returned to the United States with Goodman, after negotiating for his release.]

I traveled [with the] Human Rights fact-finding delegation to Latin America, especially to Guatemala in those days, but that included stops in Mexico; I think Mexico primarily. I traveled in the Middle East, in Lebanon and Israel and Palestine. I traveled in Egypt visiting one of the other Popes. I mean, most people think of "the Pope" as the Roman Catholic Pope, but there are other Apostolic churches--you know this?--founded at the time of Jesus.

They became the churches founded by the Apostles of Jesus. We call them the Orthodox Churches now, but they are the original Christian communions, to the Greeks, the Russians, the Georgians, the Ethiopians, the Egyptians, which are called the Copts, the Coptic Church. So, I have a good familiarity with those communions. I traveled among them and listened carefully.

In the case of Israel, back in those days, I met with the highest leadership of Israel, Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres, and Teddy Kollek, Teddy Kollek being the Mayor of Jerusalem at that time. So, international concerns have been a big part of my life. I led the first delegation of American churches, official, to China after the Cultural Revolution, and then, later, a visit to the Soviet Union, all as a person involved in religious affairs. [Editor's Note: Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres held numerous positions in Israel's government, including terms as Prime Minister. Theodor "Teddy" Kollek (1911-2007) served as Mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993.]

I was hosted in China by the first delegation that the Chinese church was ever allowed to host from a foreign country after the Cultural Revolution. I don't know if you know the story of the Gang of Four and the Maoist element within the Chinese process. The Three Self-Movement is what the Chinese church was called. They invited us and we were visiting. [Editor's Note: The Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) is the Protestant church recognized by the People's Republic of China. The three principles are self-governance, self-support and self-propagation. The Cultural Revolution, launched by Mao in 1966, banned open religious expression and practice, leading to the TSPM's dissolution. The Gang of Four rose to power as the Cultural Revolution progressed, rivaling the faction led by Premier Zhou Enlai. After Zhou's and then Mao's deaths in 1976, Deng Xiaoping, Zhou's successor, arrested the Gang of Four and ended the Cultural Revolution. In 1979, the TSPM resumed operations.]

So, you see, it's a pretty eclectic [career] and, sometimes, I can hardly believe it myself when I describe it, but it's pretty broad--Latin America, the Middle East, North Africa, I was in Somalia, for example, in Mogadishu, and so forth.

SI: I am curious, at the same time, you were still working for the Reformed Church.

MWH: Yes.

SI: How do you balance that?

MWH: How do I balance that? Let's see, in some instances, for example, when I was in South Africa, a lot of the work I did on South Africa was a part of my assignment. When I served in the World Council of Churches and in the National Council of Churches, I served with the affirmation and support of the denomination. In fact, in some instances, not in all, but in some instances, the resources needed to make these trips [were] supported by the Reformed Church.

Now, when I was in China, that was a part of my assignment as the titular head of the National Council. The President is not the executive head. We have a General Secretary who was also on this trip, but I was the guy who would accept the welcome and greet the people on our behalf, that kind of ceremonial thing. That was warmly supported by the Reformed Church.

SI: Let me pause for one second.

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MWH: Should I talk?

SI: Yes.

MWH: I also led the first post-revolution delegation of an American church group to Cuba.

SI: Oh.

MWH: In 1977, the Cuban council of churches, I think--they were called the Christian Council of Cuba, but it was a council of churches--our counterpart in Cuba invited us to Cuba. We stayed in seminary dormitories at the Matanzas Seminary, the Presbyterian seminary at Matanzas. The bunks were made of straw beds. That was quite interesting.

SI: Wow.

MWH: But, on that delegation--that would've been 1977--so, that's just one more chapter in the global sort of movement around, always representing our perspective of the Christian role or mission, being in solidarity with churches abroad, not trying to be an imposing force on the churches abroad, which, of course, we have some history in this country of that.

In fact, one little story about China, the Chinese, the Three-Self Movement, which had to do with self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-something else, but they were very determined to assert, especially in the mind of their government, that they were an independent church, they were not a church controlled by the West. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church in China still struggles with, "Are you loyal to Peking or Shanghai, or are you loyal to Rome?" The Three-Self Movement was very determined not to be perceived that way. So, the gift that they gave us as a sign of our visit was a stone rubbing of the Nestorian Tablet. The Nestorians, they wanted to let us know, had been in China before the Western European and North American missionaries had been, another sign that they were interested in our getting the message that we were not the first Christians in China. [Editor's Note: The Xi'an Stele, or Nestorian Tablet, dates from 781 CE and describes Chinese Christian communities in Northern China. Nestorianism, a Christian doctrine, emerged from the teachings of Nestorius, the Archbishop of Constantinople from 428 to 431 CE.]

Now, we represented a wing of the church that wanted to affirm the universality of the Christian Church. So, we went to all these places trying to exhibit a mutual regard, and so forth. So, I would say that characterized the tenor of our visits.

SI: To go back to your visit to Tehran, could you walk me through that event? What do you remember about the actual visit and how you were handled?

MWH: [laughter] "Handled" is a good word.

SI: Okay.

MWH: We arrived in Tehran. We received an invitation on a Saturday. We received, each of us, telegrams inviting us to come to offer prayers at Christmas. That's essentially what it was, "Come and offer prayers for the hostages."

I think Americans never quite understood the religious devotion of the people who took our hostages. They were respectful of Christianity to the extent that they wanted to honor the religion; in so far as they were Christians, they wanted to honor that.

So, we went and we arrived in the evening. We left on a Sunday. Iran, I found interesting, was eight-and-a-half hours different from our time. We arrived there in the evening and we were taken to the Sheraton Hotel, I believe, yes, Sheraton or Hilton, one of the American brand hotels.

Right away, we were asked to prepare to go to see the hostages. Being a Protestant, I was not as conscious of the Roman Catholic tradition of celebrating Midnight Mass. That was sort of a new idea, but Bishop Gumbleton oriented me, a Roman Catholic bishop. We quickly had to dress and prepare to go to the embassy where these people were being held.

Maybe around eleven-thirty, we were picked up. I've never seen so many press in all my life, I mean, hundreds of people. What I remember most was, as we were driving away in the van to go to the embassy, there were literally cars with press people hanging out the window filming us as we drove, risking their lives, apparently.

