Six months after joining Jack, Gene, and Bea in their cooperative farm venture, I was arrested while working on the farm. As was the case then, I had registered for Selective Service and claimed conscientious objector status. When my draft card arrived, I returned it with a letter notifying the draft board that I was not available for military service. The response was a personal visit from the local U. S. Marshall, who arrested me and put me in the Troy, New York, jail.

Before going to work with Al King on his father's farm I had decided to take what was called an "absolute position" and not comply with the Selective Service's policy for conscientious objectors. As a recognized CO I would most likely have ended up working at a Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp, which was similar to minimum prison camps but with a few more privileges, such as greater "leave time." My decision was influenced by Bayard Rustin, who was the Youth Secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a church affiliated organization. I first met Bayard while I was still working on the farm near Wooster, Ohio, when he spoke at a nearby CPS camp. Bayard was traveling around the country speaking at CPS camps, churches, etc. to advocate non-cooperation with the Selective Service. He was recognized as a leader in the civil rights movement as well as in the "radical wing" of the peace movement. I was also moved to action when I saw a front page photograph in The New York Times showing Yale Divinity students burning their draft cards. They were all sent to jail. These two experiences clarified my position as a non-cooperator.

The Troy jail was, I suppose, typical of small county jails. Only a few prisoners were present at any given time, most of them there of their own volition. They were homeless, without family connections, and probably winos. With winter coming on they deliberately committed some minor misdemeanor in order to get a short-term (six months) sentence and enjoy the warmth and security of the jail rather than face the freezing weather without money for food. I wondered how many more of our "criminals" were also voluntary.

From Troy I was moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I spent another month waiting for trial. Jail conditions in Columbus were worse than in Troy. It was crowded, noisy, and the food far from nutritious. Two experiences stand out in my memory. One was the visit from the head of my draft board. He came with a present for me—a copy of the St. James Bible. He apologized for the way he had treated me at a draft board meeting (which he had called prior to my going to Vermont) to examine my credentials, if any, as a CO. He had challenged my "right" to be a CO and had been rather nasty—using the threat of jail to break me down. Now that I was in jail, he had nothing left to threaten me with, so he revealed his own fear of jail.

While I waited for my trial, several others were also charged with violation of the Selective Service Act. Most were simple "draft dodgers"—uneducated men seeking the least painful punishment for avoiding going to war. Many of them would choose a minor criminal or civil violation such as theft or "moonshining"—making and selling whisky illegally. One man I talked to had a whole "conspiracy" scenario about how President Roosevelt, wanting to find an excuse to declare war on Japan, had secretly ordered the commanders of the boats at Pearl Harbor to "bank the fires" (furnaces) and reduce security, even though he knew from broken codes that the Japanese were planning an attack. This conspiracy theory, of course, has been brought forward often in the years since. At the time it struck me as not implausible.

The judge was known as a "hanging judge," and the day I was brought into the courtroom for trial there were at least ten other Selective Service violators. We were lined up and one at a time stepped forward in front of the judge. He asked one or two questions and then, without any comment, pounded his gavel and announced, "Five years." This was the longest sentence he could give for a Selective Service violation, while in other parts of the country most judges were giving six months to one year for the same violation.

I was sent to the Ashland, Kentucky, Federal Correctional Institution in September 1942 and was released exactly two years later. This type of prison was fairly new at that time, having been built under the Roosevelt administration as part of an overall plan for reforming the Federal prison system. The plan divided inmates into separate facilities, using three classes: minimum security for short-term prisoners (usually six months to one year); medium security for prisoners like me with two to five year sentences; and maximum security for those with sentences over five years, including life. The minimum security prisons were located in remote wooded places to make escape for an inmate with a short sentence unattractive. This was mostly done for the benefit of prison guards, who now had to work with either violent or nonviolent prisoners, not both.

The prison in Ashland was divided into individual cell blocks and dormitories. Prisoners were assigned to one or the other for various reasons, one of which was to separate according to race. During the two years I was at Ashland there were around forty COs out of 400 or so prisoners, about 100 of them black. Most were there for minor stealing, car theft, and moonshining. Many inmates were illiterate and were glad for help with writing or reading letters from home. With the arrival of the COs, we pretty much ran the educational program in the prison, teaching many inmates to read and write. Generally, both whites and blacks were sympathetic to COs—we were, after all, also victims of Federal law. My daily life in prison can only be described by recalling what school was like for me—the monotony was endless.

Immediately upon our arrival we COs became involved in actions against certain prison rules and regulations—having to walk "lock step" to and from the dining room at meal time, segregation, and censorship of letters, magazines and books. Any violation of the rules meant spending a few days to a month in solitary confinement—"the hole" as it was called by the prisoners. The room actually did have a hole in the center of the concrete floor for us to perform our "necessities." The room, which measured roughly six by eight feet, contained no toilet, no bed, and no running water. We wore a one-piece gray coverall and were given pull-on leather shoes. A single light bulb shone during the day; then, promptly at 8 p.m. the lights went out and the guards threw a blanket in. In the morning the blanket was taken away. The door had a small opening through which food was passed. Meals were usually brown baked beans, potatoes, and lots of white bread. And of course water.

