self-evident: the big pooh-bah, prosecutor of al prosecutors,
came to see me. He seemed to want to hear from me that I
would show up. I assured him that I would. Just be yourself
and tell the truth, said the snake to Eve. I assured him that I
would. He kept trying to find out if I was wary of testifying
or of him. I wasn’t. I was too stupid to be. The rules have
since changed, but in 1965 no one, including the target of a
grand jury investigation, could have a lawyer with her inside
the sacred, secret grand jury room. I was not the target, but
one would not have been able to tell from what the assistant
district at orney did to me. Hogan had assured me that al
the questions would be about the jail and pret y much said
outright that the jail had to go, something to that effect. He
probably said sympathetically that he had heard it was a horrible place and I assumed the rest. After al , if it was hor ible, why wouldn’t one want to get rid of it? The grand jury room
was big and shiny wood and imperial. I sat down in what
increasingly came to seem like a sinking hole and had to each
side and in front of me raised desks behind which were
washed white people, most or al men. The assistant district
attorney, who had been with Mr. Hogan the night before but
had said nothing, began to ask me questions. Where did I
live? Did I live alone? Was I a virgin? Did I smoke marijuana?
I started out just being confused. I remembered clearly that
Mr. Hogan said the inquiry was about the jail, not me, so I
answered each question with some fact about the jail. Did I
live alone? They knew I was living with two men. I described
the dirt in the jail or the excrement that passed for food. Did
I smoke marijuana? Was I going to betray the revolution by
saying no? On the other hand, was I going to give the grand
jury an excuse to hold for the righteousness of the jail by
saying yes? I answered with more details about the jail. And
so it went for several hours. I eventually got the hang of it.
The pig would ask me a personal question, and I would
answer about the jail. He got angrier and angrier, and I stayed
soft-spoken but firm. They could have jailed me for contempt,
but they didn’t want me back in jail. I had created a maelstrom
for them; because of the news coverage, which was, for its
time, massive, huge numbers of people in the United States
and eventually around the world knew my name, my face, and
what had been done to me in the jail. Put ing me back in jail
could only make the situation for Mayor Robert Wagner, head
of the cor upt city Dems, more difficult. I had spoken on
the same platform as John Lindsay, a liberal Republican who
would eventually become mayor, and I had something to
do with making that unlikely event happen. After I testified I
went back to college. While probation would have been the