We got to the embassy. It was dark. We were taken to a central building. Each one of us had blindfolds put on our faces, and then, we were taken to separate locations. We don't know where because we were blindfolded. I know I was taken to a building where I had to be held by arm to go down steps, down, like, into a basement. Once we arrived in the room where the people we were going to see--each of us separately, by the way. There were four or us, remember, [with] the Roman Catholic cardinal from France. We were all in separate rooms. Once we reached the rooms where we would meet the people, the blindfolds were removed.

Now, the people, the Americans who were there, had no idea we were coming. Right away, they wanted to know who were we and where were we from, how did we get to come there? In my case, I think there were just over fifty [people] total. I've lost track of the number, but I had the largest number in the group that I saw. They grilled me. "Who are you? What do you represent?" and so on.

Once they were convinced that I was not an agent of their captors and that my purpose was religious, they relaxed. We talked about all kinds of things. Remember, they knew nothing about what was going on, and they didn't want to have prayer right away. They wanted to be updated. For example, I've said on national television, they were very interested in knowing who was ahead in the NFL playoffs. It was sort of around that time when we were going down to Super Bowl time, and they wanted to know about that. They wanted to know if their families knew anything about their situation. They knew they were in Iran. They knew nothing about the news coverage. If you're old enough to remember, or you've read about this, this was a national obsession, every day, a countdown. They were totally unaware of this and, of course, that boosted their spirits. They were pleased to hear this.

They wanted to know if we could take messages to their families, and we were allowed to do that. The messages were inspected, but they were often simple messages. They weren't coded or anything. Then, once we had [spoken], we did have a service. We had prayer. We invited them to [pray]. I, in my case, said, "Look, we have time together. I'm a pastor. I don't know your religious affiliation. I don't intend to impose anything on you. What would you like?" What we did in terms of prayer or an occasional song was their choice.

The thing that I found really strange is, the Iranians had, in their version of Christmas, they had a Christmas tree and they had candy around the tree. I mean, we didn't touch any of that stuff, but the point is, they had it there. Then came the time when the time was up. We hugged. It was very emotional because they didn't know when they would be leaving. We didn't know when they'd be leaving. Now, we were going to be taken back someplace, maybe to the hotel, we presumed.

Before we went into the rooms, we had a little interesting exchange with the students. They were students and very religious students. They were being led by a woman. Mary was the name she gave to the public; I don't know her actual name. I remember Dr. Coffin reaching out to shake her hand and she said, "No, it's not allowed in my religion to shake hands with a man."

Dr. Coffin, years before, had been involved in negotiating the release of certain prisoners in Vietnam, and he went to Iran thinking they were going to get involved in the negotiation. So, he said, "So, how many of these people are you going to give us?" and we heard the guns cock.

SI: Oh.

MWH: Right, and we were told, "This is not what this is about. You're here as a minister to conduct…" Of course, I'm nudging Dr. Coffin.

SI: Wow.

MWH: He accepted that, keeping in mind that he was an officer in the US military operation that pre-dated the CIA. He had actually parachuted behind enemy lines in the Second World War. Do you know that story?

SI: I know the OSS. I do not know about him.

MWH: Oh, well, he was in the OSS. He was, of course, known to us as a prominent chaplain at Yale University, but he had this kind of background. He was multilingual. So, he had that sort of mentality. The Iranians knew that about him, so, they were checking him out, "Who is this guy?" He was a great colleague and, once we understood what the guidelines were, we adhered to them. [Editor's Note: William Sloane Coffin, Jr. served in the US Army during World War II. Initially, he had applied to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), but was turned down. During the Korean War, he worked for the newly-formed CIA, successor to the OSS. From 1958 to 1976, he served as Chaplain of Yale University, where he gained distinction for his outspoken activism on Civil Rights, draft resistance in the Vietnam War and other peace and social justice movements.]

The next day, we were given an option to go back to gather some, I don't know, notes or something like that. Some of us, a representative group, went to pick up these notes. Richard Queen, a young man who subsequently passed away, was one of the hostages that I saw. He was beginning to suffer--I think it might've been MS or something like that. He was released early. So, when he came out of the country, we organized a big reception for him in New York and he talked about his experience. [Editor's Note: Richard I. Queen (1951-2002), the US Embassy's Vice Consul, was released on July 11, 1980, after showing symptoms of multiple sclerosis.]

Once we went to the compound, the embassy, [we] came back to the hotel, the next day we had that brief visit, we received word that the Ayatollah Khomeini might be extending an invitation to us to meet with him. We quickly chose to leave the country before that happened, because we knew that the Ayatollah merely lectured you. There was no real conversation, but he would have the television [crews filming you] and you'd be sitting there listening.

We had the experience of meeting a group of mullahs, as they called them. We're accustomed to saying imams, but, in the Shi'ite branch of Islam, the clergy are called mullahs. We met with them and they gave us their view on the experience of the Iranian people under the Shah. They poured out their hearts and they appealed to us as religious people to understand their predicament, and so on.

One of the things I would say, very briefly, is that even though the United States has been involved in this country for many, many years, we were profoundly ignorant of that background, the story of Mosaddegh and how we financed the overthrow of Mosaddegh and the role of the CIA and how this was all a fight over Iranian oil. We appointed a pretty rigid dictator who ruled the country for a generation. This energy of resistance boiled over in 1979. [Editor's Note: Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, nationalized the British-controlled Iranian oil industry in May 1951. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, then overthrew Mosaddegh's government in an August 1953 coup d'état orchestrated by the American CIA and British MI6. In 1979, after a revolution that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah, Iran became an Islamic republic led by clerical forces and Ayatollah Khomeini. ]

SI: When you came back, on that trip particularly, but other trips as well, would you be debriefed by the government, or would they try to get information from you?

MWH: Iran was the most pronounced in that regard. By the way, Bill Coffin, Dr. Coffin, was a relative, distant, maybe a cousin, to Cyrus Vance and Cyrus Vance was Secretary of State [1977-80] at that time. We consulted with the Secretary of State even before we left to go to Iran.

So, when we returned, the day after we returned, we flew down to Washington and we met with the State Department. I assume there were some CIA people or intelligence people in the mix, but it was officially a State Department visit. My conversations with them centered around identifying the individuals that I had seen.

I mean, not all of them sent notes, so, I had to try to describe people and get a sense of what were they looking for and how could I confirm that. Sometimes, I was able to, sometimes, I was not, because in any group situation like that, there are a handful of people who are more prominent. They speak more, you get to know them a little better. So, I was able to speak with more authority about them. To the extent that we met with these folk, it never went to anything like interrogation, because they knew in advance that we'd been invited and we all held positions that made it logical that we would be invited.

