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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-07-30
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Alan Wolfe, 1942-
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Alan Wolfe is a political scientist, scholar, and a sociologist. Dr. Wolfe is a professor of Political Science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation. Wolfe received his Ph.D. from Temple University and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and St. Joseph's University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Alan Wolfe is a political scientist, scholar, and a sociologist. Dr. Wolfe is a professor of Political Science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation. Wolfe received his Ph.D. from Temple University and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and St. Joseph's University.</span>
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Vietnam Veterans; Free speech movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Panthers; Young Lords; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Vietnam Memorial; Emmett Till; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5045,"3":{"1":0},"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Vietnam Veterans; Free speech movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Black Panthers; Young Lords; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Vietnam Memorial; Emmett Till; Vietnam War; Baby boom generation.</span>
Duration
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90:46
Subject LCSH
Political scientists; Sociologists; College teachers; Boston College; Wolfe, Alan, 1942--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Alan Wolfe
Contributor
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Wolfe, Alan, 1942- ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
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audio/wav
Subject
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Political scientists; Sociologists; College teachers; Boston College; Wolfe, Alan, 1942--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Alan Wolfe is a political scientist, scholar, and a sociologist. Dr. Wolfe is a professor of Political Science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Future of American Democracy Foundation. Wolfe received his Bachelor of Science from Temple University and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He also has honorary degrees from Loyola College in Maryland and St. Joseph's University.ph's University.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-07-30
Rights
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In copyright
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.174a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.174b
Date Modified
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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90:46
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-02
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
James Quay
Language
English
Biographical Text
<p>Dr. James Quay grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in English from Lafayette College and then performed two years of alternative service in central Harlem as a conscientious objector. He and his wife moved to California where he earned an MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from UC Berkeley. He was a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and an associate producer with California Public Radio where he co-produced a six-part radio documentary, <em>Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War</em>. He served as executive director of the California Council for the Humanities from 1983 to 2008. Since his retirement, he has been a facilitator for the Center for Courage and Renewal.</p>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
159:49
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"College campus; Activism; Volunteerism; Wounded Knee; Black Panther; Stonewall; Quaker; Kent State; Jackson State; Chicago."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">College campus; Activism; Volunteerism; Wounded Knee; Black Panther; Stonewall; Quaker; Kent State; Jackson State; Chicago.</span>
Subject LCSH
Radio producers and directors; California Council for the Humanities; Quay, James--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: James Quay
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 2 August 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:03):
And again, any questions will be all over the place. They are not going to be in the order that I sent them to you, but I will start out with the first question, which is, in the early years when you were young, what were the greatest influences in your life, your experiences growing up, your high school years prior to going to college, and then of course your college years as well. I think you were at Lafayette College and I know that quite well. And then your experiences at Berkeley. So tell me a little bit about those early years.
JQ (00:00:35):
Well, I grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which is city of about 100,000, maybe 70 miles north of Philadelphia. And it was literally an all-American city. Got that designation, I think, twice, actually. So naturally, the biggest influence for me early on where my parents. My father managed the shoe store and had never gone to college. My mother was a nurse, not working at the time, but she started working to put my brother and I through college, to help with college. And it was a very big tranquil, safe childhood. Remember walking a mile and a half to elementary school without any adult supervision. Nobody worried about it. So I would say my parents early on were strong influences. In high school, a classmate named Earl Lampson was the first... I was a pretty much of a straight arrow, and he was the first person to really go off into some intellectual deep places. He knew about the Beats. He knew about blues and jazz and folk music beyond the standard repertoire. So he was a very strong influence for getting me to see other ways of seeing the world than just the standard, conventional way that I saw. Though I must say, I was not one of those who rebelled against my conventional upbringing. I just saw that there was another way. And in college, my professors were really influential, especially one English professor named James Lusardi.
SM (00:02:48):
How do you spell that?
JQ (00:02:51):
L-U-S-A-R-D-I. He died about six years ago. He was influential not only as a model, I decided what I wanted to be was an English professor, but also he had, there is a kind of easy, sophomoric cynicism that college students can have, or certainly I did at that time. I think it was a leftover from the Cool Beat (19)50s era, and he challenged that. That is really cowardice, and it is really, you are just being a punk. It is just a posture. You are actually trying to protect yourself from... There is something fearful about that posture. And all this was happening about the time that protest against the war was heating up. So we started getting involved more with challenging the [inaudible] administration rules on conduct as well as protesting against the war. So I guess those were the major influences for me, the ones I personally had, anyway.
SM (00:04:11):
Now before we even get into it really in depth, on the Vietnam Memorial website, they have your description of when you first went to the Vietnam Memorial for the first time.
JQ (00:04:23):
I did not even know that.
SM (00:04:26):
Yeah. Well, that is where I first really found out about you. It is on the website, and it is as a conscientious objector from the Vietnam War area. And then of course, it has listed that you were the executive director of the California Council of the Humanities. But go back to those days again when you were young in college. At what juncture did you become a conscientious objector? Was it at Lafayette College, or was it at Berkeley?
JQ (00:04:55):
Oh, no, it was at Lafayette. I did not get to Berkeley until 1970, and I must say by the time I got to Berkeley...
SM (00:05:05):
Can you hold on a second? Someone is trying to reach me. Hold on a second. I am on my cell. Hello? This is him speaking. Good. No-no-no-no. I retired in February of 2009, and I have not worked since. Yep. You bet, bud. Sorry about that.
JQ (00:05:55):
That is all right.
SM (00:05:57):
That was Social Security. I am going to be able to get social security for the first time. They do not believe I am retired. Well, anyway, where were we? Sorry about that. That will be the last interruption.
JQ (00:06:14):
Yeah, it was at Lafayette and not Berkeley that I made that decision. And I think about the evolution. I remember when I turned 18 in September of (19)64, I forgot to go to the draft board to register. I did not go for weeks. And in 1964, that was no big deal. If that had happened, I am guessing, two or three years later, it probably would have been a big deal. And I started paying attention to the war, I would say, in 1966 and (19)67, which would have been my junior year. I had a student deferment, of course, and so I was not thinking about the draft that way, but I was starting to read people like Camus and Thoreau, and think about what my stance was going to be when I graduated. And I toyed for a little while. I knew I did not want to participate in the war. And I toyed a little while about the 1-A-O status, which is conscientious objector, but in the military, usually work as a corpsman or something like that. Decided against that, and I guess it was sometime around Christmas or January that I decided to file as a CO. I remember telling my father, and I do not remember him having any strong objections. He had gone quite willingly to World War II. In fact, I think he volunteered. And it was more that this was a different situation, something he had not encountered. He could tell me how to follow my government's instructions, but he could not tell me how to resist them. So there I turned to by some of my professors and also the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, which was then based Philadelphia, I think still is, and started to think about what my claim would be. And I was lucky because it was a Supreme Court. Mine was not a religious objection. I was raised Lutheran, and the Lutheran Church did not have a passive stance the way that the Quakers do. But there had been a Supreme Court decision, (19)65 or (19)66, a secret decision, I think, in which the justices said it was not necessary for someone to be a member of a peace church, but that the conviction that you had against war had to occupy the same place in your life as it would in that of a belief. Very important. It is funny, a lot of the theologians that were cited in that decision, I then read later freshman required religion course that I took. [inaudible].
SM (00:09:42):
Oh, yes.
JQ (00:09:56):
So basically, my position was that we create our gods out of our own values, and the values that I most agreed with were love and justice. And I do not know if you are familiar with the CO form, but the first question is, "Do you believe in a Supreme Being?" And there are two boxes: yes, no. It is not a particularly sophisticated theological docket. Then the second question is, "What is the nature of your relationship to that between being," I am going to forget the exact wording, "That makes it impossible for you to participate in war?" It says something about your relationship is higher than any human relationship. And I said that since human beings were the carriers of love and justice and all these important values, to kill other human beings would be to more or less kill God, because human beings, in a sense, are the divinity. And that was the basis of my claim. I remember giving it really a lot of thought, and it was accepted in June of (19)68. So I filed it on the first day of spring in 1968, and then it was accepted into...
SM (00:11:51):
Did you have any choice about what you were going to do for alternative service, or were you just assigned?
JQ (00:11:56):
That is a funny story. What you do is you send three options to the draft board, all of which has to be outside, I think, at least 90 miles away from your home. And the three that I sent to my draft board were the New York City Department of Social Services, the Judson Memorial Church was a church in Greenwich Village that had a reputation as peace church, and the United Nations. And I actually started working for the Department of Social Services because I had heard that other draft boards had accepted that as alternative service. Not all, but some. And then my draft board sent back a letter saying, no to the United Nations note, to the New York City Department of Social Services, and what is the Judson Memorial Church? So I sent an appeal back. I realized that they knew that the name of the social service had been the Department of Welfare, they had just came to me. And that welfare to somebody living in Allentown, Pennsylvania did not mean, clearly, what I was experiencing in Harlem. So I sent them a letter, I think, detailing what I did in the course of the week, hoping that would persuade them that what I was doing was truly both in the national interest, and true social service. And it took two tries. I got another letter back saying, "We voted. The vote was two to two with one person absent. We will let you know next month." And then they finally did accept that. I should probably also say that I waived my physical, because I did not want to be exempted because of any physical injuries. So I volunteered for alternative service.
SM (00:14:21):
Yeah, that experience, you were there two years?
JQ (00:14:23):
Two years.
SM (00:14:23):
And it is my understanding that most positions that, or people that serve in conscientious objector positions, it was not meant to be easy.
JQ (00:14:35):
Yeah, that is right.
SM (00:14:37):
And so...
JQ (00:14:38):
His life was to be... I think the idea basically was fairness. Your life was disrupted the way someone who had to go into the military's life would be disrupted.
SM (00:14:51):
From that two-year experience, what did you learn, not only about people and about yourself, but about this country?
JQ (00:15:02):
That is a big question. I would say that first of all, I had never seen poverty at the scale that I saw it in Harlem. Never. And at the same time, I saw people and got to know people who were not the face of the poor anymore. They were individuals. I remember one fellow who was, I think he was a little mentally disabled, but he was a very gifted sculptor. Who would have thought? And I discovered that a lot of the misery in Harlem was caused by absentee landlords who lived far away and did not care about the condition of their building. I learned that if I walked down the streets of Harlem, I was afraid of the same people that the people living in Harlem were afraid of. That is, a deranged drug addict, and that they really were human beings just struggling to make do with very few resources, et cetera, et cetera. And it was really eye-opening for me. It also made me realize that doing social service work, especially in a big bureaucracy, was just crushing work. That it was not for me. That I was going to take my constitution some other way.
SM (00:16:55):
Would you say that, because you were in a very prestigious position for 25 years in California, in the humanities, were doing documentaries and programs, and would you say that the experiences you had as a young man serving in a conscientious objector status for people, a lot of people had nothing, that you were able to use that experience and use it in a position like your director position in terms of doing quality work with less money?
JQ (00:17:36):
Well, I do not know if it enabled me to do quality work with less money, but I would say that it informed what I hope is a very powerful populous stem to the way I see the world. That when I was with the Council, what gradually evolved was a program that centered on strengthening community as much as possible. Bringing people together, whether it is across racial lines, class lines, as much as possible. It is very difficult work to do, as you probably know, but that the idea of including everyone and that everyone's story is an important story. That derived, in part, I think, from my experience in Harlem, it is hard to say, it is a chicken/egg thing. Did I see what I saw in Harlem because I already had that value, did it just reinforce that? I do not know. But certainly there is a consistency there.
SM (00:18:52):
There might be some sort of direct link with that and your first position after you got your PhD, where you did that documentary on the Vietnam War.
JQ (00:19:01):
Well, yeah. What really happened there, I remember listening to National Public Radio and their coverage of the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And they had a short clip where they were reading the names, and I was just absolutely transfixed by that. It just really, really struck you. Now, this is in (19)82, and there had not been very much discussion of or talk of the war after the US left. And especially after 1975, it was just like the whole country went completely silent and was mourning, I believe, but mourning quietly, silently. No one was talking to Vietnam veterans at all, it was as if they had disappeared off the face of the Earth. So this was the first public reawakening of the war back into consciousness. And very shortly after, maybe two or three weeks later, a man named Walter Capps I interviewed, he had just written a book called The Unfinished War, 1982, and he was a professor of religious studies at Santa Barbara, and he had begun in 1979. This could be a long story, but I will keep it brief. He had started a course, very first in America, and so he did lecture of this, and in the three years since he had started the course, I think the first one was in (19)79, at first, it was a course that had 30 students. By 1982 or three, they had to put it in the largest auditorium on the campus, 900 deep. That is what interest there was in the war. And I had gotten a little hint of that when I was teaching writing at the UC Santa Cruz from 1977 to (19)79. I actually taught a course on the (19)60s, a research course. I was a writing instructor. And to supplement the course, I had a little film series that would show films every Monday night. And, oh, I always forget the name of it, a very powerful film about the Vietnam War.
SM (00:22:00):
Coming Home?
JQ (00:22:06):
No-no. It was more of a documentary film. I just cannot think of it right now. But I rented the film and showed it, and 500 people showed up to see this film. And that was the moment I realized that the war was not over. The war was still psychologically going on. So let us see, that was in (19)79, (19)82. Walter talked about, well, you can tell from the title of the book, the Unfinished War, that he, too, felt that this was happening in the American psyche, and that Americans really had not dealt with or healed from the war. And I think it was around that time that I decided to apply for $1000 satellite grant, which we got. And we went down and we recorded the first conference to talk about the Vietnam War, called Vietnam Reconsidered, at the University of Southern California. And there were some really outstanding people. Francis Fitzgerald was there, I do not think Westmoreland spoke, but people of that caliber, Arthur Miller spoke.
SM (00:23:36):
Wow.
JQ (00:23:39):
Robert Stone spoke. But by far the most powerful session, and it was just one of many sessions, was the one where the veterans spoke. And again, I was just by myself, just completely transfixed by what I was hearing, and mostly the pain that I was hearing. And we decided to take all the hours of tape that we had, package them into six one-hours, put a binder, put some information, and send them, sell them, actually, for cost, to public radio stations all over the country. And we did that for several years. And the response to that was just overwhelming. It was very gratifying. But I knew that we were just scratching the surface. It was largely through Walter's course... Walter, now, this was February of (19)83. Walter, it turned out, became the chairman of the California Council for the Humanities.
SM (00:25:01):
Oh, my gosh.
JQ (00:25:02):
And was part of the group that hired me four months later to become the executive director.
SM (00:25:08):
Oh, my gosh.
JQ (00:25:10):
Oh, it gets even wilder than that. I had my final interview. There were two finalists. My final interview was in July, on July 20th of 1983. Three days, before we found out that California public radio had been blue penciled out of the California budget due to the governor. Governor Deukmejian. Suddenly, there was no more California public radio. And on the final day, I had my interview. Went back, we taped the final showing of the 15-minute news program that we did, California Edition. And three minutes after that final show, I got the call that I got the job as the PCH Executive Director.
SM (00:26:06):
Now was Walter a professor there, too, in California at that time?
JQ (00:26:11):
And later became a congressman in 1996, and then died tragically a year later of a heart attack. But he became my mentor in the sense that the power of stories, and the power of telling one's story, and being able to have one's story heard, the veterans were in some way healed by the fact that they had an audience that was listening to their story, and not judging their story. And the course is still being taught. It is being thought by a professor named Richard Peck to this day. And Walter told me before he died that he felt that the course had gone through three phases. The first one was welcoming the veterans home, and bringing them out of the shadows onto the stage, telling their story.
SM (00:27:16):
And that was (19)79.
JQ (00:27:17):
That was (19)79 through about (19)83 or four, I am going to say.
SM (00:27:20):
Okay.
JQ (00:27:22):
But this is pretty imprecise. From (19)84 or five to (19)91. It was healing the nation, that the veterans, by telling their stories, were inviting the rest of the country to deal with what it had not dealt with before. Because there was a lot of grief in this country, the loss of ideals, the loss of the view of your country that you may have once had, that I certainly had, that was destroyed by our participation in Vietnam. And then after (19)91, after the Gulf War, the Gulf War ended that morning moment, because suddenly war was triumphal again. Look at that big victory we just had, and the concentration then was he was getting lots of students in the class who were the sons and daughters of that.
SM (00:28:21):
Oh, yes.
JQ (00:28:22):
And so there was, how does information get transferred generation to generation? It may be even a different phase now, but that one was the one that was going on when I was there.
SM (00:28:34):
So let me turn-
JQ (00:28:36):
He invited me in 1985. I asked him during the interview back in (19)82 if he had ever had a protestor or a conscientious objector speak, and he never had. And he said, "That might be a good idea." So finally in (19)85, he actually did invite me, and it was the first time I told my story, How I Came to Be a Conscientious Objector. And he later included it in a book on the Vietnam, A reader on the Vietnam War that he created.
SM (00:29:09):
Let me change the side here. We just finished 30 minutes, so let me just change this tape here. Very good. We are back. That is quite a story.
JQ (00:29:20):
Well, I am saving my big story for...
SM (00:29:22):
Okay.
JQ (00:29:22):
[inaudible] story is probably the big story.
SM (00:29:28):
I am going to get near there in a couple of minutes. But I also wanted your thoughts as a CO. You have been very descriptive as to why you became a CO, and you have talked about the experience and what it meant to you. What did you think about the conscientious objectors who went to Canada, the people that left the country and refused to even do alternative service? Because we know that Jimmy Carter, in (19)79, pardoned anybody. Amnesty was given. That was very controversial. But a lot of people never came back to the United States. They stayed up in Canada. And some people say some of the top leaders up there are former Vietnam vets to even today that have gone on, become very successful businessmen, and they are in government and everything else. Your thoughts on those who went to Canada and did not really, they paid a price by separating themselves from their families and not being able to come back to home. And secondly, something when I interviewed James Fowles, who is an unbelievable person, veterans admire him because he admitted that he was basically a chicken during the Vietnam War, that he evaded the draft, and he was very specific about this. He says there is a big difference between those who went out and protested the draft, and those who evaded the draft. And he evaded the draft like a lot of his friends at Harvard, and he feels guilty. He has gotten over it, but he has been very honest. So my question is basically-
JQ (00:31:02):
What did you do in the class war? Daddy, I think.
SM (00:31:09):
Yeah. So basically, I am asking what do you think of those people who went to Canada and never did any kind of alternative service? And secondly, what do you think of those people who evaded the draft without any sense of, "I am not going to protest against the war, I am just going to get out of the draft."
JQ (00:31:27):
Yeah. Well, my only experience with anybody who went to Canada was a friend who was working at the same welfare center as I was. His draft board was in St. Louis. He worked at the same work I did for four years, twice as long, but his grant board refused to accept it. So he lives in Toronto today. So I guess what that has told me is I...
JQ (00:32:03):
What it has told me is, I cannot judge people as a class, I would have to hear each individual story. I just cannot make that judgment. I know it is true and this is one of the things I learned from the Glendon Waters story, was that, when I was going to college, existentialist literature was very big to Moon and Sartre. And the notion that your life is what you do, you are what do, you find yourself by the actions that you take. And of course, since this is happening for me between the ages of 18 and 21, it is also part of my identity formation. So this is a very rich stew. So I saw, becoming a conscientious objector, as making a choice, making a statement about my life, embedding the things that I believed in and acting on them and that was very important. But what I learned later was, that that was a very privileged position to be in. I got to read Kabul and Thoreau. I got to be on a college campus, where I had the leisure to do that without having to earn a living or et cetera, et cetera. And there were people who did not have those privileges and did not have that opportunity. Now I would like to think that I made the right choice, given what was given to me, to know about those things. But I do believe that it was not given to everybody to know about those things. Glendon Waters grew up in Dallas, Texas. It probably was not a peace church within 150 miles of Dallas, Texas. Whereas, I grew up 70 miles North of Philadelphia in an area that had peace churches and dissenting churches everywhere. And even if you were not a member of them, that atmosphere, Quaker presence. So that took me in directions and made choices available to me that were not available to others. I would guess, that there may be a lot of, be it conscience on the part of the school to who did that, what you are calling, draft evasion. But I guess what I feel is, that the choices that we make sometimes as very young men and women, we cannot possibly know what the consequences are going to be later in life. You just make this wager. And if get that wrong, you do suffer consequences later. And that the most serious are the ones, the judgements you make of yourself, the way Fallows did.
