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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
2010-08-22
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Rosalind P. Petchesky
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
93:26
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Judaism; Microeconomics; Vietnam War; African American; Barack Obama; Afghanistan; Newt Gingrich; Gingrich activism; Economics."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588}}">Judaism; Microeconomics; Vietnam War; African American; Barack Obama; Afghanistan; Newt Gingrich; Gingrich activism; Economics.</span>
Subject LCSH
Political scientists; College teachers; Hunter College; International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group; Petchesky, Rosalind P.--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Petchesky, Rosalind P. ; McKiernan, Stephen
Subject
The topic of the resource
Political scientists; College teachers; Hunter College; International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group; Petchesky, Rosalind P.--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Rosalind Pollack Petchesky is an American political scientist, and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the founder of the International Reproductive Rights Research Action Group. Petchesky received her Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2010-08-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.93
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
93:26
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js)
This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
3/10/11
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Sidel, Ruth
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Ruth Sidel is a scholar, author and educator. Dr. Sidel received her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, and both her Master's degree of Social Work and Ph.D. from Boston University. She is a professor at Hunter College and has also published several books. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13309,"3":{"1":1},"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Ruth Sidel (1933-2016) was a scholar, author, and educator. Dr. Sidel received her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, and both her Master's degree in Social Work the Boston University and Ph.D. from Union Graduate School. She was a professor at Hunter College and has also published several books.<br /><br /><br /></span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Civil Rights Movement; China; Women's Rights Movement; Political corectness; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war Movement; Black Power groups; Baby boom generation."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":769,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0}">Civil Rights Movement; China; Women's Rights Movement; Political correctness; Civil Rights Movement; Anti-war Movement; Black Power groups; Baby boom generation.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:31:33
Subject LCSH
Scholars;
Authors, American;
College teachers;
Hunter College;
Sidel, Ruth--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Ruth Sidel
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sidel, Ruth ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Scholars; Authors, American; College teachers; Hunter College; Sidel, Ruth--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Ruth Sidel is a scholar, author, and educator. Dr. Sidel received her Bachelor's degree from Wellesley College, and both her Master's degree in Social Work and Ph.D. from Boston University. She is a professor at Hunter College and has also published several books.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-03-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.206
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
91:33
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription
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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Sally Roesch Wagner
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. </span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
158:01
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Women's Rights Movement; Drug Revolution; Baby boom generation; Racism; Beat \nGeneration; Activism; Kent State; Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Feminism "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":7101,"3":{"1":1},"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Women's Rights Movement; Drug Revolution; Baby boom generation; Racism; Beat Generation; Activism; Kent State; Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Feminism. </span>
Subject LCSH
Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Sally Roesch Wagner
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: Not Dated
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(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two. Sure. That is very good. All right.
SW (00:00:04):
Okay.
SM (00:00:04):
And when you think of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
SW (00:00:28):
A door opening into the future.
SM (00:00:34):
Explain.
SW (00:00:35):
And then closing. But the door stayed open long enough that we learned how to get inside. We saw a vision of what the world could be. We saw the way that people could be with each other personally, and also a vision of how the social structure could be transformed to create new human beings.
SM (00:01:10):
When you hear, and this has always struck me, as a person who is a boomer, when you hear people like Newt Gingrich in 1994, when the Republicans came to power, and George Will, I am just using them as examples, who oftentimes in his writings, anytime he can take a shot at the boomer generation, he will do it, is oftentimes is the breakdown of American society that a lot of the problems that we have today, they blame on that time, that era, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the young people, the drug culture, the sexual revolution, lack of respect for authority, the antagonisms and the deep divisions. How do you respond when you hear people like that?
SW (00:02:04):
They are absolutely right. They are absolutely correct. And it is sort of like, yes, we did that. One person's breakdown is another person's breakthrough. And I think that the analysis that that sort of the facade of a happy family, the facade of a generous and just country, the facade of all of us being the same cracked in the (19)60s. We smashed that facade. And breaking through that then opened the door, we were in the center I think in the midst of a cultural revolution. But I think that it is a cultural, political, spiritual, personal. It is a revolution that I am not sure there has ever been one like this in the world. I know my background really is studying the 19th century, and it is very reminiscent of the mid-19th century in terms of radical reform movements all springing up simultaneously and feeding each other. And I think that in some ways they opened a door and saw a vision into the future, and they set the blueprint for the 20th century, and we know are setting the blueprint, or the 20th century, the (19)60s set the blueprint for all the work that we are doing now. And what is interesting to me is that the people that opened that door and saw the vision now are institutionalized and making institutional changes. Because at some point we realized, and I think this was the strength of the woman's movement, we realized that there were no personal solutions. And if one's to point, I do not know if we ... Point to the one major brilliance of the woman's movement, I do not know if there was one major and is such a powerful transformative engine, but one brilliance of it was women are not messed up, we are messed over. And we actually used the F word, but it was the idea that we were tranquilized. Then it was a more primitive tranquilizer, if you will. What was it then? That women were constantly, if they were unhappy with their situation, they were put on tranquilizers, on meds, and they still are today, but probably in greater numbers. But what we realized was as we began to share our personal stories and break down the personal isolation that we felt, we began to understand that it was not our personal problems, but that it was institutional. And I think that was the moment of understanding that there had to be systematic, systemic, institutional changes before we could create a just world, before we could create an equal.
SM (00:05:42):
One of the questions that I always ask, and just general questions about the boomers, is when boomers, boomers are defined as those individuals born between 1946 and (19)64. But I have also noticed if you know anything about the (19)60s that a lot of the leaders were born in (19)42, (19)43, (19)44, 45. So a lot of people do not like these, got to define a generation and limit it to these particular years. But the question that comes up often is longevity. And this is oftentimes a criticism we hear today toward boomers who are now reaching 62 years of age, first year of social security [inaudible] this year. The front liners. Is did they carry their ideals and beliefs beyond that period when all these movements and these feelings that change can happen, that we can be make a difference in this world? And which was really part of the (19)60s and even in the (19)60s is really up to (19)73, (19)74, and then so much happened after that. But can you separate female boomers from male boomers and just the experiences you have seen of female boomers, have they carried their ideals into middle age and older age, or had they fallen by the wayside as many men had done in careers and making money and raising families?
SW (00:07:10):
I belong to an organization called Veteran Feminists of America, women who were active between (19)60 and (19)73. And what happens in the meetings of that, some of the gatherings that I have attended in this group is that women sit around and [inaudible] about are we the only feminists left? These young women, they do not have any idea of feminism. They are not part of the movement. And then I talked to my students at Zurich University, 18 and 19-year-old women who are reinventing feminism and they wonder if they are the only ones or what happened to all the feminists from before. One of the things we hope to do at the Gage House is to do more intergenerational things. The things we have done have been really effective. And what is interesting is that I teach 19th century at Syracuse University, 19th century women's rights history. What my students really want to hear about is my experience in the (19)60s. So I do back and forth. I talk about what the first wave women did, how far they brought it, and then where we took it, and then here is where you need to take it and make those connections. But we still alive and kicking, are we still? See, I think part of it is a masking. Elizabeth Katie Stanton understood that if she started out her lectures with a story about her grandchildren and her fat, little sausage curls, white hair, she could do the most radical thinking and say the most radical things. On her 80th birthday they had this huge celebration and it was, what was it? It was some big gathering place in New York City and there were thousands of people there. Now this is the moment when she could have said, "Thank you all so much. I am so honored that you are here." You know what she said? Yeah, we were going to get our right to vote pretty soon and we have made some inroads on some of the things that we need. All we need to really do now is look at going after the real enemy, and that is the church. What we need to do is the Bible was not written by God, it was written by man out of his love of domination. She wrote in her women's Bible that year, and she said, "What we need to do, because it is a manmade document like the Constitution or other men made documents, we need to change it to meet the times. So we need to rewrite the Bible." This is on her 80th birthday, and one of her mottoes became, I shall not grow conservative with age. But taking my direction from her, the ideas that come out of my mouth have not changed. If anything, they were more transformational than they have ever been, but I have lost the language. I have dropped the language of division in some cases. I mean, feminism is a word obviously that needs to be held onto, but there was a lot of jargon that we developed that is as unappealing to me as academic jargon. What you essentially are doing is creating a separate isolated group that does not know how to communicate with the masses. So my process personally has been to unlearn academic speak and to write in the language as accessible as possible. My audience has been my grandson for years. He is now 25, but he was my audience when he was 10. If I could not say it in a way that was understandable to him, I needed to go back to the drawing board and make it accessible. So someone listening is going to go, she do not talk like the (19)60s, she do not look like the (19)60s. I know. Adopt protective coloration. And what that means is exactly like Elizabeth Katie said, this gray hair is my passage into passing. It is like I belong to the Rotary Club, and as a Rotarian, there is all kinds of possibilities of making connections with people. And what I find is that the ideas of the (19)60s just simply makes sense. And if they are presented in a way that does not frighten people or that does not create separateness, join my club and you have to accept all this. And I have learned a lot of this from my grandchildren and from younger people to speak in a language that really... I mean, I seriously go through this process with my grandkids every time I am with them. I listen to their music, I watch their movies, I go shopping with them to see what page they are on with that. I ask them to bring me up to speed technologically. And in the process of that, I learn what they care about, what their issues are, what their vision is, what they want to see happen in the world. And I take direction from that.
SM (00:12:42):
When you look at the boomers, again, one of the things that was awful often another criticism of the boomers is that even though they were a generation of 70 to 74 million depending on what book you read, is that only really only 15 percent really participated. So you are talking about 85 percent that were not involved in any capacity and in the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the civil rights, the environmental, gay and lesbian, all the movements, and people like to use that as a criticism. But I have always looked upon it as a positive because when you consider 15 percent of 70 million, that is a heck of a lot of people. But have you heard that criticism?
SW (00:13:32):
Yeah.
SM (00:13:33):
And often-
SW (00:13:33):
And it is silly.
SM (00:13:33):
And actually they may even be doing it today's generation, they always try to put percentages under.
SW (00:13:38):
And it is percentages and invisibility. How do you stop a revolution that is already in progress? Well, you deny it is happening. And today it is going on, bingo in front of our eyes. And what is wonderful is that I think because it is under the radar screen, the advantage of it is that there is this whole infrastructure that is being created, that once the old tumbles, the infrastructure will be in place. Everything from what we eat to how we interact with each other, to how we live in our houses, to how we... I mean, the infrastructure of the important stuff, how we educate, that is in place. And when the trappings fall off, if we survive, I think the infrastructure is tight. But there is a couple of things about that. The silliness of, come on, how many people made the American Revolution? That was a disgustingly small-
SM (00:14:41):
Very small.
SW (00:14:43):
...Of leadership, and it was not diverse. Now the (19)60s was more diverse, but what is wonderful about the movement today is it is so diverse and it is so multidimensional that nobody can get a handle on it. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot be sought out and systematically deconstructed or attacked the way that the government attacked the (19)60s. You identify the leaders. You place drugs in there, you send out bogus information about them, all the stuff we know the government was doing now through COINTELPRO. We know that the government systematically, and we know that they systematically murdered the Black Panthers at the same time that they are destabilizing governments all over Central America. I mean, now that was in the (19)60s. Shocking news that was like, could it really be true? Could it really be true? And we had to have it proven to ourselves every way until Sunday before we believe it, I think. But we were the canaries in the mines. We were the ones who were saying first, it is going on, it is going down. And I think now that is general knowledge. But I think the other thing about the (19)60s and about it being a small percentage, Samuel J. May, who is one of my favorite dead guys, I love this guy. Somebody, I think it was Garrett Smith, said, "Heaven is sweeter with May's presence." After he died. Samuel J. May was one of the most principled, thoughtful, progressive men that I have ever known.
SM (00:16:41):
When did he live?
SW (00:16:42):
19th century. But he wrote a book after, he was the Unitarian minister here in Syracuse, and a good friend of Matilda Jocelyn Gages. He wrote after the Civil War, a book called Recollections of our Late Great Anti-Slavery Conflict. And he is furious because people did not step forward when they should have, including the Unitarians. And he names-names of people who voted the wrong way on the issue regularly. And his contention is there never would have been a civil war if enough people would have stood up, and especially if the churches would have opposed slavery. And so he is holding the, as a minister, he is holding the church's feet to the fire. But the standard thing he talks about and that everybody that does 19th century anti-slavery history talks about, is that after the Civil War, everybody's home was a station on the Underground Railroad. And similarly today, everybody was involved in the (19)60s. And my question to people who say, "Yeah, I was there." Is can I see your FBI file? I should have brought mine.
SM (00:18:03):
I have never gone down to look at mine. I know one of my friends did and he was very disappointed because he said it was all marked up and he could not read anything.
SW (00:18:14):
Yeah.
SM (00:18:14):
He could not read anything.
SW (00:18:15):
No, mine is about this thick. And I take it in and show my students. I did the FBI and CIA both, and I really encourage you to do it. You need to do it for this book. You need to ask for your FBI file to see if you have a record. And it is really important. And my kids looking at it, it really helped them to frame what was going on during that time. And I take it in to show my students. They are so afraid, they are indentured servants today because they are indentured to their parents. If they are at a private college like SU, and their parents are investing that much money in their education, they have to perform and they feel like they are very constrained to do anything. And I say, "Look it, there is life after, and you keep doing it. You keep doing it." But I think it is this idea that everyone after the fact wants to jump on the bandwagon, but what it felt like to be in that moment and the fear of it, my kids will testify to that. We had to leave our house two weeks before Christmas because the local newspaper in Sacramento, the Sacramento Union, which no longer exists, it was a very conservative paper. They did a front-page story on an underground newspaper that we were doing, and they got it confused with, we had gone through a split and then there was Weatherman, and they said that the Weatherman paper was being published at the house where we were.
SM (00:19:55):
Oh my gosh.
SW (00:19:56):
So at the end, they basically say the cops cannot do anything. The judges are too liberal, their hands are tied, the newspaper is preaching drugs and murder, and it is published in a gray frame house on the corner of 23rd and L Street. Was like-
SM (00:20:15):
Wait-
SW (00:20:15):
...When it was a call for vigilante action. So no, going through that kind of a fear thing with two little kids and then having the FBI come to visit, and having the FBI try to talk... The FBI went to the landlord and tried to scare him about who I was. I had never broken a law. I opposed the war, and was part of an underground paper, but the kind of political... To live through that kind of... I developed asthma at the age of 26, and it was purely from the pressure, the fear of that time. Now I am white. Imagine what the Panthers were going through at that time. And so for someone to come along now who did not put themselves on the line and say, "I was there in the (19)60s." Really offends me. I think it is a deep offense to claim a part of something that you never really put yourself through.
SM (00:21:21):
That is the same thing about veterans who are lying that they served in Vietnam, because that has been a big issue. Stolen Valor, which was the book that came out that Vietnam vets, they kind of hid themselves when they first came home. And now it is very popular to be a Vietnam vet. And well, we have even seen Joe Ellis, the great historian, why? Why would he lie to his students at Harvard about him? And he has got a Pulitzer Prize. People were shocked, of course, he is such a great historian. He admitted his wrong and he is back. But it is interesting, you raised some really good points there. Talk the talk and walk the walk. And that is the most important thing.
SW (00:22:01):
And that is a real important connection that it is like I feel like I am part of... I am a veteran. I belong to the Veteran Feminists of America. And I think it is important we call ourselves that because we have battle scars from being in the front lines of the feminist revolution and the anti-war activist's the same thing. We carry, and I do not mean to put my work as extremely important. I was not arrested. I was in a number of demonstrations, but I did not do CD. I had little kids. But I think to put a perspective on it, is to look at people claiming once something becomes sort of in that they were part of it, whether it is the innless of having fought in Vietnam or the innless of having fought against the Vietnam War, it diminishes the work of those who actually were there and doing that.
SM (00:23:13):
Those are very important points. And when you look at the boomer generation itself, what would you list as some characteristics, some of the strengths, qualities that both male and female and all ethnic groups had at that particular time? Just their strengths and maybe some of their weaknesses.
SW (00:23:33):
I think an openness to new experience. I left the conventional marriage. I was raised in a Republican household in a small Midwest town. My parents were high in the church, my dad was a banker. And the openness to change, the recreating ourselves, could not have done it without the support of each other. There is nothing individual about the revolutionary. And it was a leaderless movement in many significant ways. The women's movement really just emerged spontaneously, through spontaneous generation. We were all doing the same stuff all over and sometimes did not even know it until later. But I think that openness, a willingness to really go through major changes. A connectedness, a sharing, a creation of community, understanding ourselves out of the individualism of the (19)50s as community creatures, as creatures of community. And then as in the 19th century, the influence of Native Americans is extraordinary. Extraordinary. My work is on the influence of the Haudenosaunee women on the women's rights movement. And I am doing a longer book now on the influence generally on the basics of life on Native Americans. I mean, other people have done a lot of this work. I am focusing it specifically on women and looking at it through that dimension. But I think in the (19)60s there were ways that, as the movements sprang up and the connection between them, the learning from each other and the outsider voices coming together and sharing experience, I think there was a significant Native American influence on our sense of who we are, creatures of community rather than individuals. And I think that some of the weaknesses were a joy, another strength, joy. The marijuana for me was an opening into a world of spiritual that I did not get in the congregational church in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was that passing of the roach in community that you took one puff, you did not Bogart, you shared with your neighbors and you experienced. It took us out of the framework that we were in as drugs have always done, psychedelics in a spiritual way. Once the mafia took over and once the neighborhood drug dealers were driven out by the big drug dealers, and once the paraquat was sprayed on the marijuana in Mexico, and once people started, and most significantly for me, once people started smoking marijuana by themselves, that was the end of the drug revolution. A lot of people that I knew got really injured by drugs and got strung out and it was not all good, but there was a moment of spirituality with it, a moment that opened us to another dimension that we sure as hell did not have growing up in the (19)50s.
SM (00:27:51):
Do you feel, I am going to get into the question on the (19)50s in a minute. Do you feel the feelings that a lot of boomers had, including [inaudible] and others, even when I was at Binghamton, that we were unique? We were different than any other generation in history, but I kind of already knew a little bit of history because I knew what went on in the (19)30s and there were a lot of student protest movements at that time too. And so I knew we were not unique in every way because there was an anti-war at that particular time. But that, do you think that is a weakness or a strength? The uniqueness. I have gotten unbelievable responses to this question when I asked. The boomers thought they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to change everything. They were going to end... They were going to bring equality, they were going to end injustice. They were going to be the cure-all to all the ills of the world. They are going to bring peace to the world, love, brotherhood and all the other things. But in reality, that has not happened, so.
SW (00:28:55):
Well, it has not happened yet. It is still in process. Revolution, I think we were essentially right, but I think our timetable was off. We believed in instant revolution and they do not happen that way.
SM (00:29:14):
That could be a weakness, the concept of instant revolution.
SW (00:29:17):
Yeah. And I think that was, we were wrong about the timing. The thing about seeing ourselves as unique, I think was both a strength and a weakness. And as a strength, I think it allowed us to break from tradition and create our own path. And that is what I think is young people are doing that and continuing to do it and have continued to do it from the (19)60s. I mean, the punk movement in the (19)80s, that was another wave, another reinventing. And now into the fourth wave of feminism and feminisms, each group of women coming from a different culture, finding their own description of and their own way of feminism. And that uniqueness, that sense of we are doing something different, we are, was part of the energy that drove us. But I think there is a pain that comes in when you ask that question, because I go immediately to some of the meetings when some of the old lefties who had been hanging in there from the (19)30s and (19)40s when we would be in a meeting with them. And the arrogance of youth, the arrogance of what do these people have to teach us anyway? I mean, now I hang out with dead people all the time. Because I learned so much from them and learn constantly about vision and endurance and focus and the perspective I need. When I was arrested for my grandson, when he was born at the Seneca Army Depot, I did CD by myself as Matilda Jocelyn Gage because I had to do it quickly. I had to get back to teach two days later. So I had to do it right then and there was not anybody else quite ready. There was one woman that thought she might, so they arrested me and I was dressed as Matilda Johnson Gage and gave her name, but I had a picture of Michael in my clothing and they strip searched me and all that stuff. But Michael was right there by my heart. And when I was in the detention area, they kept me for about several hours and I was handcuffed and it gets uncomfortable after a few hours and was not the ones that I could... When I did CD at the Nevada test site, I could slip my hands out, because I-
SW (00:32:03):
...slip my hands out because they handcuffed me and I had on a thick, you know the trick, you have on a thick sweater and so you pull the sweater up and you are out of the handcuffs. I went back and got arrested a second time, but once was his gauge and once was his [inaudible]. But anyway, so when I was arrested and I am by myself in this holding tank and this is in the (19)80s, (19)84, and I cannot sit down because there is no chairs or anything. And I am standing and it is hot and I have got this 19th century costume on and my hands are behind me and I do not know what the hell's going on in the other room. And I am getting a little nervous. I am really isolated. There is nobody with me, nobody is singing strong songs with me, like you need to when you are doing CD. And then there was a moment when one of my hands I realized was reaching back to Matilda Joslyn Gage and one of my hands was reaching forward to my grandson who had just been born. And I thought, I am just a conduit. That is all. I am just the conduit between the past and the future. I am just passing through. And in that moment, I knew who I was and what my place was. [inaudible] ever known, ever known in life. And that was one of those transforming moments. My grandson now has become the person that I am passing everything on to. He is my favorite person in the world. He is a writer and we write together, we are doing some projects together, but he has grown up with the idea that his grandma loved him so much that she was willing to be arrested to make the world safer for him. And the only problem with it is that I have two other grandkids that have been born since, and I have not been arrested for them yet. And so at one point my daughter said, Alex thinks that you love Michael more than you love her because you have been arrested twice for him and you have never been arrested for. So what I am doing with them now, they are teenagers, is asking them to think about what issues they care most about. And I am not going to do it while I am the CD or the ED of the Gage Foundation, but when I finish this work, then I want them to have something that they want me to make a stand for in their name, in their honor.
SM (00:34:46):
That is beautiful.
SW (00:34:47):
And Michael actually wants to do CD of the Nevada test site again, since they have started underground nuclear testing.
SM (00:34:53):
You remind me so much of just in the conversations I had with Daniel Barry and Philip [inaudible] and Elizabeth McAllister from Jonah House down in Baltimore. We never saw Phillip very much because he was in jail most of the time. I took students down to Jonah to meet Elizabeth, but I can remember at school some of the Catholic workers that were just secretaries in the department could not understand why I was taking students to go meet these terrible people who would go to jail knowing that [inaudible] had, not Daniel, he never married, but Philip and Elizabeth had three kids at home. Well, and they got mad at me just because I was introducing them to them and they did not like their lifestyle and they were not being good parents. But when the students met them, it was an experience they will never, ever forget. It was about commitment, it was about risk taking. And it was also what Dr. King used to always profess for those in the nonviolent movement is you oftentimes have to pay a price for your beliefs. And those prices are you must be willing to go to jail.
SW (00:36:09):
And Matilda Joslyn Gage said, you must be willing to give up parents, family reputation, and you will not see the end. You are planting the seed and those who come after you will enter into the harvest.
SM (00:36:25):
Wow. That is her right there, is not it?
SW (00:36:29):
That is her. Yeah. And this is her granddaughter, Matilda Jewel Gage. This is a woman that I worked with for 17 years, organizing her grandma's papers, taking her, recording her stories. She remembered her grandmother. And this is me as a graduate student at the University of California.
SM (00:36:54):
Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah. I have been out there.
SW (00:36:57):
Writing my dissertation on Gage, and I was standing on the front porch of the Gage home the first time I had ever been there. Came on a research trip. And I keep this here because I remember that young woman standing on those steps being photographed by the Fayetteville historian, local historian, and thinking this house should not be privately owned. It was privately owned, and this needs to be, there is so much history here and this woman is so important. This house needs to be open to the public. Never in my life thought that I would be the one to do it, but when the house started becoming rental property, I came back every year to kind of check on it and do lectures here and keep in touch with Gage and the upstate radical reform. Dead people that I love and hang out with. And as the house was starting to go downhill as rental property, something had to be done about it. And so I moved back here and started the Gage Foundation to raise the money to save the house. And as we sit here, the house is owned by the Gage Foundation and the restoration will be completed by the end of next month, by the end of December. And then we start doing the interpretation. And this is a center where the ideas of Gage will... The (19)60s, the reincarnation of the 1850s and (19)60s and (19)70s and (19)80s. The ongoing struggle for justice is the story of that house. And that is my life's work. My legacy. Gage has been my life's work.
SM (00:38:50):
Is there a biography? Has there been an in-depth, like there is a brand new one out on Elizabeth Katie Stanton.
SW (00:38:56):
Not the long one. I have not written it yet. There is one out that is not very good. Gage and I wrote a short piece. What I will do when I finish up this work, you know how hard it is to be doing and raising the money to do this house and also doing the restoration and keeping everything going with programming and everything. I do not have much time to write, but I have started at the suggestion of Ken Burns, script writer, Jeff. Cannot think of his last name.
SM (00:39:35):
He was in Philadelphia last week, Ken Burns.
SW (00:39:39):
And his script writer. I wrote the faculty guide, Not for Ourselves Alone, you know the story of Stanton and Anthony and I was in that film and... Is it Jeff Warren, who writes all Ken's scripts, he suggested, well, at the opening, at the grand opening of the house of the film at the Waldorf Historia, I sat with the folks from Florentine Films because I had gotten to know him when I did the faculty guide. And Jeff said, I sat by him and he was kind of a quiet guy, and he said, I am sorry we did not include more about Gage in the film. And I said, yeah, I wish you would have. And he said, well, not having a biography was the problem. And I said, well, now the problem is that with Stanton and Anthony becoming one word with this film and becoming perceived as the leaders of the movement and you do not bring a third one in. If I write the biography, she is going to be this non-sequitur out here and it is going to be, oh, that is really interesting. Now let us get back to the real story. He said, do a triple biography. So I have got about a half a book written just from their childhood, looking at the differences between these three women.
SM (00:41:11):
This leads into a question on the tape. I will turn it over here in a second. But the question of movements that that is another quality, but what I consider to be a strength of the (19)60s generation is the involvement in many movements and the creation of some of the movements. Of course, the Civil Rights Movement was already ongoing. And then of course the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicana Movement, Native American Movement, the Environmental Movement, they all kind of looked, and the Women's Movement. They all kind of looked to the Civil Rights Movement as an example and a role model.
SW (00:41:48):
That was the only one I really wanted to get because...
SM (00:41:51):
On the movements, a lot of these movements came about women, one of the big sensitive issues in the civil rights movement, and I know this from reading a lot about Dr. King, was the sexism within the movements and African-American leaders at that time. But even scholars have come to our campus have talked about it. It is a very sensitive issue. And obviously in the anti-war movement is the same way that women were oftentimes treated as second class citizens. There were the Dorothy Heights of the world. There were people like that that were a little different than a lot of them. But so those two particular movements kind of looked at women's secondary roles and I think away a lot of students of the (19)60s or people that studied it, looked at, well, the women's movement came about as a result of the bad treatment they received in the anti-war movement. So they went off and created the women's movement on their own. Could you correct that myth? Because there is a lot of perceptions out there that since women were not treated equally in those two movements, they had to create their own movement. And then looking at all these movements, because Native American Movement was very important, [inaudible], we have had several scholars on our campus talking about that particular movement. Certainly Ward Churchill's been a controversial figure with things he has written. But even the Native American, the Chicano movement and the Gay and Lesbian movement, and of course the Environmental Movement and Earth Day, he said, what is the truth in terms of what I just mentioned about the break and the creation, that was the greatest impetus for the movement was the way they were treated in civil rights and the anti-war movement. And where is the link between women and boomer women in particular, in all these other movements? Were they male dominant in the Native American movement, in the environmental movement? I know you think of Gaylord Nelson, who I interviewed for this project and Dennis Hayes, but I do not see any women that were in the organizing group. And I see Russell Means I see these male names coming out in just about all the movements. And just your thoughts on...
SW (00:44:06):
I think there is so many different paths to so many different directions to come at to begin to look at what is going on in the center of that question. So let me just come at it from a couple different ways. One, the 19th century movement came about because women were excluded from the world Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 in London. That is the simple answer. And the simple answer is that the same thing happened in the 19th, in the 20th century. Women were, as you said, second class citizens in the civil rights movement. And there is some truth in that. That is the simplest level of explanation. But I think beyond that, that once you get a sense of liberation, once you get out of the box and you start seeing this is what it would feel like to be free, you realize that you are not free. And so I think it was not just male, female, the race dynamic entered in each of those movements in the Women's Rights Movement, the Gay and Lesbian movement, while gender entered into all the ethnic movements. The contradictions begin to become apparent once you are in motion. If you are in stasis, if you are just sitting tight, if nothing is going on like the (19)50s when there was essentially not a strong movement of change, those contradictions are not as apparent. But once you are in motion, and the truth for me personally, from that comes when my daughter that I just got off the phone with Beth, was at a women's rights meeting with me, women's liberation meeting in (19)69 probably. And we were talking about what do we need on campus? What do we want on campus? Well, we should get a childcare center. Well, how are we going to do that? Well, let us get kids to come in and take them into the administration building and the administrators will then see the need for it. And well, not too many of us have kids. How are we going to get kids? Well, let us rent them, let us see if we would rent kids. And everybody is laughing. Beth comes up to me and says, I want to talk to you.
SM (00:46:40):
Okay, there you go.
SW (00:46:47):
So Beth comes up to, and there is like tears in her eyes and she says, I want to talk to you. And I said, sure, honey, what do you want? She said, no, and this was a child that I did not know, and there was a change in her. We went outside and she said, you are talking all the time about women being liberated from men. You are talking about women being, I cannot remember her exact language, respect and being their own people. And now you are talking about renting kids. If you are going to talk about renting kids, I am no longer part of women's liberation. And I tried to comfort her. She said, no, it is like you got to listen to me. And that was the start of my kids forming a children's liberation group in Sacramento. And they lectured, they came up with a bill of rights of children. We formed an alternative school, the Sunshine Children's Collective, and the children were involved in the decision-making process. We would be in a meeting altogether and the kids would say, kids caucus. And they would go outside and go gather themselves and come back in and say, the children demand that. And they would say, you are treating us in this way and we do not like this. This is what we want to have happen. And that changed the way that I did, how I raised them, everything that happened with them, we ended up dividing our money each month after the bills were made and they made their own decisions about their own money. And then it is like once you get the concept of liberation, you immediately apply it to your own life. And I think that is the deeper truth that happened with each of these. And the wonder, and I think the strength of it was that I do not think that was an uncomfortable or an unfortunate or a problematic part of the movement at all. I think that was the richest part of the movement and continues to be. Where we in the woman's movement are constantly looking at our racism. And it becomes a working principle. Is racism at the heart of the woman's movement in the 19th century? By 1890, it was, and that is a story we tell at the Gage house that is not told elsewhere. The racism of the conservative women was allowed into the movement, and it was allowed to reign. And so in those parades in the teens, 1912, 1913, the Negro women are marching at the back of the parade if they are allowed in at all. And the white women are in front wearing white. I will never appear in white in any sort of reenactment or anything because it is an absolute call to white supremacy. And the movement was making the argument give women the right to vote because white women outnumbered Negroes and immigrants and women's suffrage is a way to maintain white, native foreign supremacy. Now, that is a truth that has to be faced head on. The racism and movement in the (19)60s needs to be faced head on and acknowledged and that is how you work through it. And my work became, in the (19)80s and especially in the (19)90s, I started doing a lot of work with Native American folks, just being friends and figuring out, ended up moving back to South Dakota for a time, take care of my dad after my mom died and did workshops on racism and cultural awareness with Lakota friends. And that has been a real training ground for me, recognizing the depth of my own racism. And for me now, it is like become a recovering alcoholic. I negotiate my racism day to day, but I wear it out there. It is not like I am not racist. Yeah, I am racist. I live in a racist culture. So denial is a way of avoiding it. And I think we did a lot of denying in the movement. The men did a lot of denying of sexism. White women did a lot of denying of racism. White men did a lot of denying of everything. And I think that the power structures, once we began to understand this is all about who has the power, and of course men are going to be sexist unless they are fighting it. And of course white women are going to be racist unless we own it, acknowledge it, and deliberately work against it. And I think that was the strength, was the confronting of all of our prejudices that were built on systems of power. And not just prejudice, but the power to maintain those. That is what racism is. It is not just prejudice, it is the power system. And so examining those power dynamics and I think realizing they have to be destroyed. And ultimately you have to remove power as a concept.
SM (00:52:16):
I think what you are saying, you remember Dr. King gave that speech on Vietnam. He was criticized in the African American community, but he saw the whiter picture. He saw all colors yellow over in Vietnam and black here in the United States. And so that I can remember the movement, the anti-war movement in the late (19)60s. And I think Kent State is the epitome of it in terms of that African-American students did not want to be seen or had their picture taken at that particular protest. And I think it was mostly it was all white students. And there were very few African-Americans at that particular time. They were separating from the anti-war movement and they were going strictly toward the civil rights movement and toward issues of racism whereas the white steels were continuing to be involved in the anti-war movement. So there was a big break at that time too. And the historic moments like Stokely Carmichael standing next to Martin Luther King, your time has passed. And the debate between Byard Rustin and Malcolm X, which was another one, your time has passed by Rustin, who was from Westchester, we had a national conference with him. He was one of those rare individuals that put white women in positions of responsibility in the march on Washington. Because Rochelle Horowitz, another great female leader, was a young, early twenties person who was in charge of all the buses coming in. And he was not very good at giving direction, but he had inherent faith in young people. And he went to President Kennedy, and I think it was President Kennedy asked Byard Rustin, who was in charge of all of the buses and everything? Oh, Rochelle Horowitz. He had never heard of her, but he was proud of her because she was given a heavy responsibility. So you can make a very relevant point here. What question that comes up that is a very important part of the interview process and that is this healing. Now, I want to read this to you. I have to read this to make sure I do not miss any point here. I want to preface this by saying several years back I took a group of students to visit Senator Edmond Muskey down in Washington. This is about a year and a half before he passed away. And he had just gotten out of the hospital. He was not feeling well. He had seen the Ken Burns series and he talked about it during that meeting. And we were able to get these meetings with the former senator because I knew Gaylord Nelson and Gaylord helped us meet nine senators. I am a big fan of Gaylord Nelson, former senator from Wisconsin. But here is the question, do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth. Divisions between black and white. Divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. What role has the wall played in healing the divisions, not only within the veteran population, but in the nation as a whole? Do you feel that the bloomer generation will go to its grave, like the civil war generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made this statement "time heals all wounds" the truth. And I just want to say that I have asked this to everybody, and I have had unbelievable responses to this, but I will mention what Gaylord Nelson said to me. He said, people do not walk around Washington DC on their sleeve that they have not healed. But in terms of the body politic, it changed Washington and the United States forever. That is the way he responded to it. But just your thoughts on the healing. Is there an issue still in this country on this issue? And should we care about people going to their graves with still issues?
SW (00:56:18):
I think that I cannot speak for what everybody is experiencing. I can speak for what I am experiencing and what I have experienced. The healing for me has been going through those contradictions. That has been the healing process. The healing process is the process of negotiating, how do I continue to fight sexism without always taking a confrontational stand as the only mechanism? And I employ a whole arsenal now, humor from native women. I have really learned to, it is like, you just got to tease these guys. It is like if you come from a position of power as native women do a position of real authority, you just kind of tease them a little bit. And I have watched native women bring down, I will not even name names of men, but just they know these women are in charge and all it takes a little bit of teasing and boom. There. So that is one tactic that I have learned. But I think that the healing of, it is to assume that it was healthy before. It is to assume that it was and something happened that now has to be healed. Well, it was really unhealthy. The healing needed to happen out of the (19)50s. It needed to happen out of that false unity and the breaking of that. And did we do it perfectly? God no, we broke each other's hearts. We hurt each other terribly. Those are some of the scars that we all carry. But what did you do past that point? We did not know because we did not know better. We have better skills now. People have better skills. They work with things better. Native Americans have always been able to really deal with contradictions in very respectful ways, in my experience. Just the people that I have known, the communities that I have been part of or been allowed to participate in, I should say. I have really learned other ways of dealing with difference that are not [inaudible], are not like the confrontational politics. That was what we were fed. That is what we learned. That is the only way we knew to deal with difference. That is not the only way to deal with difference. And that is really a very patriarchal way to deal with difference. There are a lot more effective ways and hearing each other, we are doing dialogue in the Gage home. And that is where you sit down with people you really disagree with and you hear what is going on with them. And you make a commitment that you are going to listen and that person makes a commitment. They are going to listen to you and you are going to hear each other. That is where healing happens. You do not necessarily come out agreeing, but you come out understanding and remembering the humanity of each other. And so I think that the healing is the process. The healing is the, we are healing not from the (19)60s. We are healing from the (19)50s. We are healing from the healthy breaking of the idea that we are all one and that everybody is equal and everybody is not equal. There is no level playing field. We have got to create a level playing field. And that means going through culturally and personally our own prejudices and the desire to hold onto the power that we have that those prejudices support.
SM (01:00:22):
We all know about the generation gap between the (19)60s and the World War II generation because lot has been written on it. I would like your thoughts on it, but the key thing I want to ask is, and I have asked this too, is what was it about the (19)50s, say you are a white... I grew up in Cortland, New York as a little boy. I grew up in Cortland through sixth grade and moved down toward Binghamton. And I did not see an African-American in any of the Parker schools where I went to school. And so when I think of the (19)50s though, I still think of very good times. My parents were always there. We had great Christmases, Thanksgiving, birthdays, PTA, everybody, even though we had the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation that did not seem to affect any of the kids that I remember. We played baseball. Everything was hunky dory, everything felt great. We had black and white TV, we had the Mickey Mouse Club. We grew up with Howdy Doody. We saw the first Cowboys and Indians or everything we were raised on. Of course, the Indians from Penn, you know, read later on. They were always the bad guy. And I saw Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, oh, Hop Along Cassidy, all the things that the kids in the (19)50s grew up with. And the question I have always asked myself is if it was such a great, when parents tried to give everything to their kids, and we were not talking about every ethnic group here now, because in the African American community, obviously it was different in some communities, but it seemed to be in all these issues of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, you were cognizant of McCarthy. Some of the bad things even happened in Washington as a little kid. Why did this young people rebel in the (19)60s? Because in their elementary school years, right up to about 1960 is when they were first going to seventh grade, the front edge boomers, why did they, all of a sudden, why did these things rebel? Why are they rebelling against their parents who tried to give them so much? And I only reflect upon it because I was pretty, must be pretty naive and pretty ignorant. And I think a lot of people were, because I never put two and two together as a little boy until I started getting seventh, eighth and ninth grade. And I started putting two and two and together on a lot of issues that were happening in the world. But what was it about those (19)50s that was showed really no sign that these kids were going to be rebellious?
SW (01:03:07):
I think you experienced it from the privileged position of a white male in a racially segregated community where you did not hear your mother's frustration, maybe, at not being able to fulfill herself. My mother was a very frustrated woman. My father was the patriarch of the family, and that was the way it was supposed to be. My mother should have been out there doing all kinds of things in the world, and instead she was on Valium. How many women during the (19)50s were on Valium? The privilege that we experienced, I grew up in a middle class family, had everything I wanted. Totally dysfunctional family, but everything was provided for, and my brother grew up in the sort of family that you grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky dory, it was...
SW (01:04:03):
...You grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky-dory. It was joyful. It was fun. It was playing out here, doing all this. That is the white male experience of the (19)50s. My sister and I experienced a totally different childhood in the (19)50s. And I think that the discontent that grew, what you are describing was not a universal experience. That was a white male middle class experience. And you were kept in a privileged position where you did not have to hear other voices. My brother had no idea my mother was a despondent, frustrated, desperate woman. He did not know that. He totally did not. He was totally protected from that knowledge. My sister and I experienced it daily. I think that the 50s, for a certain group... And it was not that it was either great or it was awful, but I think that the contradictions were there of the unhappiness, the injustice, the things that were not right. I was watching for communist airplanes flying over Aberdeen, South Dakota. The Girl Scouts had duty up on the top of the Sherman Hotel, which was the tallest building in town, which was five stories. And when I screwed around and was not watching this skies carefully at night was certain that I was going to be responsible for the destruction of the United States because I failed to see that communist aircraft coming through. We did the duck and cover. We did the... And all that is funny now, but there was an earnestness about it. It was like we were the greatest country in the world. I did not know until I was in high school that there were concentration camps for Japanese in this country. Once you start getting the information, once you start knowing about the McCarthy era... I had nightmares in my childhood, and the nightmare was that my father was being chased by communists. And then it was a recurring nightmare and there was one that was even worse. It was the same nightmare, but at the end, my father turned around smiling and joined the communists/ and years of therapy, I could never figure out what was going on with this. But you know what it was? Once I figured out, my parents were friends with Karl Mundt, who was Senator McCarthy's right hand man. And my dad, as a Republican banker was saying, "Well, communism is just another economic system and it is one that makes most sense in developing countries". And my mother would weep in whale and say, "Fred, do not let anybody hear you say that. You are going to go to prison." There was a hell of a lot of shit going on in the (19)50s. And my brother was oblivious to it. My brother continues to. And my brother never became part of any movement. He went on to become a Republican banker himself. And I love him, I adore him, and he is very generous spirited, but he took a different path because he had a different childhood. My sister and I, in varying degrees have, become involved in social justice movements. And I was the one in the family who went the furthest out, and I think it was because I was the most discontent. And then tried to do a marriage in a traditional way, and that did not work.
SM (01:08:12):
Well as a kid, my dad used to win trips to Florida because he worked for Prudential. And I can remember something was not right, because all of a sudden as we drove to Florida, I saw all this poverty in the south. Well, that was a shocker to me. And since I was a history kid from the beginning, I started putting two and two together and I did it for the rest of my life.
SW (01:08:34):
So you can [inaudible] those kind of... For me, being in the fifth grade and traveling south, and there were drinking fountains with colored water in them. I go, "Whoa, that is so cool. I am want to drink colored water." So I went up to the drinking fountain and the water was not colored. And that was when I learned that there were different drinking fountains for... I was like, "Come on, what is this?" So yeah, those kind of experiences of seeing...
