Interview with David Underhill

Underhill, David ; McKiernan, Stephen

2010-09-27

In copyright

2018-03-29

McKiernan Interviews

172:51

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: David Underhill
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So
Date of interview: 27 September 2010
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(Start of Interview)
SM (00:04):
Testing, one, two. Well David, thank you very much. It has been a while getting ahold of you, and that is my fault. But I finally did, and first question I want to ask is, how did you become who you are? Talk a little about your early years, where you grew up, your high school, before you went off to, I guess Columbia. Maybe some of the role models, the people who inspired you. And what led you to Columbia?
DU (00:38):
Well, I was born in San Francisco.
SM (00:41):
Okay, speak up.
DU (00:42):
I was born in San Francisco. But [inaudible 00:46] at the time, I never really lived, I have no recollection of it. I grew up mostly in Boise, Idaho. [inaudible 01:00]. Graduated, went to college, not at Columbia, but at Harvard. Because somehow, I got the idea that Harvard was the place where they had taken most of the world's knowledge captive and were holding it in the library.
SM (01:23):
Oh, wow.
DU (01:23):
So, I wanted to go liberate it. To take possession of it, I wanted−
SM (01:29):
What years were those?
DU (01:34):
(19)50s, early (1960s. So, I went from teenager in a small town in Idaho, [inaudible 01:42] this idea, I do not know. But I did, from the earliest age that I can remember, that was what I wanted to do. Once I got over the idea that I wanted to go to [inaudible 01:57].
SM (01:59):
Speak up a little bit louder, too. Somehow, it is not coming through very good.
DU (02:03):
Once I recovered from the idea that I wanted to go to the state university nearby and be a football hero.
SM (02:09):
Mm-hmm?
DU (02:11):
Then I was determined, for some reason, to go to Harvard. That was what I did.
SM (02:16):
You must have done well in school.
DU (02:19):
I worked hard and found schoolwork congenial. So yes, I did. By the academic time and place, yes. And Harvard was a new and astonishing experience. I am glad I did it, and it launched me on the quest for the rest of my life. People used to ask me, "What do you do?" And my people answer was, "I read the newspaper." And that was what I did. Try to keep myself informed in the hopes of understanding why the world worked the way it is. But I had to stop saying that because nobody believed it. But it was true. I graduated from Harvard, I went off and did other things here and there, and then found myself back at Columbia for a while. But always [inaudible 03:31] earning a living. [inaudible 03:35] quest for understanding whatever I could find.
SM (03:43):
What was the gap between your years at Harvard and Columbia?
DU (03:50):
At Harvard I was on the editorial board of the student daily newspaper, Harvard Crimson it is called.
SM (03:59):
Mm- hmm.
DU (04:03):
And people at The Crimson mostly, and a few others, concocted the idea to start a newspaper. Give coverage to the then infant Civil Rights Movement. Which received almost no local coverage other than hostile.
SM (04:22):
Mm-hmm.
DU (04:29):
And just [inaudible 04:29] national coverage, [inaudible 04:32] Harvard Crimson and others. [inaudible 04:37]. Reported in Montgomery, Alabama, the Southern Courier.
SM (04:43):
David?
DU (04:43):
Yeah.
SM (04:46):
Speak up a little louder. Somehow it is cutting out. Keep getting-
DU (04:50):
Started a weekly newspaper called the Southern Courier. Reported in Montgomery to cover the civil rights. Not slavishly, but since then it was not a house organ, it was a regular newspaper, but its purpose was to give [inaudible 05:12] fair balanced coverage of the civil rights [inaudible 05:20]. The local press was not doing. And I went from connection with The Crimson Harvard to working on that weekly paper. Which brought me to Mobile, where I am now. I was the reporter and photographer and circulation manager and distributor and [inaudible 00:05:45] for that paper in Mobile. That was really by accident, needed somebody to go to this city and did not have anybody here. So, armed with a couple [inaudible 00:05:56] phone numbers I was sent off into the lower Alabama wilderness to create a Mobile outpost there.
SM (06:08):
What year was that?
DU (06:08):
That was in 1964, (19)65.
SM (06:09):
Wow. That was right in the heyday.
DU (06:14):
It was. There were demonstrations and deaths and marches and violence. Yes.
SM (06:19):
Did you ever fear, as a new writer down south, coming from the north, for your life?
DU (06:25):
Oh yes.
SM (06:27):
Explain that feeling.
DU (06:29):
Yes. It was not just a feeling. There was one time, you may remember James Meredith and his attempt to integrate the University of Mississippi. At one point was trying to march from the Mississippi border with Tennessee down to Jackson and got shot along the highway.
SM (06:48):
Yes, I remember that.
DU (06:49):
And that provoked the march to carry on from where he was shot to the rest of the way to Jackson. I went from Mobile over there to cover that for the paper, and I was a participant marching, newspaper reporter, when I got back here after being gone for several days some of the neighbors in the inner-city area where I lived, Mobile, came running up to me as soon as I drove up and told me what had happened in my absence. Which was that somebody with the rifle who did not belong in that neighborhood had been spotted on the roof of an old, abandoned building right across the street from my driveway. And they had called the law who came and looked up there and said, "We do not see nobody." And went away. And the neighbors kept insisting, the law came back. Finally, they made [inaudible 07:47] the fire department came with their ladders, and they climbed up there and brought down a guy with the rifle, just across the street.
SM (07:58):
And he was there to kill you?
DU (07:59):
Yes.
SM (08:00):
Unbelievable.
DU (08:00):
And put him in a police car and drove him away. And this is what the neighbors told me when I got back. So, I went to see the police chief the next day, who I had already known, as a reporter from other stories. Told him what had happened, and he looked puzzled that no such thing had ever happened that he had ever heard of. He would certainly know if that occurred. I said, well, if a man was put in a police car and taken away, that sounds like an arrest. Surely there would be a record of an arrest and that would be a public document, would not it? He did not think any such thing had happened.
SM (08:49):
Oh, so it was just like a lot of things in the south at that time.
DU (08:51):
Oh, yes.
SM (08:51):
They just let him go.
DU (08:53):
Or were implicated in it.
SM (08:55):
Oh, wow.
DU (08:58):
But I let him know I would pursue this. And either find out who that was and what they had done with him or reveal that the police department was somehow in cahoots. Somebody who was clearly on an assassination. So, then the police chief, he went away and came back a little while later with a scribbled note on the scrap paper with somebody's name and address saying, this was the man they took down from the roof and took away in a police car. [inaudible 09:32].
SM (09:34):
Was he a white man or a black man?
DU (09:36):
White man.
SM (09:39):
Unbelievable.
DU (09:40):
Well, I presume. I mean I just curiously drove by the address. Which was out in the new white suburban area.
SM (09:48):
Now, did you go back to Columbia after you were down south for a while working on the paper?
DU (09:53):
I did not go back to Columbia; I had never been at Columbia. But I was here working on the paper and having experiences like that for over a year. About a year and a half, then I went, just in time for the uproar of the (19)60s. (19)66 at Columbia, I was a graduate student then. And I got to know and lingered on the fringes of the campus, The Students for a Democratic Society. Some of those [inaudible 10:41]. I had been familiar with all of that from the start, because it began largely among friends of mine and roommates at Harvard, named Gitlin.
SM (10:56):
Oh, Todd Gitlin?
DU (10:57):
Yeah.
SM (10:57):
Oh yeah, he is one of those really top professors in America today in communications.
DU (11:02):
That is right, that is right. He is what, sociology journalism professor at Columbia now, last I-
SM (11:11):
Yes, he is. Mm-hmm.
DU (11:13):
He was a close friend of mine and a semi-roommate at Harvard. At the time he was one of the founders of SDS.
SM (11:25):
Golly. Huh.
DU (11:27):
And actually, there was one time during our [inaudible 11:29] when both of us had interned, we were roommates in Washington. So, I was−
SM (11:39):
Speak up again, David.
DU (11:41):
I was closely acquainted with all of those folks at the founding of SDS. One of the early (19)60s movement, and because of that I gravitated towards similar activities at Columbia. I probably should mention to you that Gitlin and I and a few others created an anti-war. Actually, it was an anti-bomb organization at Harvard called Tocsin.
SM (12:16):
T-O-S-I-N?
DU (12:20):
T-O-C-S-I-N.
SM (12:22):
Okay.
DU (12:28):
It is a French word. Their creation not mine, a French word for some kind of community warning bell, a tocsin. For some reason they thought that was appropriate. Anti-bomb organization that created on campus. And had some little protests against, like the Cuban Missile Crisis and the near obliteration−
SM (12:53):
Oh yes, (19)62.
DU (13:00):
So that fright, and at one point had some sort of poster art manifestation on the streets of DC in front of the White House, as I recall. But it was mostly a campus educational anti-nuclear organization.
SM (13:18):
Mm-hmm, now you were- [inaudible 13:24].
DU (13:28):
That then led to anti-war. The Vietnam war was just beginning then to escalate the American participation in it.
SM (13:36):
Mm-hmm.
DU (13:38):
[inaudible 13:38] but to my knowledge some new people in this Tocsin organization arranged the first anti-Vietnam war demonstration in America. Which was in Cambridge, it would have been spring of (19)64. There were about 10 or a dozen people that came to a meeting the night before. Something had just happened in Vietnam that revealed to the public [inaudible 14:08].
SM (14:07):
Was that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution?
DU (14:13):
This was slightly before that.
SM (14:15):
Okay.
DU (14:16):
Something had happened that revealed burgeoning American entanglement in the [inaudible 14:25]. And about 10 or a dozen of us had a meeting to try to decide what to do. We decided we were going to have a little demonstration and pass out leaflets in Harvard Square the next day. It was one of my formative experiences. Because when I got there with the leaflets to pass out, instead of a dozen of us there was three of us conducting this anti-war demonstration. We did what we said we were going to do, and we were truly cursed at and spat at, and became a kind of urban myth later the returning solders were spit on, and questionable whether that actually happened. We were really cursed and spat at in Harvard Square.
SM (15:14):
By students?
DU (15:14):
Students, people coming in, citizens, people coming in and out of subway stations. Just everybody [inaudible 15:20] the response was of viciously hostile. Because we were openly opposing American policy [inaudible 15:32] commie enemy.
SM (15:34):
Wow.
DU (15:36):
To my knowledge that was the first demonstration in specific against the war in Vietnam.
SM (15:39):
Was that your very first experience ever, even as a high school student of standing up for something that you thought was unjust?
DU (15:58):
Oh no. That was the first time I went out and exposed in a public place and encounter an openly hostile reaction. Which was [inaudible 16:20] foretaste for what was to come.
SM (16:22):
Oh yeah.
DU (16:25):
Later in Alabama and later than that at Columbia. But that grew directly out of that Tocsin [inaudible 16:35] with Gitlin and those folk. [inaudible 16:44] but I did a few-
SM (16:45):
Keep that voice up, David.
DU (16:47):
I did a few things like that in high school. Actually, to my knowledge I am the only person who ever defeated Fidel Castro in an election.
SM (17:04):
Oh? Explain that. Because that we are talking (19)61ish, or−
DU (17:04):
Yeah, (19)59, (19)60, thereabouts. I was running for student body president of my high school. And nobody chose to run against me. But to keep the election from being a bore we decided to run Fidel Castro against me. And we got a− Hello?
SM (17:33):
Yeah, I am here. I am hearing it.
DU (17:36):
We somehow got some old− I am hearing an echo. What is that coming from?
SM (17:42):
I do not know, I do not have an echo here, but−
DU (17:44):
All right, then I will just keep talking.
SM (17:45):
Yeah.
DU (17:46):
Strange echo. So, we got some old army looking uniforms, some arrayed rifles from the ROTC unit that came trooping into the high school like Castro's revolutionaries campaigning for him to be student body president.
SM (18:07):
I hope you won−
DU (18:10):
It was close. But I won.
SM (18:13):
I hate to think what would have happened if he had won.
DU (18:20):
We unfurled Castro banners in the school auditorium during the election assembly and all sorts of stuff like that.
SM (18:27):
Well, how did the principal respond?
DU (18:31):
Well, we did not clear it with the principal in advance, of course. We just− But who knows what would prompt somebody to do something like that? But I did. And then I had a lot of help. But it was pretty much my project to run Fidel Castro against me.
SM (18:57):
Any other experiences in high school where you had to stand up for an issue?
DU (19:03):
There was a time at church where I decided, for whatever reason, that I was going to go around to all the other churches in town, including there was one synagogue in town, and there was one Buddhist church, because of the leftover Japanese when they [inaudible 19:32] from the West Coast, was still there. So, there was a Buddhist church in town, and there were Mormons and there were Catholics. So, I decided I would go around on my own ecumenical mission and visit each one of these congregations to teach myself what the other religions were about. And in the course of that− Also, there was a particular cute girl who I thought [inaudible 19:59] explorations to. And I thought she might be willing to go along. I think [inaudible 20:09]. And she did [inaudible 20:13]. But I got in, this was considered sort of cute. Maybe even appropriately educational, and I was not discouraged doing so by my own church or school or family until I went to a service at one black church that was in town and got to know some of the people there and decided, who knows why, that it would be a good idea to have a joint meeting between their high school Sunday school class and ours. And then the− you know what hit the fan.
SM (21:10):
Yeah, now, what was your church?