Then, of course, I met with President Carter sometime after that, not on that day, but, later on, I went down to visit with him. He asked me because he's from Plains--I didn't know him--Plains, Georgia, which is eight miles from where I grew up. I didn't know him there, but he had this sense of camaraderie because we were from the same place. He said, "Bill, what is the one thing you would tell me about the people who have taken the hostages?" because the hostages were still there. I said, "Well, Mr. President, I've heard them referred to as communist, and nothing could be further from the truth. These are very devout Islamic religionists who hate communism more than you do," you see, and that was, despite all the intelligence that was at his disposal, it was evident, to me, at least the way I put it, really impressed him. I think he began to perceive it in that light.

There's no question in my mind that this was driven principally by faith conviction and, also, general opposition to the kind of dictatorial clamp-down that the people had known. I mean, these students, practically all their lives, that's all they had known. Have I said enough on that?

SI: Yes.

MWH: Okay.

SI: The mission to Syria, that was considerably different. You were trying to get back the pilot. How did that unfold?

MWH: Well, Jesse Jackson was running for president. I, some would argue, made the mistake of going to a meeting to see what that was all about. He was meeting with a group of clergy in Washington, DC, so I went to hear, "What was he planning?" I knew Jesse Jackson before that, so, after the meeting, he asked me to come with him to a different meeting. [Editor's Note: Civil Rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson sought the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. In 1971, he founded Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and, in 1984, created the National Rainbow Coalition; the groups merged in 1996.]

When I went to the different meeting, it was really the people who were organizing his campaign out in Maryland someplace, at a hotel. They were working on the campaign. In one of our conversations at that meeting, he asked me, "What did I think about the meeting I had attended a short time before?" I told him that it was an impressive gathering of clergy. I knew many of these people. They were pastors of very large churches all over the country. I said, "These pastors are not as acquainted with electioneering as you may think. If they start getting involved in your campaign, they may jeopardize the tax status of their churches." I said, "You need to have some formal way of helping them to understand how to keep those things separate." So, a meeting, really led by attorneys, was called from Memphis, Tennessee, a national gathering to teach pastors how not to involve their churches as churches in this presidential campaign.

While there, as we broke for lunch, Rumsfeld--Donald Rumsfeld was the Middle East czar, or something like that, envoy, they called it, for Ronald Reagan, back then, see. He became more prominent when Bush was there, but, [for] Ronald Reagan, he was the Middle East envoy--was on the television, that he was visiting with Hafez al-Assad, the head of Syria. They were having a meeting. There was some issue that they wanted to address. They addressed it and it was announced. [Editor's Note: President Ronald Reagan appointed Donald Rumsfeld as Special Envoy to the Middle East in 1983. Rumsfeld had served as Secretary of Defense (1975-77) in the Ford Administration and would again (2001-2006) under President George W. Bush. Hafez al-Assad served as President of Syria, a dictatorial position, from 1971 to 2000 and was succeeded by his son, Bashar.]

Jesse said to me, over lunch, he said, "Do you notice," we were sitting in a room watching television, "do you notice that Rumsfeld never mentioned Goodman?" Now, remember, at this time, Goodman, an African-American Navy pilot, was in a Syrian prison. Here's our envoy, never saying to Assad, "What are the terms? How do we get our guy back?" So, Jesse caught that. He said, "Look at that." He said, "Bill." Now, remember, Jesse knew about my Iran experience. He said, "Bill, why don't we go get that boy?" just like that. I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, let's go over there and see if we can get him."

Sure enough, lunchtime ended and we didn't talk about it much, really, but, when we went back to the conference, the plenary, Jesse was speaking to the press. He said, "I've engaged Dr. Howard to travel with me to Syria to get our Navy pilot." That was the first time I really heard of it as a firm thing.

Well, after that, the press, they bombarded me. "When are you leaving?" So, I was trying to figure out a way to delay this as long as I could, until I could find out more information. He said, "We're going at Christmas." He was connecting that to the Iran experience, "We're going at Christmas." So, I told the press, I said, "Yes, but you know, Syria, the Christians in Syria are Orthodox and they don't celebrate Christmas until, like, more than a week after we celebrate Christmas. So, don't expect any visit before then." So, we were putting it off.

The first thing I did was call the Syrian bishop, the Bishop of the Syrian churches, based in New Jersey, I think in Teaneck. I don't remember his name now, but I knew him from the National Council of Churches. So, I called him and I said, "We need some advice. I mean, is this even something we should undertake?"
[Editor's Note: Mor Athanasius Yeshu' Samuel (1909-1995), known as Mor Samuel, became the first Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Archdiocese of the United States and Canada in 1957 and served in that capacity until 1995. The Archdiocese was headquartered at St. Mark's Syrian Orthodox Cathedral in Teaneck, New Jersey.]

Now, Jesse knew the Papal Nuncio. He knew the Papal Nuncio in Washington and the Papal Nuncio and the Archbishop--he was an Archbishop, I think--they began to collaborate and they began to advise. They began to consult inside Syria, until, finally, it was arranged that the government would love to have us come. They would receive our visit, but this was all orchestrated by religious leaders. Now, the government is in charge. They have their own reasons for agreeing to do this, but the advocates were religious. [Editor's Note: Cardinal Pio Laghi (1922-2009) served as Apostolic Delegate to the United States from 1980 to 1984. After the United States and Vatican established full diplomatic relations in 1984, his title changed to the Apostolic Pro-Nuncio (closer to the equivalent of an ambassador rank) until his service in Washington, DC, ended in 1990.]

When we arrived in Syria--let me just back up and say, so, I'm the official leader of the delegation, of the ecumenical delegation. That's what it was called, but Jesse Jackson is the prominent, high-visibility guy. I'm advising on who should go. So, we took a very diverse group. The head of the Unitarian Church, Jack Mendelsohn, was traveling with us. He was based in Boston. We also included Dr. Thelma Adair, who was the first black female moderator of the Presbyterian Church, very well-liked. She's in her nineties, still living. We also had Louis Farrakhan in that group, but I forget exactly how. There was an interesting group, very diverse, very diverse. [Editor's Note: Reverend Jack Mendelsohn (1918-2012) served as Minister of the First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts, from 1979 to 1988. Elder Thelma C. D. Adair was elected as Moderator of the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, a one-year term of office, in 1976. Minister Louis Farrakhan has led the Nation of Islam since 1977.]

