Interview with Dr. Francis Sheldon Hackney

Hackney, Sheldon, 1933-2013 ; McKiernan, Stephen

Francis Sheldon Hackney (1933 - 2013) was a scholar, author and a professor of U.S. History at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his PhD. in American History at Yale University. Hackney served in the Navy for five years, after earning his PhD.

2003-12-10

In Copyright

2017-03-14

McKiernan Interviews

83:46

McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Francis Sheldon Hackney
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 10 December 2003
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(Start of Interview)

SM (00:00:05):
Into my first question, and this is working, I know it is. When you think of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?

SH (00:00:17):
The civil rights movement actually, because that is where my primary interests lay at that time and now, but I lived through the period, so I have a very complicated idea about it. And I have been teaching a course on the 1960s for the last 25 years, so I know it both as a participant and as a professional observer.

SM (00:00:45):
What was that very first experience as a participant when you went from an observer to a participant in that movement? Do you remember the very first time?

SH (00:00:55):
Well, I was a participant first, I think, because I was born and grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. For reasons that I have never been able to figure out I emerged as a southern white liberal who thought that segregation was just wrong. And that happened to me when I was in the eighth grade, actually, when I suddenly began thinking about race prompted by nothing. I was a Methodist then, and I think my religious training had something to do with it, but I cannot be sure. So I was conscious of the racial situation in the south. All the way through college I was the liberal of my group in a way, all the way through college, and then married a woman who came from a family that was quite active in various ways. The Durrs from Montgomery, Virginia Foster Durr was-

SM (00:02:15):
Oh yeah, there is a brand-new book now, The Letters. I just bought that this weekend.

SH (00:02:17):
Oh, good for you, yes.

SM (00:02:18):
I did buy it, yes.

SH (00:02:20):
Oh, super. Well, she is my mother-in-law, actually.

SM (00:02:24):
Oh, wow.

SH (00:02:24):
Freedom Writer.

SM (00:02:25):
Oh yes.

SH (00:02:26):
I got married. I mean, I met my wife when I was still in college and before the Montgomery bus boycott started. So I was aware of the Montgomery bus boycott all the way through it, though I was also in the Navy then. She and I got married and I went through the Navy and came out of the Navy in 1961 and went to graduate school. The civil rights movement was already raging, and I was sympathetic to it, of course. Now, I went to Yale, the graduate school, so that did not set me apart from people at Yale where the standard opinion would have been sympathetic to the civil rights movement. But in that sense, I was already engaged in the (19)60s, not that I did anything terribly heroic, but I was a participant before anything else. I do remember the first anti-war meeting that I went to in the spring of 1965 when Johnson was escalating the war in Vietnam and the University of Michigan had a sit-in protest. And that caught on, the notion of a big sit-in to protest the war or to teach about the war actually it was. Well, there was one at Yale several weeks later, two or three weeks later, and I went to that. I remember there was even someone there from the University of Michigan to bring greetings from the academic community of the University of Michigan. And then it was along, it went all night at Yale and there were pro-war people there as well. And in fact, I did not become actively anti-war until good bit later actually. I was slow.

SM (00:04:39):
When you look at the movements, obviously the civil rights movement is the one that you were involved in, had the greatest impact on your life. What are your thoughts when historians or commentators talk about all the movements, that it was the civil rights movement, that was the model for the anti-war movement, the women's movement, your thoughts on those other movements and linkage with the civil rights movement?

SH (00:05:02):
Well, the civil rights movement did provide the paradigm for the others, both in the tactics that were used and also to an extent on the goals, if you will. I mean, the women's movement quite consciously copied some of the rhetoric and tactics of the civil rights movement, but as did the other social justice movements as well, [inaudible]. Not so much the Disabilities Movement, but others, the gay and lesbian rights movement, which really starts late in the (19)60s, but also comes in the wake of, into the atmosphere that had been prepared by the civil rights movement and the war movement as well.

SM (00:05:56):
When you look at, and I am looking at the boomer generation, and sometimes it is hard to define, a lot of people put parameters, they put anybody going between (19)46 and (19)64, and some say between (19)42 and (19)60. But when you look at the civil rights movement, how important were the boomers in that movement? Knowing that people like Dr. King, they were a little older and some of the civil rights leaders were a little older, but how important were they in civil rights itself, in the movement, whether it be college students, or?

SH (00:06:29):
It was, the civil rights movement changes several times. It began, if you think of it beginning as I do in the Montgomery bus boycott as a mass movement, the Brown decision was in (19)54. So December (19)55 Rosa Parks stands up for justice by sitting down, as they say. And the Montgomery bus boycott was basically a middle class movement. I mean, it was the whole black community of Montgomery that was mobilized for that. Same might be said for the Little Rock school integration crisis that came out of a lawsuit. It was a very orderly NAACP process that located the kids, sort of trained them about how to.... Brought the suit, got the federal court to order their admission into Central High and then followed those kids all the way through. Things changed then. That is as to say that the boomers did not have anything to do with this. The civil rights movement was coming anyway, right? But things changed with the sit-in movement in early 1960, because those young men and women at North Carolina A&T were from the boomer generation, and they had come along at a period when the black community was much more assertive about itself, where the experiences of World War II had had their effect. And African Americans in general were improving their position in American life, and as we know, improvement breeds ambition to improve. There is this escalating expectation, and I think the city movement begins that, and then when younger blacks and whites come to the fore and begin as the arrowhead of the movement, if you will, but they are out on the front lines. So the boomers take over in the (19)60s.

SM (00:08:52):
Leading into a question, in recent years, if you go back to even (19)94 when Newt Gingrich came to power, and of course he is out now, and also George Will always likes to do his digs whenever he gets a chance. Some of the commentators talk about the boomer generation and the reasons for the breakdown of American society, but some of the values that these young people had, their involvement with drugs, obviously the sexual revolution, the counter culture mentality, lack of respect for authority, your thoughts on the attacks on this generation?