SM (00:35:27):
Right.
JQ (00:35:27):
And not the judgments that others may have. I did find that veterans treated me with respect because I had done the alternative service and had taken a stand, and they did tend to have a lot of contempt for those who simply abated the draft. But I just think moral decisions are, well, sometimes they do not even present themselves as moral decisions. So I tend not to make a blanket judgment of that.
SM (00:36:07):
I know that in the oral history book, The Wounded Generation, that came out around 1980, I have interviewed like Phil Caputo and Bobby Mueller and John Wheeler. I have interviewed a couple of people linked to that book. And James Webb who is now our Senator from Virginia, he made a comment back at the time of a symposium, that was interesting. We talk about the generation gap being the battle between parents and their children, over ideas and lifestyle and all other things and that was obviously happening in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Webb said that he felt, or at least in the conversation between these gentlemen, "That the real battle was within the generations, not necessarily between generations. Between those who went to war and served in Vietnam or were Vietnam era veterans who served in this country or around the world. So you have to include them too and those who did not serve." And so his commentary was in the end, that we always think of the (19)60s generation as a service-oriented generation, one that went into the Peace Corps, went into Vista. They followed the ideas of John Kennedy, either by going into the military, like a lot of the guys at West Point did and Annapolis. So they used the military as service, where others went to Peace Corps, the other ways. But in reality, as Mr. Webb said, and then the conversation was very good, if you look at the book that, "This was not a generation of service." And I thought that was interesting because we think just the opposite, the service really began then with the idea of the Peace Corps and John Kennedy, "Ask not what your country can do for us, what you can do for your country." What are your thoughts about those comments that came out of that discussion in the book, The Wounded Generation? I know that Mr. Webb said some of those words, but it was a conversation in response to his words.
JQ (00:38:17):
Well, I know that that conflict has reared itself at different times, especially in the (19)90s, I remember the way President Clinton was viewed, et cetera, et cetera. It may still be true. Again, I like to avoid generalizing because first of all, the generation is so large, and as you pointed out in one of your questions, only 15 percent, I think protested in any way. So we tend to lump everybody together and it is really not accurate to do that.
SM (00:39:08):
Yeah. In fact, some people say that 15 is, you are way overboard, Steve. It is really about 5 percent.
JQ (00:39:13):
Is that right?
SM (00:39:15):
Yeah, it depends on who you talk to. There is no real answer to the total numbers but it was minor.
JQ (00:39:26):
Yeah.
SM (00:39:26):
Yeah.
JQ (00:39:27):
Well, I can understand that. I mean, I remember the first time I carried a protest sign, I felt very self-conscious. It was walking out on stage without your clothes or something. I mean, I got more and more used to it, but the first time certainly, it just seemed very strange.
SM (00:39:51):
What was that first time?
JQ (00:39:52):
Pardon me? When was it?
SM (00:39:53):
Yeah, do you remember the exact moment you said, "Geez." I think that is the question I have is, there comes a moment when you have to speak up against injustice or you see something you do not like and you know that when you do, you are vulnerable. That is what being an activist is. You got to be vulnerable.
JQ (00:40:08):
Yeah. So I do remember actually, because I think somebody from the South Vietnamese Embassy came to speak on my campus and about 10 or 12 of people I knew protested outside. That is by protested I mean, they were holding signs saying, "Stop the bombing."
SM (00:40:36):
This is at Lafayette?
JQ (00:40:38):
This is at Lafayette and this is in the spring of (19)67. And I was not one of those people. One of my roommates was, but I did not go. And for an hour or two, they were surrounded by a mob of many members and water was thrown, bricks was thrown, foul language was thrown, and the campus police were nowhere to be found, for some strange reason and that galvanized me. So my first demonstration was in favor of the First Amendment. We spoke of that the next day, walked around the campus with signs, I do not know, maybe 30 of us, 40 of us, still not very many, but more than a dozen. And we pressured the administration about, where were the campus police, why suddenly, there was no protection for these people. So in a sense, that broke the ice for me. There was no doubt in my mind, I mean, the First Amendment, is there anything more American than the First Amendment?
SM (00:42:05):
Right.
JQ (00:42:06):
And so that protesting, you could protest in favor of something American and you were not protesting against America somehow. So it took patriotism and it began to sometimes, I mean, you see this going against your government, is the more patriotic active space, so that was the beginning. And then I think the first protest, I took part in against the war, was in early July, in the summer, where we just handed out leaflets at our church and then went inside and attended the service. And I heard the minister denounce, "Those outside, as tools of the Moscow line." And I certainly knew we were vulnerable because we had started to do a silent protest Saturday morning from 11 to 12 in downtown Easton. And some of the people who passed by were not particularly happy.
SM (00:43:21):
That still happens in Westchester. Yeah.
JQ (00:43:26):
But I was never physically threatened but you knew that taking the steps meant you were crossing a certain kind of line.
SM (00:43:36):
Yeah. Before we get into this, talking about the March of Death in (19)69, I have a couple questions. But did you feel that after that first time that you carried that sign or you spoke up, was there kind of a, "I feel good." I mean, there is always the threat, the fear the first time, doing something you have never done, you take the chance. But it is like what Teddy Roosevelt always said, "That if you are going to be a change agent for the betterment of society, you have got to get out into the arena of life." Because the arena life means that yes, you become vulnerable. People are going to maybe criticize you and attack you and not like you, but no one who sits in the corner and hides is ever going to be able to do anything for anybody.
JQ (00:44:26):
Right.
SM (00:44:26):
And so I always look at what I call, the Teddy Roosevelt moments. And obviously, you had one, in just what you described.
JQ (00:44:36):
Yeah. Also, a part of that good feeling was, that though we were few in numbers, we felt connected to people we admired who would come before us, like Martin Luther King, like Perot, like the Founding Fathers, so that matters.
SM (00:45:07):
Continuity.
JQ (00:45:11):
Yeah. So it was not me who was betraying the country, it was my government that was betraying the country. And that was a total reversal, I could not possibly have had that mindset, when I was growing up in the (19)50s.
SM (00:45:35):
I have had different people comment about the boomer generation. Do you like being labeled, being a part of the boomer generation? I have had a lot of different comments from people saying, they do not like it because many of the people born between 1940 and (19)45 were some of the leaders of the anti-war movement, but they just were not born in this timeframe?
JQ (00:45:59):
Yeah, I guess I do not think it is a very helpful or useful label because I mean, the only way in which it is descriptive is, that I suppose that from (19)46 to (19)64, there was this population gain, which is why we are called boomers. But it does not tell you very much about that entire group thing to me. Those of us born between (19)46 and let us say, (19)55-
SM (00:46:29):
Yep.
JQ (00:46:30):
...Vietnam is very, very important to us because we had to make life and death decisions about how we were going to participate or not participate in that. But after (19)55 to (19)64, you were not subject to either the draft or the lottery, so the war might be less important in forming you, than Watergate, let us say.
SM (00:46:55):
Right.
JQ (00:47:04):
So I certainly do not like it when it is used as a dismissive term, as it often is.
SM (00:47:10):
Right.
JQ (00:47:13):
But I do think it is possible because we were the rat moving through the python. I mean, the fact that there were so many of us coming onto the scene, simply because of an accident of birth, that it does have an impact on the country and on other generations. What I certainly hope is, that they do not look back at this large generation of people and say, "Well, they used up all the resources. They ate the seaport and left us with nothing." That would be a terrible legacy. It is just because of sheer numbers. I do not know that it is-
SM (00:47:55):
Yeah, I have been really sensing, in the last one third of my interviews, that the people born between 1940 and (19)55 are really united in so many ways. And those that were born after (19)56, (19)57 to (19)64, they were like 10 years old when some of these things were happening and they were still in elementary schools. I am not quite sure, although we know that the (19)50s when we were young, really had an influence on us in many ways. I got one question before we head into this section on the March of Death-
JQ (00:48:33):
...sure.
SM (00:48:33):
...and that is this area. I have been trying to get people, in their own words, to describe what these periods mean, in terms of, this is the period that boomers have been alive, from 1946 to 2010. So just in your own words, what did that period, 1946 to 1960 mean to you?
JQ (00:48:57):
Well, for me, I was born in (19)46. So for me is, growing up in relative security, in a lower-middle class, Republican household, being a little aware of the world, but not very much aware of the world, everything's pretty local. So I remember being proud to be American. I remember looking at maps of the world, as the different colonial colonies became independent and thinking, "Oh, they are just like us, they are getting their independence from France or from Britain." Or from whoever it happens to be and I was certainly aware of communism. I was certainly aware of Duck and Cover, and that was part of my consciousness. But the single moment that ended that stage, I think it was May of 1960, was the U-2 influence.
SM (00:49:56):
Oh, yeah. Gary Powers.
JQ (00:50:10):
Because Eisenhower was a revered figure in my house. And if the communist said, "It was a spy plane." And Eisenhower said, "It was a weather plane." It was no concept in my mind, it was definitely the weather plan. And when it turned out the be a spy plane, it was like, "What? An American president did not tell the truth and the communist did?" Now, it did not split me, but a little split just opened up in my consciousness, at that time and then that widened in the (19)60s, the next decade.
SM (00:51:00):
Yeah. The next decade is from (19)61 to (19)70.
JQ (00:51:03):
Yeah. Well, first of all, it is coming of age for me. I am 14 to 24, so I am really forming a strong identity. I am falling in love. I am finding out what it is I want to do in the world and the Vietnam War. Well, first of all, early on, Civil Rights was very inspiring, Martin Luther King and others, and all the African-Americans protesting and struggling for their freedom, that was enormously inspiring to me. What else? It is almost the beginning of becoming aware of other kinds of consciousness. But at the end of that era I expect to read, since then, Buddhism and Alan Watts, experimenting with drugs myself. The (19)50s for me, because of my age, represented a kind of unitary homogenous world, now the world is becoming much more worse and fragmented, which is both sad, you do not feel as secure, but it is also exciting. You are learning things about the way the world really is.
SM (00:52:44):
How about (19)71 to 1980?
JQ (00:52:47):
I think of that as a period of mostly grief and mourning in the country. Certainly for many people, Watergate was, I just disliked Nixon for many, many years. It was a fall of innocence for many Americans who trusted their government and all of a sudden, they learned what we had learned during the Vietnam period. We were much more attentive to Johnson's lies, that Nixon had been lying. So I think in some ways, the country is still rebounding from that, both to its self-confidence and to its belief in and trust in government. We lost the war in Vietnam. That was the first time that had ever happened because I think there was just a deep mourning and grief in many ways, unacknowledged. But I think the country elected Carter, probably because of his kind of religious, we need to atone. And then in 1979 with the hostage crisis, people were done atoning. Okay, they were ready to hear Ronald Reagan say, "We have nothing to be sorry about. This is a Vietnam syndrome in America. Let us move on."
SM (00:54:33):
That is (19)81 to (19)90?
JQ (00:54:36):
That is right. That is right. I think that is a period of reaction, if you like, so the reaction almost began in the (19)70s with the Moral Majority, et cetera, et cetera. But it really got underway, I think in the (19)80s. Plus all the financial shenanigans on Wall Street came at that time, kind of a false prosperity thing and we are back in the world. And that was passed by the Gulf War, which absolutely put an end to any kind of mourning about Vietnam.
SM (00:55:18):
That gets us to-
JQ (00:55:21):
We can win a war with very little cost in American lives.
SM (00:55:24):
...right.
JQ (00:55:25):
Right. We are back.
SM (00:55:30):
Yeah. It was George Bush was the first, who said, "The Vietnam syndrome was over."
JQ (00:55:33):
Yeah.
SM (00:55:34):
Yeah, that was (19)91. And then we had the ending of his short reign, and then we had Bill Clinton. So that (19)91 to 2000, what does that symbolize in your eyes?
JQ (00:55:43):
Yeah, that is harder because you still have the Republican and the conservative backlash, full force. And now liberal rules have become moderate and they are kind of fighting a rear-guard act. I heard a very interesting panel about eight years ago, in about the (19)60s, and I had forgotten they had Peter Coyote, who had been one of the original figures.
SM (00:56:26):
Yeah, I interviewed him last week.
JQ (00:56:26):
Oh, no kidding?
SM (00:56:26):
Yeah.
JQ (00:56:32):
I bet that was interesting. And then a fellow named, Frank Bardacke, I think he helped organize the Stop Grass in 1965, he had been working with workers in Watsonville. So this is somebody who really dedicated his life to working people. And they resurrected a division that I had forgotten about, which I remember was real. And that is between people who were politically active and people who were culturally active. And Coyote was one of the people who was culturally active. He thought changing people's consciousness, that was the way to affect real change but politics and voting, that was not so essential.
SM (00:57:21):
Let me change the tape here again, that we have done one hour now.
JQ (00:57:24):
Okay.
SM (00:57:24):
Okay, here we go. All right. All right. Go right ahead.
JQ (00:57:32):
Okay. And what Bardacke said, "For him, the 30 years since the (19)60s ended, had been an unmitigated disaster, whereas in the (19)60s, there was still an ideological alternative to capitalism." Which in fact, most people thought was eventually going to win in some form, including Henry Kissinger. Kissinger said, "On the short-term, I am very optimistic, long-term I am pessimistic." In a sense, capitalism was on the way out. So to find himself 30 years later in the heart of the political reaction, was just a prediction in the (19)60s. Now, on the cultural front, what Coyote said was, "That is true, but look at the way we talk about gay people, the environment, food, just about anything you can imagine, it is race. It is completely different than the way we talked about it in the (19)60s." So that there has been a real change. And it bothered me as I was listening to those two speak, that they are connected. That the reason for the political reaction is because those people who are leading the reaction, feel that everything else is changing out from underneath them, the environmental movement, the women's movement, all of that. And they are profoundly uncomfortable with that and that is the reason for the political reaction. I mean, I am not the first person to say, you just look at the history of somebody like Norman Podhoretz and all the neocons, the more anarchic elements of the (19)60s scared the country. We might have thought that Abby Hoffman was amusing, but he was deeply scary and terrifying to many people. I think that is what formed the political reaction that we saw really, brought to fruition in the (19)80s and then into the (19)90s with the Cambridge Revolution.
SM (01:00:09):
Of course, she had Bill Clinton. Any thoughts on Clinton's time?
JQ (01:00:13):
And Clinton he was fighting a rearguard action for the most part. He was just trying to hold on shards of the new deal, that is still out-standing.
SM (01:00:23):
How about this last decade, 2001 to 2010?
JQ (01:00:28):
Well, yeah, I do believe that is pretty well defined by 9-11.
SM (01:00:34):
Right.
JQ (01:00:35):
And unfortunately, the country's leaders did not have enough confidence and were themselves, so terrified by what happened, that the only response that could be, was a response of force. And so we give a forceful response, military response, that elicits the continuing growth of Al-Qaeda and reaction to it and it is the usual tit for tat. And one can only wonder what would have happened if we had let those feelings in those first three or four weeks when the rest of the world was identifying with America, if we had taken another path, we had been strong enough and confident enough to not take the military option at that time. I mean, I do not know.
SM (01:01:36):
What is interesting now with President Obama, is that he tries to distance himself from the (19)60s. People say, "Oh, I am not the (19)60s." Yet, his critics say, "He is the reincarnation of the (19)60s." So here is a president who is trying to separate himself from that era and then his critics are saying, "He is just the reincarnation of that era." Your thoughts on that?
JQ (01:01:59):
Well, I think it is true that Obama, he is post boomer. He is not Clinton. So he is a bit more moderate in his views and in his values. Again, it is hard to say what the views of the military, that are identified with people with (19)60s and race, particularly. But I think his critics, when they see him espousing things that they identify with, they will tag him. But I do think, I am actually glad to see that he does not carry that bag. The whole notion is, the next generation should not have to fight battles that we fought. We may think that they are skipping out on battles, I do not believe that. But I think for example, that the next generation great battle is one that is only beginning for us and that is the environment. That is true.
SM (01:03:18):
Yeah.
JQ (01:03:18):
That is going to be the defining thing for my kids, kids.
SM (01:03:24):
And of course, that was 1970 when Earth Day happened, and I had interviewed quite a few people. I interviewed Gaylord Nelson's daughter, Tia Nelson, and I interviewed Gaylord Nelson because as you remember, this project started, it in the late (19)90s when I was a full-time administrator. And I have interviewed several other environmental leaders, as well. Let us get right into the March of Death in (19)69. Could you tell us about that experience, about carrying the name of Glendon Waters and going to the March of Death? I believe in (19)69, he had died in (19)67, and that whole experience of marching in front... 1967, and that whole experience of marching in front of the White House and reading the names, and then linking it years later with going to the wall back in 1984.
JQ (01:04:14):
Well, my wife and I, and a couple friends got to Washington because of Coastal Service Employees Union. And that was part of, because I was then a case worker at the [inaudible] welfare center. Just had lots of buses going down for the big march on Washington. I cannot remember whether it was the Moratorium March, but the vote before the big march was this march against death, 40,000 of us participated in. We were each given the name of an American soldier who had died in Vietnam, people could carry, if they knew someone, people could carry the name of that person. I did not know someone, so I was simply given a name at random. And all I knew is that that Glendon Waters, Texas. That is all I knew about him. And we started, I believe at the Arlington Bridge. It was very cold that night, 20 something, and we had a candle and we had the placard hung around our neck. And we walked from the Arlington Bridge to the White House where there was a very small platform, creeping by. And as you stepped onto the platform, you turned towards the White House and yelled, shouted, cried the name that you were carrying and then went on. And it is interesting, there is an echo. You see the echo in the Vietnam wall, having the names, but somehow shouting the name made the person individual and real in some way, which I think is also the purpose of the meaning from the wall. These were people, these were real people, not aggregates of casualties, something like that. Individual people. The idea was to feel the loss more. Then we walked to the Capitol, where the placards were deposited in casket that were then carried the next day in the big march. For the big march, I think that is 4,000 or 5,000 people, it was overwhelming. So I did not think any more about that march or about Glendon Waters until 1986. So this is 17 years later, when through Walter Cap, the photographers at the Smithsonian who were doing the book Reflections on the Wall, asked me to write one of the three or four prefaces. And as I was sitting in my living room, I remember this moment very clearly, thinking about my first visit to the wall. And the name that I had for called was Glendon Waters, I realized I had to find out more about Glendon Waters. I knew nothing about them, except what I had learned from the catalog that they have at the wall. So that I learned that he was from Texas. I learned my surprise that he had been born in 1928. So that he was, when he died in (19)67, was a great deal older than most Vietnam casualties, who were between the ages of 18 and 21, mostly. So I did a little research about when I found out the date of his death, which was in July, I think July 8th of (19)67. That is about exactly the day I took part in that first protest at the church. It is ironic. But I did a little research about what battle was taking place that day, etc., etc. But I could not find out a whole lot. But I did decide to send a letter to the Department of the Navy, through them, to the next of kin of Glendon Waters saying that I wanted to send them a copy of the book. I had no idea whether there still were any family members or kin. But I guess about six weeks later, after I had more or less forgotten about having sent the letter, this letter arrived in my house. It looked like it was written by say, one of my aunts. I did not recognize the handwriting, and I opened it up, and I will never forget this moment as long as I live. And I have the letter. It says "Dear Mr. Quay, thank you for writing to me. It took time to get to me. I am the widow of Glendon Lee Waters. We were married 22 and a half years and had two children. He was a very dedicated Marine and we were very proud of him. He gave his life so we could have a free country. Your words were re a tribute to Glendon and I really appreciate them. I would love to have a copy of the book, and would pray for having it. If you would care to talk to me, you may call. Yours truly, Anna Carver." Well, I got goosebumps.
SM (01:10:33):
Wow.
