There I stood. I looked out at the flat dusty Kansas countryside. I noticed the barbed wire and wooden gate but I wasn’t looking at it. I had been seeing it every day for three months. I was more interested in what was on the other side of this portal. I’d soon be a civilian again and it seemed strange to me.

            I was dressed in a suit the army had given me to replace the usual fatigues. Normal procedure apparently for a discharge from CTF – Correctional Training Facility. I remember the sun was high overhead and it was a warm July day in 1970. I carried a pair of army boots. The tie to go with the suit was in my pocket – I do not wear ties. It was a philosophical decision.

            Not all Kansas is flat and barren. I had found that out the hard way. Yet before me, the road home, as it were, stretched and with it so did a bleak landscape. No trees do I remember.

            Where were the cornfields, the hemp fields and the shade? And yet, I was suppressing a joy and did not really care what I saw. I would soon be out of this special stockade. No more solitary confinement, no more ‘rabbit chow,’ no more MP’s threatening bodily harm. I was leaving. Not to Vietnam, not to Ft. Leavenworth prison but home. I could hardly contain myself.

            “You ready Butterworth?” the MP sergeant asked.

            “I’ve been ready,” I replied curtly. I held my tongue from what else I may have liked to add.

            “Okay…hey, wait a sec. You don’t have your tie on. Put it on,” he ordered.

            I was a civilian now. I had my discharge paper. Ties are really symbolic of a noose. Or a yoke with a handle to be led about by ones ‘betters.’

            The sergeant was not going to back down. “I’m not going to open that gate until you put on that tie.”

            I braced for another showdown. I had had many in these last three months. The MP was glaring as he stood next to me. He was immaculately dressed in spit-shined boots and very starched and creased fatigues. I wondered of this wasn’t an omen.

            I thought back to another summers’ day three years before. I had held my tongue while in conflict with the ‘man,’ the police of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

            I was sixteen and could drive with an adult in the car. As it was summer I had had baseball practice. An Industrial League and school was out, of course. Just baseball and participation in the civil rights movement.

            Oh yes, I had chores. What high schooler didn’t? My chore that fine warm evening was to drive my mother, a well known politico and heavily involved with civil rights, to the ‘Freedom House.’ We were to pick up my younger brother Mark and his friend Finn Barbee, the adopted son of Lloyd Barbee. Lloyd Barbee was the only African-American alderman in Milwaukee. He had married Finn’s mother.

            They had gone to the rally at the ‘Freedom House.’ It was a legal rally and a peaceful one held primarily in the large backyard of this house located in the ‘Core,’ the primary ghetto of Milwaukee. It was also a stones throw from St. Boniface church.

            St. Boniface was the church to which Father Groppi was attached. Father Groppi was the central figure in the civil rights movement in Milwaukee. It was he who had originated the idea of the ‘Freedom House.’ A safety zone which one could kickback or where discussions and planning could go forward in a safe environment. I still remember it with fondness.

            The rally was to be over early, as the sun was setting. I parked the car about a block away and my mother, myself and my youngest brother Michael strolled to the intersection. The ‘Freedom House’ was across the street and less than halfway down the next block.

            As we neared the street corner a group of mostly middle-aged black women were standing there under the street lamp. They were there for the same reason we had come; to pick up family members who had attended the rally. The women were milling about and looked a little lost or even apprehensive. I wondered why.

            As I started to pass through the throng of perhaps twenty parents it became apparent why the air bristled with anxiety. In front of us stood scores of police in riot gear. I was taken aback. I was perplexed. I had never seen so many cops in one small area. For a peaceful, legal rally? It made no sense.

            I began to cross the street to go to the ‘Freedom House.’ I was ordered to halt. I stopped. The police stopped their milling about. Now I was confused. What exactly were they up to. I did not have a long wait to find out.

            I flashed on all the WWII movies I had seen, and I had seen many. I was again seeing the Gestapo, the Black Shirts, the nazis as if in one of those films.

