Interview with Dr. David Garrow

Garrow, David J., 1953- ; McKiernan, Stephen

Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Dr. David Garrow is a historian, educator, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a Professor of Law & History, and Distinguished Faculty Scholar at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He was the senior advisor for the TV show Eyes on The Prize and a senior research fellow at Homerton College in Cambridge, M.A. He is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, New York Times, and The American Prospect. Garrow graduated magna cum laude from Wesleyan University and then received his Ph.D. from Duke University.

2010-11-20

In copyright

2018-03-29

McKiernan Interviews

126:59

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: David Garrow
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 20 November 2010
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(Start of Interview)

DG (00:00:04):
So, my memory now of the different emails and...

SM (00:00:07):
I have to check these out every so often. Make sure they are [inaudible].

DG (00:00:10):
You run them both on the same thing.

SM (00:00:11):
Yeah.

DG (00:00:11):
Yeah, we are on exactly the same thing.

SM (00:00:11):
Yeah. Well the first hundred I did not, and then Charlie Hardy from the history department told me, "Steve, are you getting two tapes?" Because I have had situations where I damage the tape. And then you have got the backup. And I get them on CD's as fast as possible. And then whatever happens to these tapes, end up at the university or whatever and the CD will be there forever.

DG (00:00:36):
So, okay. Just the one thought I have had in the back of my mind, looking forward to when we were going to get together. I, for whatever reason, have always been deeply, deeply uncomfortable with any and every invocation of boomer generation as a phrase. Now, for some reason I just really dislike the word boomer.

SM (00:01:01):
You are not the first that is said that.

DG (00:01:01):
Okay. Now I do not know. And I am not opposed to periodization or generationalism or eras. So, my problem is not with the concept. My problem is with the word. And it may be that my deep dislike for Bill Clinton is what explains this. Because at least in the journalism of the 1990s, Clinton was presented as the personification of the boomer generation.

SM (00:01:39):
Yes.

DG (00:01:45):
Now I gave up on Bill Clinton when he mucked over Lani Guinier in about May or June of 1993. And I sort of wrote him off as any political figure, I was interested in [inaudible 00:02:05]. Well this may be completely my sort of anti-Clintonism being transferred to something that is guilt by association with Bill Clinton.

SM (00:02:15):
What is interesting is that many people have told me they hate the term. Todd Gitlin actually in my interview said, "If you mentioned the word one more time I am going to stop the interview." There has been some issues. One of the main issues is that people that were born between say (19)39 and (19)45 are closer to the boomers, the frontline, the first 10 years.

DG (00:02:37):
Todd is a good bit older.

SM (00:02:39):
Well Todd I think is 42, I interviewed him a long time ago. But Tom Hayden and basically all the leaders of the movement were mostly born between (19)40 and (19)45. And when I was in graduate school, I can remember being taught in class at Ohio State that the majority of the militants were the older people, were the ones that were leading the movement even in (19)70. And they were born before (19)46. For me being born in (19)53. Now I have great respect for Todd, though I do not know him personally at all. I do know Tom Hayden, have known Tom Hayden some personally.

DG (00:03:20):
But they must have football.

SM (00:03:23):
Yeah, a football game day.

DG (00:03:24):
Wow. Oh my god. I do not think Tom Hayden is here from the same generation. I mean I do not exactly know how much older than I am Tom is.

SM (00:03:39):
Tom is 10 years older. I think he was born in (19)42.

DG (00:03:44):
I think we may want to wait until the percussion session...

SM (00:03:45):
Yeah, let me go over, turn it off.

DG (00:03:54):
And start meeting people as a scholar. I first start meeting people 179, 19 80. So, I am 26 at that time. And whether it is Bayard Rustin, whether it is Mike Harrington, whether it is somebody like Tom Hayden. Bayard is certainly more than a generation older than me. But being 26 at that time, both these are good examples to use, because they are so far apart in age. Being 26 at that time, both Bayard and Tom seemed so much older than I am that they seemed to be more from the same generation. The linkage between the two of them seems to be inherently closer than any possible linkage of say, me to Tom. Now, even the youngest of the SNCC people, say someone who is 17, 18 in say 1964 even, not the first generation of SNCC people in here. I am using generation in a four-year increment. But say even someone who was active in SNCC at age 18 in 1964 is still born in (19)46. So inherently for me, in my Civil Rights movement phase, all of those people seem measurably older than I am. Because to someone who is 26, 27, seven years seems significant. Now that I am 57, seven years does not seem very significant at all. So, I think a lot of my ways of looking at people and thinking about generations and thinking about age is the artifact of how sort of unusually young I was when I first got in the interviewing trenches.

SM (00:06:03):
Yeah, you raised a good point because you kind of are close to that second half of the boomer generation, which had totally different experiences than the first half. So, for them it is like the older brother and the younger brother. And we had many cases of that. And I think part of the process of doing this book, I have learned so much that you cannot put things into nice packages that there is what I call a spirit. There was a spirit that really crossed, was a part of the front-runners of the generation that were linked to some people that were older, maybe members of the silent generation or those born in World War II. That had similar experiences. And that is what Tom Hayden said. Tom does not like the term boomer. Two questions for you. Up through when does your application of the term run? What is your what is the [inaudible] year?

DG (00:06:59):
Because I am a higher ed person and all my degrees are in higher ed, higher education looks at the boomer generation as those born between (19)46 and (19)64. And then we get into the generation Xer's, which is 65 to about (19)81, (19)82, there is a little discrepancy there. Just two things then, now given what I am now doing with Barack, Barack was born in (19)61, and all the people I am now interviewing in terms of his contemporaries are either his age, or say in terms of his Harvard classmates, since Barack takes essentially five years off, (19)83 to (19)88 before law school. So, a lot of Barack classmates are five years younger than he is in terms of the people I go interview for this. Now, it is interesting when I interview someone who is born in 1966, entering Harvard Law School of 1988, and they are 13 years younger than me. And I am quite aware that they are younger than me, they do not quite feel like they are from a different generation in the sense that my graduate students are, or my wife's graduate students whom we know. So, I think of some of the PhD's, new PhD's, recent PhD's we know at Cambridge. I am just going to say the names that I think about people like Lee and Julia. They are going to be 30 now roughly, maybe early thirties. So that means they are born 1980. Now they are a generation younger than me in a way that somebody born (19)66 is not so clearly. And then the other thing I was going to say to a Civil Rights historian like me, (19)45, (19)46 looms big, because of how totally different the local world, particularly in the South is, once you have got African American military veterans coming back. When the war ends, (19)45, (19)46, Amzie Moore, Medgar Evers, folks like that. So, my predisposition in terms of how I would periodize things is to draw a line some place in (19)45. And then probably, I guess I would begin in (19)46 because if somebody gets home from the war sometime summer of (19)45, fall of (19)45, the first children of the war are born in (19)46. One my first conscious memories, and I may just be slow and not very good, and I certainly have more reasons than most people to have blocked out good chunks, large chunks, huge chunks of my early childhood. My earliest substantive memories are the Kennedy assassination and the Kennedy funeral, which I saw in person. So, for me, I have vague recollections of my father kvetching about traffic problems because of the march on Washington. So that is three months earlier. So, my first political news memories are from being 10 years old. Now, let me say one other thing, and this is really, really central. And if there is anything profound, I have to say, I think this is profound. And I have been aware of this for going on 30 years and I still cannot wrap my little brain around it. Martin Luther King, the whole ambition of King's public life, takes place in less than 13 years. From late (19)55 to early (19)68. Now, when I started out in (19)79, (19)80, at age 26, age 27, the 13 years from (19)55 to (19)68, 13 years seems like a long time. A really long time. Now here is the crux of my problem. I have now been doing this for, depending on where I put the start point, at least 32 years from when Protest at Selma was published.

SM (00:12:16):
Yes, I have that.

DG (00:12:16):
Or in terms of when I started, I started my first day of work on what became Protest at Selma was June 1st, (19)74, which I remember quite clearly because it is when I began work on the senior thesis that ended up as Protest at Selma. Now the notion that I have been doing more or less the same thing, permutations of the same thing for 32 to 36 years. I have very clear memories of, I can picture... One of the weird things with my memory is that I cannot tell you a lot of things about my personal life or things that I did or girlfriends or going to meet, did I speak at a conference? When did I last speak in Louisville? When did I last speak at Princeton? Things about my personal life, personal experiences, none of that sticks. But I can picture almost without exception, virtually every person I have ever interviewed and can picture the room, the scene.

SM (00:13:33):
So, can I.

DG (00:13:34):
1979 forward.

SM (00:13:35):
Oh, wow. That is really a good story.