JQ (01:10:33):
All over my body. I gave the letter to my wife, she burst into tears. And I did not know what river I had just stepped into, but I knew it was deep water. Long story short, I called Anna, I asked if I could visit. She said yes, and in January I flew to West Fork, Arkansas to interview her, and her son and daughter, and husband. And a funny thing that happened was that the idea was I was supposed to fly in, get my car, go to the motel and then call her. And instead as I am walking across this tiny, tiny air terminal in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I hear a voice say, "Jim?" And I turned and I saw this person who had to be Anna. And I said, "Anna, what are you doing here?" And she said, "Well, I had an advantage. I knew what you looked like, but you did not know what I looked like." And I laughed and I said, "Ah, Anna, so what if I had been a creep?" And she said, "I would have not answered. I would have gone home and not answered my phone the evening." So she knew what I looked like because I had sent her a videotape of my presentation to Walter's class to see, because I wanted her to know who she was dealing with. It was very generous to invite this guy from California into her home. And she said, "But there was a second reason that I came." Kenneth, which is her husband, is also a 20-year Marine. And she said, "He is a man of very few words. But after he saw the video, he simply said, I could tell that young man is singing truth, and I just want you to know that his bark is worse than his bite." So she was alerting me to Kenneth. Well, what happened in the course of that weekend is I was doing these interviews. When I was finished, I asked if I could interview Kenneth. So I had done a lot of research by then and I knew where Glendon had been, how he had died, etc., etc. And so I knew a lot about what Kenneth had experienced also. And he had never, of course, this was very true then. He had never told and talked to anyone about this experience. And when I left after that weekend, he gave me a handshake and he said, "You are welcome here anytime."
SM (01:13:31):
That is nice.
JQ (01:13:32):
So it told me the power of, again, telling one story to someone who is not judging you, and the power of that experience to begin a healing between people, and between positions that I still very much believe in it.
SM (01:13:54):
Could you also share when you went to the Vietnam Memorial for the first time after, I think that was in (19)84 when you wanted to look up his name?
JQ (01:14:03):
Yeah. Well I would say the preface I wrote really says everything. What I remember is I was walking towards it and I kept thinking, "Where is it? Where is it?" And suddenly there it was. And as you walk down the pathway towards the apex, I felt powerfully that I was walking into an open grave. That is what it felt. And when I got to the bottom, I just stood there. I was completely overwhelmed. I did not burst into tears, but just emotionally, I could not speak. I could not do anything. Excuse me. I just stood there for, I do not know how long it was. And then you walked back out to one of those catalogs and looked up Glendon's name what, hand off his name to [inaudible], and walked back down and saw his name. I made a bronze rubbing of it that I am looking at it right now, it is hanging to my office today. So it was a powerful, powerful experience for me. And I know Walter used to take a group of students back to the memorial at the end of each class, and I know it was powerful for them. One of my favorite stories about that was Ed Bradley, the CBS correspondent.
SM (01:15:54):
Yes?
JQ (01:16:03):
He had been a correspondent in Vietnam. And Walter invited him to come to the class, and he was doing a special on the class for 60 Minutes, I think 60 Minutes did two special on Walter's class, actually. And the first one, Bradley had never been the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, and he could not. He did not want to go up to it for whatever reason. He just stood in the trees near, you know the area in front of the Memorial?
SM (01:16:51):
Yeah.
JQ (01:16:51):
And then the trees where the statue is. And that is where he was with the cameraman. And he had been to Walter's class, and so he knew some of the students. And he saw that there was a woman, the daughter of a man who had been killed, and his name was on the wall and she could not reach his name. So he walked across the field, got the bronze and everything, and did it for her.
SM (01:17:16):
Oh my God.
JQ (01:17:17):
But when the cameraman moved in to get a shot of this, Bradley blocked the camera with his back. This was a different moment. It was not a moment for broadcast.
SM (01:17:33):
Right.
JQ (01:17:40):
A different kind of moment. So the Memorial Palace was a symbol and there was a place to go. And there is a fellow named Wilson Hubble who is associated with the course at UC Santa Barbara. He too, is a veteran. And he goes back with the class each year that they go.
SM (01:18:03):
Wow.
JQ (01:18:03):
And his take on the sculpture of the three soldiers is that they represent all veterans, and that the sculpture is their guarding and standing watch over the memorial and will be there after he is gone, and all Vietnam veterans are gone. The guys who guard the memorial, which I think is a lovely way to think about this.
SM (01:18:29):
Yeah. Now they have a woman's memorial on the other end. So, same thing for the women. I want to read these, because this is something that I have on a sheet that you send. And this is very important, because I think it is one of the most beautiful descriptions I have ever heard of anybody describing the experience of visiting the wall, and the impact it has on people. So I am putting this for the record, and this is on quote. "The names of the dead wait here for the living to come close and touch them. But as the wall gives them to us, it also takes them away again, for touching the names only makes us feel how far away they are. They must remain there, united by their shared catastrophe, while we, the living must leave united by our shared grief." And I also like the fact that you talked about the Lincoln Memorial, and the importance of the wording inside the memorial with malice toward none and charity for all. You felt that your pilgrimage was complete when you saw that.
JQ (01:19:36):
Yes.
SM (01:19:36):
The grief of Lincoln who is always, he is there and he is not only grieving about the Civil War, he is always looking over the Vietnam Memorial, too.
JQ (01:19:43):
Yes.
SM (01:19:44):
And then I want to quote this, too. "I am profoundly grateful to the dedicated men and women who built the memorial, for they have given all who were hurt by the Vietnam War, the shrine we need if we are ever to be healed. Like the war it recalls, a memorial has been denounced and defended. But like this book, it brings together the conscientious objector and the general, the protestor and the warrior. Important differences between us may remain, but the memorial has given us something still more important, the common ground of grief. So long as such grief is heartfelt, shared and remembered, always there is hope for peace, and so for us all." And then your conclusion is unbelievable, and I think this should be required reading in a course on the (19)60s and the Vietnam War, "The generations wounded by the war will come to the wall, bringing our scars and our memories with us, looking for healing. But to truly heal ourselves, we must ensure that when future generations look upon the memorial, they will not have lost what we have lost. To feel the absolute silent sorrow embodied by the black walls, the American names that are on them, and the Vietnamese names that are not." I think that is just, you hit it right on the button.
JQ (01:21:06):
Yeah. Thanks.
SM (01:21:11):
So, thanks for telling that story, too. What an experience. Do you stay in touch with her?
JQ (01:21:21):
I do. We came to [inaudible] every year. And Kenneth, I thought of him recently when the movie, I think it is called The Messenger came out. It is about the men who have the detail of going to tell families that their sons or daughters have been killed, that he had that duty in his Marine career. And we did not talk about it a lot. We talked about a little in our interview, but...
SM (01:21:53):
I guess the one question I have here, because one of the major questions I have asked in all of my interviews is a question of healing. Did the Vietnam Memorial heal the nation? Jan Scruggs wrote the book, To Heal a Nation. Not only did he want to heal the veterans themselves and their families, and Vietnam veterans, but he hoped that the wall would heal the nation. I have had a lot of different responses to that question. What are your thoughts?
JQ (01:22:16):
I think as a public symbol, it began the process of healing. I do not think it itself could, but it began it because it was something tangible, something maybe argued about, but it was something tangible that there was not any pro or con. It just depicted the loss, the absolute loss that war was. So I thought it was an amazing beginning, and I thought that the [inaudible] Memorial was miraculous, quite frankly.
SM (01:23:04):
I know that there were a lot of veterans that did not like it in the beginning, and some still do not. Some them said to me once, "Well, the divisions over the design of the memorial was like the divisions in the (19)60s. It was equal."
JQ (01:23:18):
Someone called it the black gash of shame. I do not remember. I do not feel that way. I know there are many veterans who do not feel that way. But right now, there is a project that is just underway that is creating civilian veterans dialogue. And I am sure some of them are Vietnam era, but I believe there were also, and I hope through so far Iraqi War and Afghani War because that gulf between the warrior and the civilian is a dangerous one. And it is one that is exacerbated now by the fact that we have an all-volunteer Army. So we have a group of people who are putting themselves in harm's way, and then another group of people who may or may not want those people to do this, but who are certainly served in some way by the fact that they are willing to do that. And when those warriors come back home, they often feel seriously estranged from civilian life. I know Vietnam, I talked to Vietnam veterans who felt this way, that what they experienced in combat or in the combat zone, that is real reality. And this domestic life over here is just, it is not real. It is something artificial about it. And that they felt alive in a certain way, and it was hard for them to recapture that in civilian life. But older cultures than ours had ways of reincorporating warriors back into ordinary life. And I think we do not do that as a country, and we need to do that. I think we have a moral ethical obligation to do it, as well as psychological need to. It was really exacerbated in Vietnam, because they were so shunned for so long, I do not believe that happened for Gulf War vets or Afghani vets, but I think the scope is still there, and still [inaudible].
SM (01:25:55):
Very good point. I took a group of students when I was a college administrator to Washington to meet Senator Edmund Muskie, to one of my questions. And I had developed a relationship with the Senator Gaylord Nelson. We had a leadership on the road programs where we met US senators. And so, we met nine of them that were friends of his over the years. And when he got the Senator Muskie's office, he was not feeling well. He had just been in the hospital and he apologized, but he still gave us [inaudible]. I am going to let it keep ringing. Excuse me a second. I will let it ring. Cell phone. I got to learn to turn this, I got a new cell phone and I cannot figure out how to turn it off yet. Hold on. There. Okay, sorry about that. Pretty loud. When we left, the students came up with this question that we asked the senator. And the question was this. Due to all of the divisions in America at the time... Still there?
JQ (01:27:03):
Yeah.
SM (01:27:04):
Due to all the divisions of America at the time, between Black and white, between male and female, between gay and straight, between those who supported the troops, those who were against the troops, those who supported the war, those who were against the war. Do you feel that the Boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? And that was the question we asked Senator Muskie, because he was the vice-presidential running mate in 1968, that terrible year with cops and students hitting each other in the streets. And the two... Whoops, got to change the tape here. The two assassinations that took place, the two assassinations that took place during that year, and the president resigning, and Tet, and you name it. It was an unbelievable year. And the question is, do you think that the Boomer generation has a problem with healing?
JQ (01:28:04):
Again, I have wanted to avoid generalization, but I will give you one anyway. I would say no. And the reason is that I know Muskie said we have not healed since the Civil War, and we certainly had divisions in the (19)60s. No doubt about it. But we were not shooting at each other for the most part. Kent State was traumatic, Jackson State was traumatic, but Americans were not killing Americans. So you do not have that kind of bitter blood going on, and I would point to the reaction.
SM (01:28:51):
Can you hold on one second? Bear with me. Hello? Jeff, I am on a long-distance call. I am doing an interview. Okay, I will call you back. About an hour. All right. Still there?
JQ (01:29:13):
I am.
SM (01:29:15):
One of my former students just got a job at Georgia Tech. Well, he has been in higher ed for a while, but there was some things. He took the job, but then he was having second thoughts. I said, "Be happy you got a job."
JQ (01:29:29):
Oh, really?
SM (01:29:29):
Yeah, because he was unhappy in his current job elsewhere. So, go right ahead.
JQ (01:29:35):
Well, what I would point to was how I believe most of us in the country felt after 9/11. I am just speaking for myself, if evoked in me feelings of love of country that I did not know I still had, and I believe that was true of others, as well. So the word healing, if the healing means the split between the citizen and his or her country, I believe that is healed. And it is only unhealed when the country acts in a way that we do not admire. And that has certainly happened since 9/11 in some instances, but I do not believe it was a lasting legacy of the (19)60s to feel, as the Right often says about the Left, "Well, they just hate America." I do not believe that is true. I believe that the Right tends to equate any criticism of the American government as hatred for America. And I just think that is nonsense and absurd.
SM (01:31:05):
Senator Muskie, when he responded, he kind of was similar to that scene up in New England where it was snowing, and someone had attacked his wife and he had showed some tears and that really, he was not manly enough to be present or something like that, but it kind of looked like he had a tear in his eye. We actually had this on videotape. We videotaped it, and he did not give an answer right away. And then he looked up like a great senator that he was and said, "We have not healed since the Civil War because we still have an issue, the issue of race has not been solved." And he went on to talk about it, and he talked about the loss of 430,000 men, almost an entire generation in the South. So the deaths that took place, and it really affected him because he had just seen the Ken Burns series when he was in the hospital. So he did not even answer according to the (19)60s and what the students wanted, he just talked about the Civil War, that the issues that we still have go way back even then. And so anyways, that is kind of the way he responded. Another question I ask is, the issue of trust. Seems like you cannot say 74 million boomers do not trust, but a label that has been put on them is they are not a very trusting generation. And that is pretty obvious when you already mentioned the Eisenhower lie back in the late (19)50s. For those that were cognizant enough of that lie early on, and then we see President Johnson with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. And I think that was a lie. Then we had Watergate with Nixon. And of course, even if you were up-to-date on history, the questions you even have about why Diem was killed during the Kennedy administration in November, well actually in the fall of 1963. Questions come up.
JQ (01:32:54):
Before Kennedy was killed.
SM (01:32:57):
Well, yeah. Just before Kennedy was killed, there was questions about why Diem was killed in Vietnam. And he had given the okay for the overthrow, but I do not think he wanted him killed. He thought that they were going to be shipped off to France or something. So the question is this, is the Boomer generation a nation or group that cannot trust, and is that a positive quality within a group? And they pass this feeling on to their kids and their grandkids. Is that healthy?
JQ (01:33:29):
Okay, again, I am going to break it down a little bit because it is such a big question. Trust is certainly an important and precious commodity. And I do believe it is true people with the Boomers' historical experience, that they are now skeptical that as they do not take on face value, things that their government said. I happen to think that that is a healthy attitude to have. I think it can become unhealthy if you simply dismiss everything that a public official says as a lie. We used to say that there were conformists, there were anti-conformists, and there were nonconformists. Anti-conformists are just conformists to do the opposite of what conformists do, but they are still conformists. It is better to be a nonconformist and make some judgments on this. So I trust, I know Lois Capps very well. She is Walter's widow, and she is now serving in the Congress. And when I hear someone make some easy, cynical remark about those politicians and how crooked they are, and they are just in it for the money, I think to myself, "You do not know any politicians." You do not know the sacrifices that these people make in their personal lives in order to serve. You only see the big stories that occasionally blow up about a Charlie Rangel or somebody else. And you do not see the government people, the bureaucratic people who very quietly, day after day, do trustworthy work, and that is what holds the country together. If everybody was government and bureaucracy was completely corrupt, we could not function. We would not be functional. Paying bribes like crazy. I mean, you would be a third world where there is no trust. We actually, I think, have a great deal of trust still in this country.
JQ (01:36:02):
I think have a great deal of trust still in this sense. But it is trust to still have to be earned. It is not the word. You do not just give it and then, okay, I am not going to ask any questions about it anymore. I am just going to trust you. That is dangerous in a democracy, right.
SM (01:36:28):
Well one of the things you learn if you are a political science history major like I was, you learn early on that not having trust in your government is a healthy thing because it shows the descent is alive and well in America and it shows that different points of view are accepted and actually desired. So if you do not trust your government, that is a healthy thing.
JQ (01:36:50):
Well it is interesting, I just finished a very good book by a man named Tony Judt, J-U-D-T, called Ill Fares The Land, and he is talking about what is left of social democracy ideal, the kind that you still see functioning in Europe and do not see functioning so much here in the United States. And he made a very interesting historical point, and it might be of interest for you, because he is talking about the boomer generation. But the generation before them, experienced the pressure in World War II and those were common experiences in which the government took steps to counter a very pernicious enemy of poverty in the case of expression and fascism in the case of World War II. And so people had, the country had this experience of coming together behind their government to do something. And that persisted on both political parties well through the (19)50s and into the (19)60s. For the (19)60s generations, our major value was individual expression. In other words, we did not want government telling us what to do. We were experiencing it as the draft for the most part, but the right of an individual to express themselves. Sexually, politically, racially, environmentally, was really important for us and still is. That dark side of that is you do not experience your government as something that you get behind, you experience it as an adversary. And the light has taken this up now, so the government is the enemy. So I thought that was a very interesting common point and a way I had not looked at the history before. We have a largely inexperience of distrust and suspicion of government and so how would you expect a country that feels that way and has not had the historical experience that the World War II generation has? How would you ever convince them if government could do anything good at all?
SM (01:39:34):
One of the qualities that many boomers thought when they were young, particularly college age students, that they were the most unique generation in history. That they were going to end racism, sexism, war homophobia, all the bad things, and they were going to create a better world. And obviously we see the world today and a lot of positive things came out of that period. But still, we have war, we have racism, we have sexism in some respects. We have come a long way but we have got a long way to go. What are your thoughts about that attitude that many had and maybe some even older boomers have, but they still were the most unique generation in American history, both before and since. And secondly, I know you cannot generalize about a whole generation of 74 million and when we are talking about boomer generation now, I am not talking about white men and women, I am talking about African Americans, Latinas, Asian Americans, Native Americans. And so what do you think some of the positive and negative qualities might be based on the people that within that generation?
JQ (01:40:52):
Well, the aspirations that you named at the beginning of the first question, I think are worthy aspirations to have. And I would hope that every generation would happen. And it is sometimes only possible to happen before you have experienced a lot of the world. Experiencing the world, I think tends to humble you a great deal. There were times we could be a very self-righteous group of people. I certainly was. Partly because that was the only authority we had, we did not have the authority of experience, we only had the authority of our values. That could make us very self-righteous and not particularly humble. I know I remember thinking when I was at Woodstock that wow, not that we could change the world, but that there were enough of us to make a difference. I think that is still true and in many ways just because we are such a large generation, I think it is still true. We are the most unique, actually [inaudible]. You cannot be more unique, if you are unique, you are unique. So there is a way that every generation is unique. It is shaped by historical forces that it did not necessarily create and so you cannot take credit for the fact that... Well, it makes the difference that the country was so prosperous. Most of us never thought, oh my god, what am I going to do to make a living? It is just, there is going to be a job and the idea is to get a job that really counts and that his authentic good work. Well, if we have been born into the depression, we might have responded completely differently. So we were a very privileged generation in ways we are just now, I think beginning to appreciate because we are seeing other people who do not have those privileges that we have. We did not earn them, we did not create them, they were given to us. And so I think it moves us to think what gifts could we possibly give given our experience to others? And as we get older, that is the question I think that a little bit of our self-infatuation begins to go away and we begin to think, how can I contribute? And hopefully there are enough examples around, and certainly true in my life of people who have done amazing things is that you can feel some pride as well as some shame in things that the generation has accomplished.
SM (01:44:01):
Those people that criticize that era of the (19)60s and (19)70s as the time when a lot of the problems in American society began and continued through today, I know new people like New Gingrich and Governor Huckabee on his TV show and some of those shows on Fox, obviously some of those people say it as well as George Will and some of his commentaries throughout the year, they like taking these shots at the (19)60s, generation and (19)70s, particularly in areas related drugs, the drug culture, the sexual morays or lack thereof, the breakup of the American family divorce rate. A lot of the things that the welfare state, even some say, the creation of special interest groups that have become a very big problem in their views. When you hear that, what do you think?
JQ (01:45:01):
Well, I think that to some extent it is certainly true what they are saying. Many things that were not being questioned in the (19)50s unravel during the (19)60s and authority of almost every time came into question. I mean, I had the bumper sticker "Question authority." On the back of my bar for years and decades, but it was not as though we got together in some big meeting and decided to do this to the country. It turned out that authority was not serving us very well. There was something about the norms and the conventions that were in fact unreal. And so they could not stand the pressure of questioning and in some cases, mass disobedience. We did not know the pill was going to come along and that revolutionized sexual behavior completely. So I think in a sense you can be saddened by what some of the effects of drug use and the loss of authority have been. And I share that with them, but I do not share their charge or blame that a generation that in fact anybody is responsible for this as if it is just that the authority that they worship, we do not worship. And when that authority is gone, it has to be rebuilt on a new basis. It cannot be just reinstated at the end of a band net or by a sermon. It has to feel that it is authentic and real in their lives. It is almost as, and marriage is, the divorce rate went to 50 percent, but my understanding is that it also has not continued to zero or to a hundred percent it leveled off. So not the decay has just linearly continued.