DU (21:12):
The Presbyterian church.
SM (21:13):
Okay.
DU (21:14):
[inaudible 21:14] and all my other strayings and inquiries were tolerated, but that one was not. And I will never forget, the preacher of the one black church, I do not even remember what denomination it was, I might not even have been aware of the denomination at the time, eventually made an embarrassing and regretful phone call to me regretting that he and his Sunday school class would not be able to come to the joint meeting with ours. I do not know what kind of pressure was put on him through what route, but these folks originally were receptive and willing and suddenly did not want to do it. And that never happened.
SM (22:14):
Wow. And no one ever told you to not pursue it?
DU (22:21):
I mean I knew from the reactions that I was not supposed to pursue it. And I mean I was inclined to, but I knew from what my preacher had told me that the pursuit would be fruitless because they were not coming.
SM (22:37):
Mm-hmm. Wow. Going back to that experience in Harvard Square where you said about 12 of you, was Todd Gitlin one of them too?
DU (22:50):
No, I think he was already graduated [inaudible 22:52].
SM (22:54):
But your standathon, was that a onetime experience or did you keep going to Harvard Square? I have been up there twice this summer, so I know that area very well and−
DU (23:05):
It was a onetime experience going there to hand out leaflets to try to talk to people about the war that was brewing that America was getting entangled in. That was a onetime experience.
SM (23:14):
Mm-hmm.
DU (23:17):
The meeting that evening before to arrange this with about 10 or dozen people present, that was a onetime experience.
SM (23:23):
Right.
DU (23:24):
But there had been many such meetings of related issues, I think throughout, of that anti-war, anti-nuclear bomb organization. That was the connection. But the leafletting of Vietnam in Harvard Square, [inaudible 23:46] but we were deliberately trying to [inaudible 23:54].
SM (23:54):
What was the−
DU (23:54):
That was a onetime experience.
SM (23:54):
What was the town you grew up, where your high school was?
DU (23:56):
Boise.
SM (23:57):
What?
DU (23:58):
Boise.
SM (23:58):
Oh, Boise, Idaho.
DU (23:59):
Yeah.
SM (24:00):
Okay. And were you at Columbia in (19)69 when Mark Rudd and all those students took over?
DU (24:06):
Oh yeah, I was right in the thick of all of that.
SM (24:10):
Yeah.
DU (24:11):
[inaudible 24:11]. Yes.
SM (24:14):
That is one of the top five protests of the entire (19)60s. Of course, Kent State maybe believe is number one. But what was it about that experience? What did you learn from that experience, and what did the university learn from it?
DU (24:28):
Well−
SM (24:29):
And speak up.
DU (24:45):
Oh lord. I mean I learned that even when you have what looked like a mass movement behind you it was almost impossible to make any headway against an entrenched system.
SM (25:03):
Mm-hmm.
DU (25:06):
When we shut down−
SM (25:07):
Are you getting another call?
DU (25:10):
I am trying to make it go away. We shut down the university. You know all of this.
SM (25:18):
Yeah, I know it all, people who are going to be reading this though are going to hear this firsthand from the participants.
DU (25:27):
And we raised questions that had to be addressed about the university's cohabitation with the imperial war security state. And people were paying attention, willing to listen and address issues. They shut down the school. Tried to alter that cohabitation. And in the end, we did not. Columbia reverted, along with the rest of the academic establishments to the same old ways. It is sobering and sometimes if you think about it, discouraging. Almost every day it occurs to me that despite all we did at that time, and everything that we pointed out, which the events proved true, still look at the news today and the same kind of thing is happening.
SM (00:26:47):
Yes.
DU (26:50):
On the opposite side of the road, as if we had done nothing.
SM (26:54):
You raise a great point, David. I have been saying the same thing for years, that when they try to look at the free speech movement at Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65, I love the way the media tries to portray it as an isolated incident in the early (19)60s somewhat separate from the anti-war movement in the later (19)60s. When it was all about Mario Savio and the students had had enough with the university and the fact that they felt, as students, that they wanted a university of ideas, not a university that was run by a corporate takeover, and corporate interests.
DU (27:31):
Yes.
SM (27:31):
And that was what it was all about, and Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory that the students were upset with, being just− You are right, and that was happening at Columbia too. And what we are seeing today, it is the same thing again.
DU (27:52):
And those urges, and those organized uprisings reinforced each other. The people from the campus began the Vietnam protests overlap a lot with those who showed up as activists in the Civil Rights Movement. Which then overlap a lot, began with, those who enlarged the anti-war movement to the point where it finally made that war stop. So, it did not make the imperial impulse stop, but it makes that particular manifestation stop. All of those things reinforced each other, created a condition of concern and recognized mutual [inaudible 28:57] over from one effort to another. That [inaudible 29:02] it feels even more lonely and futile to try to mount some kind of public awareness campaign and resistance now than it did then. Because you do not have that [inaudible 29:24] of others of similar motive, dedication, around you everywhere, like we did then.
SM (29:33):
Yeah, it also inspired all the other movements, the Women's Movement, and the Gay and Lesbian Movement, and the Environmental Movement, and the Native American Movement, Chicano Movement, they were all linked together in different ways.
DU (29:52):
I am glad you brought the American−
SM (29:54):
And please speak up again.
DU (29:55):
I am glad you mentioned the Native American, because early in, it came to be called, the uprising at Columbia, there was a steering committee, include Rudd and me and some of the folks who later blew themselves up in that [inaudible 30:20] townhouse.
SM (30:22):
Oh yeah.
DU (30:23):
[inaudible 30:23] those.
SM (30:23):
Mm-hmm.
DU (30:25):
We were all together on a steering committee, and in those steering committee meetings I brought up the Indian question. They were not called Native Americans then. Because [inaudible 30:37] the simmerings of what came, the Rosebud Sioux Rebellion and some others. And I wanted to make an explicit linkage with those folks and make common cause with them. Which was I believe the first incredulous mockery by Rudd and those folks, they thought it sounded like something that was in a Wild West movie?
SM (31:08):
Right?
DU (31:08):
They later came to recognize the importance, but it was a lonely issue to raise at first. But again, to my knowledge, the discussion about that at the Columbia steering committee− did not want to call it the [inaudible 31:31] committee, that sounds too Red Commie. But the discussions about that issue were, to my knowledge, first of an attempt to link those struggles, and it is commonplace now. But the beginnings of it were instances like that.
SM (31:51):
Right.
DU (31:55):
One other little vignette to illustrate [inaudible 31:59]. At Harvard when I was there was also Henry Kissinger. And he was not yet− You could tell he was on his way to being unofficially, he was [inaudible 32:21] under Secretary of State Rockefeller then, touring the world on their behalf. And he would disappear from class for spreads of time and then reappear having been to India or wherever else, pursuing what [inaudible 32:38]. But he was saying it even then that [inaudible 32:41]. At one point sociologist David Riesman wrote [inaudible 32:49].
SM (32:48):
The Lonely Crowd.
DU (32:52):
Yes, Riesman arranged, I do not know why, he arranged a small dinner meeting with Kissinger. Kissinger was just returning from one of these ventures to Vietnam. And Riesman was dubious indeed about the burgeoning war in Vietnam. But Kissinger was a personal friend and college of his, did not want to be too cross with him. But Riesman knew that I did not give a damn about the thing. And that I had deep doubts about all of this. So, he seated me next to Kissinger at this little dinner party. And I got into a conversation with Kissinger, [inaudible 33:40] what he had disclosed [inaudible 33:43].
SM (33:51):
I did not know Henry was in the room with you.
DU (33:52):
[inaudible 33:52]. And I, being a young [inaudible 34:05] I did not give a damn, I just told Kissinger.
SM (34:08):
Speak up again, David, please.
DU (34:10):
I told Kissinger he was wrong and said that if he and the others he was in league with continue the way that they were going that they would, in drawing checks from the bank of American political credit and military strength until they had broken the bank and would discover that they had lost [inaudible 34:40]. And Kissinger got pissed at me for not deferring to his superior knowledge. And he said [inaudible 34:51] turned his back on me, and refused−
(Part 1 OF 5 Ends) [35:04]
DU (35:03):
− turned his back on me and refused to speak to me anymore.
SM (35:05):
Oh my gosh.
DU (35:07):
And [inaudible 35:08].
SM (35:14):
You succeeded.
DU (35:18):
[inaudible 35:18]. And then several years later when Kissinger was Secretary of State and I had been in a demonstration in DC. Actually, I think it was the time of Nixon's second Inauguration. That would have been−
SM (35:42):
(19)72.
DU (35:42):
Well, he was reelected, this would have been in January of (19)73.
SM (35:44):
Mm-hmm.
DU (35:48):
And we were in a big crowd, freezing on the street in front of the justice department in January of (19)73. And then the police decided they were going to go home, and it was cold, and they were tired. So, they charged, tear gas out of the mounted police on horses and motorcycles [inaudible 36:06] and broke up the crowd and chased us through the streets of DC. I remember thinking, 1973, this is the beginning of the 10th year since (19)64 at Harvard Square where there first had been a demonstration against the war. This is (19)73.
SM (36:33):
Wow.
DU (36:34):
I was thinking, this is the beginning of the 10th year since I first came out in this war. And it is still going on and here I am chased down the street, running from the cops throwing tear gas on this cold January night and going past the state department building. And up on the top floor I could see the light, figures of the silhouette behind the glass up, where I figured that must be the Secretary of State up there. That must be Henry looking down on me running through the streets getting chased by the cops and the tear gas [inaudible 37:14].
SM (37:11):
Wow.
DU (37:15):
After all those years ago at that dinner party Riesman set up in Cambridge where events showed I was right. Henry was wrong. But I was down on the streets running from the cops and he was the Secretary of State.
SM (37:36):
It is a great story.
DU (37:37):
Yeah.
SM (37:39):
One of the questions I ask everyone too, when you were either in high school, senior high school, or college, what books were important to you? You were probably a very big reader. Say any time in the (19)60s or early (19)70s what books really influenced you? By anyone.
DU (38:11):
Well, the autobiography of Big Bill Haywood did.
SM (38:21):
Mm-hmm?
DU (38:25):
Because he had been tried for murder for blowing up the governor in Idaho, not convicted. [inaudible 38:31] was one of the most famous cases.
SM (38:37):
Mm-hmm.
DU (38:38):
Maybe I am telling you what you already know. And then it happened in the town where I grew up. I knew nothing of it, there were two people in my [inaudible 38:53] included the participation in the organizing activities of the Wobblie. So, they were the IWW [inaudible 39:06], they knew about Haywood, and his trial. Heard about [inaudible 39:11] finding Haywood's autobiography and reading it. And that made a big impression on me. Because [inaudible 39:29] life and a way of doing [inaudible 39:35] different from anything I was told.
SM (39:38):
What did he do?
DU (39:40):
He was a minor-
SM (39:43):
Mm-hmm.
DU (39:50):
[inaudible 39:50].
SM (39:50):
I hate to say it, but please speak up.
DU (39:50):
One of the early organizers of the IWW.
SM (39:51):
Mm-hmm.
DU (39:52):
The Wobblies.
SM (39:54):
Yep.
DU (39:55):
That came mostly out of the lumber camps of out west. Idaho, Nevada, Utah. Joe Hill, those folks came from that area. And Haywood was [inaudible 40:09] by his trial [inaudible 40:13] governor was in Boise.
SM (40:15):
Mm-hmm.
DU (40:17):
So, from looking at Haywood's autobiography I got a glimpse of this way of positioning yourself in the world very different, anodized, standard, acceptable history that I got. That made an impression.
DU (40:35):
Also, the Diary's of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Edited by a historian named Bernard DeVoto. Which made you, again, realize that everything you have been taught about pioneers struggling across the wilderness and populating this empty territory was an elaborate self-serving lie. And [inaudible 41:16] colonial theft of that [inaudible 41:19] from people who had inhabited it for millennia.
SM (41:26):
Native Americans.
DU (41:27):
Yeah.
SM (41:27):
Yeah.
DU (41:28):
All of that [inaudible 41:29] standard history, and to the extent that most folk just all they were [inaudible 41:36].
SM (41:36):
What was the author's name again?
DU (41:39):
DeVoto. D-E-V-O-T-O.
SM (41:41):
First name?
DU (41:42):
Bernard.
SM (41:42):
Bernard DeVoto. Okay.
DU (41:45):
Historian of the era, but was editor of the journals of Lewis and Clark.
SM (41:57):
You honestly were born probably just prior to; the Boomers are classified as (19)46 to (19)64.
DU (42:05):
Yes, [inaudible 42:05] (19)64.
SM (42:07):
But we do not go with these guidelines here, and I have learned that by interviewing people. But when you look at the era that Boomers have been alive from 1946 to right now, 2010 and hopefully they will be alive 20 plus more years as they all approach senior citizen, although they hate that term. In your own words as a person who grew up in the (19)50s and then experienced all these things in the (19)60s and (19)70s and have been an activist through the (19)80s, (19)90s and the first 10 years of this century, how, in your own words, just a few words, how would you describe that period 1946 to 1960? In your own words. And again, please speak up.
DU (42:56):
For me that was a time of trying to learn the nature of the world beyond and contrary to the picture that was automatically presented to me. That is, it.
SM (43:16):
And what was the−
DU (43:16):