We went to Syria and the first meeting we had was with the religious hierarchy of the Christian Church. Well, remember, Jesse Jackson is known around the world. People know his face, blah, blah, blah, but we walk into the room and the Syrian archbishop, the Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church, looked across the way from his seat and he saw me. Well, everybody in the group, we all regarded Jesse Jackson as the star, but this guy is coming toward me. We hug. Somebody says, "Bill, you know that guy?" Well, Bishop Samuel had attended the funeral of a Coptic Church leader in Jersey City three months before. I knew that man and I was at the funeral. Of course, I think I was the only non-Orthodox guy there. So, the priest of the church was eager for the Bishop to meet me. "Dr. Howard is our friend." [Reverend Howard claps his hands.] That guy was sitting at the table.

I don't think this group was that receptive to our coming. They were, I think, expected to ceremonially meet with us, because our whole thing was a moral appeal. We didn't come as politicians per se, because we knew we had no power--a moral appeal. So, the Syrian government, with the help of these religious leaders, put it in that context, but, once the connection with Bishop Samuel was made, a totally different atmosphere.

They served a lovely dinner. We talked, people sitting next to each other. We were sort of mixed around. They were getting personally acquainted. Minister Farrakhan was the only Muslim in the room and they treated him well. That's how the ball got rolling.

Eventually, it led to an actual meeting with the president of the country, but only Reverend Jackson and I were allowed to sit in the room with him. He had a full briefing from the religious group. He felt good about how that had gone, but he never gave us any definitive word on whether we were going to succeed in our mission. So, I'm jumping over a lot of things, but I can say on the day that we knew that we would succeed, we were invited to meet with the foreign minister of Syria. We knew that we would find out at that meeting whether we were going to make any progress.

Now, I don't think any of us really imagined that the guy would come home with us. We thought, "Okay, he'd say, 'Well, maybe there's some opening. Maybe there's some beginning conversation, negotiation that might ensue from this visit,'" right, but the guy sat down when we were in the room and I think maybe four of us were allowed to go into that meeting. The rest of our delegation was seated in a conference room elsewhere in the building. The guy sat down and he said, "Reverend Jackson, I know why you're here and let's not waste time talking small talk. I can tell you the president has decided. You can take him." Wow, I mean, that was an emotional moment, I remember, very emotional moment. The Syrians were emotional.

I think, if I can say to you, Shaun, they wanted some excuse to let this guy go. My motivation for going was, we were headed towards some kind of conflagration. If that pilot had remained much longer, the United States probably would've contemplated some military intervention. The Syrians knew that. They had no contest for US military intervention, but they had their pride. So, I'm saying this--I don't know for sure, I never had any Syrian interpret this to me--but I think they used the moral appeal as an exit from this brewing crisis.

Dr. Wyatt Walker, a very prominent pastor, a colleague of Dr. King's, especially on the Birmingham campaign--he's the architect of the Birmingham campaign--was sort of our chief of protocol. He's written a very interesting book, by the way, The Road to Damascus. He was the person who--what do you say?--interacted, interfaced with the Chief of Protocol for the government of Syria. They bonded. I remember, we visited this man at Kennedy Airport sometime afterwards, because he was passing through. We met him in the lounge there, the layover lounge there, in Kennedy Airport. [Editor's Note: Reverend Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker (1928-2018), known for his work as Dr. King's chief of staff and his service as a board member and Executive Director of the SCLC, published Road to Damascus: A Journey of Faith in 1985.]

So, I think that, though the delegation had, I don't know the number of us, but there were several non-African-American people in the group, but what you could see there was some kind of implicit sense of connection to black people, okay. This is also true in Iran. I think it's no accident that I met with the largest number of hostages. If you go back and review that situation, the Iranians released all of the black people and sent them home long before we went, except one. He was thought to be an intelligence guy, and he was also the most acerbic; in Iran, I mean.

SI: Yes.

MWH: He's from Detroit. I don't remember his name [Charles A. Jones, Jr.], but he was very circumspect. He was the only African American who was kept. I remember my friend Vernon Jordan issuing a public statement saying, "We're not going to allow the Iranians to divide us," you see, because releasing the black hostages, it was thought, might be perceived as an attempt to divide public opinion. I don't know that that was the [intention], but let me just say that people, especially like in Iran, who feel oppressed and marginalized and abused, especially by their government, they know a lot about civil rights history in this country.

I mean, we're Americans, no question, in their minds, too, but they do have a sense of, "Maybe there's some connection between what we fought against, and still must fight against, and what they were fighting against," you see. I sensed that, and we, in turn, could perceive their plight a little bit better. I mean, you have to be careful not to over--what do you say?--translate or presume a connection that's exaggerated, but it's sort of like Dr. King speaking against the Vietnam War and drawing a parallel between the Vietcong and the black folk in Mississippi.

Now, that was very offensive when he made that connection to a lot of people in the American public, but it wasn't really lost on us. Again, we're loyal Americans, but there is a commonality that we cannot ignore.

SI: Let me pause for a second.

[TAPE PAUSED]

SI: Go ahead.

MWH: The South African who won the Nobel Prize, who met with Dr. King in the early '60s, is Albert Luthuli. Do you know that name?

SI: I have heard of him, yes.

MWH: Albert Luthuli. That was the meeting that brought apartheid to my attention and to the attention of my community.

SI: Sure.

MWH: Because we'd never heard of it before. We hardly knew where South Africa was.

[TAPE PAUSED]

SI: You had continued with Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign in 1984.

MWH: Yes. After Syria--I mean, when I went to Syria with Jesse, I was not contemplating involvement in his campaign per se. I was mainly interested in protecting the churches against the loss of their tax status, but, after I went to Syria, and that whole mission became so pivotal in his presidential race, I couldn't just walk away from him. So, I became a kind of national liaison to the religious community.

That was my role, going to sit with clergy, talking to them about the issues, the whole issue of gay rights, for example. No serious candidate who would be considered progressive could avoid that issue, but a lot of these black churches, they weren't down with that program. So, I was the interpreter of issues like that, how we had to align ourselves with other Americans who were concerned about the kinds of things Jesse was promoting, and to remind them that they were not all Christians and they were not all black, see. We had to align ourselves with all sorts of good people and, thus, the Rainbow Coalition.