SM (01:09:09):
Do you think the beats had anything to do, in terms of a lot of the boomers, were they cognizant of this-
SW (01:09:17):
I sure was.
SM (01:09:18):
...Beats and [inaudible]
SW (01:09:19):
I mean, I cannot talk about Boomers in that respect, but I can talk about beats.
SM (01:09:23):
How important were the beats in the (19)50s?
SW (01:09:25):
Here I am in Aberdeen, South Dakota in high school reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the school grounds to my friends dressed in... I had blonde black stockings and I got a false long braid to put on my blonde hair. And I got kicked out of school. I am reading... You know Ferlinghetti.
SM (01:09:53):
Oh, yeah. He still runs the bookstore out there.
SW (01:09:53):
Yeah, City Lights. And I am reading this really, really wonderful poetry about "To taste still warm upon the ground, the spilled sperm seed". And what are they going to do with me? I am the daughter of the banker in town. So they sent me home because of the false ponytail, because of the false braid. What could they bust me on? But my brother introduced me to the Beat Poets, and I am reading Ginsburg, I am reading Ferlinghetti. I was really influenced by the Beats, by the Beat Generation and by their writing. I longed to go to San Francisco.
SM (01:10:40):
Yeah, he is still out there. I think he is 92 years old now.
SW (01:10:43):
Is he really?
SM (01:10:44):
He still runs the bookstore. It is amazing.
SW (01:10:47):
Is that true?
SM (01:10:48):
Yeah, he is-
SW (01:10:48):
I have got to take my grandson there, my younger grandson, because he is doing a report right now on beat.
SM (01:10:54):
Well go into the computer and hit City Lights Bookstore and you will see it. I knew Ferlinghetti was still alive, but I did not know he was still connected to the store. He is.
SW (01:11:07):
I am taking my grandson.
SM (01:11:09):
And Pete Seeger is 91, and they see these great people that are...
SW (01:11:15):
And still going.
SM (01:11:16):
Oh yeah, Pete's-
SW (01:11:17):
The Ruth Putter Welcome Center here has named for a woman, who I am not going to tell you her exact age because she does not come out with it, but she is in Pete Seeger's sort of generation. She is a social justice activist and she funded the building of that, and she has been a social justice activist her whole life. And she is now photographing it because she is a photographer. And so when the house opens, there will be a Ruth Putter exhibit of the creation of the Ruth Putter Welcome Center. Of course you know what she is photographing: the workers. The workers in that house, I have been meeting with them, take stuff for them to eat and drink since they started the work. And do you know about Gage and do you know about this? They are now Gage scholars.
SM (01:12:06):
Are you going to have a big opening here?
SW (01:12:08):
Yeah. October 8th through 10th, the weekend.
SM (01:12:11):
Ah, I will come.
SW (01:12:11):
Oh, wonderful.
SM (01:12:12):
I will come.
SW (01:12:12):
That will be wonderful.
SM (01:12:13):
And I will ask my niece and her husband to come, and I will say hi to you and I will be here.
SW (01:12:18):
And you know who the featured guests are going to be?
SM (01:12:20):
Who?
SW (01:12:20):
The workers.
SM (01:12:22):
They should be.
SW (01:12:22):
So that is where... So is the (19)60s dead? Do people from the 60s still carry a consciousness? In everything we do.
SM (01:12:32):
Have they done a good job with their kids and grandkids in terms of sharing? Obviously you have, so you-
SW (01:12:40):
You know what-
SM (01:12:41):
But do you think that as a generation, they have done a good job of educating their kids and now their grandchildren?
SW (01:12:47):
You are going to be the answer to that. When you interview 120 people, you are going to have a better sense of it. Because who knows this? You will find this out through asking us, and I will tell you my story, which is all I can tell you. My Christmas present I already got for... One of the Christmas presents for my 16-year-old grandson, the one I am going to take to City Lights, is a subscription to Z Magazine. That is what he wanted.
SM (01:13:14):
Howard Zen is in there a lot.
SW (01:13:18):
Yeah. And I am going [inaudible] he has got a teacher that is turning him onto this. I rented through Netflix, the last film I saw was Flow about the destruction of water and the commercialization of water because my grandson told me to watch that film. So now he and I will have a conversation about that. It is my grandson, Michael, is the one who I pass all this on to. My granddaughter, Alex, fiercely independent young woman. My daughter Beth has established her own nonprofit, does animal rescue in California and large animal rescue, horses, saves the lives of horses. And then does programs with kids at risk, autistic kids, brings them together. Also, the sheriff's department keeps their horses there. So she does these programs that bring together the kids that are getting arrested with the cops, working together with the horses and brings together all kinds of class, race, gender, diversity, differently abled. It is like, here is the vision of the world. And this is the girl who said, "I am never going to be like my mother."
SM (01:14:57):
I will let you get your [inaudible] or something.
SW (01:15:01):
So my daughter, she went through this whole period where she said, "I am never going to be like my mother". The (19)60s were really hard on her. She was scared through a lot of it with the kind of pressure we were under. My son... And that way the kids would have totally different experiences, the (19)60s were the best time in my son's life. So what traumatized my daughter empowered my son, and he went on to, for a number of years, had a coffee house because he loved going to the coffee house in the (19)60s. So in the (19)80s he has a coffee house where he created community in the way that the coffee houses in the (19)60s did.
SM (01:16:00):
Now I am going to cough. I got a cough too.
SW (01:16:02):
The cough is catching.
SM (01:16:04):
Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you in talking about in influence and qualities that parents pass on to kids is the issue of looking back at the Boomer generation again, I can remember when I was in college in the Psych 101 class and the psychology professor saying to our class, "Let us talk about the issue of trust today". And he would ask the question how important we felt trust was in our lives. Then he said basically, if you cannot trust others, then you will not be a success in life. Trust is an important quality. But then you look at the Boomers because a lot of the Boomers might be defined as a very distrustful generation because of the lies that were told to them by leaders over time. And the lies being obviously Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was a lie. The lies of the amount of people that were dying over there. McNamara and the lies that he told. Obviously Watergate and the experiences of Richard Nixon. And then even... And boomers were aware of this too, even though it might have been in the back of their minds, in the late (19)50s, they knew President Eisenhower lied to them because of the U2 incident. It was an on TV... I remember seeing it coming home from school, saying that Gary Powers said... No-no-no-no-no, he was not spying, so Ike lied. And I know Ike wrote later on that he regretted doing that, but still he lied. And then you get a whole lot of others. So one of the qualities is that that boomers did not trust anybody in positions of leadership, that is whether they be a minister, a rabbi, a president of a university, a corporate leader, a politician or anybody in their... They did not trust any of them. And I knew a lot of the college administrators were not trusted. [inaudible] whether this lack of trust is a real negative on a generation. And whether you even say, as some people say, "Well only 15 percent of the activists were activists," but that was a pretty much of a quality that maybe even a 100 percent had toward people and responsibility. Do you think this quality can be defined as part of the generation and is not really as negative as that psych professor said?
SW (01:18:27):
I think it goes both ways. I think that the healthy distrust of authority really democratized the country tremendously, because what it ended was, "Trust me, I know more than you do," from father to priest to minister to president to whatever. No, I am not going to trust you. You give me the information that I am going to make the decision. Matilda Johnson said the greatest lesson of her life was her father's teaching her to think for herself. And then what he did was he empowered her to be able to act on that. She confronted authority. She spoke truth to authority from the time she was a child. And I think that what we [inaudible] later in the (19)80s or (19)90s is speaking truth to authority, that was the democratizing of America for the first time, beginning to happen in the (19)60s. And it was because of that failure to accept on face value, "Just trust me". No, I will not trust you. And that was the healthiest thing that ever happened, that distrust. But it was accompanied by the creation of trust among each other. We could not have done what we did. You cannot be in a demonstration where... I remember the... What did they call it? The squad, it was in San Francisco. And they would bring in the attack squad from Alameda County, and these were mean son of a guns. And they were in full riot gear. You are not going to be walking up to those folks or you are not going to be walking and challenging that authority unless you can trust every single person that you are in that demonstration with.
SM (01:20:35):
You are right.
SW (01:20:36):
So the creation of trust, you cannot put yourself on the line doing acts that the government is going to be coming after you for doing unless you have some level of trust. And that is why the government came in and created the distrust among ourselves, sent out those lying letters about this person doing this and this person doing this. My FBI file, there is tons of it that I cannot read. It is just page after page blacked out. Why did they do that? Because there was a police informer working with us. They tried to destabilize what we were doing. They were pretty successful in it in a lot of ways. But trust was created in a new way in community at the same time that trust in authority was being destroyed, and I think the combination of that was incredibly healthy.
SM (01:21:28):
What do you think was the watershed moment when the (19)60s began and what was the watershed moment when it ended?
SW (01:21:38):
I do not have an idea about that. And I wonder if it is not individual for different people and entering at different moments. For me, the moment was when my kids were sick, and there had been a number of things leading up to this, a number of experiences. But I was divorced, I was a single mom raising these two little kids and they got sick. I went, took them to the doctor. I had been up a couple nights, not sleeping much, going to school and working, and I was really tired. Took the kids to the doctor, got antibiotics, and they were finally sleeping. And I turned on the news and here was that mother in North Vietnam with her napalm baby. And it was-
SM (01:22:33):
Kim Phúc.
SW (01:22:34):
...The floodgate just opened. And it was like, I can take care of my children and they are going to be well, her child is going to die and I am the reason. My government is doing that. And I joined Another Mother for Peace, and that was my first movement into movement. I think each one of us may have our own personal moments. Was there a catalyzing event for everybody? That I do not know. I think it was more people entering at different moments. And once you entered, do you go to the point of origin? Do you go to the headwaters of it? I do not know. But once I entered, I was in flow. There was a movement, there was a river that I joined. And I think the movement quality of it, it was not individual, even though each of us joined at individual moments and came in.
SM (01:23:39):
You may have the same response to this question, but if I were to have in an auditorium 500 people from all over the country, male, female, all backgrounds, you name it, who were boomers, particularly those first 10 years of the boomer generation, and I were to ask them, what was the event that had the greatest impact on your life, what do you think the majority of them would say?
SW (01:24:06):
Cambodia, Kent State. The burning of the Bank of America in Santa Barbara. The Civil Rights arrests. The dogs going after the civil rights demonstrators. The murder of the three. I do not know. A lot of different catalyzing events. Cambodia, Kent State was a watershed. I do not know that it was "the" watershed, and I do not know if there was a watershed, but I would guess that you would get different answers like that.
SM (01:24:48):
Yeah, some people have said, well, the (19)60s began when John Kennedy was assassinated and it ended when Kent State happened because we knew it was ending. I had all kinds of responses to it. To me... And this is not about me, so this is the only time you are going to hear me. For me, the (19)60s ended in 1973 when the streaking happened on college campuses and I knew that something was totally different. Streaking was now the activity of college students.
SW (01:25:22):
There were things like when fashion designers started creating jeans and what had been secondhand store clothing became the designer label. When the tour buses started going through the Haight-Ashbury and hippie became a term. When the woman's movement, a lot of work has been done on when did radical feminism sort of end as a dynamic process or transform itself? And (19)73 is the date that is often used. That is why the Veteran Feminists of American voted that date.
SM (01:26:06):
That is interesting.
SW (01:26:07):
But see, for me, the (19)60s never ended. The (19)60s continue. The (19)60s are the center of my life. The (19)60s are... I saw that door open. I saw that open a crack. I looked inside, I lived in it temporarily, and I would never be satisfied until I could live in that world full time, and I will go to my grave working to create that world that we saw was possible in the (19)60s. And I still believe it is possible. If we can save the planet, if we can turn things around, that is the world we are going to create.
SM (01:26:50):
One other question following up, why did the Vietnam War end?
SW (01:26:54):
We won it. We won the Vietnam War. The people of the United States and the people of Vietnam came together and forced the United States government to its knees and we had the victory.
SM (01:27:12):
How important were college students in that? We saw protests really strong, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69.
SW (01:27:18):
Critically important. The transforming moment, the moment when I think the change happened was when we started, instead " Bring the troops home now," which is stupid. It just "Turn it into an air war". That was a dumb, dead end strategy. But when we started support the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam, that was when we began to win the war, the anti-war movement. And we won that war. And I hate the history that says anything different. The people of the United States won the war against the United States government and we stopped that war. Our war was never against the Vietnamese. Joining together with the people of Vietnam, we got the United States government to agree to the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and that was an extraordinary win. And if we taught history with that, what do you think could be happening with Afghanistan right now? If all those students that you have taught, that I have taught, if every student that was taught understood that the United States government was defeated by its own people and brought to its knees, we claimed our government, that was the victory in Vietnam.
SM (01:28:54):
How do you think Vietnam vets would feel about that though? Because a lot of Vietnam vets came back from Vietnam feeling that they were not treated right and they were not welcomed home. And this big controversy within the community, the anti-war movement in fact, that some people say it was never about the troops, it was always about the politicians. But then some vets feel that we should have gone all out and won that war, and the people back home were one of the reasons why we gave ammunition to the enemy, so to speak, to continue the war.
SW (01:29:30):
I distributed up against the Bulkhead, which was an anti-war paper that was done for soldiers. That stupid moment of believing that we were fighting the soldiers and that they were the enemy disappeared really quickly and was replaced by anti-war coffee houses for so soldiers. How come so many refused to? Why were there so many [inaudible] in Vietnam? Why were there... I worked with Vietnam Veterans Against The War. My idea was that if Vietnam Veterans Against The War and the women's movement came together in a coalition, we were an incredibly powerful group. And we were in Sacramento, and we did come together, and we sponsored a piece together and we worked together and we were allies, and we supported them and they supported us and worked with their sexism, dealt with their sexism. It was not perfect, but it was powerful. And the Winter Soldier investigation and those guys throwing their medals over the... This is a bronze, this is a gold star, and you can take them back because I never should have done what I did. That anti-war movement, the Vietnam Veterans Against The War still exist.
SM (01:30:51):
Yeah, that was Bobby Mueller. Do you know Bobby? Have you met him?
SW (01:30:55):
No.
SM (01:30:56):
And Ron Kovic. They were two of the three leaders of the movement.
SW (01:31:00):
They were. But it was a decentralized movement, too. And it was really strong in different parts of the country. It was very strong in Sacramento.
SM (01:31:09):
Just your thoughts on the music of the era, how important was music in the anti-war, and what were students and what were young people reading in the (19)60s, in the (19)70s? What were the books? What were the people reading? So it is a two-part question: the music and its importance within the movements, all the movements, and what were people reading, the books?
SW (01:31:33):
Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone got me out of my marriage. That was my support system. "Once upon a time, you dress so fine. Threw the bums a dime in your prime, did not you?" That was my song. This is the song about white, middle class married woman leaving her life behind in a moment when getting a divorce was a travesty in my family and among everybody I knew. Dylan was my support system. Well, how many other people was he... If he could reach me, good Jesus, who did he not reach? I took my grandson to a Dylan concert when he was five, and I had him on my shoulders and I said, "You will grow up knowing that you saw Bob Dylan when you were small enough to be on your grandma's shoulders". For his birthday last year, I gave him a framed flyer that I had saved from the first anti-war demonstration that I took him to, and I had written on it "Michael's first". He was in a stroller. But the music was an absolutely critical part and it is a critical part of what we share. I share the music of the (19)60s with my grandkids. They play me their music, but we are listening to Dylan, we are listening to Leonard Cohen, we are listening to The Doors, we are listening to... That music was absolutely essential. It was an absolutely essential part. And then when the Woman's Movement created its own music, Holly Near, she is the-
SM (01:33:23):
Yeah, she is great.
SW (01:33:24):
...Major, major figure in the creation of that.
SM (01:33:32):
Testing, one, two, testing. The first question on the second part of the interview here is about the issue of trust. A lot of the boomers did not trust anybody in positions of responsibility when they were young. And I think a lot of that is carried into their adulthood. A lot of them saw presidents and other people who they felt lied to them. And of course they were part of a generation that did not seem to trust anybody of positions of responsibility, whether it is a college administrator, a politician, a corporate leader, even priest, rabbis and ministers. Your thoughts on this issue of trust and whether this is a concern within the generation, that they were a very non-trusting generation and this carried on into their adulthood and how they raised their kids.
SW (01:34:35):
I think trust is earned. And I think I grew up in a generation in which there were very few people in positions of power who earned any trust or who earned a great deal of trust. And I think that the absence of trust was, there was a manifestation of the hell of the generation that we were just simply not taking the crap anymore. And when things happened like the Pentagon Papers, that became an official then who we trusted because this was somebody who was telling the truth. And I think the trust that was lost was because we were not being told the truth. And because there was an authoritarian, leave it to father, father knows best mold that we were breaking out of. And father does not always know best, and what we said was, "Father president, you do not know best about Vietnam". And I think that distrust continues. I will give you a manifestation for me of the continuation of the distrust. Medical profession-
SW (01:36:02):
...trust. Medical profession, 100 years ago, their best treatment was giving people mercury, and bleeding them, and giving them purgatives, laxatives, which killed people. And in my time, when I gave birth to my children in the (19)60s, the medical profession's best judgment was, "We will give you x-rays to see how your baby is situated if everything is okay. And we will put you on diet pills because we do not want you to gain more than 20 pounds." Well, they gave kids leukemia with the x-rays in utero. And babies, we were told by old wives tales, "Should be fat, they will be healthier. Well guess what? Old wives tales, "Should be fat. They will be healthier." Well, guess what? Old wives tales, were better knowledge than the medical profession at the time. So for me, do I trust sonograms now? Hell, no. I am not going to trust those people that have a long history of being wrong. And so my relationship with Western medicine is a very touch and go one. There is times when I will step into it and times I will step out of it. And that is just one example of the president who, when George Bush takes us to war in Iraq, I think that the Boomers had enough knowledge of the untruth of the Gulf of Tonkin to know not to trust implicitly that there really was a reason to go to war. And we were right. There was not. It was based on a lie like the Gulf of Tonkin was. So I think that we are holding out for truth. And when truth emerges, we trust it. And I think that is the hope with Obama is that this is a man who may speak truth. We will withhold judgment a little bit. We will watch, we will make sure, we will see. But there is a sense that I have that this is a man who largely is a truth teller, and that is probably the first truth telling president that I have experienced.
SM (01:39:06):
Why do you think the Vietnam War ended?
SW (01:39:10):
We ended it. I think I told you in the last interview.
SM (01:39:12):
Okay.
SW (01:39:18):
We won. When the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, the NFL ... LF. God, do I still remember? I think so. Of Vietnam and the anti-war movement in the United States joined forces, we brought down the government of the United States. We stopped the war.
SM (01:39:44):
Is there any-
SW (01:39:45):
And we got the government of the United States to agree to, the sixth point, I think was first and then nine points peace plan of the PRG.
SM (01:39:59):
Is there, in your lifetime, particularly when you were young, in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, was there a speaker you saw at a college campus or an entertainment event that had really great impact on you?
SW (01:40:14):
Tons of them.
SM (01:40:16):
Could you describe some of them or list them?
SW (01:40:20):
Going to the Fillmore in San Francisco, and watching Grace Slick spell out, "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies, do not you want somebody to love?" Watching the last performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ... Buffalo Springfield, not Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, when they were Buffalo Springfield. Their last performance as that group. Listening to Dylan transformed my life, Like a Rolling Stone. When I left the middle-class marriage, it was with the support of Bob Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone.
SM (01:41:08):
Right.
SW (01:41:09):
Became my anthem, like it was for millions of my generation and political people. I was at California State University, Sacramento, and I was on the program committee, and also employed in that office, and I arranged for Tom Hayden to come and speak when he was part of the Chicago 8. And the president of the college canceled the speech because he said to me, when he called me privately into his office, "Free speech is too important to allow it to be used." Or, "Sometimes you have to cancel it to protect it." I think was his line, Otto Butz, President Otto Butz.
SM (01:42:04):
Oh my God.
SW (01:42:05):
"So I am going to have to cancel this, speech, Sally, and I am sure you will understand." Well, it was right after Cambodia and Kent State and we were living on campus. We would set up a Strike City on the campus. And I went back to Strike City and said, "What are we going to do?" Within an hour, we had plastered all over campus that Tom Hayden was scheduled to speak, the time, and we just went ahead. And within two hours we had silk screen posters all over the city of Sacramento, which forced the president to publicly cancel the speech, which then brought in the ACLU, which filed a restraining order against the president of the campus or the chancellor of the state college system, and went into court that morning, and we won-
SM (01:43:00):
Wow.
SW (01:43:01):
...inside, on campus.
SM (01:43:03):
Wow. That is activism.
SW (01:43:07):
Was for a few, but I could go on and on, and Malcolm X.
SM (01:43:13):
Yeah. Since you had that experience, did you have some experience with some other speakers when you were a student?
SW (01:43:21):
Oh, yeah. We brought Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, Malcolm X, I never heard speak in person. Ti-Grace Atkinson, who was one of the most brilliant of the feminist theoretician, Robin Morgan, I could go on and on.
SM (01:43:41):
Okay.
SW (01:43:44):
And it was also reading things, that it was an electric time when there was a paradigm shift going on that was just unparalleled, at least in my lifetime.
SM (01:44:05):
In your very unbelievable credentials, you started the first women's studies program, according to what I have read, and of course you had the first PhD in women's studies. First off, could you describe starting that first women's studies program, where, when, and the reaction, both positive and negative, toward that experience?
SW (01:44:31):
Well, let me clarify. It was, as far as we know, the third, when the studies program in the country, I was one of the founders. None of those things were done by individuals, you know, the creation of programs, it was a movement.
SM (01:44:52):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:44:53):
And I was a part of that. And I was, I think a very strong, I do not mean to underplay my part in it, I taught the first women's studies class at California State [inaudible]. And I held the meetings that led to the creation of the women's studies program. In my role as an employee in the Honor Center, we had the very first discussion in 1969 on campus that led to the creation of the program. I taught my first class in 1970. I have been teaching women's studies for 39 years. That may be a record, but God, that said, I did play an important role. But that women's studies program grew out of these meetings that I put together on campus in the honors program. They were sponsored by the honors program. I was a work study student employed by honors. I could basically set up whatever kind of discussion events I wanted. So I did series on women's studies, or was not even women's studies. There was not such studies then, it was on women's rights, you know, on feminism.
SM (01:46:14):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:46:15):
Called it at that time, women's liberation. And so we had a series of talks about it. And whoa, oh, it was amazing. And the faculty that came and just tore us up one side and down another in terms of, "Women are not in an unequal position. Women really hold power and authority. And men are the ones who are really put upon by women." And I do not know, it was a class warfare. And so right from the beginning, you know, the opposition, just dreadful.
SM (01:47:03):
Yeah. That leads right into my, what year was that too, by the way?
SW (01:47:08):
1969 was when we held the meeting. I think (19)70 was when I taught my first women's studies class. And I think, I am pretty sure that was the first one on our campus. And that was early for women's studies classes in the country. And then I think we got the program together in about (19)71.
SM (01:47:36):
If there has been anything that has hurt the movement since the early (19)70s, what would it be?
SW (01:47:44):
There has been all kinds of things that have hurt the movement. I think the backlash was inevitable. And the backlash was predictable, although we did not know it at the time. But that was very painful. I think another very difficult thing was that we want to create a system that was not based on power over, but that was based on power with. And we did not know how to do that. And we did not know how to work with each other. We were forging relationships and building relationships at the same time that we were trying to build a movement and we had political differences, and we did not know how to deal with those in any kind of respectful way. The one model we had was confrontation politics, and we used that on each other. And that was not the most effective thing. That was injurious. We hurt each other. And I think into the (19)80s, when, was it Rush Limbaugh that created the term feminazis? The damage of that. Young women today, "No, I am not a feminist." Even older women today, "I am not a feminist," because they have that right-wing media created image of what feminist is. And then it is just the standard thing, we all know that [inaudible] said, " Well, you believe in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And, "Of course I believe in all those." "Well, that is what feminist is." "Yeah, but I am not a feminist." The word became so-
SM (01:49:46):
Wow.
SW (01:49:47):
...[inaudible]. And that is true of many moves. And that is true of many- [inaudible]
SM (01:49:52):
How do you deal with the criticisms like, well, I know David Horowitz has written about it, but how do you respond to critics who say that, "The women's movement, like all the other movements of that era, is more about indoctrination than education. And it is part of the new left. The new left has taken over."
SW (01:50:13):
That is bullshit. I do not know. How do I respond? It is bullshit. It is reactionary bullshit. Indoctrination? I do not know. I do not like to waste my time with working against those kinds of statements. Spend all your energy matching is just, it is bullshit.
SM (01:50:47):
Who stands out as the-
SW (01:50:49):
It was not a perfect movement. I think to expect a movement to have perfection, it is a crazy expectation. And I think that to make those kind of sweeping statements, there is an arrogance to that that I just find so offensive that I do not want to be in the same room with the person that would make that kind of a quote.
SM (01:51:18):
Right.
SW (01:51:18):
So it is like you just waste your time.
SM (01:51:26):
Well, the other thing here is that, one other criticism might be, do you think that the movement's criticizing the stay-at-home moms has helped the movement in any ways? Because some moms may have wanted to go out and work, but others wanted to stay-at-home and raise the kids. And that is the mothers who were in the (19)40s, (19)50s, and early (19)60s, you know, who raised a lot of the boomers.
SW (01:51:47):
No, I think if you want the indoctrination. Indoctrination came from the way that we were depicted incorrectly in the media. There was this Shulamite Firestone wrote book in which she talked about biological and [inaudible]. I bought that book early on, that was an idea that we played with. And I think our goal was to create options for women. The media created an artificial war between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And the economy is what created, women having to go out into the workforce and not have an option. You know, it is a middle-class luxury for women today, being able to think about being a stay-at-home mom.
SM (01:52:46):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:52:52):
Most families have to have two people working. And part of the reason is because women do not get equal pay for equal work. And there is no legislation prior to this [inaudible]. And now we have respect better, but we still do not have equal pay or equal rights guaranteed. And seminars still making 78 cents on the dollar to men are making. And we are in the United States, and in economics we are beat up in every single area of work. And if people are being laid off, and, and, and, and. It is a false fight between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And there were some women in the movement who made statements about an end to motherhood, an end to the nuclear family. [inaudible] family being based on male power was one of the things that we went after, not the family unit, but the idea of the fatherhood knows best, the head of the family is going to make all the decisions, and who has the right to beat the wife into submission until she just go along with it. In the (19)60s, wife battering was not a crime. It was not punished. It was a domestic dispute and cops did not want to get in the middle of it. So it was as it should be and it was really not an option. You stayed with your husband. You know, it was your fault. Have to figure out what you should do different.
SM (01:54:57):
What-
SW (01:54:59):
So I think those are the real issues and it is a diversionary tactic to get people looking at some false issue like some division between working moms and stay-at-home moms, which only affects a wealthy, privileged part of the population, anyway, even considers staying at home. That is bogus, in my mind.
SM (01:55:17):
Who stands-
SW (01:55:17):
That is a diversion from the real issue.
SM (01:55:27):
Who stands out, especially for young Boomer women that-
SW (01:55:31):
What?
SM (01:55:33):
Who stands out as the number one role model for Boomer women and-
SW (01:55:38):
For what women?
SM (01:55:41):
Boomer.
SW (01:55:43):
Oh, Boomer.
SM (01:55:44):
Yeah, the female Boomers. So was there one person in that late (19)60s, early (19)70s, through the (19)70s, into the (19)80s that stood out more than anybody else?
SW (01:56:06):
That is an antifeminist question.
SM (01:56:06):
Oh, it is?
SW (01:56:06):
Yeah. We were creating a leaderless movement.
SM (01:56:06):
Okay.
SW (01:56:07):
And I think that we were inventing ourselves, and a movement, and what we wanted. Now, the media created spokespeople, the media created leaders, the women's movement did not.
SM (01:56:25):
Okay, well, that is important. That is a magic moment in the interview, because I just learned something, because I am really into leadership. I am always into, well, what makes a leader, and how do they evolve, and where do they come from, and all that other stuff. And can I ask one other thing, though? If it is a leaderless movement, who were some of the Boomers that may have been in their late teens and 20s that have really gone on to be outstanding leaders today?
SW (01:56:55):
I think that if you look for leaders, you miss the movement, then and now. That if you looked for an individual, you look for five outstanding people, you are going to miss that this is an entire movement. And there are some who gained more visibility for whatever reason within the movement. When we first started out in women's liberation in Sacramento, the media was always saying to us, "Who is your leader? Take us to your leader. We want to talk to whoever is in charge." And they were nuts, because we would say, "We are all in charge. You can talk to any of us, because we have to get the spokesperson. We are all spokespeople." And they demanded that we give them a spokesperson. And sometimes we could not get any media coverage if we did not. You know?
SM (01:57:52):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:57:53):
And I think that there also, I was a radical [inaudible]. There were other tendencies to this feminism. And so you had NOW, which was liberal feminists and that was based more on the-the male model of leadership is power down. So you could come up with women who were presidents of NOW and women who were... Gloria Steinem, to me, has become a leader because... I do not even want to say leader. Nobody follows Gloria Steinem. Nobody follows anybody. But I think where Gloria Steinem has become a really important symbol of the movement, and representation of the same power of the movement, and the continuing growth of thought, she wins out. " I shall not [inaudible] in the age."
SM (01:59:05):
What-
SW (01:59:05):
She is the poster child for that. And she is willing, she is so adept at, you listen to anything she says, or you read anything that she says, and if she gets credited, she always says, "I was part of a movement."
SM (01:59:23):
Huh.
SW (01:59:25):
"I did not do this. I was part of a movement."
SM (01:59:25):
What-
SW (01:59:26):
So she never let the media- [inaudible]
SM (01:59:32):
What do you and what do members of the movement think about people like Phyllis Schlafly, and Anita Bryant, and female leaders, who may not support, conservative leaders support the movement?
SW (01:59:50):
I think every movement has people who do not identify with their class. I think Mark called it false conscious. You know.
SM (02:00:06):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:00:08):
[inaudible] part. You do not expect that everybody's going be part of what you are fighting for. I think it was Lucretia Mott who said, "The death of the slave is exemplified by how strong he holds on chains." I am paraphrasing, but there is something to that effect- that it is an indication of the degree to which we are oppressed that we embrace our oppression. And there are also women who exploit their anti-ness in this culture because the media is always looking for, "Let us look at the other side." Even when there is not another side, they create one. So they interview a feminist that, "My God, we got to have an anti-feminist, here, and a really good woman. Or we got to have a Black who's opposed to Black rights." You know?
SM (02:01:09):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:01:13):
[inaudible] will not it? And so they create artificially, these people who nobody in the movement would pay attention to that the media has all of a sudden created them up to be a big giant. What do I think of them? I think it is absolutely to be expected that there will be. There will always be some men who are stronger advocates of women's rights than some women. There will always be some white people who will be stronger advocates of, you know-
SM (02:01:56):
Mm-hmm. One of the things, Johnetta Cole, with- [inaudible]
SW (02:01:59):
...the-
SM (02:02:03):
Johnetta Cole used to be the president of Spelman College. She wrote a great book. And she talked about some of the sensitivities within the African American female community with respect to being identified with the women's movement because they were identified with the civil rights movement. So she brought up, they wanted to be involved in the movement, but they needed to be more identified with the civil rights movement. And-
SW (02:02:34):
[inaudible] That was a piece of an issue. And I think that that also was one that the media picked up. All that stuff is really so superficial that I think the focus on that stuff is really to not understand what the [inaudible] was about. That is really [inaudible] communication in the (19)60s. You know, that is not what it felt like to being inside it.
SM (02:02:58):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:03:01):
There was always dialogue, there was a racism, of course there was racism. The culture was rampant with racists all of a sudden, because we were involved in the liberation of women. Did that mean that we checked our racism at the door? I do not think so. There was classism. There was sexism in the African American movement. But being involved in the movement, we were working with that. It was in process, it was in dialogue. It was not status. But when it got to be looked at through the static lens of the media, which did not understand what was going on, that this was a process. It was like, "Okay, I am going to take this still photo of this and I am going to freeze this event in time to say, 'This is what is going on.'" And it did not characterize what was going on.
SM (02:04:03):
Two-
SW (02:04:03):
There was a constant looking at racism, looking at sexism, looking at classism, looking at homophobia, looking at ageism, looking at ableism. One thing would lead to another, would lead to drawing awareness of one thing in another. You know, in the last interview I told you how that happened with my daughter-
SM (02:04:25):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:04:26):
...with my daughter and then my son was children's liberation. That was part of the strength of the movement, was that we were all dealing with these issues. And yeah, people wrote about it when we were in process. But I think to take those writings that were happening in process where we said, "This is what the problem is, we got to deal with it, is to ignore the dealing with it."
SM (02:05:00):
Two things here, reaction to two different areas. The burning of the bras, why did that take place? And did it have a positive effect? And secondly is Playboy magazine, which is Hugh Hefner and the sexual revolution. And I know that it is a very sensitive issue on college campuses today, women's bodies and a lot of them do not like Hugh Hefner, and what he stood for, and everything. Just your thoughts on the women's movement, how they looked at Hugh Hefner in that Playboy movement, and then whole, maybe it was just the media with a burning bras, but just those two things.
SW (02:05:38):
Well, the bra burning, as you know, it never happened. And [inaudible] been, it is done to death, but it never happened. And yet the question keeps coming up. And it is like, "Ho-hum. Come on, ask me something important." But the effect of it was that was very important. It became a way of trivializing the movement. It became a way to not have to deal with it seriously. "They are just a bunch of bra burners." Same thing happened in the 19th century with a bunch of [inaudible] wear." Well, the burning of the objects at the Miss America pageant, which they actually did throw in makeup and whatever. That was a symbolic destruction, a symbol of our [inaudible]. It was, "We are not just sexual objects." And I think that was the whole, Hefner is soft porn. It was the objectification with the violence turned down. Larry Flynt, was not that his name?
SM (02:06:58):
Yes.
SW (02:07:04):
The one who did the woman upside down in the meat grinder. Now, he was pornography with the violence turned up loud. And the violence is there, the objectification is there. What it does is its training manual for young males and perpetually adolescent adult males who connect power and sex, and the connection of power and sex to the culture is very strong. And pornography is the training manual for it, the indoctrination. If the women are commodities to be consumed, and, "I have the power to either violently or with just mild power." You know.
SM (02:07:59):
Mm-hmm. Another question, the Women's Vietnam Memorial was built in 1993. Actually, it was-
SM (02:08:03):
...memorial was built in 1993. Actually it was opened up in 1993. I am sure you know, everything Diane Carlson had to go through and how she was treated on the hill for even thinking of doing this. And the prejudice, even in the Vietnam veteran community in the very beginning was a big roadblock. They seem to forget that now, everything's hunky-dory, but I know what she had to go through. Were the women's movement working at all with a lot of the female veterans of the Vietnam War when this memorial was being built for the idea? Is there a linkage there?
SW (02:08:35):
I do not know about that.
SM (02:08:40):
Okay, because I know that...
SW (02:08:44):
[inaudible] I mean, you are talking about a movement that is so diverse and that is so decentralized now and that is operating in so many different fronts. There is so many different areas. There is no way any single person can have the knowledge of everything that is going on in the United States. I think that is the strength of it.
SM (02:09:04):
Sally, what reading... why did the ERA fail? I remember my boss was Betty Menson at Ohio University on Lancashire campus. She was one of the leaders in the state of Ohio and trying to get this passed. And I can remember sitting in my office, I think it was 1973, and the vote was taking place in Ohio at that time, see if it would be passed. And it did not pass in Ohio. And boy, she was very disappointed. But why did the ERA fail and why was there so much resistance to it?
SW (02:09:38):
The same reason it failed last time through it. It is still on the table. And, with a Democratic majority and Obama's president, we may still join the civilized world and have equal rights to have been protected in the time too, before I die. But the reason that it failed when it went almost to the edge, was the same reason that we are really at risk of not passing a healthcare bill, right now. The insurance company. The insurance company put tremendous amounts of money behind the care, because it is not in the interest of corporations and insurance companies for women to have equal rights. If you can bill women and men in different ways for insurance, your benefit, if you can make more money off women and off their labor. I mean, if you had to suddenly pay women equal with men in this country, look what that is going to do to corporation? If you lose that 25 cents in profit, but you are getting off every woman's dollars. You know, for every man you pay a dollar, pay the woman 78 cents. Who was keeping that profit? [inaudible] And so, it was a well... and that has been well documented. It was a well-orchestrated, well financed, that they hired some token right wing women, Phyllis Schlafly before she became the poster child for Anti-ERA. My God, you are going to have go to the bathroom in the same bathroom. The world's western civilization will crumble as women and men are in the same bathroom. Well, guess what? We are in the bathroom a lot on airplanes and number of other places and the world seems to still be operating. But, it was those incredibly stupid things that were the arguments against it. But Phyllis Schlafly was a spokesperson for... She was a well-recognized right-winged [inaudible] before she became the paid gun of the corporate [inaudible] Still post-ERA.
SM (02:12:21):
What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?
SW (02:12:27):
I went there once and I was moved. I am much more moved by the movie the Winter Soldier Investigates.
SM (02:12:42):
And why is that?
SW (02:12:44):
I mean, the Vietnam Memorial is like a senseless death. I mean, okay, here is a death count and here is the names of all those men who died unnecessarily. That is what I see when I go there.
SM (02:13:09):
What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?
SW (02:13:17):
It was when the government brought the war home against its gun.
SM (02:13:24):
What does Watergate mean to you?
SW (02:13:35):
The truth.
SM (02:13:36):
What...?
SW (02:13:36):
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. In this case it was [inaudible] Richard Nixon.
SM (02:13:43):
What does Woodstock in the Summer of Love mean to you?
SW (02:13:48):
The Summer of Love means commercialization of something that was much deeper than that characterization of it. Woodstock is the place that the [inaudible] went through.
SM (02:14:10):
The what went through?
SW (02:14:13):
The [inaudible] on the East Coast.
SM (02:14:14):
Oh, okay.
SW (02:14:14):
It just became legendary to most of us on the West Coast.
SM (02:14:20):
Yeah, there were 400,000 people there, but if you talk to everybody, there might have been 10 million. What does 1968 mean to you?
SW (02:14:37):
(19)68 is the Worldwide Revolution State, for me. It means Rudy the Red in Germany. It means Danny the Red in France. It means the moment when we really believed that we could turn the world around, in a brief period of time.
SM (02:15:02):
What does counterculture mean to you?
SW (02:15:06):
A label that somebody attached at a later date.
SM (02:15:11):
What do the hippies and yippies mean to you?
SW (02:15:15):
The yippies! I love that one. Put the yip back and hippy. The hippie again, I mean, once the term was created, the movement was in decline and almost dead.
SM (02:15:34):
How about the Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen?
SW (02:15:47):
SDS was... boy, you know what comes to my mind? What was the support hearing statement? What was that even called? Was not that the first?
SM (02:15:58):
Yes.
SW (02:15:59):
And it is like reading, okay, here is our manifesto, here is... here is truth. And SDS became legendary, it was much more on the East Coast, early on. And then the split with the Progressive Labor Party - the PLP, and just if you vote. And then the Weatherman. Is it time for an armed revolution? The folks from mild arm struggle is the highest form of struggle. And the arguments over, does that mean it is the most important? Does that mean it is the last-ditch effort when nothing else makes... when all else fails? That is what you have to go through. That means Bob Dylan and Subterranean Homesick Blues, which was our national anthem. "You do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." It is the movement growing out of the lyrics of the troubadour of our generation. It means that because of people that died were principled. And it also means to me, personally, watching males pull guns just like the males that were, I do not know, being indoctrinated to carry guns as a symbol of man hooding Weatherman carrying guns, a symbol of manhood. And women trying to be as tough as the boys. Especially, it means to me being told by a weather woman, a weatherman, woman. If you are to be a true revolutionary, you have to be prepared to give up the kids.
SM (02:18:40):
Well, how would you talk about black power and the Black Panthers?
SW (02:18:46):
The Black Panthers, what comes to mind immediately is the government's systematic execution of them.
SM (02:18:58):
Yeah, what were your thoughts on... There is actually seven that really...
SW (02:19:01):
[inaudible] What?
SM (02:19:01):
There is actually seven that really stick out here. Of course, Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H Wrapped Brown, Stokely Carmichael and Fred Norman. Those are the ones that are known all over the world.
SW (02:19:24):
But the blunt... but in Oakland, they were feeding the people. They were really enhancing the lives of people. And I think that the media created leaders, and to some extent they were leaders of the movement. I think to concentrate on their activities, is [inaudible] what the Black Panthers were doing in the community. And they were feeding the people first and foremost. They were taking care of the needs of the people.
SM (02:20:10):
The other one here is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
SW (02:20:14):
Yeah, VVAW. My vision, my dream was that there would be a political coalition between VVAW and the Women's State. And we did that in Sacramento, we worked together really closely and did a lot of stuff together. That was a powerful, powerful coalition.
SM (02:20:33):
They took over when SDS was failing. They kind of rubbed up the anti-war movement. And the last one word here is enemy's list. When you hear about that enemy's list.
SW (02:20:47):
Yeah, that does not conjure up anymore [inaudible] enemies.
SM (02:20:57):
That was the Richard Nixon's enemies list.
SW (02:21:00):
Oh, okay. And that is important. That is indicative of how it was sort of like Richard Nixon is the President of the United States. Richard Nixon is a corrupt man who I do not recognize as a lead...as my leader. It was like, Richard Nixon's going to go off and do whatever he is going to do. I am going to be part of a movement to stop before I could be part of the movement to turn this country around. And so, it is not focusing on Richard Nixon. I was focusing on the work I was doing in that. But we were...
SM (02:21:46):
You, you have made comments on Richard Nixon and I was going to ask what you thought of him. Now I am just going to mention some names. This is toward the end of the interview here. You have men made comments on Richard Nixon. What about Spiro Agnew?
SW (02:22:00):
Oh man. They were just so indicative of everything that was wrong with the country.
SM (02:22:14):
And what were they indicative of?
SW (02:22:22):
Of power that was not used for the good of the people. Of corruption that was just a given and a normal part of daily life. Of a level of lying that was standard procedure.
SM (02:22:46):
Okay. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the yippes.