And I set out to learn what had been omitted or obscured or warped. And it was from a few things like I decided that I got a keyhole glimpse of something great big different on the other side that made me want to push through that crack and find out what was on the other side. That was what those years were about.
SM (43:40):
How about the years 19−
DU (43:41):
Trying to overcome the indoctrination that I suppose any society attempted to perform upon its youth to make them fit, carry on the legacy handed to them. And for me it did not sit very comfortably. So, I- [inaudible 44:03] out on my own.
SM (44:04):
How about that period (19)61 to 1970?
DU (44:07):
That was an uproar. Agitation, uncertainty, and there were many moments where you were not sure that you would be alive the next moment. Either because somebody with a rifle was on the roof across the street when you go into your driveway, or because some fool with his finger on a big red button was willing to summon Armageddon upon the entire Earth in order to make a macho point to his counterpart on the other side of the world. That is what the Cuban Missile Crisis [inaudible 44:51].
SM (44:53):
How about 1971 to 1980?
DU (44:59):
Oh, what happened? Was there such a period?
SM (45:05):
I know there was disco in the second half−
DU (45:10):
To me, I know all of that was going on kind of as the downhill slope died of the (19)60s for the society at large, but for me it did not differ much from the time before. After I escaped Columbia, my education and formal progress were to be very badly spent by all of the uproar and uprisings at Columbia. I finally escaped from there with some kind of graduate degree but came back to Alabama and worked on a prison reform and community organizing project in the (19)70s. And then I was out in Washington state for a while, parts of my family were out there, and I got involved in some organized [inaudible 46:11] against a nuclear power plant financing boondoggle. I do not know if you are aware of that at all.
SM (46:20):
No.
DU (46:21):
It is called the Washington Public Power Supply. Formerly known as WOOPS. That sold multiple billions of dollars’ worth of bonds to unwary local community public utility districts and the like to finance this big, actually unnecessary and badly conceived nuclear power plant that almost [inaudible 46:49] but wasted billions of dollars of money [inaudible 46:52] never generated. But the bonds are still outstanding, all these hopeless public utility [inaudible 46:58] you have got to pay off the bonds, even though you have got no power coming. If you Google [inaudible 47:08].
SM (47:08):
Right?
DU (47:08):
−spell that. [inaudible 47:11] there was a big uprising across the region, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, parts of Canada and Nevada against paying off these bonds for a derelict power plant that did not exist. I got very much involved in that, mostly around the city of, somewhere called Ellensburg, Washington state. Right between Seattle and Spokane. And there was a general public uprising against the bond boondoggle that I was in the thick of. I did that in the (19)70s.
SM (48:01):
How about the 1981 to 1990?
DU (48:04):
Well, in the mid (19)80s I came back to Alabama. I never [inaudible 48:08] got away from Alabama. And I had helped to create a new local community newspaper here in Mobile called the Harbinger. H-A-R-B-I-N-G-E-R. [inaudible 48:29] on the web if you care to look. [inaudible 48:38] from that I got working at a radio station. Because it was to do an audio version of this newspaper that was put on the radio. And I became acquainted with the button and [inaudible 48:53] pushing aspect of running a radio station. And spent around there for a while. Well, I needed a job, for one thing. I did a lot more for them than the value of what they paid me. So, it was a good arrangement for them. I infiltrated enough eventually I found myself as the host of an AM radio talk show in Mobile, Alabama. An unlikely outcome, but there I was. And it turned out, as I suspected it would, the sort of angle I wanted to approach local and world events from did have an interested audience within a place like this, reputedly derivative and backwards. But there was lots of [inaudible 49:43] jumping on the radio, like what I was offering. If you, by your own approach, gave them permission to hold and express such ideas then they would. And use of what contacts I could [inaudible 50:03] to try to get the prominent people from a national level on the radio here. Like I had Ralph Nader on for a while. He was scheduled to be there [inaudible 50:21] and stayed almost the whole hour and at the end when he finally tore himself away, he said, and he was not the only one who ever said this to me too, he said, "That is a really educated and an informed audience you have got." I guess he had not expected it. But that was the sort of audience you could attract.
SM (50:43):
Mm-hmm.
DU (50:43):
That gave me a chance to say, "Well, yes, of course. What did you expect? This is lower Alabama."
SM (50:50):
Did the Reagan era, what is your comments on that whole Reagan era?
DU (50:54):
Oh lord.
SM (50:56):
In a few words, you do not have to go in- Because a lot of people, when you think of the (19)80s, that is the (19)80s.
DU (51:04):
It was like just treading water, so you did not drown. That is all.
SM (51:12):
Mm-hmm. How about that period, (19)91 to 2000? Were you still with your radio station? That was the era of Clinton and President Bush one.
DU (51:17):
I mean that was mainly the time that I was at the radio station, in the (19)90s.
SM (51:22):
Mm-hmm.
DU (51:25):
And oh, then I got in some trouble with the people whose interest [inaudible 51:32] I had recruited, because they were all pro-Clinton and I was pissed at Clinton making such a mess of his presidency, and for actually for not minding the door, that was the way I put it. He was fooling around with Monica when he should have been minding his door.
SM (51:50):
Right?
DU (51:52):
Very unhappy with Clinton for that. And so, the Clintonites were unhappy with me. But I kept that outlook anyway. Then, when W and his [inaudible 52:09] came along I could honestly say that it was not partisanship pose what he was doing. And people had to believe it was not partisanship, [inaudible 52:23] but that brought the end of my radio career. [inaudible 52:30].
SM (52:31):
Because the people were upset with your- [inaudible 52:33].
DU (52:34):
End of the Iraq war if you were not pro-war and if you were not pro-Israel, you could not stay on the radio. It was just [inaudible 52:44].
SM (52:44):
Wow.
DU (52:48):
And after years of running this talk show and doing much of the button and paper pushing to keep this AM station going, I was just merrily fired by the owner, who was very pro-Bush, pro-war, and pro-Zionist.
SM (53:07):
Wow.
DU (53:09):
Also, it did not help that I had broadcast back to Mobile from Radio Havana. Do you want to hear that story?
SM (53:19):
Yeah, I know you ran against Castro in (19)61, but I did not know you tried to go see him. Yeah. Go ahead and tell that story before we go on to another question.
DU (53:33):
Yeah, courtesy of a couple of quirky people, Mobile is officially the sister city of Havana. You know about the Sister City Organization, correct?
SM (53:46):
Yes, I do.
DU (53:49):
Mobile and Havana are officially sister cities and have been for many years. And one guys [inaudible 53:54] went to Havana or made arrangements [inaudible 53:59] go there and started poking around. And he was finding the long historical connection was true [inaudible 54:06] and Havana. But had to [inaudible 54:10] waterfront of both cities. For that reason and others, he said, "These ought to be sister cities." And he made it happen. So, there is a Mobile and Havana Sister City organization that has sponsored several trips back and forth between delegates from here and Cubans come to Mobile. Under W of the restrictions [inaudible 54:34] was almost bumped. In the late (19)90s under Clinton it was a little easier to travel and did that. There was no commercial flights or boats. You had to charter your own boat. Basically, did a little [inaudible 54:49] out in the ocean, Key West, bouncing along the ocean. [inaudible 54:53]. I went to Havana, about a dozen of us from Mobile. And at one point I decided that I was going to go to Radio Havana and try to make a connection there to broadcast back to the radio station in Mobile, and just do my radio talk show. So, I was lucky enough to meet the right couple of people and got into Radio Havana and arranged to use their studio and telephone link back and got the local people in their studio. And, had somebody running with a microphone and a switchback in Mobile and did my talk show while I was sitting in Havana at the headquarters of Radio Havana. And people in Mobile can call up and talk to me and these Cuban Commie folks I had in the studio. It was wonderful. And when I got back here after that the owner, I thought that I had done a remarkable thing. The owner was not happy that I had used his equipment to cover boy Commie Castro on the air to print propaganda [inaudible 56:16].
SM (56:17):
Did President Bush make comments to him on this?
DU (56:21):
I do not know.
SM (56:22):
No? You do not know?
DU (56:22):
−how far the−
SM (56:26):
That is quite a story too. How important were The Beats? Did you read The Beats, and how important were they in your eyes in their writings about the influence they had on the Boomer generation?
DU (56:38):
Not very for me.
SM (56:39):
Right.
DU (56:39):
And I was aware of all of that, of course.
SM (56:43):
Many kinds of people believe they were the first nonconformists, and they were, and they did not care what people thought, and they were unique and different. But you do not think they were that important?
DU (56:51):
I was aware of that and influenced by it, sure. But it was not formative for me, I do not think.
SM (58:01):
Right. I guess I think I asked this next question− I have got so many questions here−
DU (58:06):
[inaudible 58:06] directly pertinent to add. I was at a meeting with all these Mark Rudd type on the campus of Columbia once and those folks, they got involved in a lot of intricate sectarian disputes with each other that derived from their personal and family connections and all sorts of [inaudible 58:29] dating back to the (19)30s and before.
SM (58:32):
Mm-hmm?
DU (58:34):
But I suppose you are aware of.
SM (58:35):
Yes, I am.
DU (58:36):
That I had no personal connection with and knew about only from reading his [inaudible 58:41]. But somebody in one of those meetings, when one of those cantankerous discussions were going on said casually and matter of factly, "We are all red diaper babies at this meeting. And that is why we are having fusses like this." And I looked at the one person who was in there with me that I knew was not a red diaper baby. Actually, she is the one who is name I gave you by email.
SM (58:06):
Oh yeah, I think I will contact her too.
DU (58:10):
Yeah, yeah. I looked at her and she looked at me, because we knew we were not red diaper. But to everybody else in there that was the norm.
SM (58:23):
Yeah- [inaudible 58:24].
DU (58:24):
−I was a misfit [inaudible 58:27] always was a misfit. [inaudible 58:32] I know that much of formative motivation came from his church.
SM (58:45):
Mm-hmm?
DU (58:47):
That more than [inaudible 58:54] posturing of the (19)40s from these sectarian groups [inaudible 59:02]. I also should have mentioned, when I was just trying to explore how the world- [inaudible 59:11].
SM (59:11):
Speak up again too, David.
DU (59:12):
−trying to find out how the world worked. And one of the things that experience told me were formative. And one of those was the Communist Manifesto. So, I started going into the public library in this little town in Idaho looking for materials, and I got educated.
SM (59:29):
Mm- hmm.
DU (59:32):
And at one point somebody, I do not know who, decided that this was bad for me and that I was no longer going to be able to check out material from the public library.
SM (59:42):
Unbelievable.
DU (59:44):
And so, when I tried to take back books, I was told no, and I had to go get something more normal and correct. I was not allowed to take back materials out of the library. So, I had to, of course, recruit friends to go in and get them for me. It just did not stop me. But there was an attempt to prevent me from those things.
SM (01:00:08):
Yeah, that is 1950s in America. Hold on one second here. You have got to bear with me in something, I have got to turn this light over here. [inaudible 01:00:15] all right.
DU (01:00:15):
But that [inaudible 01:00:25].
SM (01:00:29):
Okay. You already talked about your experiences of standing up for that first time, several times, for an issue. And of course, whenever a person stands up for something they become vulnerable. That is why a lot of people are afraid to do it. As a follow-up to that question were there many times that this happened in the (19)70s, (19)80s, and (19)90s, and beyond, I think you have already mentioned it, you have already talked about that somewhat, your activism overall has been continuous and ongoing.
DU (01:01:03):
Yes.
SM (01:01:04):
Yeah. And in describing your career after 1970 how would you describe the David before 1970 and the David after?
DU (01:01:19):
The same character.
SM (01:01:19):
Mm-hmm?
DU (01:01:22):
The (19)70s were not a dividing line for me. Why would you pick that date?
SM (01:01:28):
Well, because I figured you were at Columbia in the (19)60s and you got your graduate degree and then once you get your degree people sometimes look at college as the protective years whereas the real world happens once you leave college.
DU (01:01:46):
No.
SM (01:01:49):
Is Mobile, Alabama-
DU (01:01:50):
I went back to doing much the same thing I had done before college and before graduate school, back in Mobile. [inaudible 01:01:59] this prison reform project.
SM (01:02:00):
You have been pretty consistent from the get-go.
DU (01:02:05):
For whatever reason, yes, it has been the main contour of my life.
SM (01:02:11):
In your own words define activism.
DU (01:02:25):
It is the refusal to accept−
SM (01:02:28):
And please speak up.
DU (01:02:31):
It is the refusal to accept the path that is laid out before you.
SM (01:02:34):
Mm-hmm.
DU (01:02:36):
That is, it.
SM (01:02:38):
One of the interesting things is how I got to know you first off is that essay that was in Marvin Serkan and Allan Wolf's book in 1970. I was a political science major, and I actually got that book in 1970 in my senior year, and I read it right before I graduated. It was coming out the summer and I got an advance copy through one of the professors. How did you essay end up in that book edited by these two great scholars? And what was the main thesis for your article?
DU (01:03:17):
You might be able to tell me better than that. I have not looked at that or thought about that in decades.
SM (01:03:20):
Oh, okay. So, you do not remember what the article was about?
DU (01:03:26):