DG (00:13:38):
But it is profoundly weird to me that I have been a historian for 32 plus years. And my 32 plus years does not seem very long to me. Whereas King's public life was only 13 years. I cannot wrap... This is about the limits of my ability to be articulate about this. But in making the answer very simple is that the black freedom struggle of that period happened very, very quickly, very, very intensively. And let me do a further extension or parallel of that. Up until (19)65, when Griswold comes down, and indeed really into (19)66, (19)67, this is just parroting from Liberty and Sexuality, nobody with two or three real, real outlier exceptions, no one has ever thought, ever had the idea of a constitutional right to abortion. Now within the space of six years, never mind 13 with King, within the space of literally six years, and then January (19)73, it is actually more like five. Within the space of five years this, being the idea of a constitutional right to abortion, goes from being non-existent to being the law of the land. That at least initially the relatively non-controversial law of land. So, the speed with which Roe v Wade comes to pass is mind-boggling, even compared to the speed of the black freedom struggle. Now lastly, look at where we are today, where we have been the last 6, 9, 10 years with gay equality, gay marriage. No societal change in my lifetime comes anywhere imaginably close in magnitude and scale and depth to how the status of gay people has changed in American society from when I was in high school until the present day. I have a reasonably clear memory of first realizing that there was such a thing as a gay person in I think maybe my junior or senior year of college at Wesleyan, which should be like 1973. Now that is pretty slow, pretty late. Was I aware that Stonewall had happened? I read the New York Times when I was in high school, so I must have read about this. But I did not have the personal awareness, certainly I had no awareness when I was in high school in Greenwich up through (19)71, there was such a thing as gay people. And I cannot remember who it was at Wesleyan, and I do not know the gay historiography, gay identity theory quite well enough to do this competently. But there is, I think no question as a historical matter, as a legal matter, that the speed and degree of progression with gay social acceptance, gay legal rights is directly concomitant to the public visibility of gay people. Because the more visible, I would argue, the more non-gay people become aware of fundamental similarity, fundamental equality. But needless to say, there is no one who is more totally pro-gay marriage than I am. But I view the speed with which gay people have moved from being either non-present or actively widely harassed, humiliated, discriminated against. I view the speed with which this has happened as just remarkable. So, on all of these things, whether it is the black freedom struggle, 13 years, whether it is right to abortion, five or six years, whether it is gay equality, the last, however, we would put a beginning point on that sometime, whether Stonewall or later. I think the speed of change over the course of my lifetime on the things I care about has been just remarkable.

SM (00:19:41):
Well those, they are beautiful insights. Because when I was a graduate student at Ohio State, and I believe the spring of (19)71, Dr. Johnson, our advisor, we were talking about the war. In fact, it was a legal aspect in higher ed class. At the very end of the class, he asked all the men to stay after, and well, we were going back to study and whatever. It is in the middle of the winter. And he said, "I want you guys to meet Dr. Allen Hurst."

DG (00:20:05):
I recognize that name.

SM (00:20:07):
And we are talking about the war in Vietnam, our whole theory, we were talking about Civil Rights and you were talking about women's issues, whether police can come on campus. We are dealing with a lot of legal issues here. And he says, "I want to introduce to you the guy who is going to get the first PhD in gay history, Amal Hurst from the University of Minnesota." I think he was at Minnesota, and we were looking at each other. First off, we were black and white, no Asians, but black and white. And we were in this room, we all looked at each other, none of us knew hardly anything, we knew nothing about gay people. And we did not even know that there were gay people. And we are talking about African American and white males, who are liberal and pretty well-educated. And so, we did not understand why Dr. Johnson did this, because Phil Tripp was another person that asked Dr. Johnson to introduce them. And he just wanted to make us aware that there is another group that is being discriminated against in our society. And you are going to be dealing with this issue down the road if you are going to have a career in higher ed.

DG (00:21:14):
Right.

SM (00:21:17):
And he talked, and Pat comes over. He said, "Was not that strange?" We did not dislike the man. He was brilliant when he talked. And obviously he was a front runner.

DG (00:21:24):
Right-right.

SM (00:21:27):
But the fact that here we are dealing with the issues of black and white, male and female, war and peace. And here we are talking about gay rights in 1971.

DG (00:21:37):
Right now, let me take a pause. Just me to get more coffee. Because given my... Given what you are doing, be sure to look, need to think about the date on it, it is going to be April or May of 2000. So, look on the 2000 menu. And it is a long newspaper piece that I had in the Atlanta Journal constitution discussing the experience of the 40th reunion of SNCC, and the sort of implicit tensions between the ways in which the participant alumni wanted to remember the SNCC experience. Versus what we historians believe we know about the SNCC experience. And my sort of gentle polite point is that, and this reflects a broader belief I have, is that people remember happy experiences much better, much more clearly than they remember negative or unpleasant experiences. That people retain what is happy and pleasing and reassuring and discard that which is troubling and unpleasant. And I first realized that principle, not sure it is correct it is a principle, early on when I was interviewing people who had been in Montgomery (19)55, the (19)59, (19)60 doc's time in Montgomery. And I started to realize that virtually without exception, everybody had very clear, sometimes detailed, memories of the year of the boycott, December (19)55 to December (19)56. But the vast majority of them had very little memory about what happens in Montgomery and what happens with the Montgomery Improvement Association 1957 to 1959. Because there is just a lot of internal tensions and disagreements, and some people are sour about all the attention that is gone to Dr. King. And some people are sour that Mrs. Parks has been sort of forgotten and ignored. But very few people in black Montgomery could sort of narrate their way across the calendar of (19)57, (19)58, (19)59, yet virtually everyone could narrate their way from January to March to June to November of 1956. So, you run into this probably just as much as I do, interviewing hundreds and hundreds of people, whether it is for King, for Roe vs Wade, for Barack Obama. The variegation of human memory, the selectivity of human memory, the way in which human memory moves things around across time and gets chronology bodged up, is fascinating to me. And I deal with it. And in the present context, I deal with it all the time with Obama, especially in the 1980s. Which is the heart of it, the Barack Obama circle, at least in some ways. But so, I have become acutely conscious of the importance of getting sort of it documented, where was Barack at different times in the calendar 1984 or the calendar 1985. So that when I hear different people's memories, I saw Barack in LA or Barack went to this conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

SM (00:26:06):
They do not have any...

DG (00:26:14):
So that I have got a sort of calendar skeleton to which I can try to attach the memories in some sort of jigsaw puzzle type of way. Because I think I have always thought right back the Selma book, I sort of organize everything I know in chronological fashion. Every set of note cards, every set of three by five cards. Now this 1900-page, single space Obama notes file that I [inaudible]. Everything is organized chronologically, it is the way I understand the world. And maybe I wonder if sometimes I sound an excessively peavey or tiresome interviewer, because I always try to get people to do it chronologically. I sat with someone last Tuesday who has a collection of Barack letters, and we walked our way through them, sort of reading them out loud in order. But I was very pleased that that person had the same orientation I do. The only way to think about the letters is to think about them in chronological order.

SM (00:27:37):
Well, the question I wanted to ask you is kind of that way, because I was very sensitive, even as a young person in college when I saw that picture of Stokely Carmichael next to Dr. King. And Dr. King has kind of got his arms and... That body language with Dr. King. And then we had James Farmer on the campus, so he talked about Dr. King in meetings. It was a tremendous session. I really liked them. But the question I am getting at here is, in 1954, Brown vs Board of Education was passed. And of course, that was historic. However, when we had Jack Greenberg on campus who worked with Thurgood Marshall and going through the South and all the things that they had to go through, Dr. King was the next phase. And I can remember he really appreciated that there was a past, however, I want now. Right. Dr. King said, Thurgood Marshall has a more gradualist approach. We are going to be non-violent protest, and when we want it now, then you get the time. And Dr. King's only 36, 37 years old. You have got Stokely Carmichael talking to him, out of respect, and said, "Your time is past." Then you have a few years earlier, the debate with Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin, basically the chain... See, what you are seeing is the seemingly older generation was really in the late thirties and early forties being challenged by the late twenties and thirties. And then of course the Black Panthers. The question I am asking you is just your thoughts about young people challenging the system. The question that comes up over and over again is the Civil Rights movement was predominantly, there were not very many boomers inbound of the Civil Rights movement, it was in the fifties. If you are talking about the youngest boomers were going to junior high school in 1959 and (19)60. So how could they really be involved in the Civil Rights movement, except those early students that went on Freedom Summer and they had to be a little bit older. Your thoughts on Boomer participation in the Civil Rights movement, how important were they both black and white? And secondly, your thoughts on this seeming ongoing chronological evolution of the movement by people saying "Your time is past." Yeah.

DG (00:30:14):
Docs born in (19)29. Most of the other ministers are a little bit older than Doc, or somebody like Fred Shuttlesworth were measurably older. So the ministers, the adult leadership of the movement. I do not know off the top of my head what year Jim Farmer is born in. God, I say his name, I hear that voice. Best voice ever.

SM (00:30:34):
Oh yeah.

DG (00:30:34):
So, King is essentially 26 at the time of Montgomery, which certainly seems young to any of us in retrospect. When SNCC gets going in 1960, I do not know precisely what year. Bob Moses is a little bit or older, because Bob's been out, what, three years maybe got a master's degree, he was teaching. So Bob is a little bit older. Jim Forman is probably a little bit older than Bob. Because Jim was, I think, off the top of my head, find out how much older Jim Forman is than John than say Julian Bond. And it is going to be on the order of 10 years, maybe a little more. So, with a few exceptions, for like Jim and to a lesser degree, Bob, most of the people in SNCC are essentially 22, 21 years old in (19)60, (19)61. So, they were born sort of (19)38, (19)39, (19)40. They were 10 years younger than Doc. Now, there was no doubt whatsoever in the context of (19)60 to (19)65, (19)66, that 10-year gap between King and the members of SNCC. Is 10 years a generation? Boy is 10 years a generation. There is no doubt about that. And the younger people who are tied to Doc and SCLC, Bernard Lee, first and foremost. Now Bernard had been in the military. Bernard like Bob Moses may be a little bit older. Well, did Bernard ever graduate from Alabama State? If so, what year? Bernard's, I am not sure. But if you look at the photos of Bernard with Docketing, Bernard is dressing like King and Abernathy and Andy Young. And so, he is sort of acting older than the SNCC people. Now, to my mind, the geographical distinction within SNCC is probably the most important because you have got people like Stokely and Bill Mahoney, people that have gone to Howard and Washington. People whose experience was not simply the South, or not simply the rural south.

SM (00:33:30):
And Cortland Cox was not ignorant.

DG (00:33:32):
Yes, exactly.

SM (00:33:33):
And E Carolyn Brown, who was H Rap Brown's brother. They were both students at Howard.