SM (01:47:33):
Some people think that is why so many people revere Ronald Reagan is that when he said, "We are back." a couple of people said, well, they never heard him say that in the speech, but it was a perception that was out there when he said, "We are back." He went, "We are we are going to build the military back up again because the military had totally disintegrated during the Vietnam War." Because a lot of the problems that we were facing in society from say (19)67 to (19)71 with the drug culture, the divisions between black and white were seen right in the military. And it was part of the demise of the military and I actually talked to people who at the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Memorial was down in Washington, they had a concert going there. And some of the guys said the only reason why they went into a second tour of duty was that they could get cheap drugs. I could not believe it.
JQ (01:48:26):
Well, I know they refused that the American, the US Army was just coming an apart of the scene.
SM (01:48:31):
Right.
JQ (01:48:32):
But that is what happens when you lie to people. I mean, that gets broken. The discipline in a free accord, vanish, morale goes down. So it is like, do they expect that you could lie to people or pretend that a certain reality is not so, and your authority is not going to be eroded? Only a fool would.
SM (01:48:55):
Yeah, some might say they want to go back to the (19)50s, mean of course the (19)50s parents were very good to their kids, so there were good things in the (19)50s too. One of the questions I want to ask is, when did the (19)60s begin and end in your opinion? And what do you think was the watershed moment?
JQ (01:49:11):
Oh, boy. Well, let me start with ending first. I would say it was the concert at Altamont. The fact that it is December of (19)69 just happened to be an accident. But if you saw the bright side of the counterculture at Woodstock in August of (19)69, you saw the shadow side at Altamont. Idea of having the Hell Angels access believe. I mean, it was just childish. It was process. So that kind of insofar as it was a make love, not war innocent about us, that ended at Altamont. And again, we are talking about a half of 1 percent of the generation even being conscious of this, something I am not sure. When it began it was a lot harder for me anyway, because it is like asking somebody what they believe in God? You have to tell me what God do I either believe in or not believe in? So when you say the (19)60s, is it the spirit of exploration and openness to new things? Well, I think the beat sort of started that in a certain way.
SM (01:50:57):
And that was in the (19)50s.
JQ (01:50:58):
Yeah.
SM (01:50:59):
And so I remember seeing Allen Ginsburg when I was in high school and he seemed peculiar to me, but also attractive in a certain way. The things he was talking about, he was really a gentle soul in many ways and he just seemed like a latter-day Walt Whitman. So I did not see him as threatening or alien, in some ways I saw him as the embodiment of what America does. He keeps reaching out, bringing in new things from immigration and ideas and et cetera, et cetera. So when did that, I am not sure, I guess the reading at the Sixth Gallery of Powell, but that was in the (19)60s I think, yeah. I do not know. Was there a watershed moment or some event you think that really was shocking or were there any other?
JQ (01:52:02):
Well, shocking. Certainly.
SM (01:52:02):
A lot of them.
JQ (01:52:07):
Yeah. Well, the two I think of are the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of President Kennedy.
SM (01:52:14):
And where were you when President Kennedy was assassinated? Do you remember the exact moment when you heard?
JQ (01:52:18):
Oh, sure. Yeah. So I was a senior in high school. I had just come out of a chemistry class, which was in a separate building from the rest of the high school. I saw a gym teacher standing on the street just saying, yelling, "Did they catch the guy yet?" Not knowing quite what that meant. By the time I got into the building, I had heard that the president had been shot. And I had a meeting in the principal's office three o'clock that day. And by the time I got there he announced that the president dead. It was quite different feeling than that he had been shot, shocking enough that he had been shot. But to hear he was dead and remember sitting there with people in the [inaudible], I felt sick in my stomach. He did not feel good either. We just sat there and silence.
SM (01:53:11):
Wow. Yeah.
JQ (01:53:15):
Watershed moments are hard.
SM (01:53:19):
Yeah, I got just a couple more and then we will be done. I am not going to ask you all those names because you have really responded in a really good... Because remember, I have a question I was going to ask your response to.
JQ (01:53:29):
Yeah, that would take another year.
SM (01:53:29):
Yeah, that would take a year. Forget that. I want your thoughts again on... Or just your thoughts on the movements because the late (19)60s, early (19)70s was really when all these movies came about. And actually a lot of people leave the (19)60s really went to (19)73 because a lot of things are happening from say, from the time the President Kennedy was assassinated till the fall of (19)73, it was still in the (19)60s. So there is quite a few people have fought the early (19)70s and then there was a line of demarcation around (19)75 when the plane went off the roof in Saigon. But your thoughts on the movements, the civil rights movement was actually a role model for, and the anti-war movement were the role models for the other movements that evolved. And history has shown that a lot of the women left those two movements because there was rampant sexism, thus the formation of the women's movement. But there was the Chicano movement, the Native American movement, which was the American Indian movement. We had Earth Day in 1970 and we had Stonewall, which was the gay and lesbian revolution in 1969. And so all these movements were trying to coming together and there seemed to be a uniqueness and there was a unity amongst all of these groups that anti-war protests or events. I do not see that today. I see these groups have become so special interest all of them, that you and the civil rights people, you do not see the other groups together and the women's, they are all separate. I mean, your thoughts, it seems like what became collaboration and working together has now become integration or segregation again within the movements.
JQ (01:55:08):
Well, I would say it is specialization, segregation. At the beginning you share newness with other organizations, you are facing some of the same problems, you are borrowing technique from one another, et cetera, et cetera. And then I think it is just a kind of majority process. You have to be careful not to become so professionalized that you lose track of what it is you are trying to do. I would say it is a drive for professionalization that that is just as innate. It is not anything that anybody has discovered or created on purpose, but it is part of the life process of every organization and movement. I do think it made me think about what the (19)60s had. It in one way, it may have been at Kennedy's inaugural in the sense of this notion of new possibility, a new generation taking charge that was not our generation, but it was a new generation, something fresh. And as the Civil Rights book who been, and again describes towards individual expression. I have the right to express my sexuality, my race, I do not need to hide this any longer. The environmental movement is a little bit different. But there is that common thread going through. Plus I want to say one of the more important publications of the (19)60s was the Whole Earth Catalog.
SM (01:57:02):
Oh yes.
JQ (01:57:05):
Sort of a LLE catalog of how to live an alternative lifestyle. And I believe it was to what true what they said, the fact that we, for the first time were able to see of picture of the full earth from the moon, really made it impossible to ignore the fact that we lived on this beautiful, precious, and increasingly fragile planet together and had to find a way. I really think it was very cautious of expanding somehow. So if the root was all these movements, they have certainly changed the mindset of American today and I can talk around the world and continue.
SM (01:57:59):
Let me change this tape. I have only got two more questions and then we are done.
JQ (01:58:11):
Okay.
SM (01:58:11):
Let me get my tape here, bear with me.
JQ (01:58:11):
I am warning you, you got me talking, right?
SM (01:58:11):
Well, it is great. I mean, I can probably do another hour with you, but then I do not want to take away from your time and I appreciate this. Okay, hold on a second. Let me get this, get on tape here then. Okay. You were involved obviously all these years for 25 years in the humanities in California. And cannot not ask you a question on the arts before letting you go because when you think of the boomer generation, you got to think of the music, you got to think of the art, you got to think of theater. I think of Gorilla Theater a lot because it was such an important role and Peter Coyote told me about that because he was involved in a lot with the diggers. Your thoughts on the importance of the arts in those three areas, theater, art and music in the (19)60s, and the influence it had on the generation and shaping it, not only personally, but dealing with the politics of the time because most of it was all linked to politics.
JQ (01:59:18):
Well, it was a time of great experimentation in an area. I could remember there used to be, I think there still is something called the Publications of the Modern Language Association, and it was the journal in English and American literature and comparative literature. And it would arrive in this olive green bumper with tiny prints and the most obscure kinds of articles in it that you could possibly imagine. And I remember the May 1970 issue arriving. The cover was bold white and blue-black, I opened it to the first article was in entitled, "Something is Happening Here, but You Do not Know What it is, do you Mr. Jones." By a Berkeley professor named Henry Nash Smith. A second Berkeley professor read through, his article was, "Do literary studies have an ideology? Something had changed." something had changed. That was really exciting. So the academy felt that certainly in music before, the music industry corralled the raw energy coming out of rock and roll. Every generation, the music from the time you are maybe 15 until you are married let us say, or working or have a family, is really important to you because it is the soundtrack of your life. So for me, the Beatles were important, the Stones less so but still important. And we remember the Beatles Stones split, which one is more revolutionary? That was the culture of politics split. Street finding man versus relaxing slow downstream. The Doors were important. The folk movement had been important because of its authenticity. That was a big word for us, for me back then. Authentic. Something had to be authentic in the Pony somehow. Theater tried to get more real, I cannot remember the name of the married couple, the Living In Theater I think it was, and nudity on stage, hair.
SM (02:02:04):
Yes.
JQ (02:02:07):
It was trying to take old forms and bust them open and build them with new contents And that is something I think that that happens perhaps the less explosive and revolutionary waves than it ways that it happened in the (19)60s. But it is the way a culture grows and remains true to itself. We were not very reverent about the containers of the culture and I am now much more aware of how important they are to help transmit values and content. But they do have to keep reshaped and sometimes destroyed every once in a while or they cut off the real flow that is constantly going on of change and absence. And so I think our just a particularly yeasty period because the authority of the old forms was broken. And so we were making things up and sometimes we did a bad job. And sometimes things have lasted. I mean if you, we have traveled it to Utah just recently in the Northern California and I am curious to other areas, and you still see, and especially in the rural areas, vestiges, hippy culture, the way bread is made, the kinds of fabrics and fashions that there are. Those things are still persisting. For some people, all that was just artificial trapping. But subsequent generations have found enough that was real in that to keep certain of those forms alive. And I just think that is part of the history of culture and the way things evolved and changed. But a generation says what is real? What is real about this? And sometimes we were lucky because we were not particularly fearful. Maybe we should have been. Economically, we were not fearful and enabled us to experiment in ways that a more soft generation might not be able to do right away.
SM (02:04:25):
Yeah, it is amazing. When I think of art, I always think of two people, Andy Warhol and Peter Max because Peter Max was the poster guy of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And that poster I had on my wall., I wish someone said, if I had it now, it would be worth a couple hundred bucks. And it was a poster that said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together. It will be beautiful." Which is a kind of a hippie kind of a thinking. You were involved obviously all these years for 25 years in the humanities in California and I cannot not ask you a question on the arts without before letting you go. Because when you think of the boomer generation, you got to think of the music, you got to think of the art, you got to think of theater. I think of Gorilla Theater a lot because it was such an important role in Peter Coyote told me about that because he was involved in a lot with the diggers. Your thoughts on the importance of the arts in those three areas, theater, art and music in the (19)60s and the influence it had on the generation and shaping it not only personally, but dealing with the politics of the time, because most of it was all linked to politics.
JQ (02:05:59):
Well, it was a time of great experimentation in those areas. I could remember there used to be, I think there still is, there was something called the Publications of the Modern Language Association. And it was the journal in English and American literature and comparative literature. And it would arrive in this olive green cover with tiny print and the most obscure kinds of article in it that you could possibly imagine. And I remember the May 1970 issue arriving, the cover was bold, white and blue-black. I opened the first article was entitled, "Something is happening here, but you do not know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" By a Berkeley professor named Henry Nash Smith, a second Berkeley professor, Fred Cruz. His article was, literary Studies have an ideology. "Something had changed." something had changed. That was really exciting. So the academy felt that certainly in music. Before, the music industry kind of corralled the raw energy coming out of rock and roll. Every generation, the music from the time you are maybe 15 until you are married, let us say, or working or have a family, is really important to you.
JQ (02:08:03):
Working or have a family is really important to you because it is sort of the soundtrack of your life. So for me, the Beatles were important. The stones less so, but still important. And, we remember the Beatles Stones split. Which one is more revolutionary? That was the culture and politics split. Street Fighting Man versus Relax and Slow Downstream. The Doors were important. The folk movement had been important because of its authenticity. That was a big word for us, for me back then was authentic. Something had to be authentic and not phony, somehow. Theater tried to get more real. I cannot remember the name of the married couple, the living theater I think it was, and nudity on stage, Hair.
SM (02:09:00):
Yes.
JQ (02:09:04):
It was trying to take old form and bust them open and fill them with new content. And, that is something I think that that happens perhaps the less explosive and revolutionary waves than it the ways that it happened in the (19)60s. But, it is the way a culture grows, and remains true to itself. We were not very reverent about the container of the culture and I am now much more aware of how important they are to help transmit values and content. But, they do have to be reshaped and sometimes destroy every once in a while where they cut off the real blow that is constantly going on of change and [inaudible]. So, I think ours was just a particularly yeasty period because the authority of the old forms was broken. And, so we were making things up and sometimes we did a very bad job and sometimes things have lasted. I mean, we traveled to Utah just recently in the Northern California and I am sure to another area, and you still see, especially in the rural areas, vestiges of hippy culture. The way bread is made. The kinds of fabrics and fashions that there are. Those things are still persisting. For some people, all that was just artificial trapping. But, subsequent generations have found enough that was real in that to keep certain of those forms alive. And, I just think that is part of the history of culture and the way things evolve and change. But, a generation says "What is real? What is real about this?" And, sometimes we were lucky because we were not particularly fearful. Maybe we should have been. Economically, we were not fearful and enabled us to experiment in ways that a more strapped generation might not be able to do right away.
SM (02:11:31):
Yeah, it is amazing. When I think of art, I always think of two people, Andy Warhol and Peter Max. Because, Peter Max was the poster guy of the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. And, on that poster I had in my, well, I wish someone said, if I had it now, it would be worth a couple hundred bucks. And, it was a poster that said, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together. It will be beautiful." Which is a kind of a hippie kind of a thinking. And, then of course we cannot forget Motown and the creation of Motown because what they did.
JQ (02:12:08):
Just the contribution of what had been in the (19)50s, a pretty separated black culture. The way it informed popular culture and white culture. But, now we do not say black and white culture.
SM (02:12:27):
Right.
JQ (02:12:29):
It is incalculable.
SM (02:12:33):
I keep saying we are down to our last three questions, these are the final two. The free speech movement was very important. You went to Berkeley and got your PhD there. But, for anybody like me, whose life has been about higher education and understanding the history of higher ed, those events at Berkeley in (19)64-(19)65 are historic. Not just because it is a protest, but because Mario Savio and his peers did something about the importance of free speech on university campuses. And it is interesting, all came about by chance because the whole history, they were told that they could not hand handout literature. And, one thing you do not know to student populations, whether there is differences in their politics is you do not tell students what they can and cannot do and that united the campus from all angles.
JQ (02:13:22):
But, I think an important question to ask, why did it erupt then? In other words, did not students care before then? And, I think one of the reasons is, you had on the Berkeley campus a significant number of people who had been in Mississippi the summer before. And, I think that motivated them about their own rights in ways that, again, it is experience. You do not know what an experience, what consequences are going to be. They had that experience trying to register a black folks vote, they come back to their campus and they cannot hand out literature? So, suddenly there was that experience that a year earlier, the very same student had not had who were on the campus. So, the history and our response, but.
SM (02:14:26):
Well, Mario Savio said, "The university is about ideas, not about corporate corporations running the universities." And, what is interesting, we are still having the same battles today in the universities because I interviewed Arthur Chickering the great educator, because he wrote Education and Identity, the book that we all used in higher ed and our degree programs at Ohio State. And I said, "Do you have any closing remarks?" At the end of the interview and he said, "Yes, I have one disappointment in higher education today. The corporations have taken over again." And this is from a conservative, he is a conservative. And, because what you are seeing today in universities is that everything is based on scholarship monies and fundraising. Everything has to be linked to raising funds for this. You name a building, it is a fundraising effort. You bring a speaker in, it has got to be linked to a fundraising event, it is like controls again. And, it is kind of upsets me as a person who was in higher education for two or three years to see that what happened at Berkeley in (19)64 and (19)65 is being forgotten in some respects. And, I would like your thoughts on the whole issue of activism on the university campus. Volunteerism is very strong all over the country. I mean, 95 percent of students are doing volunteer work and it is great and it is part of all the service programs. But, a lot of it is required if you join an organization. And, I think there is a big difference between the term volunteerism and activism. And, it is my perception that universities today had been for quite some time afraid of activism because it brings back memories of the (19)60s and (19)70s and fear that it could happen again. Where students such threatened the university's power in many ways by questioning too much, demanding to be on too many organizations. Do you sense that there is a fear of activism?
JQ (02:16:37):
I do not know because I am not on campuses enough. Well, I teach a little bit, but here is what I would say about activism. There may be a fear about it, but activism is very difficult to sustain as a light. That is, some people can, because they are in groups or they have a salary from an organization. And, the specialization we were talking about before where you have large organizations that do employ people, but for the basic person, once you are out of school and you are having to work, so-called activism becomes a part-time at best occupation. And, so I would say that activism may be feared because it tends to happen in concentrated form on campuses, people with time be active. And, that volunteerism is a bit more sustainable because you can tuck it in the activities of a normal life in a way that activism demands almost a total commitment. So, I guess I would not want to privilege activism over volunteerism because I am thinking again, of the average person who has to get a job, has to raise a family, et cetera, et cetera. And, does not have that total 24 hours a day unless something comes along so outrageous that, "Okay, we have to stop this, et cetera, et cetera." I mean, I had a very dear friend, Oakland fireman, we would talk about this and I coined this term or he thought I coined it, "Sustainable Activist." And, he responded so much to that because he was a very active guy, but it can eat your life up. And, I think we all have met professional activists who somehow it has taken hold of them in a way and become an obsession in a way that does not look particularly healthy and can turn you into a self-righteous person who thinks everyone in the world could be doing their particular cause. A hundred percent, 24/7.
SM (02:19:27):
Good response. That is an excellent.
JQ (02:19:33):
The way the world works.
SM (02:19:33):
Why did the Vietnam War end, in your opinion?
JQ (02:19:41):
Because, the truth, the reality on the ground overwhelmed the reality that American commanders were telling themselves. The Vietnamese lived there. They were not going to go away. We are going to find the same thing as true in Afghanistan, I believe. And, so their commitment was just more tenacious than ours was. I remember Colonel Harry Summers.
SM (02:20:24):
Oh yes, I know. Yeah, actually I talked to him before he died.
JQ (02:20:28):
Well, yeah, he remembers going to the Paris Peace Talks and saying to a Vietnamese general, I think it was, "You know, you never defeated us in any battle." And, the Vietnamese general said, "That is true. It is also irrelevant."
SM (02:20:48):
Yeah.
JQ (02:20:49):
It blew Summers mind as it should have. But, we did not win because we could not.
SM (02:20:59):
Well, the best history books are written, which is normally long after a particular period, 50 years.
JQ (02:21:06):
Oh yes.
SM (02:21:06):
Yeah, for World War II books. But, the question I am asking, when the last Boomer has passed away, the last member of the Civil War who fought, if you go to Gettysburg's Battlefield, you see a statue there in 1924, the last participant in the Civil War soldier died, and they have his name and a statue for him. When the last Boomer of the 74 million has passed, what do you think the historians and the sociologists and the commentators will say about the generation that grew up after World War II and their impact on the society and the world?
JQ (02:21:47):
Boy, the real answer is, I do not have the slightest idea. But, I will of course take the crack at it anyway. I think it will be that it was just as we have forgotten many of the details about the Civil War, but its legacy remains in the country. I think the legacy that will remain is the very variegated desire for liberation of all kinds that for whatever reason, got unleashed during this particular time. Political, sexual, racial. In some ways we can talk about environmental liberation. I think those processes will still be going on for 50 years from now or a hundred years from now. And, it is not even that they necessarily started in the (19)60s, though some of them did. But, they got a rather explosive propulsion during this time. And, like the Big Bang, it will still be expanding during that time, for better or for worse. I mean, in a sense, the brain of certain morality and ethical standards is also, it maybe the darker side of the liberation movement, but there it is.
SM (02:23:44):
Do you think that the-
JQ (02:23:44):
The light of the dark.
