Special Collections
J. Quinn Brisben
Official history is always phony,
But it never lasts because,
As an old folk singer once said:
“The most dangerous political force
In America today is a
Long memory,” and memory
Will not die in the special
Collections room of a good
Librarian, on fireproof shelves
Which spark as you touch metal
And open the brittle brown pages,
Or the drawers of dusty tapes
Of widows recalling the glory
Of nationalities uniting against
The lead mine bosses in 1921
In the Little Balkans of Kansas.
Alexander Howat was their leader,
And the women, an Amazon army,
Backed those hard rock men doomed
To be shot by goons or buried
Under caved-in slate or poisoned
By the ground they dug for others.
It meant the blacklist to remember,
But blacklists cannot endure.
John L colluded with the bosses,
Betrayed Howat, and got his scowl
On statues in a dozen parks,
But statues can be undermined
By burrowers. J. A. Wayland’s
Appeal to Reason was suppressed,
But the issues were preserved,
For a librarian grooms a battlefield.
The Girard Press lied, but a poet
Can read between the lines.
As long as documents are saved
The gutted past can be made whole.
Those with courage to delve and recall
Howat and his Babel of hard men
And their Amazon wives and Wayland
And Debs and all the rest including
Of course Gene DeGruson among his pile
Of real things which would not go away
Are bound to triumph after all.