SH (00:09:29):
Well, it is interesting, because we are still living in a politics that has been fashioned as a reaction to the 1960s basically. And if you look at those aspects of the (19)60s that were making for change in American life, the social justice movements, all of them, the counterculture in particular, those were profoundly upsetting to a lot of Americans. And it is easy to dismiss, especially the counterculture, but the young people in general was simply pursuing sex, drugs and rock and roll in the (19)60s. But I think that is simplistic and does not get at the essence. My own attitude toward the (19)60s is that it contained both a very hopeful, bright upper side, if you will. The social justice movements in particular, the bringing African Americans into the mainstream of American life, providing justice a bit for the disabled and for minority groups and protecting the rights of women as never before. All of that changed America fundamentally. And we will never revert to the way things were in the (19)60s when there was only one imagined America, and that was a white Anglo person. We were most much more pluralistic now in our thinking and in our actuality. The counterculture is somewhat different. I think it is more mixed. The counterculture has its roots in the 1950s in the Beat generation and the challenge to middle class American suburban values, if you will. Because those values were stultifying. Well, I think in a way they were. The counterculture is the first movement I know of that consciously identifies their enemy as not a class or a group, but as the values of society itself. The counterculture is saying, "These middle-class values are stultifying limiting, and we have got to, if we are going to be free, we need to overthrow and live by, overthrow those middle-class values and live by a different set of values." I mean, I am making it sound prettier than it was, but I think that is what they were saying. And they imagined liberty for them than being able to choose what values to live by, which is really quite radical.

SM (00:12:30):
During that timeframe, when you look at the boomer generation, if you had to look at those years, anywhere between 60 and 70 million people were born and can be categorized from the beginning of the boomers in (19)46 to (19)64. These same individuals that attacked that generation always to say that the only 15 percent really were really activist-

SH (00:12:51):
That is actually true.

SM (00:12:52):
...involved in things. And by using that, even those numbers are pretty high. Only 15 percent was involved. Your thoughts when they used that? That only 15 percent of that group was ever involved or cared about anything.

SH (00:13:06):
That is true, absolutely true. There is this study of Harvard graduates in 1969 or (19)70 in which the pollster asked Harvard students to identify themselves along the political spectrum, 75 percent said that they were much more conservative than the typical Harvard student. Think about that a minute. Which means that the mood was set by the small minority that were active and that were out in front doing things that were different. They got the media coverage, they moved the culture, basically. Those 85 percent who did not demonstrate, did not even sign a petition, were still sympathetic to the 15 percent that were more active, but were more passive about their sympathy. At times of crisis, for instance, I am thinking here of the spring of 1970 when the Cambodian incursion occurred and campuses everywhere exploded. That gives you some notion of the campus mood. But even though very small percent of people had been active in the annual movement statistically on college campuses, when that happened and those small numbers organized a mass meeting, the whole campus showed up. It was not that the 15 percent was forcing the others, it was that it is just the passive and more aggressive.

SM (00:14:51):
When you look at, especially when you look at student development and how when you look at students, sometimes they develop at different stages. Their leadership may not come out when they are in college, but it may be in their late 20s. Has there anything ever really been done in that 85 percent with a respect to how that era affected their subconscious?

SH (00:15:15):
Good question.

SM (00:15:15):
So that they have gone on in their lives and they may not have been involved during that period, but certainly in their later lives those experiences played a part and they came forth? We always believe that students.

SH (00:15:27):
I were not aware of a study, but that is really a good question. My guess is I think, I can assume that the implication of your question, my guess is that the people who live through the (19)60s on a college campus probably were easily engaged by social issues later in their lives, or had their values set a little bit differently.

SM (00:16:00):
If you were to look at that generation again, and we are concentrating in on this boomer group, their greatest strengths, some of their greatest characteristics, and their weakest characteristics?

SH (00:16:13):
Well, the greatest characteristics is they had a social conscience if you take the generation as a whole. That whether this is not genetic certainly, but it is just that when that group happened to hit college age, it meant that universities were growing rapidly, very rapidly. It was a heady period on college campuses in general. And so they were there and more easily mobilized as college students always are. And they responded because the (19)50s, this was a reaction against the quintastic (19)50s, and the (19)50s of course were a reaction against World War II and the Depression. People wanted to live more subtle lives that had a bit more material wellbeing to them. And the (19)60s were a reaction against that in the direction of being more socially involved and creating a society in which everyone could lead a more fulfilling life. Social conscience, I would say, is the leading characteristic on the upside. More creativity. Start an accident, that music-

SM (00:17:48):
Oh yes.

SH (00:17:49):
I mean, of the (19)60s, it is quite remarkable that it is still played, and college students today is still familiar with that music. That is 40 years ago.

SM (00:17:57):
Simon and Garfunkel performed last night at the inspector, filling next door, and two of our administrators went and they said it was packed with boomers. They were all in their 40s. It was like, and then when they did that Bridge Over Troubled Water, Coming Home To America and Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio. In fact, Tom [inaudible], director [inaudible] said he almost had tears in his eyes. Because it was bringing back memories of a trip he took, Coming Back To America, that song there. And he was involved in a very serious issue with his family at that time, and he was at Alfred University, and I thought it was interesting. It all came back. That song brought everything back and tears came like it did 30 years ago.

SH (00:18:48):
Yeah.

SM (00:18:49):
Unbelievable.

SH (00:18:51):
Oh, it really is. Well, it is interesting that in my seminar I gets a good sense of how today's students think of the (19)60s and how they view it. And there was a time in the (19)80s when students were rather nostalgic for the (19)60s, because that was a time when it must have been great to be a college student. Things that is where the focus of the world was. Television were watching what was happening on college campuses. Also, it is a new experimentation going on, real sense of excitement. They thought, "Why could not things be like that now in the early (19)80s?" Well, today's students see the (19)60s as not very attractive, because sex, drugs and rock and roll get you into trouble. And if you are interested in a career, you can get off track awfully easily with all these distractions and with movements and marches. Those students of the (19)60s looked pretty bedraggled. They did not bathe all that much or did not cut their hair, so it is quite a reversal then. And it is not that they are unsympathetic, because the values, especially the women, it is interesting, women students now, if you ask whether they are feminists, they will say, "Absolutely not, I am not a feminist." Then you talk a bit more and you will find that they intend to have a career. They know about the women's movement of the (19)60s and (19)70s. They appreciate what that women's movement did for them, but they do not want to be known as feminist. They appreciate, they want the rights that were earned. They want equal pay for equal work. They want careers to be open to them, but they do not want to be identified as radicals. It is really quite remarkable.

SM (00:21:00):
Could you comment on the social consciousness was the main positive? What was, in your eyes, the main negative?

SH (00:21:06):
I think self-indulgence, without a doubt, just self-indulgence. In two senses. One, if you come to see middle class values as imprisoning and stultifying and you want to open up life to all of its possibilities, it is very easy to tell yourself that LSD is going to do it. And it is very easy to tell yourself, "If I lie around and take drugs and drink booze and do everything else that feels good, that I am really part of the revolutionary movement." When actually what you are doing is indulging yourself just and not doing anybody any good, much less yourself. The other self-indulgence that is there is really responsible for causing those social justice movements to fragment at the end of the (19)60s and disappear. And that is, the sense that this is a revolutionary moment and we are the revolutionary vanguard and we are going to bring off the revolution, and therefore violence is okay, and uncivil behavior is okay. Treating other people badly is okay because they are not likely to be in the revolutionary vanguard. That is kind of political self-indulgence, pseudo revolutionary self-deception.