SM (02:23:46):
Do you think that what became very popular in the early (19)60s of nonviolent protests that Dr. King talked about in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, the trend toward violence, students for Democratic society always had a lot of respect. But, then when it became the weatherman, it went down like a sunken ship. And, even the American Indian movement that started at Alcatraz in (19)69 ended up at Wounded Knee violence in (19)73. You had the Black Panthers that some people say were or were not violent, and the young Lords who kind of fit them in the Puerto Rican community that kind of followed the Black Panthers as well in their movements. You could even say even at Stonewall, they to fought, it was a reckoning, but they ended up fighting the police. Do you think that violence gets you anywhere? And, that the violence is why people are so upset oftentimes with the generations as opposed to all the other things?
JQ (02:24:48):
It may be. I think violence may have a dramatic effect short term, but it is long term effects I think are always pernicious because it invites a violent crime. And, it requires patience and a long view of history to stick to a non-violent approach. But, I believe in the long term, it is the one that is going to succeed because it does not invite that kind of reaction. Rather, it tries to include and incorporate. And, if I could tell a quick story that Parker Palmer, who's the inspiration to the center that I am part of now tells about, I am forgetting his first name now, Wollman a Quaker who in the 18th century felt that he had received a kind of visitation or understanding from God that slavery was wrong. And, the Quakers at that time were slave owners who were prospering quite well, thank you very much, as slave owners. And, so when he went to his own meeting and to others and tried to convince people that slavery is wrong, they did not be [inaudible]. But, what they did do was they said that they would support Wollman, W-O-L-L-M-A-N, and I just cannot remember his first name. They would support him as he went from place to place, from meeting to meeting, trying to convince people that what he had received was in fact the truth. This was of course how the Quakers were. And, so for 20 years he did that. He refused to serve by a slave. If he received anything made by a slave, he paid that slave. And, as a result of his going from place to place, I think it was in 1783, where at some time near then, Quakers became the first religious organization to condemn and [inaudible] flavor, 70 years before this.
SM (02:27:47):
Wow.
JQ (02:27:47):
So yes, it may seem like it is going to take a long time, but here is someone who managed to convince others in a non-violent fashion and in a way that led those others to participate in the anti-slavery movement and did not invite the reaction that it had, had he been John Brown or [inaudible], he would have. Violence is always a sign of impatience. Sometimes it is necessary or deemed necessary because the enemy is at the door. So, what are you going to do? But, it is always impatient and for that reason, I think it affects the short term, and they invite the very opposite of what you were in fact, trying to do.
SM (02:28:43):
And, as an add-on and I know we are saying we are done, but as an add-on to what you just said, why do you think Chicago's convention in the summer of (19)68 and the killings at Kent State and Jackson State had on the psyche of this generation? And, I am not only talking about those who may have been the five to 15 percent of them are activists, but the entire 74 million, you cannot help but forget those two major events because they both were violent. And, to have deaths on two university campuses. Whereas Mario Savio said in 1964-(19)65, "Freedom of speech was guaranteed." And, then of course the Chicago convention was sad for everybody and that is the last question.
JQ (02:29:33):
Well, when you mentioned those events, I will tell you what comes to mind. One was, I was working at the welfare center at that time in the Dykeman Welfare Center in New York. And, the day after Kent State, I wore a black arm band and everybody knew why, there was no question. There were a lot of... And, it was very shocking and many people were already paranoid, but it really made people even more paranoid. Two weeks later, when Jackson State happened, I came in the next day to the workplace and I had a black armband on and I remember a black case worker, welfare worker asked me, he said, "What is that for?" And I said, "I am mourning the students at Jackson State." And, his eyes filled with fear. I mean, he knew damn well what had happened. But, the fact that a white guy.
SM (02:30:46):
Yes.
JQ (02:30:47):
Would say that he was mourning the black students at Jackson State as opposed to, well, that happened in another place in another time, really affected him. And his response, of course, affected me because what was happening was, Chicago just showed the divisions within the country and how ugly they were. I think my brother and my father watched the same TV footage I did, and they were probably rooting for the police. And, so just before I left for California with my wife, I remember saying to my father, it was a cruel question to ask. And, I was not estranged at all from my parents. A lot of people were in this, I was not. But, when I think about it now, I said to him, "Dad, if you were to find out that I had been killed at a demonstration on a campus, what would you say?" And, it was as if I take it a two by four and hit the man in the chest. The question, just the notion, the idea of imagining that the event hit him so hard and he said, "Oh my God, I do not know what I would say." And, I felt so polarized at that time that I thought he might say, "Well, I would say, well, he deserved it. He should not have done it." And, that was not true at all. That was not the emotional... That was some kind of media imagination that I had. Had nothing to do with flesh and blood actual response. And, so it has always made me wary of big responses to far away events as opposed to the real flesh and blood. How normal human beings respond to one another when they have the, you know?
SM (02:32:57):
Are there any questions I did not ask that you thought I was going to?
JQ (02:33:02):
Boy, after almost two hours now, I cannot think of any. I cannot think of any.
SM (02:33:09):
Well, that is it then. Thank you very much. I will keep you-
JQ (02:33:14):
Oh yeah.
SM (02:33:15):
I will keep you updated on the project and certainly you will see the transcript eventually. And, I will need a couple pictures.
JQ (02:33:23):
Okay.
SM (02:33:23):
And, I will get the tape to you, may not be right away.
JQ (02:33:28):
Oh, that is all right.
SM (02:33:28):
But, you will get it. I am going to be transcribing all these myself. And, so you said Walter Capps' wife is in Congress?
JQ (02:33:34):
Yes. Lois Capps, she represents the Santa Barbara area.
SM (02:33:40):
Golly, I think I have that book by Walter Capps.
JQ (02:33:45):
Oh, "The Unfinished Floor."
SM (02:33:45):
Yes.
JQ (02:33:46):
Yeah.
SM (02:33:48):
I wonder if she would be willing to talk.
JQ (02:33:50):
I will bet she would. I will bet she would.
SM (02:33:53):
So-
JQ (02:33:56):
I mean, I met John Wheeler through Walter. I think he had just written his book.
SM (02:34:03):
Yeah. Well, I interviewed him a week ago in Washington.
JQ (02:34:06):
Oh, no kidding?
SM (02:34:06):
In fact, I will send you a picture of him. I got a great shot. If you do not mind, I will send a picture I took of him.
JQ (02:34:13):
Sure.
SM (02:34:13):
He was very tired, and I guess there is a story with him. His sister, excuse me, his wife's sister was murdered in Memphis by drug people.
JQ (02:34:24):
Oh dear.
SM (02:34:25):
Yeah, about a year or so ago, so they were going to jail. The trial's going to be happening and his wife has to go. So, he is going through a lot of.
JQ (02:34:37):
Oh, I am sorry to-
SM (02:34:38):
Yeah. And, of course he was at the Commonwealth Club in Washington where I interviewed him one. And, I still have another hour to interview with him, but I will send you his picture.
JQ (02:34:49):
Well, give him my regards when you see him next.
SM (02:34:51):
Oh, I will.
JQ (02:34:52):
I remember I very much meeting him. We were of course very different politically, but I thought Touched with Fire was a very important book.
SM (02:35:00):
Oh, it is a great book and he signed it for me.
JQ (02:35:01):
It began really with retreats for public school teachers in that, Parker Palmer's wrote a book called The Courage to Teach, in which what he was saying was, people go into service professions like teaching not to make money. They go in because there is something in their heart that makes them want to do this.
SM (02:35:27):
That is why we go into higher ed.
JQ (02:35:29):
That is right. And, in fact, he has just written the book on higher education called The Heart of Higher Education. Book just came out three weeks ago, actually. But, what happens is people then get into institutions whose behavior is almost the opposite of its mission statement. And, teachers get burned out very badly and they get twisted and it is really difficult. And, what these retreats do, is they do not have a particular content or ideology, but they using poetry and silent and conversation in small groups, they give people a chance.
SM (02:36:14):
Wow.
JQ (02:36:21):
And, usually the response after the first retreat is, "Oh my God, this is so wonderful. I realize how poisonous the environment I am in right now, I am out of here." But, after the second retreat, what people are saying is, "I will be damned if I am going to be driven out of this profession, which I love."
SM (02:36:42):
Wow.
JQ (02:36:42):
"I am going to change things."
SM (02:36:44):
So you-
JQ (02:36:48):
But, now there are retreats for clergy. There are retreats for health professionals because there are a lot of service professions where people are suffering the same way. So, it is great work. I really love it.
SM (02:37:00):
And, what do you moderate or?
JQ (02:37:02):
I help facilitate retreats and I am now, I am on the board.
SM (02:37:07):
Well, my gosh.
JQ (02:37:07):
Administrative [inaudible].
SM (02:37:11):
Well, let me tell you this, when I am done working on this book I was in higher education for 30 years. I did over 500 programs on forums, debates, conferences.
JQ (02:37:21):
Oh, no kidding?
SM (02:37:21):
Yeah. It is my whole life. So, if there has ever an openings there, I would be curious to... Because, I love that because higher ed has been my career and students are my life. And, we did five major conferences that I organized at Westchester. One was a major conference on Byard Rustin. We did one on Jackie Robinson, National tribute to him. We did the Wall That Heals, which was a four day conference where we brought the traveling wall and Jan Scruggs. And, we had a whole series of speakers in the fall to educate our students about the war. And, we had over 6,000 people in the community that came. We did a conference on Islam, which was very controversial in my last month, where we packed a 500-seat auditorium for 10 straight sessions. We packed nine of them. Totally. And, they were out the wall outside the hall trying to get in. So, we have just done a lot of speakers. It is just amazing how many that I have done. So, just what you are talking about, about trying to bring people together and to keep people in teaching, because teaching to me is the greatest profession anyone can ever be in because you are shaping the future of America and the future of the world.
JQ (02:38:44):
Yeah.
SM (02:38:44):
So, we do not want to lose good teachers.
JQ (02:38:46):
That is right. Well, one thing I might invite you to do is go to the website, which is www. [inaudible]renewal.org. And, they give these retreats. They are not done in a systematic way, but they are all over the country and you might want to just experience one.
SM (02:39:08):
Yeah. Super. Well, what an honor to talk to you.
JQ (02:39:15):
Well, I thank you for your questions and for your interest and your passion.
SM (02:39:17):
Yeah, well I do. And, I wish I had known you when you first went on board out there in California where I lived. But, you are a deep thinker and you have a lot of passion for what you do. And, boy, that must have been a big loss to leave that profession well, that position. But, you are in something else that you love, and that is important.
JQ (02:39:41):
It is true.
SM (02:39:41):
Okay. Well, you have a great day.
JQ (02:39:41):
Well, you too. And, good luck with your project, Steve.
SM (02:39:42):
Thanks. Bye now.
JQ (02:39:42):
Bye-bye.
(End of Interview)
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Title
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Interview with Dr. James Quay
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Quay, James ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
Subject
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Radio producers and directors; California Council for the Humanities; Quay, James--Interviews
Description
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Dr. James Quay grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He earned a BA in English from Lafayette College and then performed two years of alternative service in central Harlem as a conscientious objector. He and his wife moved to California where he earned an MA and Ph.D. in English Literature from UC Berkeley. He was a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and an associate producer with California Public Radio where he co-produced a six-part radio documentary, <em>Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War</em>. He served as executive director of the California Council for the Humanities from 1983 to 2008. Since his retirement, he has been a facilitator for the Center for Courage and Renewal.
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-08-02
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In copyright
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.95a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.95b
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
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159:49
-
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/e6c579bc725bd9467d59b577e42b0058.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-04
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John B. Anderson, 1922-2017
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. John Anderson (1922 - 2017) was a United States Congressman and presidential candidate from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he represented Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 through 1981. Anderson had a Law degree from the University of Illinois."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">John Anderson (1922 - 2017) was a United States Congressman and presidential candidate from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he represented Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 through 1981. Anderson had a Law degree from the University of Illinois.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Vietnam; Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Baby boom generation; Harry S. Truman; Foreign Service; Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Woodstock; Nineteen sixties; Generation Gap; Watergate; Kent State; Jackson State; Vietnam Memorial; Affirmative Action; Chicago 1968; American Foreign Policy."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14281427}}">Vietnam; Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; Baby boom generation; Harry S. Truman; Foreign Service; Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Woodstock; Nineteen sixties; Generation Gap; Watergate; Kent State; Jackson State; Vietnam Memorial; Affirmative Action; Chicago 1968; American Foreign Policy.</span>
Duration
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108:03
Subject LCSH
Legislators—United States; Presidential candidates—United States; Anderson, John B. (John Bayard), 1922-2017--Interviews
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: John Anderson
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Kimberly F Mourao
Date of interview: 3 August 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
00:03
SM: Anderson, John Anderson, August 3, 19- not 19. Quick question, so here we go. And I am going to read them to make sure I get these correct. When you sat in that cold weather on January 20, 1961, in front of the Capitol as a new congressman listening to a new president, what was going through your mind when you heard these words: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,” from President-elect Kennedy, did you know that he would be an inspiration to a whole new generation of Americans born after World War II? And of course, he ended up being assassinated, but what was it like being there being brand new yourself, and then he was brand new?
00:56
JA: Well, I was going to say, obviously, my feelings involved, my own sense of pride, and accomplishment, and having won the race, and I had been elected to my first of what would become ten terms in the US House. So, I had my own thoughts and what I wanted to do, but it, I have a very distinct memory of being thrilled by what the new president had to say. Even though I was obviously of the opposite party. He struck for me the kind of note that I wanted to hear from, from a new president promising a change. And I have to roll back the tides a little bit. And try to think if there was anything other than the fact that it was fifty years ago.
02:19
SM: Yes.
02:21
JA: And I still, still recall quite vividly the sense of pride that I felt that being a part of the scene, being, being there on the porch, then they, in those days, it was on the east front of the Capitol. Last inaugural, of course, that I attended was Barrack, Barack Obama's and they have long been held on the west front. Not long, but for quite quite a number of inaugurations now, as I recall it. But looking as you do up for the Supreme Court, being a lawyer and having respect for that institution, it was totally a memorable experience. And as I say, it filled me with a sense of genuine excitement and hope that I could be part of the new wave of progress. He was, he was assuring us that he would try to achieve.
03:37
SM: When he gave that speech, when you were listening, did that line, did those two lines of that one line really stand out? Or did, or did you read it?
03:48
JA: Yes, I think it did. Even, even at the time, it resonated very clearly, with the thought that, well, here was a new era that was opening up and a new and young and dynamic president with a real gift, as we all know, to speak and write with eloquence. And feel like he struck, struck a real note of optimism. That was memorable.
04:21
SM: The other lines that come out of there, there are many, but “we will pay any price or bear any burden to guarantee Liberty around the world,” of course a lot of people linked into Vietnam.
04:33
JA: I think. I do not, I do not, of course, that could not foretell the fact that he would turn out to be the first president that would really very appreciably enlarge our presence in Southeast Asia by sending a force of more than battalion strength as I recall it, to South Vietnam, and it was a war that I, like many others finally turned against belatedly when I made a speech during my primary campaign, I think it was a nationally devised, televised debate that was sponsored by the League of Women Voters, which not all but I think, four or five of the people who were contesting as I was for the Republican nomination in 1980. I said that one great-. She asked me: “What mistake have you made years that you serve in Congress and in my 10th term,” of course, and I said, “Well, the worst mistake was to vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964,” which was, of course, after Kennedy's death, and Lyndon Johnson had assumed the mantle and had decided, you know, that he had to get the public to be supportive of the effort. And some people indeed suggest that the whole thing that happened there in the Gulf of Tonkin was purposely staged as an incident that would arouse public passion and attract public interest. In any of that I said that the worst mistake I made was to go along. Well, it was virtually a unanimous vote, to go along with the crowd and vote, for what turned out to be a misbegotten campaign to assert our presence in Southeast Asia and ended the ignominious incident of Ellsworth Bunker, the American ambassador, the last American ambassador had to be airlifted off the roof. He was in there in Saigon, along with members of his staff, successful North Vietnamese were storming the gates, and about to take the city. So, I have a very distinct memory of that.
07:41
SM: How would you describe the boomer generation? A lot of people do not like terms, like, I found this out through the process of doing this book, is they do not like terms for generations. Higher education always uses terms because that is how they define groups. Sociologists often defined the same way; boomer generation is those born between (19)46 and 1964. And then, but a lot of the people more in between (19)40 and (19)46 really feel closely associated with that group, because many of them were the leaders and the activists of the era. And so, and of course, those students has experienced in the first wave of the boomers compared to the second wave was totally different the second ten years, because they were so much younger. But my question is, when you look at the time that boomers have been alive, which is has been from 1946, right now to 2010, the oldest Boomer is now sixty-four, and the youngest is now forty-eight. Going on forty-nine is amazing how time flies. And so, I have asked each of the individuals in my last one third of my interviews to define the, the years and what those years meant to each individual, in terms of what was America like.
09:04
JA: The years between 1946 and 1954?
09:06
SM: Yeah, no, yeah. No, (19)64 is the boomers.
09:12
JA: I am sorry, (19)46 to (19)64.
09:15
SM: Is what they call the boomer generation. So, I am asking to you, when you look at these periods, what does it mean? What are these periods mean to you? 1946 to 1960.
09:29
JA: Well, Harry Truman started that period, I guess. Not, he did not start it, but he was a president during that period, I was newly emerged. After the war, I went back and finished my law school education. I was discharged in November, as I recall it of 1945 and then went back for the spring semester in 1946. And got my LLB or JD whatever it was they called it in those days. Somebody told me the other day I have always said I had a Juris Doctor degree and they said, “No, it was really a Bachelor of Laws.” Anyway, it was a law degree, I suppose it is not terribly important, what you call it. So, the period began with my emerging from law school. And being picked up by a law firm, and going to work in Rockford, Illinois, in my hometown, and Boulos. And then by 1948, I had decided that the private practice of law was maybe not really what I wanted to do, I would like to teach. And to do that, I would need a graduate degree. So, I looked around and finally was able to secure a fellowship to attend Harvard Law School and went out to Cambridge and spent (19)48 to (19)49 acquiring my degree, and the only really good offer that I received to teach when I graduated was, I remember out of the University of Montana. And I think the law school was located in Missoula. And it just was not a part of the country that I was attracted to. Particularly. So, I declined that offer. And then I decided to go into private practice, I would try the law again, as a private practitioner, and I had made a living and it was fairly interesting. But in any event, it was kind of the springboard, really for a political career. In my case, I became very friendly with the people in the courthouse. And they included two people that were very dominant. In the Republican Party, the county treasurer and the county assessor. The Norland L. Anderson guys. So, remember their names. And they took me around to the various political functions of the republican party held in that area, and I became friendly with the people in the party. So, when the current man who had been State's Attorney, Matt Weston, decided not to run for reelection, he was involved in some scandal, here and there. But in any event, I decided to throw my hat in the ring. And there were five candidates in the race and really the leading candidate was the first assistant State's Attorney, Jack Buynon, his name was. And when and he had been quite a local hero, he had a winning football team of the State University, University of Illinois, which I had also graduated. But I campaigned hard and shoe leather campaign of going door to door and handing out my literature. And I had a small group of friends that obviously assisted and in a fairly close race, I emerged the winner. And that was really then my springboard again into politics. I served for four years as a state's attorney, and I think I achieved a fairly commendable record of convictions and enforcing the law. And so, when I guess I left something out here, something out here because that was, my term was (19)60. (19)60 to (19)80 and I was state's attorney from (19)56 to (19)60. I left out, I left out the fact that I had a stint in the in the Foreign Service. I took the competitive exams for the Foreign Service, and was offered a foreign service officer post, which was in West Berlin, I did go to West Berlin as a Foreign Service officer, and served for about two and a half years, which is the tour of duty got married. During that time to my wife whose still my wife. Our first child was born in Berlin. Eleanor who now resides abroad, married a man from Holland that she met in New York and has lived for many years, twenty, more than twenty years in the Netherlands, had her over a year ago, this past summer, with her four children who were grown up. But it was after that. That time in Europe that I came back and got into politics. I kind of left that. Oh, I should have mentioned that. And-
16:44
SM: How would you describe the America? When you look at that period (19)46 to-
16:48
JA: I kind of got off your question?