DG (00:33:37):
Okay. Now there is another Brown brother whom I know from Brooklyn.

SM (00:33:47):
We had E Carolyn Brown, we had both of them at our campus and we did a tribute to Bayard Rustin. We did a national tribute to Rustin.

DG (00:33:53):
Yes-yes, yes.

SM (00:33:54):
And we had Norman Hill, Rochelle Horowitz-

DG (00:33:57):
Oh, I love Rochelle.

SM (00:33:58):
... And Walter Nagle, Cortland Cox, E Carolyn Brown. Ernie Green came up and spoke, and John Lewis opened the conference.

DG (00:34:09):
How many years ago was this?

SM (00:34:12):
Probably we did that conference in (19)99, 2000. John Damilia was the only one that we wanted there that had a bad back and could not make it. And Dr. Levine from Bowdoin College, the historian.

DG (00:34:21):
Yeah, I am afraid that is not a book I like.

SM (00:34:28):
Yeah. And then also VP Franklin, we had him there. So, it was a really good conference. And by the way, those tapes are all in the library [inaudible] They were all there.

DG (00:34:40):
Oh, great. No, I adored Bayard. I saw a lot of Bayard, (19)84 to (19)87 in New York. Because he died what, August of (19)87? I remember we had dinner with him and Walter. I cannot remember where it was. Sometime early that summer, maybe circa June.... right? Sometime early that summer, maybe circa June. This is another weird thing about being a historian. I remember about three, four, five years ago now, picking up ... I certainly did not buy it, but I might have picked it up in a bookstore, I picked it up in the library, there was a somewhat memoir-ish book that Ron Radosh, a historian who started out as a sort of young communist, and then wrote a very good book on the Rosenbergs, and then became a sort of very, very self-identified, very conservative. And Ron had some account in there of a conversation he had with Bayard at a party at the home of myself and the woman I was then living with, Susan, in West Harlem. This would have been probably in (19)85. I have the exact date of the party someplace. And Radosh had the year of the party off by at least two years. I am doing this from memory, we are on tape. I do not want to be unfair. He might have had it off by four years. And I remember thinking, this was weird to me, both because I was not quite prepared for seeing parties I have thrown making it into the history books. And then I was, at best, bemused by the fact that a professional historian could get the date of something from a relatively recent time period so wrong. Then, about two or three years ago, I was completely freaked when someone said to me, a good nine, 10 months after it came out, I know, it is [inaudible] Don Critchlow, who's a conservative Catholic social historian, Don Critchlow emailed me, and said, "Are you aware of what is in Arthur Schlesinger's diaries about you?" I was completely unaware.

SM (00:37:08):
About you?

DG (00:37:09):
Yep. And it turned out that someplace in Arthur's diaries, and I have got to think about the date. What was the date of this? Sometime in the early (19)80s. Could be 1980. The first time I met Arthur, I think he invited me to lunch at the Century Club, old and fancy thing, on 43rd or 44th Street, Midtown. Arthur had been acquainted with Stan Levison. Arthur had published his RFK book by that point, talking about RFK signing off on the wire-tapping, and RFK being briefed about King's sex life, and all this. And so, Arthur and I discussed this thing. Discussed family, and certainly discussed some aspects of King's private life over lunch. And lo and behold, there in Arthur's diaries is a perfectly accurate recounting of our lunch conversation. And I was very fortunate. I was quite happy that none of the people that reviewed the book decided that this conversation about King's private life in the diaries merited comment in the newspapers. But again, I mention both of these, because I think of myself very much, and boy, am I conscious about this now in the Obama context. I think of myself as purely a historian. I have no desire to be at ... The last thing I want to do is have anything to do with the 2012 election. So, I find it sort of weird that I am turning up as a character, however minor and brief, I find it sort of weird that I am turning up as a character in the historical record, rather than simply being a third-party chronicler of it, if I am saying this with any clarity.

SM (00:39:08):
I ended up getting to know Mrs. King's sister, who taught at...

DG (00:39:12):
Oh, Edith.

SM (00:39:12):
Edith.

DG (00:39:13):
Oh, wow.

SM (00:39:16):
She liked me, and we tried to get her to come, but she was pretty ill, and I have lost touch with her since I left the university. But one time, I asked her, "What did you think of the books written on Dr. King?" And I mentioned your name, Taylor Branch. And she did not like any of them, because of the fact, I think it is because they dealt with the sex life of Dr. King.

DG (00:39:37):
Right-right.

SM (00:39:40):
So, probably just does not know the whole history of the ... She just read the books.

DG (00:39:44):
[inaudible] I mean, I am super conscious of this. And I am firmly comfortable saying this on tape. And this is arguably the most important ethical decision I have ever made in my life. And it was a decision I made in 1979, and it remains an active, live decision today, 31 years later. I first met the woman whom a number of us King scholars referred to privately as the real wife in 1979. And I saw her any number of times back in the eighties. I have not been in active touch with her for some years, though I know Clay Carson has been in very active touch. I will peacefully say that I do not think ... There are certainly some people, or there is certainly one person who has written a lot on Dr. King, who has no clue about who this person really is, and has gotten it wrong in print, and I have politely sort of indicated that. But leaving that one exception aside, there are a good number of us in the world of King scholars, it is true of me, it is true of Clay, it is true of Jim Cone. We have known this lady, and she knows us. She knows we know, we know she knows we know, for 30 years. And I have always thought that so long as she is alive, it is entirely her decision as to whether she wants to publicly acknowledge the relationship.

SM (00:41:27):
Right. Yeah.

DG (00:41:27):
Now, I know Clay has said to her, probably more than once, and this is not an exact quote he was to say, that sooner rather than later, she would sit down with a tape recorder, and make some tapes, and put them in an envelope, and wrap it up, and put whatever future date she wants on that envelope. And that is my belief, too. So certainly, I mean, Taylor did not know what he was doing on this. But all the rest of us, we made a conscious decision that I think this is still right, I still believe it, that we could give an honest portrayal of what was going on in King's life, without having to out her. We have been incomplete, but I do not think it has been, in any way, misleading. And I think the balance of interests has played out correctly. Now, 2020, coming up on 25 years later, that is not the world we live in now. So, there is a little bit of an artifact there.

SM (00:42:41):
When you talk about Dr. King, because he is such an important figure in the lives of boomers, I do not care, you had to be in a cave not to be affected by him if you are a member of the generation. What was Thurgood Marshall's thoughts on Dr. King's commentary, that he appreciated the gradualist approach, and the passage of the law, but we are going to do it a different way. We are going to [inaudible]. What did Thurgood Marshall think of Dr. King, and vice versa? And secondly, when Dr. King had those kinds of challenging comments given to him by Stokely Carmichael, what was the relationship between those two men? I have a sense. Because here was a man of stature, and he knew who he was, but he could take it like, he could take his part, because you have got to be a thick skin to be in the position there. But, to me, those are very important. A lot of people portray Stokely as this Black Panther that is got ... but he was a smart guy.

DG (00:43:41):
Yes-yes, yes-yes. Yeah.

SM (00:43:41):
So, talk about Martin Luther King and Stokely.

DG (00:43:41):
Sure-sure. Sure. Yeah. Let me [inaudible]. Let me grab a book. Hold on. I just want to grab a book.

SM (00:43:52):
Because these are all important things. And my interviews, again, are oral histories, based on not only about the times that people lived, but the interesting and historic facts within those times, that are part of boomer lives. And of course, I am caught up in this boomer, I am actually not seeing it that much anymore.

DG (00:44:16):
Okay. There is no doubt that for King, that both Thurgood Marshall and Roy Wilkins seemed a generation older to him than he is. Now, both Marshall and Wilkins, as I am sure you realize, and the Marshall pieces of it are memorialized in that not very good Carl Rowan book, and in the perfectly solid Juan Williams book. Marshall, for whatever combination of reasons, of both ego, and envy, and strategic disagreement, and commitment to being a lawyer, Marshall's view of King is dismissive, sarcastic, hostile, right from early 1956 forward. Now, part of it is reasonably rooted in the lawyer's perception that the NAACP LDF lawyers always have to clean up the legal mess after some protest campaign. And oftentimes get left holding some sort of financial bag. With Roy Wilkins, the envy, jealousy, hatred of King is, I think, less defensible, less explicable. It is just pure competition, that the NAACP is so self-important, and so full of itself, that it does not want a younger organizational competitor. Now, that is mirrored with Wyatt Walker's reaction to SNCC, because Wyatt has the same sort of my organization first attitude, with regard to SCLC, that especially Wilkins and Thurgood Marshall, too, had about the NAACP. Now, Doc, Dr. King, Doc does not share that, because Doc never buys into the sort of organizational ego model. And that is one of the many reasons why King is most oftentimes always a morally superior leadership figure to the whole raft of everybody else, because he is able to practice a degree of self-abnegation that is unusual. And we can say this to mean, and I say that relative, not just the Civil Rights Movement egos, but to egotistical and selfish behavior in the Pro-Choice movement, where I think it is at least as bad. Interestingly, I would argue that there has been dramatically less selfish, egotistical behavior the last 10 to 15 years, in the legal part of the Gay Rights movement. And I think that that absence of self-seeking, self-promoting behavior among Gay Rights legal advocates, has been a significant factor in why they have been so successful. Now, Stokely, then, and Stokely is a challenger. Keep in mind, Stokely is a challenger within SNCC. So, the John Lewis, [inaudible], et cetera.

SM (00:47:55):
Yeah.