SM (00:22:40):
One of the slogans from that period, I can remember the Peter Max poster that was very popular when I was a grad student in Ohio State, and I had it on my door and people always talked about it. We had even talks about it in my room, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful."

SH (00:23:02):
Right-right, yes.

SM (00:23:06):
And when I see Peter Max now with all the millions that he has made and all of his paintings, Peter Max has become quite of an entrepreneur off of this. But he would be interesting in terms of his comments.

SH (00:23:20):
Well, the other, sort of the irony, the same vein, the irony of the music of the (19)60s, which is closely identified with protest movements. There is Bob Dylan with consciously political lyrics to his songs, but the music in general is part of this (19)60s feeling of, do your own thing, live for the moment, spontaneity, do not recognize any constraints. Of course, the music groups that were making that music and identifying with the forces of change were practicing 18 hours a day, were rigorously disciplined, were engaged in a catalyst economic activity, and were making tons of money by all of their effort and work. So, I do not know whether that is [inaudible], but it is quite interesting.

SM (00:24:21):
And we will look at the Grateful Dead and the impact that they have had ongoing. In 1970, I get back because this is your interview, but I just want to make a comment. In 1970, I was a senior SUNY Binghamton, and the night of April 30th I broke my arm and almost had an amputated, that was in a serious accident, and I was graduating on May 17th. And so that was the night of the Cambodia speech that President Nixon gave at nine o'clock, and I was in the operating room for five hours. Then I was in the hospital for nine straight days and I made out fine and went to my graduation and everything. And Bruce Deering was our president and the great philosopher, but I missed a concert that was at SUNY Binghamton, which was the Grateful Dead in the brand-new gymnasium on May 2nd, 1970.

SH (00:25:08):
Right in the middle of all this?

SM (00:25:11):
Right in the middle. It was after the invasion, after the bombing of Cambodia. And it was two days before Kent State on May 4th, and I was not there. And you cannot buy that tape, except through the Grateful Dead website. And a student brought this to my attention and the Grateful Dead considered this one of their top five concerts of all time-

SH (00:25:35):
Wow.

SM (00:25:35):
...because of the intensity of the audience in the new gym. And I graduated in that gym only 15 days later. Well, you bring up the invasion there and everything that happened and the violence, because that was happening in Binghamton too. Could you talk your thoughts on how important the anti-war movement, particularly the college students, the anti-war movement was not ending the war in Vietnam.

SH (00:26:03):
Controversy was subject. I have asked my students the same thing and I get various answers, each of which has good rationale behind it. I think that it did have an effect, especially after the Tet Offensive when the credibility gap was so evident and the mainstream public opinion began to turn against the war. It was another year before majority of Americans were telling posters that they were anti-war. But it was, the anti-war sentiment went up into the 40-percentile range right after Tet in the spring of (19)68, (19)68 was the turning point. The phenomenon that I find extremely interesting is that as the public was... And I do not think, it is not just Tet in the credibility yet, I do not think the public would have reacted that way if there had not been already a constant anti-war movement that was reminding people that the war might be a bad thing, might be wrong. It was not just that it was on television. It was that there was an opposition group there constantly saying, "We should not be there," for a range of reasons. When it then becomes clear that our leaders had been lying to us, then the public reacts very strongly. Now, the interesting thing is that as the public began to agree with the anti-war protestors, the antagonism toward those protestors also went up. That is the public did not tell themselves, "You are right. I am going to agree with you." They said, "I am anti-war and I do not like those anti-war protestors either." And that divides the country in a very interesting way. Seems true about the urban riots that were going on in that period as well. Urban riots, oddly enough made the public feel that something had to be done, that there were injustices in the urban centers of the country that could not be tolerated and that the population would not tolerate in that circumstance. And we could not go on having major riots in urban centers every summer. At the same time this is the origin of the law and order movement basically. I mean, one of Nixon's big campaign slogans in the 1968 is Law and Order. Because the public both was prepared for social policies, public policies that would address the complaints of the rioters. They were also wanting to repress the rioters at the same time. It was the same sort of dichotomous reaction, simultaneously dichotomous reaction. "I am going to do something to respond to your complaints, but I am going to put you in jail as well."

SM (00:29:34):
When the best history books, I got a lot of, I am going around here, but when the best history books are written on the boomer generation, and oftentimes the best history is you as a historian know that oftentimes the best history books are 50 years after an event. Some of the best books on World War II are coming out now. And so hence, 25 years from now when books are being written on the boomer generation in the (19)60s, what do you think they are going to say? How are the historians going to define the boomers and that generation in that period?

SH (00:30:07):
If you take the boomer generation to begin to make its effect in the (19)60s when they got to college, then I think there are two things that will be said. One is that in 1960s it was a watershed in American history. It really did change America fundamentally, shifted the values. The Immigration Act of 1965 was a response to the new consciousness of the 1960s. Immigration Act did away with the National Quota system and allowed a much more diverse immigration into the country. That is when Latin Americans and Asian Americans began to arrive in much greater numbers. Now, we are a much more diverse society than we were in the 1950s, and we are a society that has pluralism as one of our guiding tenets now, in a way that was not true in the (19)50s or before, fundamentally changed. The Civil rights movement fundamentally changed both the public policy and American attitudes towards discrimination. In all sorts of ways the (19)60s really do mark a new beginning. And since there was a conservative reaction against all those changes, we are still living with the politics that was created by the conservative reaction. I mean, the new conservative movement, both the neocons but also the religious right and the current conservative hegemony in the United States begins as a reaction against the (19)60s, so we are still living with the (19)60s in a way. Because the new conservatism has its agenda undoing the (19)60s, if that makes sense, so we are still living with it.

SM (00:32:18):
What are your thoughts as to why? Because the conservative or the people to the right know that if they really go toe to toe with liberals that they will lose? That they always have to go back to find the Achilles heel within the, and that is really a symptom of the whole body? So, they are going to try to destroy it in any way they can?