If you still have the book the book it was the end of political science and how political science does or does not- [inaudible 01:03:33] the issues that it needs to address.
SM (01:03:38):
Yeah, well I read your article a long− Well, I re-read it. I read it a long time ago and then I re-read it for the interviews. So, I did not know if you had a purpose for writing it. I know you mentioned in the article some experiences at Columbia. How did you ever get in that book?
DU (01:04:04):
Well now that you asked me, I am trying to remember, and I do not. I knew those guys, and where I came across them or how I crossed paths with them I do not specifically recall. And they asked me to produce something for their book, so I did. But beyond that I have no specific recollection of how it came about.
SM (01:04:41):
Well, what I am going to have to do-
DU (01:04:42):
They approached me. I did not approach them.
SM (01:04:48):
Okay. I have not seen a lot of writing since you were in college. Explain your writing, and or teach it− Have you ever taught? Been a teacher at any community college or school?
DU (01:05:05):
Well, I was a teaching assistant in some classes at Columbia as a grad student. And I had a couple of brief teaching assignments at Long Island University in Brooklyn, one at Fordham in New York.
SM (01:05:32):
Oh yeah.
DU (01:05:33):
And one at William Patterson [inaudible 01:05:37] in New Jersey.
SM (01:05:40):
Oh yes, Mm-hmm.
DU (01:05:40):
I taught at all three of those places during or after the time that I was at Columbia. Those were the strange years when my contract was not renewed at William Patterson there was some sort of uprising on the campus. And [inaudible 01:06:05] student strike and marches and demonstrations and all. I do not know [inaudible 01:06:12].
SM (01:06:14):
Well, they protested because you were not reinstated.
DU (01:06:17):
Yes, yes.
SM (01:06:18):
Oh, my golly. Do you think it was politically done?
DU (01:06:24):
Yes.
SM (01:06:27):
And why do you think they did that?
DU (01:06:32):
Well, I did not recite the party line.
SM (01:06:42):
Oh, and so that was it? It just did not become part of the in crowd, so to speak.
DU (01:06:51):
No, I did not.
SM (01:06:51):
And yet you were a very good teacher?
DU (01:06:57):
Well, opinions differ about that amongst students, as they are wont to do. But enough thought that I was. And enough they made a terrible fuss on the campus over that. But those were the years when any good cause would bring out a crowd on a campus. Late (19)60s, early (19)70s.
SM (01:07:21):
Right.
DU (01:07:24):
But it was pretty much a state university, a commuter college, largely blue-collar working class, Italian boys and the Mark Rudd and those folks, the downtown people that I dealt with said it was impossible to [inaudible 01:07:52] any kind of student rising on a campus like that, because those folks were the redneck regressives.
SM (01:08:01):
Oh. Or Richard Nixon's silent majority.
DU (01:08:06):
Yes. Yes, yes.
SM (01:08:06):
Yes.
DU (01:08:07):
And so, the downtown folks were astonished at what kind of uprising occurred on that campus. I was not. I expected it. I did not have any doubt.
SM (01:08:22):
What did you teach?
DU (01:08:23):
Political science.
SM (01:08:27):
Were they upset with the way you taught it? You encouraged students to protest, or−
DU (01:08:33):
All of the above.
SM (01:08:35):
It is interesting, David, in my junior year as a student at Binghamton my sociology professor got fired because he led a protest in downtown Binghamton next to the John Dickinson statue. I will never forget it. He was not asked to be back the next year.
DU (01:08:53):
Yes, this was that kind of thing.
SM (01:08:56):
Yeah, and then when I was in high school in the mid (19)60s a teacher was summarily fired because they called him a Communist.
DU (01:09:07):
Yes.
SM (01:09:07):
And that was a high school.
DU (01:09:12):
Yes. This was that sort of thing.
SM (01:09:14):
Yeah. When you think of the Boomer generation and the era of the (19)60s and (19)70s what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
DU (01:09:31):
There is too many [inaudible 01:09:35].
SM (01:09:33):
And speak up, please.
DU (01:09:33):
Well, there is no first thing. There is a wealth of things that come to mind.
SM (01:09:43):
Just give me some examples.
DU (01:09:44):
If was a frightened and fruitful disorder.
SM (01:09:55):
Mm-hmm?
DU (01:09:57):
And there was a kind of careless bravery.
PART 2 OF 5 ENDS [01:10:04]
DU (01:10:03):
There was a kind of careless bravery among people who thought what they thought were great wrongs that needed to be righted and maybe could not, but you had tried anyway. And so, they did. And often the effort came to nothing and sometimes great to grief. Still, there was a kind of careless bravery that people were willing to proceed anyway.
SM (01:10:42):
When you look at those (19)50s, the period when you were in Boise, I have always felt as a person who grew up in Cortland, New York in the (19)50s, that there were three qualities that most young people had until they went to junior high school and maybe went to senior high school in the mid (19)60s. And that is that they were weird to be very quiet. They were very naive. As someone said, "Well, are not all young people naive?" But I think they were especially naive. And there was a fear. The fear that many of them had was because in the early years, if they were young, they saw this man screaming on TV saying, "Are you, or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?" And subconsciously affecting people saying that, "I better not speak up, because if I speak up, I could be called a communist or afraid," and of course, living in the nuclear age and the threat of the bomb. And of course, television was very, basically I hardly ever saw a person of color. And Cowboys and Indians were a big thing. I mean, everything was hunky Dory. There were some serious shows like Edward R. Murrow and Dave Garroway, and Mike Wallace, but they were few and far between. And then naive is the TV helped the naivete. Just your thoughts, whether you think those are three characteristics that really− You agree?
DU (01:12:22):
Yes. Yes. Yes. I mean, when I said careless bravery, that described the reaction to this fear. When you realized that instilled fear was preventing you from exploring the world you inhabited, then careless bravery would give you the courage to do so. Without that, you would succumb to the fear and accept the [inaudible 01:12:59] that had been prepared for you.
SM (01:13:03):
Yeah. Because we were talking about some of these books that were written in the (19)50s, The End of Ideology, by Daniel Bell, basically the Marxism is no longer a threat. It is dying, it is no longer important. Then you had the White Collar: [The American Middle Classes], by C. Wright Mills, The Organization Man, all these things that were− This is the way it was for the parents of the boomers. And boy, and lot of boomers did not want to have any part of that. What do you feel were some of the strengths and weaknesses of the boomer generation as you experienced via your own peers, knowing that no one can talk about 74 million boomers? But were there strengths and weaknesses within the group as you knew the boomers that you were with? Not only as an activist yourself, but as a teacher who taught in the classroom, some boomers as you were a graduate student. And you saw protests and, or many that did not go to protests.
DU (01:14:17):
Yeah. Well, that is always the majority.
SM (01:14:22):
Do you have any strengths or weaknesses?
DU (01:14:33):
I was impressed by the people who were willing to apply their own understanding what they observed and act on it best their knowledge, even if that conflicted of the truth that they had been taught. And the ones who were willing to do that were always available if you could find them and were always willing to take an unnecessary stand. But you had to look for them and you had to cultivate them.
SM (01:15:35):
Would you see any weakness?
DU (01:15:39):
I recognize even to the extent that you yourself possess those qualities, sometimes they would wane and falter, and you would be in danger of losing those qualities yourself. [inaudible 01:15:55] struggled [inaudible 01:15:57].
SM (01:15:58):
Speak up again, David.
DU (01:16:00):
Was a constant struggle. So, alert and committed because the temptation is too otherwise great, and the rewards were great. But if you wanted to put yourself position where looking back, you could say, "If I had to do over, I would not do it different," then you had to take the approach I did. That is what I thought. I did not want to have to look back say, "I wish I had done this or that." [inaudible 01:16:36] greatly different.
SM (01:16:40):
It is like someone says, the philosopher says when you are on your deathbed and your life passes before you, you hope you− It is not all about the car, the money, the house. It was about what you have done with your life.
DU (01:16:55):
Yeah.
SM (01:16:55):
And I think what you are saying is that you are very comfortable with that. Do you like the term, "the boomer generation"?
DU (01:17:02):
I never use it. I never felt a part of it. I mean, I am not precisely demographically. I am born two years before, but also, I did not participate much in that a lifestyle encapsulated in that phrase. Boomer generation, the act of [inaudible 01:17:37] boomer generation was yuppies as much as anything else.
SM (01:17:48):
Oh yeah. That was a term in the (19)80s.
DU (01:17:55):
Never part of that, I hope.
SM (01:17:58):
Yeah. Lot of them thought they were the most unique generation in American history. Your thoughts on that?
DU (01:18:05):
No.
SM (01:18:05):
No?
DU (01:18:09):
No, everybody like think that about themselves, but no. I faced certain challenges and opportunities and just did what I thought my circumstances to my personality at that particular time and place required. At one point, I was something called the International Fellows program at Columbia, which was supposedly a select group of graduate students who were ushered off DC for meetings with important people in 50 agencies, and who have had the special seminars, some have dinners with important people back on the campus. International, it really was really a screening and recruiting of program for replacement part for the establishment.
SM (01:19:30):
Oh wow.
DU (01:19:30):
In the course that, I mean, it was if you were selected for this, I knew without being told that these opportunities were in front of you. You were being groomed for your place in the establishment. So, we went off to Washington and we were taken to the Pentagon [inaudible 01:19:59] and we were taken to the CIA. We were taken to the State Department, had a meeting with the Secretary of State Dean Rusk at time.
SM (01:20:11):
Wow.
DU (01:20:19):
About 10 of us, International Fellows program, one or two [inaudible 01:20:19]. And this was in, I do not know, (19)68, (19)69 there about when the country was in and up. Campus was [inaudible 01:20:30]. And it was a strange time of trouble and [inaudible 01:20:36]. And every day is filled, the horror as slaughter [inaudible 01:20:45] interpretated in your name and with your money on the far side world. And here you were inside the digital to the folks who were performing these things.
SM (01:20:57):
Wow.
DU (01:21:04):
Face-to-face with what are you going do? In these small group meetings, they were looking at on the table with the Secretary of State or with Peters with the CIA and the Pentagon. And I knew how you were supposed to behave. And I just would not, or could not, or did not at each of those places. So, the professor in charge of the program tried to avoid me. Could not forever ignore my hand once [inaudible 01:21:42]. And each of those places, I have made some kind of comment [inaudible 01:21:51].
SM (01:21:51):
Speak up, too.
DU (01:21:54):
I made a comment or raised some kind of question, essentially, got our group thrown out of the Pentagon, CIA. And they [inaudible 01:22:06] brought those meetings to an end.
SM (01:22:09):
Just by your question?
DU (01:22:11):
Yes.
SM (01:22:11):
Oh my God.
DU (01:22:15):
Oh. And the meeting was quickly wrapped up. And the Secondary of State excused himself, and he was gone.
SM (01:22:21):
What were the questions?
DU (01:22:24):
Oh, I do not remember for sure. I mean, it was first designed to make them address things that they did not want to address.
SM (01:22:33):
Did you, by accidentally say, "Secretary warmonger, I mean, Secretary Rusk"?
DU (01:22:40):
That is not my [inaudible 01:22:42]. It was something oblique, but pointed and unmistakable. I do not remember for sure, but what I do remember one CIA. We were in a big room, not all that [inaudible 01:23:12]. Across one wall of this room was a big painting of China. Was done all up red China. The evil empire. And along one back wall of these one-way mirrors so you knew you were being watched, recorded. God, they were so creepy. Oh, when we get there, we walked down these long hallways where you pass doors and file cabinets that had combination locked rather than handles on the doors. And you had to sign in the beginning. And get one of these ID badges which not common at time [inaudible 01:23:53]. Got up the meeting at the big room to go to the men's room just around the corner, somebody appeared from somewhere and followed you there. That kind of setting.
SM (01:24:04):
Wow.
DU (01:24:06):
And in that setting, what they [inaudible 01:24:07]. And they had told us about all the wonderful things the CIA does and how abroad, and only in the gathering intelligence provides for the safety of the American system. And I told the story of something I had encountered in Alabama that gave the clear impression that somebody who worked for the CIA was spying on me and some of my companions and trying to sabotage our operations, contrary to what we had just been told by these people. Oh, and the whole room fell silent. And they brought that meeting to an end. And we went down this long hallway and everybody else in the group was shied away from, but I was a big, invisible bubble around. CIA, nobody wanted to be anywhere near me, all got on the bus and only half people [inaudible 01:25:12] out CIA compound. One of the guys [inaudible 01:25:15], "Yeah, thank you. I am [inaudible 01:25:17]." But until then, they did not know me. That was what happened CIA.
SM (01:25:26):
Wow. Who was the professor that ran that?
DU (01:25:31):
I do not-
SM (01:25:31):
Do not remember? And I think I know how you are going to respond to this, but how do you respond to conservative critics of the generation reared in the (19)50s and involved in the (19)60s and (19)70s activism that many of the problems in our society today center around the drug culture, the sexual freedom, the lack of respect for authority, challenging the system, rock and roll, long hair, clothes; counterculture, that kind of− And a lot of them, whether it be Newt Gingrich or George [Wilson's 01:26:07] commentaries, or even on Fox, you hear it all the time. There is Mike Huckabee. You hear it all the time, "back then," or "the (19)60s" and all this other stuff. What do you think of when you hear of that stuff?