DG (00:48:06):
Stokely is a challenger within SNCC, as well as a challenger to Doc. And Stokely is a very, very bright ... Stokely was a very bright, and in many, many respects, a very likable person, who unfortunately had a little bit of a sickness, the profound sickness of anti-Semitism. But Stokely did not have the degree of ego self-control that Doc did, which is why Stokely allows himself to be swung into the damaging media circus of what does Black power mean, in the way that he was in (19)66, (19)67. And Stokely is sort of like a comet passing by. I mean, there is John Lewis, then there is Stokely, then all of a sudden, you have got Rap Brown. And then I would make a fourth generational point here, just to sort of complete it. And they may technically, they are older by dint of age, but it almost seems like a subsequent generation, the sort of Oakland-based Panthers represented by Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale, et cetera, et cetera. And this is only the second thing, I would recommended it, and I will limit myself to two. If you are at all interested in Panther stuff, about two and a half years ago, I wrote a really, I think, first rate, really powerful little historiographical essay on the Panther literature, where I put in some deadly, deadly end notes dissecting bad faux scholarship. It is in Reviews in American History, I think December, 2007. So, it will be on the 2007 page on the website. I mean, the Panthers are a hugely important presence, (19)67 to the early seventies. The quality of the literature on the Panthers is horrible, just horrible.

SM (00:50:27):
I interviewed Roz Payne now, last week.

DG (00:50:29):
She is incredible. Roz Payne is a good person.

SM (00:50:37):
Her photography, and [inaudible] you can read any of this stuff.

DG (00:50:38):
Roz is ... yeah-yeah, yeah. That is great. But so much of the Panther scholarly, big quotation marks, "literature," is the worst sort of fan-ship stuff. It is like bad early communist party historiography, where the people writing about CP USA, wanted to simply celebrate the importance of communists. And CP historiography has improved measurably over the last 15 years. And I am certain Panther historiography will improve over time, once we get past the fan club devotees. But the Panther historiography is really important, because there are many positive commendable things about the Panthers. And many, many more really despicable, horrible, evil things about the Panthers. And just as I was saying earlier about human memory, and people remembering the good and forgetting the bad, oh boy, do we see that, this is not in bad taste, in spades in Panther material, because both the participants themselves and the fan-ship historians want to talk about breakfast programs, breakfast programs, breakfast programs. And not talk about the frigging thuggery where they are killing people. And I do not mean cops, I mean a variety of innocent, undeserving supporters. So, there is that sort of generational succession from Marshall to King to Stokely to Huey. That is inevitable in the same way that we get a sort of succession within the reproductive rights movement from a Katherine Hepburn senior, to an Estelle Griswold, to a Bob Hall, an Alan Guttmacher, or a Roy Lucas.

SM (00:52:42):
What is interesting about the Panthers, and I have been asked by people that I have interviewed that you cannot just ... it is like you said in that article about always mentioning the organizations, and the top civil rights leaders. Well, yeah, we would like to talk about Stokely Carmichael, and Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale, but there was Kathleen Cleaver, there was Eldridge Cleaver, there was H. Rap Brown, if they liked him or not. There was Fred Hampton who was killed in Chicago. There was Bobby Hutton, who was killed. There was...

DG (00:53:33):
It is a very mixed bag of people. I mean, Kathleen Cleaver, that group. Newton, at one point, is something of a positive figure, before he goes way downhill. I cannot be, at any time, as positive about Eldridge. I actually think that much of the best Panther activism happened away from the Oakland epicenter, in the same way that an awful lot of the best of SNCC happened away from the Atlanta epicenter.

SM (00:54:04):
When we talk about the anti-war movement in the (19)60s going violent, we know the SDS and the Weathermen. We know what happened there. We know what happened in the American Indian movement. There was violence at Wounded Knee. What happened at Alcatraz was fine. And then we see some violence with the Young Bloods, the Puerto Rican group that was following the Black Panthers. So, we see a lot of violence here. And the question is, were the Black Panthers violent? There is a question, "No, they were not." "Yes, they are." "No, they were not." "They are not the Weathermen."

DG (00:54:38):
The Panthers devolved into an organized crime gang. The Panthers are, what is his name? It is not a fully honest book. The guy who was the security head who is now in New York. He has got a very unusual name. I am blocking the first name. I want to say his last name is Forbes. Forbes?

SM (00:54:57):
Black Panther?

DG (00:54:57):
Yeah, Panther.

SM (00:54:58):
Oh. I only know Dave Hilliard is the guy in charge.

DG (00:55:01):
Yeah. Yeah. I cannot [inaudible].

SM (00:55:03):
Elaine Brown, I think. I think David Horowitz believes that she is the person responsible for the murder of...

DG (00:55:11):
Betty, the secretary.

SM (00:55:12):
Yes.

DG (00:55:12):
I mean, I cannot think of anything positive to say about Elaine Brown, or David Hilliard, or David Horowitz. But on the ... I forget her, I am not going to get her name right, Betty Lou Prader? Pratter?

SM (00:55:27):
Yes. Betty Van Patton? Was that her name, or something like that?

DG (00:55:27):
Yeah, something on, yeah. I apologize for not having it right. On that one, Horowitz may have benefited from the Blind Pig phenomenon. I am not good enough ... I do not know the SDS decline well enough to narrate all the splits. I wish that people like Bill Ayers, and I have a lot of respect for Bill in some ways. I wish that people like Bill and Bernadine and...

SM (00:56:17):
I have been trying to get her to be interviewed, and she just [inaudible]. Well, she does not even say yes or no. She would not even respond. Her secretary said, "I give it to her." She does not even respond.

DG (00:56:25):
Yeah. I wish the people from that whole world were a little more publicly honest with themselves.

SM (00:56:36):
Martin [inaudible] has been.

DG (00:56:38):
Has he? Okay.

SM (00:56:39):
I think Martin...

DG (00:56:39):
See, I do not follow with that. The person on whom I have always relied, whose judgment I have always relied upon for that world is Todd.

SM (00:56:48):
Oh, yeah.

DG (00:56:48):
Todd is sort of my guidepost for that, because to the extent I know it, and that extent is limited and modest, Todd is the person who gets it right.

SM (00:57:03):
I do not know how much more time you have?

DG (00:57:05):
It is more a question of my tiredness. We can go to another five, 10 minutes.

SM (00:57:09):
Okay, great. And then I will finish it on a phone conversation.

DG (00:57:12):
Sure-sure.

SM (00:57:12):
I have got some real quick questions I have put together since you are home. The Civil Rights Movement is so important in the lives of boomers. Again, you would have to be in a cage to not realize it.

DG (00:57:25):
Right.

SM (00:57:25):
And it is so important, because we all know that have studied the history of that period, that the Freedom Summer of (19)64, but way before Freedom Summer, people like Tom Hayden and others who went South.

DG (00:57:36):
Going South. Yep-yep, yep, yep-yep.

SM (00:57:37):
Casey...

DG (00:57:37):
Casey Hayden.

SM (00:57:38):
Casey Hayden, who is going to be interviewed with me. She is always...

DG (00:57:42):
She is a beautiful person.

SM (00:57:42):
She does not do interviews anymore, though.

DG (00:57:44):
Oh, really?

SM (00:57:45):
No, she is very hesitant. And I guess she is pretty sick. And she has got some very bad back problems, and everything.

DG (00:57:51):
Oh, okay.

SM (00:57:53):
But the question I am getting at is, would not you say that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s was the catalyst for everything that followed? Anti-War movement, the Women's movement, the Gay and Lesbian movement, the Environmental movement, the Chicano movement, and the Native American movement. Because they use that, history books have said that it was the model on how to do things.

DG (00:58:18):
Yep. Now I am quite positive on Sara Evan's book, which is really the book to make...

SM (00:58:25):
Personal Choices?

DG (00:58:40):
Yeah-yeah. Personal Politics.

SM (00:58:40):
Personal Politics.

DG (00:58:40):
And Sara's book, if I am remembering this right, is 1980, I want to think?

SM (00:58:40):
I think that is right. I would say that.

DG (00:58:46):
Now, I think that basic notion is correct to a degree, but to a modest degree. And it varies by movement. The white folks who go South, both early on, like Tom, like Joni, and then the larger group that go South in (19)64, and a smattering of those who go in (19)65.I think if we look at the individual biographical trajectories of those people, and I do not like saying this, but I mean, it is the honest thing to say, they do not turn out to be, on the whole, terribly influential people. Given their pedigrees, they actually should have been more influential. And that raises the bigger question, which you can see on any SNCC email lists or set of exchanges, that participation in something as intense, and emotional, and threatening as the movement, tends to, at least to some measurable degree, to produce instances of personal emotional traumatization of whatever sort. Now, I do not know enough, and I am rusty enough on that Alden from Saint and company, the sort of psychiatric psychological literature of the mid to late (19)60s on Civil Rights movement volunteers, and I have got various ambivalences about that literature that we do not need to go into. But I guess you could make the argument, quite fair-minded argument, as a scholar, that the people who chose to go South, were, of course, not a random distribution. But these were already people who were self-identified as dissenters, or uncomfortable, or outside the norm.

SM (01:00:57):
And many red diaper babies.

DG (01:00:59):
Yeah. It is not just ideological. And certainly, I completely agree on the diaper baby aspect of it. So, the fact that these people end up having a post (19)64, (19)65 higher-than-average casualty rate, in terms of their sort of social connectivity, it could be, to some degree, the result of pre-selection, and not just the result of the trauma of being in Neshoba County Mississippi, or wherever, in 1964. Now, I am not sure where, anywhere I was going to go after that.

SM (01:01:47):
Would not you say, though, that probably one of the most important results of those young people being around the Free Speech movement at Berkeley in (19)64- It looks like the other one here. I am going to be out at Berkeley. They have got a statue out there that they put up for the Free Speech Movement.

DG (01:02:14):
Oh, okay.

SM (01:02:14):
I am going to be out there next week vacationing. But I am going to be going to the...