SH (00:32:42):
And they do it kind of surreptitiously in a way. Because if you simply look at, this is what give you a data, if you will. If you look at the policy positions of Ronald Reagan on social issues all the way through the (19)80s when he was president, there was a majority of Americans who was against all of them basically. Yet he prevailed basically. And the same thing is true now. I will make a partisan remark because it makes the point, and I am not sure I believe all this. But the Medicare Act that was just passed amid great fanfare yesterday probably is the first step in dismantling Medicare. But it is sold as a great step forward, makes it much more complicated, makes it somewhat privatized. But this is what the conservative movement has learned over the last 30 years is that if you go frontally against policy positions that are liberal, you lose, because most Americans agree with those liberal policy positions. So, you find ways to chip away that are not noticed basically, or can be camouflaged in some way. Now, that sounds partisan, but actually you find some conservatives who say that. David Brooks, for instance, a conservative I have a lot of respect for, says that the building up of these think tanks, conservative think tanks from the (19)70s, (19)80s and (19)90s has given the conservatives not only a lot of intellectual depth to what they are doing, but some very intelligent ways of dismantling or attacking the liberal positions.

SM (00:34:58):
I interviewed Dr. Lee Edwards down at the Heritage Foundation, and he teaches a course on the (19)60s as well, and at the Catholic University. And in there he wants to make sure that the conservative movement against the Vietnam War is also known.

SH (00:35:13):
It is interesting.

SM (00:35:14):
Because there has been a couple books, or at least one really top book, I think at Rutgers University Press that has really gone into detail about how the conservative students of the (19)60s were against the war, and they have been excluded a lot in a lot of the history books, so Pete brought that up and talked about it. And I do not know if there is any thoughts you have because of whether that group has been excluded?

SH (00:35:39):
Well, not really excluded, but his feeling that they had been excluded is an example of a conservative reaction. But it is interesting, this is a good example of how a position that claims support across the ideological spectrum and across the class spectrum is seen by conservatives who have the other position who are against it. Is illegitimate, I am not saying this well. But the anti-war movement, there was a very strong Catholic anti-war movement. The Berrigan brothers-

SM (00:36:21):
Oh yeah.

SH (00:36:21):
...for goodness sake, were out there way out in front of everybody, just as the Catholic Worker Movement has been there. So, the anti-war movement was much more complex than the pro-Viet Cong stereotype that is pasted on it by the current day conservatives, if you will. There are other examples of the same sort of thing. The women's movement really irritates a lot of conservatives. But if you ask, I mean, you take a poll of American women and they support all of the fundamental elements of women's rights, even if they do not want to be identified as a feminist.

SM (00:37:19):
You were given the qualities, the strengths and weaknesses of the boomers, how would you feel about a generation of students? And I can remember being college campuses and my peers saying this, "That we are the most unique generation in American history. We are going to be the change agent for the betterment of society. We are going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, bring peace to the world. Money is going to be secondary to serving others." This was an attitude that a lot of the young people had at that time. Your thoughts on that kind of an attitude that they had then, and whether in their personal lives they really have fulfilled this as they have gotten older? Because in a Fortune 500 magazine article about in the last two years, again, it was a way of attacking the boomer generation is that some of the wealthiest people are boomers and it goes on and on. And in reality they fell in just like their parents, trying to make money and get ahead in the world and serving others became very secondary. Is that true?

SH (00:38:30):
Yes.

SM (00:38:30):
Okay.

SH (00:38:33):
In a word, all right? Hubris might be used. But I think this goes back to the 15 percent, 85 percent split. Those sympathetic 85 percent folks were always headed toward a normal life and a career. They just had these ideals that they also wanted to honor along the way. So, it is no surprise that they reverted to middle class ways and values. One thing that I wanted to say earlier was that the boomers are so powerful, not only by creating the (19)60s, but they are a huge market. So, you track them through their lifecycle, and you will find American tastes changing in response to the demand, if you will, of the boomers wherever they are in the lifecycle. It is such a huge market that manufacturers and advertisers focus on them. When they get to be middle-aged, in their 40s and 50s and luxury goods go up, they are selling these huge gas governed vehicles, because that is what the boomers want. They move to suburbia, so you have got all sorts of things catering to suburbanites. Everywhere now they are on the verge of retirement. And Medicare is going to be a huge fight, because the boomers are going to catch on and will insist on.

SM (00:40:19):
Do you feel that they will change old age-

SH (00:40:21):
Yes, they would.

SM (00:40:24):
That development? It is interesting whether the boomers are going to retire in a way that their parents may have retired. By the retirement meaning they are going off and taking trips and moving to Florida and that kind of stuff. Will they really never retire? They may retire from their job, but they will always be giving back to society in private. I am sure we do not know that, the answer to that yet, but-

SH (00:40:48):
We are taking from society.

SM (00:40:48):
We are taking from, I am kind of wondering.

SH (00:40:53):
Opportunity. Well, no, that is a really good question, because retirement may change.

SM (00:41:00):
One of the issues of this whole thing was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial has become a very important symbol for healing within the Vietnam veteran population and certainly within the families of Vietnam vets. And Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal a Nation, which is this entity being a non-political entity, just paying tribute to those who served and caring about those who served. Your thoughts on whether this nation has healed since the (19)60s? I know you have brought up the divisions between conservatives and liberals in the political arena, but the overall healing process from the tremendous divisions of that war did in this society. I preface this by saying that some of the people that I have interviewed thought that we were near a second civil war at certain times with the riots, especially in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, and then started to wane in -73. But just your thoughts on that?

SH (00:41:57):
Well, there is still wounds there that have not healed. If you think about, what did Newt Gingrich say about the Clintons in 1992 when they were running for office? He called them the counter cultural McGovernics, which is to say they are right out of, they are tainted with communism and right out of the (19)60s with no values at all. And they probably voted for McGovern, as indeed they did. So, if it was useful in (19)92 to invoke, to taint the Clintons with that aura of being countercultural-

SM (00:42:42):
Try this here. Okay, just called slow.

SH (00:42:49):
Then I think the (19)60s are still alive. The other place to look is in the lessons of the Vietnam War are still very much on our minds and in our military policy, so we worry about that all the time. But we just violated one of the biggest lessons of the Vietnam War is to have an exit strategy.

SM (00:43:13):
Healing, that wall was, I think in (19)82 when it was supposed to heal the generation. I do not know if you have ever thought about this, probably had, as a person who teaches the (19)60s, when people go down to that wall, especially those who are against the war, the feelings that must go through their mind.

SH (00:43:32):
Well, I give you my own experience. I was in Washington for a higher education meeting sometime in the three or four years after it was up. Had never seen it, had sort of seen pictures, but they do not give you a good notion of it. And I am a jogger, or was then, so I went out for my morning run and ran down, going to the mall, and actually stumbled across it. I did not know where it was, and just suddenly I was there in front of it. And I was moved to tears. I just thought it was so effective, and all those names of people who gave their lives. For the nation, actually, in my opinion that was the wrong war. We had no national interest in being there. There was no way to win it. We should not have been there. But those folks who went were doing their patriotic duty. And I think I would have done the same thing in that age. And for me, as an old sort of anti-war person, it was, I think, doubly effective, because I saw the tragedy and sadness of it all. And I respected all those names that were there. I also loved the way it is done. And the fact that the two arms of the wall point to the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument is as if to say, "This is the nation." The meaning of the nation is captured in the symbols that are involved in this association between the Vietnam Memorial Wall and the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument.