SW (02:22:50):
Yeah, they were funny guys. I liked it when they threw dollar bills at the on the floor at, what is it? Wall Street?
SM (02:23:05):
Yep. Dollar bills. And of course Jerry Rubin, remember the story in his book 'Do It!', when he went into a bank and wanted to use a restroom. Do you remember that story?
SW (02:23:17):
I do not.
SM (02:23:19):
Well, I will mention it here. In his book, 'Do It!', he went into the... you know how he always looked with a bandana and the beard and everything. And he went into a bank and they might have been having a rally someplace, but he had to go to the bathroom and he went in and the policeman said, "you have to leave." "Well" he says, "I got to use the restroom." And he says, "No, we are not going to allow you to use the restroom." So he put his pants down and did a dump right in the middle of the bank. Unbelievable. How about Timothy Leary?
SW (02:23:56):
The opening of consciousness.
SM (02:24:00):
Eugene McCarthy?
SW (02:24:03):
Liberal.
SM (02:24:05):
George McGovern?
SW (02:24:08):
Liberal. But with more integrity.
SM (02:24:15):
How about John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy?
SW (02:24:25):
You know, that was a different time. That was an earlier time. That was the time when, for me it was the horrible time.
SM (02:24:44):
How about Lyndon Johnson?
SW (02:24:48):
Hey-hey, LBJ how many babies did you kill today?
SM (02:24:52):
Hmm. How about Hubert Humphrey?
SW (02:24:57):
Bah. That is my response.
SM (02:25:03):
Okay. Robert McNamara?
SW (02:25:08):
McNamara, watching that movie of him coming to grip to some extent with his behavior during that time. You know the movie I am talking about?
SM (02:25:21):
Yes.
SW (02:25:21):
About a couple of years ago? Yeah, That was dangerous.
SM (02:25:27):
George Wallace?
SW (02:25:30):
George Wallace, the poster child for Southern rights.
SM (02:25:37):
Ronald Reagan?
SW (02:25:45):
A man who had Alzheimer's when he was President of the United States and nobody pulled him out.
SM (02:25:55):
How about Gerald Ford?
SW (02:25:59):
He could not walk and chew gum at the same time.
SM (02:26:01):
Jimmy Carter?
SW (02:26:20):
A man whose integrity has grown geometrically in my eyes, and I think he is since he was President.
SM (02:26:21):
Dwight Eisenhower?
SW (02:26:25):
A guy who we quoted about the Military Industrial Complex. And maybe it was still possible to be a Republican with integrity before Nixon.
SM (02:26:48):
How about Benjamin Spock?
SW (02:26:55):
Well, he had a hell of an impact on [inaudible] and not all of it good, but a lot of it good.
SM (02:27:06):
Daniel Ellsberg?
SW (02:27:11):
Truth teller.
SM (02:27:14):
Daniel and Phillip Berrigan?
SW (02:27:19):
I think the reason I do not hold the entire Catholic Church in contempt. Examples of how even in an obsolete and corrupt institution, there can be [inaudible] integrity and goodness. And that would be true, the whole Dorothy Day of which they were part in arm.
SM (02:27:53):
Barry Gold...
SW (02:28:06):
The guy who cut my hair now in Syracuse is a product of that world in friends [inaudible] but still does not work in our area.
SM (02:28:08):
Barry Goldwater?
SW (02:28:17):
If you think Goldwater, I may be liberal, but to a degree I think everybody should be free. But if you think I am going to let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter, I would not do it for all the tea in Cuba.
SM (02:28:30):
How about John Dean?
SW (02:28:40):
Well... what do you say about being able to live through a [inaudible] The crooks get caught and the crooks are held accountable, and the crooks are in the highest office [inaudible] It was a vindication.
SM (02:29:13):
William Buckley?
SW (02:29:21):
A smart conservative.
SM (02:29:26):
Okay. George Bush Sr?
SW (02:29:27):
Yes. And arrogant. Who?
SM (02:29:32):
George Bush Sr? Who said the Vietnam syndrome is over, took us to the Gulf War.
SW (02:29:40):
Hey you know, it is just more of the same. I think that at some point it starts looking like is the Principle President and oxymoron? Is there something inherent about the land between the office and the political processes embedded in a for-profit world, where it is impossible to have all these communications. Because it just becomes another farce.
SM (02:30:26):
How about, lastly here, George Bush and Bill Clinton, because they are the only two Boomer presidents. Do they define the Boomer generation by their actions, even though they are both...
SW (02:30:39):
They define what I just was talking about. The impossibility of principle politics in a for-profit system.
SM (02:30:52):
How about, and again, even though...
SW (02:30:54):
The accident of their time of birth does not have a whole hell of a lot to do with their behavior.
SM (02:31:02):
Gloria Steinem?
SW (02:31:05):
I think I have talked about her.
SM (02:31:08):
Okay. Bella Abzug?
SW (02:31:10):
Yeah, she is another person that got a lot of spotlight and was doing good work along with thousands and millions of other ones.
SM (02:31:21):
Betty Friedan?
SW (02:31:22):
Same thing.
SM (02:31:24):
And Shirley Chisholm?
SW (02:31:26):
She opened the door...Betty Friedan opened the door with her book, to a lot of reflection. And the book was important.
SM (02:31:41):
When the best books are written about the legacy of the Boomer generation. It could be... it is usually 50 years after an event or a period and we are approaching that, but particularly after Boomers have passed away, what do you think historians and sociologists will be saying about this Boomer generation when they are writing it in books for future generations?
SW (02:32:08):
I think it depends on how many voices from that time period they witness and the variety of voices that they witness. That will depend... that will be how good their history is.
SM (02:32:25):
All right, I am looking and see if I have anything else here. I do not think I do. Is there any questions I did not ask that you felt I should have asked?
SW (02:32:35):
I cannot think of any.
SM (02:32:37):
I think I have covered about everything. I wrote a whole extra set of questions here. I know one person who... A critic of the women's movement wanted me to ask a question, I have not really been asking it, but I will... Why have the women's movement not made more criticism of Muslims for how they treat women, instead of trying to defend their rights constantly here in the United States?
SW (02:33:08):
I think there has been a lot of criticism of the behavior and the criticism makes me a little observant, because we are criticizing a religious tradition where women had property rights 500 years before they had them under Christianity. And it is also an easy target to point to another culture and say, "that religious exploits women." "That religious is bad." When I think, the absence of looking at the effects of Christianity in our own culture, might be a more productive use of our time.
SM (02:33:55):
And my very last question is something that you have heard before and it is just a general comment that I have heard for a long time, is when women take over leadership roles, they will take on the same qualities of men and they will start getting sicker earlier. They will die of the same illnesses. It is just part of the nature of the human species. When you hear that, what do you say?
SW (02:34:25):
I think that is not got anything to do with the human species. I heard clueless about what the human species is. If we generalize from our particular society at this particular moment in history, I think that the goal of the revolution in its largest, broadest form of this social, cultural, economic, political, spiritual revolution is to do away with power-over, and to establish a system of power-with. And that means leadership takes on a very different form. And that price that you are talking about, the level of stress is the function of a system of power-over, is the price that the oppressor pays. Will women move into that? Yes they will, black. Yes they will. Will gay and lesbians? Yes they will. There are people that will move into that and are moving into, and we will see that as progress. I think a deeper progress is a real transformation of human relationship is when we end the system of power-over. End the price that both the oppressed and the oppressor pay in that system. The leader and the lead, if you will. To end that we move to a system of power-with. And then those stress things fall away, work with people. It is a very good model.
SM (02:36:24):
But you finally, my last, I have said this twice already, but this thing about the Women's Movement, as particularly when Boomers were young, the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, right through to today, the role that the women's movement has played in linking up with the GLBT movement, the Chicano movement, Native American movement, the Anti-War, Civil Rights, Environmental Movement, Disability Rights, ageism, and even mental health issues now, which is a big issue with women. Because there is a lot of movements. David Oaks, I do not know if you have ever heard of David, you ought to link up with him. He is really leading the mental health issue. He was a former student in Harvard, he is out in Oregon. Just your thoughts on how the Women's Movement has worked with these groups over the last 40 years. General thoughts.
SW (02:37:18):
Well, I think it is not just the Women's Movement. I think that of the linking of the struggles, that is what I was talking about earlier. The interplay. That we all needed to deal with each other's issues if we were to work together. And I think that has been one of the real strengths of this movement in its largest sense. And it is an imperfect thing, it is one that he keeps raising contradictions, but out of those contradictions comes transformation.
SM (02:37:57):
Very good. Well that is my.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner
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Wagner, Sally Roesch ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews
Description
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Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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In copyright
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.169a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.169b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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158:01
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2009-08-06
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Sally L. Satel
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist, author and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Satel focuses on mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15107,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16382457],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,1447960],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist, author, and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Satel focuses on mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University. </span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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1 Microcassette
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Interview Format
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Audio
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69:42
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Hippies; Bill Clinton; George Will; Mad Men(TV Show); Baby boom generation; Beat generation; Middle class; Generation X; Activism; Young Americans for Freedom; Nineteen sixties."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">Hippies; Bill Clinton; George Will; Mad Men (TV Show); Baby boom generation; Beat generation; Middle class; Generation X; Activism; Young Americans for Freedom; Nineteen sixties.</span>
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Psychiatrists; Authors; Lecturers; Yale University. School of Medicine; Satel, Sally L.--Interviews
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Interview with Dr. Sally Satel
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Satel, Sally L. ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Psychiatrists; Authors; Lecturers; Yale University. School of Medicine; Satel, Sally L.--Interviews
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Dr. Sally Satel is a practicing psychiatrist, author, and lecturer at the Yale University School of Medicine. Dr. Satel focuses on mental health policy as well as political trends in medicine. She earned a Bachelor's degree from Cornell University, a Master's degree from the University of Chicago and an MD degree from Brown University. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Yale University.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2009-08-06
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.109
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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69:42
-
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-16
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen Mckiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Sara M. (Sara Margaret) Evans, 1943-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Duke University and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":4995,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Duke University and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
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92:32
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; McCarthy hearing; Middle class; Second-wave feminism; Betty Friedan; Ronald Reagan; Family values; Third-wave feminism; Rebecca Walker; University studies programs; Environmental Studies; Women in the nineteen-fifties."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792}}">Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; McCarthy hearing; Middle class; Second-wave feminism; Betty Friedan; Ronald Reagan; Family values; Third-wave feminism; Rebecca Walker; University studies programs; Environmental Studies; Women in the nineteen-fifties.</span>
Subject LCSH
College teachers; Evans, Sara M. (Sara Margaret), 1943--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
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Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Sara Evans
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 16 August 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:04):
Testing one, two. All right, let me get going here. I have got my sheet free. The first question I have is, who were your role models growing up? The teachers or the parents, the leaders that helped you become the person you are? I follow that up, also, as part of the question that I asked Dr. Baxandall when I interviewed her up in Massachusetts about a week ago. If you were in a packed house of 500 female college students today, and one of the students stood up and asked you to name three or four events in your life that made you who you are, the person you are today, what would those events be? It is kind of a combination, two-part question.
SE (00:01:03):
Well, the role models, when I was a child, I certainly have to talk about my parents. Because my father was a Methodist minister in South Carolina, and my parents were the only white people I knew who thought segregation was wrong, and I grew up in the segregated South.
SM (00:01:32):
Oh, wow.
SE (00:01:33):
That is very fundamental to who I became. My mother told me when I was, I do not know, about second grade, "They are going to teach you in school that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, but it is." That is probably far and away the most important. I loved school. I had a number of teachers that I adored. I remember my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Holler, and I am not sure I can name any other one, but I had a number of teachers that I cared about very much. I always thought I wanted to be a teacher.
SM (00:02:32):
Right.
SE (00:02:32):
It is what I turned out to be. I wanted to teach every grade I was in except eighth grade and that is because, it is not because of the teachers, because the kids. I thought that that would be very hard.
SM (00:02:45):
Right.
SE (00:02:45):
I think I will stop at that for role models and-
SM (00:02:56):
Are there any specific-
SE (00:02:58):
Go ahead.
SM (00:03:00):
Events in your life besides the role models, who helped shape you?
SE (00:03:07):
Sure. There's no question that the civil rights movement changed the world I lived in and, certainly, changed my life. I can think all the way back to 1954 when I asked my students to think about some time when they became aware that history matters. And I say, 'I will tell you mine." I was on the playground and we were arguing about who should have won the war. Then, of course, I made them figure out what war and it is the Civil War. It is a playground in Columbia, South Carolina, and it is about 1954. The fact is, we were arguing about Brown versus the Board of Education.
SM (00:04:00):
Right.
SE (00:04:01):
That was what was really going on. So growing up in segregation in the (19)50s meant that the civil rights movement was both, was just a huge relief in a way and an opportunity to act on values I was raised with. I started college in 1962 and became active in the movement there in Durham, North Carolina, soon thereafter. I, also, another important event or experience was that in the summer of 1964, I went to Africa as a... It was after my sophomore year in college. There was a program called Operation Crossroads Africa. I do not think I had ever been out of the country. I went to Africa in an interracial group of college students, my first interracial experience, really, and laid bricks in a country that received its independence the summer that we were there, the little country of Malawi. We even got to be in the stadium and watched the British flag come down and the Malawi flag go up. That summer changed my view of the world because I saw the United States from outside. I discovered colonialism. I began to understand the impact of our country on the rest of the world. For several years, anyway, focused on African studies in my academic life. It framed when I began the next year to think about the war in Vietnam. I thought very differently about it because of having had that experience, so that was pretty fundamental.
SM (00:06:23):
I wrote this question up that I have asked probably the last 12 people I have interviewed. Since I am writing a book on the boomers, a lot of people have had a problem with defining the boomers.
SE (00:06:35):
Right.
SM (00:06:36):
Because the textbooks say it is anyone born between (19)46 and (19)64. But so many of the people that were the leaders of the anti-war movement were born between 1938 and 1945.
SE (00:06:52):
Right.
SM (00:06:52):
Many have told me, that I have interviewed have said, "Steve, you have got to think a little different here because the first half of the boomer generation, yes, they were really impacted. But a 10-year-old in the second half?" So I am just dealing with what higher ed defines as generations-
SE (00:07:13):
Right.
SM (00:07:13):
And what sociologists have been saying. But the question I am coming up with here deals with the (19)50s. I have a couple questions here. To boomers, and correct me if I am wrong, grew up very naïve. They learned that the meaning of fear stood for being quiet, obeying orders, do not question authority. So I came up with three qualities here that I feel defined boomers in the 1950s. The concept that there was fear, there was a sense of being quiet and there was a sense of being naive. Then the (19)60s and (19)70s came, it was just the opposite. There were lots of injustices and people spoke up. They challenged authority and certainly the students did. So they had to deal with these issues from the (19)50s that they grew up with. Whether it be the McCarthy hearings, the Cold War, the bomb, obviously, injustices in the South, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Am I on target here? I read your book, Personal Politics. It's one of the best books I have ever read, in fact.
SE (00:08:25):
Thank you.
SM (00:08:27):
I got it right in front of me. Actually, I destroyed it underlining it but I got to get another copy. It is a tremendous book.
SE (00:08:35):
Thank you.
SM (00:08:36):
But are those three qualities really what the boomer generation when they were young lived through in the (19)50s? I am not just talking white people. I am talking about African American, gay and straight, you name it.
SE (00:08:53):
Well, I think it is really hard to apply something like those qualities completely across the board. I was born in 1943, by the way, so I am in that earlier group. I always tell my students that the uptick in fertility took place a lot sooner than 1946. So I do not think the boomer generation should be counted just from (19)46, but that is a different issue. Fear. Let us talk about that one just a little bit. Certainly, I was aware that there was a danger of atomic war, for example. On the other hand, I think African Americans in the rural south lived in a kind of perpetual fear that is not really about the decade of the (19)50s. It is about centuries of suppression. So those things are very different and their links to time are somewhat different. On the other hand, I would say a lot of people think of the (19)50s as a time of tremendous optimism. Think about Happy Days, that movie, that TV series. A lot of Americans became middle class for the first time. We had been through a depression and then a war. Now people were beginning to have a life of material wealth and opportunities to seek higher education, to own automobiles or refrigerators, or use telephones, watch television. All of those things were becoming a part of ordinary American life, so there is an optimism in the 1950s that linked, also, to the Cold War ideology, "We are the best. We are the most wonderful. Look at us." The Cold War both had produced fear because of war. We had come out of a war and now war seemed threatened all the time. This sense of, "We are the best and we are only getting better and we will win." It was all modulated with that. The naivete of many in my generation was linked to that sense of well-being that gets shattered as we discover. I cannot say that I feel participating in this because I grew up in the segregated South, and I grew up knowing that something was deeply unjust about American society. But I think there were many in my generation in other parts of the country who did grow up with the sense that all is well and getting better, until they discovered that children go to bed hungry in this best of all possible societies. The civil rights movement brought segregation and the brutal suppression of segregation to their television screen. Then the Vietnam War, of course, brought others. Your themes are not, I would not say they are completely wrong but, like any stereotype, you need to push them a little bit because they are never going to fit perfectly.
SM (00:13:25):
The second wave is something you have written about in one of your latest books. What are the major second wave accomplishments, in your opinion? What are the failures or maybe things that were not achieved in the second wave, so far?
SE (00:13:46):
Well, the second wave, certainly, in many ways, created a revolution in American life. We can look at that on many dimensions. It made a lot of legal changes, of course, so that it is no longer legal to pay women less than men for the same work. It is no longer legal to advertise jobs as men only or women only. It is no longer legal for professional schools, medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools that have quotas and only admit 5 percent women. It is no longer legal to prevent women from serving on juries. That whole edifice of legal discrimination fell apart in the late (19)60s and in the 1970s, mostly in the early part of the 1970s. It is also no longer the case that women are expected to stay home through their adult lives and care for children and tend to the house. Now, that was never a reality for very large numbers of women no matter what. But it was a cultural ideal that was lived out mostly in the middle and upper middle classes. That the revolution of women's labor force participation was not caused by the women's movement, but it interacted with it. In some ways, it was a cause of the women's movement because all those women were running into barriers, discrimination, finding only dead-end jobs. Only women only work available to them. Younger women with higher education who sensed potential in themselves would be discouraged, or not admitted to school, or whatever, so there was an interactive effect there. But in the aftermath of that movement, women and men participate in the labor force on an almost equal basis in terms of numbers. There are many ways in which that movement did not... I think I want to credit it with creating a revolution and also notice that it is far from achieving the goals that it set for itself, which was genuine equality between men and women in American society. There are many ways in which it is far more equal than it used to be, but we still have, in many ways, a double standard. There is discrimination still but it's much more subtle, much more subtle. It is important that we had a woman run for president in 2008 who could have won. That is the first time. We have had women run for president many times but this was a new one. I think it is a real marker that Hillary could have won.
SM (00:17:41):
I think she is going to run again down the road.
SE (00:17:44):
She might, she might. We will see. There are a lot of built-in attitudes that I have been distressed to see the sort of casual sexism that was rampant in my childhood, some of that is back. I do not know if you look at movies and that sort of thing, they certainly are better than they used to, but there is still a lot of those themes are there. I think what we did not do was change the way society regards family. Even though families have changed, we offer no support for single-parent family. It is... When it was married couples raising children, women still do more than half, although, at least it is not 90 percent. But they still do more than half of the work of caring for children and families and households. Our labor force offers very few breaks for people who want combined meaningful work and child rearing. There are other countries, particularly in Europe, that have gone much further down this path. We do not offer paid childcare leave. We do not offer them for men, as well as women, except in some places six weeks. But that is not what we need. We make it very hard for people to deal with ill children. We create this competition between these two arenas that are both essential for the future of our society. So you have people hiring nannies that are... People with really high paying jobs, hiring nannies and hardly ever get to see their children. People with really low paying jobs find it very difficult to find decent childcare and children end up in not very healthy situations.
SM (00:20:26):
When you look at the, I am going to use the years the boomers have been alive, of course, they have been alive since 1946 through today, and the oldest is now 64 years old, and the youngest is 48 going on 49, so there are no spring chickens anymore within this generation. I think they finally realized that maybe, like a lot of generations, that they are mortal.
SE (00:20:53):
That may be what?
SM (00:20:56):
That they are mortal. That they-
SE (00:20:59):
Hello?
SM (00:20:59):
Are you still there? Can you hear me?
SE (00:21:05):
Hello? Are you there?
SM (00:21:06):
Yes, I am here.
SE (00:21:09):
I think I lost you for a second.
SM (00:21:11):
Can you still hear me?
SE (00:21:13):
Yes, I can.
SM (00:21:13):
Okay. Yeah.
SE (00:21:16):
You need to know that my telephone works through my wireless.
SM (00:21:21):
Okay.
SE (00:21:22):
Because I am in a very remote place, so every now and then it blinks out.
SM (00:21:26):
Okay. All right. I do have your number if it does disconnect us. What was it like, and you can just give a few examples or just explain it briefly. What was it like being a female during these different periods that boomers have been alive? You did a great job in your book, Personal Politics, about explaining about the young women who were being reared in the 1950s, seeing their moms go to work-
SE (00:21:59):
Right.
SM (00:22:01):
And so forth. So they saw some of the experiences that their mothers had to go through. It helped shape them, too, that it was not going to be easy for many of them.
SE (00:22:11):
Right.
SM (00:22:12):
But what was it like being a woman in the United States from 1946 to 1960? I am breaking these down according to timeframes, from that time at the end of World War II-
SE (00:22:24):
Right.
SM (00:22:25):
Until the time John Kennedy became president?
SE (00:22:28):
Okay, well, I am assuming you are asking me about my experience as opposed to-
SM (00:22:32):
Yes-yes.
SE (00:22:37):
I was born at the end of 1943, so I do not have a lot of memories of (19)46. But the main thing I would tell you is that I had a mother with a college degree and the passion of a scientist, who should have been a scientist, who never thought she had that choice. So I grew up aware of my mother's frustrated potential and anger and depression. I think that really did shape me in some important ways. I did not want to end up in that situation. When I read in 1963, this is outside your timeframe, but when I read Betty Friedan's book, a light bulb went on like, oh, I do not have to make that choice. But I think in the (19)50s, girls in the middle class, which I certainly was, the way we thought about our future was not, what are you going to be when you grow up? When I was really little, I was going to be a nurse because kids did ask that question.
SE (00:24:03):
I was going to be a nurse, because kids did ask that question or asked that question. But in high school, what I recall is conversations among girls about who would you like to marry? Would you like to be the wife of a lawyer, a doctor, a minister? Those kinds of... It was being the wife of and not being those, not having those professions ourselves, that was presented as how to think about yourself in the future.
SM (00:24:38):
How about that period? You already talked about Betty Friedan's book that came out in (19)63, but the period 1961 to 1970.
SE (00:24:49):
Well, that is when things got really revolutionary, and you almost have to talk about that year by year, because it is different year by year. Certainly this mobilization of women is beginning by the mid (19)60s, and with the presidential commissions on women and so forth. I read Betty Friedan in college because one of my professors told me to read it. And at that point, I decided along Betty Friedan's prescription that I could be several woman. I would have a career and I would have a family too and it would not even be hard. But it was in 1967 that I landed in a women's liberation group. And from that moment on, became a very active feminist, and saw the need to transform American society and the way it defined gender and gender roles.
SM (00:26:03):
How about that period, 1971 to 1980?
SE (00:26:10):
Well, again, I am really reluctant to just slap labels on decades like that, because they changed so much from beginning to end. The high point of the women's movement in terms of mobilization was the mid (19)70s, just in terms of sheer numbers and actions and so forth. The high point of legislative change was about 1972 to (19)74, in terms of legal transformations. I think young women, coming of age then, and you need to talk to them, because I was moving from my late twenties into my thirties at that point, in graduate school. But for younger women, I think there was a sense of, the sky is limit. Everything is opening up.
SM (00:27:13):
Then you get into that Ronald Reagan era, from (19)81 to (19)90.
SE (00:27:21):
Right. Well, and that was a time of tremendous backlash. The backlash got going in the (19)70s, the anti-ERA movement, for example. And I actually think it is important to remember that some women growing up in the (19)60s and in the (19)70s were living lives that were not so different from the women growing up in the (19)50s. There were places in America, from suburbs, from small towns, that were not touched as deeply or thoroughly or whatever. So changes, change always has a ragged quality to it. It is certainly far from uniform. And in the (19)80s, you have, on the one hand, Reagan and all the talk about family values and people openly saying that women should go back home and take care of the kids and be women again. And on the other hand, you have women entering all these professions in massive numbers, because now they have been able to go to medical school and law school and get MBAs in the (19)70s. And so the change is still going on and even Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court.
SM (00:28:56):
That is right. Then we get into the (19)90s, which is the time of Bill Clinton.
SE (00:29:04):
Right. And I think there is a resurgence of feminism in a new generation. In the early (19)90s, they called themselves the third wave. One of their leaders is Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker.
SM (00:29:18):
We had her at our school.
SE (00:29:18):
You what?
SM (00:29:23):
We brought her to this university. She spoke at our school.
SE (00:29:27):
Oh, great. Yeah, she is quite charismatic. She is quite wonderful. And also, I think in the (19)80s and (19)90s, more and more women and men were discovering how hard it is to live these new lives and have families, and some of the pressure of that is beginning to be felt.
SM (00:29:56):
And then we-
SE (00:29:57):
But I would say by the (19)90s, the women's movement and younger generations were less divided by race. Not to say that race was not still really important, but Rebecca's a good example of a new language of talking about race that begins to be possible. I apologize for the fact that there is another phone here, a landline. Can I?
SM (00:30:27):
Yep.
SE (00:30:28):
Do you mind if I pick it up?
SM (00:30:29):
Nope, go ahead, just go ahead.
SE (00:30:31):
Okay.
SM (00:30:31):
All right. That is fine. All right.
SE (00:30:35):
Chuck, are you there? Are you on the phone? So I hang up? Good. Okay.
(00:30:44):
Okay. Sorry. I am in a very small cabin.
SM (00:30:47):
Okay. That is all right. Then we got the last 10 years, which is George Bush and now President Obama. Where was everything stand in that decade?
SE (00:31:01):
Well, when you say everything, what are you talking about? [inaudible] lose the thread here.
SM (00:31:09):
Well, what is it like being a female today, really?
SE (00:31:13):
Okay. Yes. Yes. Well, and I think for young women today, it is very confusing. They have an immense number of choices, and they know it. They also know that they are often very hard choices. In some ways, I feel like young women today feel something like that old pressure of family or career. They no longer have the illusion that it will be easy to do both. They expect they will do both, and they will have to do both, but they do not see it as something that is going to be a piece of cake.
SM (00:31:57):
I have two nieces that are going through it right now.
SE (00:32:00):
Yeah. No, I think it is very hard. On the one hand, the sky's the limit. On the other hand, you may not be able to ever get there.
SM (00:32:11):
Right. One of the things that is interested, and I have been asking each of my guests recently, is the difference between mainstream feminism and radical feminism. And it seems to me that oftentimes, when people define mainstream feminism, they say that is liberal. But that radical feminism is like the new left that led the anti-war movement in the (19)60s. And it seems to me that it is always the new left or the more extremes that gets things done. Your thoughts on the difference between the two and defining them?
SE (00:32:49):
Well, if you read, obviously, Personal Politics is about the origins of radical feminism. And I notice that liberal feminism is being created at the same moment, but I do not go into that. I am completely unwilling to say one does things more or better than the other. And the reason is, I think they need each other. I think this is true of many social movements, that when the radicals raise the questions in a far more fundamental way and set out to show the world how deep change is possible, the liberals who are saying things that in the previous context would have been considered wildly unthinkably radical, suddenly look moderate and are able to accomplish things. My last book, called Tidal Wave, which is a sequel to Personal Politics, covers from (19)68 into the beginnings of the 21st century. And I look at these two streams, I argue that, by the mid (19)70s, you really cannot draw a line between them easily. There is a spectrum, but not a bifurcation, but that they influenced each other enormously. The radicals, lots of people joined the more liberal organizations because they went looking for a radical movement and they could not find it because it was so decentralized, and they landed in the other movement, but they radicalized it. And I do think legal changes matter. I think it matters that we have an equal pay act and that we have Title IX, which [inaudible] in women's participation in sports. I think the Equal Credit Act matters. So the fact that we got, and Roe versus Wade, for goodness sake. But the person who argued Roe versus Wade came out of a consciousness raising group in Austin, Texas. It was part of the radical movement. But what she did was the way the liberal movement functioned.
SM (00:35:14):
That is Sarah Weddington, correct?
SE (00:35:17):
Exactly. So I am going to resist that either-or kind of question.
SM (00:35:27):
Okay. Yeah. One of the things that is very important, and my very first boss at Ohio University was one of the leaders of the ERA movement in Ohio. And I know Dr. Mensen was very disappointed when it did not pass. I remember being in the office next to her when the final vote came in and I think she was crying, and it is a long story, because she had worked two years on this. But why did it fail? And I also interviewed Phyllis Schlafly in Washington about four months ago. Yeah, I interviewed her for an hour, and I interviewed David Horowitz on the phone. And both of them have said this. They say that the troublemakers of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, which are probably the new left or whatever, now run the universities and they control what is taught. And they were making reference to women's studies, black studies, gay and lesbian studies, environmental studies, all the studies movements. Your thoughts on their criticism, the studies programs in the universities, whether there's truth to that. And secondly, why did the ERA fail?
SE (00:36:35):
Okay. Those are really two different questions. The ERA failed in part because the most important things it was going to accomplish were already accomplished in the legal changes that did take place in the (19)70s. And so on one level, in the end, it was not as devastating to lose it as it would have been 20 years earlier when all that discriminatory stuff was still on the books. But it also failed, I think, because people found change in gender roles very frightening. And people like Phyllis Schlafly played on those ears. And it was similar to how frightening voting, the idea of women voting was in the 19th century. And all of that change which was happening to people and they were participating in it, was also scary, and I think there was a lot of demagoguery, and Phyllis Schlafly was the leader of it, talking about why should people be worried about single sex bathrooms, we're going to say, or they made up things that they said the law would do, but they also said women might have to participate in combat in the armed forces. Well, we have got that and we do not have the ERA. The ERA was not going to make it happen, but it was happening and people were not easy about that. And I think there were also women in more traditional roles, and there's a very good book on this by Jane De Hart and Don Mathews about the Equal Rights Amendment in North Carolina. And what they found were that women who were opposed, it was not only men who were opposed, for sure, but women who were opposed shared a deep distrust of men with the people who advocated it and said, "We need legal equality, because you cannot trust them to treat us right no matter what." But they were in traditional roles and still very dependent on men. And their fear was that if men are not forced to play their traditional roles, they will abandon them. And their fear was that if women and men are treated equally in the public arena, in the workplace, and everywhere else, men will say, "I will not support my family. You have got to go out and work." Or they will get divorced and refuse to pay alimony. Or they will simply abandon their family. And their view was really that men have to be coerced to take care of their families, and women are vulnerable, and they were afraid that equality would mean that women would be abandoned, so. And that is really about how deeply uneasy some of these changes made many people feel. So that is one question. Now, remind me again of what your other one was, because-
SM (00:40:15):
Well, the other one was just-
SE (00:40:17):
Oh, about the studies sequence.
SM (00:40:19):
Yeah, Phyllis Schlafly basically said the troublemakers of the (19)60s and (19)70s now run the university's studies programs.
SE (00:40:30):
Well, that is a right wing attack that is... I could name a number of writers who have made those charges. It certainly is true that the social movements of the (19)60s and (19)70s ask questions that could not be answered within the framework of traditional discipline. And there's an intellectual transformation that follows from that. I have been very involved in women's studies. I wrote women's history and taught women's history. When I was in school, there was no such thing as women's history. And you did not learn about women in any class that you took, because they were considered to be outside of history. So asking the question about where are the women and what are they doing was an intellectual transformation. The same thing with black history. When I was in school, I was taught very little about what life was like for slaves. In fact, in South Carolina, it was assumed that slaves were probably pretty happy. But even in college, we did not know anything about what life was like for enslaved people. But when people started asking about that, there's an amazing amount there to be covered about how enslaved people created a culture from many parts of Africa, speaking different languages, created African American culture and music and religion and family structures and so forth. So I think those studies programs, in fact, were very, very important in bringing previously unthought about and fundamental issues into our intellectual discourse. It's simply not... It is true that a lot of us... I was an activist in the women's movement. I wanted to know, what shoulders do we stand on? Have people like us, i.e. females, ever changed history the way we want to do it, or is it true that women never have made any history? And I felt we needed to know our history, not romanticized, but just to know, as part of the movement. And that drove me into graduate school. And lots of people like me did that. But the implication that our scholarship is purely ideological, that we do not in fact do real research and hold ourselves to rigorous standards, is the right-wing position, that I think is wrong and dangerous. And if you want to say environmental studies, then you are discounting all the environmental science of the last half century. And those are the same people who say there is no global warming, if they want to say environmental studies is a left-wing plot.
SM (00:44:08):
One of the other points, and I had an hour with her, she was at the CPAC conference, and she was very tired, so I think I got a really quality 30 minutes from her, even though she was there for an hour. And we talked a little bit about whether women in the (19)50s, the parents of boomer women, were fulfilled or were unfulfilled as mothers and housewives, and many not even working. And it was her belief that many were fulfilled, that being a mother and taking care of kids was the duty. And so for the women's movement to say that there is a lot of unfulfilled women who never had a chance to speak their thoughts, just raise the kids and so forth, any thoughts on that?
SE (00:45:02):
Well, I had a mother who was not fulfilled, so that was my personal experience, a group of one. I suggest that you read a book by Elaine Tyler May called Homeward Bound.
SM (00:45:16):
Homeward Bound.
SE (00:45:18):
Yes. A very, very important book about the family in the Cold War era and she has data on this that is really important, and I think anecdotally, you will get people telling you everything. Based on what I know from Elaine May's work and other scholars, I would say, and then packing back to my own experience, I would say, in the first place, of course there were some women who were happy doing that, but that does not tell you that they were all happy doing that. The flood, if you go and read the letters written to Betty Friedan after The Feminine Mystique came out, you would be deluged with thousands and thousands of women writing to say to her, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I did not think anybody else felt this way." And if you look at the numbers of women who go to graduate school, once the barriers are lifted, and the number of women in the (19)60s, there was a big movement in the (19)60s to create opportunities for women to return to college. And that was very, very successful, called the Continuing Education for Women movement. Huge numbers of women wanted to go back, finish degrees and find something else to do with their lives. Maybe they enjoyed staying home, but then they wanted to do something else. And finally, I have to say for Phyllis Schlafly, so why did she have a career? Her own life does not fit that.
SM (00:47:07):
Yeah, I have heard that before. She has been a lawyer, created the Eagle Forum and speaks all over the country, and-
SE (00:47:15):
Right, so she said women should have a role that she never chose to have.
SM (00:47:22):
One of the things about the second wave movement, I remember reading Johnetta Cole's book, several years back, Sister President, that she wrote about her experiences. And this leads me into this question, has the second wave of the women's movement been all inclusive with respect to women of color, women with different sexual orientations? Because I have read quite a bit from other authors that, even Johnetta Cole said, there was pressure within the African-American community to identify as a black person first and then as a woman second, and then she identified with both, but it was very-
SM (00:48:03):
And then she identified with both, but it was very difficult for...
SE (00:48:08):
Well, I think that is true, and I would ask you to please read Tidal Wave because that is a major theme of Tidal Wave. My history of the Second Wave, and it's a functioning part of timing. The Women's Movement started at the same time that the Black Power Movement was in full force. And what seems to me is when you tell this story, on the one hand you have to notice black women and women of color were always there. They started women's groups within all those other movements, which were pretty separated in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. But there were women's liberation committees that raised issues within the Latino movement, with the Chicano movement and the Asian American movement and the Black movement. There were separate organizations, often of women of color, raising very similar issues and often in very similar ways and similar language. But it was a time of such racial polarization that it was very difficult for women to talk across racial minds successfully. And there was tremendous pressure within each of those groups to identify first with their group and then secondly with your gender. So that was true. I would say that the liberal wing of the Women's Movement was more successful, even there, it was not easy, but there were women of color in the leadership from the beginning of the National Organization for Women and of the National Women's Political Caucus. So it is important to notice that, and I discussed it in some detail in Tidal Wave.
SM (00:50:18):
Do you also include the Native American women?
SE (00:50:22):
Yes.
SM (00:50:25):
When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And when did it end? And what do you feel was the watershed moment? This is just you personally.
SE (00:50:35):
Well, I would begin it with the sit-ins in 1960, although it is not hard to push it back to the Montgomery bus boycott since the marker for me is really civil rights. And I am not quite sure how to end it. I would push it well into the (19)70s. But even then, when you try to create a category like that, the early (19)60s and the late (19)60s, (19)70s are also very different times. The early years, the Civil Rights Movement, the Kennedy years, the creation of the Peace Corps, and then the Anti-War Movement and the race riots that happened, and the increasing violence and turmoil is a very different era.
SM (00:51:37):
Did The Beats have an influence on women?
SE (00:51:42):
The Beatniks in the (19)50s?
SM (00:51:44):
Yes, The Beats, because many people have told me they believe that the (19)60s began with the beats because they were anti-authoritarian. They lived their lives. They did not care what other people thought.
SE (00:51:58):
Oh, I think so. I was not living where they were very permanent. But I am sure that is true. They were extremely sexist, and at the same time, they were very anti-authoritarian and into breaking all the rules. So they are forerunners of the new left. They are very... Are you there?
SM (00:52:28):
Yes. I am here.
SE (00:52:28):
They are very sort of nihilistic and they represent some of that side of the (19)50s that says the world is going to blow itself up and recognizing that racism is rampant and so forth, and not feeling very hopeful that any of that can be changed. And the New Left comes along, picks up on a lot of those themes, but says, "Well, hey, we can change it."
SM (00:53:06):
I know that one person I interviewed said that he identified Neil Cassidy. He is the number one Beat because all the books that were written were basically studies about him. And of course, he became one of the Mary Pranksters. But his attitude toward women was basically conquests.
SE (00:53:29):
Right. And that is why I have trouble with a lot of those folks.
SM (00:53:35):
One of the well-known facts that you bring up in your book, Personal Politics, but also, it has been historically documented, is that the sexism that was rampant in the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement drove many of the New Left women that were affiliated with those groups into the Women's Movement in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. So now I have some questions that are directly related to your book, Personal Politics. The people who have studied post-World War II activism know that sexism was rampant in the movements I just mentioned. My question is, how bad was it?
SE (00:54:13):
Well, I would say it was not as bad as in the rest of American society. And I think it is really important to notice that the Women's Movement did not happen in a place where women were treated much worse than they had ever been treated. But rather in a movement that advocated equality but did not treat women equally. And it is that contradiction that women ran into. But they had opportunities to do things, to change history, to go to jail, to stand up for what they believed, to risk their lives, to teach in Freedom School, to take on responsibility for organizing communities. And I think it is the later part of the New Left Act, it became a really massive movement that some of the sexism of the counterculture was much more raw, [inaudible] but the New Left offered women an opportunity to grow and develop leadership. And it also periodically reenacted the sexism that was fundamental to American culture. No surprise. It is not that they were worse, it was that they had not completely transcended everything they had been raised with. And the contradiction is what drove women to name it and act on it.
SM (00:55:48):
You do a tremendous job in this book. I have read the Free Speech Movement. There is a lot of books on that. And a lot of the students that were involved in that movement, were also in Freedom Summer in (19)64, and many of them were even in down south in the (19)61 (19)62 period. And I have interviewed at least six people who were involved in Freedom Summer and male and female. But can you explain, I know, but this is for the people they are going to read this, how important was the student non-violent coordinating committee with respect to not only the Civil Rights movement, but the Women's Movement? And you also in the book do a great job in one section of talking not only about the SNCC, but you talk about the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress on Racial Equality. These are all major groups that were linked to that movement in the (19)50s and (19)60s and beyond. And you talk a little bit about the sexism within those organizations where women were, and you talk a little bit about that.
SE (00:57:00):
Well, I am not going to be able to tell you any more than I already wrote, but the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was one of the most innovative and radical parts of the Civil Rights Movement. It was on the ground and the scariest parts of the South all over the place. And it often does not get its due when civil rights stories are being told. And the focus is on the big leader, Martin Luther King. It was the place where women found the most equality within the Civil Rights Movement, where they learned the most leadership capacities. And it was the organization that gave women an ideology about living out your value in your daily life. That the idea of the beloved community that we were going to enact among ourselves, the values we were trying to bring about in society. And, it really was fundamental to the origins of the Women's Liberation Movement. It gave them a set of ideas, a deeply egalitarian ideology. It gave them a set of strategies and tactics, consciousness raising, and the technique traces directly back to the way people talked to each other in SNCC and spoke from their hearts and tried to reach consensus and not leave anybody behind. So I think that organization was really fundamentally important.
SM (00:59:00):
What is interesting here also is when you look at the March on Washington 1963 with Dr. King, and you see the background of all the people around him. The only females you see are Dorothy Height, who is over to the right. And I know Mahalia Jackson, she sang, but it was all Men. So there is a perception out there, and I think you really correct it in your book that women, they were really secondary in the Civil Rights movement. They just were not there. And-
SE (00:59:44):
A lot of research since then to show, if you look at the Civil Rights Movement on the ground, the things I said that I wrote when I was writing that in the mid to late (19)70s, there is a huge amount more detail about it available now. Because in local communities, women were the leaders. They were towering figures. And SNCC offered role models of older women who risked their lives for what they believed in. And it was in the local communities, those women, they called the Mamas that were so powerful. And if you look at SCLC, what you get is a hierarchical organization in which the top leaders are all black ministers. But there were people like Dorothy Height who is pretty wonderful.
SM (01:00:46):
You talk about the major role played by white women in the South, and certainly African American women as well to end segregation. And they were involved in voting registration drives and so forth. Could you talk a little bit about what it was like being a white woman during Freedom Summer or any of the voter registration drives throughout the early (19)60s down there? Because I do not think a lot of people realize it, many of these people came back to college campuses and actually were the leaders, and several of them were as the Free Speech Movement. Just talk about-
SE (01:01:20):
So like Joe Freeman, for example?
SM (01:01:27):
Yes. Just your thoughts on the women that were involved in with SNCC.