DG (01:02:24):
Certainly, in terms of Sabio, and the FS, and then Berkeley, yeah, there is a direct line of connection. And there is some direct line of connection as Sara's book very nicely traces out, to many of the early feminist groupings grouplex, especially in New York. When you look, though, and this is where I am switching over to liberty and sexuality, in terms of the actual legislative initiatives and activism around the legislative initiatives, and with the legal initiatives that lead to Roe and Doe, the right to abortion is the product not of the feminist movement, it is the product of a relatively small-sized network of mainly male, or disproportionately male, professionals, doctors, public health people, journalists, lawyers. So, even if this is sort of politically incorrect in some sectors of the planet, I do not see the ... it is incorrect to see Roe versus Wade as a product of feminist activism. It is a product of professional reformers, very impressive, committed professional reformers. Where the doctors are crucial and the lawyers are crucial. Now, some of the lawyers are young women. But just as many of the important lawyers are young men. And you can argue young men are quite committed to the idea of sexual freedom, unsurprisingly. Now, I do not know. I am not good and I do not know American Indian movement history at all. I do not know Chicano history well at all. But I think that we have to moderate and de-limit the notion that everything else flows directly from the Black Freedom struggle in the South. Both because the direct personal linkages are actually relatively modest, though that is a separable question from a sort of, the category of was a Cesar Chavez, was a whomever, inspired by watching King, inspired by watching John Lewis? That, I cannot judge. That is outside of my purview. So, anything else, or are we...

SM (01:05:33):
I guess we will finish this up at another time. And I thank you.

DG (01:05:37):
Oh, sure.

SM (01:05:37):
I did not expect to have this. And I really, it is an honor.

DG (01:05:48):
No, I wanted to do it. No, I felt ... I spent 98 percent of my life in your position, trying to get former Obama classmates, or campaign staffers, or whatever, to talk to me.

SM (01:05:55):
Right.

DG (01:05:55):
So, my sense of the karma is just too overwhelming.

SM (01:06:03):
Well, what is interesting, Dr. Garrow, is that this is my first book. All these years I have been in hiding. I have been so busy being a college administrator, working with students, I have not had a chance. But this is actually an oral history. This is going to be like a Studs Terkel [inaudible] ideas. But my next venture, I am in my early (19)60s, and I am starting late, but my next venture is something that Lewis Baldwin, the historian, said that I ought to do. And that is something, Dr. King is one of my all-time heroes. And I worked in higher education for 30 years, and I make sure every year we get a tribute to him. And I got heat for it.

DG (01:06:42):
Right, right-right.

SM (01:06:43):
I got a lot of heat. Not in more recent years, but in some of the other years. And my dream is that someday do an in-depth look, in-depth, at him and his Vietnam Memorial. Because Vietnam and Civil Rights were two areas that I am closely linked to.

DG (01:07:05):
You want to, I mean, I hope he is in good health. Up there in years.

SM (01:07:09):
[inaudible]?

DG (01:07:09):
No-no, no. Vince Harding, in Denver.

SM (01:07:13):
Oh.

DG (01:07:13):
Look up Vincent. Vincent is someone you need to be aware of. Vincent has some contributing role in Vietnam and Speech. I would have to ask Clay or somebody else, somebody, or Steve Fayer, from Eyes on the Prize. Steve would know. But Vincent would be good. Pay attention to that name. Look up Vincent. Vincent is probably older than Doc. So, Vincent is going to be born in the twenties. But Vincent is, to some degree, a sort of lesser male version of Ella Baker, in terms of encouraging the young people across the (19)60s.

SM (01:07:52):
Yeah, well, one of my first interviews was with Julian Bond, and he said, that was one of my early ones. And I brought Julian into our campus twice, and went down to the [inaudible] Memorial in Washington, and he was thrust into the emcee role, with about 10 minute's notice. But then I had John Lewis, I interviewed him for the book, and we had him on our campus. Of course, Lewis Baldwin came to our campus. And so, I have been involved in this for a very long time. And the final question I was going to ask here, let us see, my golly. That is a very long one.

DG (01:08:29):
Go ahead and state it. I mean, this is my body clock.

SM (01:08:34):
Yeah, I understand.

DG (01:08:39):
I am just starting, [inaudible], and physically, having spoken this morning, too.

SM (01:08:41):
I guess the last question I will ask, and that is something that you brought up when you mentioned in that article that I read off the web, about the fact that we tend to, as human beings, and as a society, and the media, to always go to the big-name organizations and the well-known names. We did a program on Dr. King at Westchester University, where we invited Linn Washington. I do not know if you know Linn? He wrote a book on Black judges in Pennsylvania?

DG (01:09:13):
No.

SM (01:09:14):
And a Professor from Villanova. And we talked about the unknown heroes.

DG (01:09:21):
[inaudible].

SM (01:09:24):
The things that if Dr. King was alive today, he would say it is all the people that have gone and died that we will never know who they were, and what they did.

DG (01:09:36):
Yeah-yeah, yeah.

SM (01:09:36):
Because the movement could not have happened without that. Could you say a little bit about the unknown names [inaudible].

DG (01:09:43):
You will see King repeatedly over time use the phrase, ground crew. He has got some extended airline metaphor about, it is not just pilots, it is the ground crew. I mean, that is repeatedly inescapably true, locale after locale, after locale. Whether...

SM (01:10:03):
It is capably true locale after locale after locale, whether in Montgomery, whether in Albany, whether in Birmingham or Selma. Let me just, the one last thing to say on this, sure you know this already, but just to emphasize it, keep in mind that in Birmingham in particular, we have got such a degree of active participation by people who are not yet high school graduates. And so, you have a degree of youth in terms of 15-year-olds in Birmingham in 1963, so that your actual in the streets lead, wedge in Birmingham, James Orange. James Orange is an important name for you. Because James graduated when did James graduate Parker High School? I am not going to get this right. Look up James. I hope somebody has done a good Wikipedia on James. And who was, I am going to, I am rush on this, who was the principal? Was Angela Davis's father, the principal at Parker High School? Angela Davis comes from Birmingham, and there is a lot of, I may have this, I have to send this, who is principal of Parker High School is important, but I may have [inaudible] about the Davis' versus someone else.

DG (01:11:31):
He was there when the little girl died in the church fire.

SM (01:11:31):
Yeah-yeah.

DG (01:11:31):
Yeah.

SM (01:11:36):
Look up Sheryll Cashin's father too. John Cashin, who was a dentist in Huntsville. Sheryll was a wonderful...

DG (01:11:42):
How do you spell that last name?

SM (01:11:43):
C A S H I N. Sheryll was a law professor at Georgetown. Wonderful lady. And she wrote a memoir, published a memoir about two, three years ago, about her daddy. And the daddy was so committed to activism that he was always putting his family in, potentially, dire straits. So, I have not, unfortunately, read it, but it is a memoir about the family cost of activism. And she was a really good person. Great.

DG (01:12:20):
She was a Georgetown?

SM (01:12:20):
Yeah. And so, David, Sheryll. S H E R Y L L Cashin.

DG (01:12:26):
David Coles there, I think.

SM (01:12:27):
Yes-yes, yes. Yeah. But Birmingham should stand out for you because so many of the young participants in Birmingham are post 45.

DG (01:12:36):
Yes-yes.

SM (01:12:36):
Date of birth. So, we should stop, I am, and I will just put it here.

DG (01:12:41):
Sure.

SM (01:12:48):
One of the things about Barack Obama, what is interesting is that he tries to not be identified with the boomers, of the (19)60s generation, yet the press keeps saying he is the reincarnation of it. So, is not been that an oxymoron that he was trying to disassociate himself from it? I have read everything that has been written about Barack, at least with any sort of biographical linkage. And I have not seen that or otherwise, have not thought about it. But that may be, again, me tuning out when I see the word boomer.

DG (01:13:28):
Oh yes.

SM (01:13:29):
That may be what is going on.

DG (01:13:31):
I think they say the (19)60s generation. I think that is what they do.

SM (01:13:38):
Yeah, sure. And again, thanks again for bearing with me here and...

DG (01:13:41):
Oh sure.

SM (01:13:41):
Being patient. What was the working relationship like between Dr. King and the other members of the Big four? James Farmer, Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young? What was their relationship like? Wilkins, like the NAACP hierarchy in general, including Thurgood Marshall and Wilkins' direct deputies like John Marshall viewed King with the, had a leery view of King from the get-go as a potential threat to the or NAACP's organizational primacy.

DG (01:14:34):
And certainly, once King formed SCLC in 1957, and then especially once the student movement got active in 1960, the NAACP's disdain, dislike for King became more pronounced. So, the King, Wilkins relationship was never close and was pretty consistently fraught with dislike, disdain on Wilkins's part. King learned to just tolerate it. I think King was significantly more comfortable with both Jim Farmer and with Whitney Young. They were never close, close, nor was King in any way close with Floyd McKissick, after McKissick replaces Jim Farmer, (19)66-ish, King and Young, as is well known, had some tensions after (19)65, because, true, Young was much more directly aligned with Lyndon Johnson and did not share King's opposition to the Vietnam War, had one well-known face off, not quite argument, but disagreeable conversation during the period when John Lewis's head of SNCC. They are, that is a somewhat closer relationship, but it is not as close as I think some people may imagine it, nowadays or in recent time.

SM (01:16:45):
Is there truth to that story that when President Kennedy was concerned about the March on Washington (19)63, when the group met at the White House, was, actually A. Phillip Randolph was kind of the father figure and all the other civil rights leaders, he was very worried about potential violence in the city, and he was hesitant to support it, but he was very concerned what John Lewis was going to say. And...