I'm a habitual voter, but I had never been a part of a campaign like this. That was my role. Because people in churches became so vital to the Jackson campaign, I wound up being a floor leader at the national convention. So, that was the extent of my involvement. After that experience, I excused myself from the '88 campaign, because I knew it was not my cup of tea. I'd rather be a good voter, you see, because political campaigns, that's a different world. It's not my thing.

SI: Is there anything you would like to add to this session?

MWH: This is the section on, what, international?

SI: Yes, apartheid and international work, of which there probably is more to talk about. I wanted to ask, you had the United Nations Seminar against Bank Loans to South Africa. You were the chair of that in 1981.

MWH: Yes.

SI: Do you have any memories about that?

MWH: Well, it was a massive thing. I mean, it involved anti-apartheid organizations, personalities from the United States and Canada. It was a true North American gathering. The sessions had rolling chairs. I remember General Garba, Joseph Garba, from Nigeria. He was the chief, or permanent, representative to the UN from Nigeria. He was also a chair. [Editor's Note: General Joseph Nanven Garba (1943-2002), Permanent Representative to the UN from Nigeria from 1984 to 1989, served as President of the UN Assembly from 1989 to 1990 and presided over the UN's Sixteenth Special Session on apartheid in December 1989.]

There were other prominent chairs, but I was the young kid from the US who was put in that role. At the UN, I was known by many of the key [players], and, remember, Nigeria was always chair of the constituency group that gave oversight to the Centre Against apartheid at the United Nations. I'd worked very closely with that center and its director, E.S. Reddy, who, incidentally, I last saw, after many years, at the great Rutgers University. [Editor's Note: Enuga Sreenivasulu Reddy served as Director of the Centre against Apartheid from 1976 to 1983.]

SI: Oh.

MWH: Yes. It was some organization at Rutgers that hosted a major conversation on apartheid, like "Apartheid Revisited" or something. I'm talking in the last five years, I think, it took place and, lo and behold, in walks E.S. Reddy, with whom I'd worked. So, I'd given testimonies at the UN, and so forth. So, by the time this big conference came along, I was a known quantity at the UN. So, that's what that was. I didn't know, maybe a couple thousand people came to that. [Editor's Note: Dr. Reddy and Reverend Howard both spoke at "The Global Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Transition to Democratic Rule in South Africa: Reflections After Twenty Years" event on October 8, 2014, on the Rutgers-New Brunswick Campus.]

I also chaired a conference against bank loans to South Africa in Zurich, Switzerland, a United Nations-sponsored conference. I was the chair and my two co-chairs were both UN Ambassadors, one from Sierra Leone and the other from Ghana. I remember Ambassador [James] Victor Gbeho from Ghana, because he and I remained good friends long after that. He eventually went back home and became the Foreign Minister of Ghana [from 1997 to 2001].

Crazy life [laughter]--I mean, I also, by the way, read the Scripture for the first sermon given by Pope John Paul II in the United States, 1979, he came, first trip to the United States. He gave a homily to the ecumenical community. I don't know, is it St. Mary's College? It's right near Catholic University in DC. That's where he appeared and I was chosen to read the Gospel lesson. [Editor's Note: Pope John Paul II made his first papal visit to the United States in October 1979. On October 7th, he led an ecumenical prayer service at Notre Dame Chapel at Trinity College (now Trinity Washington University).]

SI: Wow.

MWH: And I had hair, by the way, back in those days. [laughter]

SI: You were also part of the committee that welcomed Nelson Mandela to the States.

MWH: 19--was it '90?

SI: That is what it says here.

MWH: '90, yes, okay. Of course, Mayor Dinkins was his formal host. He and his wife, Winnie Mandela--at that time, they were still together--slept at Gracie Mansion. [Editor's Note: Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) joined the African National Congress Party (ANC) in the 1940s and opposed apartheid from its inception in 1948. He married fellow ANC member and anti-apartheid activist Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (1936-2018) in 1958; they divorced in 1996. Mandela co-founded Umkhonto we Sizwe ("Spear of the Nation"), the ANC's militant wing, in 1961 and, in 1962, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was released on February 11, 1990, after spending twenty-seven years in prison. Mandela then helped negotiate an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial state in South Africa. Mandela served as President of the ANC (1991-97) and was elected President of South Africa (1994-99) in the first election under universal suffrage. David Dinkins served as Mayor of New York City from 1990 to 1993.]

I was the person who convened the people to plan the first public event where large, big [crowds]--I mean, I think Mandela may have appeared before like a daycare center or something like that in Brooklyn, but the big televised meeting at the Riverside Church where he spoke, I was the convener of that group. There's a picture right there at the top. You see that top …

SI: Yes.

MWH: … To the right there? I don't know if you see that, top right.

SI: Yes.

MWH: Yes. There's Mandela with Winnie in the Riverside Church. That was an opportunity for the churches of the country, and some synagogues, by the way, to express their solidarity, to actually contribute money to the cause. I was the guy that raised the offering, but I had a big hand in choosing the speakers--so, Archbishop Iakovos of the Greek Church, a very revered man, who was also a personal friend of Dr. King's, but he was the leader of all the Greek Orthodox churches in North America. Dr. Gardner Taylor introduced Mandela. Well, he's a giant in his own right. So, the speakers, the key speakers, [were] my purview. [Editor's Note: Archbishop Iakovos (1911-2005) served as Primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America from 1959 to 1996. Archbishop Iakovos marched at Dr. King's side in the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Dr. Reverend Gardner Taylor (1918-2015) led the Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, for over forty years and co-founded the Progressive National Baptist Convention with Dr. King.]

It was a magnificent event. I became very popular, like, three or four days before the event, because friends I didn't even know I had were trying to get tickets to go to the event. [laughter] They had to have tickets because Riverside had a finite number of seats. There was no charge, but you had to have a ticket to get into the door--so, old girlfriends and guys who owed me money, everybody. [laughter]

One thing I did get from that was a signed photograph from the eminent journalist Chuck Stone. I don't know if you would know Chuck, but Chuck Stone, now deceased, was the right hand of Adam Clayton Powell. He was just an extraordinary man. I mean, that doesn't tell you much at all about what he represented, but Chuck Stone gave me an autographed photo of him with Adam Clayton Powell, Kwame Nkrumah and Malcolm X sitting together in a church, looking back up at the camera. When he gave me that picture, I gave him a ticket, right, but I was bribed, I'm telling you. [laughter] [Editor's Note: Chuck Stone (1924-2014), a Tuskegee Airman and journalist, served as a special assistant to US Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who represented Harlem from 1945 to 1971, in the 1960s.]