SE (01:01:35):
Well, again, this makes me uncomfortable because I have written it all, and I would love you to quote from my book too.
SM (01:01:43):
Well, yes, I have got quotes that I am going to bring up here next, but I-
SE (01:01:50):
But I do think for many white women, it was stepping outside of the roles that they were expected to fulfill way outside. And when they went south, they found themselves in a movement where there were these powerful black women who became role models, who taught them a different way to be women and a more assertive and self-respecting way to be women. It was for both [inaudible].
SM (01:02:29):
With me. All right.
SE (01:02:34):
And I do not have a whole lot longer, so. I know you planned 90 minutes.
SM (01:02:43):
We got 27 minutes.
SE (01:02:45):
I will try. Anyway, I would say for middle class college kids, black and white, male and female, going into the Southern Civil Rights Movement was a searing experience and [inaudible] and committed them, no matter what happened next, to be engaged with making the world a better place. I doubt many students came out of that experience and went back to their old lives as if nothing had happened. For black students, of course, it would have all sorts of other transforming dimensions. But for white students and for white women, it was such a step outside of their traditional roles that many of them came back to their campuses and were prepared. They felt able to lead. They were prepared to question authority. They were prepared to take public stands. And so the students who went south show up in the leadership of the New Left all over the country and the Anti-War Movement, and then the Women's Movement, and they became the leadership.
SM (01:04:23):
I have two quotes here from the book which are excellent. The first quote is, "These women recognize from the very beginning of their involvement in the movement that they, like their male associates, were at war with their own culture." And the second one is the, "Thus within a movement, young white women have the necessary to forge a new sense of themselves to redefine the meaning of being a woman quite apart from the [inaudible] image they had inherited." And then the third-
SE (01:05:01):
Do not agree with that.
SM (01:05:03):
... One I have here is, "The next generation daughters of the (19)50s grew up with a knowledge that they were identifying roles should be those of wife and mother. But they knew they would probably have a job at some point. They saw mothers with double duty."
SE (01:05:19):
Great.
SM (01:05:19):
So any other thoughts on that or that is good?
SE (01:05:26):
No, I think that is true.
SM (01:05:30):
Then I have another one that I do want you to respond to. It is on the bottom of page 11. Let us see here, you have got, "The straight jacket of domestic idea to challenge it openly would be too frightening in a rapidly changing world clouded with threat of nuclear warfare and the early bush fires of racial discontent and urban decay, where corporate behemoths trained their bureaucrat into interchangeable parts, fewer ready to face the unnerving necessity of reassessing the cultural definitions of femaleness and maleness." So.
SE (01:06:13):
And I am in some ways saying the background of what I was saying earlier about how scary it was, how fundamental the changes the Women's Movement was demanding were. And there was great resistance to raising the issue. And once it was raised, there was a big backlash in the (19)70s. And that is because it is pretty fundamental. Our identities as women and men are pretty fundamental to who we think we are in the world. And so if anybody wants to tamper with that and change it, people get upset.
SM (01:07:00):
You also stated a beautiful quote which is, "Bureaucracy suppressed demotion and passion training its members into interchangeable parts. Bureaucratic values emphasize female traits of cooperation, passivity and security, getting along, being well-liked between new goals."
SE (01:07:20):
And what I am arguing there in [inaudible] is that men were taking on roles that the qualities demanded of them were things the culture labeled females. And so there is an uneasiness already. Things are shifting in ways. So how do men prove their manhood anymore when they are being placed in these kind of settings to work? So when women start saying, "We want in too," or "We want equal chair," or "We want the right to do this and that and the other." For men, it is like, "Well, so what is left?" How will we know?
SM (01:08:06):
You bring up also, and other people have mentioned that the election of John Kennedy showed many people that change is good. And of course, change is one of the definitions of the (19)60s. And certainly John Kennedy was a much younger person. So that is true. And you also bring up the fact that McCarthyism was an attitude that many people were afraid of which is to root out subversion from within. And so there was a fear. That is where I get into the fear again of-
SE (01:08:39):
You are right. McCarthyism did make many, many people afraid. Afraid to advocate change.
SM (01:08:46):
When President Kennedy asked Eleanor Roosevelt to head the commission on the status of women, I believe that was in 1961. She died in (19)62.
SE (01:08:54):
Yes.
SM (01:08:54):
Was he dead serious on that or did Eleanor Roosevelt pressure him to do it because Eleanor had problems with him before supporting him to be president?
SE (01:09:13):
Well, I do not think it was a top priority for him. I think it was a bone that he threw to the women, but he needed women's support. And there was concern within the Democratic Party about pressure for the Equal Rights Amendment. So one of the ways that he was persuaded to do this was that people like Eleanor Roosevelt who were opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment, on the grounds, said it would undo protective legislation that her generation had won to protect women workers. So they wanted to have a commission that would say, "We do not need that." What happened, of course, was something altogether different because that commission uncovered the depth of discrimination against women. And so when they did have one committee that said, "We really do not need an equal rights amendment." That stands somehow at odds with all the other things that they did.
SM (01:10:22):
One other quote I have here that I would like to, if there is any further comments, I think it is another great quote. "Furthermore, having grown up in an era that commoditized sexual intimidation while it reasserted repressive norms, they found themselves living in the ambiguous frontiers of sexual freedom and self-control opened up by the birth control pill. Such contradictions left young, educated women in the (19)60s dry tinder for the spark of revolt."
SE (01:10:51):
Yes. Well, that early chapter argues basically that a Women's Movement was going to happen. It was almost over-determined. There were too many contradictory pressures. It is almost like tectonic plate crushing against each other and something has to give.
SM (01:11:18):
The couple of people you talk about in the book, Stokely Carmichael joked in (19)64 that the only position for women was prone. And I have read about that for a long time in a lot of other books. What did the women at that time think of that? And was he just joking or was he dead serious?
SE (01:11:42):
He was not dead serious. And you can read many other people's descriptions of Stokely Carmichael as being one of the people in SNCC who treated women equally. So it's the implication that he was one of the most macho people around is unfair. It was a joke. It-
SE (01:12:03):
People around is unfair. It was a joke. It was made at the end of a very long, contentious conference, late at night. It was a joke about the sexual relations that had happened frequently within the Civil Rights movement. It is a movement of young people. And what is important about that quote to me is certainly not to vilify Stokely Carmichael, but to notice that the quote when he said that the people around him just laughed. They were tired. They realized yeah, there was a lot of sex that went around. But when other people reported that quote, and it bounced through the movement on a rumor mill, huge numbers of women heard that quote. And to them, it named the sexism that they had experienced in the movement. It is really not about Stokely, it is about how those words resonated with lots of women who had been active in the movement. So in personal politics, I talk about it some, how I had a hard time tracking down someone who talked to me about that quote, but I heard the quote from many people who were not there, many, many people. And that is what I think is really important is not what Stokely really meant, which was basically, there's been a lot of sex around here. But what it meant to people who heard it.
SM (01:13:58):
Casey Hayden and Mary King wrote a position paper that women were treated as second class citizens, just as African Americans were treated in the nation at large. How important was that document? Because I think there has been reference that it reveals the origins of the modern feminist movement.
SE (01:14:20):
Yeah, it was one of the very, very first articulations of the issue of women in relation to the Civil Rights movement. It is the opening shot that you can trace straight from there through a series of other documents to the beginning of the women's movement. So it was very, very important.
SM (01:14:50):
One other quote, this is from someone else, Belinda Rubbalet, and her quote is, "Feminism did not evolve from the sexist treatment within SNCC, but from the organization liberating philosophy and open structure that fostered challenges to authority."
SE (01:15:07):
I think that is fair. What I have been trying to say is it took both. I think she is right. That is the most fundamental, but then there was some sexism, and it's that contradiction of the movement that offered this idea of equality, this very liberating idea and this open possibility to take on leadership roles. And then within that context, when traditional American sexism showed up from time to time as it did, as it could not-not have, women had ideas and tools with which to react to it.
SM (01:16:01):
Yeah. One of the things about that particular comment is also linked to the students for Democratic society, because the participatory democracy, remember Tom Hayden, when he came to our campus, talked about participatory democracy and seems like SNCC was the epitome of participatory democracy.
SE (01:16:21):
It was the epitome of participatory democracy. And SBS took a lot of those ideas from SNCC.
SM (01:16:24):
You also mentioned, I read some place that you thought the 14th Amendment was a slap in the face because it only gave African American men the right to vote.
SE (01:16:36):
No, I did not say that.
SM (01:16:37):
Oh, okay.
SE (01:16:38):
It did. It was experienced by the women who had been active in the abolition movement and the Women's Rights Movement in the 1850s and (19)60s, they experienced it as a slap in the face because it put the word male into the constitution. Some of those women said, "Look, we do not like it, but this is all we can get right now. And it's more important to give Black men the vote than to insist on getting everything." But it raised the issue of voting to the forefront in the women's rights movement in the 19th century, from that point on, focused on the right to vote as its key issue.
SM (01:17:38):
Well, I am down to my final three questions, if that is okay.
SE (01:17:42):
Oh, good.
SM (01:17:44):
Because I am going to do the hour and a half. It's been one hour and 17 minutes, and I am going to keep it to one 30.
SE (01:17:49):
All right.
SM (01:17:50):
So we got 13 minutes. I took a group of students in 1995 to Washington DC as part of our leadership on the road programs, and we met Senator Muskie. And the students I took, helped me develop some questions to ask him. And one of them was about the issue of healing within the nation and within the generation. The question was this, because they had seen, they knew he was the vice-presidential candidate in (19)68, and they knew about Chicago. They had seen what happened in Chicago that year and the assassinations that year. And the question was this, due to all the divisions that were taking place in the boomers' generation when they were younger, do you think that they are going to go to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing due to the divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who were for the war against the war, those who supported the troops or were against the troops? Do you think they are going to go to their grave not healing? And just your thoughts on the whole issue of healing.
SE (01:19:03):
Yeah, I actually do not think so. And of course you have to again say people are different, some people may go to their grave not healed because they want to hang on to their anger for reasons that are theirs. But I would not say that that is true of a generation at all. I think that there are lots of connections across racial lines within our generation that 45 years ago would have been difficult to sustain. I think that there's certainly men and women in our generation have engaged in deep debates about what it means to be men and women and have come to various kinds of resolutions about that. I think separatism, except for a few people who hang onto it, separatism, is not where people are pulling away and refusing to talk to those who are different. And I think most of us, and here, I will just speak personally because I do not really want to speak for my generation, but I personally feel grateful for having been able to live through the things I lived through. And there was a time that was very divisive and fairly painful because of that. But I do not feel I am stuck in that place at all. And the people that I know in my generation are not either.
SM (01:20:46):
I know that Senator Muskie in his response, made no reference to anything in the (19)60s, nothing, not even (19)68 convention. He looked up at the students after about 30 minutes, it looked like he had a tear in his eye. And he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War due to the issue of race." And he went on to talk about that in detail and the loss of life during the Civil War, because he had just seen the Ken Burn series.
SE (01:21:16):
Oh, that is interesting. That is really interesting. Well, I do think that there are a huge amount of unhealed things in American society, but then we're not talking about a particular generation. And if you look at the immigration debate right now, we have got a lot of some of the same awful stuff going on.
SM (01:21:42):
My next to last question is a question dealing with, I have talked to many feminists and I talked to one prominent feminist at her home in New York City about six weeks ago. I will not mention her name, but she likes the National Organization for Women. But she says she is disappointed in it because of the fact that if you walk into their headquarters now, the only things you are going to see as far as pickup materials, this is the first perception you have when you walk into an office. They have literature there dealing with abortion, literature dealing with the pill, and I think literature dealing with AIDS. And her comment was, "Those are all important issues, but there is a lot more issues for women than that." And she felt that that they have been hung up on those three issues.
SE (01:22:39):
And I do not have enough inside information about NOW to make a statement about them and their priorities as an organization. And I certainly think that there is reasons in Tidal Wave, I really wrestled with why the body was so important in the second wave of feminism, and you are lifting up issues that are about that. Also, domestic violence and so forth. But I would agree that we have a huge range of issues, and it is going to take a new generation to articulate a new focus based on their lived experience. Because I think people in our generation, we know what we experienced, but the world has changed in so many ways that we need new generations to clarify where are the flashpoints for them.
SM (01:23:43):
The plan of question here is the issue of trust. One of the qualities that has often been defined within the boomer generation, and that really includes the entire generation, even the activists, I have read this in books, it is just they are not a very trusting generation. They have not been trusting from the get-go, particularly with respect to the leaders that represent them in government. And as a result of the lies that many of them have seen and the disappointments that they have had in their leaders from the time they were young, right into their twenties and thirties. And they saw Lyndon Johnson, and they knew that the Gulf of Tonkin was a lie. They saw Watergate with Richard Nixon. They were questions about President Kennedy's policy on Vietnam. And anybody who was a student, particularly in the first 10 years of the boomer generation, knew that Eisenhower was the first one that lied on national television about the U2 incident. And I had interviewed one person who said that I believe in leaders. And certainly I always believed in Ike until he did that. And everything changed. So we know from history that many of the people in the (19)60s and (19)70s, the people on college campuses did not trust university presidents. They did not trust their religious leaders in the churches and synagogues. They did not trust anybody in corporate leadership. They did not trust anybody in the leadership responsibilities. So the question I am asking, do you believe that that is a negative or a positive within the generation? And I add one other note. The reason why I asked this question, I was in a Psychology 101 class at Binghamton University in my freshman year, and the professors talked for an hour about the importance of trust. And its basic premise was, if you cannot trust, you will never be a success in life. Yet seems like a lot of the movements that came because we did not trust. Women did not trust men; the anti-war women did not trust the leaders in Washington. You got all the movements, so just whether it's good or bad?
SE (01:26:03):
Oh boy, I need to pull your question apart again. You have got a lot of specifics that are true. People learn to distrust leaders who were not trustworthy. You end up with Watergate. But the issue, I am not quite sure about the framing of your issue, because you are saying, here is a generation that discovered as leaders were not trustworthy, did that condemn them to never being a success?
SM (01:26:40):
Well, that was a professor saying that, but I am just –
SE (01:26:44):
I think what it does is put a burden on us to build a democracy in which we in fact do hold our leaders accountable in such a way that we do trust them. And that is a long-term change that we need to work to bring about. And that requires a lot more engagement at the grassroots level. All those ideals about participatory democracy and so forth. Some are not realizable on a large scale, but they create some values that are very important to figure out ways to bring about. And they are pretty, are plenty of people that came in my generation out of the (19)60s as community organizers working at the grassroots level, doing the kind of things that Barack Obama later did. And so that is not just about a negative attitude saying, "Authority is bad," or you that you cannot trust anyone over 30. Well, most of us are maybe double 30. So, problem. But it does raise a question of how do you create a society in which you have leaders that you do trust? Not because you hand off to them responsibility and do not pay attention, but because you are engaged with them and they are accountable to you.
SM (01:28:17):
Since I have two minutes, so can I ask one more?
SE (01:28:23):
Okay.
SM (01:28:24):
And that is the last question.
SE (01:28:25):
I am making coffee in the background. So you are just going to hear little [inaudible].
SM (01:28:28):
That is okay. What do you think the legacy will be of the generation that grew up after World War II when the history books are written 50, 75 years after they are gone? What will historians and...
SE (01:28:46):
I do not know. I do not know. I am a historian, and that guessing about the future is something that I have a tough time with because I really do not know. I do think it is a demographic bump. It had a particular shared experience as a cohort or some sub cohorts within it, was involved in massive changes in American society. But I think there is a lot more that we need to know about what comes after, before we can make those judgements.
SM (01:29:24):
You are right, because we are just talking about boomers.
SE (01:29:28):
We are in the middle of it still.
SM (01:29:29):
Yeah. We are in the middle and they can change a lot of things. And the one thing I did not mention when I was talking about healing, and that is the fact, how is the Vietnam Memorial itself, I am sure you have been there –
SE (01:29:42):
Oh, it is very powerful.
SM (01:29:43):
Yeah. When Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal a Nation, his goal was not only to heal the veterans and their families, but hopefully to heal the nation from that war. What do you think that is done with respect to the healing process, not only for vets and anti-war people, but the nation as a whole?
SE (01:30:01):
Well, again, I do not have any data on the nation as a whole. I can tell you my own personal experience of that memorial was extremely powerful. And I have talked about it with my students often when I talk about the Vietnam War and how it tore this country of par. And then talk about that beautiful place, which is like a scar and it names the names and it is a place of mourning and grief, and people leave their wreaths and they leave teddy bears and whatever. It honors without glorifying. And I find that very, very profound.
SM (01:30:46):
And of course, Diane Carlson Evans did a tremendous job making sure the Women's Memorial was there.
SE (01:30:52):
Right.
SM (01:30:53):
And she had to go before Congress, and she had to deal with a lot of issues that women have had to face their whole lives through the hearings.
SE (01:31:00):
Exactly.
SM (01:31:00):
Was there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask?
SE (01:31:04):
No, I was not quite sure what your trajectory was, but I will be very interested. When do you think you are going to finish this book?
SM (01:31:15):
Well, the interviews are going to end at the end of September, and then I am going to be hibernating for about six months and transcribing all of them myself.
SE (01:31:24):
Wow.
SM (01:31:24):
I am not going to –
SE (01:31:24):
That is a lot of work. I know. I have done.
SM (01:31:26):
Yeah, because I do not trust anybody else. Peter Goldman, who I have gotten to know who wrote the book on Malcolm X said he has had nothing but bad experiences handing off transcripts, even when they were covered by grants, he says, "I end up doing them all over again because of the mistakes that are made."
SE (01:31:42):
Oh.
SM (01:31:43):
So anyways, I am hoping that next year it will be done and then I am finishing, like I said, I am going to need two pictures of you though.
SE (01:31:55):
Okay.
SM (01:31:56):
And I do not know if you can mail them to my home address or I can email you just two.
SE (01:32:02):
What kinds of pictures?
SM (01:32:03):
Just –
SE (01:32:04):
Why do not you send me an email telling me what you're looking for? I can send them to you on email.
SM (01:32:08):
Okay. I will.
SE (01:32:11):
So that would be the best way to do it.
SM (01:32:13):
Well, thank you very much.
SE (01:32:14):
You are very welcome.
SM (01:32:15):
And you have a great day.
SE (01:32:15):
All right.
SM (01:32:15):
Bye now.
SE (01:32:15):
Bye.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Dr. Sara M. Evans
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Evans, Sara M. (Sara Margaret), 1943- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Duke University and received her PhD from the University of North Carolina.
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2010-08-16
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.49
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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92:32
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a68293686f8f3ea57e9b335a388a5504.mp3
27d4227795dc73d91550704205c2ec15
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Date of Interview
2009-07-28
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Steven F. Hayward
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Steve Hayward is an author, political commentator, and policy scholar. He currently serves as a Fellow at Ashland University's Ashbrook Center where he directs a program in political economy. Hayward earned a Bachelor's degree in Business and Administrative Studies from Lewis and Clark College. He also earned a Master's degree in Government and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Claremont Graduate School."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13057,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Steve Hayward is an author, political commentator, and policy scholar. He currently serves as a Fellow at Ashland University's Ashbrook Center where he directs a program in political economy. Hayward earned a Bachelor's degree in Business and Administrative Studies from Lewis and Clark College. He also earned a Master's degree in Government and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Claremont Graduate School.</span>
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Woodstock; Baby boom generation; Counterculture; Self-assertion; Abortion; John F. Kennedy; Nineteen sixties; Anti-war movement; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam veterans; NAACP; Feminism; Family Ties (TV Show); Civil War generation."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792}}">Woodstock; Baby boom generation; Counterculture; Self-assertion; Abortion; John F. Kennedy; Nineteen sixties; Anti-war movement; Civil Rights Movement; Vietnam veterans; NAACP; Feminism; Family Ties (TV Show); Civil War generation.</span>
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Authors; Journalists; Hayward, Steven F.--Interviews
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64:55
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Steven Hayward
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 28 July 2009
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:06):
Today's interview will be with Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute, which is a conservative institution in Washington, DC. This is July 28th, 2009. And this interview is part of my oral history project on the boomer generation. Looking at the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the (19)80s, some of the characteristics of the boomers and certainly, excuse me, issues related to boomer lives and the events that shaped their lives. This is... All right, the first question I would like to ask, when you think of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
SH (00:00:50):
It is just like word association, feel like a war shark test, hippies, rock music, Vietnam War protests. Gosh, I do not know. I struggle a bit. I write about these things. It takes me a long time to come up with my generalization, so it is hard on the spur the moment. But yeah. Well, I mean, I guess a lot of ferment and turmoil and uncertainty and changing rules of the game. And gosh, you could go on forever about all this. Maybe some of your follow-up questions will tease out more.
SM (00:01:23):
Is there one specific event in your life or in your mind that shaped you when you were young?
SH (00:01:30):
No, not really. I mean, I was fascinated by a lot of things. The space program, of course, that was one of the things that went right in the (19)60s was getting to the moon when everything else seemed to be going wrong. I was born in 1958, so by 1970, I am only 11 years old, so I am not quite... I mean, I was aware of what was going on around me. Looking back, I think the whole Woodstock thing was kind of an interesting moment. Because as I write in my book, the media and all the deep thinkers, and of course the people on the new left and the so-called youth or countercultural movement thought of that as the beginning of a new civilization. I mean, you had Time Magazine and the New York Times both talking about how Woodstock youth really were different, and that there really was something new to the counterculture. And in fact, what was it, four or five months later, you had the attempt to do a follow-up on the West Coast at Altamont, which ended up as a disaster. And that was kind of the end of the whole thing. The whole end... all the attempts trying to do Woodstock reunions have really worked. So Woodstock was kind of a one-off, and were it not for the neighbors and people in the surrounding area... I mean, back up a step, the Woodstock was supposed to be 50,000 deep or something, it ended up being 500,000 or something like that. And so they did not have toilets, they did not have food, they did not have water. And if not for the neighbors in those surrounding towns, you could have had a real catastrophe there. So that was always... I guess I am rambling a bit here, but what comes to sight out of Woodstock and a lot of other parts of those years was the pretentiousness of the baby boomers and the so-called counterculture or youth movement, that they really did represent some new phase of human nature, when in fact there really is no escaping some of the basic facts of human nature.
SM (00:03:22):
Following up to that question, what do you think, if you were to look at the boomer generation again, that is defined by the scholars as those born between (19)46 and (19)64 that fall within that generation, what do you think are the strongest characteristics of that group and the weakest characteristics of that generation?
SH (00:03:43):
Oh, let us see. Oh, boy. Yeah, that is another hard question to generalize about. I mean... Yeah, gosh, I do not have a good answer for that question. I mean, I sort of repair to some of my general... I mean, I think the scholars and intellectuals of that period share the same defects with the broader generation, which is a lot of self-indulgence. A lot of self-assertion. I think there is the idea that is quite typical of baby boomers is I mean, a popular form of it is we can have it all, right? But then the sort of more serious intellectual version is that through triumph of the will ideas, I mean, it is very nichey. I think it is people thinking that the only real obstacles to changing the world are failures of our willpower. And so there is a disregard of what conservatives would recognize as some of the lessons and requirements of tradition and authority. And, Tom, you know, those are some general traits, I think you see, I am trying to think of some good examples, but hard-pressed off the top of my head, but they will probably come to me later anyway.
SM (00:04:59):
Do you think that the term activism, because it was a highly activist period, not only in terms of the anti-war movement and the civil rights and the women's movement and the environmental, gay, lesbian, Chicano, Native American, all these movements came about at that time. Do you look at that as a positive quality in America?
SH (00:05:19):
Well, no. And it can be qualified this way, you had the activism for activism's sake. You had the notion that commitment was the way you exhibited your moral purity or moral seriousness. I mean, if you go back a century, let us take the abolitionists, who crusading to abolish slavery, or the early women's movement of people who wanted votes for women and suffragette movement. I mean, they were activists too, but their activism was subordinate to a concrete moral purpose that you could argue about. Whereas I think what you tended to see coming out of the (19)60s and (19)70s was activism for activism's sake. Activism became its own moral category. And you say... In other words, people would say, "I am an activist," and by the way, what you were activist about just flowed from one thing to another because Martin Luther King was a civil rights activist, but the civil rights took the priority over activism, right, whereas I think later in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, as I say, activism became its own moral category, and commitment became the most important moral tribute or moral... what do I say, a moral attribute, but in fact that it represents a certain value-free abstraction from more hard headed thinking about what the moral purpose is behind it. I mean, let us look at, for example, one of the great cultural divides would be abortion. Both pro-choice and pro-life people think of themselves as activists, but obviously on a very different side of a moral divide. But the media tends to treat them equally as well. They are all activists. And so that is why I think the term activism has acquired its own status, separate and apart from thinking about what it is you are activist about.
SM (00:07:05):
Good point. One of the things we would see on television, say in the (19)90s, we would see when Newt Gingrich came to power in (19)94, really, the Republican leadership and the conservative leadership, you would see George Will make comments about it. You would see Newt Gingrich and other people say that... They would really criticize that whole era, that boomer generation because of the breakdown of values, the breakdown of American society, the drug culture, the divorce rate, no respect for authority. Do you think they were blowing a lot of wind there, or do you think there was some truth into what they were saying?
SH (00:07:47):
Well, no, I think there is a lot of truth to it. Here is the... Couple of problems need to be sorted out about this whole phenomenon we are talking about. We tend to think of the (19)60s as when... essentially as America's cultural revolution, like you said, with cultural revolution in China or something. And that is narrowly speaking true. But I think that something that I did not think of, I first heard James Q. Wilson suggest this idea, that in fact, the seeds of what we now criticize of the (19)60s and the (19)70s were present way back in the (19)20s and (19)30s, especially the (19)20s. I mean, you saw in modern philosophy of existentialism, of modernism in the arts, the modernist poetry of certain aspects of T. S. Eliot or Ezra Pound, people like that, bohemian culture, some of it linked of course to radical politics, modernist literature, all the rest. The beginnings of the sexual revolution and so forth, were all very much present back in the 1920s. And what Wilson points out, and a few others, and I think Francis Fukuyama has also talked about a bit of this, is you then had the Depression and World War II in short order when you could not afford to indulge in these kind of escapes from restraint or traditional restraints or traditional morality. I mean, both the Depression and the war, which of course were global phenomenon. In other words, call the halt to the progress of the diffusion of the ideas of modernity. And then, you know, you had the 1950s, you have us and the rest of the world getting back to order. But then with the baby boom and the prosperity that comes in the post-war years, you have a return to realizing the consequences of modernist spot in the 1960s. So in other words, the 1960s are partly the culmination of a long-term philosophical change in social and philosophical thought that really could arguably go back 200 years to the enlightenment when we start explicitly throwing over authority and tradition. And you also have a demographic problem. I think it was Pat Moynihan who said the principal job of civilization is to get young people from 16 to 24. We had a lot of them there in the (19)60s and (19)70s when the kids were surging into colleges and so forth. And Moynihan's argument was you were always going to have some trouble in the (19)60s of some kind just on demographic grounds alone. Too many young kids just surging through our educational system and into the workforce and all the rest of that. You overlay all that with, as I say, the long term social currents going back a century or so along with the particular events, especially the Vietnam War in this country, civil rights and unrest in the streets. And you have quite a phenomenon. One of the curiosities of the (19)60s is that what we think of as the student movement was not just an American phenomenon. Remember, I mean, you know, you had student unrest at universities in Europe and even in Asia and even in a couple of universities behind the Iron Curtain, you had had some student riots and whatnot suggesting that there was something beyond just the war and just the domestic scene in America that was going on in the 1960s.
SM (00:11:00):
Beautiful thoughts there. What is the one event in your eyes that changed the generation forever? What do you think, if you were to ask a room full of, say, a... If you were speaking at West Chester University and a bunch of boomers, particularly those boomers that were in the first 10 years of that age group, what would you think would be the number one event to shape their lives?
SH (00:11:25):
Well, I think it would... takes a little explanation. Probably the assassination of John F. Kennedy, although it did not happen immediately. I think the most interesting work on this subject lately is Jim Pearson's book... What is the title of it? I forget the exact title. It is Camelot and the Unmaking of Modern Liberalism or something like that. James Pearson. It is worth looking up.
SM (00:11:49):
I will get it.
SH (00:11:50):
Yeah. And he makes a very interesting argument in there. Remember that before Kennedy's assassination, the big concern of the establishment liberals was... Well, the radical right, the conspiracy theorists of the John Birch Society and the McCarthyites, and people like that. And liberals were all for rationality and progress and incremental reform. And of course, in the immediate hours after Kennedy's killing, and then later it became through legend as well, it had to have been some kind of right wing plot. Well, it turns out it was Oswald who was a dedicated communist. And what Pearson points out is that Kennedy was a victim of the Cold War. This was a leftist who was out to kill Kennedy because Kennedy was against Castro and so forth. And what happened is in the years since then is the left essentially lost its mind over this. Now it is the left that is in conspiracy theory. Had to be the CIA and the mob involved in killing Kennedy. It could not have been Oswald. 9/11 was an inside job. We hear all these crazy things that have continued to this day. And suddenly it has the left that is interested in conspiracy theories and has gotten somewhat irrational. And it is really kind of amazing that within three or four years after Kennedy's killing, all his leftist ideas had caught on college campuses and had overwhelmed liberals. Portland and Johnson, I think he was kind of a fuddy-duddy to the youngsters searching through the universities of six... Of course, Kennedy had been kind of a hip, stylish young guy. So anyway, I think that was sort of the watershed event in the (19)60s that... and we will never know how it would have gone if Kennedy had lived, but I think it might have gone by differently. We will never know. I mean, Johnson thought after he won the election Ford-Goldwater, he still thought his problems were going to come from the right and from populous conservatism and from the John Birch Society type. And one of the things that, for Johnson and other liberals like him, mainstream liberals, is they were completely disoriented when their "most ferocious" problems came from their left. And they never did understand that and get over it. And I think that is how we get disrupted liberalism, at least in the (19)90s. I think in a lot of ways Clinton kind of righted the ship for liberals. We will see if Obama figures this out.
SM (00:14:13):
Kind of a follow-up, that term watershed, what do you think was the water... What was the watershed moment that began the (19)60s? Because a lot of the books that have-
SH (00:14:23):
Kennedy's assassination.
SM (00:14:24):
Oh, okay.
SH (00:14:25):
Yeah. I mean, until Kennedy was killed, you are still kind of... In my book, I described that year (19)64, right around then, as the tail end of the tailfin era, I call it. And that is because, I mean, Kennedy wanted to, as he created a slogan, was, "Let us get the country moving again." But it really was a continuation of a lot of Eisenhower policies. The economy was growing okay, but not... It was roaring after the middle of the years of the (19)60s. So I think that is the event that really snapped the country out of its sort of post-war stability that you had under Eisenhower and Truman.
SM (00:15:02):
One of the other criticisms of the boomer generation is that this was a generation of 70 million or 75 million and oh, really, only 15 percent were involved in activism of any kind during this timeframe. So it was really a small number. So thus their impact was not as great as people might think. People look at that sometimes as well, that is another attack on that generation and those that were involved.
SH (00:15:30):
Well, I have a couple of thoughts on that. I mean, the number may even be smaller. I mean, in some surveys thought that the number of people involved in campus activism was 5 percent or less. However, it is 5 percent of a large number. You point out if you are talking about 70 million people, you are talking about a couple million at least. And of course, the other thing is that even if it is a tiny minority, that is irrelevant in this sense. I mean, the history of politics is small, concentrated, determined groups that determine political outcomes. I mean, that is the Bolsheviks and the Soviet Union, right? It is the Nazis in Germany in the (19)30s. It is the Federalists in the United States in 1787 saying, "We need to get a new constitution because the Articles of Confederation are not working." So, the history of politics and social change is small determined groups that become the use of shade the tail that wags the dog, and they sort of drag along the rest of the generation with them. And even though you may have only two to 5 percent or even 10 percent, if you want to of people involved in activist activities or sympathizing with the ideas of the new left in the student movement, you probably have at least an equal or double that number who sympathize with it or who find themselves influenced by it, because that is the sort of social dynamic of modern mass movement. So I think that although it is an important point to keep in mind that you did not have a lot of people burning their draft cards and marching in the street, it had a strong magnetic effect on the rest of the generation, I think.
SM (00:16:56):
My next question is actually a two-part question. How important were the college students of that era? And we are talking late (19)60s, and oftentimes when we talk about the (19)60s, we are talking about college students up to about 1973, because it is hard... The (19)70s is often thought about after, sometimes even after the helicopters took off from Vietnam in (19)75. So it is hard to separate those first three to four years in the (19)70s. How important were college students in ending the Vietnam War, number one? And number two, how important was this generation with respect to having a very important influence on the civil rights movement, the women's movement, and all the other movements?
SH (00:17:38):
Yeah. Got to take those in several different parts. I think it is overstated or exaggerated that the anti-war movement actually stopped the war. That that is been their big claim ever since then, "And gee, we stopped the war." In fact, as Todd Gitlin among others recognized, although the war was unpopular, the anti-war movement was even more unpopular with American people. Americans are funny that way. I mean, majority of Americans, they are capable of having conflicting ideas in their heads at the same time. We call that cognitive dissonance. So while the war was increasingly unpopular in the later (19)60s and especially into the (19)70s, a lot of people also do not like anti-war protestors. Whoop, hello? Hello?
SM (00:18:23):
I am here.
SH (00:18:24):
Hm. Uh-oh. Somebody-
SM (00:18:29):
That is me. I am okay. That is not my phone. We are okay.
SH (00:18:34):
Oh, okay. I am not sure what happened there. I have another extension here someone may be using. Anyway...
SM (00:18:37):
Okay.
SH (00:18:39):
Where was I in all that? Oh, the war story is a complicated one. I mean, I argue that the war was lost very early on, as early as 1964 when the Johnson administration decided they were not going to fight it like a real war, but fight it like an exercise in game theory. Once you committed that as your basic strategy, you were not going to win that war in any sense. And then the American people, you continued to support the war majority according to polls as late as mid-1968. And it was after Ted that they started losing heart for it. But yeah, it was... Hold on a second. Oh, mom, who did that? Huh? Nothing. Never mind. I got someone... Anyway.
SM (00:19:26):
Okay. It is okay.
SH (00:19:29):
So where was I? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that is a complicated story. I mean, Nixon, I think knew the war was lost, but wanted to get us out in some reasonable fashion, and that is why it took another few years. But the student movement... By the way, the anti-war movement really loses steam starting about 1971, I think, when draft is abolished, right?
SM (00:19:48):
Right.
SH (00:19:48):
That took a lot of the steam out of the anti-war movement.
SM (00:19:51):
And one of the other points is that the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, if it was not for that particular group, the other groups were waning at that time.
SH (00:19:59):
Yeah, I think that is right. And one of the other things you noticed is when Nixon decided in 1972 to escalate bombing and whatnot in the spring, and then again at Christmas, the public opinion poll showed pretty strong public support for him. So at that point, we were already getting out our ground troops.
SM (00:20:17):
Right.
SH (00:20:18):
But the other question, civil rights, look, the civil rights movement, which mostly means the NAACP and people like Kang and Bill Randolph and all the others who have been toiling at that for decades, deserve the credit for making civil rights happen. An awful lot of... For the rest of the new left and the student activists and the baby boomers came to that quite late. And they showed up for the victory parade, you might say, right? Everyone is proud of marching in the South in (19)63 or (19)64, but at that point, the movement had been toiling for decades to get to that point. So that is always been a little bit of opportunism. If I were a Black civil rights leader from that era, I would have had mixed feelings about all of that. Nice to have the help, but where were you when we needed you in 1948 is what I would have been wanting to ask. And similar, the other thing, the environmental movement... The environmental movement spout itself after the civil rights movement. So the Environmental Defense Fund was sort of thought... was founded to be something like the Civil Rights Litigation Organization. But in fact, a lot of those organizations were not even founded until after the initial Clean Air Act was adopted. And quite the opposite of the civil rights, many whose organizations are now a century old.
SM (00:21:33):
You are right. When you talk about the women's and the gay and lesbian movement, I think even they will say in the beginning, they look to the civil rights movement as their...
SH (00:21:40):
As their model.
SM (00:21:40):
As their model.
SH (00:21:43):
What makes both those movements possible is prosperity. I mean, feminism does not work if you do not have prosperity. I can be flip about it a little bit, but not entirely and say, what makes the feminist movement possible is dishwashers and washing machines. Now, you can... the labor saving devices mean... and also expand educational opportunity. But all that is based on prosperity and technological improvements. So now, the ancient distinctions between male and female labor are eroded, and now women can join the workforce in any capacity at all in large numbers, which is what they did. And I always think there has been, and this is not an original thought, I always think there has been quite a distinction between what you might say, equity feminists, there would be no ordinary educated women who would like to be lawyers or doctors or managers or whatever. And then your ideological feminists who are all about gender differences and all that sort of nonsense that you get in higher education and gender studies and whatnot. That is a really tiny minority, I think. Most real women, I think, do not care anything about any of that stuff.
SM (00:22:47):
How important do you feel the boomer generation who are now in their early six... or in their sixties basically, and in aging, and many of them probably thought when they were young, they never would age.
SH (00:23:00):
Right.
SM (00:23:01):
Some still have their youthful ideas, but I am not sure really how many. What kind of an influence have they had on their children and their children's children because now they are becoming grandparents, and the millennial generation is now the largest generation in American history. There are more millennials than there were boomers, but generation X was basically their kids. And the generation Xers were the born from (19)65 to about 1980. And so what kind of influence have these boomers had, not only... I am not only talking about white boomers, African American boomers, Asian American boomers, even gay and lesbian boomers who have their own issues. What kind of an influence have they had on their kids and their kids' kids with respect to activism and having an influence in their lives in that direction?
SH (00:23:59):
Well, yeah, that is hard to say because I mean, it is hard to generalize about too much, but there is a couple of straws in the wind. I mean, the old joke is that a... One old joke is that a neo conservative is a liberal with a teenage daughter. I mean, one comparison I made in actually my next book that is coming out in a little while is the great politically charged TV show in the early (19)70s was All in the Family, right?
SM (00:24:28):
Yes.
SH (00:24:28):
Archie was the bigot and the son, Mike, Meathead, was supposed to be the enlightened liberal, right, and they were always fighting about stuff. 10 years later, the politically charged sitcom was Family Ties, right?
SM (00:24:43):
Mm-hmm.
SH (00:24:43):
And there what you had was boomer parents who had been hippies in the (19)60s who do not understand their conservative son, Alex, right?
SM (00:24:50):
Yes. Michael Fox.
SH (00:24:52):
His hero was William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman on the show. It was the exact opposite of All in the Family, just in 10 years. I mean, that really to my mind, is a difference between the Reagan years, in cultural terms, a difference between the Reagan years and the Nixon years, or the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And I thought that was a real cultural marker of things. You know, you see other things, I mean, what I picked up from students today and people in their twenties, teenagers, is they think all this talk about the (19)60s that you folks and parents and grandparents talk about, a lot of them think it is a little puffed up and pretentious, and they have a, "What was that all about?" kind of attitude, and you guys were kind of silly. And the long hair, and God knows the bell bottom jeans and disco, the (19)70s, they look at with complete horror. So maybe that is just the wheel turning that happens in cultural terms. But you do not see, I mean, remember that in the (19)60s you had one of the big totems was the generation gap, the younger generation versus the older generation. And the younger generation... Or the older generation could understand the younger generation. I do not see that as around as much today. You do not see that represented. There has always been parents against kids a little bit, but I do not see it. It was not been blown up into what you might call a metaphysical dimension as it was in (19)60s and early (19)70s. The generation gap, you often see that in capital letters. It was a real social phenomenon. Well, I think that is gone. So to that extent, I think it is the baby boomer parents and grandparents today are maybe a little older and wiser, and their kids are not as, for whatever reasons, do not seem to be as easily swept up into some of these pretentious enthusiasms for the moral superiority of their new generation.
SM (00:26:43):
Right. I think I know your answer to this, but when I was... I am a boomer, and when I was in college, I was around friends who thought we were all the most unique generation in American history, and mainly because there was a feeling that we were going to cure everything. We are going to bring peace to the world, we are going to end racial injustice. Everything is going to be good, almost like a utopia. Your comment on that, just the feelings that be... a feeling of being the most unique generation in American history when they are young, I still think many boomers still feel that as they are old, in their old days.
SH (00:27:27):
Yeah, that is right. They probably still have that attitude somewhere consciously or subconsciously or from some level. I mean, one of the problems with the (19)60s is that the so-called establishment, the parents of the boomers went out of their way to affirm all that nonsense. In my book, my Age of Reagan book, I quote Time magazine saying... Time Magazine, remember, I think it was 1967, named the under 25 generation as Man of the Year.
SM (00:27:55):
Yeah, I have the magazine.
SH (00:27:55):
Yeah, that is the point, they called it Man of the Year, right?
SM (00:27:55):
Yeah.
SH (00:27:56):
Some of the prose in that article, if you got it is really astoundingly idiotic. This is just a new generation, but a new kind of generation, and I am paraphrasing here, but it said they really are better than their parents. They are going to really bring new hope. So if you are a kid and the establishment is telling you this, then what are you going to think? Of course you are going to run away with these intentions. I mean, that was not the only one. You had the Cox commission, Archibald Cox commission appointed by I think Johnson or somebody after Columbia University was sacked. Now, that was essentially a bunch of hooligans who trashed one of our leading universities, and the Cox commission went on about the wonderful idealism of this generation and how terrific they were. And it was just an unbelievable failure of moral... sort of moral accountability on the part of the older generation who should have... That I do not think you would see today. I do not see people today pumping up a younger generation and saying, "Oh, yeah, you are better than we are," in part because of the residue, as you say, of baby boomers who still think deep down inside, they probably are a little better than the World War II generation. And in part because I just think we are not going to run that movie over again.