SM (00:45:34):
Beautiful observation, because when you talk about your observation and how when you were running and you came to the wall, I interviewed Tom Hayden who was under campus a couple weeks back, and it was hard to get an interview with, he was on the way to the airport. But the most prophetic comment he made during that entire 35-minute interview was the fact that he looked at, it is the way he looked at the wall. He looked at on it as like that is the casket. That the wall coming together with the grass on top, the grass over the casket, and the wall comes together like this, and that is the body within the casket. And of course, all the people who served. So he looked upon it like a cemetery.

SH (00:46:25):
Yeah, I do not think that is right.

SM (00:46:31):
That is the way Tom looked at it. But I thought that was a prophetic statement from him, because he had been, and of course he did not regret anything he ever did-

SH (00:46:39):
Yeah, that is true.

SM (00:46:40):
...in the anti-war movement.

SH (00:46:42):
Well, let me, one other observation about the wall. His reaction gets the juices going a bit, but if you walk along the wall, you are walking into it, but you also walk out of it, and both are correct. And the other thing is, if you stand in front of the wall, there are two ways to focus your eyes. You could look at the names which are etched in the wall, but then if you shift your focus a little bit to the wall, you are looking into the wall as a mirror. First you see the names, and then you realize that you are also looking at yourself, looking at the names which connects the individual onlooker to the names and what they mean.

SM (00:47:36):
Your thoughts on boomer generation or kids, and whether-

SH (00:47:41):
The children of the-

SM (00:47:42):
The children of boomers, which obviously is Generation X, and actually a few of the kids who had kids later in life with a current group. Just your thoughts on the concept of empowerment, because one of the concepts that I do not see, and I am just, this is my prejudice, it is just me, is I do not see a sense of empowerment among students. Not only it either desire to have power or even if they were able to have power, how to use it. And just the whole concept of whether parents have actually sat down with their kids and talked to them about this era and that your voice counts, that you are empowered.

SH (00:48:23):
I think you are right. The parents have not done that. It is interesting, and in my seminar, I hear so often from students who go back and talk to their parents. These are fairly recent students, because the parents of the students I have gotten now in for the last five years have lived through the (19)60s on a college campus generally. My students go back and talk to their parents and they come back and report that they, first, it was fulfilling. It was wonderful to talk to your parents about something that you can share and that the parents have the experience and the kids have, it is kind of the knowledge, the book knowledge, so it brings them together. But the students report that they learn things about their parents that they had never heard before, never knew before. I think the parents have not talked to their students very much about what they did and where were you during the war, dad, sort of thing. And I think that you are right, maybe they should have. And the other observation about current day students, I think you are right as well. Their goals seem to be much more private, personal. They do have a vague sense of wanting to be of service to society. That they do want to give, but it is generally, they do not want to change the world so much as to do a little good in it while they are pursuing their own careers.

SM (00:50:25):
The issue of trust is something that really did have an effect on students of the (19)60s, and even all young people in the (19)60s. As a college student and for other people I have talked to, look at what happened with Lyndon Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin. I know what has been written about it. McNamara, the numbers game during the Vietnam War. You can even go back to Eisenhower and the U2 incident, and standing before the American public and lying. You can talk to how much was President Kennedy involved in the killing of Diem? And then of course, Richard Nixon, the Enemies List.

SH (00:51:13):
I am no crook.

SM (00:51:16):
I am no crook. The whole issue of trust in leaders that has been written about were, boomers did not trust any leader, whether they were in the White House or the head of a church. But how, did they pass this on to their kids, and do today's young people trust? Is this one of the weaknesses of our society, a lack of trust in anyone who is in a position of leader? And you would know more than anyone being a university president, not because you are a university president, but because you are a leader. Just a leader.

SH (00:51:50):
This is the point of attack for a lot of conservatives. Now, the worst thing about the (19)60s, the argument is that the (19)60s taught America to distrust authority. Not that authority is always right, but you do have orderly procedures in society for making decisions and you have to have leaders, people who have a bit more authority than others, who get things done for the community. That was certainly true. I mean, their analysis, the (19)60s is absolutely right, the (19)60s was anti-authority. It was the anti-leadership virus, as some have called it. That does not seem to have lasted. I think you are absolutely right in that you can see a kind of atomization of society since the (19)60s. It started in the (19)60s, and you could actually trace it in public opinion polls to today that people are less engaged in their communities in various ways. This is the Bowling Alone argument issue.

SM (00:53:05):
Oh, yeah, following-

SH (00:53:07):
Putnam's book and what has come out of it. And I think he had something right, whether he made the argument in the most convincing way, and I think he was on to something. There is this disaggregation of society, gated communities, suburbs. We are increasingly segregated by class, as well as by ethnicity and race. And there is less that brings us together as whole communities to solve problems. I think that is a problem for us. And it is in the wake of the (19)60s that that has developed.

SM (00:53:53):
You would not agree though with the conservatives that the boomers are responsible for this, and so they continue to use that. When in reality, some of the people today who are leadership roles, you cannot trust because of the things they do.

SH (00:54:09):
I wish, I mean, part of me says, "I wish the public was a bit more suspicious of the leaders." But there is no evidence that Clinton, they certainly distrusted. But there was a huge campaign to get the public to do that. Reagan did not suffer from it. The first President Bush did not suffer from it. Carter did not suffer from it. He made other-

SM (00:54:33):
How about President Bush? Students that you see every day here at Penn, do they trust this president?

SH (00:54:42):
I think it would be better to say they do not distrust him. They do not see any reason not to think what he is saying is, I mean, they are not outraged by him, which I think in the (19)60s, if President Bush, if the students in the (19)60s were on the campus today, they would be marching and ridiculing and pointing out the problems.

SM (00:55:10):
I think you mentioned this earlier in the interview, but if you could say it again, when did the (19)60s begin? What was the magic moment, very magic, you think the (19)60s began?