Here's the point--people wanted to be present. They wanted to hear from this man, Nelson Mandela, and he did not disappoint. By the way, PBS filmed the whole thing. You can see that if you'd ever like to. Another thing that I participated in deciding was to invite Babatunde Olatunji, a graduate of Morehouse College, a revered Nigerian drummer who was well-known for teaching young people traditional African drumming. We chose him to lead the procession with, I don't know, ten, fifteen drummers, with the traditional African drums, wow. It set the tone for the whole thing.

[Editor's Note: Babatunde Olatunji (1927-2003) helped popularize African music in the West, beginning with his 1959 debut album Drums of Passion. He collaborated with a wide variety of blues and rock acts, from John Coltrane to Carlos Santana, and contributed music to Broadway shows, including Raisin in the Sun (1959), and motion pictures, such as the films of Spike Lee. He infused social justice messages into his performances and marched with Dr. King, numerous times during his Civil Rights actions. He also earned recognition for his work as a music educator, particularly at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, after 1985.]

Riverside Church was the perfect venue. Now, we struggled a little bit with the ANC over the location. We loved the fact that Riverside had been a strong supporter of the movement. It was emotionally the right place for this ceremony, but it would seat, believe it or not, only about fifteen hundred people comfortably. A few blocks away was the Cathedral of St. John [the Divine], also a good church in terms of this movement, not as prominent in this regard as Riverside, but it would seat five thousand. So, we were saying, "We want to go to the larger venue," but the ANC said, "No, Riverside." They had a long history with Riverside.

Just not so long before that, I had introduced and presented to an assembly at Riverside Thabo Mbeki, representing the ANC. They knew all of this, and so, they said, "No, it should be Riverside." It went very well. That picture is in Christ Chapel, which is sort of an ancillary chapel of Riverside. It'll hold maybe two hundred people. [Editor's Note: Thabo Mbeki, a high-ranking official in the ANC, took part in the negotiations (1990-93) between the South African government of F.W. de Klerk and the ANC to end apartheid and release political prisoners like Nelson Mandela. He later succeeded Mandela as President of South Africa, serving from 1999 to 2008.]

In that room were the top religious leaders of America, the heads of dioceses and all of that stuff. They were, of course, right behind the drummers when they marched into the main sanctuary. When we left that, it filled with people who wanted to be present. I think, I'm not sure, they might've had a screen where people could see. We couldn't fit as many as we could've put into St. John the Divine, but the location meant something. So, it went well. That was my role, long answer.

SI: That was great. It seems like it would be a meaningful moment given your long involvement, even though it still had more to accomplish.

MWH: Yes, and this is how I close the South Africa chapter. By that time, by '92, I had gone to seminary to be the President at NYTS, New York Theological [Seminary]. This was the South African elections, 1992 [April 1994]. I was invited to come and observe the elections. I told the ambassador, "The South Africans didn't need me to," crazy, "to observe their elections." Who was I to observe their elections? I decided I didn't want to go. I was so pleased when I decided this, after the fact. I struggled with it, but I said, "No, it's insulting. Why do I need to go and observe their elections?" They had election observers who had official roles. In fact, a good friend of mine was one of the authors of the Constitution, from the United States, a legal expert, and served on the commission that organized the election. Well, someone like that, yes, but who is Bill Howard to observe elections?

When I found out all of the people who went, who were invited there for that, who had never, to my knowledge, ever lifted a finger in the anti-apartheid movement, I said, "Fine," because, by then, it was a big celebrity thing. It was a "go and get a picture with Mandela" thing, you see. I wanted no part of that.

Then, of course, the South Africans sort of became normalized as a country. One of the first things that I remember feeling, "Oh, boy, where are they going?" is when my good friend, my intelligent president, Thabo Mbeki, who became president after Mr. Mandela, denied the HIV virus for many years. South Africa today has the largest HIV infection rate in Africa. It's one of the most advanced countries, but it has an HIV rate related in part, not exclusively, but certainly to that period of denial. [Editor's Note: Mbeki denied the relationship between HIV and AIDS and implemented public health policies in South Africa as president that often countered the best-practices and theories exposed by HIV/AIDS policy makers and medical practitioners.]

So, I would say it became a normal government. It sort of does what governments do, and some good things to report on South Africa, but, today, you have government corruption. The memory of Mandela, I don't know what it means these days, yes. Mandela was not a perfect man, but he was a very good leader. That integrity and that devotion, at least from afar, seems to have faded a bit.

SI: Just one last question, to see if there is any tie back to Rutgers. I know Ed Bloustein was very outspoken on anti-apartheid issues. Did you have any contact with Rutgers or Bloustein during this movement? [Editor's Note: Dr. Edward J. Bloustein served as Rutgers University President from 1971 until his death in 1989.]

MWH: I did. Dr. Bloustein employed John Cooney. Does that name mean anything to you? You know about John Cooney? [Editor's Note: Dr. Reverend James Cooney, a Presbyterian minister, worked at Rutgers from 1972 to 2002 as a community and state government liaison and representative of the University to dignitaries.]

SI: A little bit.

MWH: You know a lot of stuff, right. [laughter] So, John Cooney, I met him in the Office of Community Affairs in Trenton quite a few years before all of this. In fact, I was a student at the seminary when I first met John, Princeton Seminary, but, by this time, he was a Special Assistant to the President of Rutgers.

Now, John Cooney had these types of jobs for most of his adult life, but he was a graduate, I think, of Harvard Divinity School. He was a theological graduate. He didn't practice, but he had that background. To some extent, that was the basis of our continuing connection.

So, he knew of my involvement in anti-apartheid issues. All the universities around the country were being pulled into this because of the divestment movement. The American Committee on Africa had a [national] student [coordinator], Josh Nessen was his name, who went around to all of these campuses, Berkeley, Michigan, you name it. Josh was our guy, and he had been to Rutgers.

Remember now, in that time, I'm at the Reformed Church, and a student demonstration breaks out at Rutgers and Columbia. Columbia is ten minutes walking from my office, so the legal advisor to those students was a friend of mine. He invited me to come and just encourage the students. I'm a pastor, not to be religious per se, but I'm a personification of something. At the same time, I get this invitation to come to Rutgers. Now, John didn't extend the invitation, but he knew of my involvement, okay. So, somehow, I think through Josh, I wound up going to visit.