            I looked behind me. Only mothers, my eleven year old brother, myself and a smallish older black man could I see. Just what were the peace officers afraid of? No one spoke out. No hostility was visible. I shrugged and started again to cross the street.

            “Halt. Disperse,” a hard angry voice yelled out.

            I again stopped and looked behind me wondering what threat any of these people on this corner posed. I saw no threat. No anger. No aggressiveness. No hateful placards, no placards period. Just middle-aged African-American women and three of the Butterworth clan.

            Again loudly, angrily and stridently, “I said disperse,” Then I heard, “form ranks.” And the police formed ranks. Shoulder to shoulder, shield to shield (as in the Roman legions), billy clubs in the raised position.

            “Hey,” I called out. “This is America.” I was starting to get my dander up. “This ain’t Russia, so stop acting like commies.”

            “Disperse,” to us. “Move forward,” to the police rank and file.

            I was stunned. And I was getting very angry. I stood my ground. How dare they deny me my constitutional liberties? The police moved forward in a line as one. I could tell the group behind me was moving off. But I was confounded. Could this really be occurring? The police line was close now. If I had thought about it, I could have picked out the separate features of the individuals in this oncoming wall.

            However, I did not see individuals. I was not meant to. Then I saw their eyes, even through the plastic visors on their helmets. I was shocked beyond belief. I had never seen hate before.

            I had originally grown up in a violent neighborhood in the East coast, ward number nine. Violence was in the streets and in the homes. Gangs and Mafia were prominent in the area. Fighting was almost a daily occurrence.

            I was even attacked in the 4^th grade by the principal, Mrs. Phillips. It was triggered, I was to find out later, because my mother stood up to her at the PTA meeting the night before. Mom was just starting her political career.

            But I never witnessed hate. Until that summer’s night.

            I turned to look at the sergeant. He was angry, really angry but not hateful. He didn’t like me. He had told me on more than one occasion that he’d like nothing better than to beat the shit out of me. I’m sure he could have.

            I wondered why this black man was so hostile towards me. Because I refused to go to Vietnam? Because I wouldn’t conform? Even after three months in a stockade I stuck to my convictions

            When the Episcopalian priest recommended I go to the DB – the Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth prison - with these words, “because it will make you a man,” I held to my beliefs. However, before I could be sent, I received a stroke of incredible luck. Congress withdrew the camp commanders prerogative (the only such prerogative in the U.S. military) to send anyone he wanted to the DB. Is that why the sergeant was angry?

            Was it because I wasn’t being punished enough? Was not three months out of my life in a ‘Special’ stockade enough? Was not five weeks in solitary confinement with the first three weeks on rabbit chow – boiled potatoes, lettuce, a slice of bread with water three times a day – enough? The daily harassments and threats not enough?

            Why would one American hate or even be angry with a fellow American for that citizens love of our seminal document, the U.S. Constitution? I was confused. I still can't explain it.

            The riot police were close. I could see the whites of their eyes. I stood frozen from indignation and shock. The smallish, older black man came to me and put his arm around my shoulder. “It’s time to go son.” And with that he steered me out of harms way.

            I looked back through the barbed wire gate. The portal to freedom; to the brown and dusty road lying before me.

            I set down the army boots and put on that tie. I kept my face forward and the gate magically opened. I walked through, shoulders erect. I did not hurry, I did not feel the need to. I walked past the opened gate.

            Once clear of the barbed wire, I set the army boots down for the last time. I undid the tie and took it off. I kept my face forward. I dropped the tie on the boots and began my journey home. I never looked back.

Postscript: The group at the street corner went to St. Boniface church. It seemed only natural considering the circumstances. We went to await family. We did not have to wait long. People from the rally came in. They came in bloody. Some needed hospital treatment. The police had cordoned off the ‘Freedom House’ and set up a gauntlet from the front door to the street. When the rally ended those who exited by the front door were systematically beaten with the billy clubs.