Healing Crusader: Patt Derian on

the Arc of Civil and Human Rights

The official history about the most important woman in
U.S. human rights diplomacy since Eleanor Roosevelt is the story
of the recommitment of a nation to its founding principles
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/952899990/patricia-derian-healing-crusader-for-human-and-civ

ABOUT THIS PROJECT

President Jimmy Carter at the swearing in of Patt Derian as the first

assistant secretary of state for human rights.

In the wake of the torture scandals and new terrorist threats in France
and elsewhere, as we face questions unprecedented in this century
about who we are as a nation, this project will help us rediscover our
true character and remind us of the ways in which we have changed
the world for the better.
A modern Eleanor Roosevelt (the chair of the drafting committee of the
UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights), Patricia Murphy Derian was
a hero of the U.S. civil and human rights movements who often
fearlessly confronted great physical risk in her work at home and
abroad. Patt served as President Jimmy Carter's Assistant Secretary of
State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1977 to 1981.
Her biography, tentatively called Healing Crusader: Patt Derian on the
Arc of Civil and Human Rights, focuses on who Patt was, the trials she
faced, the significant and lasting contributions she made inside a maledominated and stultified bureaucracy, and important lessons that were
critically learned and became an essential part of the fabric of
international diplomatic practice. As Patt Derian nears the end of her
long and glorious life, I am seeking funding to complete in 2016 a book
on her life and example.

*****

The funeral of murdered Mississippi civil rights champion Medgar

Evers

Late one hot June night in 1963, just after President John F. Kennedy
had addressed the nation on television about making civil rights a
reality in the United States, its most important Mississippi exponent,
38-year-old Medgar Evers, was turning into his driveway with his family
inside their home. A rifle shot rang out and Evers, hit in the back,
staggered some 30 feet before collapsing and being taken to the local
hospital in segregated Jackson. Finally, when authorities realized who
he was after initially refusing him treatment, Evers was admitted to
the facility, where he died 50 minutes later. That morning a young
white nurse and civil rights activist arrived on the blood-spattered yard

to comfort Evers wife and small children. Her name was Patt Derian.
Fourteen years later, President Carter appointed Patt Derian as the
State Department's point person for the human rights revolution he
announced as a presidential candidate during the 1976 American
bicentennial. Shortly after Carter took office, Patt sat in front of an
impeccably-groomed Argentine Admiral, Emilio Massera, at the ESMA
navy mechanics school on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. A year before
Massera and others in the military junta had overthrown that countrys
troubled democracy, andafter being given a green light by the
United States for a campaign that resulted in the secret
disappearance, torture and death of thousands of people--he tried to
conduct a face-to-face charm offensive with Derian. Patt looked back
at him and said evenly, I know you are torturing people in this
building. Massera denied it. She replied: Right now, below us, I know
people are being mistreated. Massera parried: Theres nothing down
there, this is a school. To which Patt replied, I have a map. I know
what is happening in every room. Rubbing his hands in what Patt later
called one of the most eeire moments of my life, Massera responded:
You remember the story of Pontius Pilate? Later it was revealed that
more than 5,000 disappeared people were eventually tortured and
murdered at the school, one of hundreds of secret concentration
camps around Argentina.

*****

Captain General Augusto Pinochet with Henry Kissinger in Chile,

where the Secretary of State gave a "green light" for the Argentine
massacre (Archivo General Histrico del Ministerio de Relaciones
Exteriores)

Healing Crusader will be based on hundreds of interviews and oral

histories both in the United States and overseas, as well as scholarly
studies, archival material, and declassified Federal and state
documents.
This work has been a long time in the making; the project is completely
self-funded. It comes nearly four decades after Patt stared down
Argentinas generals and others like them around the world who
claimed to be American friends, but trample on their own peoples and

the values Americans hold dear.

Today there is again a critical need to make a searching and fearless
moral inventory of U.S. foreign policy, in order to liberate ourselves in
our Founding Fathers' tradition. Patt's example is a beacon lighting the
way.
Please join us in becoming a part of the Healing Crusader campaign.

BACKGROUND

The Carter foreign policy focused attention on the importance of the

rule of law and the principles of self determination for all peoples.
Before being named by President Carter as the coordinator for human
rights and humanitarian affairs at the State Department, Patt was
admired for work in segregationist Mississippi on civil rights, and more
nationally on civil liberties, including having an important role in the
work of the American Civil Liberties Union. At State, although she had
no prior foreign policy experience, Patts unconventional style proved
to be key in making human rights a critical factor in the external
relations of a country whose reputation was scarred overseas by often
violent domestic unrest, the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam war.
After Congress elevated her position to Assistant Secretary of State for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Patt came to symbolize the new
understanding about how the domestic and international faces of
human rights were connected. Her work and that of the talented staff
she put together in the face of fierce internal opposition assured that
Carters public re-commitment to American values reestablished the
countrys sense of national purpose and gave the highly-publicized
shift in emphasis sure and permanent footing in policy debates across
the federal government.
Patts experiences not only in Argentina, but also with the Soviet Union
and its allies and "friends of the United States" dictatorships like those
of South Korea, Chile, El Salvador, Uganda and the Philippines, served
as a reminder of the good that came from telling truth to power and
fighting to make a difference.