SM (00:29:08):
I want to read something to you. This has a little bit to do with the meeting we had with Senator Muskie before he passed away when I was working at the university, and I took students down to Washington for our Leadership on the Rope programs. He was kind of... had just gotten out of the hospital, was not feeling well, but I am going to read this question first. Do you feel boomers are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, the division between Black and white, divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? What role has the wall played in healing divisions? Or was it primarily a healing for veterans? Do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 35 to 40 years made the statement, time heals all wounds a truth? And I want to follow it up with... We met with Senator Muskie and I asked that very question to him with 14 students in the room, and I think he was not expecting the question and he did not answer for a minute, and he almost had tears in his eyes. And then he said, "I just got out of the hospital and I had a chance in the hospital to watch the Ken Burns movies about the Civil War." And he said, "My only comment to you is that we had not healed since the Civil War." And then he went on talking about the generation that we lost due to all the men who died and making the comparisons of the populations. And I will tell you, the students, you could hear a pin drop in the room for the next 10 minutes. It was just an unbelievable experience. It was such an experience that one of my students went on to higher ed and got his PhD and that was the moment that he knew he had to go on. But your thoughts on that whole business about healing within the... Do you think there is an issue here on healing?
SH (00:31:07):
Well, yeah, I mean, I tend not to that language of healing and reconciliation and closure and all the rest of that. That is very much therapeutic baby bloomer language that we would not... Our grandparents from the World War II era, parents and grandparents, they would have never used... They would never have had midlife crises, first of all. Right? And they would not have used that therapeutic language about closure and all the rest of that. However, I do think that what is underneath all that though is, the way I sometimes put it, others have too. There is kind of a Hatfield versus McCoys intramural feud among baby boomers. I think on political terms, that is how you can explain Bill and Hillary versus Newt in the (19)90s. I mean, remember Newt calling the Clintons countercultural McGoverniks, which got everybody else that. And there was a business, by the way, last year in the presidential race, and something that, again, Sullivan and others pointed out, is that part of the genius of Obama was saying, "I am not part of all that." Hang on. It is a complicated story. But I mean, part of his genius, I think, was saying, "We ought to give a gift beyond this baby boomer feud that we have been carrying on since the (19)60s." He does not quite mean it because he is very much a product of the (19)60s and (19)70s leftism. But still, I think he had an insight there that yeah, this has now become a long running feud. The Civil War comparison I think is a pretty good one. If this is not geographical, it is ideological and cultural. And yeah, I think probably we will go to our grave with some of all that. I think they are going to have some of the young Americans for freedom fight some old SPSers in their nineties in their nursing homes, yelling at each other about the tent offensive or something. I think it will go on till the very end.
SM (00:32:51):
I know when I interviewed the late Gaylord Nelson, who I thought was a great statesman, I do not know if you ever had a chance to meet him.
SH (00:32:57):
Yeah. Never met him, but you certainly know his work.
SM (00:32:59):
Oh, my gosh. And he passed away and I went to... because he had helped us with some of our speakers and meeting people, and he came to our campus twice. He was kind of the real deal. And he always... When I asked him that question, he said, "People do not walk around Washington, DC with that they have healed on their sleeves." But he made one important point that I think was the most important memory of that meeting, he said, "But forever, it has left its impact on the body politic."
SH (00:33:29):
Yeah, that is right. Yeah. And I think it is interesting to say about Muskie. I mean, Muskie was one of those postwar liberals who I think was completely disoriented and surprised by what happened. And I mean, partly was Lyndon Johnson we know was upset about the riot. He did not understand why Blacks were rioting in Detroit and Newark and places like that after he put it all he can do for them. And I think that the new left, remember the new left was very radical, and their enemies were liberal. I think it was... I forget if it was Tom Hayden or Peter Collier, or which one of them said that our first object was to murder liberalism in its official robes. And so if you are going to establish a liberal like Muskie, you cannot understand... This is completely incomprehensible to you. And I think that explains why he hesitated in answering the question, because I think he still does not understand to this day or cannot accept it or finds it bizarre and hard to come to grips with. And I think he and people like Moynihan and others perceive how damaging this was to establishment liberalism. And it really was 20 years or more getting over it, and to some extent may still not have gotten over it. Clinton, I think, represented a walk back from the brink. I mean, Clinton signing on welfare reform, talking stuff on crime, and in other ways represented that we are no longer going to give in to the radical left and the new left on these subjects, even if he had some sympathies with it himself. But now under Obama, you have got a lot of those folks somewhat older and wiser and a little more shrewd who still believe some of that stuff, I think. As you saw this whole Gates affair the last... has been a real revealing moment, I think, for Obama and people on the left. But nonetheless, I think that is being blindsided by something that nobody could have foreseen as what so upset people like Muskie and probably Nelson too.
SM (00:35:29):
And of course, we had a chance to even have our students meet Senator Fulbright.
SH (00:35:32):
Oh, yes.
SM (00:35:33):
And he probably would fall into that same category there.
SH (00:35:38):
Yeah.
SM (00:35:38):
Overall, now that you mentioned that you were 11 when these things happened, so you are in the younger group of the boomers, but over the years, have you changed your feelings toward boomers? Obviously, you have degrees, you have done a lot of thinking and writing about it as you have gotten older. But have you been consistent in your thinking, or have you been really evolving and changing?
SH (00:36:04):
I think I have probably been pretty consistent in my thinking. Yeah. No, It would take a while for me to sort out my thoughts on all that.
SM (00:36:14):
Yeah. What do you think might be the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation in... Of course, when I talk boomers now, I am really not only talking about the (19)60s, I am talking about the (19)50s when they were young and raised in that post-war era where hopefully a lot of parents were there. I reflect on it on the (19)50s and on. When I think of the (19)50s, I think of Dwight Eisenhower. I think of security, even though we had the McCarthy hearings and the threats of Russia, seemed to be a much more stable time. I remember that personally. And then all of a sudden, as I got to be a teenager, things, so many things changed. So really, when you are talking boomers, you are talking about the (19)50s, the (19)60s, and the (19)70s, and of course when Ronald Reagan came in and Assay Bay. So you are talking about a lot of things here.
SH (00:37:07):
Yeah. Yeah. I think what explains the (19)50s is, well, a lot of things. But you come out of World War II with a couple things. One is that the whole world's exhausted and broken, destroyed except for the United States, really. And so all that rebuilding time, I think, we have a whole generation of people coming back from national service, and they are very service and dutifully oriented people, and they start having kids like crazy. And I think I recur to the answer I gave a little earlier. I think it takes a while for the rise of prosperity and for some of the social ideas I was talking about that were fermenting back in the early part of the 20th century to exhibit themselves. It is hard to trace out causation on this because there is so many things that overlap. But yeah, I mean, that is why were the (19)50s so sort of placid and quiet. Well, I think the other thing about the (19)50s is, and other people have made this point, is that you had, in the (19)50s, you had the... and coming out of World War II, you had the triumph of bigness. I mean, in the (19)50s you used to talk about three things: big government, big business, and big labor, and big projects. We built the interstate highway system and out here in California, we built the water projects and the modern university system and lots of three ways. We built the suburbs all over the country. And that was regarded as a great success. That is back in the days when people would tell pollsters that by large margins, 60, 70 percent said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing almost all the time. Today that number's under 20 percent almost all the time. So the collapse of confidence in big institutions, like especially big government, but also big labor and big business. So it is a sort of simpler framework for the world then. And most people looked up from their morning newspapers and what they saw the government was a record of success. You had won a big war. You have built a big highway system, you have built middle class prosperity and new communities all across the country, and things went pretty well. It is not still (19)60s when things start going wrong with riots in the streets and the war that cannot be won and all the rest of that. But people start changing their minds about all this.
SM (00:39:18):
How important... Could you comment on the music of the year? Because when you think of the (19)60s, the music continues to be played on the radio. Every generation seems to love it. Most of the young people that I have been around, both generation Xers and millennials, they loved the music of the (19)60s, but it had seemed to have had a very important impact on that generation. When you look at the era when my parents grew up, the big bands were very important to them in the (19)40s and the (19)30s, late (19)30s into the (19)40s. Then you had the Sinatras, and of course Elvis came about in the 1950s and that whole period, rock and roll. But the (19)60s, could you just comment on how important you think when you defined the Boomers, how important music is?
SH (00:40:05):
Well, I mean, obviously, so (19)60s style music was the soundtrack to the student activism and whole youth movement. I mean, I am not a music critic, so I am not going to offer an opinion whether it is better or worse. But I do notice a couple things. One is that if you look at popular entertainment today, TV shows, especially in movies, you will find that for music background, they tend these days to use two periods, use music of the (19)60s and maybe in the (19)70s, and then rap, and rap-inspired styles today as you see in movies and TV shows. Whereas, in other words, the music of the (19)70s, disco especially, and a lot of the music of the (19)80s, has just disappeared. I mean, it is still a little bit of a round. And when Michael Jackson dies, people buy his records again and play them for a couple of days before putting them away again for good. But yeah, there is something, and I do not know if that is because it is connected with historical moments in some way or not, but yeah, I mean, that was the rock fest. Before the (19)60s, big musical events were just big musical events. But of course, bigger rock festivals of the (19)60s, and Woodstock being the best example I already mentioned, those became political events as well, in some sense, larger social events. And they are kind of still thought of that way a little bit today. I do not know if you had benefit concerts before the (19)60s, but nowadays, benefit concerts for political social causes are a big thing and pretty prominent. And all musicians think they have got to be part of doing something like that.
SM (00:41:41):
Right. Like Willie Nelson and Farm Aid, which began in, I think in (19)81. He was just on television last week talking about it. He thought it was a one-year happening, and it is every year since.
SH (00:41:52):
Right. But then you had... I remember one of the first ones was in the early (19)70s was the concert for Bangladesh, which I forget what that was, but that raise... in London or somewhere, that raised some millions of dollars for famine relief, I think was (19)70s. I forget when it was, sometime in the early (19)70s. But yeah, so yeah, music became politicized. That is the other thing is, music has always had some political content to it, but I think it... You know, you saw more of it starting in the (19)60s than you had before. You actually went out and tried to measure it.
SM (00:42:26):
If you were to list some of the bands or personalities music-wise, entertainment-wise who may have had a great influence on the boomers, who would they be?
SH (00:42:36):
Oh, I do not know. That would be a purely subjective response. I mean, you had the leading artists who broke the ground, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, of course. And then certain individual performers like Jimi Hendrix, but then some of... and they were not especially political, I do not think, I mean they had their politics, but their songs with a couple of exceptions. I mean, one of the Beatles, most famous tracks is their right-wing song Tax Man, right?
SM (00:43:04):
Yeah.
SH (00:43:06):
They was shocked that having to pay 98 percent tax rates on the large amount of money they were starting to make. And so that was kind of an irony in their case. But then you would have Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash, they were much more explicitly left wing, anti-war, so forth. And help, I mean-
SM (00:43:26):
Mr. Hayward, I want to change my tape here. Hold on one second.
SH (00:43:29):
Yeah.
SM (00:43:34):
Okay. I am back.
SH (00:43:39):
Yeah, I am not sure what else to add to all that. I mean, that is...
SM (00:43:41):
Certainly, we cannot forget the Motown sound because when we are talking about rock, Motown was big.
SH (00:43:46):
Right, right. And that was not especially politic. I mean, off the top of my head, that does not strike me as especially political. Popular with civil rights folks, but I do not think of any... Off the top of my head, I do not think of any particular Motown ballads that were highly politicized in their content. Unlike some of the rock bands who wrote explicitly anti-Vietnam War songs and so forth.
SM (00:44:07):
Were there any books, you are an intellect, and yeah, I have asked this to some people, and I am a book person. I read a lot of books, and I was reading back when I was in college, so I had deep feelings on books. But were there any books that you think college students or young people or the boomers were reading when they were young that influenced them?
SH (00:44:26):
Well, yeah, I mean this I would want to think about, but off the top of my head, I think of a Charles Reich, Greening of America, which is a pretty late book in the (19)60s or maybe early (19)70s. J. D. Salinger's, Catcher in the Rye was popular, I think, for its sensibility. And which swathly fits into the beats out of the (19)50s, with Jack Kerouac and all the rest of that. Herbert Marcuse was very popular. What was his book called, One-Dimensional Man or something, I want to say. I am not sure if that is the right one. And a lot of stuff is kind of impenetrable, but it was popular for especially superficial leftist intellectuals. I know I am missing a whole bunch of books [inaudible].
SM (00:45:11):
I know that Roszak's The Making of a Counter Culture was very big and-
SH (00:45:15):
Yeah, but I guess that was in the (19)60s, or was that a little later? I do not remember.
SM (00:45:18):
No, that was in the... I went to grad school and it was required reading. And then anything that Erickson wrote, the psychologist was-
SH (00:45:28):
Oh, yes. Right. Yeah.
SM (00:45:30):
He wrote a lot about the (19)60s and identity politics. It was so funny.
SH (00:45:33):
I have thought about the books of that era for quite a long time. So once upon a time I did, but I really sort of lost touch with that.
SM (00:45:41):
Right. I have a question here regarding kind of a follow-up to the healing issue, and that is the issue of trust. I start my question by stating that when I was in college in my 101 class in psychology, and I will never forget this professor talking to us, saying that it is very important to trust others. Because if you have an inability to trust, then you most likely will not be a success in life. Now, I was a college student first year, I did not really take that in, but I never forgot it. And then I saw what many boomers thought were lies that leaders did not... Nixon lying, President Johnson lying, Gulf of Tonkin, you studied... Even President Eisenhower lied with the U-2 incident. Now, recent John Kennedy lied about what was going on in Vietnam with saying goodbye to the Diem, the murder of Diem.
SH (00:46:40):
Right.
SM (00:46:40):
And then you have got so many others during that period when people were evolving, do you think that there is an issue... that boomers have an issue, have had an issue their whole lives with trusting others? They do not trust leaders, and in that era, they did not trust anybody in authority, whether it was a minister, a rabbi, a president of the university, a politician, anyone in a position of responsibility, I do not trust you.
SH (00:47:08):
Yeah, that is right. I know. I think that is a common theme is you just do not trust large institutions, public or private. And part of that has got its postulates. And again, some of the intellectual ideas of authenticity and individuality going back at least a century, you know, you want to trust yourself first before you trust somebody else. And partly it is the increasing complexity of the modern world. I mean, anyone who thinks about this seriously for more than five minutes understands that responsible governments and leaders have to conceal certain things and prevaricate about the truth. If you believe otherwise, you would say we would not have any spies at all if we would disband the CIA tomorrow, which no responsible person would ever do. And again, there is some cognitive dissonance in play. We are cynical and distrustful of institutions, and to a certain extent that is healthy, right? I mean, that is not too far from Thomas Jefferson's idea that the Tree of Liberty should be watered with the blood of pirates every 20 years or so, or should have periodic revolutions to renew things. And on the other hand, we always say, "We really want a leader we can believe in." This is part of the enthusiasm for Obama, change we can believe in. And we will always end up being disappointed. People like that. We were disappointed with Jimmy Carter, who told us he wanted to give us a government as good as the people, and then within a few years he was telling us the people were no good.
SM (00:48:32):
And even Ronald Reagan, who most people loved, but then Iran Contra toward the end, and then people started to question him.
SH (00:48:39):
Exactly. I mean, that was the worst part of the whole thing, was as somebody put it, it was as though you had learned that John Wayne had been selling rifles and whiskey to the Indians, and then that was a huge problem, yeah. And right. So no, I think there is something to all that, and we will probably never actually get that back. And that is a mixed bag. Yeah, I do not know what else to say about that.
SM (00:49:07):
Do you think that boomers have pressed this onto their kids and their grandkids, and is that healthy?
SH (00:49:14):
Well, it depends. I mean, a great book about this is now quite old, but I think is onto the origin of this was Robert Nisbet's Twilight of Authority.
SM (00:49:23):
I think I have that.
SH (00:49:23):
Back quite a long time, the erosion. So social reasons for the erosion of respect for authority in any forms, and it is not brand new, did not really start with the boomers, but accelerated around then for some of the reasons you mentioned, read the newspaper headline. If you trust the newspapers.
SM (00:49:37):
Right.
SH (00:49:41):
Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America, right? We do not even watch the network news anymore. I mean, if Walter Cronkite were still alive, we would not think of him that way anymore. It is impossible to recreate Walter Cronkite now, but that is just the way we have gone. And I do not think there is any changing that back.
SM (00:49:57):
If some people, even Johnson's, they talk about two things that caused President Johnson to resign. One of them was Cronkite making those comments on television, the second being that McCarthy had finished in second place up in New Hampshire.
SH (00:50:10):
Right, yeah. But then he was going to beat him in the Wisconsin primary the next week.
SM (00:50:14):
Right.
SH (00:50:15):
He knew he was going to lose.
SM (00:50:17):
Why do you think the Vietnam War ended?
SH (00:50:23):
Well, yeah, a complicated story. I mean, as I said a little earlier, I mean, that war was lost at the very beginning when it was decided to run it not as a traditional war, but as an exercise in game theory in one sentence, in this whole theory of graduated escalation with pen signals to the North Vietnamese. I mean, in other words, Johnson's people completely misjudged the character of the North Vietnamese in thinking they were rational actors who could be bargained with. In fact, they were revolutionaries who were determined to win and figured out early on that they could outlast us and were willing to do so. And the failure to recognize that fact meant the war was lost in the beginning, unless you were going to change your tactic. Well, it was too late after 60 days. That is when we made our final flint and said, "We are not going to effectively prosecute the war." But then at the other end of it, it finally ends... Well, it finally ends with North Vietnamese victory, right in 1975. But it ends for us when Nixon decides that he is going to escalate enough to make them conclude some kind of agreement to let us get out in one piece, which we more or less did. I mean, you put up the helicopters taking off in (19)75 was not exactly getting out in one piece, but it was... came pretty close.
SM (00:51:29):
Right. Let us see here. I am coming toward the part where we asked you some of the names for your mission response, but what does the wall mean to you in Washington? I lived in California too until 1983, and of course it opened (19)82. And the first thing I had to do when I came to Philadelphia is I had to take the train down to Washington to see the wall. Because it meant an awful lot to me and I have been at every Memorial Day in Veterans Day ceremony since 1994, and I am not a veteran, just because I feel I have to be there to pay my respects to those who serve. Your thoughts on the impact that this wall has had on America?
SH (00:52:12):
Well, I do not know. I think it was a bigger deal when it first opened up. I mean, in my next book on Reagan, as we were talking about, I have a couple paragraphs about how controversial the whole thing was when it was first announced and then opened up. And also people changing their mind. It is interesting. National Review Magazine initially criticized the design, and then when it opened up, they wrote an editorial saying, Tensiter saying, "Well, we were wrong. This is actually pretty good." So, I do not know, people bring their own aesthetic, philosophical judgements to that kind of memorial. I once reflected that, and actually, I think I tried to do the math once, but if you... In Europe, for example, did the memorial in that style to the dead of World War I, it would stretch down the entire length of the Mall, right? Because the numbers are so much larger. The idea of putting every single person's name on the wall is that is very modern American. It also reflects now our commitment to individuality. And there is certain things about that that are noble and laudable. I do not really have any strong feelings one way or another about those, the Vietnam War Memorial.
SM (00:53:20):
What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?
SH (00:53:24):
Oh, gosh. I do not have a strong response on that either. In both those cases I am now sort of vague on the facts about how much it was a provocation, how much was overreaction by the National Guard troops. You can always bring in the old themes of town and gown there. An awful lot of... I mean, this is certainly true of the police in Chicago in (19)68, but true National Guard troops, as long as there are working class people who resented what they were perceived of as these privileged kids who are acting up. And it does not excuse what happened, but I think it sometimes gets forgotten that there really is... Those particular moments, you mentioned Kent State, are reflective of the cultural division amongst the baby boomers. And that is where I mentioned before that Hatfields versus McCoys. So that was one place where real shooting broke out, like the old Hatfield-McCoy feud.
SM (00:54:23):
Right. I am to the part now where I am going to ask just some... give some names of people of that era just for some brief comments, and then also terms of that era.
SH (00:54:35):
Yeah.
SM (00:54:36):
Watergate.
SH (00:54:38):
Oh, the great crown and catastrophe of the (19)60s, you might say, even though it was in the (19)70s, but it was had its origins in the (19)60s, of course.
SM (00:54:47):
Woodstock.
SH (00:54:49):
Yeah, I already said my part about that. It was sort of the cultural apogee of the youth movement.
SM (00:54:57):
1968.
SH (00:54:59):
Oh, yeah. The worst year for America since 1861.
SM (00:55:10):
The term counterculture.
SH (00:55:10):
Yeah, the pretentious name that the youth movement gave for itself.
SM (00:55:11):
Hippies.
SH (00:55:15):
People who did not bathe at all.
SM (00:55:17):
How about yippies?
SH (00:55:20):
Yeah. Well, that was the sort of formalized what? That actually was the acronym for Youth International Protest, was not it?
SM (00:55:24):
Youth International Party.
SH (00:55:26):
Yeah, Youth International Party. Yeah. Right. Jerry Rubin and those guys.
SM (00:55:29):
Yep. SDS.
SH (00:55:33):
Yeah. Students for Democratic Society. I mean, I do not really have a sort of summary one sentence about them. I mean, they were the organized radical force of it.
SM (00:55:43):
The weathermen.
SH (00:55:45):
Yeah, the violent streak of the whole... They were the mad bombers of the New West.
SM (00:55:52):
Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
SH (00:55:55):
Well, John Kerry comes to mind immediately. Yeah.
SM (00:55:59):
Boy, there are a lot of people that do not like him in this group. It is amazing.
SH (00:56:05):
When he was emerging as a candidate, what, four years ago, very early on, I thought, oh, this is all going to come back in a big way, and this election is going to end up being about Vietnam to some extent. And I am kicking myself for not having written an article about that, because what happened with swift boats and all the rest of that, I foresaw all that quite clearly. And yeah, that is another... That was really a classic example of something that Obama understood, is that one of the things that was wrong about the 2004 election is that we were fighting out our old divisions from the (19)60s, especially over the war, because Kerry was really a bad candidate for precisely that reason. But he had all that baggage.
SM (00:56:43):
The people that, not the Swiffo people, but there were other Vietnam veterans against the war that had problems with him. They did not dislike him because he is a Vietnam vet, but there were issues around that period that they liked his speech in front of Fulbright, that took a lot of courage and they praised that, but the fact that he was one of the few guys because he was wealthy that could fly to locations where everybody else had to hitchhike, take planes, ride in old cars, and he was flying in airplanes. That really upset a lot of the Vietnam vet. Young Americans for Freedom, which Lee Edwards has talked about a lot, but is a forgotten group when talking about the anti-war movement.
SH (00:57:26):
Yeah-yeah. Oh, was that your next question?
SM (00:57:30):
Yeah. Just your thoughts on the young Americans for Freedom, which was a conservative group.
SH (00:57:33):
Yeah. I mean, they have finally gotten some of their due. There have been a couple of liberal writers who have talked about how... This is ironic that at one point in the early (19)60s, it was generally thought across the spectrum that the youth movement was going to be a right-wing phenomenon, and Young Americans for Freedom starts before SDS, for example, and it turned out some pretty impressive rallies and turned out some impressive numbers of people who never got the media coverage for it.
SM (00:58:00):
Well, I think there needs to be a book written about it.
SH (00:58:02):
I think there was one by a guy named Andrews a few years ago, a short little book [inaudible] side of the (19)60s. It was mostly about... Yeah.
SM (00:58:09):
Yeah. I think there needs to be more information for scholars because-
SH (00:58:13):
Yeah, I do too. Yeah. That is right.
SM (00:58:14):
The enemy's list.
SH (00:58:17):
Oh, well, Nixon's paranoia again. But all politicians have their enemy's list, whether they write them down officially or not. That was a little bit exaggerated, I think.
SM (00:58:25):
Okay. Ted?
SH (00:58:25):
Yeah. A military victory for the US and a political defeat for the US.
SM (00:58:37):
Cambodian invasion.
SH (00:58:39):
Yeah. Another thing that was puffed out of all proportion. It turned out that key members of Congress had been informed about what was going on, and the Cambodian government knew what was going on, but it was supposedly "secret" for diplomatic and political reasons. You wanted to have certain amounts of public deniability for political reasons, and so that was one of those events that spun out of control.
SM (00:59:03):
Black power.
SH (00:59:05):
Yeah, the militant side of civil rights, which dismayed even Martin Luther King, of course.
SM (00:59:10):
The American Indian Movement.
SH (00:59:13):
A sideshow. Native Americans wanting to get in on all the fun.
SM (00:59:18):
Mm-hmm. Again, these are some names of personalities now. Andy Hoffman.
SH (00:59:24):
Oh, yeah. Sort of the clown prince of the new left.
SM (00:59:27):
Jerry Rubin.
SH (00:59:29):
Same thing. Yeah. He is even more the clown prince of the new left.
SM (00:59:32):
Timothy Leary.
SH (00:59:34):
The pharmacist of the new left.
SM (00:59:36):
Of course Richard Nixon.
SH (00:59:38):
Yeah. The perfect hate figure for liberals of all stripes.
SM (00:59:43):
Spiro Agnew.
SH (00:59:45):
Oh, yeah, I do not have a good quick one for him. Nixon's designated hitman, you might say.
SM (00:59:53):
Eugene McCarthy.
SH (00:59:57):
Interesting guy. One of the unappreciated geniuses of American politics, I think. And certainly this is more appreciated, one of the great wits of American politics.
SM (01:00:07):
Pretty well educated too.
SH (01:00:08):
Yeah.
SM (01:00:09):
And boy, was he a poet. A lot of people-
SH (01:00:11):
Exactly. Yeah.
SM (01:00:12):
He could have been a poet and never been in politics.
SH (01:00:14):
Right.
SM (01:00:15):
George McGovern.
SH (01:00:17):
Yeah. Sort of a tragic figure in a lot of ways. Yeah, I will leave it at that.
SM (01:00:23):
John Kennedy.
SH (01:00:24):
Well, as his reputation had it, but somewhat naive about the movement that he wrote to the nomination.
SM (01:00:32):
John Kennedy.
SH (01:00:34):
Yeah. Well, the boy prince of liberalism and we will never know how that might have turned out.
SM (01:00:39):
Bobby Kennedy.
SH (01:00:43):
The other boy prince of liberalism, about whom I think we have a quite inaccurate perception.
SM (01:00:50):
Sergeant Schreiber in the Peace Corps.
SH (01:00:53):
You do not have too much to say about that. He was this little decent guy, but that was not... a marquee job, but I think actually a fairly ordinary one.
SM (01:01:03):
Lyndon Johnson.
SH (01:01:05):
Yeah. The tragic figure of establishment liberalism.
SM (01:01:08):
Robert McNamara.
SH (01:01:11):
Oh, oh, God. The face of technocratic liberalism.
SM (01:01:17):
George Wallace.
SH (01:01:20):
Yeah. I do not... What do you say about him? Do not have much to say about him really.
SM (01:01:25):
Ronald Reagan.
SH (01:01:27):
Yeah. The other... Boy, what do you say about him? The fulfillment of the Goldwater Revolution in the Republican Party, I guess you would say.
SM (01:01:39):
Jimmy Carter.
SH (01:01:44):
Oh, I do not know. What do you say about him in one sentence? He campaigned on the slogan of Why Not the Best, and we are still asking that question about him.
SM (01:01:57):
Gerald Ford.
SH (01:01:59):
Oh, a very decent man who did well in a bad situation.
SM (01:02:02):
Daniel Ellsberg.
SH (01:02:05):
Oh, yeah. An opportunist little runt.
SM (01:02:10):
Dr. Benjamin Spock.
SH (01:02:13):
Oh, yeah. Another sort of shooting star, sort of overblown... of overblown reputation.
SM (01:02:19):
Norman Mailer.
SH (01:02:23):
Oh, I do not have anything to say about him really.
SM (01:02:23):
Okay. The Berrigan brothers, Daniel and Phillip.
SH (01:02:26):
Yeah. I do not really care about those guys either. I do not have anything to say about those guys.
SM (01:02:36):
All right. Let us see who we have here. Barry Goldwater.
SH (01:02:36):
Ah, yeah. The breakthrough figure for modern American conservatism.
SM (01:02:40):
About Huey Newton, Bobby Seal, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, that group.
SH (01:02:45):
Yeah. That would be the same as the Black Power folks, the militant side of civil rights.
SM (01:02:50):
Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, and Betty Friedan?
SH (01:02:55):
Yeah, they are the gender... They are the vanguard of gender feminism.
SM (01:03:01):
Mm-hmm. Okay. Let us see. Is there any question that I did not ask you that you thought I was going to ask you that you would like to comment on, on the boomers in the (19)60s?
SH (01:03:13):
No, not really. That covers quite a lot.
SM (01:03:17):
I think I am missing one thing here. I know I have asked most of... You have answered some very good... You have done some deep thinking on these, I can tell, on some of the questions. I want to fill you in also on what I am doing is I will be getting these transcribed, but I am going to send you... I did not realize this because this was my first book, and I actually did early retirement to do this book because I have been working on it since (19)96 when I first interviewed Eugene McCarthy. And then I had my parents were... I had a lot of issues, and I went back and forth. Now I am finishing it up. And so the first 30 people, I did not know about, you had to get a waiver signed by all the people. They all agreed to do it, but they did not... Nobody ever asked about a waiver, but I am sending now waivers to the individuals, and you sign it, send it back to me, and then when I get it transcribed and I send the transcript to you to give the final okay in editing. And that is what I am doing with everyone. The original 30 is kind of an issue because seven of them have died. So I do not know what is going to happen there.
SH (01:04:23):
I have no idea. You will have to talk to your publisher about that or something.
SM (01:04:26):
Yeah. But waivers are important, even though they agreed to do it.
SH (01:04:31):
Yeah.
SM (01:04:35):
You have any other thoughts you want to say on anything?
SH (01:04:37):
I do not think so. We covered a lot of the waterfront.
SM (01:04:39):
Yeah, what I usually do with each interview, I take pictures of people, and I have really good pictures of you when you were here, but you may have gotten a little older looking. I do not know.
SH (01:04:51):
Well, I am balder, I am pretty sure, and I am a lot thinner. I lost a bunch of weight here a couple years ago, so we will be around September if you are in through Washington, or October, if you are in through Washington.
SM (01:05:00):
Yeah, why do not I do this? Because I got great shots of you, but I would like to have a more current, so when you are back down there, I will come down and take some pictures because I am actually going to be interviewing Dr. Sally Satel.
SH (01:05:11):
Oh, right, sure.
SM (01:05:12):
I am going to interview her along with M. Stanton Evans next week. Next week. And then I am going out to Dr. Murray's home to interview him.
SH (01:05:22):
Oh, good. Yeah.
SM (01:05:23):
So I will be down... And I am actually interviewing Ron Robinson from the Young Americas Foundation sometime when he is not having that conference of the... that is coming up for him. And even Dr. Ornstein is interested in doing an interview as well, but he has got a lot of family issues in August.
SH (01:05:42):
That is right. Yeah.
SM (01:05:43):
So, well, Dr. Hayward, thank you very much.
SH (01:05:47):
Sure thing.
SM (01:05:49):
And I will be in touch with you. When will you be back in...
SH (01:05:52):
Early September.
SM (01:05:53):
Okay. I will send you... Do you want me to send the waiver at AEI or at your home in California?
SH (01:06:01):
Oh, how soon do you want it? Do you want it end of this month or...
SM (01:06:04):
Yeah, I am going to be mailing them all out in September.
SH (01:06:05):
Oh, send it to AEI then.
SM (01:06:07):
Okay. And then you just send it back to me, and then of course, then you will see the transcript when it is transcribed and you can edit it and whatever.
SH (01:06:13):
Right. Okay.
SM (01:06:15):
All right. You have a great day.
SH (01:06:16):
Yeah, you too. Bye-bye.
SM (01:06:16):
Thanks. Bye.
(End of Interview)
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Steven Hayward
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Hayward, Steven F. ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Authors; Journalists; Hayward, Steven F.--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Steve Hayward is an author, political commentator, and policy scholar. He currently serves as a Fellow at Ashland University's Ashbrook Center where he directs a program in political economy. Hayward earned a B.S. in Business and Administrative Studies from Lewis and Clark College and a Ph.D. in American Studies and M.A. in Government from Claremont Graduate School.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-07-28
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.60
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2017-03-14
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
66:22
-
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4a7db8257f23d3dbb2f40a0c4eaaf7f3
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/acc3be9cff4e426d027b9e5db043c174.mp3
8ac5f2d5736c05ce424258d9dd5053b0
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Steven M. Silver
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Steven M. Silver is a psychologist, author and combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He is currently the Director of the inpatient Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Program of the VA Medical Center in Coatesville, P.A.. Dr. Silver has been working with trauma survivors since 1972. He received his Bachelor's degree in History and Government, a Master's degree in Counseling form Miami University in Ohio, and he has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Temple University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6915,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,3618091],"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Steven M. Silver is a psychologist, author and combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He is the former Director of the inpatient Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Program of the VA Medical Center in Coatesville, P.A. Dr. Silver has been working with trauma survivors since 1972. He received his Bachelor's degree in History and Government, a Master's degree in Counseling from Miami University in Ohio, and he has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Temple University.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Anti-war protests; Vietnam War; Civil Rights Movement; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Jane Fonda & Tom Hayden; Nineteen seventies music; Rock and roll."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Baby boom generation; Anti-war protests; Vietnam War; Civil Rights Movement; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Jane Fonda & Tom Hayden; Nineteen seventies music; Rock and roll.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
124:11
Subject LCSH
Psychologists; Authors, American; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Silver, Steven M.--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Steven Silver
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Silver, Steven M. ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Psychologists; Authors, American; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Silver, Steven M.--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Steven M. Silver is a psychologist, author and combat veteran of the Vietnam War. He is currently the Director of the inpatient Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Program of the VA Medical Center in Coatesville, P.A. Dr. Silver has been working with trauma survivors since 1972. He received his Bachelor's degree in History and Government, a Master's degree in Counseling from Miami University in Ohio, and he has a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Temple University.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
ND
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.207a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.207b
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
124:11
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84029d45994fe13bc714a96dc5ac37fe
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js)
This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part.
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dr. Ted Morgan
Date of Interview
2011-02-04
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
117:15
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Ted Morgan is a Professor Emeritus in Political Science at Leigh University. He is the author of The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America. Dr. Morgan received his Bachelor degree from Oberlin College and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in Political Science from Brandeis University. He taught classes on Social Movements and Legacies of the 1960s, and Propaganda, Media, American Politics, and Organizing for Democracy."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,11791078],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Ted Morgan is a Professor Emeritus in Political Science at Leigh University. He is the author of <em>The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America</em>. Dr. Morgan received his Bachelor degree from Oberlin College and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in Political Science from Brandeis University. He taught classes on Social Movements and Legacies of the 1960s, and Propaganda, Media, American Politics, and Organizing for Democracy.</span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Oberlin College; Vietnam War; political activism; media; Baby boom generation; Conscientious objector; Anderson Cooper; FOX News; financial crisis; war discourse."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Oberlin College; Vietnam War; political activism; media; Baby boom generation; Conscientious objector; Anderson Cooper; FOX News; financial crisis; war discourse.</span>
Subject LCSH
Historians; Journalists; Authors; Morgan, Ted, 1932--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Ted Morgan
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Morgan, Ted, 1932- ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Historians; Journalists; Authors; Morgan, Ted, 1932--Interviews
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2011-02-04
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.135
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
McKiernan Interviews
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
117:15
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Ted Morgan is a Professor Emeritus in Political Science at Leigh University. He is the author of <em>The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America</em>. Dr. Morgan received his Bachelor degree from Oberlin College and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in Political Science from Brandeis University. He taught classes on Social Movements and Legacies of the 1960s, and Propaganda, Media, American Politics, and Organizing for Democracy.
-
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584c1cd4f2ae5cf6c812e5e9c9802a29
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2022-01-26
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dr. Thomas Grace
Biographical Text
Thomas Grace, a native of Syracuse, NY, is an educator and activist. Grace was one of nine students wounded and four students killed during the Kent State shooting. He graduated in 1972 with a Bachelor's Degree in History. He also earned a degree in Social Work from SUNY Buffalo. He worked for many years as a social worker and union representative. After his retirement, Grace received a Ph.D. in History from SUNY Buffalo. He is currently serving as Adjunct Professor of History at Erie Community College. He is the author of Kent State: Death & Dissent In The Long Sixties.
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:36:15
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
Original Format
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Digital file
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Kent State shooting; Student protest; Activism; College campus.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Thomas Grace
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Eden Lowinger
Date of interview: 26 January 2022
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(Start of Interview)
SM: 00:03
Again, Tom, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. I would like to start out like I normally do with all my interviews, if you could kind of describe your early years before college, where you grew up, your parents background, some of your early adventures or any major happenings that kind of sent you in a different direction, life's path, your high school years. What was it like in those early years?
TG: 00:31
Well, I was born five years after the war, March 2nd, (19)50. And I knew none of this at the time. But we were also just a few months away from the start of another war in Korea in June of (19)50. When I was born, I was the oldest of, as it turned out to be four children. The parents of Thomas V Grace, V as in Victor, and my mother, actually, her name was Helen Collette. And she did not like that name, Helen. So she dropped out or used to just sign her name H. Colette Grace. She is a Binghamton native; my father was a Syracuse native. They met at Syracuse University after the war, and I think in a biology class and were married (19)49 and I came along in 1950. He was the son of a disabled railroad worker, and an English teacher who was, who seldom taught. That was on my father's side, my mother's side, her parents were both immigrants from Slovakia. And he had worked on the railroad and her mother had been a homemaker in Binghamton. They, they went through, of course, the travails of the Great Depression, which was harder on my father's family than it was on my mother's. Binghamton seemed; they had a kind of a welfare capitalism that was practiced in Binghamton with a lot of the major industries there. They did not seem to have the unemployment that Syracuse did. And I mentioned this because it had a profound effect on my father's political values. He and his siblings and his parents saw the New Deal policies as having saved their family, providing work for his older brothers in the Civilian Conservation Corps. distributing free food on Saturdays, where they would go down and stand in line, pick up the free food. And like, like we see so common today, although now people just drive up in their cars to pick it up. But then you stood in line, there was a welfare caseworker that came to the house that would inspect my father's clothes to see how they were holding up and to see if there was enough coal in the bin. But they did not, they, the only home that they had they lost because they could not, could not keep up with the payments and the banks failed. So, whatever modest savings they had, they lost. And he just, oh, and-and after they lost the house, they-they wound up having to move all the time, because either the rents would go up and they could not make the rent, and then they would have to try to find some other place to live. So he actually lived all of his life in Syracuse. But while he was growing up, up until the time he was 18, I think they moved 11 times. Always on the south side of Syracuse, which was kind of a Irish American, African American neighborhood. He seemed to have good relationships with African Americans, went to an African American dentist, and then worked on the railroad while he was putting himself through school. He was 4F for the draft, his older brother did-did serve, was missing in action and was able to get back home okay. The other brother was also 4F as well. So he was putting himself through school working on the railroad. And you got to know a lot of the porters, they are known as red caps. And they were, that was the principal African American union in the country, A. Philip Randolph Union.
SM: 04:43
Yes.
TG: 04:43
And they he learned a lot from them. I remember a few years before he died, I asked him how he came to have such a deep and fairly profound understanding of the questions of race in the United States when, when so few white people seem to possess that, because he was not coming at it from an ideological perspective. He was coming at it from a class perspective, which, of course, has an ideology. But he did not, he did not. He was not an ideologue in any way. Although he was a partisan New Dealer. And asking him about this experience 50 years later, he proceeded to give me the name, so about half a dozen of these guys that he had worked with. And he had not seen them for 50 years. So, it is obvious that those relationships were meaningful to him-
SM: 05:38
Wow, yes.
TG: 05:38
-if you can, if he could remember all of that information all those years later. My mother was not, she was more of an emotional thinker, my father was, he was guided more by his intellect. They too suffered during the war, her brother was killed on, on Iwo Jima on George Washington's birthday in 1945. So you know, one time there was an M.I.A. in the family and another who had been killed. But as they said, my father's oldest brother was able to get back home, his pilot, his plane went down over China when they were flying on gasoline from India and China, flying over an area called Hump. So, I grew up with all these stories. I know, this is a long digression that I just gave you. But I grew up with a lot of these stories, and they kind of formed me. I also learned when I was about 10, or 11 years of age from my grandmother, this is my father's mother who I was close to, who had been the English teacher, that we had two of our ancestors who fought in the American Civil War. And I was coming of age during the Civil War Centennial, (19)61, (18)61. And, of course, the Civil Rights Movement was taking off. So, I am trying to figure out why the country could fight a war against slavery 100 years before, and we have all these unfinished issues. It did not, did not make a whole lot of sense to me as a preteen and adolescence. So, it is one of the things that caused me to start reading. And I mean, it was not until college that I really started to figure all this out. But these were things that I remember that puzzled me. And to some extent, my father could help me understand it, but he did not have a degree in history either. So it takes a lot of study to figure this out, as you know. So we grew up in a working class Italian American neighborhood, although no one in our family. My father was Irish, my mother was Slovak, so we did not have that background. But in other respects, and despite the fact that both my parents had gone to college, that was a rarity in our neighborhood, I think we were the only family on the block, the whole blocks that, where anyone not only graduated from college, but had attended college. I went to a Catholic grammar school, oddly called St. St. Daniel's school, SDS for short.
SM: 07:07
Yes. Wow. [chuckles]
TG: 08:10
Those initials would take on a new meaning once I got to college.
SM: 08:12
Right.
TG: 08:13
And then we did not have high school, in our neighborhoods. So the kids went all over the city to different places. So my parents selected a Catholic all Boys High School, it was college preparatory, it was about 10, 12 miles away. I would take a bus there every day. I did not really care for that experience at all. Although I had had all my all my schooling to that point had been in parochial schools. And I just wanted by the time I got to college, I wanted to do something different. I felt like I wanted to get away. You asked me about remarkable experiences growing up. I do not really think I had any I had a pretty ordinary childhood, I was very devoted to the game of baseball, which I still am today. I was a kid of modest talent, though, in terms of playing the game. But that did not dim my enthusiasm. And I went to the high school, as I told you and my father at that point had, by the time I was starting to get ready for college, he was a social services administrator at a facility that cared for the developmentally disabled in Syracuse and called the Syracuse [inaudible] school. And there was a great shortage of social workers in the country at the time. So, the federal government had a policy that if someone was had graduated from college that did not have a background, irrespective of what their background had been, they could have been a music major, they could have been a Phys Ed teacher, they could have been a sociology major, which would have been fine. Whatever their background, if they took a job up, working in social services. And that and applied, had applied and been accepted for a master's program in social work, then the federal government would, would pay for, for their two years of schooling with the understanding that they would return to their former place of employment over the summer, and then remain there for five years. And then the loan would be complete, or they, they would not have to pay back the cost of their schooling. So there was a guy such as that, that my father had hired who was a recent graduate of Kent State. So he told me about the school and that put it on my radar.