16:51
SM: It is just in a few words; how would you describe the America of (19)46 and 1960? Because that is important. But tell me about you.
16:59
JA: The period between (19)46-
17:01
SM: And 19-, in the period that President Kennedy was elected and how was? What was America like in your thoughts?
17:14
JA: Well, Eisenhower was elected president (19)52. And I remember the celebrated campaign where Harry Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey. That was (19)48, (19)48 to (19)52. Harry Truman who had succeeded when the presidency when Roosevelt died. Well, it was a, (19)46 to (19)60, (19)52.
18:27
SM: I have not broken down here I have, what was the like to be, live in American (19)46 to (19)60, and then (19)61 to (19)70, (19)71 to (19)80, (19)81 to (19)90, (19)91 to 2000, 2001 to 2010, and these are like periods that boomers have been alive. What would, how would you describe the America in a few words what it was like then?
18:51
JA: Well, it was a time of sort of recovering from the events that preceded that period, namely World War II, returning veterans finding their way again in society, in my case, coming out of the army and going right back to school to finish the one semester that I had to complete, to get my degree and take the bar examination. I am kind of groping around trying to think of how I would describe the period, I was pretty busy building my own life, I think those of us who came out of the army and been away from civilian life or interested in getting back into the flow of normal life. It was during that period that I was really trying to find myself, in a sense, because after a brief period, in the law office, as I have just described for you, I decided to try something else. Try teaching rather than, than the practice of law, as a way of using my legal education as a foundation for a career. Then politics took over with my election. That's that was in (19)56. And you wanted me to spell-
21:20
SM: Well you were fine because you were, you describe the year for you right up until the time you were elected to Congress.
21:26
JA: During that time I was trying to reintegrate with my normal pattern of American life that we had left behind when we went off to the army, and had experiences that would live with us forever, but would be totally different alien from the culture that we were accustomed to, and trying to find our way into another veteran style of living, where we can both enjoy life and at the same time, managed to make a living and create a career that would sustain us. And-
22:16
SM: That was typical what was happening in America that time and-
22:20
JA: Maybe, maybe it was the kind of wandering that I was doing between the law and Foreign Service and politics, process of trying to reintegrate in society and American life that caused me to make some rather abrupt [inaudible] and sharp changes in what I was doing, from being at a law office one evening, one day and then being out, back in the classroom again, and then leaving that to go back into private practice with a partner, whom I had met during my law school days, and then leaving that for a career, which began with the election of State's Attorney, and then to Congress in 1968.
23:21
SM: Most of these-
23:25
JA: Well, it was kind of a, we were trying to find ourselves, find our way.
23:31
SM: Most of these other periods are going to be in part of these other questions that I asked because the periods from the time you were in Congress, what does the assassination of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King say about the America of the 1960s?
23:48
JA: Well, I remember vividly, where I was at the moment that the word arrived of the assassination. We were just assembling to conduct a committee hearing of the government operations committee chaired by an African American congressman from Chicago, Bill Dawson, his name was, and the news filtered over the transom somehow that the President had been shot and the committee, adjourned for the day. And I can remember that I wept I literally, he was a president of another party, but he was the young, youthful, vibrant hope that many of us had for the future. So, it was a searing, searing moment, etched into my memory in a way that I can, I can still remember how wretched I felt that this awful thing, it was a blot on the country's [inaudible] the President had been killed, been assassinated, even though it had happened to several others before him, but to me it was, it was a shocking, shocking-
25:23
SM: Was there a fear? Did you, you and your peers, have a fear that it was the unknown? He, you knew he had been killed, and that President Johnson had been protected, so that he would succeed, but the not knowing of why this happened, and it could it be something bigger than just-
25:44
JA: No, I do not think, I do not think I succumb to any deep conspiracy theory other than feeling the same sense of disbelief and wonderment that anyone could commit such a vile act. But I did not really, there were those who subscribe to a more conspiratorial view of the event. I just thought it was one of those tragic events in history that you cannot explain why it happened or how it happened. But you have to accept and somehow pick yourself up and move on as we did. When Johnson came in, and to his credit, it was he launched the civil rights revolution, which to me was the most important part of my congressional career being a part of the Congress that enacted the Civil Rights Act or-
26:51
SM: Fair housing. Yeah, and-
26:53
JA: Fair Housing Rights Act of (19)65. And I was the deciding vote in the rules committee that brought out the Open Housing Act.
27:01
SM: Yeah, I read that your book. And that was historic.
27:05
JA: I am prouder of that vote than any other action that I took, during the twenty years that I was in Congress, because as I think I probably indicated there, you do not very often in the body of 435 members feel that your vote has been of singular importance and it could not have happened without it. And that bill had to get my vote, the only Republican voting for it, and the rules committee needed to come out so that the floor could then vote on it. And that was the thing that really attracted national attention to me, just one at 435 in that large body, and from then on, the press began to cover me a little bit more intensively. And it probably was responsible for the fact that later I would take the bold step of saying I will leave the Congress, retire after ten terms and run first as a Republican and failing that, then as an independent.
28:20
SM: How about the 1968, which was a terrible year, you wrote about it in your book, but the assassinations of two leaders? What they two months exactly between.
28:33
JA: Martin Luther King.
28:35
SM: In April, April 5.
28:38
JA: Yes, yes. Well, yeah. And as someone who had come to really realize that civil rights had to be the dominant issue of that period, that we had to overcome the legacy of indifference and intolerance, that had locked us in from 1896 and the Supreme Court decision that decided it was perfectly alright to segregate people on a railroad train, and require them, blacks to ride in one car. That separate but equal doctrine which came about that bad decision in 1896 and lasted until the civil rights revolution of the (19)60s. well over a half century later. So, you are right, those two assassinations I think gripped me with a feeling that I wanted to be remembered, if I was to be remembered at all, as having played some part and some role and had a hand in bringing about a reversal of that whole doctrine and pattern of separate but equal and integrating American society basis where you did not draw the color line.
30:36
SM: One of the things here that I have is you served in Congress from (19)61 to (19)80. During these twenty years, the boomer generation went to high school, college, began their careers, many became involved in multiple movements which was really big in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. Many protests and many went on with their careers, in short, the question I am getting at here is what legislation Congress has passed that had a direct-
31:03
JA: I did not get the rest of that sentence.
31:07
SM: Well, no, in short what legislation in Congress was passed, that had a direct bearing on the boomer generation. And I say this that things that I remember, it was the draft, voting age at eighteen, the Civil Rights Act and voting rights act that you talked about the Open Housing Act-
31:26
JA: Well for me the overriding issue was the civil rights issue, but those other things were important, of course, the eighteen-year-old vote-
31:36
SM: Right, and Roe v. Wade, in (19)73. And the Bakke decision, which was a decision that when I lived in California, that made [inaudible] news so big. And so those are some of the things that happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s. That-
31:53
JA: Well, that was a big issue in and in my life as well, because one of the things that I remember most vividly in one debate that I had, a national debate that I had with Ronald Reagan before League lost sponsorship or was afraid, they would lose sponsorship unless they acceded to the demand of Jimmy Carter, who would not get into a debate with Ronald Reagan and me. He said he would only debate Reagan, he would not, he would not debate with an independent candidate, namely my, myself. And, but in the one debate that I did have with Ronald Reagan, the thing that made headlines, of course, was that I flatly came out in strong favor of a woman's right to choose and indicated my belief that the decisions of the court prior thereto that denied that right were totally wrong. So, the women's movement, particularly to achieve the right that we are describing, the right to choose whether or not to have a child. That was one of the really significant features of that era.
33:38
SM: When you think of the politicians between (19)60 and (19)80. In the Senate and Congress, some of them stood out because of courageous acts. The two senators are against the Vietnam War at the beginning were Wayne Morse of Oregon, and I believe, Senator from Alaska, Ruska? The two of them. But they were, they were way ahead of their time in terms of being against the Vietnam War. And they were criticized heavily for it. I got to know Senator Nelson quite well. And because we brought them to our campus, the founder of Earth Day several times, and we organize the Leadership on the Road program. So, we saw eleven, United States senators. And he talked about the courage of those two, they were kind of ostracized, because they were the only ones for a long time. And then, then you had finally Gaylord Nelson and Fulbright and others going against it. But it is kind of a two-part question. What are yours? What were your thoughts then when those very few politicians were the way ahead of the others in terms of being against this war? And then in 1980, the price that was paid by many of the United States senators by losing their senatorial positions because of their anti-war stand when Ronald Reagan-
34:54
JA: Because of what? You have to speak up a little bit, my hearing is not good.
34:59
SM: In 1980, several senators lost their positions because of their anti-war stand and when President Reagan was elected, and of course, we are talking Gaylord Nelson, Birch Bayh, George McGovern, I think McCarthy was just going to retire, right. But they said he was not going to be able to win. Fulbright was on his way out. So, the major people were kind of out because of their stand against the Vietnam War, because America was changing toward Ronald Reagan. So, your thoughts on the politics in 1980 at that time, and also the courageous stands that these early senators took?
35:41
JA: Well, my thoughts today, obviously, are to salute the memory of all of those men that you have mentioned, for the courage and the foresight and the prescience that they had, that we were in an era where the United States should not be fighting that kind of war. To leap ahead, the one thing that troubles me about the present administration, which I voted for, and totally support, is that I have not agreed with a war in Afghanistan-
36:29
SM: Neither have I.
36:31
JA: And I feel that it is unfortunate that the President made the commitment that he did, to continue, I think that we should be trying to turn that over to an international body like United Nations, I do not think the United States should be fighting that war. Well, I guess I pretty well, given you a clue as to what my thoughts are I, I, in very recent times, I have invited people like McGovern, to come to the campus of the law school, or I have taught for twenty years to come speak to the students, in part because of the admiration I had for them on the stand courageous stands that they took with respect to the war in Vietnam. And I do not want to get away from your topic. I mean, I guess maybe it is because of my feeling that Vietnam should have engrained itself so thoroughly into our minds and our thought processes about the danger of becoming involved in the kind of struggle involved there, that I have carried that over to why I feel strongly as I do, that, our, our idea of trying to build a nation, despite recent statements where I think Obama himself has backed away from the idea of nation building, that that his predecessor, George Bush, Herbert Walker, George W. Bush had, he was really drumming a way out, that we were going to build a new nation and, and Iraq in the process of punishing al Qaeda. There was also nation building. And I do not think that is our task. To just totally believe that we ought to have the kind of global democracy represented by a body like the United Nations that will be in charge of building democracy around the world that ought to be an international cooperative effort. It should not be the job of one single nation, albeit my own country and the most powerful country in the world, to take on its shoulders, the idea of building democracy. I think that ought to be an international project. Well-
39:48
SM: It is almost you know, it's almost as I just wish Eleanor Roosevelt saw it even though she passed away in (19)62. But I wish she, she could have lived another ten, fifteen years because her Universal Declaration of Human Rights and what she first saw as the, is the role the United Nations. I still am a believer in the United Nations. But I think they do an awful lot of dialogue. And they do not do a whole lot of action beyond it. And the last great moment, I think was when Stevenson’s “wait till Hell freezes over.” That was a memory I will never forget because that is when the United Nations was working. I think, even though there were confrontations, the confrontation are in the United Nations. And it is, and that is, I think, what Eleanor Roosevelt dreamed of. I, your book is unbelievable. I, I read it in the past three weeks. And, and I had this book for a long time. You were, you were so right on with about the boomer generation and about the young people I think a lot because you had kids of the age. I love the explanation there when you took your daughter to see a concert, I think it was Arlo Guthrie concert, or you finally went with your daughter, the one that lives in Europe. And it was a great description, because the description you have the experience with your daughter was exactly the (19)60s. It was exactly. And so, I am going to start out by question number one. Here is a quote that you said, and I am going to put these quotes in the book. “What impressed me, however, was that the young man who denounced my views, at Elmer-,” this is at Elmhurst college, this is about generation gap. “What impressed me, however, was that the young man who denounced my views did so without even knowing what they were. If I needed any proof of the generation gap. I found it that day at Elmhurst College,” when that person was shouting you down. See, that is what we always teach young people do not speak unless you have some knowledge. And this is a tremendous quote to me. Could you explain what it was like going on college campuses back then? And whether Elmhurst was fairly typical, or was that just a unique?
42:02
JA: No, I think it was a fairly, a rather unusual incident really. I forget the exact date.
42:13
SM: It was, I think it was, not even sure. But it was in the (19)60s. It was right around the time that the Vietnam War was, probably mid (19)60s, (19)65, (19)66, somewhere around there.
42:29
JA: I remember, just got another little bit hazy about dates around that period. But-
42:39
SM: What was it like going to college campuses though, because you went to a lot of them. Speaking in the (19)60s, what kind of, what kind of, what did you think of that generation you had kids that were that age.
42:52
JA: You are talking about the mid (19)60s?
42:54
SM: Mid (19)60s or all the (19)60s, basically, mid to late (19)60s, early (19)70s? What did you think of those young people that listen to you? Were they listeners?
43:08
JA: Well, when was the, when was the great event up in New York? When they, all the young people got together?
43:23
SM: Woodstock? 1969.
43:26
JA: Yeah, that was toward the end of the decade. I know my own daughter; my own daughter went to Woodstock.
43:35
SM: She did? She admits it.
43:39
JA: Well, I find it hard to really tell you now. How to assess that period.
44:03
SM: You say it here the generation gap, your definition you stated-
44:07
JA: I guess there was a gap between generations. Yes, yes. I found it. I found it a difficult, even though I like to believe that I was a person of progressive views who was capable of changing as the times changed, not in just an accommodative sense but in the sense that I was putting my ear to the ground and could understand and empathize with the feelings of young people who were trying to express themselves and how they felt. But I guess I was just one of many somewhat puzzled parents, when it comes to trying to explain Woodstock.
45:00
SM: Let me refresh, you were writing here that, that you had reasons for the generation gap, and you broke them down. And they were very well thought out. And I have just mentioned them if you want to, let me make sure though this is still going here. You mentioned that one of the things is the change was American religion at that time, change was big. You said that hypocrisy, there was hypocrisy of the older generation. Alienation of the young due to the fact that there, there was so much-
45:35
JA: Yeah, I guess. Yeah. As you read those words, and, and refresh my recollection, I suppose I did. I did feel that young people were rebelling and throwing off the teachings of their elders, and yet they had not put in place of that. Anything to really fill the vacuum that they had created, other than to engage in their kind of fantasy that Woodstock represented. It was it was a puzzling time then. And I guess it still puzzles me, I really do not have a good answer.
46:26
SM: Well, in the in the book, you describe pretty well, the, the generation gap, the heroes were different, there was a decline in adult authority, decline in church authority, there was a decline in a lot of different things. And it certainly were challenging. How important do you feel, you have already mentioned the civil rights movement. But how important was the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement and the women's movement, in shaping this generation and in shaping America, the America not only of then, but now, those are three major movements.
47:03
JA: I think, enormously, enormously important. All of those things that you mentioned, were really, enormously important, in causing us to the kind of country we are today.
47:30
SM: Another quote, again, I am going to read these quotes, just see if you can respond to them. This is a quote on the bitterness of many of the people of that era toward the Vietnam War. “The bitterness and intransigence that we see in so many of our young people today reflects, I believe, the fact that unlike the civil rights movement, the Vietnam peace movement showed no early successors.” And then you also thought that the reason why the young people went toward violence, which is the Weathermen, and maybe the Black Panthers and other groups is that “The lessons seem to be no,” I cannot even read my reading here. “The lesson seemed to be no matter how hard they tried, nothing slowed down the war, so they turned to mobs.” So, they turned to mobs-
48:33
JA: Well, there was a feeling of deepening frustration that events simply plotted on. And one tragedy succeeded another because of their inability to affect the kind of change in policies that would have ended that seemingly endless conflict in Vietnam. And you are right. There were some singular victories in the civil rights struggle, like the passage of the Civil Rights Act of (19)64. And the Voting Rights Act and the Open Housing Act. There was nothing similar to deal with the problems that were engendered by the fact that our politicians and our political leaders with a few exceptions, were we were simply kind of caught in the tide and swept along endlessly in this involvement. Not to get off the track completely. That is why feelings like that are why I feel the way I do about the situation today in in Afghanistan, and our involvement in this war against terror, that lives are being lost. In the papers just a day or two ago, another long, well you were not here, you do not read the Post, the voter drafts of all the young men who have been killed in Vietnam, not in Vietnam, but in-
50:33
SM: Afghanistan.
50:35
JA: And it, it does start memories of the frustration that young people must have felt back in that earlier period that you are addressing.
50:49
SM: President Bush. The first President Bush said that the Vietnam syndrome was over, I, I say no, it is not over. I have always felt that way. There seems to be a sensitivity that whenever you bring up the word Vietnam, or the term quagmire, you get out “Oh, do not go back to that again. I mean, you are all you are doing is bringing up past” or “you are nostalgic for the past. It has no relevance to today.” That is frustration on the part of maybe some boomers who have lived through the period and have, they say they moved on, why do not you? But your thoughts on when you bring up Vietnam quagmire, it is, it creates a stir. You sense that still today? Do you do believe the Vietnam syndrome is over?
51:49
JA: Hard question to answer definitively. I-
52:03
SM: We will finish in thirty minutes. You do not ponder anymore on that particular one. But he just said, what did the following events mean to you individually? What does Watergate mean to you?
52:38
JA: Well, it led to the resignation of a president which was a traumatic effect. And yet I think Watergate in a sense had had a purgative and a cleansing effect. That was beneficial, highly, highly beneficial, as far as politics were concerned. And they showed that, it showed the recuperative power of American democracy. I mean, even though we suffered the ignominy and the disgrace really of seeing an elected the highest elected official, forced to resign for all of the reasons that they have gone into by many others and do not need to be repeated. It shows the, the recuperative strength of American democracy that this could survive all of that, and to bring about some of the changes that were clearly necessary.
54:17
SM: What did you think of Nixon's enemies list?
54:21
JA: Did I think what?
54:21
SM: What did you think of Nixon's enemies list?
54:25
JA: Well, it was shocking, was a shocking thing. Really. I was horror-struck.
54:34
SM: Were you on it?
54:36
JA: Well, I do not know whether I was on his list or not. I, I may well have been for the reason that I will always remember a long letter that I wrote to John Ehrlichman, who of course, I will ultimately paid the price of going to jail and being penalized for the role that he played, urging, urging that he counsel the president to come before the American people, this was before the complete denouement occurred about Watergate, and speak honestly and, frankly, and tell everything that he knew. Well, now, in retrospect, Nixon knew that he would be putting his neck in a noose, the fact that I wrote Ehrlichman and told him that that is what he should advise the president to do to come before a joint session of the Congress and honestly, honestly, lay out the facts and his role and the role of his administration, in what had happened. And I never even got an answer to my letter from Ehrlichman, who later went to jail himself, but I have the feeling that maybe Nixon knew the letter had been sent, and Ehrlichman may well have told him about it. And if so, he would have put a check by my name on that, on that list, and he kept of people to watch out for.
56:32
SM: I noticed that Daniel Schorr who just passed away, that he was, he was number four on the list. If he was invited to your, there is a story that he was invited to a White House function, and at the same time, he was number four on the enemies list, so there must be some communication around. What did you think of when Nixon said “peace with honor” in 1973? We, as we were leaving Vietnam, the Paris Peace Talks, “peace with honor,” that upset a lot of Vietnam vets. But your thoughts on when Nixon said, “peace with honor?” We had just, we had just killed almost 3 million Vietnamese. Do you think that was a little-
57:16
JA: Not only that but fought an illegal war in Cambodia.
57:18
SM: Yeah.
57:20
JA: Where no war had ever been declared. Well-
57:28
SM: I am going to turn the-, here we go.
57:33
JA: It was just another cynical effort by Nixon to put a favorable gloss on what had been this continuing tragedy of sending troops and money and incurring a loss of life in Vietnam that we did. It was his, it was the arrogance of power. It was really and others have used that term. It was an expression of the arrogance of power.
58:09
SM: What did you think of the Pentagon Papers? Just Daniel Ellsberg doing what he did?