DU (01:26:22):
Those are the fees of illegitimate authorities that cannot command respect by-
SM (01:26:39):
Speak up, and please speak up.
DU (01:26:39):
− Those are the fees of illegitimate authority that cannot command respect by deeds and [inaudible 01:26:48] vague or [inaudible 01:26:51] people to accepting their authority. Authority that worthy of respect does not have demand it, conferred without the request. Authority that does not deserve respect should not expect it. The way the American authority is played in their conduct [inaudible 01:27:24] abroad and in their treatment of fellow citizens, like in civil rights era showed them me as unworthy of respect. I did not respect them. Maybe on as individuals, maybe, but as legitimate authorities, no. And as for the rest of it, all those things you cited, [inaudible 01:27:56] whatever else you said, I never considered myself or hippy crowd-
SM (01:28:04):
Oh, the counterculture crowd.
DU (01:28:06):
− No.
SM (01:28:07):
Yeah.
DU (01:28:08):
But everybody in that era was affected by it. But I was never a participant. When I was at Woodstock, I went to Woodstock.
SM (01:28:24):
Wow. You were there?
DU (01:28:25):
Oh yeah. I mean, it was happening in the vicinity, and it was obviously a big event. And the governor of New York came on the radio and said, "This is a disaster. Do not go there." And when I heard that, I thought, "Well, damn. I got to go."
SM (01:28:36):
Were you there all four days?
DU (01:28:43):
No. For about two days.
SM (01:28:45):
You were there during the rains?
DU (01:28:47):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What I remember mostly is long before you see it and long before you could even hear it, you could smell it because of the rain, all the garbage and the [inaudible 01:29:00].
SM (01:29:00):
Oh yeah. You remember the musicians you saw?
DU (01:29:03):
Well, you did not get close enough too much. It was so heard, smelled, could not get very close [inaudible 01:29:19] but I did not.
SM (01:29:22):
Yeah, you were not in that group that was sliding down on the mud and that-
DU (01:29:27):
Not purpose, I mean, some ways you slid in the mud, just could not help.
SM (01:29:34):
Some people's cars were parked five miles away.
DU (01:29:37):
Oh yeah. Mine, I mean, I was a long ways off and walk. I am glad I went, because I mean, it was a phenomenon. But I did not really feel like a participant. I was there. That was not my kind of scene.
SM (01:30:00):
Did you see a lot of spaced out people?
DU (01:30:02):
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And I did not like that. I did not participate in that. And I thought that was system's deliberate way of turning people off from activism. I agreed with the pretty much the old hard nose [inaudible 01:30:30] type about that. This was all bread and circuses and the opiate of the masses stuff designed to divert them from their [inaudible 01:30:44] ought to be their true cause. I was inclined to agree with that.
SM (01:30:47):
I know when I interviewed Richie Havens, Richie Havens said that it was a tremendous happening because they are finally listening to us. He said in 1969, referring to the people, the young people that were there and the musicians. "They are finally listening to us," and he thought that was a magic moment there. The media has played a huge role in− I can read my, I do not want my glasses here, in terms of "outlining and showing the extravagant and extremes over the norms of the 1960s." Knowing that 85 to 90 percent of the young people were not even involved in activism, I still feel they were subconsciously affected. The media is supposed to cover controversy and news, not create it with one-sided presentations. And I think what we are seeing, even with the 40th anniversary of Woodstock and all these anniversaries of Ken State, and the media seems to only go after the sensational. And what are your thoughts on the media? You were part of it for a while.
DU (01:32:01):
Oh yeah. I have been part of the media. And in my activist guises, I mean, I have relied on the media to publicize what I was doing, spread the word. And it took a mutually exploitive [inaudible 01:32:33] understood by everybody, all that you are providing them with a product, they sell of advertisers because they will [inaudible 01:32:50] interest and viewers and listeners. And in exchange, they provide you with some access for your ideas to people who otherwise would not counter.
SM (01:33:08):
And in your view, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end?
DU (01:33:17):
(19)60s began in 1956 or there about.
SM (01:33:27):
About when?
DU (01:33:28):
In 1956. The (19)60s began with the civil rights movement, Brown versus Board of Education and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Those then showed that the existing system was not ordained forever. And that change was actually possible. That began in the (19)50s. And me, that is, (19)60s have not stopped.
SM (01:34:11):
Is there a watershed moment?
DU (01:34:17):
The assassination Martin Luther King of-
SM (01:34:24):
(19)68.
DU (01:34:25):
− the course of stream of time. About watershed, yeah.
SM (01:34:32):
Yeah. That year, (19)68. Where were you when JFK was killed? Do you know the exact moment where you were?
DU (01:34:40):
Yeah, I was on the campus at Harvard. And actually I was, I did a little announcing work for the Harvard student radio station. Soon as I heard Kennedy had been shot, I went to station. And I was the one who announced over the WHRB, that was Harvard radio that Harvard graduate, John Kennedy, had died.
SM (01:35:18):
Wow. But did you have the TV on right there with Walter Cronkite or the other channels?
DU (01:35:30):
Oh, that probably. I do not remember for certain what all the connections, the technical connections were in the radio [inaudible 01:35:41]. I was in the Harvard yard when word first read Kennedy had been shot.
SM (01:35:50):
Wow.
DU (01:35:50):
And went immediately to the radio station. I was one of the regular announcers did mostly classical music program. And the assignment of announcing Kennedy's death over Harvard radio.
SM (01:36:10):
Did you take any calls or did you just announce it and leave? Or were-were you on for a while?
DU (01:36:19):
We interrupted regular programming course.
SM (01:36:23):
Okay.
DU (01:36:25):
News bulletin as they arrived, I was helping do that and news of his death [inaudible 01:36:35] and I was [inaudible 01:36:36] a somber moment. I had-
SM (01:36:39):
Now on that campus on those four days, it was a Friday through Monday. So obviously somber all over the country. Were you in your residence hall room− Or you were probably watching all the students on TV or all the events from the-
DU (01:36:57):
Radio station.
SM (01:36:59):
− Right. But when you left the radio station, did most of the students watch it on their television set?
DU (01:37:05):
Remember specifically.
SM (01:37:07):
Right.
DU (01:37:07):
Probably. But I do not recall.
SM (01:37:11):
Did the university do anything?
DU (01:37:15):
I was looking to see even Lee Harvey Oswald got shot, remember seeing that.
SM (01:37:17):
Yes, that was on Sunday. Wow.
DU (01:37:21):
That was when you first began to think, "Oh, there is something going on here beyond what is acknowledged."
SM (01:37:33):
When the students at Harvard knew that he had died, what were you talking with each other as students trying to figure out why and how could this happen in America? Or what? It only happens in other countries?
DU (01:37:55):
I remember all of those speculations. There is such absurd welter of recollections that it is impossible me to separate actually what I thought, learned at one time or another about that from thought or learned at another. Any speculation or data that you have come across connect with that is probably something that I do and added to my fund of uncertain knowledge, which I still have. I do not feel I understand who did better, how that happened. I certainly do not believe Harvey Oswald all by himself went out decided that he was going change history by killing the president.
SM (01:38:58):
You already defined the term activism and talked about it with respect to university campuses. And we were talking about the influence that student protest had on universities, whether it was lasting or whatever. But the question I am coming up with here is, are today's universities, after− I guess what I am going to say here is− I read my words here. Define volunteerism in your own words. You have already divine activism, (19)60s activism compared to today's volunteerism. What I am trying to say is that I feel that the universities today are afraid of the term activism because it brings back memories of that period in the (19)60s where there were disruptions and certainly disruption of classes, and certainly more student power, as Tom Hayden used to said, empowerment, not just power. And it is very nice to have volunteerism because volunteerism is required in fraternities and sororities. And this is what all students do, volunteer work, and probably over 90 percent of the students are doing it on all campuses. But there is a big difference in my opinion between activism, which is 24 hours a day, seven days a week mentality, and volunteerism, which is only a couple hours a week. Am I right in feeling that today's universities are afraid of activism on college campuses? Of course, they say volunteerism is their activism.
DU (01:40:46):
I cannot address that much in relation to universities because I do not have regular [inaudible 01:40:52] at a university. But around communities where I have lived, and I do. And to me, by volunteerism is free labor on behalf of system. And activism is a challenge system.
SM (01:41:19):
And are you saying that people do not like to be challenged?
DU (01:41:25):
Some do, some do not. I have done both. Just this morning before talking to you, I was had a big meeting convened by the governor of a commission to supposedly plan and arrange for the restoration of the oil rec Gulf coast. Even though I was [inaudible 01:41:50] by the very establishment business sort of commission that the governor put together with a few [inaudible 01:42:00] came environmentalists on board. But not the likes of me, but I went anyway and just appeared there and participated in the sense of an activist, rather than a volunteer. In the discussions of [inaudible 01:42:23] and raise some question, brought up some issues that I do not think would have been on the agenda at all, otherwise. That is what activists does. And then they all went to a catered lunch without me. I was not invited.
SM (01:42:53):
Well, obviously, is this Harvard reincarnation?
DU (01:42:59):
Sort of, yeah.
SM (01:43:02):
Well, that is good. Because you go with your own drummer, so to speak. Your thoughts on when the anti-war movement turned violent out of frustration? We all know the history of Students for Democratic Society. They did have a lot of respect. But when it split into the Weathermen, everything changed and SDS really died. We had the Black Panthers who were carrying guns on university campuses at Cornell− Well, students at Cornell were carrying guns, but Black Panthers were always saying that they needed guns to protect themselves from the police because police were being brutal every day. And you had the American Indian movement in 1973, and the violence at Wounded Knee. So you saw, and I know that in the Chicano community and the Young Bloods, they copied the Black Panthers. This is my thought: to me, this hurt all movements, and is why the neocons and conservatives write are legitimate in their attacks on the period itself, because they look at those things that were really negative, even amongst liberals. And your thoughts on when it went violent?
DU (01:44:20):
When I first heard [inaudible 01:44:25] others who became and then Bernardine Dohrn and those folks who became the Weathermen talking that way. I was in many meetings with most of those folks, one time or another, around Columbia in Cortland, New York. By the time they pick up the gun, they were carrying on in that fashion. It was hard for me keep from laughing because they were talking of harming themselves in order to carry out the revolution that they knew was just on the verge-
PART 3 OF 5 ENDS [01:45:04]
DU (01:45:03):
To carry out the revolution that they knew was just on the verge of break out. And it was so ludicrous, mistaken understanding their place. It was tempting to laugh, and I could not because they were obviously so serious about it.
SM (01:45:27):
Please speak up again.
DU (01:45:29):
And they are obviously so serious about it.
SM (01:45:31):
Uh-huh [affirmative].
DU (01:45:31):
And some of them, like Ted Gold who'd dead because of it. And I remember saying to them, in some of these meetings, if you think you need an armed cadre to carry out the revolution of his ripe, you do not need to be picking up the gun belt and going off weekend encampment to teach yourself how to shoot. I said, this whole country is armed. You need to recruit those people who have guns and know how to use them, to your side. If you try, without them to do this, you are going to be the losers. In short order and big time, they were. They did not want to recruit to their side of the proletarian task of who were armed and might be ready for revolution. They wanted to reside over a revolution that they directed. And they were nowhere close to having historical opportunity or the political organization to help them− It is baffling to me, that they could have been so hallucinatorily deranged about this, but they were.
SM (01:47:03):
We all know about the Weathermen, and interesting, Black Panther's always used− It is so confusing. Black Panthers said they were not a violent group, and they had guns only to protect themselves. And some would say, well look what happened to the killing of Fred Hampton in Chicago. "We had to protect ourselves or they will come and kill us all."
DU (01:47:24):
Right.
SM (01:47:24):
And then of course we had the COINTELPRO, which did terrible things, infiltrating organizations. And some people have even gone to the extreme of saying that the reason why the Weathermen went violent is because of infiltrators that were from the CIA who encouraged them to become violent so that they would become illegitimate.
DU (01:47:44):
I am sure some of that happened.
SM (01:47:47):
I just, you see you have got all this stuff here, but most people are against violence. Dr. King was nonviolent protest. Then you get the Stokely Carmichael types and then Malcolm's, by any means necessary. And I think Malcolm was believing in taking guns to protect oneself, not to kill people. But this is a very, it is very confusing. You have to look at it in its context. But would not you say that whenever there is violence, it creates a negative image for any group?