SM: 10:43
Oh, all right.
TG: 10:44
Three other places where I also wanted to study Civil War history, because I looked over the college catalogs, you know, when they came to get a sense of what their history departments were like, and Kent State was a large school, which I wanted to go to, it was, it was called coeducational. And it was the closest of the four schools that I had applied to. So that is where I went.
SM: 11:11
It is interesting, when you talked about your father. You know, when you study the life of Dr. King, and what he went through in his 39 years, you know, he certainly fighting injustice and things like that, but he has brought up the whole issue of class, and poverty and all these other things. And so, he was often criticized for not just concentrating on the race issue, but on class issues. So your father was, well, he was a person that kind of was like Dr. King in a way. I-I, I would like to ask you this: did you ever feel during your first 18 years or even into your college years, that you belonged to a generation that was never before, it was, it was considered very unique. I can remember going to college right here at Binghamton, and I have talked with so many friends and they felt that there was this feeling that this youth of today, this 74 million that came out after World War Two, the sons and daughters of the boomer gen of the World War Two generation, were different. Especially the front edge boomers, those first 10 years between the- born between (19)60, excuse me, (19)46 and (19)57. Did you did you feel when you were young that you were part of something that was different and unique when you were, as a youth as a person, [inaudible] your peers?
TG: 12:41
I do, I do not recall it. And oldest children are often the inheritors of tradition. And in that regard, I was no exception. And I took an interest in what had gone before. What, what my parents had been through, and I think may have failed to mention that my mother was a Binghamton native. No, I did not, I did mention that-
SM: 13:09
Yes.
TG: 13:11
-to the welfare capitalism that was practiced by the industries. But I was interested in what their lives had been like. And I was I was taken by the military experiences of men on both sides of my family and then on my ancestors. So, I was I was, I think through that prism of familial experience. I became interested in my own family's role and the development of the history of the country. And certainly learning that about my ancestors who had fought and both of them died in civil war. We recently discovered a third who did survive, he was with he was in the famous march through Georgia with Sherman. He was the only one of the three ancestors in the civil war that survived the experience. But all of those things were very formative to me. And in other respects, the things that I was interested in besides history and reading, you know, and just playing with my friends, was baseball. Play, I would play that all spring summer and fall. Just go down to the playground, there would be a bunch of guys there, we would choose up teams and you know, I played little league as well, but I played baseball from the time that I was about eight. I did have, when you asked before about adventures, but the biggest calamity that befell me when I was the young person is that I had something wrong with my hip, it was called a Legg Perthes, which my father had as well. And I believe it is not an inherited or genetic problem. But they had caused me to have to be in traction for a year. So you know, I got through with, with tutors. And when I, at the school I had to be on crutches for about a year while my leg was put in this kind of harness to keep some pressure off of it. So yeah, that was that was that was, that was something I had to kind of learn to get through, kids are pretty resilient. Not, and I was and I got by that. But I only mentioned that because I otherwise would have started playing baseball even sooner than I did. But as it turns out, I was not able to start playing until I was eight, because of this Legg Perthes, which kind of sidelined me for about two years. But in terms of the generational I remember thinking that maybe when I, it was in my very late teens, and start of college, because there were certainly other people that were saying that and-and there were a lot of stories about the effect of the baby boomer generation and-and then there was Kennedy's oration at his inauguration.
SM: 16:10
Yes.
TG: 16:11
So, I did feel in that respect, and is I think, a little further in response to your question that, that we did have an obligation, but I did not see myself as part of a, being so much special is I did carrying on a continuity that other people had carried before me. We all have a role to play here. And it is our, you know, it is, it is our time now.
SM: 16:41
Right.
TG: 16:41
But I did not see ourselves as separate and apart and distinct and better, any of that kind of stuff.
SM: 16:51
Did you-?
TG: 16:51
Later-later, I did feel that because so many people had had a formative experience by being part of the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, that that that generation would ultimately make its own mark and affect the generations that came after us. But that clearly did not happen. And I thought for maybe about when I got into my 30s or so that that still might occur. But then I realized that in some respects, we were different from those who went before us, and rather different from those who came after us.
SM: 16:52
Right.
TG: 16:55
And even our own generation. There was there was a generational divide within the baby boomers.
SM: 17:43
I agree.
TG: 17:44
There were people who had experiences that caused them to become left wing and-and sympathetic to people of color, and then later gender differences, et cetera, et cetera. But there were an awful lot of people who are born in the late (19)40s and (19)50s that do not think that way and seldom did. They may have adopted some of the cultural trappings of it, that our generation won the cultural war and lost the political and economic one.
SM: 18:18
Well, you raised something, a question I did not even have here, the young Americans for freedom, which was a conservative organization during the Vietnam War. When I spoke to Dr. Harry, Dr. Edwards, Lee Edwards, in Washington, DC, he talked about the fact that when all the books are written on the (19)60s, what is left out are the conservative antiwar activists, and-
TG: 18:44
Well, there have been books dedicated to that subject.
SM: 18:47
Right. But the key thing I wanted to ask is that you brought up the fact that the continuity of understanding the generation that preceded you, what your parents did, and your responsibility to carry on, there was that term that we heard all the time that there was a big generation gap going on. Was there any generation gap going on within your family over what was happening in the (19)60s, especially the antiwar protests and civil rights and all the other movements? Was, was there any divisions I call it divisions within the family and, and divisions with your peers?
TG: 19:26
I do not remember divisions really with-with my peers, the-the tension in our household was over the length of my hair. Not-not my politics, and I wanted to have longer hair and my father insisted that I keep it you know, kind of like, what they used to refer to as a Princeton haircut. So I was, there was always a big issue. I would go to the barber, and I would come home, and he would say, "You [inaudible] you did not cut off you know, you got to go." You know, so went through all of that. But in terms of my politics, I really inherited my-my father's politics. He did not really think a whole lot about the international situation. He was not, he was not pro- I would not say that he was pro-war. He was not, he was not all that anti-war. I do remember what a conversation that I have had with him, though that may help to answer your question. I remember saying to him, "Dad, I understand that the Black people have it really bad in this country." And I may, may or may not have used the word "oppressed," for a long time. But I understand now that a lot of them in this group SNCC, do not want to go into the service. And if they want to be part of this country, then they should help to defend it. That, that is how, so I had kind of a Cold War mentality, you might say, I did not really fully understand what Vietnam was about, and turn against the war, until I had been in school at Kent State for about five or six months. And that did not really come, that was complicated. I addressed it in the book that I wrote on Kent State.
SM: 19:48
Right. [laughs] What a great book you wrote too.
TG: 21:22
Well, thank you.
SM: 21:23
The best book ever written on Kent State.
TG: 21:25
Well, I appreciate you saying that, Steve. I worked at it a long time. So I always tell people, I better get it right when I spent over 10 years working on it. But I remember saying that to my father, and he looked at me and he said, "You know, they should be the last people to go to Vietnam," he said, "The country has done the least for them, that continues to do the least for them." He may have pointed out the disproportionate level of casualties that African Americans suffered during the first couple of years in the war. It was up in I think, in that high teens or low 20s, when they only represented about maybe 12, 13 percent of the population. He said, he said, "Let the rich kids' sons fight this war." He always look, his attitude was that a lot of white people are poor. Almost all Black people are poor. We, we need to band together to fight the rich that oppress us all. That was that was kind of his mentality. Again, he was not an ideologue, he did not, if he ever read anything about Karl Marx, I would be astonished. Because he never had those, he never came in contact with anybody that ever would have introduced him, you know, to those kinds of ideas. But what he did have was this "School of Hard Knocks" that he did, he grew up in poor and even though when he went to college, he always had that kind of class edge to him. And if he heard people putting down poor people, oh it used to send him off, really-really made him angry. Because he had been poor, he-he knew what it was like to-to, to-to endure, those, they are often invisible injuries. But I think he experienced them growing up and it never left him.
SM: 23:34
I am going to ask this question, [inaudible], there is kind of divided into four areas, but it is just your overall perceptions of an era during the time that boomers have been alive. When you describe the era (19)45 to (19)60, what comes to mind in your view?
TG: 23:53
Well, a lot of things I remember watching, used to be a program on television called the 20th century. And it was usually devoted to World War Two. So I watched, I remember watching that a lot. I remember as a little boy being taken down to the train station, when my cousin Dick was, he was in his uniform. And he was leaving for service during the Korean War, but he was being sent to Germany. But there was this sense. I could feel this like tension and unease when we were seeing him off at the train station like this is not good, that he is about to be departing on something that might be bad for the family. And, of course, he had a pretty ordinary experience in Germany. You know, nothing bad happened to him there. But when you are three or four and you at best, have an imperfect understanding of what is going on, I remember that that had quite an impact on me. I remember seeing President- well then Senator Kennedy, in a motorcade in Syracuse, New York, and this probably would have been in this springtime, of (19)60. And our family was really taken up with, with his candidacy. My father saw it as an opportunity for the, for Irish Catholic Americans to, to break through in a country that had been dominated by white Protestants. And, you know, we were just absolutely thrilled when-when he was when he was elected. We are going to keep this before (19)60?
SM: 25:49
Yeah, I am done. The next the next part of this question is when you describe the era of (19)60 to (19)75 what comes to mind? And I, I want to state that this center here at what at Binghamton University, is dedicated to the (19)60s to the (19)75 era.
TG: 26:06
Okay. Well, certainly, the presidential assassination was just a horrible, horrible event. It just, it just plunged our, the whole country but our family in particular, I do not think the TV was off for, you know, as long as we were awake for that bet that weekend of November 22, of (19)63. And I remember, one of the things that kind of helped lift that mood, a number of months later, when the English invasion occurred, and the Beatles just exploded. And if I felt like kind of a generational pulse, it was, we were just like- I remember my sister and I, my sister is about slightly less than two years younger than I am- Irish twins, as it were. We were both like, very taken with the Beatles. And I started like buying a lot of rock'n'roll albums. So I remember that, watched a lot of television as a kid, a lot of western movies. One author refers to it as the victory culture that we grew up with. And I certainly grew up with that as well. But I, I did pay a lot of attention to Civil Rights. I remember the horrible scenes of the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, in the spring of (19)63. That, of course, occurred months before the Kennedy assassination. I remember watching King's, some of King's speech in (19)63. And in the summer of (19)64, I remember the Civil Rights workers, quote, unquote, disappearing and Mississippi, and the efforts that President Johnson, then President Johnson was making to get the civil rights legislation passed. And I will add as a parenthetical here, that when I started graduate school in social work, I had a professor by the name of Fred Newton. And Fred's first job in social work was to take the position that Andrew Shriner, Shriner had, I am mispronouncing his name but-
SM: 26:56
Right, (19)64. Schwerner.
TG: 28:36
Schwerner, Schwerner, thank you. Schwerner had held in New York. And, and that was stunning to me. At the time, I was about 23 when I when I learned this, but I had paid close attention to all of those developments. You and also in the summer of (19)64, President Johnson came to Syracuse, New York to dedicate the Newhouse School of Communication. And that was right around the time of the Gulf, Gulf of Tonkin incident. In fact, I think he was flying back to Washington to give his joint address or give his address to the joint houses of Congress. So the speech that he gave in Syracuse was kind of like a dress rehearsal for that. And I was, I think that was one of the things that had an adverse effect on my understanding of the war in Vietnam, because I saw Johnson as carrying on Kennedy's legacy. And here he was speaking so forcefully about the war in Vietnam, which I again, imperfectly-imperfectly understood, in fact I understood it very poorly, to be very blunt about it. And even though I read Newsweek magazine on a weekly basis, whenever it came to the house and looked at photos in Life magazine, we did, we did get a lot of magazines and newspapers in the house. So I had a rich childhood in that respect. I understood the military aspect of the Vietnam War, but I did not understand the political aspect of it. So that had a deleterious effect on my political understanding of Vietnam, until I got to college-
SM: 28:47
Wow. Right.
TG: 29:02
-and met some people who-who had fought in the war and other people who knew a lot about the history of French colonialism. And all-all of those things, helped open my- those experiences and those encounters with people helped open my eyes to what the Vietnam War was all about. Let us see, I mentioned the cultural and musical aspects of the (19)60s I, I did develop an affinity for rhythm and blues and rock and roll and, and blues music. So I started to, I had quite a record collection by the time I started Kent. Of course, then there was the experience of the (19)70s shootings. When, by the time Cambodia was invaded, I was I had been very, very deeply involved in the Vietnam War protest movement, both on the campus and attending demonstrations as far west as Chicago, up to Cleveland, which was about 35 miles to, from Kent. And had been to Washington DC, for several antiwar protests by the time Cambodia was invaded. I also had a roommate at Kent State, whose name was Alan Canfora, who I believe you interviewed as well.
SM: 32:02
Oh, Alan is the best.
TG: 32:03
And he, by being a year older than me, and much bolder, I tend to be a reticent individual, somewhat introverted. Introversion, I am sure does not come out in the course of an interview, because I am discussing things with a fellow, or my life with a fellow historian, I know how to impose chronological order on one's past. So, the introversion really does not come out. But Alan was, [phone buzzes] was a very extroverted individual, who is also a very bold individual. In fact, I think it is not too much to say that he was a truly audacious person. So it was impossible not to become immersed in what was going on at that time, when you had a person who had views that were similar, but was so willing to take action on what he believed. And he also came from a family that, in many respects, was a carbon copy of my own. While neither one of his parents went to college, his-his father had been a union, a union leader, and a very partisan, ardent Democrat. His mother had been a nurse, like my own mother, although she her training as a nurse came in the United States Army, whereas my mother's was, you know she, she got her training at Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh and Syracuse University. And we, at that point, we were both against the war in Vietnam. And then, and Alan was also a year older than I was, and that it does not seem like a big difference. But there is a major difference between someone who is just starting college, someone already been in college for a year.
SM: 32:11
Right, I agree.
TG: 32:46
So, in, in a lot of ways he was he was kind of like my older, older, slightly older brother. And if, and if he, if he was the captain, I was his first mate.
SM: 34:12
Yeah, very well said, I miss him tremendously. And, you know, I only saw him once a year when I come to the, to the remembrance events, but knowing that I will never see him again really upsets me. Because we always had some really good conversations. Since we are talking about Kent State now, I was going to ask this later on, but I got a lot of different questions outside of Kent State, but I want, since we are in it right now, could you talk about the atmosphere at the campus upon arrival there as a brand-new student? Did you sense right away that this was a lot different than any of my experiences before, that during those first five months on campus leading up to the terrible tragedy at the end of the year?
TG: 35:01
Well, I started in the fall of (19)68. So, it was right after the Democratic Convention, which I have watched on television, and was horrifying, you know, to see people beaten that way. I was not necessarily in sympathy with what they were doing but it was appalling what the police did to the demonstrators there. And so that that was fresh in my mind, because that was the end of August, and we, Kent was on a quarter system. So we were starting school in late September. So it was approximately a month later. In fact, it was exactly a month later, I think. So we took, my father and I took the long drive out there, he dropped me off in the dorm, brought all my records in, and Alan may have told you the story. But I was I was playing John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. And I have been playing Cream. And he could hear this music from a couple of rooms down the hall. So he came down to see who was playing the music and came in and introduced himself. And that is how we-we met, and we became fast friends. And, and soon, we were doing everything together. So I remember that as being an important experience. And I also had a friend that I met during the summer orientation, who was from Cleveland, his name was Jimmy. And I introduced him to Alan, so three of us became friends. And that friendship only deepened over the course of the year, although we did not see him as much because he did not live in the dorm, he lived off campus. In terms of the wider campus, I mean, it was it was nice going to school with girls, for the first time since I had been 13, or 14. And I did not really have that much of an interest in girls when I was when I was, you know, in my very early teens, but I had girlfriends in high school, of course and all. So that was really nice. And I was enjoying the classes that I took, particularly the history and political science classes. And the English classes, I was a double major in history and political science and English. I remember two political experiences. SDS held a meeting soon after the start of the fall quarter. And I went to that it was very well attended. There were a lot of people that were still juiced up from the Democratic convention. And there were probably 12, 15 of the people who had been there and experienced, some of them and experience that violence firsthand, had been locked up and threatened with their lives in the police station. So it was, it had been a significant emotional experience for the people who went there. And they understandably enough, emerged as the leaders of the chapter. But once they started talking about New Left ideology, I did not really get that I did not really understand at all. And I do not think I stayed for the entire meeting because I eventually became bored with it, because it did not resonate enough with me. Shortly thereafter, with Ohio being such a political battleground, I had the opportunity to hear someone speak on the campus who was there on behalf of the Humphrey campaign. And it was the first time in my life that I ever heard an intellectual speak, it was Carey McWilliams. And I thought to myself, what a privilege it is to hear a man have such rich experience and such, possesses such a towering intellect speak. And I said to myself, this is the kind of experience that I want to have more of as a college student. And I was impressed too with how he handled a person who had been beaten in the streets of Chicago, who spoke against the Democrats and-and Hubert Humphrey. The, McWilliams was sympathetic to what the man had to say. But he also said that all of the different, despite all the differences that have emerged, and have fractured the party, we have to come together against the person who is really a threat to the to our entire order that we have, that we have come to know since the since the Depression and World War Two and that is the New Deal and everything that it is done for the American people. That made sense to me, you know, to put all of that in perspective. So I became involved with the Humphrey campaign, I went to a blood bank and gave a pint of blood and then to use the $25 that I was given and I donated that to the Humphrey campaign. I got to hear the vice president speak and shake his hand about a week before the presidential election, because, of course, Ohio is being so sharply contested. And I also, working with a political science professor, went door to door for Humphrey in some of the working class neighborhoods in Akron to try to get out to vote for him. You know, I had some tough experiences there, but I, you know, people threatening me, you know, you run into lawless people here and there. But, you know, I, it was unnerving, but I stayed with it. And, and then Nixon also came to Northeast Ohio. And along with Alan Canfora, I went there to protest against him with the Young Democrats. I was a member of the Young Democrats, I was not a member of SDS. But SDS showed up in large numbers there, there was a very small number of Young Democrats, and they disrupted Nixon's talk. So, Alan, I remember him saying, "Tom Grace," he said, "Let us go out with those guys." So, we left the Young Democrats, and we spent the rest of the Nixon speech with-with the SDS who are just yelling and screaming, protesting Nixon. And Time Magazine said it was the most significant disruption of Nixon campaign event during the entire campaign.
SM: 40:22
Wow-wow.
TG: 40:34
So-so I, you know, I had a lot of rich, excuse me, I had a lot of rich experiences, packed into a few short months. And that only takes us up till you know, the presidential election, which I watched and was still in doubt when I went to bed that night. Of course the next day we learned, you know, the outcome. And within a couple of weeks after that, the Oakland Police Department came to Kent State to recruit for their police force. This is the same police force that shot and wounded Eldridge Cleaver and killed 17 year old Bobby Hutton, around the same time as the King assassination was completely overshadowed, of course by the King assassination. But SDS and the Black United Students banded together and blocked the recruiting, which created this massive crisis on the campus because the university administration said that they would be moving to sanction all the people who participated and perhaps expel them from school. Alan had gone into the area where the recruiting was going on and helped block it. I did not, which says a lot about the two of us, you know, him being a year older, prepared to take bolder steps, not as interested in education at that time, as I was. I was more focused on getting a degree and having a career in history. Alan was in school largely, so he did not have to go to Vietnam. Like so many of his friends had from town of Barberton, industrial city of Barberton where he grew up. So, he participated, and I did not-I was sympathetic to it, I agreed with what the people were doing. But I figured if I go in that building, I am going to get arrested. As it turns out, no one was arrested. Because all of the Black students on the campus of which there were about 600, to about 650, left in mass and said that they would not return to campus unless, until charges were-were dropped, or the threat of charges were dropped against all the participants. The university said, "No, we are not going to do that." But SDS predicted that with regard to the university administration, that they were going to come under immense pressure. And a lot of the professors were going to say that they did not want to be teaching at an all-white campus. And that is exactly what some of the professors started to say. Either they adopted the SDS mindset and rhetoric or whether they came to it, that same position on their own, I do not know. But the NAACP, and-and other advocates for African Americans started joining the calls to just put this whole thing behind them. Whereas people on the right were saying "No, they should be expelled." So, the president of the university, Robert White was in a rather difficult position as he had been throughout his tenure of getting flak from both the left and the right. But he decided in this particular case that he was going to listen to those of his advisers that were, in effects saying that, that amnesty needed to be granted. They did not call it that, because they would have been too charged the term, all they said was that they did not have enough evidence to press charges against people, which was really ludicrous because they had taken photographs of everyone. But that is what they, that was their face-saving explanation. So as it turns out, no one was charged. And that had a profound effect, not only on me, but a lot of other people. Because we grew up, we tend to grow up in a country that that that insists that you cannot fight city hall, that if there is something amiss in the society that you are trying to overcome, it is very hard to do anything about that. But we knew differently, having viewed what the Civil Rights Movement had accomplished up to that point. And then we had this experience where Black and white students stood together, each drawing power from the other, and not only blocking the Oakland police from recruiting on the campus, but also being able to stand together and force the university to cede the possibility of any charges being filed against the participants.
SM: 46:22
See, this brings up the- and I have been to the remembrance events for many, many years. And before I came to Kent State for the first time, you may have heard this around the country, especially the couple years after the tragedy of the murder, what I call the murders at Kent State. And that is, that why did this happen at Kent State of all universities? This, in this conservative state of Ohio, at Kent State, why did it happen? Well, I was at Ohio State, so I know there is a lot of protests going on there. But I also know that Ohio University in Athens had always been given the name as the most liberal of the schools, where there was massive protests, even when I was working there in my early career. And you have just given some of the greatest examples of the activism that was taking place at Kent State, basically, you know, stating the truth about that this was a high- because of all the, the information you just given, that activism was alive and well. And-and, you know, having the older student like Alan and the younger student coming in, it was like the whole perception of the (19)60s was, it was always the graduate students that were kind of the leaders, and it was the undergraduates who were learning from them. Your-your descriptions are, are fantastic in terms of what Kent State was way before the tragedy of May 4 of (19)70. And I would like to ask this too about the president, President White, when I was read the first book, which is not a very good book, James Michener's book on Kent State, which came out I think in (19)71 with so much misinformation. It is, it is not even good anymore. But however, there was some strong criticism of President White in the book. And correct me if I am wrong, was he away the weekend of May 4th at a conference?
TG: 48:26
Yes, it was for the American College. It was it was the ACT- forgot, I forgot that the what the acronym stood-stood for fully, American college testing, it might have been. And he was there that weekend. But he-
SM: 48:45
But yeah-
TG: 48:46
-he also-
SM: 48:46
-I always thought that was terrible leadership on the part of a university president when a crisis was happening, and he was not there.
TG: 48:54
Yes, but he dealt with crises by absenting himself from, he would abdicate in effect, leadership. And I think he felt that if something bad happened, and he was not there, that the responsibility might fall on someone else other than him. Because, as I documented my book, there were-
SM: 49:18
Yes.
TG: 49:18
-several instances earlier in his tenure, where there was a brewing crisis on the campus, and he turned responsibility for that over to his Vice President Raskins and a few others, Barkley McMillan, and people like that. And then he would go to his home and stay in touch by-by telephone. So, I mean, there is a lot of ways that that could be characterized- cowardice is one of them. But and I think that that is a fair charge, you know, to make against him. I will say, I do not say this so much in his defense is I do offering it as an explanation, that when I worked on my own book, and reviewed his correspondence from probably maybe (19)64, right up through the (19)70s shootings, that he always had to navigate the shoals of both the right and the left. And that was very difficult for-for him. And if he had been the president of Kenyon University, and responsible only to the trustees in that responsible to a governor and the taxpayers, et cetera, et cetera, the Ohio legislature, he might have been- might. Might have been a little more courageous, and willing to provide some leadership. But instead, he tried to, he-he navigated that that very treacherous political world by seeking not to make a mistake, and if a mistake were made, to turn through responsibility, to push down the level of responsibility to someone else. So, the fact that he was away during that period and did not come back, and then, and then to leave the campus to go to lunch with his aides, when he knew that the National Guard was moving against the student demonstration on May 4th, that, that that crystallizes everything.
SM: 51:36
Yes.
TG: 51:37
His-his entire tenure was crystallized in that moment. But-but it has to be seen in this like, wider scope of conduct as, as the president of the university.
SM: 51:55
I just want to men- this is something I was going to say at the end of the area, but I think it is the perfect timing, when we are talking about not only Kent State but Jackson State, and, and in being there and talking to Alan and then coming to all the remembrance events that this was a simp- this was protest, freedom of expression. And-and I wrote this down, freedom of expression is central for all Americans who live in a democracy. Yet, why have the basic rights been denied to many who challenged the status quo, and the injustice in our society wherever it raises its ugly head? Kent State and Jackson State, this never should have happened. And a democracy may be, as Franklin Frank said, at the in 1776 independent [inaudible] when he described the wooden sun on the Washington's chair, was it a rising sun or a setting sun? Franklin said, it is a rising sun, if we can keep it. And to me, let me tell you this, this event, at Kent State on May 4th, just change my life, forever. And I have empathized even emotionally, with the four students who died and the nine who were wounded, and this is never should have happened. And it changed my career. And I just, in your own words, I did it with Joe Lewis, in my last interview, I want to just on that particular day of May 4th, where you were and what you did, and I know you were wounded. Just explain it because the people that are going to listen to this tape are not even born yet. These are going to be forever preserved. And could you go through then that like that, that day of May 4th 1970 from your viewpoint? Sure. Although as I have mentioned to you in some of our correspondents, electronic correspondence setting up this interview, I have been through this many, many times. I know.
TG: 54:08
And in in a lot of ways, I am kind of talked out on it. I will do my best. But I also want to alert and educate future listeners to the fact that in (19)85 I sat down with a man by the name of Bob Morrison, he and his mother wrote a book called "From Camelot to Kent State" and it consists of oral interviews with well, many well-known figures from the (19)60s and others that are like fairly obscure like me, because I was not a well-known figure of the (19)60s by any means. The only way that I have any notoriety at all is because of something that happened to me on May 4th (19)70, that I was hit. But it was not anything that I did. It was something that happened to me. So, when I am intro- when people introduce me sometimes as a person who got shot at Kent State, for years, I did not know what to say. And then I, I eventually came around to saying to people, yes, that that I was, and it was not an accomplishment. It was simply-simply, it was simply something that happened to me.
SM: 55:08
Right-right.
TG: 55:36
So, and, and none of us know that the future, we do not know what is going to happen an hour from now or tomorrow or next week. And when I went to the protest on May 4 (19)70, when I, when I left my classroom building, I knew that it was a very fraught, fraught situation. And I had promised a friend of mine whose brother had been killed in Vietnam, that I that I would not go to the protest. But I heard at the very end of the class, a woman get up and announce that there was going to be a rally on the Commons, which is the central area where this confrontation occurred, the central area of the campus where this confrontation occurred. And of course, I already knew that that rally was taking place, and it made a promise that I was not going to go. But I sat in the room for a minute or two after most people had left the classroom and, and kind of deliberated. What should I do? And I eventually came to the decision that I had been involved in and too much, that this expansion of the war was too wrong. And knowing what I know, and the kind of commitments that I had made over the last year, year and a half, that it was just too important. And I had an obligation to go, despite the promise that I made to my friend. So and there was something else that was at work, too. And I know that Alan, my friend, Alan Canfora would have discussed this. My roommate's brother had been killed near the Cambodia border with Viet- with Vietnam weeks beforehand, and we had attended his funeral probably the last week of April. And then, only a few days later, Nixon announced the invasion of Cambodia. So this was a felt issue for us as well. Kent State was the kind of campus where it was not uncommon for a student to be there, and his brother being-being in Vietnam at the same time, or Kent State had about one out of every 10 of the male students in (19)70, were either reservists or veterans of Vietnam. And they had already fought the war and then on May 4th, there were dozens of them that were in the protests, they were at the rally, protesting a war that they had just fought. So I left my classroom building, it was a fairly short walk over to the rally site. When I got there, I saw hundreds of people, including several black flags that were being blown in the breeze. And I quickly recognized that two of my roommates were carrying them, so I gravitated to them immediately. The National Guard were off to the left. And the students were gathered around the base of a hill that is known as either Taylor Hill or Blanket Hill. It is a rather steep incline that forms almost like a natural amphitheater for that area of the campus. And there were maybe between three and five hundred active protesters. Another couple of thousand people that were onlookers, almost totally ringed this area of the campus known as the commons. And we were not there very long. Chanting anti-war slogans, many of them abusive. 1,2,3,4 we do not want your fucking war, 5,6,7,8 organize to smash a state, you know, stuff like that, pigs off campus. Et. cetera, et cetera. And Jeep came out with a campus patrolman riding shotgun. And I think two or three other Nat- and two or three National Guardsmen in the jeep. And they, and the campus policeman, Harold Rice, ordered us to disperse. I knew Harold a little bit. He was a nice man. And he was the kind of officer that would pick kids up who were sick on the campus and bring them over to the health center. And I will add parenthetically that about a year after the shootings, I was working a table to raise funds for a group of students, students known as the Kent 25 that have been charged for their role or their alleged role in all of the protests that occurred between May, May 1 and May 4. And he walked down the hall, made sure that no one was looking on either end, threw a couple of dollars down on the table, picked up one of the political buttons and attached that to the inside of his jacket walked off. So that gives you an idea of where Harold's sympathies lie. But on that occasion, he was trying to get us to disperse. And he was not doing it because he was trying to deny us our civil liberties. I think he was genuinely anxious and fearful for what was about to occur. But we did not know any of that. So it just whipped the crowd up into a further frenzy. And people were chanting, get the hell out of here, and cetera, et cetera, and someone threw either, it was probably a rock at the Jeep, and it hit the tire and bounced off and made a couple of passes. But I do not think they came as close as they did the first time. And then the Jeep returned to the National Guard lines. And they leveled their bayonets. They were given a command by their General Robert Canterbury, to begin firing tear gas and about 105 guardsmen leveled their- they all were wearing gas masks, most of them I should say were wearing gas masks and the gas dispersed the students and forced us up this steep incline that I referred to earlier. There was a large building at the very top of the hill called Taylor Hall, hence the name, Taylor Hill. And it was so large that to get up to the top of the hill and to safety and beyond, that students had to part ways. You either went to the left of the building or you went to the right, I went to the left of the building. And I had a handkerchief with me. So I kept that over my mouth and nose. But other people were rubbing their eyes from the tear gas, there was a- there was only one really clear picture that was taken of me at the protest that day. There was a close up, but you can see me yelling to a student not-not to rub her eyes, because that is the worst thing you can do. It just it just irritates the eyes. I have been tear gassed before in Washington and knew better than to do that. So when I got to the top of the hill, there was a girl's dormitory, Prentice Hall. That was to the left of Taylor Hall, the architecture building. And what a lot of the girls were doing, there were there were there was a first floor girls' bathroom with frosted windows. So they cranked these windows open, and they were moistening paper towels and passing them out to the students who had been tear gassed that were lying against the building on this grassy, grassy apron between the building and the Prentice Hall parking lot. So I spent most of the time there, either washing my face with these towels, or helping other people who had been gassed more seriously than me. So, while all this was going on, some students were throwing rocks at the guardsmen who had followed us up over this hill, and down onto a practice football field. There were not many people doing that, perhaps less than a dozen. Some of the guardsmen were throwing the rocks back at the students. I only know all of this because I saw photographs of it. I did not see that firsthand. But then I wanted to get a better look about what was taking place. So, I walked over to the-the very base of Taylor Hill or Blanket Hill, which on its reverse slope and the area of which I am now discussing was far more gentle, the one slope than the other side of the hill where the incline is very steep. And I stood there and watched these guardsmen leave an area where they had congregated about 75 of them on a practice football field, begin to march back in the direction that they had come from. And I was kind of pivoting to turn, turning my body to watch them as they were going. And when they got to the top of the hill, it seemed like I saw this quick movement, where you suddenly see 15, 20 men reverse course and stop their march and then turn around. And I heard one or two cracks of unmistakable, rifle fire. And I started to run. And within just a second or so, I did not get very far at all. I found myself on the ground, and I was not really sure what had happened it first. And then I looked down and I can, I could see what the bullet has done to my foot and ankle. And I was trying to in the process of raising myself to look at my lower body. I heard someone yelling, "Stay down, stay down. It is birch or it is buckshot," and he meant to say birdshot. He thought, and it was my friend Alan Canfora, who I really had not been with, since the rally had started when I first arrived on the campus, because when the tear gas came in, everybody got dispersed. So that caused me to realize that we were still under fire. And I needed to shield my body as much as I could. So I lay as prone as possible, while they gunfire continued. As it turns out, he wound up being hit too, although he had the shelter of a tree, a bullet, I do not know if it was a clear shot or a ricochet, but I went through his right wrist. And then after 13 seconds, the gunfire finally stopped. I discuss all of this in the book that I referred to earlier.
SM: 1:06:59
Right, yes-yes.
TG: 1:06:59
And also, another book that I also recommend to people because I think both of the books that I mentioned, are going to offer a superior account of what I am now describing, because they were offered years and years ago and my memory, memories of all this were much clearer than they are today. Now I am discussing it 52 years later. And in the earlier interviews I was discussing, when it was a 15 year old memory or when it was a 20 year old memory. Now it is 52-year-old memory. But I was, I remember when I was lying there, I was thinking, how are we going to get these guys to stop, we have we have no weapons of our own. If we did, if this were a real battle, we could return fire. We could. They were, they were, they were shooting and killing us. We could shoot back and try to kill them. But we did not have any arms. We were college students, we were just caught completely in the open. The only thing that was that stopped it was a major Harry Jones, who-who likely and oddly enough, is probably the one that gave the order to fire. But what-what he meant when he, if indeed he was the one that gave an order to fire, we do not know if he was saying, you know, fire-fire above their heads and people and the guardsmen misunderstood that, or whether some of them had who had hate and malice in their hearts, just wanted to kill as many students as they could, you know, started firing right-right into us. There were 60- between 61 and 67 shots that were fired, of that number 15 of those shots hit someone. So that means approximately one out of every four, four and a half rounds that were fired, actually struck someone so in that kind of an environment and from the distances that a lot of these guys were firing at us because people in some cases were hundreds of yards away from where the guardsmen, at their guardsmen firing line. These guys were pretty good shots because if one out of every four of your rounds, hit-hit the target, in this case a human target, that was, that was pretty good shooting. So it was it was it was terrifying being under fire and having being caught in the open and having no means of protecting yourself. Yeah, you mentioned something that I have heard before that you said that you went to Kent State to major in history not to be part of history and of course that was so true. When you look at the, when you were taken to the hospital, how long was the recuperation and-and when did you get back to school full time? Well, it was fairly lengthy recuperation. I was in the hospital in Ravenna, which is the county seat for Portage County where Kent, the town of Kent is located. I was there until the 13th of May. And then I was transported by ambulance back to my hometown in Syracuse, my father followed in his own vehicle. It was a time when a lot of college students were on the road protesting. There was a nationwide student strike. So here, you know, we would be passing all these cars on the New York state thruway, and on Interstate 90, and the ambulance says Kent on the side, and it has got a person in the back, you know, with-with long hair. So, it did not take a lot of imagination to figure what that was all about. And when we would pass a car that had young people, and it was long hair, they would be giving me a [inaudible] sign, you know, from their cars. So that that is something that I do not think I have talked about before in an interview. And that helped to kind of pump me up and to reinforce me because it was a very painful injury. And I had to go through a lot of surgeries. And I was in the hospital, in Syracuse until about, it was either June 28th, or June 30th when I got out. I remember what a great feeling it was just to see the sky again, and to breathe, you know, some fresh air because I had not been outdoors since May 4th, 1970.
SM: 1:11:37
Wow.
TG: 1:11:39
And, you know, at that point, I had a cast from my foot up to my thigh, or up to my hip rather, and had to keep that on until probably December of that year. Because you know, a lot of, my ankle was broken, had to be put back together. They had to fuse it, that was the only way they could do it. So that is why I have that, if you have ever seen me walking around with a limp, that is why, that is where that limp comes from. But it is not, all things considered, it is not-not too bad. I mean, I have a huge cavity in my foot. But I am for the most part able to walk fairly well and have led a normal life. So, while it was really bad at the time, and I have, you know, the [inaudible] red-red badge on my foot as it were, in other respects that led to very regular life since then, unlike my friend Dean Kahler, who is who was paralyzed and had a, his life was immeasurably changed. Whereas in my case, it was not. And I always like to tell people too that when I got back into coaching baseball, and I had a son, who played ball and then when he did not want to play anymore, I was able to get into an adult baseball league. It is called the Muni league. And we have some fairly good players, Joe Charbonneau who played with the Cleveland Indi-
SM: 1:13:18
Oh, yeah, I got a baseball card of him.
TG: 1:13:20
Yeah, he played in the Muni league here in Buffalo, although at a higher level than I did. Paul Hollins, whose brother was on the (19)93 World Series Phillies teams-
SM: 1:13:33
Dave Hollins.
TG: 1:13:35
Yeah.
SM: 1:13:35
Yes.
TG: 1:13:36
Yeah, he-he, he played. Paul, his brother, Paul, played in a Muni League. So I played in that for a couple of years in the (19)90s. Again, at a much lower level and on a bad team, and I was probably the wor- I used to tell people that I was the worst guy on the worst team. But I would still rather be the worst guy on the worst team than the best guy sitting on the bench.
SM: 1:14:06
[laughs] Yeah.
TG: 1:14:06
I was able to, you know, I was not able to run very fast I always used to tell people that I fielded like a DH and hit and hit like a pitcher and ran like a catcher. But I was still able to play. So, it could not have been that bad if I was able to go and play baseball for a couple of years.
SM: 1:14:26
Who were the- I guess my history questions because I knew you are a historian too. So I had some questions strictly that, not even Kent State. But I have a que- who were the heroes of Kent State, if you can say there is a hero, who were the heroes of Kent State and who were the villains?
TG: 1:14:48
Well, I think there was only one hero that that really stands out at Kent State and that was Glenn Frank. He averted a-a much wider slaughter. When the students regrouped immediately after the shootings, went back down to the commons, and sat down said they were going to refuse to leave. At that point, the general who had ordered the troops to attack us in the first place, encircled hundreds and hundreds of students who were seated at a compact [inaudible] says he was going to open fire into them if they did not leave. And Glen Frank and two other professors, all of whom are now deceased, and a history graduate student by the name of Steve Sharoff, pleaded with the National Guard general to give them time to get to convince the students to leave.
SM: 1:15:45
Okay.
TG: 1:15:47
And a member of the Ohio, an officer in the Ohio highway patrol was there as well. And you can hear some of the film footage and audio footage from that moment. And Sheriff is saying to them, "Can you give us five minutes" and, and then you hear the Ohio highway patrol officer say, "You got five minutes." At that point, Glenn, Frank goes over and he had a lot of standing on the campus. He was a geology teacher, World War Two veteran, wore a crew cut. I mean, he really looked the part of having been, you know, World War Two veteran. And he had enormous standing on the campus with the students, although he was a conservative man, and he was not at all in sympathy with what the students were doing necessarily, but he loved the students of Kent State, and his oratory, heartfelt, as it was, was able, was enough to convince the students to get up and disperse. Otherwise, there would have been a slaughter on the scale of Sharpesville in South Africa were something like 67 people were massacred during some of the first anti-apartheid protests of the (19)60s. So he, he was a true hero in other respects. And as a historian, I tried not to, and I use- and I adopted this approach, when I was writing the book, I did not want it to be a morality play.
SM: 1:17:26
Okay, very good.
TG: 1:17:29
That is up to other people who will hear this tape and study can stay on their own and read some of the interviews that I have that I have given and listened to all of the other interviews that you have done. That is up to them to decide.
SM: 1:17:44
One of the things Tom is, when you look at the (19)60s themselves, and the divisions that were taking place in the (19)60s, many people at the time thought that there this could be another Civil War. I mean, this is like a general statement. I mean, we know what the Civil War was all about. But we were so divided as a nation, that there was a, there was commentary that, "Are we heading toward another one?" And now we are living in another era, right now, where a lot of people are saying, you know, the-the nation is so divided. Are we ever going to be united again? And so, so we are not, we are dealing with what happened in the (19)60s, you are a scholar of the Civil War. Can you put as a historian you know, I know you can write a book on this, but the divisions between America in the Civil War, the (19)60s and early (19)70s and now.
TG: 1:18:48
Well, in the (19)60s, we saw this less in terms of being a Civil War and more in terms of being a Revolution. That is how I thought about it. That, that the people who were, had been disadvantaged and oppressed and made to fight a war that was immoral and illegal, that all these forces would rise up against the government and create a, just a more civil society. That was a complete fantasy. But that does not mean we did not think that at the time. And of course, when you have something like this happen to you, you want to have, you want to have a measure of justice or some type of retribution, you know, so. So the peop- the people who were responsible for inflicting this upon us are going to be made to pay for it. I never really had confidence that the government was going to do that, how that might take place, I really cannot say, but or I am not prepared to say in the course of this interview, but a lot of us were very angry about that for a period of time. So, so a number of us saw ourselves as being like radicals, revolutionaries, or what have you. Was not too many years after that, though, that I became involved in the union movement, which is how I spent the majority of my adulthood. And that is a very different kind of organizing, because you have to be elected to union office, you have to represent a constituency, you have to make sure that you are acting in accord with their wishes. So, you do not want to be too far behind where they are at politically, but you do not want to be too far out ahead of where they are politically. So, what you are doing is you are providing leadership, but you have to be in close contact with the people that you are representing. So that, basically, that kind of a mindset informed my politics, you know, probably from, from the (19)70s on, you know, right up to the present day, in terms of the tensions that now exist in American society, I see it as a very, very dangerous time. Not unlike the late, well not unlike the periods throughout the entire (18)50s. There was, there was a fair amount of border violence during-during the (18)50s, both on either side of the Mason Dixon Line, or on either side of the Ohio River. And, of course, it was occurring on the on the borders of the new states that were seeking to come into the Union, places like Kansas, and later, Nebraska. And then, of course, the combination of that was the raid that John Brown undertook, in mid-October of (18)59, where he and several dozen of his followers tried to take arms that they had gotten from a federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and used that to start a slave rebellion. Of course, that was crushed, and they were either killed, and majority of them were executed. 11 of those guys, by the way, were from Ohio, [inaudible] Brown, and four or five of his sons. And five of them were African American as well. So but now the tension in the energy is all coming from the, from the right, we have several recent public opinion polls show that somewhere around 10, or 15 million people in the United States feel that political violence is, is justified in terms of pursuing their means. You know, a dramatic example of that, that was January 6th, of course, and that energy is not dissipating. If anything, it was, it was as potent now, it was a year and a half ago. So, I do not know what is going to happen with all that. But it is going to either dissipate on its own or it is going to continue to gain momentum and, and lead to some level of clash that is worse than anything we have seen so far in the last five or six years. Beyond that, I cannot really make any predictions and I hope that it dissipates on its own but there is no indication that, that is, that is the case.