58:15
JA: Well, I hailed the ultimate resolution of that dispute. And the Supreme Court decision that went with it. Again, I did not, I will always remember whether I put this in the book or not-
58:47
SM: Oh Jesus, it is ok, it is a cell phone, it is my cell phone, it will turn off.
58:53
JA: When Nixon tried to make his comeback in 1968. Well, he did. And-
59:06
SM: Can you hold on one second? We are talking about Pentagon Papers, I think you maybe, you might have finished your-.
59:10
JA: Well, it was just another glaring example, and then of evidence of the kind of intolerance that Nixon displayed toward those who disagreed with him, and his capacity to seek vengeance, and to get even, and all of the things that led to what we just finished discussing before ultimate disgrace. Watergate was of a piece with that kind of mentality that he brought to the presidency.
59:58
SM: What did Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? Obviously, you were, you were halfway through your time in the Congress. And obviously it was on the fourth of May 1970. Right after Nixon gave his nine o'clock speech on the invasion of Cambodia the night before on the 30th. Just your thoughts on that tragedy, and-
1:00:22
JA: Well, it was a shocking, it was a shocking thing, to say the least. And I felt a great deal of personal pain. At the thought, you know, that I had, in a sense, been a part of the scene that that brought about the incident that you just described. It was a, it was a very painful reminder of the fact that we had caused those students in the first place to feel the way they did and the incident that developed, I felt some sense of personal, personal responsibility.
1:01:28
SM: This leads me right into the Wall, which is the Vietnam Memorial. Were you there at the opening in 1982? When they opened the memorial with all the-
1:01:37
JA: No, I was not actually, I was not actually there. I visited the Wall, of course, and I, I do think sometimes since I have been down there. But thinking back to when, when, I went the first time, it was just a very painful reminder of what an awful waste of resources and human life can result from wrong decisions being taken, and what our role in the world should be. And-
1:02:25
SM: Do you think the Wall has done a good job with, for healing the nation on the Vietnam War or is that going too far? Jan Scruggs wrote a book called “To Heal a Nation”-
1:02:35
JA: I think it was belated recognition of it was an effort really to try to, to ease the national conscience over the debt that we owe to those that had to give their lives for what was really a misbegotten enterprise, one that they were forced to make the ultimate sacrifice. And we who were left behind bear some responsibility for what happened.
1:03:15
SM: What is amazing, when you think about of course Mỹ Lai and there were other very bad experiences over in Vietnam, but upon their return, you know, the government had to actually put Vietnam veterans in the affirmative action policy because they were being discriminated against, they could not get jobs. And so, I do not know-
1:03:38
JA: It was a dark, it was a very dark chapter in our national history. Your question, about and the fact you know, that it even came up in that celebrated episode in the campaign against John Kerry-
1:03:56
SM: That is right, in 2004.
1:03:59
JA: To punish him for the fact that he had spoken out against the war.
1:04:09
SM: And then, of course, there is the Vietnam Veterans against the War that became a very strong anti-war group in the early (19)70s. And there was also very strong anti-war movement during the war within the military, that we do not talk about, you know, the alternative newspapers that were at a lot of the bases. What did the Iran hostage crisis in (19)79 mean to you?
1:04:38
JA: That my phone? Well, let me think.
1:04:48
SM: Really cost Jimmy Carter his presidency.
1:04:51
JA: Well, yeah. Ordered desert raid to, you know, rescue the hostages. Well, it was it was just a very early signal, we did not really recognize as such at the time of how vulnerable we were, as far as energy supplies were concerned. And it was the beginning of the end of any hopes that he had of being reelected since-
1:05:40
SM: Then the Berlin Wall coming down because that was a major happening when we consider the Cold War.
1:05:49
JA: Well, I have been, I went to the Berlin Wall, while it was still there on a trip to Europe, particularly having served in the State Department in Berlin, for that period that I mentioned between 1953. A grim reminder of how political division can lead to a kind of obscenity that that wall did to literally divide the city, shut people from one sector off from another sector.
1:06:35
SM: And then Chicago, 1968, you write in depth about-
1:06:39
JA: Chicago in 1968?
1:06:41
SM: Yes, the convention, the Democratic Convention, and the fighting between the police and-
1:06:50
JA: Oh, yes, yes.
1:06:58
SM: I got three quotes here that I want you to respond to. These are quotes from you. And these are, to me they say a lot about America. “The real tragedy of Chicago was not the violence done to bodies in the streets. But the violence done to the hopes and minds of the young people. I speak as an American who, who cherishes the value of participation in American politics.”
1:07:27
JA: I cannot say it any better today than I did then I guess.
1:07:31
SM: Yeah. And then you say in quote, number two, “the lesson of Chicago seems to be: Do not get involved for the system will beat you in the end.”
1:07:42
JA: Or the system will beat you in the end? Is that the way I put it? Well, I think I think if I had some words to take back, I might be, I might modify that. To some extent. It was a little too pessimistic about the permanence that that event had on affecting people's attitudes about participating in democracy and in government, I probably was a bit of an overstatement.
1:08:18
SM: And the third one was “five years ago, in 1965, the response to, to the failures of the American institution was to get in and change it, change it. In 1970, many today are selling out, dropping out. It is not cool to be in that kind of thing.” So, you, were your thoughts on that? You went into the whole description of selling out, throwing out, and dropping out, which really worry you.
1:08:51
JA: Yeah, well maybe I was a little too pessimistic. At the time. I think, frankly, I was in the sense that the election of Obama now in.
1:09:17
SM: 2008. The reason I, early on after reading this book, decided that he was the one that I would like to support and did support in his campaign shows that we, history does have a way of reversing itself and of changing. And some of the deep pessimism that I expressed at that time, I think have been replaced by, were replaced by a renewed hope and belief that government could be truly responsive to the needs of the people. My one, I do not want to be tiresome on the subject, my one fear is that we have not done enough to build. Not democracy in Afghanistan, which I do not think is going to be a successful effort, to build an international institution, which we started to do. And we signed the charter, establishing United Nations, we have not gone far enough and had presidents or sufficiently dedicated to putting the United Nations in a better position to express the will of the world community. And leave it to individual nations to try to build democracy, as we say we are going to try to do in Afghanistan. That ought to be a global effort led by a global institution, not just one nation.
1:11:29
SM: You state something, I will get that. But there is a quote we use here. John Gardner is one of my favorite people. And you actually quote him in your book on page sixty-seven, who at that time, he was chairman of the Urban Coalition. And, and you, you wrote down what he wrote, and I think it is very important here. He had observed that “an important segment of young people has accepted the view that man is naturally good, humane, decent, just and honorable. But that corrupt and wicked institutions have transformed trends transformed the Noble Savage, into a civilized monster, destroy the corrupt institutions, they say, and man's native goodness will flower. There is not anything in history or anthropology to confirm the thesis, though, it survives through the generations.” Any thoughts on that?
1:12:31
JA: Again, I think I would modify what I said then, with the further, that with the further thought that where we have really singularly failed, is to strive with might and main to create an international institution that would be democratic, and would enable us to explicate American foreign policy in a way where it became an international responsibility to bring democracy in nations of the world that are troubled and being beset by civil strife and all that we, we still have too much “go it alone” attitude, with respect to world affairs, have not really yet yielded to the strong impulse, that our principle effort has got to go into building world institutions that will be capable of governing ungovernable areas of the world like Afghanistan, where the Taliban are free to roam and commit their degradations and commit their crimes. We finally signed reluctantly, the World Court treaty, you know, but we have done we have done nothing really, to make that body given the credibility and the enforcement power that would enable a truly World Court to take the place of making the judgments that we want to make unilaterally about how nations should conduct themselves. It ought to be that sense of international responsibility that gets more support from our leaders. Even Obama has not come up to the mark, as far as I am concerned. Yet, he has time. He is only halfway through one term. I hope maybe he will see the virtue of doing that.
1:15:12
SM: He has got the timeline to get out of Afghanistan, but now he was getting the pressures from the military and others. McChrystal-
1:15:21
JA: So many people have to resist those pressures.
1:15:24
SM: McChrystal was one of the main persons that, Petraeus may be the next person who knows, because they believe we cannot leave. I am going to just finish this little segment by saying that, even though you have changed since 1978, you state in your book, and I think it is very important, that you fear the new culture in 1970, due to its effect on participants in social and political life, you felt apathy is more of a threat than revolution, which I think is important point. Because if you know, well who knows, there is always this philosophy, I think Benjamin Barber are very good at this, the former guy, the Walt Whitman Center for Leadership at Rutgers is that the stronger the citizenship, the stronger the nation, when we constantly look to have a strong leader. That is, oftentimes we have weak citizens, it should be the other extreme, we do want a strong leader, but we want strong citizens. And I think this is what you are saying here. And the other final quote on this is something a beautiful quote that you put in here, “I believe our youth would rise to the challenge, for it seems to me that they understand intuitively perhaps better than some of their elders, that they will be, they will find their meaning only through constructive involvement in the problems, needs, hopes and joys of other people.” And I think that is exactly what you just been telling me. And it is very well said in that time going, you took your daughter to an Arlo Guthrie conference or concert, I remember, you mentioned that in this book, I think she was 16 years old. And even though you had a hard time with some of the long hair, and you had a quote in there saying, you know, “barbers have to make a living too.” Yeah, when you put that in there, that is beautiful, because it shows you have a sense of humor. But this quote’s important too. This is a quote from a song that you took from Arlo Guthrie, “it is only by having no self-sat-, status, satisfying grati-,” excuse me, “it’s only by having no self-gratifying goal that you can ever really fulfill yourself.” And that's Arlo Guthrie. So, the message in the music sometimes is very important. Couple questions I have here. When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And when did it end?
1:18:00
JA: When did the (19)60s begin?
1:18:02
SM: Yes. And when did it end?
1:18:05
JA: Well, they really began I think with the election of john F. Kennedy that we have already talked about. It seems to me that that, that it ended the Eisenhower era. And definitely, even though his life was tragically cut short, launched us on, on a new phase, period of American culture, political culture. And when did they end? Was that-
1:18:40
SM: Yeah, what do you think the (19)60s end?
1:18:59
JA: Well, probably, probably with the election of Nixon.
1:19:09
SM: (19)68.
1:19:12
JA: That, that, I think, brought about kind of a different approach. Yeah, I guess I would, I would tie it off with, with the election of Nixon.
1:19:33
SM: Is there a watershed moment during this time that stands out above every other?
1:19:38
JA: Well, for me, it was the civil rights revolution. Yeah, it was the mid (19)60s when we finally, sixty-four and sixty-five. And Open Housing (19)68, that, that to me was the great defining moment of that decade.
1:19:58
SM: Did you ever have a chance to meet and talk to the Big Four, which is Dr. King, Roy Wilkins, James Farmer- Did you have an opportunity to talk to the Big Four, Dr. King, James Farmer-
1:20:13
JA: No, no I never actually had a personal meeting with him much as I admired him.
1:20:20
SM: Any other civil rights leaders that you talked with in any?
1:20:24
JA: Well, our great civil rights leader of my personal circle of friends was the former lead counsel to the civil rights movement, Joseph Rauh.
1:20:42
SM: Oh, yeah.
1:20:45
JA: He was, he was, he became a dear friend of mine. And I revered, there is a Joe Rauh Memorial Lecture Series. Every year someone coming from the DC law school. And I missed the last lecture. Sorry to say, Eric Holder, the new Attorney General delivered the lecture. But Joe Rauh should be remembered in any book that is written about civil rights, and the true meaning of the important events of the decade of the (19)60s.
1:21:30
SM: I am going to put down my batteries might seem to be low here. So let me just turn my, put my batteries in here. Bear with me. I can see you doing okay. It was a gentleman who never got a whole lot of praise. But he is always behind the scenes and he was African American. He worked with in Congress. And he was not a congressman. But he was certainly in-
1:22:04
JA: I cannot think of him either, of course, Joe Rauh was not an African American. To me he was one of motive forces behind the accomplishments in that field that took place in the decade of the (19)60s.
1:22:23
SM: You said one of the problems of the (19)60s was what you call massification. What do you mean by that?
1:22:30
JA: Massification?
1:22:32
SM: Massification.
1:22:33
JA: I am not sure I remember what I had in mind.
1:22:35
SM: That is a whole, you have a whole chapter I do not know what to tell you.
1:22:39
JA: No, that is faded into the ether, I am not sure why.
1:22:47
SM: I know that. That is when you talked about Riesman’s book lonely, the lonely crowd-. Riesman’s book, The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman. And it was part of that feeling that America just was not talking to itself, they were walking by each other. And that was that was part of the massification that there was so much technology and so many new things that because of all these new things, there was no communication. You are just, you are walking by someone on the street. And that is what David Riesman said in his book, The Lonely Crowd, because-
1:23:22
JA: Well probably I just, it goes back to my real preoccupation with the fact that it was not until, toward the end of that decade that we finally completed the trilogy of congressional enactments that we refer to as the civil rights revolution, that we were walking down the street and we did not see people as we should have seen them, suffering from, from prejudice and bias and indignity of that separate but equal doctrine.
1:24:09
JA: Yeah, you talked a little bit about Woodstock and the moratorium also, the moratorium was in (19)69 and Woodstock was (19)69. So, these are two happenings and you felt that Woodstock was not so much to express to decent as to draw human and personal meaning from each other, of being around someone that you-
1:24:32
JA: Yeah, yeah, recall the old saying people like company. They like to know that there are others that share their thoughts and dreams. I think there was that feeling on the part of many young people that they wanted the comfort and the assurance that came from knowing that there were others like them that were grappling with the same kind of uncertainty and indecision and problems that they had. They wanted the, the proof, of the comfort that comes from association with other like-minded persons.
1:25:18
SM: You also said that was similar to what happened the moratorium in (19)69. Where something like four hundred. There is a lot of people there, 400,000 or whatever, at the moratorium and you said it was more commercial than political. It was a coming together out of a deep sense of, I cannot read my writing here. But deep sense of feeling about issues and that was (19)69. And my last quote that I have here, that I am going to incorporate within the rest of the straight questions is your discussion of Vietnam. And because I know this, Vietnam really upset you immensely. And bear with me because I want this in the record too that you wrote this. “We are guilty, not of intentional evil, but of blindness, and specifically of an inability to perceive the difference between a situation such as World War Two, in which American security itself required a foreign military effort, and a situation such as Vietnam, in which a threat to our security was indirect at first, and in which our power should have been employed in an entirely different manner, if at all.
1:26:39
JA: Yeah, well, it goes back to what I have been drawing away at that we should have internationalize that problem, it should not have become a concern. If there were problems in Vietnam, they were the concerns of the world community. They were not simply American concerns that we would deal with unilaterally. There ought to be, the world ought to take responsibility, the world community and we should be a leader in the effort to transcend the idea that every problem around the world is an American problem and is somehow run a militate against our best interests unless we promptly solve a particular nations problems. It goes back to my intensified feeling today. And I had it back as long ago as when those words were written that we have got to become much more globally conscious. And if we do, then we will see that purely national interests have to be submerged in an effort to find international solutions, problems that are not simply our problems, but the problems of humanity and the rest of the world.
1:28:09
SM: Let me-
1:28:09
JA: -walking today.
1:28:12
SM: It is not very nice out there. One person running. And that is about it. In the end, why did we lose the Vietnam War In your opinion?
1:28:27
JA: We lost the Vietnam War. Because we failed to understand that the government that we chose to support, namely, the government of South Vietnam, what it was not representative of the aspirations of the Vietnamese people themselves. It was a construct that favored a few who held positions of power and influence, but it did not look to the national needs of that area, known as Vietnam. And we should have seen that it was not, it was not an appropriate venue for us to try to transport American democracy to a part of the world that clearly preferred the leadership that was provided by another system altogether. And even though they were communists, today, we were living peacefully with Vietnam. I have clothing in my closet that when I turn over the label it is made in Vietnam, we are importing and exporting, carrying on trade and commerce with Vietnam. And we just totally misconceived, what the appropriate role for American policy, foreign policy, should be. We took upon our shoulders, something that did not belong there. And if the world community through a world body, like the United Nations did not want to take over and administer the affairs of those people, that it was not up to us to interfere in the internal decisions that were made by the Vietnamese.
1:30:48
SM: When you, you have kids that are boomers. And when you I have asked this question to everyone, but you cannot generalize an entire generation of seventy-four million people's, which the boomers and actually only between 5 and 10 percent. were involved in any kind of activism within the generation, which is still a couple million, but that means 85 to 90 percent were just went on with their lives, although they were affected psychologically, obviously. What, what are some of the positive qualities or negative qualities you look at the generation? That includes everybody, when we are talking, we are not only talking white, we are talking African American, we are talking Latina, we are talking what generation? Are you talking about?
1:31:34
JA: What generation are you talking about?
1:31:37
SM: Boomer generation. Yeah, just some of the positive qualities and some of the negative qualities that you see.
1:31:47
JA: Oh, I do not know whether I am wise enough to give you a good answer to your question. I suppose the positive qualities of that generation, are that they picked up their lives, those of us like myself, who had fought in a war and gone on and picked up the pieces of their lives and put them back together. I do not know. I do not I do not have a good answer.
1:32:30
SM: How about your kids, your kid’s generation? What do you think about their generation?
1:32:37
JA: Of which generation?
1:32:38
SM: The boomers, the kids that were born after World War II.
1:32:41
JA: that were born after World War II?
1:32:44
SM: Yeah, what are their strengths and weaknesses? As a group? You saw them in so many different ways? And then you raised boomers.
1:33:18
JA: It is almost an impossible question to answer. I really defer to others. I personally do not know.
1:33:27
SM: How do you, 1984 when Newt Gingrich came into power, and actually George Will oftentimes does this in some of his writings, and we see it when Glen, Glenn Beck often times on his TV show and Mike Huckabee on his TV show, they'll blame a lot of the problems we have in our society today on the generation and the era of the (19)60s and (19)70s by saying that the breakdown of the American family, the lack of moral values, the drug culture, the, the divorce rate, the not going to church, you know, the family, stable family unit we saw in the (19)50s, the welfare state, all special interest groups. They only think about themselves and not about others. What do you think of when people make those general attack?
1:34:29
JA: I have a very minimum high regard for people like Glenn Beck, who set themselves up as philosophers who have the capacity and the wisdom to assess any generation. There is anybody that causes me to turn the dial immediately its somebody like that comes on. Their pontifications where they blame one group or another group for the problems of society do not impress me as being very analytical. Their post proper, post hoc, propter hoc kind of reasoning, after the fact, they are trying to tell us. This is what, why things happened as they did. And I do not think their analysis is very credible.
1:35:49
SM: Have we healed as a nation? I am going to get to some, we took a group of students to see-. The question I am asking is regarding the issue of healing, healing. We took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995, to meet Senator Muskie. And the students came up with this question because none of them were alive in 1968. But they had seen the divisions that were happening in America in the (19)60s. And since he was the nominee, they wanted to, the vice-presidential nominee, they wanted to see his thoughts on this question. And the question was due to the divisions in America, in the (19)60s, do you, which was the divisions between black and white, between male and female, between gay and straight, between those who supported the war and those who were against the war, between those who supported the troops and were against the troops. They have seen the bombings, the fires within the cities and the assassinations. Do you think that the boomer generation that was born after World War II was going to go to their grave similar to the Civil War generation not healing? No,
1:36:58
JA: No, I do not think so. I think that is, that is kind of overdrawing that picture, to, to make that kind of blanket condemnation. I do not give it as much basis, much justification. I do not think the people that say things like that are not terribly credible.
1:37:25
SM: The Senator Muskie responded in this way. He said, he did not even respond to 1968. He responded by saying we have not healed since the Civil War, over the issue of race. And that is how he responded to it. And then he went on to talk about people that had died, he had seen the Ken Burns series and all the people that died. So, the students were a little surprised by his commentary, but then he made a lot of sense because he was talking about that ongoing issue of, of race. Trust, you bring up the issue of trust in your book, too. But trust seems to be a quality that or lack of trust, that many of the boomers had toward leaders in any capacity, whether it be a Congressman, lack of trust, whether it be a congressman, a senator or president, president of a university, a head of a corporation, even ministers and rabbis or anybody in position of responsibility they did not trust because they have seen so many of the leaders lie to them? And of course, we are talking Watergate, we are talking golf with Tom McNamara.