SH (00:55:21):
Well, I will have two answers. In general, they began for me with the Brown decision in 1954, because the civil rights movement set the paradigm for the whole (19)60s. And they end with Nixon's resignation, because even though we still were involved in Vietnam for another year, it was a minimum involvement and the fate was already filled, basically. So, it is Nixon's resignation that ends an era. And the (19)70s are spent trying to put the country back together, not only from the (19)60s, but from Watergate, which also destroyed trust in authority. That is one answer. I think that is the right answer. But the way people generally think about the (19)60s is the sex, drugs, and rock and roll and radicalism and unkempt students, I think begins with the sit-in movement in 1960. And because that is also the time when the Students for Democratic Society is being formed, 1961. Tom Hayden you mentioned was the leader of that, and they were aware of the sit-in movement and the civil rights movement in the south, so they are modeling themselves a bit after the civil rights movement. But that is the first sort of organized general attack on American society as a whole.

SM (00:56:55):
You had mentioned some of the simplistic approaches people use to describe things. One that comes on more and more is the fact that the (19)60s began with the assassination of John Kennedy. And 1963, because really the first three years were like the (19)50s when Kennedy was the first president. And I interviewed Marilyn Young down in New York City, and she said the (19)60s began with the Beat generation.

SH (00:57:21):
Well-

SM (00:57:22):
And she talked about that, because of they were different.

SH (00:57:29):
I think there is an argument.

SM (00:57:29):
And she said it is the (19)50s. It is those bad groups.

SH (00:57:30):
If you take that view that it starts with the Brown decision, you get the Beats because that is when they are getting going as well. In fact, that is the year, when was On the Road published? That is about then. (19)56.

SM (00:57:45):
(19)57, I think (19)56, (19)57.

SH (00:57:47):
Yeah, you are right.

SM (00:57:49):
I basically am going to the next part of my interview, which is basically just listing... How are we doing time wise?

SH (00:57:55):
[inaudible] now.

SM (00:57:58):
I am just going to list some names for, I am going to do the second slide here, because this is pretty well done. Thing that I did not ask you-

SH (00:58:13):
No, this has been a working conversation.

SM (00:58:15):
Yeah-

SH (00:58:16):
You are into this.

SM (00:58:17):
Well, I am really into it, but I want to give back to society and I want to do a really good book. And I am doing a 100 interviews. Someone said, "Why a 100?" I am doing a 100.

SH (00:58:27):
Yeah, thanks for [inaudible].

SM (00:58:30):
If you could just respond to these names with a few comments, and I will start right with Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda.

SH (00:58:36):
Oh, well, gee, I have some respect for, Tom Hayden is the founding member of the Students for Democratic Society, which had a democratic focus to it. The Port Huron Statement laid out a critique of America in the 1950s basically that needed to be made. They belonged to a wing of the 1960s that I did not belong to, the going to... I was against the war, but I was never pro-Viet Cong. And so I think pitching the anti-war rhetoric in terms of being pro-North Vietnam or pro-Viet Cong or pro-communist, I thought was wrong both technically and substantively.

SM (00:59:42):
When Lewis Fuller, before he passed away, he was one of the ones responsible for getting Bill Clinton to the wall, when we came, and I think James Crux for that too. Bringing some people, doing the best they could to heal. And he was pretty open to a lot of ideas. I did not know if it would have been interesting if he had stayed alive, if McNamara might have been invited, or even a Jane Fonda or a Tom Hayden would be. And I have gotten to know so many Vietnam vets now, and I have gotten to talk to them, that the two people that they would never want at the wall are McNamara and Fonda, it is just the hatred against them. In fact, I will get back to the interview, but I have been to the Vietnam Memorial for the last 10 years Memorial Day and Veterans Day. And three times, in retrospect the book has been placed at the wall with bullets through it.

SH (01:00:39):
You talk about which book?

SM (01:00:41):
In Retrospect, the McNamara. And I have pictures of it one year, it is three times over 10 years, but it is probably the same person doing it. But they take the book and they put bullets through it, and then they leave it at the wall, so it is pretty strong.

SH (01:00:54):
Yeah, I understand that.

SM (01:00:56):
The black power individuals, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, those [inaudible]-

SH (01:01:02):
Oh, the Black Panther people?

SM (01:01:03):
Yep.

SH (01:01:05):
I will answer about black power. I think black power destroyed the civil rights movement basically. And was, for America was the wrong answer at the wrong time. The Black Panthers, I would not go so far as to adopt the conservative critique, which is that the Panthers were hustled. But I guess they were accepted by the black community as their champions, some black communities as the champions of the black community. And they were doing some good things in the communities. I thought they developed into a revolutionary class-oriented movement, they did not include me.

SM (01:01:57):
How about the Yippies, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and the whole Yippie group?

SH (01:02:01):
Entertaining. And they were effective in making Americans think about the issues that were before the country at that time.

SM (01:02:12):
Any thoughts, when you talk about beyond the Yippies, when you look at Abbie Hoffman's life and when he died in Bucks County with a note, when he committed suicide, "No one is listening to me anymore."

SH (01:02:24):
Yeah, sad.

SM (01:02:24):
Is that-

SH (01:02:26):
Well, it indicates that he was hooked on celebrity, but that celebrity is a failing of American society. We are radically equalitarian, except we love celebrities. And if you get used to it, if you get hooked on celebrity, then you are like coming down, I guess. I have never been high.

SM (01:02:50):
How about Daniel and Philip Berger? I have interviewed Daniel for this project, Philip and Daniel Berger.

SH (01:02:55):
You just have to admire their devotion to their principles. And those are not my tactics, but those are men of conscience, and they live by their conscience.

SM (01:03:10):
How about Dr. Benjamin Spock?

SH (01:03:12):
Oh, the man who created the (19)60s?

SM (01:03:16):
With his baby book.

SH (01:03:20):
I guess that was raised out of stock, though.

SM (01:03:23):
I have his first edition of that book. I found it in a used bookstore and I could not believe it was first edition-

SH (01:03:30):
Oh, I have not really thought about him. I do not think that is fair to accuse him of raising the Boomers wrong. And I see him as a sympathetic figure. I mean, he joined the anti-war movement and used his celebrity for a good purpose.

SM (01:03:48):
How about Daniel Ellsberg?

SH (01:03:51):
Oh, I think Ellsberg did the country a huge service when he wrote the Pentagon Papers to light, so I have got respect for him as well. I think he is one of the good ones.

SM (01:04:09):
But the politicians of the year, I will start with certainly Martin Luther King and Malcolm X.

SH (01:04:14):
Well, it depends on which Malcolm X you are talking about. The later Malcolm X I admire, that is the Malcolm X who solve the problems of the world with human problems rather than racial problems. This is after he went to Mecca and became less of a race conscious critic of America and more of a human rights leader in a way. And his story is compelling, his life story. And indeed, the book, the autobiography of Malcolm X, is one of the great documents of American letters. Martin Luther King I have, even despite the personal flaws I have understanding admiration for the great man, one of the great figures of the 20th century.

SM (01:05:10):
What do you think of his stand on the Vietnam War?