SM: 1:24:01
Another thing we hear today, from those who are protesting is we guess we are seeing a return of the to the (19)60s with this kind of protest. I kind of react negatively to that. I like the fact that people are protesting and speaking up and being heard. However, I am not, it is, it is a different time, the issues are different, although some are still the same. You talked about race, the whole issue of race, everybody's talking about race. I have never seen more books in my life, in Barnes and Noble than I see right now on the issue of race. And it is like my graduate advisor used to say who I interviewed Dr. Johnson, he used to always say, "Well, we are taking two steps forward, but we are always taking you know, a step backward. When we should be taken three steps forward and no steps backwards."
TG: 1:24:50
Well, that always happens with race in this country. Whenever there are gains, those people that have held down advances of African Americans in particular, eventually put up their hands and say enough, and then they try to take back what has been gained. That is the, that is the story of racial relations in the United States. And maybe-maybe what I can do is make-make a comment on this. In the (19)60s, all of the shootings on American college campuses happened at state universities, they did not happen at prestigious institutions. Some, somewhere in the neighborhood of about 16 to 18 people were killed by the authorities between (19)67 and (19)72. The vast majority of those people were African American, with the exception of Kent State, where two young women were killed, they were all male. So that, so that the, the repression and, and the use of lethal force, it was a class dimension involved, class and racial dimension involved in that as well. And for all of the tumult that existed in the (19)60s, the lethal violence was almost exclusively the purview of the authorities, rather than the protesters. Whereas, whereas today, we, the people who were protesting in the (19)60s, were trying to bring about a more racially inclusive and just society, and they were trying to stop a war that millions and millions of people saw as illegal and immoral. And for the most part, the-the tactics that were used to bring about those ends were, were not violent. And to the extent that force was used in in the protest, it was usually force and destruction against property, rather than against people. Whereas today, coming from the right, you, you see this, this angry impulse is being directed towards people. And there is almost like an indifference to-to human life. I mean, how else could we get to the point where we are approaching, for instance, 900,000 people dead from a pandemic-
SM: 1:27:43
Right.
TG: 1:27:43
-and you have people who refuse to get vaccinated and refuse to wear masks to protect the rest of the population and themselves, you know, so that there is, there is almost like a nihilism that is that has engulfed American society. And it is more afraid now than at any time in my lifetime. And probably more afraid now than it has been in over 150 years.
SM: 1:28:09
I agree. I agree. Well-
TG: 1:28:11
So, it is not a pretty picture. And it is not an optimistic forecast. But at the same time, someone is listening to these 10 or 15 years or 20 years from now, I hope that they are able to, to say, well, it was it was it was it was dim and dark then. But fortunately, we did not go over the cliff.
SM: 1:28:35
When, when did the (19)60s began and when did it end?
TG: 1:28:40
Well, I dated in my book from (19)58 to (19)73. That is how I understand what took place at Kent State.
SM: 1:28:50
Right.
TG: 1:28:50
Chronological period of about 15 years. I think there are different endpoints. I think one could say (19)75 when the, when the war ended. They did not. They did not end however, on a grassy hillside on May 4th (19)70.
SM: 1:29:09
Right.
TG: 1:29:09
As so many people believe it is just, it is just too neat. When people try to squeeze a tumultuous era into a chronological one. From my point of view, that does not work.
SM: 1:29:25
One of the things that I have always been dealing with in all my interviews, you are going to if you listen to them, I always ask this question. I remember I was interviewing Gaylord Nelson, the founder of-
TG: 1:29:37
The former senator from Wisconsin.
SM: 1:29:38
Yeah, I was in his office and he, I get to know him quite well and he gave me over four hours. I interviewed him, cut back and forth. But the question was this: I care deeply about Vietnam vets, and I have been going to the wall since (19)93, Memorial Day, Veterans Day. Know, I know quite a few of them. I have interviewed some of them. I have always been asked, "Why did not you serve in the war?" And it was a typical question, and I have to tell them why. But the question is this, Jan Scruggs, the founder of the Vietnam Memorial wrote the book, "To Heal a Nation." That was his book, that was his first book. And if you read the book, it is the purpose of it was not only to pay respect to those who served and died, and give them the respect they deserved, but to help the families of those who died and to show reverence also to those who served with the opening of the Wall in (19)82. Now, the question I keep asking, and this is how Gaylord Nelson responded, "are we ever been to heal from this war?" The divisions were so intense, that it seems like we never have healed from the war, even today. And when George Bush the first was president, he said, "the Vietnam syndrome is over." I always remember he said that.
TG: 1:30:52
[inaudible] I think.
SM: 1:30:53
Yeah, and it was (19)89. And I said, "You are kidding me. And impossible." So Gaylord Nelson responded in this way. He said, "People are not walking around Washington DC, you know, with not healing on their sleeves. They are not doing that." But he said, "Vietnam has forever changed the body politic." I would like your thoughts on that.
TG: 1:31:23
Well, it made Americans well, let me put it this way. It took the French two wars to get over their ideas as being colonizers. They had to lose both Vietnam, and or all of Southeast Asia for that matter, as well as Algeria, before they lost their taste for foreign domination. I think it is taken the Americans, maybe three wars. Two in the Middle East one, and actually, four. Vietnam, the two in the Middle East, and Afghanistan, before Americans really soured on it. So, I think in some respects, we are a nation of slow learners. And we, of course, just ended our-our longest war, and that was in Afghanistan. Of course, none of the wars that took place after Vietnam, were on that scale, and involved as many soldiers and involved as many casualties. But there are, there are really different ways of if you look at the long scope of American history, most of the wars that America has fought with the exception of the Second World War have been controversial. And as-as Vietnam was. I think the real question is, "When will the country learn that it cannot, cannot and should not try to dominate the world." We are not the policemen of the world as-as the is the popular wisdom often has it. But it does not have that, the popular wisdom is not prevalent enough to keep us from becoming embroiled in these kinds of, from initiating very often and becoming embroiled in these kinds of conflicts.
SM: 1:33:41
I only got a few more questions, and then we will be done.
TG: 1:33:44
I yeah, we are maybe one more Steven, and we are going to have to wrap up,
SM: 1:33:48
This is the last one, then. This is about the issue of trust. I can remember being [inaudible] the same the same age, and being in college and going to a lot of speakers on campus. And in hearing about we cannot trust leaders and I, there was this perception out there in the (19)60s and (19)70s, that if a person was a leader, no matter whether it be a president of a university, a head of a corporation, politician, President of the United States, you know, they cannot trust him. There is just-
TG: 1:34:22
I know where you are going with this. I did not feel that way. I felt that there were people who had earned trust. And I was prepared to give it to him. And then there were other people that I knew that I knew could not be trusted, and were clear adversaries. But-but I did not. I did not dismiss all people who held positions of authority. And let us let us keep in mind, too, that the leaders of not only the Civil Rights movement, but the movement against the war in Vietnam, were often 10 or 15 years older than many of the people that were the, you know, the rank-and-file protesters.
SM: 1:35:03
Yes, you are right. That is true. All right. Well, I guess that is it. Do you have any, do you have any final thoughts on?
TG: 1:35:15
No, I think we have, we have, we have covered-covered a lot of ground and you-you asked good questions, Steve. And I would like to thank you for persevering with this too, because this is I know, the third or fourth time you have tried to set this up. So, I appreciate what you are doing to help preserve the history of these times through these interviews.
SM: 1:35:36
Well, I will be at Kent State in, I do not, I do not care if they are having a ceremony or not, I am going to be there. [crosstalk]
TG: 1:35:41
Well, we will get a chance to meet then because there is a committee that is re-forming now to do in 2020 what we were not able to do that year and in 2021.
SM: 1:35:56
Very good. Alright, Tom, well, thank you very much. You be safe, your family be safe and healthy and happy here in the year 2022. And carry on.
TG: 1:36:07
Thank you, Steve. You do the same.
SM: 1:36:08
Have a great day.
TG: 1:36:09
Look forward to meeting you in May.
SM: 1:36:11
Take care, bye now.
TG: 1:36:12
You too, bye.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Dr. Thomas Grace
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2022-01-27
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dr. Tim Spofford
Biographical Text
Dr. Tim Spofford, a native of Cohoes, NY, is an educator, author, and editor. Spofford's early writing was inspired by the killings at Kent State University and Jackson State University. In his first book, Lynch Street, he describes in detail the killings of Black Students at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. Spofford received a Ph.D., in English from the State University of New York at Albany. He has taught writing and journalism in schools and has produced numerous articles that have appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, Columbia Journalism Review, and Mother Jones to name a few. Spofford is the author of two books.
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2:19:29
Language
English
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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Digital file
Material Type
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Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
Rebellions; Riots; Voting rights; North and South; College students; 1960s; Liberalism; Radicals; Republican Party; Race issue; Neo-segregation; Resistance.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Tim Spofford
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Lynn Bijou
Date of interview: 27 January 2022
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM: 00:03
All right.
TS: 00:08
All right, let us roll.
SM: 00:09
All right, Tim, I, as I do with everybody that I interview, the very first questions that always kind of around the same and that is, please describe your early years where you grew up. Your parent's background, your early experiences in elementary and high school before you went off to college, your background.
TS: 00:28
Sure. I was born in Bennington, Vermont, a small city, mill city. My parents were working class. They had factory jobs before they married. My father had one after he married. And he, when I was three, moved to Troy, New York, another mill city, mid-size on the Hudson River, not far from the capital, Albany. And, they stayed there a brief time. And he-he was working in a steel factory. Allegheny Ludlum Corporation and Watervliet to another city nearby. And, a number of Black people started moving on to our block. And it was probably, it was probably I say a number. I think my mother said loads, but I was probably one family and they moved out. My parents were extremely poor and uneducated, did not have, did not finish high school, even. And-and they fled across the river to an all-white town Cohoes, New York, c-o-h-o-e-s, New York. And that is about 11 miles north of Albany, the capital. And-and that is where I grew up. And-and they were poor to start with, and they got poor, my father was an alcoholic, child abuser, and a gambler and not a good combination to raise seven children.
SM: 02:24
Wow.
TS: 02:24
I was the oldest. I was the oldest. And while his pay was not bad, by the standard of the day, the fact that he had seven children and all these bad habits, made us one of the poorest families in the city. What is quite germane is that, as young as maybe five, I started hearing stories that I heard throughout my childhood, from playmates, school friends. I remember walking to school one day and-and some friends that was walking, the walk was about a mile. So, we, we talked a lot. Anyway, they said that Black people moved into our city once and we were hustled out in the middle of the night. I heard that story. And I do not think it was just an urban legend. There were no Black people in our city and there were Black people in virtually all the other smaller and midsize cities around us. We were a city of about 26,000 back then. And so, I was looking at a book one day, "Sundown Towns," by a guy, I think it is Loewen, l-o-e-w-e-n. And he writes about, basically ethnic cleansing. And towns, towns where Black people were either purged from the city, burned out, lynched out, shot out, whatever. And-and in towns where, where there were signs up at the boundaries, saying in no uncertain terms, Black people and they did not often use the word Black, they used a less, a more expressive term. That you need to be out of here by sundown. And anyway, I believe his name is Loewen and, l-o-e-w-e-n, I think, he had a website and sure enough, my town was listed. There was a memory of a resident from the (19)40s or (19)50s, who recall police escorting a Black woman to a bus to get her out of town.
SM: 05:02
Wow.
TS: 05:03
So, I mean that is my parents were, you know, your garden variety racist. They were from New England and small town, city, Bennington whereby the way, abolitionist, Frederick Douglas ran his newspaper I believe, or worked with, worked on "The Liberator," I cannot remember which, which of the abolitionist's papers were printed in that city. And you know, I mean, New England has a proud abolitionist tradition. But it also has a proud racist tradition as well. And my parents shared in that they were also anti-Semites. Not, you know, not, I think garden variety, none of the most virulent, overt type, but just, you know, real racist and they were not afraid of using the N word.
SM: 06:01
Wow.
TS: 06:01
And so, I-I was a pretty conservative kid, I went to a Catholic high school, which kind of softened the more hard-edge racism that I encountered even from teachers in public school, because of the church's firm belief in charity, and so on. So-so then I went to Plattsburgh State College, State University, State University campus, in the Canadian border, and-and I read probably two books that really began to change my complete political orientation. And, one was the Kerner Commission report in 1967, which I read for one course. And then the, J. William Fulbright's "Arrogance of Power," about Vietnam, those were the two burning issues of the (19)60s. And I started college in (19)67. So those were the two burning issues. And early on, I read those two books like my sophomore year, and I began a pretty rapid change, becoming quite a bit more liberal. And then in (19)70, with the Kent State killings, it really disturbed my very little teacher's college community, which also had big air force base, a SAC, Air Force base with B-52 bombers, and a city of maybe 30-35 thousand, something like that. But it really unsettled that there was a power outage, it might have been sabotage and all the kids emptied the dorms. And we congregated and went into the street, and marched through the city, and went down to a big monument overlooking the Lake Champlain and-and then we marched to the federal building. It was a big, concrete, federal building, kind of a grand, neo classical building, and we took control of that, and I might say, we, I was there but I cannot take credit as any kind of leader. But, and we stopped the, processing of draft records. And there was a ceremony, we had a lot of turmoil, you know, student strike, I mean these things were real common. I wrote about these kinds of things in Lynch street. So, we had a student strike and four crosses, white crosses went up on the lawn, beside the pond in the commons of my college campus. And those represented the white students. And then, the 10 days later, there was a killing at Jackson State College in Mississippi. And there had been, oh, a, a, an attempt to burn the ROTC building there. As part of, you know, all the nationwide unrest after the Cambodia incursion and the killings at Kent State. So, there was something like that at Jackson State too, a protest in the daytime that was peaceful and, but there was always unrest on that campus, especially in spring because white people, racists, often would come through, straining through the campus on, on this major artery. They had come in their cars, and they would shout racial slurs out the windows and-and then the kids would throw rocks at them. And so there have been a number of shootings, which were related to this conflict over a period of years in the spring, and one was in (19)63, James Meritus, a famous, integrationist that you interviewed, he helped organize a number of protests along Lynch Street. That is the name of the street. And there were shootings that year. And then, then there was shootings along Lynch Street again, in 1967. I believe yeah, it was (19)67, I am pretty sure it was-(19)67. And then in (19)70, and then in (19)70, but what happened in (19)70 really overshadowed anything that happened in the prior years. There were a couple of kids wounded, but no one was killed, well, yeah, actually. Yeah, there was a non-student who was killed in (19)67, Benjamin Brown, and all of this activity happened on Lynch Street. And then, and then in (19)70, about 70 officers, roughly half from the State Police, roughly half from-from the city police. And they all came in armed, and state policemen had, they had some machine guns and rifles, and the police all had their pistols. And someone in the crowd of students did not, well, there was a crowd of students in front of a, a women's dormitory and they did not like the fact these police were coming out on their campus on Lynch Street. And so, one of them threw a bottle, and it was bladdered in the street near the police. And they all, not all of them, but many of them opened fire. And there were-
SM: 09:03
Wow. Oh god.
TS: 10:18
-literally hundreds of rounds, literally, hundreds of rounds poured into the dormitories, in front of them, behind them, into a Roberts dining hall, trees, they hit trees. I mean, bullets hit the ground all over the place. I mean, it was a mess. And they wounded, I believe it was 12 students. And they killed two and four girls were hospitalized for hysteria. I mean, you can imagine-
SM: 12:56
Oh, yes.
TS: 12:57
-something, something that horrendous, that many bullets, hundreds, and the shooting went on for 38 seconds. That is how long, it was, you know. And I think Kent was something like eight seconds.
SM: 13:05
Thirteen-thirteen.
TS: 13:14
Thirteen seconds, okay, that is the title of Joe Esther's book, "Thirteen Seconds." And this went on for almost 40 seconds. I mean, just think about some machine guns firing that long. In any case, I was horrified by this and-and one day, two black crosses showed up alongside the four white ones on my campus. And there was a little quiet ceremony, but there was no big turmoil, the likes of which occurred after Kent. And there was, 1-3 or 4 days of media hankering, hand wringing about Jackson State, but it was really pretty quickly forgotten. And I thought, jeez, you know, somebody's got to write a book about that-that is, cannot be forgotten. And so, it took me quite a few years, I got some training in journalism. And I got a master's in English, and I started a doctoral program in English; English slash Journalism at the State University at Albany and I have been teaching high school and including in my teaching a fair amount of Black literature. And-and then, when I got into the doctoral program I got into, Doctor of Arts and English it allowed a, it required actually a second field of study. I mean, mine journalism and an I went about getting myself some coaching from some very good teachers in nonfiction writing, journalism, long form journalism. And-and that was the, I asked that my dissertation be a, a book, a documentary narrative, reconstructing what happened at Jackson State and got permission, that would be in effect my thesis and but, I spent way more time, and way more money [laughter], and way more travel than almost anybody I knew at, at the university who went out for a Ph.D. And because I wanted a book out of this, I wanted this to count, I did not want it just to be on microfilm, or in a file cabinet somewhere I-I wanted it to be published and a lot of people recognize what happened. And so, I spent almost a year living in Jackson, Mississippi, and traveling throughout Mississippi and traveling in, to Washington, because a lot of the records, the documents were there, I bought all kinds of copies of documents, FBI, the FBI files. There was a, as you know, Presidential Commission that Nixon ordered to look into student, pardon me, to look into student unrest from-from those times, sorry, I apologize for my asthma.
SM: 16:57
You are okay.
TS: 16:59
And so it spend a good time, a good deal of time in Washington, and I could still see all the burn marks, the scorch marks on the buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue, right near the White House, and from buildings scarred by the Martin Luther King assassination era riots in 1968.
SM: 17:28
Right.
TS: 17:29
Those did not go away. Until I would say, it was probably the early (19)90s, late (19)80s.
SM: 17:38
Wow.
TS: 17:39
That was still had the marks of a, of a riot, what I call a riot quarter. And it was very disturbing. I mean, to see that go on that long. And there were all these other cities, Detroit, Newark, that really never sprang back, that really never recovered to the degree that one would hope. Those cities were really-really harmed. [crosstalk] And-and it just was heartbreaking, you know. And so, after I did that-that book, which was published by Kent State Press, I-I was a working journalist by that time, teaching college journalism and high school English and journalism no longer interested me and I was working at a newspaper covering education, which I absolutely loved. But at the same time, I-I was not happy. I wanted to write another book. And I wanted something more, or less perishable, something more durable to my work, and I picked this up also in Plattsburgh, I took psychology, I was a psychology minor. And one morning in this big lecture hall, my psychology professor mentioned, Kenneth and Mamie Clark and their research with dolls, and how they show that Black children were spurning black dolls in favor of white dolls. Because they were internalizing the resentment, or they were reacting to the low, to the mistreatment of Black people and-and were experiencing low self-esteem as a result. And just about anybody who had written on the subject of self-esteem and being Black had pretty much concurred with the Clarks, back then, concurred with Clark's understanding of what their research showed. And, but after the Black Power movement in (19)68, well actually it started, started in (19)66. But after really gained steam (19)68-(19)69 that-that, that belief has been widely challenged by scholars of all kinds. But in any case, I thought that I would like to write a book someday about this, Kenneth Clark and his wife, because I-I learned that they were very close, that they were very much in love and they worked together, their, all their married years. And-and all this really appealed to me as a second book about civil rights. And, it was not till 1993 that I started working on it part time while, while working as a journalist and-and that is hard to pull off for a particularly small paper where they are always getting you to crank out stuff constantly, as opposed to the New York Times where you write a story maybe once every three weeks. But I did it. And I, you know, I started it. And, but then I-I wanted to move south here to Florida, to work at a better newspaper. And it was very hard for me, very rough job, God it was even harder, the real sweatshop. And so, I-I put off the reporting, but continued the reading. And I did a lot of reading, and a lot of, Kenneth was extremely prolific. And I had hundreds of pounds of his, of his writings. [laughs]
SM: 22:17
Wow.
TS: 22:18
In interviews with him, I mean, you know, he just wrote tons of stuff, and tons of stuff was written about him. So, there were interviews of him, countless, I mean, he was the Black scholar of his era, the (19)60s and (19)70s. And so, I started, I was doing a lot of that, but eventually I said, I want out of this newspaper business. And I was 58 years old, retired from newspapering and went into this project full time and-and at the same time, a woman I have been needing to talk to at length for in-depth interviews had moved nearby in, in Sarasota area. This was, this was the Clark's daughter. And-and I would interviewed her only once, but she was living, she was on a visit to, to New York, but she was living in, first in Switzerland and then in Hong Kong, [laughs]. I could not very well write the kind of family chronicle, the in-depth biography that I wanted to write about that family, that Black family living in the suburbs. But, but starting out in Harlem, I wanted to write a really intensive biography about the way they lived, the way they thought, the way they, their activist lives, and so on. And the daughter was my key. And they had a son too, and he was very helpful to me. But, he lived in New York and I can interview him no sweat in New York, so I had no problem interviewing him there. But what Kate Clark Harris did for me was, as their daughter, she threw up in her garage door and open and allowed me to, to comb through several huge boxes. And I am not talking about little boxes like you get in an archive, but I am talking about huge boxes, stuffed full of family documents and-and it was a treasure trove. But the Clarks also, and this is why I needed to get out of the newspapering in business. The Clarks also had five hundred boxes, smaller boxes that kind you have in archives, in the Library of Congress, and I needed the time away from work, to read, and study, and copy an awful lot of those. Because as you know, when you are writing something in depth, you need copies in front of you, you cannot just walk down to the library when the library is 1000 miles away from you. And so, I spent nearly a year living in Washington, going through all that. And I interviewed Kate over a period of, you know, probably eight, nine years, long, you know, long interviews, probably, we had about 13, more than a dozen interviews, some shorter than others, but a lot of long interviews. And I finally got a chance to write that. And I spent 13 years researching, and writing, and editing, and finding a publisher, it took a long time. Nobody really gave any, me any encouragement in the publishing industry. Everybody said, "Nah, nah nobody is going to be interested in that." And but, finally, now, I think with Black Lives Matter, and after the Obama administration, I think there was, I think there was a renewed interest and I had three possibilities. One was Simon and Schuster, but ultimately, I went with Source Books. It was going to come out in August, the editing is done except for the proofreading. And-and that is my story.
SM: 26:53
That is a great story. And-and I have the book, "Lynch Street," right in front of me here. I have a first edition copy of it. So-
TS: 27:01
No kidding.
SM: 27:02
-yeah, I have got some markings in it. But I think it is a great book. What I like about, I might repeat some of these things that you just said, but I want to go over them. I was very impressed with when you were doing the research for the Brooklyn Street, the number of trips you took down to Jackson, Mississippi, how you describe the environment from where you were living in upstate New York, or wherever it was, and then going there. And-and it is, it is the history, you go into a little bit about the history of Jackson, Mississippi, because of all the racism and the segregation and all the other things even before Jackson State was a college there. Could you talk a little bit about the history of Jackson, in terms of, because that is also I believe, was the home of Medgar Evers-
TS: 27:08
Thank you. Yes, it was, yes it was.
SM: 27:50
-he was killed there.
TS: 27:56
Yes, he was. And, Jackson was the frontier capital city of a state that had slavery on an industrial scale. Most of it in the Delta region, where all the cotton plantations were. And then, after slavery, there was the, I should add, after Reconstruction, there was this, soon after Reconstruction very soon after it, sooner than other southern states. There was a you know these-these rebellions all across the state. Riots staged by thugs, white thugs, to frighten Black people from the polls. There were shootings, there were killings on election days to keep Blacks away. And so, even though Mississippi had a very-very large Black population, the whites kept a total iron lock on political power. After reconstruction, it was very rapid counter revolution, once those Union troops left, and Jackson was that capital city and-and there were a good number of, of Reconstruction era politicians who were Black, and some of them went to Congress even. John Lloyd Lynch was one of them, and that street in the Black neighborhood, the Lynch Street neighborhood was named for him, I am trying to remember the name of the other fellow who lived in Jackson. First name was Jim and I cannot remember his last name. He was a Mississippi legend, Black legislator too, of prominence and he was buried on Lynch Street, and a Black cemetery there that still has this extraordinary Reconstruction era, 19th century monuments to them once they-
SM: 30:34
Wow.
TS: 30:35
-died. It is quite a, it is quite a sight on Lynch Street. But in any case, Lynch Street was the Black neighborhood, there was another one, which was a pretty lively business district, [inaudible] street. And many of the Black people in the city, the poor Black people lived in little rickety shotgun houses, three rooms open, you know, and they were called "shotguns," there is lots of theories when they were called shotgun. These are extremely narrow little, basically shacks. And I was just shocked by the level of poverty- in Jackson, I mean, you know, a capital city not, not just the Delta, it was up in the Delta too, the most abject kind of poverty, just unbelievable. The squalor, the smell of the-these decaying structures, which I imagine were probably built during slavery days. It is something that a northerner never-never set eyes on, and I-I was just appalled at the poverty. And, but in any case, Lynch Street had those kinds of houses in the side streets, off Lynch, and a lot of, on Lynch Street there were a lot of fairly rickety, whitewashed, wooden homes on piers that were pretty poor, but others were more dignified. There were middle class people that lived on the street it, it was not really completely a slum, there were some slummy sections. But it was, the heart of the political Black community. The Masonic Temple was there. And that was, you know, a fraternal group, that was Black. And-and there were major funerals, held there. Martin Luther King spoke there on occasion. And-and that was like, almost the beating heart of that street and Medgar Evers, and a number of white activists in the early (19)60s, or mid (19)60s, or early (19)63, the (19)64, the integration, protests, a lot of those emanated out of that building, the Masonic temple and Medgar Evers spoke there all the time. And-and he had these like, t-shirts promoting integration, and civil rights, and he would hand them out there, he would speak and-and Black preachers would speak with him. And, there were a lot of civil rights rallies right there on Lynch Street. And in (19)64, during Freedom Summer, a lot of the, white as well as Black students from the north, and the South, a lot of them Mississippians, a lot of Black, I mean, they were living in the homes of, of Black adults on that street. And they were working in the civil rights movement during Freedom Summer-
SM: 31:21
Right. Wow.
TS: 34:17
- there, they are fighting for voting rights and so on. This-this issue that we are living through today, voting rights is hardly new. And it just tears my heart out to see what we are going through right now.
SM: 34:31
Yeah.
TS: 34:32
Because, you know, I lived to see, you know, I remember a time I could see a time when Black people had trouble voting, and I saw the places where they struggled to win the vote. And, poor Medgar Evers was gunned down right in that city, and his funeral was held in the Sonic temple and all the great civil rights leaders all over the country flew into Jackson for his funeral in that Masonic Temple on Lynch Street. And then when the two students who were gunned down, killed in Jackson, Jackson State University, Jackson State College at the time, when they were killed Edmund, Edwin or Edmund, I forgotten, Edmund, I think it is Edmund Muskie's chartered jet and flew congressmen and senators and-and civil rights activists from Washington down to, down to Jackson, and they showed up at the, at the Masonic temple for the funeral of Philip Gibbs when he was buried there. And when he was buried in the in the city, and I am trying to remember, I think the memorial service was also. But excuse me, the funeral was held in Ripley, that is where Philip was born. There I believe there was the funeral for Jimmy Green, James Green. That is- it, that was held in the Masonic temple. I wrote "Lynch Street," 25 years ago so I am, I am reflecting back. So anyway, so-
SM: 34:33
Well-
TS: 34:38
-I do not know, how does that, does that answer your question? [crosstalk] Town was rich, rich in slave history, in the politics of the slavocracy, a city rich in civil rights history. And I was very-very excited about being there and doing that research. I loved it.
SM: 36:47
I was impressed with your, the number of times you went down there and how you described the-the environment, the trees, the humidity, I mean, everything was just, you know, compared to where you were, I think you, the book is very good, too, because of the fact that, you know, Kent State is well known, Jackson State is well known too, but not like, it evolved as you wrote in your book. I, that speech that Nixon gave on April 30th of 1970, you know, did tear this, the-the universities apart all over America. And you do a great description in your book about all colleges, you know, women's-
TS: 37:28
Right.
SM: 37:28
-colleges, Black colleges, you know-
TS: 37:32
Even seminary. [laughs]
SM: 37:33
Yes, seminaries. I mean it, it affected everybody. And the thing here is that it was, it took place in Jackson, Mississippi, that had such a terrible history of its treatment of African Americans. And it was segregation. It was, you can see a lot of people did not probably know a whole lot about Jackson State now, I believe, the coaches, which is a pro football players, now the head coach there at Jackson State. And the question I want to ask here is, again, that speech, if you could put it in your own words, how that speech itself really tore this nation apart. Because Nixon at that particular time, was trying to de-escalate the war. And this was like, I, college campuses, how there was an escalation.
TS: 38:27
Well, we sure did. And we were, we were outraged. And-and what young people today have a great deal of difficulty understanding is one of the reasons why we, (19)60s students were so activist was that our lives were in danger. [chuckles] I mean, this was not some philosophical, some abstract academic debate. Our lives were in danger. If you went to Vietnam, you had a pretty good chance of dying. And if you were working class, and you are from a working-class town, you knew people who went and lost their lives. And so, this was very much a part of everyday life, and to watch television, and see the president come on and saying, you know, remember, all that stuff I said about a, a draft lottery. Remember all that stuff I said about the Vietnamization of the war effort in Vietnam, and how I was going to be bringing the American troops home. Well, forget about that. I am, I am marching into Cambodia, and oh, my God, I mean, it was like, dropping a match on a, a tinderbox. I mean, it was just unbelievable. And I knew at the time because we were, our city had a sack base, and I knew Air Force guys. And I knew that they told me, they told me, I could not believe it. They said, "You know, we have been doing flights over Cambodia. And we were bombing Cambodia," and I said, "What? You are not supposed to be doing that-that is illegal." They said, they were very knowledgeable, they said, "Yeah, we know it is illegal. And, but it is really happening." And this was before, it, that April speech. So, I already knew about it, it was already very concrete to me. But to see the President of the United States, come on, and actually justify it, and announce it. Wow, I mean, I-
SM: 40:49
These-these are your words. This is a quote that you have in your book. It is on page 24. And this is Nixon speech, speaking that night toward the students or the people who were protesting. And I will just briefly be mentioned here, "My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions, which have been created by free civilizations, in the last five hundred years, even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed." And that was part of his speech.
TS: 41:25
Right.
SM: 41:26
And-and, of course, we all know what him and Nick or Agnew we are doing for a long period of time, calling them bombs. And I think you have said that in your book, too.
TS: 41:36
That-that, that remark, even more than the speech. I mean, the speech was the abstract embodiment of the policy. And we were horrified by that. But when they actually, you know, off the cuff, referred to us, and I cannot remember which one if it was Nixon or Agnew, I certainly knew at the time. I think it was Nixon, when I heard that. I mean, I can tell you that that really drove a wedge between young-young college students and the Republican Party. And-and really, the whole country because most-most parents were pro-war. I mean, this was a working-class nation at the time. People were not all that educated, sophisticated, unaccustomed it was right after WWII, it regarded themselves as, [coughs] excuse me, super patriotic. And-and, you know, our parents were not supportive at all of our anger, and our lashing out at, at this, at this war, and this-this incursion into Cambodia. It drove a wedge through generations, and through classes of people and-and there were students against students in our town, and I am sure of towns all over the country, they were very-very conservative. Very loosely goosey, people on the extreme right, who were running around town, threatening to use guns against students, or to protect their-their drugstore or whatever, we had one guy like that, and there were, there were just jockeys who lost their jobs over this. I mean, they would, there were people who were making comments on radio, and television that lost their jobs. You know, professors that got in trouble for their role on the campuses. It was just an incredible, turbulent time.
SM: 44:06
Well Jackson State and Kent State are so united in so many ways, not only because they, the remembrance events that Kent State have always included Jackson State, but, and vice versa. But the one thing that, is personal experience myself, is that on the college campuses in the late (19)60s, I was at Ohio State in the early (19)70s. The divisions between Black students and white students was pretty strong.
TS: 44:30
Right.
SM: 44:31
And the fact is that Black students were saying, "Well, we are going to just work on the area of civil rights and protest that way," whereas the white students can do the anti-war stuff. But when this speech was given on April 30th, and the students at Jackson State obviously you know, heard about the four killed at Kent State and then this happened, they were protesting the war as well. And it was, the, it kind of as you state in your book, very important. It united again, the civil rights people with the anti-war people.
TS: 45:06
It, to some degree it really did.
SM: 45:08
It is historic in my view in that reason.
TS: 45:11
Yeah. Well, it was interesting to me that Joe Hester's book, alleges that the first student hurt by the National Guard troops at Kent State was a Black student who was, [inaudible] that is in that book. Black students were upset too, because they knew that they were being drafted disproportionately, and disproportionately sent to Vietnam. They did not have middle class white parents, who were doctors, lawyers, dentists, whatever, judges sitting on draft, local draft boards, deciding who was to be drafted or not. They did not have that clout. But, there were plenty of people who are white like that, and they got a break. And-and also, a lot of Blacks felt that they were being sent to the front lines and dying, and they were dying in disproportionate numbers to whites. These are facts that-that young Black people were very aware of. Again, it was not like this was an abstraction, that this was some academic debate. They knew this. And so, Jackson State had that attack on a ROTC building, there was a small fire. They had a protest, one day outdoors on the commons, that was peaceful, they cared. But, the funny thing to me is, though, that nationally, journalists tend to look through one lens at Kent, and one lens at Jackson. And-and I have never talked to a white journalist on the subject, who agreed that there was anything in common between the two. Almost all of them said that well that-that, that thing at Jackson was that-that was just civil rights. And that thing, that was just, that was just the war, those two issues were joined at the hip.
SM: 47:36
Yes.
TS: 47:36
I mean, those were the burning issues of the (19)60s. And if you are in the least bit liberal, you were concerned about both of them. And if you were radical, you were more concerned-
SM: 47:49
Yes-yes.
TS: 47:49
-just a little about both of them. And, there was a lot of common cause struck between Black and white students, there were a lot of panel discussions on the campuses that week or two of turbulence. And a lot of those tables, those roundtables, included students of both colors. And-and they were talking about this together and respectfully. A lot of white students were trying very hard not to take over anything that Black students wanted to do, to dissent. They treated them respectfully and respect was returned. That is, that was my experience from what I saw on television and personally in life, in real life on the campus. And it was, it was interesting, but the media did not get it. What the media saw was, the media felt that well, you know, those white kids, oh, you know, they were kind of like, dope smoking hippies with long hair at Kent State and-and they were wearing their kind of grungy, any worn regalia. And then those kids at, at Jacksonville, you know, they, they were kind of sharp dressers, and they were more concerned about civil rights, and conflict on Lynch Street, and the twain never met. I mean that-that was the attitude that I got.
SM: 49:29
Yeah, they were, they were all wrong. And the fact is your book-
TS: 49:33
They were wrong, they were wrong, yes.
SM: 49:33
-people need to read your book and-and understand what happened there. You had some great interviews in the book as well and one of them was a quote, and this was the 35-year-old Jackson State student talking about the four killed at Kent State. Now I am not going to use some of his words, but this is the quote, "The kids at Kent State had become second class n's," you know, what n's stand for. Oh, I know, yeah, I know exactly who that was, yeah. So, they had to go. Anytime you go against the system, you become a n.
TS: 50:03
Right.
SM: 50:04
Regardless of your color. And-and that was a 35-year-old student at Jackson State talking about after the tragedies happening at Kent State.
TS: 50:18
That is right. And you know, I have never forgotten that idea, that concept. And I had seen it a couple other times in my life. But I think it is true. I think it is absolutely true what that, what that young man said, and the thing was that our, our parents, our elders, had lost a lot of, they were disenchanted. They felt that they had created this really great world, this wonderful, technically sophisticated, materially rich, middle class society. And, these kids were turning their backs on it. While we were, I mean, it was there was a real anti-material streak to our generation. And we felt that older people were making compromises with the, over the lives of Black people here in the United States, and over the lives of Asian people in Southeast Asia, to keep their way of life, keep their own white privileged way of life. This was a feeling pretty general among progressive young people. And we were not all progressive, believe me. But so, there was a real wedge between the generations, then.
SM: 51:47
Could you talk a little bit, I want to make sure that the world knows at least, these tapes do not forget are going to be, people are going to listen to these 30 years from now. People yet unborn. Could you talk about the two students who died? I would like the world to know more about Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green. I know James was a high school student. And I know that Philip Gibbs was a pre, a pre-law student at Jackson State.
TS: 52:16
Sure. Philip, in some ways, was the most interesting, he was older and-and had political inclinations, therefore. So that is what made it, made him interesting to me. And the New York Times published a story saying that Philip was non-political, and was not interested in politics, and did not get involved in that kind of stuff. In other words, the suggestion being that he was completely and wholly innocent of any responsibility for the, for the Jackson State killings. Well, I agree with that part. Yeah, he was, he was innocent. But the thing is, he was not so innocent, that he-he did not have strong beliefs, and even actions regarding racism in Mississippi, because he did. He was an activist student, a high school student activist up in Ripley, Mississippi, a town that was once run by William Faulkner's, I think, grandfather or great grandfather, cannot remember right now. But anyway, who was assassinated there in Ripley in a town square. But in any case, Philip was, sat in on, at pools and theaters, cafes. He took part in sit-ins to integrate his town. He was very much an activist. And he, to be honest with you, I was told he really did not like white people. Because, let us just say that he did not come into contact very often with white people who liked him. And so-so he was that kind of kid. He was very political. He was very interested. Not so political that-that in, he was a leader in protests, and organizations like Snick, and things like that, no. But, when he was younger, he took part, as so many children did, in the demonstrations and protests in their towns of Mississippi, and in another small southern towns at that time. So that was Philip, and he happened to be in the wrong place. He was on a date that night. He just dropped off this girl, it was just, pretty much a platonic relationship, friendly relationship. It really was. I looked into it pretty deeply. And there were rumors about it at the time, but he-he was just walking across the lawn in front of Alexandra Hall after dropping her off. And he drops her off. He turns around, he walks a little bit, not very far. He did not get far, and he was gunned down. So, that is really sad. And then, I cannot help but call him Jimmy. Jimmy Greene was still a child. I mean, I cannot remember how old he was, maybe 14. And he was in high school. Jim Hill, that was the name of the high school. It was a segregated high school. Jim Hill was and-and Jim Hill was the other Black lawmaker that I was trying to remember. Jim Hill was a reconstruction era Black lawmaker, and he was buried on Lynch Street, in the Black cemetery there. But he went to Jim Hill and-and not too far from the high school. He went, he worked at a store, a little tiny mom and pop store called the Wag Bag. And- and, you know, he did he did, you know, just sort of manual jobs and he would, he was a car hop, he would, they, white people would drive up on Lynch Street, park at the curb. And Jim, Jimmy would come out and hand them their groceries, they would phone up first. And he would hand them through the car, through the car window. And, you know, and he set up, you know, gathered all the-the coke bottles and stuff that were stored to be recycled and that kind of stuff. I mean that-that is sort of work, sweeping up. Well, he was walking home, he lived in a little tiny rickety shotgun house. He was one of those poor kids that I was referring to earlier, lived on a side street off, off Lynch Street, off Dalton street, I think it was. And, he was just walking home from work, that is all. And he stopped to see what all the excitement was about. He was on Lynch Street behind the officers as they stood with their weapons. Some of them were facing, probably most but I am not sure, a lot of them were facing Alexandra Hall. But some of them were facing, behind them to protect police officers from any, any kind of rock throwing or whatever. But anyway, they were facing behind them, Roberts Dining Hall. And Jimmy was in front of Roberts Dining Hall near the sidewalk. And when the firing started, he probably ran, and he was shot right there. He was killed. And-and Jimmy brought money from his job. I mean, his parents had a lot of children. I do not remember how many they had. They had a very big family. And he was, I believe the oldest, I am pretty sure he was the oldest. And he gave his parents most of his earnings every week. And boy, they needed it. They really needed it. Those, those shotguns were really tiny-tiny places with just three rooms. And I do not know, I think the books tells you how many there were. They were, it was abject poverty. And, after the funeral, Charles Evers the brother of the slain civil rights leader, Medgar Evers. He gave them, he gave the family money to buy a house.
SM: 59:35
Wow.
TS: 59:36
And I interviewed them in that house. And it was not a shotgun. It was a very-very modest house, that could not have cost all that much but, Charles Evers, I mean this was his money. He did not have a fundraiser or anything for them. He just, he just, you know, in Mississippi real estate was not, Jackson real estate was not all that expensive, anyway, but I mean, really, he bought them a house. And they needed it. They really needed it, very poor. [crosstalk] It is sad story, so very sad story.
SM: 1:00:14
Now, I think you mentioned that there is a memorial to them on campus that students walk by, just like they have at Kent State now. So, the students, many students obviously, probably do not know, current students, unless they know their history but, is that forever there on campus for them?