DU (01:48:25):
Malcolm said that it is almost a criminal act to tell somebody under assault, he should not defend himself.
SM (01:48:35):
Say that again.
DU (01:48:36):
Malcolm said, it is almost a criminal act, to teach somebody who is under assault, that he should not defend himself.
SM (01:48:43):
Mm-hmm [affirmative].
DU (01:48:45):
And I was inclined to agree with that. Right? And I think people like him and the Black Panthers, for the most part, were defending themselves. And in case by Fred Hanson, not successfully.
SM (01:49:05):
What did you think of that scene at Cornell University in (19)69 of students with guns walking out of the union? What was that all about?
DU (01:49:15):
A new guy from Mobile. He went to Cornell with a pistol, tried to get the education that he thought he deserved.
SM (01:49:33):
He was in that group?
DU (01:49:36):
I do not think he was in that group, but he briefly went to Cornell. And he believed that Cornell intended not to provide him with education. And that the whole system was set up to provide him with an education.
SM (01:49:52):
Right.
DU (01:49:52):
That if he did not threaten violence, he was not going to get an education.
SM (01:49:56):
Wow.
DU (01:50:05):
That was−
SM (01:50:05):
This is a question that, took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995 to meet Senator Musky. There were 14 of us. And the students came up with this question on the issue of healing. And the question was this, that they asked the Senator, due to the extreme divisions that took place in the 1960s and early (19)70s, between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who supported the war and those were against the war, and those who supported the troops or against the troops, and all the other divisions that took place at that time. Witnessing what happened in America in 1968, with the two assassinations and the convention and turmoil of police beating heads, a president withdrawing, burnings in the cities, talk that we were heading toward a second civil war. Do you feel that the (19)60s, or the boomer generation, is going to its grave like the Civil War generation as a generation that will never heal from the divisions that tore them apart?
DU (01:51:20):
No, because I do not think the divisions were anywhere near as a deep or grave as Civil War divisions. Civil War divisions are still here. What is Faulkner's famous quote about, the past is gone, it is even past? Something like that.
SM (01:51:50):
His what now?
DU (01:51:53):
Faulkner said, the past has been forgotten in the fact it is not even past. Something to that.
SM (01:52:00):
Okay.
DU (01:52:05):
That legacy is still with us every day. But you see that around Alabama, anywhere you look. So, this business of the Boomer Era, I do not think it is anywhere near the−
SM (01:52:26):
Yeah.
DU (01:52:27):
The sound of that.
SM (01:52:30):
The students thought that Senator Musky would talk about 1968, because he was the vice presidential running mate at that convention. And he mentioned nothing about (19)68. He basically said we have not healed since the Civil War and the issue of race. And then he went on to talk about that at length, and that we had lost 430,000 men in that war, almost an entire generation in the south. So, you are kind of right in your assumptions, or not right, but you agree with the Senator Musky. One of the qualities that often is labeled in this generation, is they are not a very trusting generation, because they all witnessed, including those that were not activists, so many presidents and leaders who lied to them. Whether it be the experience of Watergate, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which a lot of people knew was a lie by (19)65, by President Johnson. Then you had the U-2 incident where President Eisenhower lied on national television. You had so many other politicians who had lied. Nobody trusted the information coming back from Vietnam because they knew that the counts that were being presented in American public included animals and all kinds of things. So, the lies were conscious. So young Black Boomers did not trust anyone in positions of authority, whether it be a minister or a rabbi, priest, university president, vice president of student affairs, Congressman, Senator, any corporate leader, anybody in position of responsibility. But do you feel that is a negative quality or a positive quality, this lacking of trust?
DU (01:54:19):
I think it is a positive quality not to trust if the trust is untrustworthy. If you truly are being misled and misused by those in positions of authority, you had better distrust them.
SM (01:54:35):
Do you believe what a lot of political science believe?
DU (01:54:40):
What?
SM (01:54:41):
Do you believe what a lot of political scientists believe that the sign of a true democracy is when you do not trust your government? Because that means that liberty and democracy is alive and well?
DU (01:54:54):
No. In a democracy you would be able to trust the government.
SM (01:55:02):
Right. But if you do not trust it, that is okay too, isn't it?
DU (01:55:06):
No, that is not a democracy.
SM (01:55:11):
Explain the−
DU (01:55:15):
If you do not trust it, then you believe that it is effectively operating against your interest. That cannot be a democracy, unless you are some sort of autocrat. In that case, if it is not operating against you, it might be a democracy. But if you are part of the demos, and you do not trust the government, then it is not a democracy. Because you were rightly doubtful about it toward you.
SM (01:55:54):
I got about 10-
DU (01:55:54):
Oh, I think the need to distrust it is an unhealthy, not a healthy one.
SM (01:56:06):
Can we go 10 more minutes? Because I have got about 10 more minutes here.
DU (01:56:10):
Yeah.
SM (01:56:10):
Okay. What did we learn from Vietnam?
DU (01:56:17):
Next to nothing, near as I know.
SM (01:56:22):
What have we forgotten about Vietnam?
DU (01:56:29):
What was the story about the French regime, about how they had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing?
SM (01:56:39):
Who was that now, the French regime?
DU (01:56:43):
The ancient regime on the verge of the−
SM (01:56:44):
Oh, okay.
DU (01:56:45):
− the overthrow. That they were incapable of learning. The circumstances changed, but they had not forgotten any of their old resentments or loyalty. They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. I think the Vietnam experience is similar. Learned nothing, forgot nothing. My belief, it is one of the− The radio station anymore says this stuff.
SM (01:57:14):
And please speak up.
DU (01:57:18):
I said, one of the reasons I am not at the radio station anymore, because I said this stuff on the air. When these new wars are on it, I believe that the anti-war movement saved the world from World War III. Because without it, I think the pro war element in Washington would have pushed that Vietnam forward to the point where they brought China to war. Because China was never going to accept American victory, or even the approach of American victory. Vietnam, just sad not in Korea. So if pro-war folks had been able to have their way, and supply all of their resources, including even nuclear ones to that war, they would have pushed it to the point where they brought China in before. And that would have made World War III.
SM (01:58:10):
Wow.
DU (01:58:10):
Nuclear World War III. The anti-war movement prevented the warriors in Washington doing that. And in the process, I think saved the world from World War III.
SM (01:58:30):
Uh- huh [affirmative]
DU (01:58:30):
But that does not mean that those in command of the forces who could create World War III learned this lesson. I do not think they did.
SM (01:58:47):
Wow.
DU (01:58:48):
Which means that some anti-war movement may need to rise again, form the same active probation. Of chief difference now is that there is not booming over these current wars, prospect of another superpower able to challenge America in a way that could bring on World War. That is not apparent at the moment it could be. It could appear, as yet, but it certainly was apparent in Vietnam and the memory of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It instructed you about that every time you gave it a thought. So I believe the antiwar movement saved us from that, and that there was not the recognition of thanks for doing so. That does not get it. It is still a curse to call somebody a hippie.
SM (01:59:49):
Right.
DU (02:00:02):
In fact, when Bush started his wars, I was, for a little while allowed to be on the radio, there were people who detected the card of my anti-war, who were just puzzled. Many were furious and calling me a traitor and in a sense calling for a death sentence if you opposed. Some were just puzzled. And then−
SM (02:00:30):
Okay.
DU (02:00:32):
And they said, "How can you, you just oppose war? You are against war?" They were puzzle that anybody would think war was a bad idea.
SM (02:00:55):
Unbelievable.
DU (02:00:59):
Not only do I think it is bad, I think those who stood up against the Vietnam War save the world from ruin. They should be honored for it, as it is filed and said, those who ordered the war and those who carried it out are honored. And that legacy sets us up for more of the same.
SM (02:01:28):
It is interesting, it is just like it is a brand-new book. I buy everything on Vietnam that I can read. But in the Vietnam section, if you go to Barnes & Noble right now, and even Borders, there is a brand-new book out on Tet. We would have won Tet, and that is what the book is about. And this is about a guy from Vietnam who was there, and this is how we would have won Tet. I do not want to hear that. And that is again saying, we actually did not lose Tet, but in the eyes of our public, it affected us. And that is a lot of the reason why President Johnson withdrew. But when you learned, when you hear words, oftentimes there were slogans that were said at the time of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, just what did these few slogans or actually words mean to you? And the first one is, we already mentioned, "By any means necessary." What did Malcolm mean by that?
DU (02:02:34):
That is playing on his face. That is not that ambiguous, I do not think. He was saying that we are not going to accept the status that you have forced upon us.
SM (02:02:44):
And please speak up.
DU (02:02:45):
We are not going to accept that it is forced upon us. And whatever is required to alter that, is what we will do. Even if that means we must die in the trying, which he did.
SM (02:03:08):
How about JFK in his inaugural, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." So supposedly it was inspired by young people, and it was, at the University of Michigan. And then he had a great guy named Sergeant Schreiber, who kind of carried it down with a Peace Corps in one area. But it really inspired a lot of people, even to go into the service.
DU (02:03:29):
Oh, it did. It did. And it has often been taken in a plea for people to surrender themselves to the suffocating embrace of the state. But that was not what Kennedy meant and that was not how it was taken at the time. Rather, it was a call to set aside your private headache turn for a greater communal turn. Enacted through the machinery of the state, which at the time, was widely believed to me a magnificent and efficient operation that could actually enact higher ideals than individual personal satisfaction.
SM (02:04:39):
His other one that we all know is, "We will bear any burden, pay any price." And a lot of people believe that set the tone for the Vietnam war.
DU (02:04:48):
Yep.
SM (02:04:49):
Do you believe that? Because he was long dead after we had the advisors there, but it was Johnson who brought the troops in.
DU (02:04:59):
Who knows what Kennedy had signed, or Sorenson who probably wrote it. And that sounds like inaugural bluffery to me. So, Kennedy, he did pay any price, did not he?
SM (02:05:30):
Yeah, he did. And "Bear any burden, pay any price." Of course, that fall, the DM regime fell just about a month before he was assassinated. So there was a lot going on there.
DU (02:05:44):
It did not fall, it was [inaudible 02:05:44]
SM (02:05:44):
Yeah.
DU (02:05:45):
Right?
SM (02:05:45):
Yeah.
DU (02:05:47):
Yeah.
SM (02:05:47):
I believe the President was shocked though that they were killed.
DU (02:05:49):
Oh, okay.
SM (02:05:51):
Yeah. Robert Kennedy's favorite slogan was, "Some men see things as they are and ask why, I see things that never were and ask why not?" That was not his original quote, but he used it. I believe he quoted that in Indianapolis the night that Dr. King was−
DU (02:06:08):
That is right.
SM (02:06:10):
That is kind of an activist mentality, isn't it? It is kind of a−
DU (02:06:14):
Yes it is. Yep.
SM (02:06:16):
That is pretty inspirational. Would you say that is how see would some of your light?
DU (02:06:26):
Yes, I suppose. And I do not think those are a mark of his brothers. The way they are now, he talked through the histrionics of a bloated federal− I took them as a plea for a turn toward common rather than individual health values. And exercise to the coordination of state. It sounds quaint now to say that because they have lost a cluster of being in a capable institution. But those things were said by the Kennedys, at a time much closer to the New Deal than we are now to the time when Kennedy said those things.
SM (02:07:46):
Right. Yep.
DU (02:07:52):
And the apparent success of the New Deal in raising a whole stratum of the population out of destitution, to some hopeful life, was still very much on people's mind.
SM (02:08:08):
The one that, obviously you being in the south for a long time, "We shall overcome." Of course, the song is historic and you hear it all the time today. And certainly hear it on Dr. King's birthday. But how does that impact you?
DU (02:08:30):
It keeps you going when nothing else will.
SM (02:08:36):
Mm-hmm.
DU (02:08:40):
It did so during a movement era when you knew that you had some kind of mass and some kind of momentum with you, but also knew that you had stirred up a determined and even deadly persistence. So that song and the sentiment sustains you. And it also sustains you in times when that movement is gone, and you are operating much of the time, almost alone, and in the darkness. And you have to pause and wonder why.
SM (02:09:18):
Right.
DU (02:09:18):
And that song and its sentiments help carry on when nothing else will.
SM (02:09:27):
There was the one that, " Tune in, turn on, drop out," was Timothy Leary. Your thoughts on that?
DU (02:09:38):
Leary was not my favorite. I never ever was attracted to what he was doing. Diversionary at best, destructive at worse.
SM (02:09:57):
This−
DU (02:09:57):