I walk into this room somewhere around the Student Center; I don't have that in my head too much, but you could find out. They were in this room. They were all lying on the floor, sort of on a strike, a hunger strike. I remember this young black woman, student, Lisa Williamson, who became known as Sister Souljah. Do you know that name? [Editor's Note: As a Rutgers undergraduate, Lisa Williamson, also known as Sister Souljah, was active in the Rutgers Coalition for Total Divestment and in efforts to convince the State of New Jersey to divest its South African assets. As an artist, she has released a solo album, performed with Public Enemy, and authored a memoir and a series of novels.]

SI: Yes.

MWH: She was there and she quickly latched on to me and, eventually, wrote me a covenant, by the way--not that day, but later--I was going to be her mentor and here's the covenant, "This is what being my mentor involves." I thought it was the most hilarious thing, but she was serious and serious-minded. The kids were very impressive.

You go to meet these students and they have some assignments for you. So, they said, "We want you to bring Jesse Jackson to the campus." So, I said, "Well, I can't assure you that I can do that, but I will make an effort."

They had regular demonstrations of students who were not on strike but who supported them right out there in front of the Campus Center. They'd had a podium and they would sit out and talk. So, I agree. The one thing I knew I could do was talk to him on the phone and put the phone up to the mic. So, we did that. Jesse spoke to the group. Well, I thought, "Well, I've met something of my assignment," but, no, they wanted more.

SI: Yes.

MWH: [laughter] Okay, they loved that. It was great, but they wanted to meet Reverend Jackson. Well, I thought, "Before I get involved in bringing Jesse to the campus, I needed to talk with the leadership." So, through John, somehow, I don't remember the details, we got together with the president. Now, I had met President Bloustein. He didn't know this before I got there, but, once I got there, he remembered. I actually met him when he was president of Bennington College. My college girlfriend was a student, so I visited Bennington and I met the president, because it's a very small place.

Right away, it was a good chemistry. Jesse came, and Jesse met the president after the rally. Somewhere down in there, around in that period, I'm not sure the precipitating factor, Rutgers decided to divest.

Also in that same period, this was an issue with the State of New Jersey. Governor Kean was governor at that time. Just as Josh was going to the university campuses, Dumisani Kumalo, a South African journalist, who actually just died about a month or so ago, he was visiting state houses and city councils all over the country. Boston, for example, was the first city, but [the] New Jersey Legislature voted very strongly to divest. [Editor's Note: Dumisani Shadrack Kumalo (1947-2019), a journalist and anti-apartheid activist, served as Project Director at ACOA and the Africa Fund on the divestiture campaign, which convinced twenty-eight states and over ninety cities to divest. He later became the Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations from 1999 to 2009. Republican Thomas H. Kean served as Governor of New Jersey from 1982 to 1990. He announced his support for the divestiture legislation on August 20, 1985. On August 27, 1985, the New Jersey State Legislature approved a divestment bill that was signed into law by Kean. Following this, Rutgers University announced its total divestment from more than ten companies.]

Governor Kean could actually sit on a piece of legislation, and I think it was called, like, "the pocket veto," or something like that. I'm not sure, but you may know. A few days were passing and it looked as if our governor was going to sit on the bill. So, Lawrence Hamm, a very well-known and almost legendary activist; I don't know if you know that name. [Editor's Note: Lawrence Hamm founded and serves as Chairman of the Newark-based People's Organization for Progress.]

SI: Yes.

MWH: Yes, Princeton graduate. He and I decided that we would go and sleep on the Capitol steps. I was insane in those days. [laughter] I would do things like that. So, once we announced we were going to do this, two or three people agreed to join us and we sat on the front steps of the Capitol.

We stayed overnight, and a couple things happened that night. One, the people of Trenton supporting this cause brought us food. That was fine. Then, they brought us a band; that wasn't too good. [laughter] So, then, the neighbors, they said, "Oh, no, we can't have this noise." Three or four blocks away, you could hear this band at three o'clock in the morning playing, all this sort of a festive thing.

The next morning, people began to come to work and we were sitting on the steps. They were coming, "What do you guys [want]? What is it?" We weren't blocking the door. People went in, but they saw us there. I don't know, I mean, after maybe the day started, maybe after nine o'clock, we were prepared to be arrested.

A State Police officer came out to us and they said, "Which one of you is Reverend Howard?" [laughter] Now, Larry was, in my view, a much more aggressive agitator, and that's what I love about him, but they asked for Reverend Howard. I said, "Well, that's me." Larry says, "Well, I'm going with him wherever you take him." So, we were thinking, any moment now, we would get handcuffed and booked.

Instead, we were taken to the Governor's Office. Tom Kean was an excellent governor. He was really eager to know what on Earth had motivated us. "What was the thing that would make two, at least from outward appearance, sane, sensible fellows spend the night on the State House steps?" I talked to him about the church roots of apartheid, the theological aspects of apartheid. He was really very interested, I would say maybe captivated, by this.

So, we had a lovely, civil dialogue. By the way, all the other people who had accompanied us came into that room. So, we were there, maybe ten, fifteen people. He excused us. He thanked us for the discussion, and so on.

I'm driving back to Princeton and, on the car radio, they announced, "Kean will sign the bill," another really high moment. Of course, [there was] legislative support, but we had no idea that this would be pivotal in his decision. Then, he invited me to be present at the signing. New Jersey was a leader in this, and a Republican governor. The United States was led to its anti-apartheid posture by Republican leadership, Richard Lugar of Indiana. You can't imagine that today. I'm just saying. So, that was also [a factor]--and Rutgers was right in the mix, the State of New Jersey, the State University. [Editor's Note: Richard Lugar (1932-2019) served as US Senator representing Indiana from 1977 to 2013. As Chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Lugar advanced bills to sanction South Africa that ran afoul of President Ronald Reagan's policy. He successfully led a campaign to override Reagan's veto on economic sanctions in October 1986.]

I remember giving an address at one of the colleges, Lehman College, of the City College structure, Lehman in the Bronx. I gave a talk there. It was called the Lehman Lecture. I gave the talk, "Apartheid is Crumbling." Parenthetically, the Department of Education at Rutgers invited me to address a group of students, graduate students, who were on their way to South Africa. I think they were making an annual trip there or something. You know about that?

SI: I do not know if they still do it, but I know, for a long time, they did, yes.