TS: 1:00:37
Well, there was a, I think so, there was a small monument that looked like a, almost like a gravestone, a good size gravestone, in front of a men's dormitory. And I used to remember the name of the dormitory. I cannot remember it right now. But it might have been Sterling Hall, I am not sure. But anyway, there was a small monument there when I was doing my research in the, in the (19)70s and 1980. But then, the college was terrified that there would be another terrible incident on Lynch Street, because of white people driving through, and Black students are crossing the streets. And, you know, if somebody got hit by a car, or if somebody jeered racial, you know, racial slurs or whatever. The administration was terribly afraid that it would happen all over again, another incident like the three prior ones. And so, in the (19)80s, I believe it was, the state appropriated funds to put up a plaza, a big concrete plaza, to obstruct traffic from both sides, it was sealed off the street. And so, people could not drive through the campus anymore. And in that plaza, there is an inscription on it, and I cannot remember what it says. But it memorializes the loss of, of Green and Gibbs. And-and it, you know it-it honors those who were wounded there as well, if I recall. And it is right in front of Alexandra Hall, where the shooting took place. And the extraordinary thing is that if you, if you are there, well, let me put it this way, before the plaza was built, most students I talked to, and I mean, almost everyone had no idea what the bullet holes and Alexandra Hall from, now, I do not exaggerate. And I wrote a piece for The New York Times about, about the tragedy and-and I had a sentence in there saying that-that they did not remember. And, the copy desk told me that they were not going to accept that. They did not believe it, they did not believe that there were students there who did not know about the killings. Well, when I was doing my research, was in that 10 or 11, year period, after-after the incident occurred. The administration wanted to hush it up. They would not cooperate with me. And when it was an interview, they really would not. The president of the college would not talk to me. He was the president in 1970. He was still in office, and he would not talk to me.
SM: 1:04:02
[inaudible]
TS: 1:04:03
That is right. And-and the administration would not cooperate. I felt very fortunate when the library at least would let me go in and look at a, a little memorial collection of photos, and telegrams, and stuff that came out of that incident. And I felt very grateful for that. But they gave me a hard time. And I was shocked when they put that clause in and turn it into a memorial, but I guess they felt safe at that point. Safer because, more than 10 years had passed and without, without another terrible incident. And-and the fact that you know that, I think it helped everybody a lot including me. I felt better about the school and the administration, when they did memorialize what happened there, with this plaza, with the construction of this plaza.
SM: 1:05:10
I have some, just general history questions. You are a historian. And I just want, you do not have to, really long answers here. But this deals with aeration.
TS: 1:05:21
By the way, I apologize if I have been winded, [crosstalk] I got the impression you wanted me to, sort of, free associate. [chuckles] Oh, okay. What-what I will try to do is keep my answers brief for you now, and-
SM: 1:05:29
One thing I do not want, I do not want to have, I have less of me and all of you. That is the most important thing here. But I just want to, hear your views on this as a historian, and so. And this dealing with an issue that-
TS: 1:05:44
-if you want more, just ask for more. [chuckles]
SM: 1:05:46
-Yeah, this is, as a historian, could you describe the racial progress with respect to what our presidents have done since WWII, and I break this down into four eras. The 1946 to 1960 era is Eisenhower and Truman.
TS: 1:06:08
Okay, so you want to take that part first?
SM: 1:06:10
Yep, yep, I am just, there is four of them, I just want to know what you think of Truman and Eisenhower with respect to race relations in America.
TS: 1:06:16
Sure, okay. Harry Truman made the first move to, the first moves to desegregate the armed forces. Harry Truman, in campaigning for reelection in, pretty sure it was (19)48, had a civil rights plank, in the party platform. And he-he although a southerner showed a side of the party that we were not accustomed to seeing, pro civil rights, very surprising. And-and so that was his move forward. And- and he got a lot of grief for it because of Strom Thurmond of South Carolina basically ran against him and the Dixiecrat party, and-and that made it hard for Harry Truman to get reelected. A lot of Democrat, Democratic votes went to, to Strom Thurmond, the southerner, the segregationist, the Democratic Party was a segregationist party. That is important to remember.
SM: 1:07:41
Right.
TS: 1:07:41
It is not today, but it was then.
SM: 1:07:43
Right.
TS: 1:07:45
Okay, Eisenhower. His big claim to civil rights progressivism can only be that he sent troops to calm the situation at, in Little Rock, Arkansas, at Central High School, when there was a move to send nine Black children to study at Central, Central High School. And the-there was utter chaos. I mean, utter, utter chaos, terrible, terrible. Protests and-and beatings, beating of newspaper reporters, beating of like, photographers and cameramen, and slurs hurled at the children, the nine kids. They were kicked, and spat upon, and pushed down stairs, and oh, it was horrible, the way those nine kids were treated by the all-white, the rest of the student body which was white. And-and so there were troops patrolling the halls, and the grounds, and the street out in front and-and the governor then, Orval Faubus, Faubus was totally irresponsible at the time and stoked that I mean, he was a demagogue. And Eisenhower brought assemblance of rationality and peace to that situation. Assemblance, in part because he was motivated by the embarrassment to the American democracy created by this terrible, terrible thing. In Little Rock, the Soviet press went bananas over it, they loved it. They, they, this was a big propaganda gem for them. And, this was in the middle of the Cold War and we, the country hated communists. And, so this was his contribution. But in general, Eisenhower was pretty hands off on civil rights. He, another contribution he made but not a winning one was he nominated, Earl Warren to be chief justice of the Supreme Court. And Earl Warren had been a guy who had imprisoned or in turn Japanese, in western states during the war, and that was a, you know, a real black eye to him. So, he when, when he became the Chief Justice, however, he turned rather liberal, and went along with Brown versus the Board of Education. I mean, he-he worked very hard to get a unanimous and succeeded in getting a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court, to issue a ruling, striking down state mandated school segregation. And that was, oh, that opened the door to legislation, and court decisions doing the same to, to break down segregation, and in voting, and public accommodations, all through the south and even in northern states. Where there were, there were impediments to voting, even in states like Ohio, and unfortunately, there still are today. And so, that was a, a thing that he could claim to fame in the civil rights area. But he would not claim it-
SM: 1:11:48
Right.
TS: 1:11:48
-because he really was ticked afterwards, after that decision was handed down, and really rue the day that he had nominated Earl Warren.
SM: 1:12:00
The, that was beautiful, the years 1960 to 1975, Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, and Nixon.
TS: 1:12:08
(19)60, (19)75, Kennedy first, pretty lame on civil rights. He, like FDR, before him and Truman, I mean, he was a, he was a Democratic candidate for presidency in a party that is, very much a segregationist party. So, he was hamstrung if he, if he did very much. He might not be elected, if he did a little, he would not get the Black vote. So, he tried to do as little [chuckles] as he could to get some of the Black vote. The Black vote at that time in 1960, was not solid, Democrat. I mean, there were many Black Republicans. They regarded the Republican Party as the party of Lincoln. The party that helped place reconstruction and put reconstruction in place. [coughs] Pardon me. So, there were things that, the Kennedy people did later on, that were more progressive. Robert Kennedy helped a little bit. But Bobby Kennedy tried to discourage the Freedom Rides in (19)61, he really tried very hard to get the Freedom Riders not to take their anti-segregation crusade on buses through the south. Because he thought there would be violence and there was, there was violence. And those young people knew that there might be and, but they were very brave, very courageous. And they wanted the world to see just how vicious white segregationists were in the south, to see that the south was essentially a police state. That is what it was. And by Robert Kennedy, so this is trouble for his brother. It was, it was, and that is what the activists wanted, they wanted trouble. And because they want, they wanted segregation gone. And they wanted to see voting and-and they were right, they were right, but boy, they were courageous. They took big chances.
SM: 1:14:50
Oh, Johnson and Nixon.
TS: 1:14:55
Okay, Johnson, well, Johnson is to me, a heroic figure, in the sense that he, you know, he-he really fought for civil rights legislation. Paradoxically, he used the n word all the time. He was a southerner, he knew it. He knew that he had prejudices. He was very familiar with that. I think he was trying to live it down. I think he felt some guilt about that. But he wanted a historic place in history. And he saw it as gaining, going to bat for civil rights for Black people. He did that. He also knew, I mean, he was very shrewd. He knew that this was going to evacuate an awful lot of southerners from the Democratic Party. And he was correct, because today, they and their progeny are largely in the ranks of the Republican Party. And so, the Republican Party has become a, what I-I, a word that I-I like to use, I like to utter is neo, it is, the Republican Party is now a NEO-segregationist party. And it, it does not stand in the schoolhouse door, and block Black people from going to school or university. But it is, it is shutting the doors, in my view to the voting sites, trying to discourage Black people from voting, and it is an old story. So anyway, Johnson was successful with the Civil Rights Act of (19)64 and (19)65, which opened like public accommodations and voting rights. And-and he did lots of other things, too. That is to the good, to the bad, off the subject of civil rights, the Vietnam War. This was of his making, for the most part, the-he inherited a problem of Vietnam. But he vastly enlarged it, greatly and it is, that is to his detriment. I mean, it is a shameful episode, that more than a million southeast Asians lost their lives in that horrible, really-really racist war.
SM: 1:17:43
Nixon and Ford.
TS: 1:17:47
Nixon was trying to turn the clock back on civil rights, but not so abruptly that he was exposed for doing it. He was trying to, he was no friend of Black activists. Not at all. He-he developed a southern strategy, what-what was called the "southern strategy," to win the democratic votes from the escapees, from the democratic Party who resented the integration legislation that Johnson promoted. And he benefited from that, benefited from those votes as people move from the Democratic Party, as southerners moved from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, and-and he used a lot of what we call today, "dog whistles," a lot of politely demagogic rhetoric. He and his vice president Spiro Agnew, to endear themselves to the southerners at the expense of Black voters. And but, he did not want to do it so abruptly that he would lose those suburban white voters. You know, because that is generally you know, the racist, the n word, the-the race baiting, that is not the style of conservative suburbanites. And he wanted to retain them. And so that explains, I think, part of that southern strategy, that dog whistle strategy.
SM: 1:19:42
Did Gerald, did Gerald Ford do anything during his tenure?
TS: 1:19:47
Well, geez, you know, I-I, oh geez. One other thing. Nixon, big thing. There is much more that I could say but, but I, Nixon is the busing, busing for the purposes of school integration was one of the hottest issues in 1970s. And in late (19)60s, and when George Wallace, a Democrat started winning, started gathering primary votes, in the presidential primaries for the Democratic Party, by opposing busing for purposes of integration, school integration, then Nixon came out and called for legislation to have a moratorium on court orders to achieve integration through school busing. And so, he went right into the column of the, what I would call I would call Nixon, a NEO-segregationist, that is the NEO-segregationist tactic of not using the n word, of not screaming and shouting, "Segregation now, segregation forever” but taking moves to achieve the same, the very same, end. That was Richard Nixon. And Gerald Ford, you know, I think it was just pretty much the same hands off, just let it go. Daniel Moynihan, a conservative Democrat, worked for Nixon and called for benign neglect of Black Americans in social policy, just let it go. We have, we have had an awful lot of turmoil in this country, just-just set it aside, benign neglect. And I think that is pretty much the policy, or the attitude of Gerald Ford. I mean, he was a, he was a conservative, he was not an advocate of, of civil rights.
SM: 1:22:08
The-the next two groups, and then, then this will be the last on these questions on presidents, but it is an act of the (19)60s really, but it is the years 1976 to 2000. And of course, this is the beginning of boomers being presidents, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush the first, and Bill Clinton.
TS: 1:22:29
Okay, Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter had been I-I think, you could say a segregationist in his, in pretty much his orientation, as most, virtually all white southerners were. But he did make progress, growth, there was growth there in Jimmy Carter. And there were even dog whistles in his presidential campaign that were kind of chilling, and I believe there were dog whistles in his gubernatorial campaign as well. To say, hey, look, I am one of the good ol' boys, you do not have to worry too much about me. During his presidential campaign, he-he made a statement that he favored preserving the, quote, "ethnic purity of our neighborhoods," ethnic purity now, what could that mean? Sounds to me like a housing policy that was not going to integrate neighborhoods. That is what it sounds like to me. And he caught a lot of hell for that remark, as he should have. He was not an outstanding advocate of, of civil rights, not really. He did hire Andy Young. The aid to Martin Luther King, Andy Young was a minister like King was, and civil rights activist just as King was, he was King's right-hand man. And he gave him the job of the ambassador to the UN, which was a very, a real plum assignment. And but then because Young met with, on the, on, on the QT with Palestinians. At a time when we did not have relations with the Palestinian, Palestinian authority. Well, felt Carter felt compelled to fire Andy Young, and that really, in other words, when it whenever it came to push, and shove, and if you could lose Democratic southern votes, while you would do what you had to do. And-and that is, that is what Jimmy Carter did. So, he was a tepid, I would call him a tepid, moderate on race. He had other Black appointees in his administration, which was to the good. But was he a, you know, crusader, crusader for civil rights? No, I definitely could not, could not say that.
SM: 1:25:24
Reagan and Bush.
TS: 1:25:28
Reagan was just-just-just terrible, just terrible. Right from the very first day, he announced his presidential campaign in the Shelby County at the Nashoba County Fair in Mississippi. The Nashoba County Fair, was always, I mean historically, the place where rabble rousing, demagogic political candidates showed up to give their speeches. And that was its history. There were some like way in winter. Perhaps the first progressive, Democratic governor of Mississippi. He gave speeches there too, but he did not give the kind of speech that Reagan gave. Reagan went there. And he said that he was for states' rights. And a very clear sign that sort of like ethnic purity, a dog whistle, that, hey, I am one of the good ol' boys. I am on your side, do not worry about me. And Nashoba County besides having that history of political demagoguery at that fair, I have been there. It is a fascinating cultural phenomenon. And that county was where three civil rights workers were executed by local law enforcement officers who are basically working as Klansmen to get rid of civil rights workers, to get rid of people wanted integration. And they killed Michael Schwerner, Ben Cheney, I believe it was Ben Cheney, Ben, I think, Benjamin Cheney and-and Goodman, Andrew Goodman. And Goodman, and Schwerner were white, and Cheney was Black, and they were executed and their bodies were disposed of, in earthen dan, and their car was burned, and tossed into the water, and a, a shameful, one of the most shameful episodes in, in American racial history. And-and so for Reagan to go to that county, in that fair, and to invoke states' rights was just appalling. He did plenty more, he tried to get rid of the liberal and he succeeded largely, to get rid of the liberals in the Civil Rights Commission. And he stocked the commission with, with reliable Black conservatives, he did all kinds of things that-that just made it very difficult for the movement to move forward. And-and set the tone for the (19)80s, which was a period, in the (19)60s, under Johnson, you know, there were all kinds of books about civil rights, all kinds of memoirs and-and polemical books about civil rights and segregation. It was a fruitful time to buy books and read about our Black fellow citizens. That was really common. By the 1980s, man, it is like the whole publishing industry just locked right up. And it was sad, it was sad, although, you know, a wonderful book like Toni Morrison's "The Beloved," toward the end of that decade was published that-that is a great thing. But the whole culture, just Black issues, were just, almost non-existent, just ignored. It was a terrible time.
SM: 1:29:29
George Bush, the first of his four years.
TS: 1:29:36
Well, you know, more of the same, you know, it is pretty much a question of inertia when you are talking about Ford, Bush, and Bush too, I mean, it is really basically inertia. I mean, that party is pretty much running on the southern strategy, of endearing itself to, to the Neo-segregationists’ whites in the south, and the Neo-segregationists in the north. And-and Bush infamously gave, oh, gee, I am, I am blanking out on his name. Now, one of his, one of his surrogates, and political consultants from South Carolina, I may not be able to dredge the name up just now. He died of brain cancer- -supply the name, if you can supply the name. Anyway, he gave him his head to, to produce these political ads for his presidential campaign. And-and one of them used the-the case of Willie Horton, a Black man who I think, if I am not mistaken, was convicted of, I will just say crimes. It was convicted, and I cannot remember exactly what the charge was. He was convicted, and he went to, I believe, federal prison. And when George Bush senior ran against Michael Dukakis of the governor of Massachusetts, the Bush administration, Bush campaign ran an ad claiming that Dukakis basically supported paroling people like Willie Horton, who committed these vicious crimes. And this ad was so demagogic, it was very effective. It was devastating. And it had the imprimatur of George Bush. It had his okay. And it was produced by a southern Neo-segregationist, who later apologized for it, he was dying of brain cancer. And he, and he actually apologized for, for, for doing what he did, and some of the things he did of a, of a highly insensitive racial nature. And so, enough said about George, George Bush senior.
SM: 1:30:38
Oh, yeah. Yeah, Bill Clinton, because he is the first boomer president.
TS: 1:32:42
I am, on this subject, I am just ashamed to claim him as a boomer president, not only because of what he did with Monica Lewinsky, [laughter] and that whole sexual affair, I-I loathed him for that. I was one of the Democrats at the time, who said "No, this is not something we can, countenance, playing grab ass in the, in the Oval Office with a 21-year-old intern." This is beyond the pale, he needs to, he needs to leave and Mr. Gore needs to step in and take over. But on the issue of race, I am, I am just thoroughly ashamed of Bill Clinton. His first year in office was in foreign policy, just a disaster. screwed up every step he took. Some, we sent some, I believe, a boat with some, I will call them law enforcement officers or troops, limited, limited number to intervene in Haiti too, to assist in Haiti. And then apparently, the story was that there were, there were some, there was some opposition that formulated on the docks, I think in Port au Prince, but maybe some other city in Haiti, and there were weapons shown, maybe a knife or two or whatever. And he-he, he basically, his administration turned that boat around and hightailed it back for the United States. That was an example of, of one foreign policy screw up after another. So, what did he do? One of the Black appointments he made was Clifton R. Wharton Jr., a Black man to run the state department day to day. He was not Warren Christopher, the Secretary of State he was, Warren Christopher's right-hand man and running the store, keeping the store open. And so, Clinton trying to assuage his critics appease his critics, I should say, over his disastrous first year in foreign policy, he fires Clifton Warden, a Black man, one of his most prominent appointments. When he goes to try to, to appoint a new attorney general, he nominates among other people. He nominates Lani, Lani Guinier, a Black woman, a civil rights icon, in her time, very much an activist and-and very accomplished attorney. And, soon as the, she had written a paper, apparently, a law journal article, I believe in favor of racial quotas to achieve integration, and the Republicans started screaming and hollering about Lani Guinier being a quarter queen. Well, did not Bill Clinton backpedal right off and basically dump her nomination and, lightning quick. So, when it came to loyalty to his appointees, especially his Black appointees, Bill Clinton was just no good. I mean, just terrible. And- and also to try to triangulate, to curry favor with that Neo- segregationist white vote. He came out and made remarks about Sister Souljah, I believe a Black pop culture icon, music icon. I know nothing about her, except for she made some statements or had some lyrics that-that some white people, many white people took offense to. And did not Bill Clinton come out with a great big statement putting her down in a very big way. Why the President of the United States would lower himself to make a demagogic attack on a Black popular music figure is beyond me, is beneath the office. And it was a disgrace. And now, on incarceration. He-he was very much in favor of tough legislation, locking, locking away people who were involved in drug cases and other, other small crimes. I mean, this really fueled our huge incarceration rate among minorities that we have in this country today. I think in this, in the (19)90s, early (19)90s maybe, there were something like 1 million people in our prisons. Maybe I am wrong, maybe it was in the (19)80s, we had a million and-and by the end of the (19)90s, and into the 2000s, we had 2 million. There is no other country in the world that comes even remotely close to the-the numbers and proportion of its population in prison. South Africa, the union, the fascist Union of South Africa, gave us some competition for a while. But, we were number one, and we still are, and it is a disgrace.
SM: 1:39:19
The, very well said on those presidents these are the final ones, of course, and you have already made a comment about the, this is 2001 to 2022. George Bush the second, and President Obama, President Trump, and the current President Biden.
TS: 1:39:36
[laughs] Okay, I think we are first at Bush now. Bush Jr. I, 42, I think I already addressed-
SM: 1:39:48
Yes.
TS: 1:39:49
-with the inertia problem, the continuing use of the southern strategy. I mean, that just did not change. He courted the far right, as president and as a presidential candidate in ways that he did not court the far right, as the governor of Texas. An awful lot of Texans, progressive Texans were shocked to see his behavior in office, in Washington as president, because he did not show signs of that, as the governor of Texas. So, I think we can go put a ditto on his name. Now, the next is-
SM: 1:40:37
President Obama, President Obama.
TS: 1:40:39
-Obama.
SM: 1:40:40
He is still, he is a boomer, but he was only like two or three years old. But yeah.
TS: 1:40:44
Yeah, you know, I admire President Obama for some things. As a wonderful family man, father, as a brilliant man. But he was not a, he was not in the presidency, a figure of consequence on behalf of civil rights, is putting Eric Holder in the Attorney General's office to head that job. That is, that is great. I mean, that was wonderful, a good move. But many Black leaders of the Obama era and since, have really pretty clearly delineated the ways in which he fell short of promoting and supporting civil rights in his, in his administration. And, I can give you a couple of examples. One was again, the lack of loyalty to a, an appointee, I believe, well, no, I am not an appointee, appointee, I think, I do not think she was an appointee. Shirley Sherrod was a, a federal employee who is accused of making racially offensive or insensitive remark, by a right-wing outlet, I believe a website and it ran, the site ran a film clip of her giving a speech. And it made it, it was cropped or edited to make it sound like she was anti-white, bigoted against whites. But if you saw the whole thing she, she was not, she was actually very much the opposite. She worked in the agriculture department. And she was a civil rights activist in Georgia. A very ardent civil rights activist, a really good woman, decent, decent person. And his, he-he had basically his administration fired her, immediately. Almost immediately after that-that irresponsible demagogic report went out. And meanwhile, it took a day or two to see the whole film and it clarified that she was not guilty of anything racist or anti-white whatsoever. On the contrary, she was very much a great help to white farmers. She was a friend of the white farmer. Most farmers in Georgia are white and they liked her. And, but when all that was clarified, and that came out, and corrected, still, the Obama administration did not call her up, invite her back, gave her, and give her-her job back. She lost out. And it is, it is Obama did call her and we do not know what he said to her. Now another one was when Obama made a very good remark about Henry Louis Gates in Boston, Cambridge, being arrested for being in his own house. Black man, the foremost Black scholar of our times, a white cop goes and arrests him on his front porch for being, for trespassing on his own property, and he was not trespassing. [laughter] And Gates rightly got incensed, and so he was, he was charged. And Obama rightly said, "Look, this was really stupid." I think stupid was the word Obama used. And boy, did not a, white neo-segregationists go bananas over that, and give Obama hell. And so, what-what does he do? He has the cop who arrested him, with Gates, show up at the White House grounds for a beer so they can sit down and talk together. You know, I mean, what the cop did was beyond ignorant, I mean it was so ignorant to, to arrest a man in his own home. And-and Henry is the most, possibly one of, one of maybe 5 or 10 best known African Americans in the nation. And he arrests the guy in his own home. Now, if that is not the very definition of stupid, I do not know what is. And then to, and then to just charge this very-very tepid, moderate, middle course between them to have a beer on the grounds of the White House with them both outdoors, where the cameras could see them from a long distance. What a shameful, just a shameful moment. But I admire Obama. He was a good president, for the most part, the ACA was, the, Obamacare was a wonderful thing. He handled a lot of racist abuse with a plumb abuse from the Tea Party, rabble rousers, name callers of all sorts like that guy from I think South Carolina, who said he lied. During his State of the Union speech, the man who screamed out "You lie," to him. I mean, Obama put up with a lot of crap. And he did it, gracefully, with a lawn, and I admire him for that. But I think he-he could have been more progressive on the issue of, of civil rights. He tried too hard not to appear the angry Black man in the presidential office, I realized he was hamstrung, I understand that I understand the problem he had. I understood that to be elected and reelected, you really need, need not, you need to keep even some of those neo- segregationist votes. But still, I think he could have done more. In his last year, he began to speak out more forthrightly in the Trayvon Martin case where Trayvon Martin, a young Black man was slain by a man, a kind of vigilante, who was trying to keep his neighborhood safe. When he said that, you know, if I had, if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon that-that was a, that was a wonderful remark. And he took an awful lot of crap for that. But that was, that was a help. That was a good thing. So, Obama is not anti-civil rights. But he is not, you know, he is not an avid in office, pro-Black figure.
SM: 1:48:27
How about Donald Trump?
TS: 1:48:31
Donald Trump went well beyond the southern strategy. He threw, he threw away the dog whistle. And he just openly embraced bigotry, expressed and stated, I mean, he was just wide open with it. When he announced again, it is interesting how these people announced their candid, candidacy. When Reagan did it, he did it in Neshoba county, embracing states' rights. And when Trump did it, he did it on his golden escalator at Trump Tower. And he called for a, well he-he attacked immigrants from Mexico as being, rapists, thieves, and murderers. "They do not send us their best people," he said, and he then very soon afterward, not long after he was, I believe he was in office and that is when he actually called for a Muslim, a ban on immigration of all Muslims. I mean just-just deplorable demagoguery, the kind of demagoguery, demagoguery we used to expect from southern governors in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Men who used the n word. That is what we, I mean, he was giving us that kind of leadership. And-and what-what was the result? I mean, we have had shootings at synagogues. We have had, you know just-just a terrible four-year period, we had the, backlash from the Black Lives Matter, people with the executions of so many young Black men, usually Black men. And mistreatment of Black people and jeez, you know, talk to a cabbie, even talk to a cabbie today, as I often do, and a cabbie will tell you that the-the abuse that they take, if they are a Muslim, or a Black man. The abuse that they take from white riders in the back, you know they are, they are, this has just become so much a part of our daily lives now. It is intolerable. And it is, you know, I just did not realize, I did not fully appreciate the degree to which good, wholesome, moral leadership mattered to white adults. I thought, in the mass, in the great mass, white adults did not need a babysitter on the subject of race and morality. But Donald Trump proved that they do. They do. Donald Trump did one wonderful thing for us, all of us. He taught us who we are, and America is still a racist nation. And I think he proved it.
SM: 1:52:02
Very-very well said and, of course, our current president, Joe Biden, he has been here one year he got an African American female vice president, your thoughts on him so far?
TS: 1:52:15
Well, Joe, was a tepid moderate in the Senate. He was not a progressive. He was not an advocate of, of school, busing for the purpose of school integration. And as a matter of fact, he was an opponent. And I think that really pretty well delineates where he stood on civil rights pretty much, in his Senate years. Delaware is a border state. Delaware was a rigidly segregated state, it had segregated schools, racially segregated schools. It is pretty clear where he stood as a Democrat, right in the tepid center. And while he did campaign, in Black barber shops and do things like that, and he handled himself with dignity, in friendships, and in his discussions with Black people that he met, nonetheless, he was not going to take any chances, on losing white votes by staunchly, but by being a staunch advocate of civil rights, but he was a thoroughly decent man. And James Clyburn, whom I really-really admire, sensed that he was, Biden was the only white candidate seeking the presidential nomination in, in 2016, who could win it-
SM: 1:54:07
Right.
TS: 1:54:07
-and win the president and take the presidency. And so, he backed him. And that won for Biden, the Black vote. But when, in an interesting moment, is, the woman who is now his vice presidential, his vice president, challenged him in a presidential debate, primary presidential debate, campaign debate on the issue of school integration. Biden did backtrack, you know, he more or less stuck with where he had been. That is not for, I think, for the purpose of school integration. And he later made a statement that did not get a lot of attention. But he made the statement that you know, vice president, Ms. Harris, also, you will notice is not campaigning aggressively on integrate, for school integration, which was true, because she too, needed white votes on behalf of the team, to become vice president. And Kamala Harris is really not terribly, terribly progressive herself. And the thing is, she at least kind of faked a progressive stand on school integration with him, and challenged him to try to defeat him in that, in that high-profile moment. But-
SM: 1:55:50
I know.
TS: 1:55:51
-I do not know, I thought that situation really told us a lot about both Harris and him.
SM: 1:55:57
I know that he took a lot of heat for the Anita Hill hearings, so-
TS: 1:56:01
Right.
SM: 1:56:02
-yeah, when he was head of the committee.
TS: 1:56:05
Right, well, I guess you could, you could argue that it was racially neutral, because what he did was to, you know, to the benefit of Clarence Thomas, who was also Black. And it was to the detriment of Anita Hill. And he has regretted and apologized for his behavior, and it was inexcusable. And, but that really does show you how conservative the guy was. I mean he was really quiet, Delaware is not a progressive state. I mean, in racial terms it, it was not.
SM: 1:56:45
Some people, thank you for going through this. I think this is one of the most important parts of this interview was your commentary on our presidents because the issue of race today in the news is every day. You go into the Barnes and Noble bookstore, I have never seen so many books on the topic. And-and I think it is really very timely. Some people say the (19)60s was divided into two parts. The first part was 1960 to 1963. And the second one from 1963 to 1973, or (19)75, depending. And I think I know what they are referring to, they are referring to when John Kennedy was assassinated, that was the first half. Your thoughts on that?
TS: 1:57:31
I-I, (19)60 to (19)63, I think there is some wisdom in that I would probably want to push the boundaries a little farther to (19)65. Because the legislation, that was the logical outcome of the early (19)60s, protests for civil rights came, did not come out until (19)64 and (19)65. But you could see that the tenor of the protests were growing more bitter, towards (19)65. There is no question about that, the rise of Malcolm X, for instance. But the (19)60 to (19)63, yeah, I can see some wisdom in that. But for me, I would expand the boundaries of that to (19)65 when the legislation that opened things like theatres, and swimming pools, and motels, and restaurants. I mean, this, really, you could argue that nothing concrete came out of all those protests until that moment in (19)64, when that (19)64 Civil Rights Act passed. And-and also, you know, the voting did not really, the floodgates did not really open until after (19)65, when the (19)65 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act passed. So that is why I would push those boundaries that far. And then the other era, you said was what?
SM: 1:59:22
It was the 1963 to 1973, or (19)75. You know, we have the new senator here at Binghamton, which is 1960 to (19)75. And that is because symbolically that is when the helicopters fall off the roof in Saigon. So, that gets kind of the end of the Vietnam War. But (19)73 was also the peace conference on Vietnam, which was not really. really that successful cause-
TS: 1:59:47
Oh, so you are talking more broadly. I-I was talking specifically about civil rights, were you?
SM: 1:59:57
-yes, I am talking, when I am talking about the six, the two breakdowns of actually, it was one of the people that I am going to be interviewing down the road, Dr. Josiah Bunting, the third, he said he has always looked at the (19)60s divided into two parts, the period up to (19)63, from (19)60, over the death of John Kennedy. And that period of activism, which is really from (19)63 to (19)73, or (19)75.
TS: 2:00:23
I-I would not go with that part of it. From the point of view of civil rights, I think the, it was pretty much over, the civil rights movement was over by 1968. When Nixon was elected, it really is over. And, you know, you had that horrible, horrendous Detroit riots in (19)67. And then, the riots in (19)68. And, as the-the Martin Luther King, post King's assassination riots, the civil rights organizations were beginning to unravel. Stokely Carmichael's Black power movement, deprived Snick of white participants. And I-I, I think most people agree that the Civil Rights Movement dies with King in (19)68. It is, it is over, it is just over. And Nixon is in charge, and everything begins to reverse in civil rights, as I see it. At that time, so, now with the war, it is different. And-and I-I mean, from my point of view, I, the continuing war, and the continuing kind of hot resistance to the war. To me, that period ends in (19)71. Night you had, the turbulence of May 1970. And that, to me is the climax of the anti-war movement. That for me is the climax. I never saw anything like that, afterward. And it burned itself out, as I see it very fast. One year later, one in the spring, one year later, May (19)71. There was a-a big demonstration in Washington, major demonstration and-and carpet tacks where, the nails were spread on the bridges into Washington. Anywhere activists were trying to bring government to a halt that day. Nixon was basically wielding the city police as a bludgeon to, keep the- [silence]
SM: 2:03:15
Hello-hello, hello? [silence]
TS: 2:03:29
In May of I believe it was May, but maybe it was April, that-that huge Washington anti-war demonstration where activists were trying to close down government for a day. And Nixon brought in the police chief, and thanked him for basically beating up all kinds of war protesters, and that is what happened even innocent people just sitting on their front porches, adults not, not young activists, just sitting on their porch watching what was going on. I mean, police were going up, staircases, and onto porches, and beating the crap out of citizens. It was just unbelievable. And like the next day, Nixon has the-the police chief and to thank him for-for doing it. I think that is anticlimax. But still, I mean, it showed the resistance continuing. But boy after that, I do not know the anti-war movement- -to me, is pretty well shot. And it just, I think Nixon let the air out of that, anti- war movement with a couple of things. One big thing was the draft by having an all-volunteer army that made a lot of young people no longer fearful of dying. So, that removed a, a reason to fight for a lot of them. And, I think the whole tragedy of Kent and Jackson State had a real depressing effect on young people. I mean, the idealism was just, you know, it was just, awful, I mean, [crosstalk] hopes and dreams for a better country, you know.
SM: 2:04:35
Right. At the times in the newspapers when this all happened, when the tragedies happened at Kent State and Jackson State, and of course, they were talking about when the war came to middle America, you knew the war was over. I mean, most of America is now going to, you know, be against the war. And there is some, there is some truth to that-that was in the papers a lot, at the time.
TS: 2:05:48
It went pretty, it went pretty mainstream, but the heartbreaking thing is, that damn war continued. And we were exterminating all these Asian people every damn day with our bombs. You know, I mean, air attacks, week after week, year after year, I mean, even resuming bombing after, at Christmas time, the Christmas bombing of Henry Kissinger. Progressives of my generation today, think of Henry Kissinger as, a little better than a war criminal. But still I see our mainstream news media, genuflect to this-this 90 plus year old man is if he is some sort of sage. I just cannot believe it. That is how conservative the country is.
SM: 2:06:46
I know it is hard to do this. And you can just, you can just, I got three more questions, and then we will be done. We are a little, but that is you, it has been a great interview. If you were to pick between (19)60 and (19)75, if you were to pick five individuals, male, female, I do not care what it is, that were either positive or negative towards the, this era, who are the five people that you would pick?
TS: 2:07:16
Martin Luther King top, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson. So, that is what, three? Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King, wow. As the five most influential in that period, gosh I, it is not as if I cannot come up with names of that era. But those are the ones that really occur to me. Those are the ones that really-really grabbed me.
SM: 2:07:30
Yep. Right.
TS: 2:08:06
I mean, they there is just such towering figures.
SM: 2:08:10
Yeah, I agree. I agree. I know, some people might say, Bob Dylan because of the music. And that is, that he has been a powerful person in the music world. There is no question about.
TS: 2:08:23
Well, that is popular culture, I was thinking more in terms of, I was thinking more in terms of the political culture of the-
SM: 2:08:32
Right.
TS: 2:08:32
-of our society. Martin, I mean, my God, what an extraordinary man, and Nixon for the exact opposite, such an ordinary flawed man. And-and Johnson also in a way for the opposite, such an ordinary flawed man who had great aspirations, and did a wonderful, wonderful thing, and helping to encourage a second reconstruction. You know, that is, that is the, to me, that is his big, he gets a, a plus and a minus. You know what I mean?
SM: 2:09:13
Yes.
TS: 2:09:14
Nixon is all minus, all minus in my in my field. But we know, by the way, one thing I did not mention to you is that Nixon did decide to go on the Supreme Court case, in 1970, a Supreme Court ruling that forced the southern states, those that mandated segregated schools to stop immediately, before it was all delivered, speed, which was not very, which was all deliberation and no speed. Well, believe it or not, the Nixon administration, his ATW secretary, Fench I believe it was- went along with it. I mean, the administration was, went along with it. And the south integrated in the, by the 1980s, far more than the north ever integrated-
SM: 2:10:07
Wow.
TS: 2:10:07
-its schools.
SM: 2:10:08
Yep. When you go to the Vietnam Memorial, one of the basic symbols of the (19)60s but, for all time, you know, that war, that unjust war that we all know about, that really is the watershed event along with civil rights, and for the boomer generation. When you visit the wall, and you look at that wall, what do you see? And what feelings are going through your mind, not just because the names are there, what do you see, sensing in your mind? What are you feeling?
TS: 2:10:43
I am just speechless, like most people, speechless and heartbroken. And see, young bodies, dead bodies, corpses. I see a tragic pile, tragic waste, a pile of dead bodies. And I reflect on the uncounted, unnamed over in Asia-
SM: 2:11:16
Yes.
TS: 2:11:17
-because they lost about a million. No, actually, I think I read it was 2.1 million.
SM: 2:11:25
Actually, you know-
TS: 2:11:26
I think it was, I think I read it just-just like about a week or so ago, 2.1 million Asians.
SM: 2:11:32
-yeah-yeah, I think you are right. And some people said up to 3 million because of the fact, we are not only talking Vietnam, we are talking Laos. [crosstalk]
TS: 2:11:42
Laos, you know, Cambodia, North Vietnam, South Vietnam. Yeah, definitely.
SM: 2:11:49
And another, another thing too. But when you hear people today, say, well the (19)60s have returned with today's protests. I have very funny feelings about this. I do not think it is the same of the (19)60s. At the activism of the (19)60s, we are going to- we are talking 70 percent of the people probably were activists, during that timeframe, and probably the same things happening today. But the bottom line is this, it was a different time, there were different issues.
TS: 2:12:17
You think 67 percent of the young population were activists?
SM: 2:12:22
No, that is I have gotten that from many of the interviews that I have had from-
TS: 2:12:27
I sure do not. I do not, I do not think at all.
SM: 2:12:31
-how many do you think there were percentage wise?
TS: 2:12:33
Oh, much-much, much lower, much lower, you have to realize it is a big country. Well, I just think that when you think about those times, you have to realize the complexity. You there?
SM: 2:12:56
Yeah, I am here.
TS: 2:12:58
The complexity of American society, it is not all private elite universities in the northeast and-and public and-and distinguished public universities. I mean, it is a very diverse country. And I do not think you could say at all, most people were activist, nowhere near it, and I would not, nowhere near 50 percent.
SM: 2:13:27
I-I was mentioning 7 percent.
TS: 2:13:31
Oh, you said seven. I thought you said 70.
SM: 2:13:34
No, I said seven, 7 percent.
TS: 2:13:36
Oh-oh, okay.
SM: 2:13:38
Yeah. And that is, and I have gotten that from a lot of including Tom Hayden and you know, other people. The key thing here is that when people say and I see these protests today, they have been going on for several years. And you know, of the whole, over the issue of race, it seems to be as, we have so many issues in this country, we take two steps forward and two steps backward. But the thing is, I, it is a different it is, I just cannot compare what happened to the (19)60s, and where people say we are back to the (19)60s. I do not, I do not buy it. And I do not know how you feel about it. It is a totally different thing. And today, it is even scarier than what it was back then. That is what, that is what I feel like. Still there? [silence] Oh my goodness, what is going on here?
TS: 2:14:35
But, okay, enough-enough on that, on that subject. Is it like today, is today's Black Lives Matter? Well, in one respect, I think I have more respect for them. And the sincerity and depth of their commitment then for us, the boomers because those, those young people stuck with us and a lot of them were boomers too. There were a lot of boomers, I saw out in the streets.
SM: 2:15:05
Right.
TS: 2:15:07
They stuck with it for a year. You know, the whole Kent State, Jackson State furor that flamed out very fast-
SM: 2:15:16
Right.
TS: 2:15:17
-I mean, really fast. And an awful lot of it was very histrionic. An awful lot, the news media were new, back then. The broadcast media were new. And I think a lot of people in our generation really and-and some of the activists just a few years before the boomers, like people like Tom [inaudible], I think a lot of folks of his age, really enjoyed, Abbie Hoffman comes to mind, really loved the limelight, really loved to have the cameras on them. Very-very histrionic, very dramatic. And-and I have great doubts about their sincerity. I mean, not some, I mean, you know, some of them like Jerry Rubin went to work on Wall Street as a stockbroker, you know, who is another one. Eldridge Cleaver, he becomes a clothing designer, and he designs clothes with a big pocket for the testicles, to feature them in his- the pants line, and he was run. I mean, I do not want to caricature everybody as shallow, and histrionic. But there was a lot of that stuff in both the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. A lot of crazy ideas, a lot of silly nonsense, a lot of posing. But I get the feeling from these Black lives matter people hold a whole lot of sincerity and with the Wall Street group too, after the, with the Great Recession, protesting down in Wall Street. I think there was a lot of depth and organization, and sincerity there. I do not want to say that, I do not mean to suggest all (19)60s young activists were shallow, and histrionic, but there was an awful lot of that.
SM: 2:17:20
Right.
TS: 2:17:21
And I just somehow respect the young people who got so involved with Black Lives Matter. I really, I really do great respect for.
SM: 2:17:31
One presidential candidate that I did not mention was the hippie's candidate, Pegasus and I wanted to [laughs] make sure you make a comment on that.
TS: 2:17:41
I do not know anything about him. Assuming it is a- him, I-I never had the name.
SM: 2:17:47
It is a pig, it is a pig. That was Jerry Reuben in Pegasus.
TS: 2:17:49
Oh, it is a pig [laughs]. Well, I would not okay. I remember that. No, no, I did not know the name. But yeah, do not leave out the pet Paulson candidacy. [laughs]
SM: 2:18:03
Oh, that is how can you do that, my goodness? Yeah. The one final question I have is I have been trying to do this the last couple interviews, I have done the last three or four. And that is, these interviews are going to be eventually heard down the road by people who are not even alive.
TS: 2:18:19
Yeah you said that, you said that.
SM: 2:18:21
10 ,20, 30, 40. If there is anything you want to say to those individuals who have listened to this tape, or have an interest in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, and race relations, if there is anything you would like to say to future generations who are going to hear you, you may not be around anymore, I will not be. But they are going to be here, and they are the future. What would you like to say to them?
TS: 2:18:48
If I can venture to offer some advice is struggle on. Do not give up. As you get older, keep on pushing for a better society. You too, are going to go the way of all flesh into the great beyond. Leave something behind for another generation, justice, social justice, fairness. That is my suggestion, struggle on.
SM: 2:19:22
Very good. Tim, it has been great interview and I am going to turn off, hold on one second. Thank you very much.
(End of Interview)
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