SH (01:05:12):
Principled. That is people, especially people within the civil rights movement with the thought of King as being that bold enough and not radical to accommodating, because he was doing business with the White House, for goodness's sake, which was a no-no for real radicals. But his stance on the war, even Stokely Carmichael admired. And I thought it was, as everything he did in public was a principled stance and took a lot of guts because it caused him a lot of status, a lot of position in American life.

SM (01:05:52):
Your thoughts of that really? Of the blank leadership that included Dr. King, James Farmer, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, and of course, John Lewis?

SH (01:06:00):
John Lewis statute, a special affection for, I think he is a man of just unyielding integrity, who is stuck by his principles all the way through, even though it got him tossed out of SNCC. And we will see, the metaphor here is that Stokely Carmichael ousted John Lewis in a coup, in 1966 it was. And Carmichael became the chairman of SNCC. Two years later, one year later Carmichael left. Two years later SNCC did not exist anymore. John Lewis is now a member of Congress. There you are.

SM (01:06:45):
Stokely went off to Africa, I think, died of cancer.

SH (01:06:47):
Exactly.

SM (01:06:48):
Changed his name and everything else. The politicians, Lyndon Johnson.

SH (01:06:54):
Tragic figure, both a great man on the upside and on the downside, man of gargantuan appetites.

SM (01:07:02):
Hubert Humphrey.

SH (01:07:04):
Sad figure, because he was the man of great principal. And as vice president he had to compromise that principle. And I think it crushed him.

SM (01:07:16):
Barry Goldwater.

SH (01:07:18):
I am not among those who think that he is a person of integrity and therefore one should have affection for him. I just think he was a retrovirus.

SM (01:07:35):
Richard Nixon.

SH (01:07:36):
An evil man.

SM (01:07:37):
[inaudible].

SH (01:07:43):
A crook.

SM (01:07:46):
And Jerry Ford.

SH (01:07:48):
Oh, a decent man who tried to bring America together and did the right thing. I thought his partnering of Nixon was the right thing to do, and that probably caused him any chance of going further in public life.

SM (01:08:01):
And Ronald Reagan.

SH (01:08:03):
Oh, I have trouble with Ronald Reagan, because I recognized that he was a strong and effective president, yet I think his policies were bad for America.

SM (01:08:15):
How about his role as the governor of California?

SH (01:08:18):
I do not know enough about that. He fired Clark Kerr who just died. And I thought, I think Kerr is one of the great figures of higher education in America, so I know I have a bit of trouble. They said, I had two opinions about Reagan.

SM (01:08:33):
John F. Kennedy.

SH (01:08:38):
I am not captured by the Camelot myth entirely, though I think he came to be committed to civil rights. He was not originally, and it was not until 1963, probably that. But he became committed to doing something about the status of blacks, even though he had been saying the right thing all along. He was fundamentally interested in foreign policy. That is where he spent his time, and he did extremely well there. But if you test for leadership is recognizing the most pressing problems of your organization at your time, and then mobilizing support to identifying also a solution, something to be done about it, and then mobilizing support for that solution. He fails on the domestic side until quite late in a way that Lyndon Johnson, of course, succeeded on the domestic side and then was the masters on the international side.

SM (01:09:34):
Bobby Kennedy.

SH (01:09:35):
I was a Kennedy supporter in 1968, rather than a McCarthy supporter, because I thought Bobby Kennedy had grown, had become passionately committed to civil rights and social justice, and had the toughness to win the nomination and the election.

SM (01:10:04):
People from the, actually, I want to say Robert McNamara too, because you have got to mention that name in the (19)60s.

SH (01:10:09):
I see. McNamara, see is a tragic figure also, who was, and his tragic flaw was his commitment to rational analysis of policy. And it led him into thinking that the war could be fought by the numbers and that we were winning. I do not know what to think about the fact that he understood that we were losing and could not win, and resigned and said nothing about it until 30 years later.

SM (01:10:41):
Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and some of the women leaders, the early-

SH (01:10:45):
Oh.

SM (01:10:46):
The women's movement.

SH (01:10:48):
Heroic or heriotic, or whatever the term is for their time. I think they mobilized and created a movement that made changes in American life that needed to be made.

SM (01:11:01):
Muhammad Ali.

SH (01:11:08):
Oh. Actually, you have got to admire Muhammad Ali. He had principles, and he became a Muslim and he lived by those principles that he adopted. It cost him dearly in money and in fame as well. And he was not only a great boxer, he was a great entertainer, but he was a great boxer. Just a great boxer.

SM (01:11:33):
Speaking, he was out for at least two years, not three.

SH (01:11:40):
At the peak of his career. And those careers are not very long anyway.

SM (01:11:41):
George McGovern.

SH (01:11:44):
Oh, I would like to think well of him. He was not a good candidate in (19)72, though I certainly voted for him. But gee, I think he was on the right side, but did not have the wherewithal to bring leadership to the Democratic Party.

SM (01:12:10):
Eugene McCarthy.

SH (01:12:13):
The opposite figure. But it is pretty much the same. I thought you have to admire him for stepping forward in this fall of 1967 and agreeing to challenge the sitting Democratic, the president of his own party. That took guts and commitment, but he was always a bit mystical and witty. It was not clear that he really wanted to be president. Even some of his close supporters, his campaign workers say that he kind of quit in the summer of (19)68 before the convention, quit running, because he wanted to bring a message to the people, which he did, but he did not really want to win presidency badly enough to do what needed to be done.

SM (01:13:05):
You did not mention the music of the (19)60s. When you think of Janice Chaplin, Jimmy Hendricks, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, Baez, The Folk Singers, Phil Ochs, goes on and on. Arlo Guthrie, what do you-

SH (01:13:20):
Amazing.

SM (01:13:20):
When you think of, I mean the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

SH (01:13:25):
Just so much talent.

SM (01:13:26):
How important was that to an era? We hear about the big band being the music of the World War II generation.

SH (01:13:32):
Yeah, I think it was huge. Even though a lot of the lyrics coming out of the folk music, the lyrics are not necessarily specifically political, but there is something community building and even subversive in all that music, even though the Beatles were rather consciously non-revolutionary. I mean, we do not want to make a revolution. So whereas the Stones of course were their opposite numbers. If you look at the lyrics that they were singing, they were going in different directions. But if you look at their music and its effect on the audience, they were both making for a generation that differentiated itself from those that went before, so it made your boomer generation that music.

SM (01:14:32):
I have to mention one of the Beatles, John Lennon, because he was killed in 1980 and he was like one of the tops on Richard Nixon's enemies list. Just your thoughts on John Lennon separate from all the other Beatles. Just him as a person?