MWH: Yes. So, they invited me to come in and just say hello to them, and say, "Here are some things I remember about South Africa you might expect," and so on. As a gift for that appearance, they had gone to Lehman College and got a copy of that lecture, which, by the way, I had lost. So, I was able to get that.

"Apartheid is Crumbling," that address, was based on things like what was happening in New Jersey and what was happening at the University, and other universities, in Boston, and so on. Because once that movement got going, a few other states, I can't cite them, but a few other states and a few other universities began to divest. The truth is, the economic pressure that came out of that is what led to the release of Nelson Mandela.

When he came in 1990, you see, the Unitarian Church, Christ Church, I believe is the name of the church; no, it couldn't have been, but it was the Unitarian Church. I don't think they would've called it Christ Church. As well as I know that church, I can't think of the name, but it's in midtown, in the thirties, just about a block east of Fifth Avenue.

That church, the Unitarian Church, was the first organization in the United States that welcomed the African National Congress and provided them with office space. For many years, the people from the ANC who visited the United Nations, long before they had any type of status there, their office was at this community church. Maybe that was the name of it, Community Church. Bruce Southworth was the pastor in a good part of my time, and he journeyed with us to South Africa on that other trip I made to South Africa. [Editor's Note: Reverend Bruce Southworth spent thirty-eight years at the Community Church of New York Unitarian Universalist.]

When Mandela spoke at Riverside, he spoke, like, to the public, the national media, and so on, but, after that meeting, he wanted to go to the Community Church to show his respect. At that gathering, only the hardcore anti-apartheid activists were invited. He said, from the stage, that all of these efforts, by the universities, by the city councils, by the state governments, had been instrumental in his release. That evening, of course, he appeared on the Ted Koppel program. What was that, Nightline?

SI: Nightline, yes.

MWH: Yes, Ted Koppel. That was at City College, and then, that evening, he appeared at Yankee Stadium. Now, there's a whole story behind that, Billy Joel and all of that. Billy Joel was going to perform the first concert in 1990. Was that when Mandela came, 1990? [Editor's Note: Nelson Mandela spoke at Yankee Stadium on June 21, 1990. Billy Joel performed there on June 22nd and 23rd of 1990.]

SI: Yes, '90.

MWH: He was going to give the first concert ever performed at Yankee Stadium. There had been concerts at Shea Stadium, The Beatles, and so on, but never at Yankee Stadium. He was going to perform the first concert. He had hired a company to put the seats on the playing field and the stage, all of that setup.

Billy Joel was in London. He was performing in London. He paid for his setup to be used for Mandela, and then, the complete re-setup for his concert. Now, that's a good story, but Yankee Stadium is also owned by the City of New York. So, David Dinkins, as mayor, had some sway. He would not have affected Billy Joel's concert, but the point is, once Billy Joel agreed to this, we were there.

I did not go to the concert. After the Ted Koppel screening, I got on the train and I came back to Princeton. Just as Mandela was getting up to speak, I'm coming in my door. My wife said, "What are you doing here?" I came home because of a question that was asked of Mandela at the Ted Koppel event. Ted Koppel had allowed a handful of questions from the audience. We were at City College, remember. I remember Dr. Calvin Butts from the Abyssinian Baptist Church asking this question, "Mr. Mandela, you seem to have been well-received here by the United States government. I would like to know, how can you trust a government that facilitated your capture and one that continues to be an unjust environment for African people?" or something like that. Mandela said, "I've been well-hosted here and I am reluctant to interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States." [pause] I had spent a good part of my adult life interfering in the domestic affairs of South Africa. Why couldn't I have a word from this gentleman about my situation? I came home. I wasn't bitter, but it was an awakening. [Editor's Note: Dr. Reverend Calvin O. Butts, Minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, has served as the President of the State University of New York College at Old Westbury since 1999.]

African Americans have played an important part in a number of international issues--if you think about all of the artists and activists who traveled to Ghana after the independence of Ghana, assisting Nkrumah. You think of the African Americans who went to Tanzania, who worked because of the hope that they thought Julius Nyerere represented. Zimbabwe, United States activists were very [crucial], led, in part, by African Americans--not only, but mostly, a great deal, I should say--many intermarriage arrangements, meaning African-American men and women marrying South Africans and Zimbabweans, and so on.

But, when people in those places come to power, they become normal governments, so, they have to deal with the governments of the world and, if you are not a government, you become secondary. So, we have to keep that in mind as we chart the course in the future, but that was my judgement. I thought I'd rather be at home with my family.

The concert was magnificent. By the way, I was intimately involved in planning the concert, because Harry Belafonte had actually persuaded a well-known concert promoter guy, who had produced tremendous concerts in big venues, to manage the whole thing. A few days before, he dropped out, didn't want to. He was a pretty dictatorial guy and there were certain conditions that weren't being met.

So, Mr. Cleveland Robinson and his assistant, Brother Bell, Jim Bell, and one or two other people, early in the morning, at four and five o'clock, we [had] conference calls, making names of, "Who should we invite? You think they'll come?" Oh, my, we were really under pressure. We had the venue, but who was going to bring all of these people that we wanted to entertain the people? [Editor's Note: Civil Rights and labor leader Cleveland Robinson (1914-1995) served as Chairman of the Administrative Committee for the March on Washington in 1963 and co-founded the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists in 1972.]

Well, what we found out is, anybody you called, when they knew Mandela was going to be on the stage, they said yes. Tracy Chapman, I mean, you go down the list of people who were really hot in those days, they were cancelling commitments to be there with Mandela. It was a star-studded program. I mean, anyone you wanted to be at such a thing, they performed.

This also happened with the people we wanted to speak at the Riverside Church. People like Iakovos, the Greek Archbishop, they have tremendous responsibilities--dropped everything, "I'll be there." So, we made the calls, but Mandela organized, by his presence.

That's the apartheid story. Mr. Kumalo, with whom I worked here, he became the Permanent Representative to the United Nations in the Mbeki Government. So, he remained here. He had come out in '76 as an exile. He and I remained in touch until he died, but he had returned home some years ago. He actually worshipped with me a couple times in Newark, he and his wife. So, I would say, for maybe fifteen years, he had been back home.

SI: Thank you very much for all your time today. I know we are going past what we thought originally.

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Transcribed by Jesse Braddell 6/14/2019
Reviewed by Shaun Illingworth 3/11/2020
Reviewed by Kathryn Tracy Rizzi 3/15/2020
Reviewed by Bill Howard 8/14/2021