DG (01:17:13):
Mr. Randolph was without a doubt, the presiding elder in that entire context of 1963. The overblown or exaggerated worries about the 1963 March were, I think, shared pretty widely throughout the Kennedy administration, not just on the part of the President. And I do not think the President was as, was any more concerned or worried than a good many people in DOJ and in the White House.

SM (01:17:55):
When you look at the speech he gave in New York in (19)67 against the Vietnam War, did he consult with any of his other peers before giving that speech? In other words, the other members of the Big Four or...

DG (01:18:13):
No.

SM (01:18:14):
Either in other members of SCLC?

DG (01:18:16):
No. The relationship among the leaders is never at any point, that interlinked. Steven Courier, wealthy Financial Person, Foundation head, who died in a plane crash sometime (19)66, (19)67-ish, I am not sure of the date. Steve Courier had tried to bring all of the African American Civil Rights leaders together in a thing called Cook Roll Count, CUCRL, Council for United Civil Rights Leadership, which was a, sort of, effort to create a regular conversational structure. It never really got anywhere, because really none of them were that interested in giving up their independence to that degree. So, King, the people King consulted most closely with, and this is true from (19)62 onward up to (19)68, are the two circles of one his immediate people around him in SCLC, Wyatt Walker, And he, Wyatt leaves in (19)64. Andy Young, oftentimes Jim Bevel, Ralph Abernathy, and Bernard Lee, in a different, less policy-oriented way. But the people who really had the most substantive political policy and analytical, intellectual interaction with King are really King's New Yorkers, Stan Levison, Clarence Jones, Bayard Rustin, Harry Walk Tell, Marion Logan, a little bit less so. Mike Harrington, a little bit less so, but it really is the New Yorkers who were the Brain Trust, and Bayard and Stan in particular, Clarence, probably third Harry Walk Tell, Fourth, they are in many respects, the most important sounding boards for King, even though he spent a whole lot more time in a day of the week, hours per day, sense with Bernard Lee and Ralph Abernathy. Come Vietnam, there are some other important voices in there too. Vincent Harding, John McGuire, who certainly make contributions to that, to the...

SM (01:21:07):
Did Rabbi Heschel play an important role here too?

DG (01:21:10):
Excuse me, I am sorry?

SM (01:21:11):
Did Rabbi Heschel play an important role in his...

DG (01:21:14):
No-no.

SM (01:21:15):
No?

DG (01:21:16):
No, I do not think there is, there is a little bit of contact there. You could say the same thing for Ben Spot, but no, I am... Thanks to the wiretap transcripts. This is, again, one of the great ironies of the FBI. Thanks to the wiretap transcripts, one can have a real good idea of who King is in contact with, because the transcripts we have with Stan, with Clarence, with Bayard, make really clear who else King is talking with too.

SM (01:21:50):
Very good. Yeah, because I know there is a lot of discussion out there that he played a major role in that Vietnam speech.

DG (01:21:58):
Heschel?

SM (01:21:58):
Yeah. Persuading him to do it, not...

DG (01:22:01):
Oh. No, I would have to think about how the invitation to go to Riverside comes into being, but no, I would not...

SM (01:22:19):
Would you agree that March on Washington (19)63, how many people were there? I have heard different numbers.

DG (01:22:26):
I do not want to do that off the top of my head, whatever. I know I looked at that with a critical edge when I did, bearing the cross. So, whatever I said in bearing the cross would be my own best conclusion about the numbers that were used contemporaneously. Hold on just a second for me.

SM (01:22:53):
Yep.

DG (01:22:53):
I want to turn the temperature on the fan up a bit. Sorry, here we go.

SM (01:23:10):
Is it pretty cold in Chicago?

DG (01:23:12):
No, actually not. When I came back in, I made it cooler and where I am sitting here, it just blows directly on me.

SM (01:23:22):
One of the, I think we talked about this briefly at Princeton, but one of the sensitivities about the civil rights movement, is the sexism and the few women were at the leader, in the leadership roles. But I have some questions. I met with Dr. Cohen this past, yesterday, in fact, down in New York City.

DG (01:23:44):
Oh, Jim Cohen?

SM (01:23:45):
No, Robert Cohen who wrote, [crosstalk] free speech movement.

DG (01:23:46):
Oh, sure-sure, sure.

SM (01:23:48):
And he is writing a new book now on the activism in the South, the African American activism in the South amongst the young students in the early (19)60s, which has not been written about as much, and a lot of women were in key roles there. Your thoughts on what the media has portrayed as a sexism within the movement, particularly when you look at the March on Washington (19)63, you see Dorothy Height there and Mahalia Jackson was there singing, but you do not see there, any other, really, women leaders?

DG (01:24:21):
No, they went through them. I would not get the entire roster of names correct off the top of my head, but there is a series of quick introductions of other women and did it include Mrs. Parks? Did it include Diane Nash Bevel? Did it include Gloria Richardson from Cambridge, Maryland? Part of what is an issue in the limits on women's organizational participation in the movement, part of that grows out of, in some aspects of the movement, grows straight out of the black church, gender roles, gender structure. Part of it too, simply just parallels what there is in all of the US society at that time, wholly separate from, apart from the movement, but the most important women to name, I always draw back when the first name people use is Dorothy Height, because Dorothy Height was simply someone who was the head of an organization with an office in Washington, period. People like Diane Nash, people like Gloria Richardson, people like Joanne Robinson in Montgomery, people like Amelia Boynton in Selma. One could go on and on at the local level, and one could also do the same thing with people like Ruby, Doris Smith Robinson in women played major roles in most of the locales, most of the organizations Septima Clark, Dorothy Cotton in SCL C, and did not get much credit or appropriate credit until years later in some of the literature. But the question of women's roles should be looked at from that fundamentally local, fundamentally southern lens knocked through a sort of DC interest group perspective.

SM (01:26:45):
Would you say that, I asked a question to everyone. I think I may have asked it to you, as well, but when did the (19)60s begin and end and many people feel that the (19)60s began at the lunch counters?

DG (01:27:00):
Oh, yeah. No, I would very much agree with the February 1, 1960 dating. I do not think I am going to cast a vote on when they end, because if I had to choose, I think I would say when RFK is shot in Los Angeles, more so than when Doc is killed.

SM (01:27:36):
Why did, this is interesting because Bayard Rustin's a big name here. Yeah. He is from Westchester, and we did a conference on this, and I have read in several books, Dr. Levine's book and John de Emilio's book. There is a lot of explanations here, but I would like to hear from you, why did Dr. King not fire Bayard Rustin? He had people...

DG (01:27:54):
Sorry, in what time frame?

SM (01:27:57):
In that time frame, I think Jose Williams was one of the biggest critics of Bayard Rustin, and did not really like him. And because he was a gay person, and...

DG (01:28:08):
Well, I was in the major attack on Bayard is what Adam Powell mounts back in 1960, for God knows what reasons, maybe because he is carrying water for national political party leadership, I think is the most likely answer. And King, as I said, in baring the crosses, other people have said Emilio, too. I mean, King behaves very badly towards Bayard in 1960.

SM (01:28:43):
In what way? In what way?

DG (01:28:43):
In contrast, everybody behaves very well, very courageously in 1963 when Strom Thurmond and others go after Rustin in the context of the (19)63 March, and Bayard from (19)63 into (19)66, (19)67, what Bayard and Mr. Randolph are saying about, and Tom Kahn are saying about economic policy issues and questions, is a big, big, big influence on what is going on in progressive circles in the 1960s. And a big, big influence on King. Where Bayard draws a lot of criticism, is in Bayard's reluctance, unwillingness, tardiness, to be critical of the Vietnam War, which seems all the more pronounced, and to some people inexplicable or contradictory, given Bayard's, deep pacifist roots and credentials going back to the 1940s.

SM (01:30:00):
Would you say though that even when Dr. King went north, I remember he went into the Chicago area and there were criticism within the ranks of SCLC and in other groups, that he should stay in the South, that racism was really an issue in the South and not in the North.

DG (01:30:20):
I think most of the disagreement within SCLC, was fundamentally, rooted in the fact that the staff were virtually all Southerners, lifetime Southerners, who, understandably, felt much more comfortable anywhere in the South than they would in any northern city, whether Chicago, New York, Newark, et cetera. In retrospect, how much of a mistake was it for Doc and SCLC to come to Chicago? The local movement here that invited them, Al Raby was a vibrant local network, although it was a vibrant local network set in a context where a heavy majority of African Americans were, African Americans who were politically active, were unsurprisingly, tied fairly closely to the Democratic machine.

SM (01:31:35):
Could you describe Dr. King and Bayard Rustin and then maybe some of the members of the Big Four as well? Their response to black power and to the Black Panthers, as a whole? I say this for a couple reasons. Number one, there is that picture of Dr. King next to Stokely Carmichael, and Stokely may be one of the more respected Black Panthers, but he was in SNNC, and then he went to the Black Panthers as...

DG (01:32:03):
Yeah, but I would never speak of Stokely as a panther. The Panthers, to me are a very separate kettle of fish from what Stokely and Willie Ricks, and other people from SNCC who really use the black power phrase represent. And the people who put forward the black power phrase ,and the black power emphasis from the Southern movement, I think are a quite understandable product of what black people are looking at in a context like Lowndes County, Alabama in (19)65, (19)66, where in contrast, in huge total contrast, to what Bayard Rustin is seeing at the national level, where Bayard and other national political voices are seeing the Democratic party and labor unions, as the best vehicles and allies for the black policy agenda. In a context like Alabama, the Democratic Party simply means George Wallace. So, there is a really almost complete disconnect between what black activists are experiencing in a rural southern context and what the world looks like to someone like Bayard. The Panthers are largely a San Francisco Bay area phenomenon, who then acquire somewhat spontaneously adherence supporters, enlistees, in a series of varied other locales, whether it is Chicago and other cities, both large and small. I think it is very, very difficult to speak comprehensively, about the Panthers in any, to any meaningful degree, because what the Panthers represented in Baltimore or Boston or Chicago, is not necessarily what they represented in Oakland. The historiography on the Black Panther party is not very large, and today, not very good. And we have got a long way to go on that.

