Dangerous Grounds by Parsons David L.;

Author:Parsons, David L.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2017-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

A “CESSPOOL OF EVIL”: THE UFO COFFEEHOUSE ON TRIAL

The UFO coffeehouse in Columbia, South Carolina, caught the attention of officials in Washington when the Fort Jackson Eight case became national news in 1969. Shortly after the case’s conclusion, the army issued the first federal guidelines on dissent during the Vietnam era. Commanders at army posts around the country received an official directive, referred to as “Guidance on Dissent,” that specifically addressed antiwar activity among soldiers and how best to handle it. In categorizing the different manifestations of dissent found on and around army posts, the directive listed the two most significant threats as “possession and distribution of political materials” and “coffeehouses.”44 In keeping with its overall strategy of quiet containment, the directive acknowledged that soldiers were technically permitted to visit coffeehouses and other “off-post gathering places,” as they were entitled to constitutional protections that included freedom of speech and association. “Severe disciplinary action in response to a relatively insignificant manifestation of dissent,” the directive continued, “can have a counter productive effect on other members of the Command, because the reaction appears out of proportion to the threat which the dissent represents. Thus, such disproportionate actions may stimulate further breaches of discipline.”45 Nonetheless, the directive also left a clear opening for local commanders to declare coffeehouses “off-limits” if they decided that “the activities taking place there include counseling members to refuse to perform duty or to desert, or otherwise involve acts with a significant adverse effect on soldier health, morale, welfare.”46

After the Fort Jackson Eight were released from the stockade, the UFO coffeehouse experienced a conspicuous increase in harassment by undercover FBI agents, local police, and civilians. UFO staff members noticed “straight people trying to act real cool” and were well aware that, in the UFO, they were often surrounded by undercover police and government plants.47 Often agents would show up at the UFO dressed in rather obvious “radical” garb, attempting to infiltrate the staff by volunteering for work and mouthing extreme leftist rhetoric. As one staff member later recalled, “They [undercover infiltrators] were so eager to be useful and accepted that whenever we had a really nasty chore, we’d just give it to one of them. I used to think I was really popular. It was only later that I learned all those guys were being paid to be my friends.”48

Government records reveal that the UFO staff were right to be paranoid: throughout the few years of its existence in Columbia, the UFO coffeehouse was aggressively investigated by all levels of state, local, and federal government. The FBI supplied local police with information on social activities engaged in by UFO staff, hoping to arrest them on drug charges.49 Federal agents collected detailed profiles on the staff’s political beliefs, sexual preferences, and travel plans and attacked the coffeehouse’s finances, sending information to the IRS that taxes had not been paid on admission fees for live performances.50 In addition to the undercover infiltrators on volunteer duty, several plainclothes agents (a mixture of

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