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<font size=4><b><i>The truth is always left of center!<br>
</i></b></font><font size=3>
- Elsa Knight Thompson<br><br>
I offer this message In celebration of today, which would have been the
100th birthday of Elsa Knight Thompson.<br>
<br>
Elsa was a forerunner, role model, and a spiritual grandmother of the
Freedom Archives. Several of us worked closely with her. Her lifetime of
work in radio and her aliveness to new revolutionary currents remain an
inspiration.<br>
<br>
At the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in London during World War
II, the program Radio Newsreel, where she headed the international desk,
reached an estimated audience of 20 million people worldwide. In
the United States her documentary programs and interviews, mainly
generated at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, won numerous broadcasting awards. She
was a pathfinder for women in broadcasting and one of the leading forces
in the evolution of community radio. Her interviews are
legendary.<br><br>
As the recently and also dearly departed music critic and longtime KPFA
programmer Phil Elwood said: "When Elsa had some very special guest
on the air most of the staff and lots of townsfolk-subscribers would
crowd into the station to watch it all happen. Who among those
present will ever forget Elsa and Paul Robeson?"<br>
<br>
Elsa was a very dear friend of mine. We worked together in radio for some
years, then became even closer during the final years of her life, when I
began to help her with an unpublished autobiography/biography. She died
on February 12, 1983. I met her in 1968, shortly before I became News
Director at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, when she was, as she had been since
1957, Public Affairs Director and later Program Director. The book
records her birth this way:<br>
<dl>
<dd>Two weeks before the San Francisco earthquake, on April 6, 1906,
Elsie Eloise was born in Bonner's Ferry, Idaho, to Murel Bolden and Earl
Knight. Although her parents came from Seattle, Washington, they
were sent to Idaho by<i> their</i> parents to disguise the fact that the
child was conceived out of wedlock. When they returned to Seattle, now
legally married, the official birth date was listed as three months
later, to provide a veneer of "legitimacy."
</dl> <br>
While the birth of this child was hardly an earthshaking event at the
time, in years to come her creative work would play an important part in
helping to tremble the Northern California earth again, this time not as
a quake, but as part of the worldwide wave of social protest of the
1960s, one of whose epicenters was Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay
Area. <br>
Social protest was an important part of her life from childhood, for she
grew up in the activist Northwest where many union organizing efforts of
the IWW were concentrated. Her father was a journalist, and she
heard vehement discussions on all sorts of topics, as the house swirled
with the controversies brought forth by shootings of workers in
Centralia, Washington, conditions in the lumber camps, World War I, and
the Russian Revolution.<br>
<br>
Elsa's personality, full of contradictions, had a power well remembered
by anyone who met her, friend or foe. She was a controversial
figure, and could be uncompromising, cantankerous, stubborn,
irascible. She didn't "suffer fools gladly." At the
same time, she was a sensitive, consistent friend and great helper to a
remarkably large number and variety of people. Less well known than her
radio work were her many close connections to activists and
revolutionaries, from Europe before World War II to the Black Panther
Party, the United Farm Workers, Women for Peace, and the list goes on and
on.<br><br>
Elsa was not a large woman physically, but her presence was
commanding. Partly this was the power of her voice, the intensity
and depth of her gaze. She was a memorable conversationalist, with
an often barbed and sardonic sense of humor and a certain unerring
ability to say the unspeakable truth, no matter whose toes were stepped
on. One always wonders (and misses) the sharpness of her wit during
these imperio-fascistic times!<br>
<br>
Another less well known but transformative chapter in Elsa's life, more
relevant than ever today, was her rape and pregnancy at 17, followed by a
botched (then illegal) abortion that she almost died from, and a long
period of despair, illness, and then eventual recuperation. In the
end she emerged to say:
<dl>
<dd>
<dd><i>Something within these events brought into full flower earlier
influences of my childhood, creating within me a power I only partly
understand, a force far larger than myself, causing me to speak out when
something had to be said, reinforcing within me an unyielding love of
truth.
<dd>
<dd>Most of all I resolved absolutely, with no-holds-barred, that, as I
could not have children myself, I would do whatever I could to try to
help build a better world, to make this Earth a better place for all
children to be born into, to use whatever abilities I had and was able to
cultivate in the service of humanity. That was my resolution, and
that resolve became the guiding force of my life.
<dd>
<dd>Of course, we can look at the world now and wonder whether or not the
efforts of my lifetime, and the struggles of so many other people in all
nations, have indeed resulted in a better world. In many ways, the
world situation has been getting steadily and visibly worse since I began
my quest! Yet even so, I deeply believe that the efforts of so many
I have known cannot have been in vain. The survival of the Earth is
at stake, just as so many years ago, my own survival teetered on the
brink of destruction. The root of hope, the strength found within
the common struggle of people for freedom, justice, and peace, the
constant creative effort to raise the new generations as stronger,
healthier, and happier people-this struggle is at the heart of my
commitment.
<dd>
<dd>But one thing I know for certain: I emerged from over a year of
deep psychological and physical terror as a woman with a mission, and I
have tried to remain true to that mission over the course of terrible and
tumultuous years in world history.</i>
</dl> <br>
Of course, there is so much more to say and tell, If you are interested
in learning more about Elsa Knight Thompson, contact The Freedom
Archives.<br><br>
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ELSA!<br>
<br>
Lincoln Bergman, for<br>
The Freedom Archives<br><br>
PS - Elsa was a mentor and friend to me, a very naive teenager, as i got
my start in radio at KPFA in the late 1960s. (and also when Lincoln and i
first met and became life-long friends).<br>
Claude <br>
<br><br>
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<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
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