NPC in History: John and Yoko

It’s a story of sex, drugs and rock and roll; a child-custody battle and anti-war protests; political chicanery, immigration law and artistic freedom.

It’s the story of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and for at least one morning, it happened at the National Press Club.

John Lennon, a member of the Beatles, married performance-artist Yoko Ono in 1969. For decades, until fellow-Beatle Paul McCartney denied it, many people believed that the marriage helped break up the Beatles. The couple were an international sensation.

John and Yoko became political activists in the early post-Beatle years, especially in opposition to the Vietnam War. Their wedding was a five-day “Bed-in for Peace.”

They came to the United States in 1971, in part because Yoko was searching for her eight-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, Kyoko Cox. Kyoko's father, American filmmaker Anthony Cox, disappeared after Yoko married John, living a life in hiding for fear that Yoko would gain custody of their daughter.

Early in 1972, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service wanted to deport Lennon, claiming he could not have legal residency here because he had been convicted of a 1968 drug charge in England.

That’s what brought John and Yoko to the Club on April 28, 1972. They held a press conference in the morning before going out to party in the afternoon. Washington Post reporter Tom Zito led his story the next morning this way:

“In a paradox that has become John and Yoko Ono Lennon, the couple spent a day of urgency and frivolity here yesterday, beginning with a press conference called to discuss pending deportation action against them and finishing with a scene-to-be-seen party that had much of quintessential Cleveland Park acting as if the Lennons were the couple to have over for drinks.”

Lennon didn’t miss a chance to punch some wit into the dreariness of the press conference, Zito wrote, quoting Lennon: “They say we are illegible or uneligible or whatever … People ask me, why do you want to live here – especially in New York where it is so ugly? Well we have a nice loft in the Village and we love the place. There are lots of stars, so I am not the only one on the block. We like New York and we want to continue living there and raise Kyoko.”

Yoko was not as witty: “I am forced to choose between my husband and my daughter if we are deported.”

A letter from New York Mayor John Lindsay, released at the press conference, said, “I think it is very much in the interest of the citizens of the country that artists of their stature be granted residence status.”

Peace activist Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick laid the dispute right on the anti-war movement.

“Let’s not beat around the bush. The only reason they are trying to run John and Yoko out of the country is because these two people are telling truths that are opening the eyes of the public – particularly regarding the war in Southeast Asia.”

And Lennon summed it up this way with one of his famous lyrics: “The only thing I would like to say today is ‘give peace a chance.’”

The case dragged on for five years. Lennon had been arrested in 1968 for having a small amount of hashish. Was that by definition marijuana, for which he could be excluded from entry to the United States? Lennon’s attorneys argued it was not.

But perhaps more damaging to the INS’ case, was a letter that surfaced from Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina claiming Lennon had planned to help Yippies disrupt the 1972 Republican convention. Lennon denied it. Former INS regional director Sol Marks said under oath, “I suspect there were some people in high places who were terribly interested in getting Mr. Lennon out, but I never made inquiries about it.”

So, what happened to Kyoko? Her father changed her name several times and kept her in hiding, raising her for a while in a cult called the Church of the Living Word, sometimes known as “The Walk.” Anthony did not contact Yoko until after Lennon’s assassination in 1980. And Kyoko did not contact her until 1994. They finally reunited three years later.

This is another in a series provided by Club historian Gil Klein. Dig down anywhere in the Club’s 111-year history, and you will find some kind of significant event in the history of the world, the nation, Washington, society, journalism and the Club itself. Many of these events were caught in illustrations that tell the stories.