How did you fare in college? Did you remain a diligent student?
When I attended Columbia, on a scholarship, the teachers were highly rated, but I was bored with sitting in the classroom. I lived in the dorm and then in rooming houses off campus. I would show up regularly to work in my parents’ business, now based in a loft on West 36th Street in the garment district, from which they shipped merchandise to their stores. At Columbia, all around me were veterans of World War II, who were very serious about obtaining a professional education. The only courses I enjoyed were French literature of the nineteenth century, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and Chaucer. I tried campus radio, and then found a berth at the campus humor magazine, the Jester. In the spring of my third year, I was suspended from school in midterm for flunking Soviet Economics, poor grades, and cutting classes. I went west and found a job as a laborer in a Wyoming tunnel construction project, surrounded by strong silent men, and lived in a tiny cell with a slatted wooden door. At the end of two weeks, it was clear to me and the foreman that I was not strong enough to maintain the pace. I went on to Los Angeles, where I worked briefly at various jobs, including as a stock clerk in a drug store and as a gas station attendant. In the fall, I returned to Columbia, where I was readmitted. I took the law aptitude exam and scored in the top 2 percentile. My faculty adviser suggested that I enter Columbia Law School on professional option, which meant I would not have to finish college.
Was there anything in particular that made you think of law school?
It was the prospect of being drafted for the Korean War. I don’t know if I ever would have chosen medicine as a career. A Jewish youth is expected to choose law or medicine or commerce. I was comfortable with law, assuming that the training would be useful in whatever career I undertook. Cutting classes, I would digest three texts for each course prior to the exam. This required a periodic frenzy of reading, but it freed me to continue my self-indulgent practices. As graduation day approached, the dean called me in. He said, “Bernard, we can’t let you loose on an unsuspecting society. Your professors have no idea what you look like.” He insisted that I take an extra term and attend class diligently. I graduated in January 1954 and then in March I was drafted. The Korean War was now in an armistice phase.
Were you ever tempted to enter the family business?
No.
So then you allowed yourself to be drafted….
I could have avoided it. At my physical, the examining doctor offered me an out and said, in effect, “Do you want this?” Being drafted, I didn’t have to take the bar. I didn’t mind that at all. Also, I was curious about the world. The war was over, and I hadn’t traveled outside the United States, except to Montreal.
I was assigned to Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia, to learn teletype operator skills and spent much of the hot summer in the base swimming pools. Visiting a large barbershop on the base for my first haircut, I studied the barbers and noted that one young black barber clearly took pride in his work. When his chair was free, I sat in it. The barber quietly informed me that he could not cut my hair. I asked him to identify the shop owner. The barber pointed to a short, elderly white man who was unloading barber supplies from his van. “Hold the chair,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
I approached the proprietor. “I care about my appearance, and that barber is good. I would like him to cut my hair.” He adopted a confidential manner. “Look, son, in our shops, white barbers cut white boys’ hair and black barbers cut black boys’ hair. You wouldn’t want to catch a disease, would you?” I ignored the comment and reiterated my request. The owner, sensing an impasse, changed his tone. “You will have to sign a paper, releasing the barbershop from responsibility for anything that might happen to you.” I stated that I would sign the release, returned to the chair, and directed the barber to proceed. I noticed that all of the eight barbers, white and black, were staring. The barber’s hand trembled slightly from nervousness. When the haircut was finished, I signed the statement in a notebook that was proffered to me by the proprietor.
Recognizing that this practice was in violation of Defense Department regulations, I visited several base barbershops the following Saturday and interrogated the barbers. I learned that the white barbers would cut the hair of black soldiers if directed to do so, using a shaver attachment for this purpose. A white barber informed me that the preceding year there had been three days of rioting at a Virginia military base over barbershop segregation, and one man had been killed.
I collected statements from barbers and also from my black teletype instructor. He had been refused service by two white barbers, and they told him to wait for the black barber, who did not materialize. He had to return to his classes without a haircut.
Visiting the base recreation center on Saturday, I prepared a report titled “Integration of Camp Gordon Barbershops: Report and Recommendations.” I attached the various statements, plus my own statement decrying this breach of law and policy. I made multiple copies and on Sunday delivered one to the office of the commanding general, and others to those of his subordinates in the chain of command.
On Monday morning I marched off to class. At noon I was called into the office of my company commander. “You do not follow the chain of command by what you have just done. You are supposed to bring it to me, and I refer it up the line.” Laughing, he added, “I have just delivered a lecture to you on the chain of command. You have an appointment with the base IG [inspector general].”
I was interrogated intensively by the IG, a captain, who concluded that I was acting from conviction. I was given an assignment as an Information and Education instructor and relieved of all normal duties. After learning that my unit was to be assigned to Korean occupation duty, I visited the instructor who had provided me with his statement. He told me that all of the units on the base had been summoned to a formation to hear an announcement from the commanding general that the base would not tolerate discrimination in the barbershops and that the soldiers were to report any infractions immediately. In response to my expression of concern regarding my probable assignment to Korea, he directed me to visit the officer in charge of the assignment section and to request compassionate leave, ostensibly to visit my girlfriend in Europe. Following his instructions, I was greeted by a black warrant officer who smiled broadly and ushered me into the office of the captain in charge. He listened to my story and then proposed to assign me to European duty, so that I would not have to use up precious leave time for a visit.
In Germany I was assigned to an artillery unit. While on maneuvers in the Black Forest, I shared Thanksgiving dinner with a small group of soldiers. Seated across from me, a corporal commented that I appeared downhearted. I said that I was just thinking I would rather be in Paris. The corporal said he was being assigned to Paris. I remarked on his good fortune. “Don’t sweat it, man. I am the chauffeur of Senator Harry Flood Byrd. I just wrote to him that my buddy was being sent to Paris, and so I wanted to be sent there too. You just write to the senator and tell him the same thing. I will give you his private mailing address.”
I thanked him for his kindness and rushed off to write a letter to the senator. The following Monday, having returned from maneuvers, I had a reply from the senator—the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, one of the most powerful politicians in Washington—acknowledging my request and stating that he would follow my progress with great interest. I obtained a pass to visit Heidelberg, where I called on the general in charge of legal matters for the U.S. Army in Europe. I asked to be assigned to Paris, where I proposed to study Civil Law, since I spoke French. The general granted the request. I was assigned to the Claims Office Team in Paris, a NATO liaison office that dealt with claims by French civilians against the U.S. Army.
On New Year’s Eve, I was on a train to Paris. Arriving the morning of New Year’s Day, I walked down the Champs-Elysées, oblivious to the cold. For seven months, I lived on the French economy, wearing civilian clothes and with a generous cost of living allowance for rent and food. I worked closely with a staff of French civilian women in the glass pavilion of the former Rothschild mansion in the Bois de Boulogne. I lived on the Left Bank and frequented the cafés, where I once observed tiny, white-maned