I also thought that the sort of people he appealed to most were folks who had, somewhere in the privileged echelon, who had lots of cushions they could fall back on if they made any big mistakes in life. But others who did not have the cushion to fall back on, if they followed Leary's ways, and made one or two big mistakes, they were probably finished forever. But Leary and his buddy Albert came from an appeal who knew that they had lots of cushions that they could stop and they could bounce back. Most people could not, and they were going to be victims rather than liberated.
SM (02:10:55):
How about the women's movement and, "All politics is personal"?
DU (02:11:07):
I do not believe all politics is personal. But some politics are politics.
SM (02:11:18):
That was the slogan of the National Organization for Women, when they started, how politics was personal.
DU (02:11:26):
It is in line with a lot of these others we have been talking about. I did not participate in it, as much as the others. I have never called myself a feminist. Some men do. I cannot believe in calling myself a feminist, but I acknowledge that it has greatly altered society.
SM (02:11:56):
Then there was, on the Peter Max posters that were very popular in the early (19)70s, the hippie mentality. "You do your thing; I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful."
DU (02:12:11):
Yeah.
SM (02:12:15):
You like that kind of mentality?
DU (02:12:19):
No. I mean−
SM (02:12:20):
Yeah.
DU (02:12:21):
And an activist does not believe that.
SM (02:12:25):
Right.
DU (02:12:27):
Activists are always speaking organization, and direction, and purpose. And what that requires, people become loosened from, if not separated, loosened from their familiar ways besides, so that they are willing to think about and do different things of, they won't become so loose unless they adopt some of that hippy attitude. But if they become the stuff of hippies, then they disappear from that active life.
SM (02:13:05):
How about the−
DU (02:13:06):
They are no help.
SM (02:13:07):
This was, there is actually two of them from Jerry Rubin, "Do not trust anyone over 30." And then he changed it to 40. And then, do it, which was the title of his book, Do It. They were kind of the yippie mentality, the yippies.
DU (02:13:25):
Yeah.
SM (02:13:28):
Any thoughts on that?
DU (02:13:32):
Abbie Hoffman spoke once at the State University here in Mobile, and offered to jump off the stage and into the audience and try to punch me out. He was restrained by some of the other professors on the stage who had invited him to speak. Because I had challenged from the audience, during the question period, about exactly these sort of things. The message he and Rubin said lured people away from activism and turned them off rather than turned them on. And in many cases, physically or emotionally wrecked them, affected them into a life of drugs, of the opposite of raising them consciousness activism. And he was more of a digressive than a progressive influence because of that. Ooh−
SM (02:14:44):
Wow.
DU (02:14:46):
He was pissed. He wanted to jump off the stage and have it out on the spot with me, he said. And made some motions like he was going to do that, but I think he would probably seized, some of the other jumped up and grabbed him.
SM (02:15:02):
It is amazing, because of the perceptions I have had from between Abbie and Jerry is Jerry was not a likable person and Abbie was. And Abbie lived a lifetime of activism, but Jerry went off to make money. It is an interesting story. I have interviewed a lot of his friends. Here is one, the last one here is, "One giant step for man, one giant leap for mankind," which is Neil Armstrong. Even though it was up in space, it still has, I think, a meaning to a lot of the (19)60s and (19)70s. Because if we actually accomplished something, we got, a promise was made by a President, and here we are on the moon before the end of the decade.
DU (02:15:50):
I think I remember being deliberately unimpressed by that.
SM (02:15:55):
Right?
DU (02:15:59):
I thought it was literally out of this world, other worldly. And it defected or deflected from rather than helped address things that needed to be addressed in this world.
SM (02:16:15):
Oh, okay.
DU (02:16:15):
And I, to the best of my ability, ignored it for those reasons. It was impossible to ignore it entirely. And it was an astonishing thing, but I thought it was irrelevant at best, and damaging at worst.
SM (02:16:35):
Considering that it was on a stage in Arizona too, was hard to−
DU (02:16:38):
Yes.
SM (02:16:41):
Some people tried to say that.
DU (02:16:42):
Yes. And listen, do not get me wrong about Rubin and Hoffman. And I thought some of the things they did, like making the stock brokers go crazy by tossing dollar bills off the balcony at the stock exchange.
SM (02:16:56):
Yep. That was Abbie.
DU (02:17:00):
Yeah, that was wonderful. Some of the stuff they did was.
SM (02:17:07):
Yeah, and Abbie's friends told me the differences that those two guys had. And they had friction from the get go. And Jerry was not, I cannot− He has passed away. All you have to do is go on the web, and on YouTube, and see every interview of Abbie Hoffman, and then you see the interviews of Jerry Rubin, and you see what a jerk Jerry Rubin is, and what a nice person Abbie is. So, you might have got him on a bad day. But I have only got three more questions here. The generation gap, did you have a generation gap issue with your family and parents? When you went off to college?
DU (02:17:55):
I do not, it was− Nobody in my family had ever done anything like that before. Neither of my parents were college graduates.
SM (02:18:02):
And please speak up again.
DU (02:18:06):
Neither of my parents were college grads. They graduated into the Depression and had to work. I do not know where, it was more than an obsession of mine to go off to get the most deeply teacher education I could, in the most demanding place I could get into or came from, but I had it. That was the generation, there was a gap of interest and ambition between me and the family and my surroundings. It was not generational. It was beyond that.
SM (02:19:03):
So were your parents against the war in Vietnam?
DU (02:19:06):
Yes, actually.
SM (02:19:07):
Okay.
DU (02:19:08):
Actually, before most any other adults that I knew, but I did not know that until after I had already launched a state of events about that. They were way out in the West. After I went to college, I had no regular connection with my family or this great part of my life.
SM (02:19:35):
Well you remember there was that Life Magazine that had that young man on the cover with sun and one eye shade, and the other eye shade being the father's pointing fingers at each other. So, there was a strong generation gap between the World War II and the Boomers over a lot of the issues, lifestyle, politics, but− Huh?
DU (02:19:59):
That did not happen for me, but it was mostly-
PART 4 OF 5 ENDS [02:20:04]
DU (02:20:03):
− for me but it was mostly a function of the distance and separation rather than [inaudible 02:20:14].
SM (02:20:17):
You did not see them at Harvard and Columbia with your peers?
DU (02:20:24):
Yes, I saw it. Yeah, but I did not relate to it. I did not have to deal with that intimately, like many of them did.
SM (02:20:42):
In a book called the Wounded Generation, there was a symposium in 1980 with some of the top Vietnam veterans from Phil Caputo and Jim Webb, Bobby Muller, a couple other well-known names. In that conversation, one of them mentioned that he felt that the generation gap was− Yes, there was a gap between parents and students, but the real gap was between those who went to war and those who did not within the generation. He was very critical of the generation and for those who say that the (19)60s generation was a generation that served, that is, i.e., went to the Peace Corps, Vista, did all kinds of things, served their nation in a time of war, he said it is anything but a service generation because when you are called to go to war, you go. It is like your parents did in World War II. Did you sense there was a generation gap within the generation between those who went to Vietnam and those who did not?
DU (02:21:51):
I have an older brother who was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. From the first time I went out there and I was there handing out leaflets against the war [inaudible 02:22:08] 10 years later, being chased down the streets of DC with teargas and mounted police. I was thinking I got to do what I can, as little and as ineffective as it may be, to try to bring this war to an end so my brother can get out of it alive. Even though, he was not [inaudible 02:22:37].
SM (02:22:36):
When you had family get togethers, say, in the late (19)60s and (19)70s, after the− Well, after the war was over, did you and your brother have issues with each other? Because he went to war, and you did not.
DU (02:22:59):
He just would not speak of what happened and what he did there. He would not talk about it. [inaudible 02:23:08] but the Pentagon Papers had a big impact on him. When that book came out, when they appeared in book form, he bought it and read it cover to cover. Even though, he was not the most scholarly man. He was not pleased at what he found there.
SM (02:23:40):
Wow.
DU (02:23:41):
[inaudible 02:23:41] and he realized he had been deceived.
SM (02:23:48):
Wow.
DU (02:23:49):
He realized that he was lured into what he thought was patriotic duty under false pretenses. He also realized his little brother was right.
SM (02:23:59):
Wow. Did he ever talk to you personally on that?
DU (02:24:03):
Only obliquely [inaudible 02:24:07].
SM (02:24:08):
Are you close to your brother?
DU (02:24:10):
Not particularly but [inaudible 02:24:17] our lives have gone on different paths [inaudible 02:24:21]. He just would not talk about his service. [inaudible 02:24:28] you were right after all. Some remark he made. We both knew that was so.
SM (02:24:44):
Yeah.
DU (02:24:47):
At some point, [inaudible 02:24:49] save the country and save the world from what I was sure was World War Three [inaudible 02:24:58] but also trying to save him.
SM (02:25:03):
I mentioned all those movements that evolved from the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement because the women's movement evolved in many respects because a lot of the sexism that took place in those two prior movements and women became− They had important− They did have important roles in the anti-war and civil rights movements but sexism was definitely there, and so the women's movement came about and, of course, the gay and lesbian movement in (19)69 at Stonewall. You had the Earth Day, the environmental movement in 1970, the Chicano movement, Cesar Chavez who worked closely with Bobby Kennedy and then, of course, you had the Native American movement that was going on in its heyday in the late (19)60s and (19)70s. It seemed like they were very strong movements. When there was an anti-war protest, it seemed like they were all there. Now as time goes by, it seems like whenever there is a movement, the movement is like− The women's movement is only women there. There is no anti-war groups. If there is a gay and lesbian protest, it is only them. It seems like they have become so special interest and so− They are not united anymore. At one time, they were united and now they all seem divided in their own little spheres. Am I correct in sensing this?
DU (02:26:33):
Yeah. I mentioned to you before that in those years, those movements all were− They were kindred. [inaudible 02:26:40] they grew out of and overlapped and nourished each other. If you moved from one of those realms, either in activity or geography, you would run into many of the same people. That is no longer true. You are right.
SM (02:27:11):
Even the conservative critics of those movements say they have become nothing but special interest. In other words, they only care about them. That is a very strong conservative, neoconservative criticism that all these movements, including civil rights, they are all special interest groups now and they have gone into the universities, as Phyllis Schlafly said, the universities today are run by people who were the protestors of the war. She says radicals have now taken over the universities.
DU (02:27:51):
I do not see that. I do not have daily contact of the inners of universities but what I do, I do not see that.
SM (02:28:01):
I think she sees− She saw that the women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, Asian American studies, Native American, African American studies, environmental, they are all run by liberal left people with their own agendas.
DU (02:28:19):
If you are talking about people with an identity politic outlook, trying to push their little plan forward, academically or otherwise, there is some truth in that but that is not the same as a liberal or a radical movement on campus.
SM (02:28:38):
Right.
DU (02:28:40):
Identity politic does not challenge or upset [inaudible 02:28:43] as I can tell. The imperial impulse that exists in the Vietnam War and is still as strong as ever and universities still are given more intellectual and other support to that imperial impulse as they did in the (19)60s and whatever radical counter there is to that is feeble on the campus. [inaudible 02:29:22] poor people's movement that Martin Luther King was trying to launch [inaudible 02:29:34] to the Civil Rights Movement, when he was assassinated [inaudible 02:29:41] as a result and the consequence of that poor people's movement failure are visible around you on the streets every day, of every American city, and universities are not addressing that. [inaudible 02:30:00] left behind by the failure of that movement are not prominent or influential [inaudible 02:30:05] people are talking about [inaudible 02:30:10] of the only thing they mean is some kind of identity politics and attraction in the universities, these people like Phyllis Schlafly do not like because they want to maintain a myth of the old unitary American identity and for that reason, they do not like it but other than that−
SM (02:30:39):
Would you agree, though− Again, you refer to this in the community as opposed to on the university campuses but I have been on university campuses for 30 years, and what happened with a professor being fired− I mention because he was involved in a protest or a speaker not being allowed to come to a college campus in the (19)60s for fear that money would not be given to the university because of a political point of view, that it has gotten to the other− It is really extreme today that because monies are tight on university campuses and the fact is that it is all about scholarships, it is all about fundraising, that they got to be very careful about who they invite to a university campus and if there is somebody that is controversial, it could threaten the bottom line and so they are really into that. The whole idea that Mario Savio talked about, about the world of ideas, which is what the university is about, is really today still about the bottom line and ideas play a secondary role.
DU (02:31:56):
Yeah.
SM (02:31:56):
Do you agree with that?