People often ask me, "What was it like in solitary confinement?" I suppose if you are a Tibetan monk (I was familiar with Zen Buddhism), solitary confinement wouldn't feel much like punishment since meditation requires silence. But if you are a moonshiner from the Kentucky hills, it may not be so good. Some men go berserk and beat the walls of their cell until they drop from exhaustion. As for COs like myself, we could find ways to amuse ourselves. I would take the white bread they gave us for meals (I was on a fast for most of the time anyway), wet it, and roll it into balls about the size of golf balls. I let them get hard, and used them for games —juggling, mini basketball with a shoe for a basket, bowling on the hard floor, etc. One CO managed to write a lengthy dissertation on toilet paper (they gave us writing paper and pencil to write home—and only home), which he concealed in his shoe when he was released.

Washington, D. C., had ultimate control over all Federal prisons in the United States. Certain rules existed, such as "Prisoners will be kept a maximum of one month in solitary confinement." Because of our consistent violation of the rules, however, we were repeatedly sent back to "the hole." Over a three-month period there was a lot of coming and going of COs to and from "the hole." Apparently this began to worry Washington—such activity caused unrest among the other prisoners, and this could be dangerous. In any case, prison authorities sent down a new warden to relieve the current heavy-handed warden, who we knew was generally disliked by his peers, including the assistant warden. In fact, the assistant warden on at least one occasion apologized to me for how we were being treated.

The new warden invited all the COs to meet with him; during the meeting he affirmed that he had been sent to change unnecessary rules and regulations. He asked us to be patient with him while he tried to educate the guards. (At the time we didn't know he had a Ph.D. and belonged to the Church of the Brethren, a historic Peace Church.) He was as good as his word, and soon the guards began to relax. We didn't have to go to the hole anymore for something like not walking lock step to the dining hall. The new warden continued, however, to enforce censorship of magazines and books. When Bayard Rustin arrived in 1943 with a three-year sentence, we found more inspiration to continue protesting. Bayard joined with us, and before he and other COs (Larry Gara was one) were moved to the Lewisburg penitentiary, censorship ended. That was a major victory for us. But the dining hall remained segregated because the COs didn't want to force the blacks, who were either afraid to break segregation or were comfortable with segregated facilities.

I remember an event while I was still at Ashland that softened the whole prison experience. Charlie Butcher of the Boston-based Butcher Wax Co. arrived at Ashland with a one-year sentence. To amuse himself Charlie, who knew all of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "H.M.S. Pinafore," wrote a satire of the prison system, using music from the operetta. When the warden found out about it, he asked Charlie to do a performance for the whole prison, including the staff and guards. The show was so successful that the warden invited the guards and staff to bring their wives to a command performance. And who was the star performer? Bayard Rustin or "Rusty" as he was called then. Bayard had a great voice. He could have become a renowned singer if he hadn't devoted himself to the causes of peace, nonviolence, and civil rights. He had the power to move people deeply. Later, when he became a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., he used his sense of drama to encourage people to overcome their fear.

For me, the most important experience of my prison term was a correspondence course organized by the COs. Fifteen of us studied a book called The Small Community by Arthur Morgan. The book was the fruition of Morgan's life work. He once said that he had searched all his life for the lever which could change or mold character, and he decided that the secret lay in the small community. He called the concept "a seedbed of civilization." An important premise for the book was his idea that cities weren't self-renewing; only because people from rural areas moved into cities could cities survive. We read several other books for the course, including Lewis Mumford's The City in History and The Culture of Cities. Mumford is considered to be an outstanding critic of architecture and urban planning. I continued to read many of his books after I was released.

Arthur Morgan was something of a folk hero to me because of his varied experience, his social conscience, and his ideas on community cooperation. He became widely known for his work as a civil engineer designing dams in Ohio to control flooding of the region, especially around Dayton. As president of Antioch College for many years, he was famous for his innovative work/study program, which is now common practice throughout U. S. colleges and universities. It was Morgan who really shaped Antioch College, making it what it is today. But his good work as an engineer was what made President Roosevelt decide to appoint him as the first board member of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933.[More info on TVA]

Morgan left TVA in 1936, returning to Antioch College as a professor. There he developed his course on The Small Community.

Toward the end of his life Morgan fought the huge dam the Army Corps of Engineers proposed to build in Pennsylvania, which would inundate several square miles and obliterate the Seneca Indian tribe's land. After several years he won the battle. Morgan wrote a book, Dams and Other Disasters, in which he laid out his reasons for opposing most large-scale dams. This book was published by my friend and fellow CO, Porter Sargent.

In 1948 Morgan was invited by the new government of India to be an economic-development advisor. Knowing only of his work with TVA, they were shocked when he advised them against such megaprojects. In spite of his advice they went ahead with more dams. History has shown that Morgan was correct. Fritz Schumacher had the same experience when he was invited to India later in the 1950s. He also advised against building more dams.

Arthur Morgan certainly influenced the direction of my life As a result of our correspondence while I was in prison, Morgan later invited me to Yellow Springs to work with him in Community Service, the nonprofit organization he created.