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Sleep to Gather Strength
By David Glenn Cox
Those who take the meat from the table
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the tax contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
Bertolt Brecht (playright, poet, anti-fascist)
I believe that it was Edmund Burke who said, "People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." I find myself caught in this paradigm because sometimes we forget just who it is that we are. We are the culmination and the survivors of all wars and plagues that nature and mankind could manifest.
We are the heirs to their dreams, their seeds come to flesh. These ancestors walked a crooked road and fought long battles for prosperity in the enduring cause of humanity. I think of my own grandfather who passed away when I was but six years old. His booming voice and his six-foot-four frame terrified me. But as I look back I feel grateful just to have known him for a moment, just to have touched him to know that he was real and to have crossed paths with him at a moment in time.
My grandfather, Thomas Ott Cox, was not rich nor was he a celebrity, but he was a great man in the truest definition of greatness. He did not and would not desert his friends or fellows and he would not bow down to authority regardless of cost. During the 1920’s the city of Springfield, Ohio was holding a parade and Tom stood quietly as a contingent of hooded Ku Klux Klansman paraded by him. He did not intend on abridging their right to free speech until a Klansman called out, “Cox! Join us!” and grabbed him by the sleeve. My grandfather then decked him, turning his white robe crimson.
This is the greatness of which I speak. He could have just said, “Thank you, but no thank you.” To him he was exercising his patience by letting them parade by, but when they touched him, oh, when they touched him he felt that he then had every right to shut them up. Even outnumbered fifty to one and even with his wife and children standing with him, he would let them know what he thought of them. He was arrested for disorderly conduct and the charges were eventually dropped.
He worked as an ironworker and remembered seeing injured workers taken home to die. The company owed them...nothing. So Tom became involved with the union. During a strike a policeman split his head open on the picket line with a billyclub. They took him home unconscious and a neighbor woman sewed his head up with thread. When he regained consciousness he grabbed a baseball bat and headed for the door with blood in his eyes. Only his wife could restrain him, but he returned to the picket line the next morning and was arrested around 10 AM. The union paid his bail and he was arrested again around one in the afternoon. The judge commented that he was the only man that he had ever had before him twice in one day.
Tom answered, “I suspect I’ll be seeing you again tomorrow,” but Tom was held without bail. He served his time and was released as the strike went on. He immediately returned to the picket line and was again arrested. This time he was taken home and the policeman told him that the factory boss would be coming by to talk to him. My father remembered it as the first time he had ever seen a new car up close.
The policeman stayed when the boss man showed up. He offered Tom the job of shop foreman if he’d break the strike. He added, “I wanted the police handy because I was afraid you might try to kill me.” Tom answered, “That was a wise decision, now get the hell off my porch!” Needless to say he didn’t accept the job and the strike persevered until the union prevailed and Tom was named the shop steward.
I tell his story not as a boast but as a calling. My own father both respected and resented his father for putting the union even before family. But Tom was not unique; there were thousands of Toms in thousands of places. Men and women that would not take no for an answer, willing to put their bodies on the line to change the status quo. Willing to be jailed today and again tomorrow if need be. Willing to be beaten and abused until the bosses realized that only through accommodation could they make progress.
He is my hero because when hard times called he answered with the full force of his life. It is important now, more than ever, to remember those who would not be silenced and who fought the law whether the law won or not. Those thousands who were strong and resolute, who would have their way or bring heaven crashing down upon themselves. Simple people with a simple resolve, to make this country listen to them or ignore them at their peril.
Many of us see the dark clouds on the horizon and feel the pain of economic disenfranchisement and governmental abandonment. They fail to see the revolutionary possibilities of the situation. The turning away must cease; we must seek what is due to us. We can enforce judgements in our favor just by showing up. Maybe not today, but soon. The world turns day by day and hearts on fire are not easily extinguished. The world is ours if we but dare to reach for it.
“Good night, then - sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.”
(Winston Spencer Churchill)
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