DU (02:31:57):
Yes. Yes. A few years ago, I was with all these people who had gone to bring a Palestinian speaker to the city and to campus venues. Among those promoting this were some Jewish groups advocating on behalf of Palestinian rights and [inaudible 02:32:28] moderate and polite way and that caused [inaudible 02:32:34] and on the state university campus here for exactly the reason you just said.
SM (02:32:38):
Yeah, it is interesting.
DU (02:32:41):
[inaudible 02:32:41] they might withhold who did not like any [inaudible 02:32:50] presentation [inaudible 02:32:56] be known that if this happened, financial consequences would follow.
SM (02:33:03):
Yeah. That is interesting. We did a conference my last semester that I organized with a couple of faculty members and students called Islam In America. We were packed every session, the whole theater was packed for 10 straight sessions from morning until about 10 o'clock, 10:30 at night, and I never saw so much criticism in my life of a successful event and it was all about educating about what it means to be in the religion of Islam. It had nothing to do with being anti-Israel. Oh my God. Everybody on the committee was looked at, studied, ridiculed, all the speakers, all the panelists were all ridiculed. I mean, people that I worked with− That is one of the reasons that I love the university. People I worked with who had never came to things, they were all in the audience and they were just there to try and see if anything negative happened. Nothing negative happened except people were upset that− They thought that we were promoting as opposed to educating. I only got two more and then we are done, because I know you have gone over, and I really appreciate it. Could you list some of the heavyweights in the lives of Boomers over the past 64 years? List the people who stood out− Actually, in your view, people that stood out in the following areas since 1946 that you feel had an influence on the Boomer generation. The first category is TV/radio personalities.
DU (02:34:43):
TV/radio personalities?
SM (02:34:45):
Yes. It could be news men, it could be talk show hosts, it could be anything.
DU (02:34:57):
Edward R. Murrow.
SM (02:34:59):
Okay.
DU (02:35:00):
Are you asking about people who have influenced me or who I think have influenced [inaudible 02:35:08].
SM (02:35:08):
Yeah. People that you think − When you look at the last, what is now 64 years since Boomers were born, because they are now reaching 64 this year, people that you feel, you personally, who has lived the same time that they have lived, and you are not very much older, I mean, you are a year or two older, so you are really one of them and I have learned that, that people from (19)40 on, to me, are really Boomers in their mentality, in the way they live their lives, and everything. You know, TV personalities that you felt were major in their lives. You have said Edward R. Murrow.
DU (02:35:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
SM (02:35:51):
Anybody else?
DU (02:35:54):
I do not know. I never paid much attention to TV.
SM (02:35:59):
Okay. How about writers?
DU (02:36:03):
I mentioned [inaudible 02:36:06]. I was an early devote of Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. A buddy in college [inaudible 02:36:21] and as a fable of perseverance in the face of difficulties, even [inaudible 02:36:41].
SM (02:36:52):
Who's the person?
DU (02:36:55):
Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings.
SM (02:36:57):
Oh, the Lord of the Rings. Tolkien. Oh, yeah. Big time. Big time. Any others before we go− The next section is politicians.
DU (02:37:07):
Yeah. Lately, I have been reading and rereading Given.
SM (02:37:16):
Edward Given?
DU (02:37:17):
The Decline and the Fall of the Roman−
SM (02:37:18):
Yeah. We had to read that when I was a history major.
DU (02:37:22):
Yeah. It seemed pertinent.
SM (02:37:31):
How about politicians? There were a lot of them.
DU (02:37:31):
Politicians? I worked for Senator Frank Church of Idaho.
SM (02:37:45):
You are lucky. He was a great person.
DU (02:37:47):
Yeah. I mean, I knew him− When I was a cheeky teen, I just walked into his office, in the federal building in Boise one day when I knew he was there, and the Congress was in session. I introduced myself. I said, "You are my senator. I want to get to know you." He was sitting there by himself. He invited me home and I went and had dinner with him.
SM (02:38:16):
Oh my gosh. What an experience.
DU (02:38:16):
Yeah. You could do that in a small town like that. I kept up with him after that and I worked in his Washington office. [inaudible 02:38:30] one summer. I was working in Senator Church's office.
SM (02:38:37):
Oh, wow.
DU (02:38:38):
Did that for two summers.
SM (02:38:43):
Wow. He is historic because of the Church committee and, of course, his son Forrest passed away this past year. I interviewed him for the book.
DU (02:38:54):
Well, I knew Forrest also. Forrest was around the office the summers I was working. [inaudible 02:39:06] senator's wife and, of course, mother. She is still alive. [inaudible 02:39:16]. I was very impressed with Church in a rock star kind of way because he was young and a flashy senator and he hung out with the Kennedys and all that when I was an impressionable age, and I claimed [inaudible 02:39:40] but when I got to know him more politically, [inaudible 02:39:47] I was even more impressed with the caliber−
SM (02:39:58):
Yeah. He is in that−
DU (02:39:59):
[inaudible 02:39:59] Wayne Morris and a few others [inaudible 02:40:03].
SM (02:40:02):
Yeah. [Ernest] Gruening. Yeah. Wow.
DU (02:40:08):
Morris, Gruening, Church, they were [inaudible 02:40:10] and when he ran for president in (19)76, I spent the summer volunteer working on his campaign.
SM (02:40:19):
Wow.
DU (02:40:19):
In the DC office [inaudible 02:40:21] Rhode Island and Ohio.
SM (02:40:28):
Yeah. What an experience, because I consider him a statesman. You know? Nelson was another one from that period who went against the war and, of course, Senator Church and Senator Nelson and Senator McGovern and Senator McCarthy were all ousted in 1980, also Birch Bayh in the anti-war, being against people who were in the anti-war likes. It is amazing. Anybody in the civil rights, women's movement, environmental movement stand out in your opinion? That you feel were very influential.
DU (02:41:10):
Well, because of what Martin Luther King did, the direction of my life changed, I would not be talking to you from Alabama− Civil rights came out of Alabama.
SM (02:41:24):
Right. I have got to get down there some time to see where the Montgomery bus boycott took place. How about any of the TV shows that you think were impactful? You said you did not watch TV very much.
DU (02:41:44):
Hardly.
SM (02:41:46):
How about newspaper journalists?
DU (02:41:54):
I loved Russell Baker.
SM (02:41:56):
Okay.
DU (02:41:58):
[inaudible 02:41:58] New York Times, because he was irreverent and offbeat and quietly radical.
SM (02:42:18):
Any magazines that stand out?
DU (02:42:19):
Not particularly, and I have written a few things for the Nation, so I guess I should say them.
SM (02:42:31):
How about the activists that you really looked up to?
DU (02:42:42):
[inaudible 02:42:42]. It was mostly the folks out in the trenches.
SM (02:42:53):
Not so much the big names.
DU (02:42:56):
Almost anonymous [inaudible 02:43:00] be there when you needed somebody there.
SM (02:43:06):
Right. Any scholars?
DU (02:43:25):
I paid attention to what [inaudible 02:43:27].
SM (02:43:28):
Who?
DU (02:43:30):
[inaudible 02:43:30].
SM (02:43:31):
Okay. I interviewed him for my book. I do not know if anybody in the veteran community you were linked to in any way but any veterans you admired?
DU (02:43:53):
[inaudible 02:43:53] Veterans for Peace− I consider myself a veteran of the Vietnam War, even though, I was never military. [inaudible 02:44:10] have a military−
SM (02:44:15):
You have a what?
DU (02:44:15):
[inaudible 02:44:15] military dog tag [inaudible 02:44:17] be a veteran.
SM (02:44:19):
Right. Yeah.
DU (02:44:23):
Some of those organizations, I admire.
SM (02:44:29):
You believe that those that were involved in the anti-war movement, like those who served in Vietnam were part of the Vietnam− They are Vietnam vets?
DU (02:44:40):
Yes.
SM (02:44:42):
My last question here is when the best history books are written, they are often written 50 years after an event or a period. You know, a couple years back, the best books on World War II were being written 50 years after the war. My question is basically when the last Boomer has passed away, many years from now, and there is no one around that will have experienced what it was like to live when we lived, what do you think historians, sociologists, writers are going to say about the generation that grew up after World War II or around World War II and the influence they had on America?
DU (02:45:29):
Well, the [inaudible 02:45:31] book.
SM (02:45:35):
Pardon? That would be nice.
DU (02:45:36):
Yeah. [inaudible 02:45:38] book and then you will know.
SM (02:45:41):
Yeah, because what is interesting, David, is that I want people to know the people for who they are, what they stand for, and to respect them all, because how one is raised, reared, and their life experiences are different. To understand the time, I truly believe that oral history right now is the best way to do it and so I got a long way to go but I am doing this because I have a drive within me t−
DU (02:46:15):
I can tell.
SM (02:46:16):
Yeah. It is like my work at the university. I did over 450 programs at Westchester University. I know a lot of people and those programs are not happening anymore. They are not doing any lectures, forums, debates and seminars. I am getting students emailing me saying the university is not the same anymore and it is because the finances are tough and all they want to do is party and program. There is some good quality things that faculty are doing but I did not go into higher education to just simply retire and not do anything more. My whole life is devoted to students and will continue to be so. Are there any questions that you expected me to ask you that I did not ask?
DU (02:47:13):
Well, I tried not to think about what you might ask me, because I did not want to have canned answers. I wanted [inaudible 02:47:25] the first thing that occurred to me. I did not have any expectations about what you might ask [inaudible 02:47:39] conversations are what I supposed it would be, but I had not formulated anything specific.
SM (02:47:49):
One thing is I do not know if you have a couple pictures of yourself, but I am going to need a couple pictures. I do not know if you have any recent pictures or even pictures, somebody is sending me a picture from− Caroline Cassidy is going to send me a picture of her when she was− 1970. Then a picture of her. She lives way up in Oregon, and I cannot get to Oregon. I have gone and interviewed everybody in person who lived in New York, Washington, Baltimore, I have gone up to Boston three times, going up to San Francisco, in a couple weeks just to take pictures of 14 people that I interviewed. I am not spending any time with them because I have already interviewed them but trying to coordinate that. I am going on vacation, and I am going to do it all in two days, drive around San Francisco, going from place to place, taking pictures of all these people. I have two interviews out there too. I am going to need your pictures. I am going to keep you updated because I am going to be hibernating at the end of October. My interviews end at the end of October. I have one in November and that is it. I am not doing anymore.
DU (02:49:04):
You want before and after pictures?
SM (02:49:06):
It can be before and after. It can be two pictures. It can be a current one. Whichever. You can mail it to me through the mail or on the computer. I prefer the mail because somebody sent me a computer picture from California that was terrible. I am taking a picture of him in person. Whatever. There is no rush, but I just wanted to let you know.
DU (02:49:28):
What is the mailing address?
SM (02:49:31):
My mailing address is 3323 Valley, V-A-L-L-E-Y, Drive in West Chester, and that is two words, Pennsylvania, 19382. You have my name.
DU (02:49:49):
19382?
SM (02:49:52):
Yeah. I will keep you updated. Between November 1st and probably June, I will be transcribing them all myself. Someone says, "You have got a lot of work to do." I said, "Yup. I got the equipment here." I have already done 12. It is not that bad. I have been advised not to let anybody else do them, because I have got two authors that had nothing but problems when they were transcribed by others. When I am transcribing them, it brings back all the memories. They are going to be divided into seven sections with the pictures and then what I call magic moments, that will be under each interview that I pick as magic moments. There were several that you gave me today that were unbelievable. Then the rest of it will be the interview and you will eventually see the transcript and so the next seven months, I am going to be transcribing. I have one university press that wants to do it, but I have not tried to go after any other presses, so I have made no commitments.
DU (02:50:57):
You got one for sure?
SM (02:51:01):
Yeah. One for sure, without even−I did not even send them a proposal. I talked to them at a conference. I was at a higher ed conference this summer. They knew that all the people that I had interviewed and, anyways, long story. I have not approached any major book companies and I am going to send 12 transcripts, my introduction, and then go from there.
DU (02:51:35):
Okay. [inaudible 02:51:38] picture from me. [inaudible 02:51:48].
SM (02:51:49):
Yeah. You can mail them to me− I want to get most of them before the holidays, because I want to be able to get the pictures and, so if you can think of trying to get those two to me before Christmas, that would be great.
DU (02:52:05):
Yeah. [inaudible 02:52:06] wrote to myself with your address. [inaudible 02:52:11]. If you do not get the pictures [inaudible 02:52:16].
SM (02:52:16):
Yeah. I will.
DU (02:52:16):
[inaudible 02:52:16]. Okay?
SM (02:52:16):
Yeah.
DU (02:52:17):
You have my permission [inaudible 02:52:18].
SM (02:52:17):
Okay.
DU (02:52:18):
If you come across any [inaudible 02:52:18] transcript and you want to [inaudible 02:52:33].
SM (02:52:35):
Will do.
DU (02:52:35):
Okay?
SM (02:52:36):
Yup. I am going to contact that person too that you mentioned and if there is any other people that you feel would be good people to interview, let me know.
DU (02:52:45):
Great.
SM (02:52:47):
David, you have a great day.

(End of Interview)

2010-09-27

Stephen McKiernan

David Underhill

172:51

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

2 Microcassettes

Audio

Journalists; Authors, American--20th century; Political activists--United States; Underhill, David--Interviews

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