SH (01:14:47):
He is interesting. And he grew more than the other Beatles, I think, during his fame, and that is very hard to do when you are caught up in ... Their career as a group was relatively short. But he was a first-rate musician with an inquiring mind that led him in quite different directions from the other Beatles. And you got to admire that. And maybe Nixon was right. He was the most dangerous one because he was thinking.

SM (01:15:19):
He wanted him out of the country so bad.

SH (01:15:21):
Yeah.

SM (01:15:22):
I remember the Dick Cavett show when he was on there with Yoko Ono, is just a classic hour interview. And that is what Nixon was trying to get rid of. I am going to end the interview with a couple just terms from that era, just your thoughts on them? SDS.

SH (01:15:38):
Students for a Democratic Society, the Radical Wing of the movement outside the civil rights movement. A very small cadre of activists who made more change than their numbers would have predicted so you have got to think that they were brave. I did not agree with everything they did.

SM (01:16:03):
How about the Weatherman?

SH (01:16:06):
I think they were terrible. They were a part of that self-deluding, pseudo revolutionary group that did the American left a huge disservice by thinking that violence could work in America.

SM (01:16:24):
The communes.

SH (01:16:26):
Some of those were brave experiments in an alternative way of living. America has been the host country for a huge number of utopias, utopian communities. Intentional communities they came to be called in the 19th century and in the 20th century. None of them lasted very long, but the [inaudible] being an example of one that lasted longer. If you think of the Mormons as one of those utopias, you could say they lasted longer. But those experimental intentional communities are quite useful for democracy, because they try out ideas.

SM (01:17:07):
Counterculture.

SH (01:17:10):
Upside and downside. It is a good thing to challenge accepted values and to try to stretch the limits of individual freedom, which they did. It is a bad thing to think you can do that by self-indulgence of all kinds.

SM (01:17:35):
Let me get down there, Chicago Eight.

SH (01:17:38):
Oh they were, I am glad they were. Well, that is a more complicated thing, because they did go to Chicago with the intention of creating a ruckus, though they became the victims of a police riot more than the other way around. So, I was, again, the history is correct to see them as more heroic than what would be the opposite turn, the villain of the peace.

SM (01:18:18):
Yeah, that 1968 year was quite a year with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and the Republican and the Democratic conventions.

SH (01:18:29):
Yeah. And the Tet Offensive.

SM (01:18:29):
Yes.

SH (01:18:29):
And all that.

SM (01:18:30):
If you were to pick a year that you think was the most, what was, I would not say most violent, but they had the greatest impact on America during the... Would (19)68 be that year?

SH (01:18:39):
(19)68 would be it beyond a question, yeah.

SM (01:18:43):
Kent State.

SH (01:18:44):
Tragedy that maybe caused America to stop and think a bit more carefully about what the war was doing to the society. So, those deaths may not have been in vain.

SM (01:19:00):
Chris Jackson State. You always have to include that in there too.

SH (01:19:03):
Same stuff.

SM (01:19:04):
Because they died a couple weeks later. And last but not least are just some of the figures that were linked to the war itself. The leaders of Vietnam, which was General Q and General Cao Kỳ. They are part of the (19)60s, the Vietnam leadership. Just your thoughts on them?

SH (01:19:20):
Oh. Well, they were corrupt and autocratic and that is why there was no way we could win the war, because we did not... The South Vietnamese society could not have been democratized in the same way.

SM (01:19:40):
And I cannot end the interview without talking about the space program. You talk about the (19)60s and-

SH (01:19:44):
The upside of-

SM (01:19:45):
The upside of the (19)60s. Could you talk about space program and a few more of the upsides?

SH (01:19:53):
Well, it is ironic. There is so many other things happening in the (19)60s that are unambiguously wonderful. I like the landing on the moon, the space program in general. Art was, the music we have already talked about. But classical music also was, contemporary music was terrific in the (19)60s. Art was also going through a revolution. Some great figures emerged in the (19)60s. The economy was doing extremely well. So, this was a time of huge prosperity. In fact, it is probably true that the (19)60s could not have happened, except in a period of great prosperity. Have always thought that the college students who did get involved in movements and protests of various kinds could do so because they assumed that their future was going to be secure. That America was great and the economy was going to grow and they were going to be educated and they could always do very well. So they could take time out.

SM (01:21:10):
And they will not read about it being put in jail, being on their record and affecting them getting a job, whereas today-

SH (01:21:17):
Yeah, that you-

SM (01:21:18):
No way am I going to do that.

SH (01:21:20):
Yeah, exactly right, wow.

SM (01:21:23):
I think that is about it. There was one other term here, I think. Yeah, I guess the other thing is Watergate. Yeah, just Watergate itself?

SH (01:21:34):
Watergate did not really surprise me because that was suspicious of Nixon all along. It depressed me though, because in one way it depressed me, because the thought that someone who was elected President of the United States and gathered people around him was capable of such subversion of basic values. On the other hand, the system worked, did not it? I mean, we found him out and Republicans and Democrats together drove him from office. That is pretty good.

SM (01:22:14):
In closing, is there anything that I did not mention or ask that you thought I was going to ask today before the interview started?

SH (01:22:20):
No, I think if you would send me a transcript of this, I will just give it to my (19)60 [inaudible].

SM (01:22:27):
Great. This was very good. I guess-

SH (01:22:31):
I enjoyed it, I must say.

SM (01:22:32):
Yeah, thank you very much and if you could, as I could do with closing everything, you would just state your name, and the day, and your title, and-

SH (01:22:42):
Oh.

SM (01:22:43):
Because-

SH (01:22:43):
I am Sheldon Hackney, I am a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. And this is December the 10th.

SM (01:22:53):
December 10th, 2003. And the interviewer has been Steve McKiernan. Thank you. Dr. Hackney, could you comment on Earth Day in 1970?

SH (01:23:05):
The first Earth Day is another one of those things that started in the (19)60s that is evidence of a new consciousness that is dawning there and a new emphasis on saving the world for future generations. I think it is totally admirable.

SM (01:23:24):
Do you think that that is still happening today, or is it falling on the back burner?

SH (01:23:26):
Environmental movement is still there, but it is much more sedate. And I am afraid it is not in the front of our consciousness. I mean, all of our environmental regulations are being stripped of their power at the moment and nobody is saying much.

SM (01:23:41):
Thank you.

(End of Interview)

2003-12-10

Stephen McKiernan

Sheldon Hackney

83:46

English

Binghamton University Libraries

audio/mp4

Sound

Audio

Authors; College teachers; History--United States; University of Pennsylvania; Sailors; Hackney, Sheldon, 1933-2013--Interviews

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