SM (01:35:01):
How did the, I always remember, even in college, I remember Charles, I think it is Charles Silverman's Crisis in Black and White?

DG (01:35:09):
Oh, yeah. Yep.

SM (01:35:10):
A great book that we read in sociology class back in the late (19)60s, which was a required reading. And I will never forget the line in there where Dr. King did not fear the bigot, and he knew his supporters, but he feared the fence sitter, the one that we never know what they think, but he felt they were the more dangerous. And one of the things about after King, is that he was very open and you knew what he was thinking. I often wondered what Thurgood Marshall thought when Dr. King was coming to power. And the Brown versus Board of Education decision in (19)54 was monumental. It was historic, but it was a more gradualist approach to rights for African Americans. Whereas Dr. King said, I praise that decision, but we want it now. And so...

DG (01:36:05):
No, let me...

SM (01:36:05):
The time of change. So, he was basically challenging the methods of Thurgood Marshall, your thoughts on how did Thurgood respond to Dr. King, and the style of non-violent protest?

DG (01:36:13):
Well, Thurgood Marshall was, Thurgood Marshall was a lawyer, through and through, and believed totally in a constitutional, constitutional rights, constitutional litigation through the courts approach to civil rights change. Marshall was very dubious, doubtful, sarcastic, about any notion that people getting arrested and facing criminal charges, could make any positive contribution. So, Marshall's disdain, is a disdain for the entire concept of civil disobedience as a social change strategy?

SM (01:37:13):
Did that, I often wonder then, Dr. King then when he was in his late thirties, and I know Bayard Rustin's the same way, were challenged by the new ones, the Stokely’s and the, I guess, H. Rap Brown...

DG (01:37:27):
I actually, I actually believe that the King-Stokely relationship was both closer and more respectful than most people have been willing to appreciate or acknowledge. Stokely and Willie Ricks enjoyed the politics of theater, or theatrical politics of, the theatrical aspects of black power politics, a little bit too much for anyone's good. But I view Stokely as someone who was trying to push the envelope without totally leaving the King frame of reference.

SM (01:38:26):
Yeah, because then you get the H Rap Browns who was in SNNC, and then he became a Black Panther, and a lot of people thought he went to violence.

DG (01:38:40):
I do not believe Rap had much of any relationship with Dr. King. And again, I do not think either Stokely or Rap should be discussed in terms of the Panthers, because that is a brief potential organizational alliance that goes nowhere.

SM (01:39:00):
What did Dr. King think of the Huey Newtons and the Bobby Seals, though, would not he...

DG (01:39:06):
I am unaware of any evidence that he thought about them much at all.

SM (01:39:12):
Okay.

DG (01:39:12):
You just do not see much reference to it at all. I do not think King ever met any of those folks in person that I am aware of. Even passively. I would have to, I think that is the right answer. I just want, I would want to think about that. But...

SM (01:39:37):
In some of my interviews that I have had, and again, your opinion would be very important on this. When we talk about the student protest movement of the (19)60s, a lot of people will say, well, the boomers were both born between (19)46 and (19)64. I know Dr. King had many young teenagers in his movement, but basically the civil rights movement was older people, whereas the boomers really came to power with the anti-war movement of Vietnam, women's movement and all the other movements in the late (19)60s. So thus, the boomers did not have much of an influence in the civil rights movement. Do you believe that?

DG (01:40:14):
But it varies by organization and by locale. Now, most everyone who was in SNCC would have been roughly 20, 22 years old in 1960, 1962. You do not, I am not sure you have anybody, you do not have many people in SNCC born after (19)46. Now, at a local level, in a place like Birmingham where you have a lot of high school student participation, though simply at a protest or demonstrator level, if you were 18 years old in 1963, that means you were born in (19)45. So, you would have a little bit there. But then even people who are 22 years old in 1968, in terms of people who are graduating from active and anti-war stuff, only a little bit of people who would be born, say (19)46, (19)47-ish.

SM (01:41:30):
And this is, just the information you just gave me, shows that trying to pinpoint a generation based on years (19)46 to (19)64 really takes away a lot, because I am talking the spirit, and I have had more and more people tell me that those people born, say between (19)38 and (19)45 are as, are closer to the first generation, the first 10-year boomers than the boomers of the last 10 years. Because it is...

DG (01:42:03):
Yeah, I would...

SM (01:42:04):
It is a spirit thing.

DG (01:42:05):
Yep. I would agree with that. Yes.

SM (01:42:06):
Yeah. So thus, they are linked in a very important way. Your thoughts on the relationship between Dr. King and Malcolm X? Malcolm died in (19)65. Correct me. I think they liked each other, but...

DG (01:42:21):
As best we know, they only met in person once that, the well-known photo of it. I think they had a significant degree of mutually shared respect. I think it is, fundamentally, erroneous for people to think of them as opponents or opposites. And I think Malcolm needs to be viewed primarily through the lens of the last 12 months of his life, when he is independent from Elijah and the Nation of Islam.

SM (01:43:02):
I have always thought, as a person who loves history, I am not as a historian like you, but I have always, history was my major, that there is a link between Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy, and I have always felt that the link was just what you said, that Malcolm changed, all people were not devils. He saw when he went over to Mecca and he came back, he was a change man, and that is, Bobby Kennedy was the same way.

DG (01:43:30):
Yep, that is a very good, when you first started saying that, I thought, no, this does not make any sense. But no. Then when you explained exact, you explained the parallel. No, I completely confirm with, because that is a very insightful linkage.

SM (01:43:47):
Yeah. Because the Bobby that we saw in the hearings for Jimmy Hoffa is not the Bobby that we saw in (19)67 and (19)68.

DG (01:43:53):
Exactly.

SM (01:43:55):
And so, I just see tremendous passion in caring for fellow human beings. Overall, what was the relationship between SNCC and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference all throughout their history?

DG (01:44:08):
Oh, that is, I mean...

SM (01:44:08):
I do not, I...

DG (01:44:08):
That is book length, yeah.

SM (01:44:11):
Yeah.

DG (01:44:18):
SCLC helps give birth to SNCC, by the time of Albany and December of (19)61, especially into the summer of (19)62, many of the younger people in SNCC become somewhat disdain of King's hesitance, as well as King's media stature. The SNCC people are both more impatient and more locally oriented. By the time of the Democratic Convention in (19)64, the SNCC people have a much more critical... The snake people have a much more critical, much more cynical worldview than King and Bayard Rustin. By the time of Selma and Montgomery in the spring of (19)65, the tensions and disagreements are pretty pronounced, and you do have a sort of clear split between the organizations, even though there is still a lot of close personal ties one-on-one. And then ironically, in some respect, the two organizations come together in opposing Vietnam.

SM (01:45:55):
What some people have written, that when SNCC was breaking up, many went to become Black Panthers. Is that true?

DG (01:46:06):
No, I do not... I think the Panthers loom rather small in the whole thing. I am not sure there was ever a Panthers operation in Atlanta, for example. I am not sure there is. One thing that has to be kept in mind is that, and some of the more recent literature on the Panthers documents this, that you clearly had people setting themselves up in... I am not sure I would select the town accurately off the top of my head, Omaha, Nebraska, maybe you have people setting, announcing that they are Black Panthers in some city and the official Black Panther party in Oakland does not know anything about them, but the Panthers are as much a media phenomenon as they are anything else?

SM (01:47:09):
We know the impact that the young students who went south for Freedom Summer and even before Freedom Summer had in terms of many of the students that were at the free speech movement and at Berkeley and (19)64, (19)65, and certainly the influence that the movement had on the anti-war and the other movements in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. Is there a direct, would you say that the concept of participatory democracy, which was in the SDS manifesto, which Tom Hayden wrote, and also what happened out at Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65 with the free speech where they talked about participatory democracy, it all began with SNCC.

DG (01:47:54):
Yes. Certainly Tom, and I mean this... It has been years since I read and reviewed Tom's book, but I believe my recollection is that Tom's memoir makes it very clear how much he was influenced by what he saw of SNCC when he went south early on. Because remember Tom is in Albany for some chunk of time. I think there is significant direct influence from SNCC to early SDS to free speech movement in Berkeley. Again, my memory on this is a little rusty because it is, so many years have passed. Tim Miller's book-

SM (01:48:39):
Democracy in the Streets?

DG (01:48:40):
Yeah, it has been probably 20 years now since that book came out, but I remember that as being really first-rate and very much on target in analyzing those relationships and influences and linkages.

SM (01:48:59):
How important was Coretta Scott King, her role before and after Dr. King's death and-

DG (01:49:06):
Very little. Before Doc's death, close to zero and not that significant after.

SM (01:49:21):
Because I have a question here because we see a lot of her, but what is interesting is that they had four children yet that it was such a dysfunctional family after his death. Not so much right after his death, but certainly as they got into their twenties and thirties fighting over the center and when are they going to sell it and-

DG (01:49:40):
Unfortunately, the whole SCLC world becomes dysfunctional after Doc's death because you have disagreements between Ralph Abernathy and Mrs. King. You have disagreements between Jose Williams and Ralph, between... Throw Andy Young into the mix, throw Jesse Jackson into the mix. There are no happy stories from (19)68 forward in SCLC in the King Center, there are no happy stories at all. Joseph Lowry is the one creditable survivor who comes through all of that period. It is a sad story.