El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Romero was murdered in 1980 by

death squads.

ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED
Having kept extensive files on human rights and nation building over
the past three decades, I have long thought about doing Patts
biography. Critical resources now available include hundreds of oral
histories, archival collections of personal papers, and scores of books
that detail Patts myriad contributions both at home and abroad.
Dismissed by many inside the State Department as a movement
person, as a role model Patt showed how to breach the supposed
disjuncture between responsibility and respectability.
The biography of one of the most interesting and authentic lives to
grace the policy salons of the worlds longest-lasting democracy has
yet to be written. Meanwhile, the terrible legacy that comes with
promoting torture and other human rights abuses is again under the
microscope, as todays war against terrorism has called into question
American values and well as government tactics. Some Native
American tribes have no verb to learn; the closest to it is to stand
by. Those of us who were privileged enough to stand by Patt now have
an obligation to share those lessons with those coming up. My gift,
such as it is, is to write. I must stand by Patt by writing her story.
As I move forward, Patts husband, Hodding Carter III, himself, like his
father, a civil rights hero in his native Mississippi and the State
Department spokesman during a Carter Administration faced with
Irans hostage taking and an aborted rescue attempt, has offered their
familys endorsement of the project. An open letter from Hodding says,
in part:

As many of you know, Patt has been sidelined for a long while for
health reasons. Aging is a process that has taken its toll; however, the
legacy Patt has left us remains as rich and as meaningful now as when
she actively fought for civil rights at home and human rights around
the world.
It is important that her story be fully told, as the challenges we face
today, such as terrorism and the U.S. role in the world, mean the
continuum of civil and human rights upon which Patt made her mark
remains a definition of who we are and what we will leave to our
grandchildren.
A friend of Patt's and mineMartin "Mick" Andersenis writing her
biography, a work that will spans the totality of her idealism, activism,
official contributions, and most important legacies. Micks current
project has our full and unqualified support. When he contacts you,
please be generous with your time, memories and other help, as you
see fit.

Guatemalan ex-dictator Efran Ros Montt with President Ronald

Reagan, who chided Patt for her firm stand against the Argentine
junta, saying that she should walk a mile in the moccasins of the
Argentine generals before criticizing them.

STILL TO COME

The goal is to research and write an approximately 300-page (book

length) manuscript for publication in 2016. Already one prominent
publishing house has expressed its interest in Healing Crusader. At the
same time, I would like to establish an interactive Web site in Patts
honor, in which those who worked with her and those who learned so
much from her example can share their experiences, in order to
incorporate some of them into the biography.

RISKS AND CHALLENGES

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our
children. One of these is roots; the other, wings. W.

Hodding Carter
I first met Patt in Buenos Aires in 1983 when she was personally invited
to the inaugural of incoming democratic President Raul Alfonsin,
himself a human rights hero, as Argentina's dirty warriors" limped
back to their barracks after being quickly defeated by Great Britain in a
real war.
Patt became an inspiring mentor, staying in touch as I made my way to
Washington, D.C., to labor both inside and outside officialdom. I had
just arrived in the nation's capital in 1987 immediately following the
publication of journalistic "scoop" about Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger giving the Argentine generals a green light for their vicious
repressiona story based on Patts revelations to me.
Six years later, I published the first of three books I have written.
Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the 'Dirty
War' earned a full-page review in the Sunday New York Times and an
endorsement from Senator Edward Kennedy. Patt was one of the three
people to whom it was dedicated.
To date I have put in hundreds of hours on this project, thrilled by the
fact I will be able to help reawaken public appreciation for Patts story;
of what it meant for her and the impact on so many others of her being
on the barricades as well as in conference rooms fighting for civil rights
and human rights.
History and writing are my joys as well as my profession, and I have
never worked anywhere where my bosses thought I had NOT given my
all to the work at hand. But I need your financial help to keep moving
forward.
If you help, I can promise that I will keep you and the literate public
informed about my progress, sharing in the exchanges and truths
revealed by those who knew Patt best.
Whatever you can donate is greatly appreciated, as it will allow me to
make maximum use of the time that remains before Patts story is
reviewed and appreciated even more around the world.
Healing Crusader is a story that should be remembered, bringing to
light the roots and wings that Patt has left for all of us ... to promote, as
well as defend.