SM (01:50:30):
You had mentioned in, when I was talking to you at Princeton about Dr. King had another wife, something of that effect.

DG (01:50:42):
Oh yeah. We have always used... I mean, there is someone whom we have never, who is still alive and we have never publicly named who is the most significant person in his personal life from (19)63 forward. I mean, that is in Bearing the Cross without a name attached. That lady has got to be, let me think. Well into her seventies now.

SM (01:51:15):
Was she the type of person that influenced him politically? In his-

DG (01:51:20):
No, I do not say political influence, no, but I think he draws more emotional sustenance and support from that relationship than from anything else.

SM (01:51:37):
That whole J Edgar Hoover... Would you think that Bobby Kennedy really regretted that in the end?

DG (01:51:49):
I think he regretted going along with the Bureau on wiretapping King himself as distinct from wiretapping Stan Levison and Clarence Jones. That would be my... If we were able to know where Bobby's mind was at on that as of early June (19)68, that is my strong instinct as to what he would say.

SM (01:52:22):
What do you think these files say? I have read that the three thickest files of any American in the FBI is Dr. King, Eleanor Roosevelt-

DG (01:52:39):
Oh, that is crap.

SM (01:52:40):
... And John Lennon.

DG (01:52:40):
No.

SM (01:52:49):
No?

DG (01:52:50):
No, the John Lennon thing is a complete Looney Tunes trip. No, I mean the largest files the Bureau would be on Communist party functionaries that most people have never heard of. And the FBI file on say Elijah Mohamed would be 65 times larger than anything they have on Mrs. Roosevelt, never mind John Lennon. The Lennon thing is the result of one installer with a sort of creative omelet. And even Doc's file, I mean the main... The 1066, 70 file on Doc is large, but it is my now rusty recollection, though no one has ever gotten the file on Elijah, is that Elijah's would be significantly larger.

SM (01:53:48):
One of the things that in our conference on Bayard Rustin that we learned... Well, we knew that he influenced a lot of young people, but somebody at the conference had documented that he had influenced almost 2,500 people to go into public services in some capacity.

DG (01:54:06):
Well, it depends. That would depend on how one defines the term influence.

SM (01:54:12):
Yeah. And of course, a lot of them were at the conference and some of... Quite a few of them were working in the Clinton administration at the time. But did Dr. King have the same kind of influence on young people to follow in his-

DG (01:54:28):
I think that is difficult to measure because it is... Does one mean one on one-on-one relationships as opposed to people that see something on TV or on film or read something? In a one-on-one sense, it would be very hard to add up significant numbers.

SM (01:55:01):
We are looking at the boomer generation, of course there were quite a few presidents from Truman right now to Obama. But when you look at the following presidents, just a brief comment on these few, where would you place them in the area of civil rights? In other words, they were really cared about this issue. It was not just being pragmatic to do it or something. John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter.

DG (01:55:35):
JFK changes very measurably for the better in May, June of (19)63. It is a great step forward for him. LBJ cares a great deal about it, clearly, from November of (19)63 forward, though he becomes very despondent, depressed that Black America in the (19)67, (19)68 context does not appreciate him more. Nixon, I do not think ever views it as any different than interest group organizational politics in other settings. Say the civil rights movement to Nixon is another, is say, like the labor movement, another piece on the chess board. I am not sure I could say anything with regard to Jerry Ford when he is in the house. I do not think he ever focuses on it to a significant degree. Ditto for Ronald Reagan. I do not think Reagan had any personal, negative values about it. I just do not think he had ever thought about it or appreciated it very much. Carter in a way, would be the most complicated because he perhaps should have known more and done more coming from where he came from in southwest Georgia. I do not know the Carter biographical literature, but Carter probably is always more distant from it than he might have been.

SM (01:57:54):
How about the two Bushes? Bush one, Bush two, and of course Bill Clinton.

DG (01:57:58):
I do not know enough biographically about either Bush. I mean, they are sort of outside my, I have never written about them, so they are really outside my scholarly purview.

SM (01:58:18):
And Bill Clinton?

DG (01:58:19):
No, I-

SM (01:58:22):
He seemed to care about it.

DG (01:58:23):
I have not read... Some of the political theatrics, I think playing the saxophone or whatever on, what was that Gentleman's TV show? Arsenio Hall.

SM (01:58:41):
Yeah.

DG (01:58:42):
I think those sorts of political theatrics can be taken way too seriously or way too importantly by people.

SM (01:58:50):
And of course, the last two you have written about Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman.

DG (01:58:55):
Yeah, Eisenhower is a huge disappointment, probably is the one person in the entire panoply of presidents who evidence suggests, did hold discriminatory views. Truman, on the other hand, is a quite pleasant surprise given where he comes from in terms of very modest roots.

SM (01:59:20):
He integrated the military, did not he?

DG (01:59:27):
Yeah. Well, I think that is a more complicated story.

SM (01:59:28):
Yes, I know. Pressures, yeah.

DG (01:59:31):
Are we about there?

SM (01:59:32):
We got a couple more questions, a couple more here. Bayard Rustin's. Would you say that Bayard Rustin's most influential person in his life was A. Philip Randolph and that Dr. Mays was the most important influence in Dr. King's life?

DG (01:59:49):
I think that is correct for Bayard. It is either Mr. Randolph or AJ Musky, though Musky is a complicated, and in some ways unhappy... Ends unhappily, but I would defer to John De Emilio on that. On Doc, with regard to Benny Mays, no. No, absolutely not the most important. Hard to say. I mean, the answer is probably Daddy King in that sense. Yeah. Daddy King is definitely my answer there.

SM (02:00:37):
This is a question that we asked Senator Edmond Musky, when I took students to Washington in 19... I do not think I asked this question, did I? The question on healing? It is a question that the students came up with when we went down in DC in (19)95, and the question was this. Due to the divisions that were so intense during the 1960s, do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing from the massive divisions that tore the nation apart at the time? Students that came up with a question-

DG (02:01:17):
No. I mean, I do not... I would critique or dismiss the question because I think the people that really suffered the divisions, as you rightly touched on somewhat earlier, are people who are pre (19)46.

SM (02:01:37):
Yeah. Because Senator Musky, his response was that, "We have not healed since the Civil War in the issue of race."

DG (02:01:43):
No, I think that varies a lot by local and class and neighborhood. I mean, simple generalizations do not work on that. I mean, whenever I am in a place like this, Chicago, there are so many complexities. I turn away from all-inclusive generalizations on that.

SM (02:02:16):
Two more questions and then we are done.

DG (02:02:18):
Sure. Okay.

SM (02:02:18):
One question on Roe v. Wade, which is, you have written a whole book on that?

DG (02:02:22):
Right.

SM (02:02:22):
And how important is this decision? Because there is this constant behind the scenes in Congress that we are going to change this, we are going to reverse the decision-

DG (02:02:33):
No, Roe will never be reversed in name. No. Roe has been a crucial landmark in acknowledging women's equality. This is a culture that is now much more child conscious than was American society in 1973. And I think that really the greater appreciation, the greater social cultural appreciation of children as opposed to 35, 40 years ago, is why overall American opinion is so much more ambivalent about abortion now than in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s.

SM (02:03:43):
Now, my question is, where do we stand today in the area of civil rights? In women's rights and all those rights movements that were so important in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s? They still exist, but [crosstalk]

DG (02:52:20):
Yep. I mean three things, Barack Obama's election as president, irrespective of whether he ends up as a one-term president, will undeniably always be remembered as one of the landmark events in American history since the Civil War, much more important than the election of John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. Second, women have a degree of equality and equal participation in public life and the professions now that almost no one would have imagined in 1960 or 1965. And then lastly, the greatest change in America in my lifetime, I think without a doubt, the greatest change in America in the lifetime of all of us who are presently adults, is the almost complete acceptance of gay people as equal participants in American society and public life. Look at what Bayard went through.

SM (02:53:50):
Right.

DG (02:53:51):
Even as of 1970, it was almost impossible to be a gay person in public without being physically victimized. I mean, that is the greatest change, the best change that has happened during the lifetime of the boomer generation.

SM (02:54:16):
Would you say that the lasting legacy of the boomer generation may be the rights movement? Because Mario Savio talked about-

DG (02:54:23):
No, I would not. No, I would not want to... I mean, we would have to break down how much of the credit for what is happened, say with gay rights, goes to people who predate (19)46 or postdate to (19)64.

SM (02:54:39):
Mm-hmm. Is there a lasting legacy that you would say if you were a historian?

DG (02:54:46):
No, I have not thought about it in the way you have because I do not think about the generational category or the generational construct.

SM (02:54:52):
Right. Any other thoughts?

DG (02:54:54):
Nope. I think we are there.

SM (02:54:56):
Well, I want to thank you very much for not only greeting me at Princeton, which was an honor to meet you, and-

DG (02:55:02):
[inaudible].

SM (02:55:02):
Meeting me at Princeton, which was an honor to meet you, and-

DG (02:55:02):
Totally. It was great. I very much enjoyed our conversation there. It was really great.

SM (02:55:05):
Yeah, and I will... Let us stay in touch, and I will keep you updated on my project.

DG (02:55:09):
Okay. Please do.

SM (02:55:10):
And continued success in your working on that book on President Obama.

DG (02:55:15):
Thank you very much.

SM (02:55:15):
Have a great day.

DG (02:55:15):
Okay, bye.

SM (02:55:17):
Bye.

(End of Interview)

2010-11-20

Stephen McKiernan

David J. Garrow, 1953-

126:59

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

3 microcassettes

Audio

Historians; Authors, American--20th century; College teachers;University of Pittsburgh. School of Law; Garrow, David J., 1953--Interviews

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