1:38:32
JA: That begs the question, what events like Watergate do play on the national conscience, and can be influential, and affect the thinking and self-assessment that people make of their own lives and the lives of the people that they associate with? I am not suggesting that we live in some kind of a vacuum, all of these forces have some interplay, with how we emerge as, as a people as a nation. I am just very hopeful. I am optimistic about the future, even though I get a little bit discouraged. As I already indicated things like the continuing war in Vietnam and our failure to construct international institutions and build respect for the rule of law. So that we do not have to take on tasks that are beyond our capacity as a nation to really assume. I am still an optimist.
1:40:10
SM: How have you changed since writing this book? This book was written in 1970. Yep, it came out in 1970. And it is a really important book of the times it really.
1:40:30
JA: I do not know whether I have become, I become older, have I become wiser? I am not sure. Well, it is hard for me to give you an intelligent assessment of how I have changed, I hope I have become more tolerant of other people and opposing views. And even when I very much disagree, as I frequently do with things that happen. I, I have kind of an optimism that we are going to get over this, and eventually we will find the right path. We will find the right way. So, I still put myself in that category.
1:41:23
SM: When you were very young. We are not we are not talking about your college years. And we are talking about when you were growing up in elementary school, in high school. Who was the greatest influence in your life?
1:41:38
JA: A great influence in my life?
1:41:40
SM: Yeah, who helped shape the person you became?
1:41:44
JA: Oh, my father, I think I admired my father intensely. He was a Swedish immigrant boy who came in (19)15. Lived a very useful life as a, as a merchant, raised a family. Was a good Christian. I guess I can hope for nothing more than that my children would one day look up to me the way I look up to my father. He was he was a great overriding influence in my life.
1:42:28
SM: What are the qualities of leadership that you most admire in a person?
1:42:32
JA: The qualities of leadership?
1:42:34
SM: That you think are important to be a leader.
1:42:36
JA: Well, you have to be able to break from the pack, you have to be able sometimes to disregard conventional thinking. And to know I was put on earth in this time, in this era, given the present circumstances, and it is for me, not simply to accept it, as wrote, the opinions of other people, but to examine them carefully and choose for myself. Whether this is the course that we should now follow. So, it is that independence of thought and action, I think I treasure the most.
1:43:20
SM: One more question here, and then we will be done. Some of the personalities that kind of stand out from the (19)60s, the personalities that stand out from the (19)60s, we often tell young people that if you stand up and speak up, there is a price one pays for that. You do not get assassinated, mostly like you do in other countries or be put in jail. But what were your thoughts on?
1:43:55
JA: I think that’s my phone. My wife got it. We have one down here somewhere.
1:44:05
SM: What did you think of people who believe they stood up for something, but they had a lot of people that did not like them, and I am just going to list them. And then you can just give your thoughts. The Tom Haines’ of the world, the Jane Fonda’s, the Rennie Davis’, the Abbie Hoffman’s, the Jerry Rubin’s, the Angela Davis’, the Benjamin Spock’s. You know, the-
1:44:34
JA: That is a rather mixed breed. I mean, going to the last name first, Dr. Spock. I thought was a rather opinionated person that probably was a little bit, demonstrated our quality of a little too much self-assurance. He has the right answers and the right remedy and the right prescription. The world is constantly changing. And people have become rigid in their thinking. And think that, well, this is the way we do it. This is the way we have always done it. This is the way we should always do it in the future. I kind of drawback, a little wary of people who dispense that kind of advice. I think people have to realize that different voices are needed in different periods of history. And the same message that may ring true today may not be appropriate in the message, depending on changed circumstances tomorrow. That is not to say that there are certain eternal verities, I believe in the Ten Commandments after all. And as a Christian, I accept the Gospels as the translation of your kind of religious faith and doctrine that I should continue to have, no matter what happens. But that aside, I think the capacity of the greatness of this country has resided in its capacity for change, to realize that what may have been an appropriate thing to do, and an appropriate approach in this era is not necessarily the key to open the door to tomorrow. Where different circumstances may require an entirely different approach. I hope that does not sound wishy washy, I do not think it is, it is just the changing times, and changing circumstances can and should lead to changed attitudes. That is progress. Without that you are stuck on a treadmill, and just kind of going around and around and around. And nothing ever does change. I do not believe in that limited view of our capacity, either individually or as a nation to deal with our problem. We ought to be constantly willing to turn over new ideas, examine new approaches. And if there is one problem the Republican party has today, I think it is extreme conservatism is, they claim to have views that might have been appropriate some prior period, but certainly are not an adequate prescription for tomorrow.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with John Anderson
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Anderson, John B. (John Bayard), 1922-2017 ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Legislators—United States; Presidential candidates—United States; Anderson, John B. (John Bayard), 1922-2017--Interviews
Description
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Dr. John Anderson (1922 - 2017 ) was a United States Congressman and presidential candidate from Illinois. As a member of the Republican Party, he represented Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 through 1981. Anderson had a law degree from the University of Illinois.
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2010-08-04
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.15
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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108:03
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/05ebf1741a4dbc56328086182b7ef8aa.mp3
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Audio interviews
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-09
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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Mark Hamilton Lytle
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Mark Hamilton Lytle is a scholar and educator. He received his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University. He is a professor of History and Environmental Studies, Chair of the American Studies Program at Bard College, and has written many volumes of history and biography."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Mark Hamilton Lytle is a scholar and educator. He received his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University. He is a professor of History and Environmental Studies, Chair of the American Studies Program at Bard College, and has written many volumes of history and biography.</span>
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Activism; Drugs; Sexual revolution; Healing; Thurgood Marshall; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Equality; Robert F. Kennedy; George McGovern; John F. Kennedy; Voting rights; War Powers Act; Generation gap; Youth culture; Women's Rights Movement; Sexual freedom;Lyndon B. Johnson; Civil Rights Movement; Kent State."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">Baby boom generation; Activism; Drugs; Sexual revolution; Healing; Thurgood Marshall; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Equality; Robert F. Kennedy; George McGovern; John F. Kennedy; Voting rights; War Powers Act; Generation gap; Youth culture; Women's Rights Movement; Sexual freedom;Lyndon B. Johnson; Civil Rights Movement; Kent State.</span>
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236:17
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Scholars; College teachers; Bard College; Lytle, Mark Hamilton--Interviews
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Mark Lytle
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 9 August 2010
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(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:04):
Testing one, two. In your book, "America's Uncivil Wars: The (19)60s Era from Elvis to the Fall of Richard Nixon," I have several questions. Question number one. You include Elvis, who was in the (19)50s, and then the fall of Nixon was in 1974, so when you are talking about the (19)60s, you are actually talking about part of the (19)50s and part of the (19)70s. Could you explain that?
ML (00:00:34):
Well, it is partly said that the tyranny of the calendar does not really help us unlock historical events and historical trends. And so that scene, the (19)60s narrowly as phenomena of a particular timeframe. I do not think it is as illuminating as to think of the (19)60s as a state of mind and a cultural shift that worked itself out over a long period of time. It was also, for so long, there was the notion of the do not trust anyone over 30. And so, as an emphasis on the (19)60s phenomena as a generational conflict, which I think of as naive. It is not that there was the baby boom generation coming of age, with all of their energy and a certain amount of rebelliousness, but, as I argue in my book, if you look at the people who inspired the children of the (19)60s, they were all born prior to the baby boom, and most of them in the (19)30s, anywhere from David Dellinger, who has turned, who was in his (19)50s in the (19)60s, and Paul McCartney, who is born in the late (19)30s, (19)40s, something like that, and he just turned 70.
SM (00:02:02):
I think he did.
ML (00:02:05):
But in any case, Elvis is another example. Elvis would be in his, I believe he would be in his-
SM (00:02:11):
Late (19)70s.
ML (00:02:13):
Late (19)70s, or even (19)80.
SM (00:02:15):
Yeah.
ML (00:02:15):
Something like that. But I do think that, in the way the (19)60s had a kind of populist, the grassroots sensibility, even though an awful lot of the leaders did have somewhat of elite connections. Elvis is a good example of that grassroots phenomena. So that was actually my purpose of, I know it is sort of the long (19)60s, as opposed to the [inaudible].
SM (00:02:50):
Do you like these terms? Tom Brokaw has just been written writing up the greatest generation. Then you had what they called "the silent generation," which is a short period of time, which is probably the people we're talking about here. They were not so silent. Then we had, of course, the boomer generation, which I am talking about, those born between (19)46 and (19)64. Then you had generation Xers that followed them. And now were into the millennials, who are college students today, who actually have surpassed boomers in numbers.
ML (00:03:24):
Uh huh. Actually, makes sense that they would, although I do not know if there is demographically as bunch of a bulge as the-
SM (00:03:34):
No. Right. Right.
ML (00:03:35):
I think that is one of the differences, the population's much bigger, so the pure numbers do not mean the same thing. I do think that there is generational experience, something that is, each generation has a few formative events who are shared experience, September 11th, or the coming of the Internet. And then, within generations, there are some people who are very much framed by the Internet, and some people it sort of goes by them and maybe it does not affect them until 10 years later. I can remember when I first went on e-mail in the early (19)90s, was because my son had it at college, and it was an easy way to communicate.
SM (00:04:18):
Yes.
ML (00:04:20):
But I had four colleagues at [inaudible] who also had e-mail. So now half the younger generation do not even use e-mail. It is considered to be old foggy stuff.
SM (00:04:32):
Yeah.
ML (00:04:32):
And so, there is a certain amount of that in the (19)60s also, that there were these cultural markers, rock and roll being one good example of it that began as a very much a defining phenomenon. And then, over time, there were a certain number of, part of the cultural elite who began to embrace rock and roll, break down some of the artificial distinctions or hierarchies of genres. So, and I think in that sense, they belatedly got on the bandwagon.
SM (00:05:11):
I think what happens, higher education has this tendency, they want to put everything in little boxes. And so, the boomers of the box from (19)46 to (19)64, because of the large number of people that were born during that timeframe, and certainly the generation Xers and those titles. Howard Straus had written a lot about this. They had the characteristics and so forth. You mentioned something very important before I got to the next question. Todd Gitlin was the first one that said that if you mentioned the word "boomer" one more time, I think we will end the interview. Because he says, "I do not look at it in those terms." He looks at it in terms like you do, about the events, and the fact that the people that experienced the first 10 years of the boomers are totally different than those who, and the second 10 years who were like 10 years old when things were happening. What kind of influence would they have? And one other final point, and then when I interviewed Richie Havens, Richie said, "I was born in," I think, "'41." He says, "I am as boomer as anybody. I am a boomer in mentality," and most of the leaders of the hippies, and the Yippies, and they were all born between (19)40 and (19)45.
ML (00:06:20):
Right. Like Abbie Hoffman.
SM (00:06:21):
Yeah. And Tom Hayden and-
ML (00:06:23):
Jerry Rubin.
SM (00:06:23):
Yeah.
ML (00:06:23):
Those guys.
SM (00:06:24):
That whole group.
ML (00:06:25):
Yeah. No, I think, and one of the things that I do emphasize in my book, but when I anecdotally test this proposition, my wife's two years younger than I am, and yet her experience was quite different from mine, because when I was in college at Cornell, it was still a (19)50s kind of atmosphere, very fraternity centric. We had huge beer bashes and [inaudible] out of "Animal House" on the weekends. And when I came back in the fall of 1967, or the spring of 1968, somewhere in that range of time, everybody was stoned. It was between the summer of (19)67, there was a kind of title change in cultural practice, at least I suspect it happened slightly later on other campuses, but it was like a page turned. And so, I do think that Todd's right about making the distinctions within a very narrow timeframe. I am actually technically not a boomer. I was born in January of 1945, so I consider myself a very front edge. And then also, the demographically this, the baby boom thing's a little bit misleading, because the population uptick began actually in (19)41, (19)42, as prosperity returned. And also, you have the going away babies and whatnot.
SM (00:08:06):
Right.
ML (00:08:06):
So, it was not quite as explosive then. But the demographic trend was upward.
SM (00:08:16):
It is interesting, because you went to Cornell, and I went to Binghamton. And Binghamton banned fraternities, and so the students at Binghamton had to go to Cornell to join a fraternity. And I remember one of my friends, Rich White, whose dad was, I think, the DA of Binghamton, he had to go to, he was a pre-law major, and he had to go over to Cornell, and he was carrying a tiger around campus. I never forget it. And boy, people kind of looked down on him because he was joining a fraternity. We abandoned him there at that particular time.
ML (00:08:47):
Did you ever know a guy named Norman Breyer when you were at Binghamton?
SM (00:08:49):
Norman Breyer, I graduated in (19)70.
ML (00:08:56):
He graduated in (19)70 also, or somewhere around, that is (19)68 or (19)70, maybe (19)68.
SM (00:09:00):
I know Camille Pollier was in-
ML (00:09:02):
Well Norman Breyer lives in Reinbeck. And he is such a character that if you were thinking there is a chance here-
SM (00:09:12):
Well, he might have. I was actually involved in a lot of intermural events, and I went everything. But I-
ML (00:09:19):
I think you were stoned pretty much though.
SM (00:09:24):
It is a great college though, I mean, geez. And this is your interview, but I will never forget, you are exactly right about that 1967, because in 1965-66, (19)66-(19)67, Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, these were all popular groups. And then The Beatles were coming on too in (19)64, but it was (19)67 where everything changed. Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass, they kind of disappeared.
ML (00:09:54):
Still has a singing nun out there, and-
SM (00:09:57):
That is right. One of the things here too, and I just want your clarification on this, everybody I have talked to really believed you, taken off what you said earlier, that period of 1970, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 is really the (19)60s. So, you cannot even differentiate, well, (19)67, (19)73. The war was coming down at that time, but that was still the (19)60s I would say, wouldn’t you?
ML (00:10:23):
Well, particularly, if you think of it in terms of the role of the war and Vietnam War as a frame for, as the Vietnam War intensifies, so do the (19)60s, or the political upheavals.
SM (00:10:42):
Right.
ML (00:10:42):
Even though I think that the civil rights movement was more of an initially generative, and certainly created the first wave of activists of the Mississippi Freedom summer types, and the veterans who went on to be part of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. But I do think that for many politically conscious college students, the Vietnam War and protesting the Vietnam War was more central, particularly until the draft, the repeal of the draft. So that really is (19)72, (19)73, and could still get people out demonstrating in the (19)70s, with [inaudible].
SM (00:11:32):
Oh yeah. I got a question on that.
ML (00:11:33):
We have talked about defining moments in the (19)60s.
SM (00:11:37):
Yeah, I interviewed Phil Caputo when Phil was in Vietnam early on, around the (19)65 period. But dissent was really starting even then in Vietnam, from what he says in "Rumor of War." And, of course, he was back, and he covered Kent State. And now he has got the book "13 Seconds," but he was actually back to cover it, because he was a Chicago Tribune or whatever when he got back. So, he really talks about what is going on in Vietnam and everything. And what you are talking about is exactly what he talks about too, about everything was going in a different direction. Explain, I think it is very obvious what it is, but some people have not read your book, and when I interview people, some people said, "Well, just read it in the book." Congressman Anderson kept telling me, "Just read it in my book." Well, people do not have your book. It was printed in 1970. I just interviewed him last week in Washington.
ML (00:12:31):
May have lost it.
SM (00:12:35):
And I do not know if you ever saw his book. It is a great book he wrote in 1970. It is a classic book, and if you can get it, it would be great for-
ML (00:12:41):
Is this John Anderson, or?
SM (00:12:42):
Congressman John Anderson. A book he wrote in 1970. It is classic (19)60s stuff. He cannot remember a lot of it, because he is 89 years old now. But it is a very good book. But explain what you mean by the "uncivil wars," because we think of a civil war, and oftentimes, the (19)60s is looked upon as the second Civil War.
ML (00:13:07):
Yeah.
SM (00:13:07):
People say, "Oh no." Your thought, just your definition?
ML (00:13:11):
Well, I am just thinking, in terms of correcting racial injustice, the (19)60s are in, at least a metaphorical sense, a second Civil War. But I stole the concept, to some degree, from I think it is Bill Chase in his book on Greensboro and the sit-in movement and was talking about how oppressive the concept of civility was in an increasingly middle-class country. The idea of drawing negative attention to yourself, much less becoming obstreperous to the point of going to jail suffocated any kind of aggressive political action, civil disobedience of that. So, one of the things that happens in the civil rights movement is once all these middle-class kids started going to jail, and it became a badge of honor rather than a humiliation for their families, it really did shift their mentality, and to some degree, radicalize them, holding onto the term radical. Because if you look at the history of the four civil rights students, I just wrote an essay on for one of our books on the sit-ins in Greensboro and the, four of them went on to do stuff that had, one of them became a corporate executive, and one had a career in the military, and one of them runs some kind of public service agency in Boston. I mean, one has died. But none of them went on to be engaged in civil rights politics after that initial event. But I think that the people in authority also used the idea of civility as a way of suppressing opposition, because it was impolite to question your elders. It was impolite to call the dean a fool, to challenge your, challenge faculty authority and whatnot. So, one of the great, if you look at so many, like Ronald Reagan and others, when they're criticizing, during the (19)60s, smells like, I do not know, dresses like Tarzan, and [inaudible] like Jane, and smells like cheetah, or has hair like Jane, and smells like cheetah. It was sort of an attack on the incivility of, in a way, or the rejection of civility. Or when Mark Rudd gets up on the stage, and tells, says, "Fuck you" to the President of Columbia, nothing could be more uncivil. So, then it, to me, it became really one of the central themes of... Because I see so much of what the (19)60s was really about, was really a fracturing of the, I would never use the term "ruling class," because I do not really believe in that structurally, but of the sort of dominant elite, where it fractured, and the loss of the ability to communicate or to rebuild consensus. And I think that was one of the reasons why it was so strident.
SM (00:17:06):
Do you find it ironic that most universities today, particularly from the (19)90s on, have had civility day?
ML (00:17:13):
I do not know-
SM (00:17:13):
Yeah-yeah. We have it at West Chester University. And it is like when we had Tom Hayden on our campus, and we organized activist days, and we had 2 or 3 days of activist speakers. And Tom Hayden thought that was a joke, because activism is 365 days a year, not 3 days a year, but he appreciated what we were doing, because not many were doing that. But I do not know what Bard has it, but the university I have worked at, they have civility day every year, where they bring in a speaker, or say that we are civil with each other. It is important to be civil, but.
ML (00:17:47):
We actually have a requirement at Bard that has to do with a difference. You have to take a course, at least some course, that deals with cultural, ethnic, racial difference in the course of your career. So that is how we put it in. Bard has a pretty liberal left tolerant filter. In fact, I would say Bard is intolerantly tolerant.
SM (00:18:19):
Do they tolerate conservative people?
ML (00:18:21):
They have a little trouble with that, but if you are eccentric enough, they buy it. They like that. They like eccentricity.
SM (00:18:27):
Was not there a professor that was mad at Dr. [inaudible] this past year, or he got fired, or something?
ML (00:18:32):
Oh yeah, that was [inaudible].
SM (00:18:34):
Yeah, I do not even, I remember reading that in "The Chronicle."
ML (00:18:37):
No, that was a classic kind of, where Joel still lives in the kind of Marxist frame of the (19)60s radicals, and he had become actively sympathetic to the Palestinians, and considered, he was in this sort of Noam Chomsky camp. Prior to that, he had been very outspoken about, he was a Green Party candidate in New York State, so he was against corporate exploitation of the environment. He always believed that the Vietnam War was fought over oil and the South China Sea. And before that, he wrote about civil rights and whatnot. So, he has sort of followed the trajectory of radical politics. And he had been at Bard as the [inaudible] professor of social studies. But over the course of time, he had become more and more remote from the community, and also more, he remained very doctrinaire, and so there was an increasingly fewer students who were interested in what he had to say. And he communicated less and less with his colleagues. So, when the financial crunch hit, turned out he was being paid a rather magnificent salary for being half-time. And I was on the committee, and one of the committees that has to do with hiring and new positions, and the planning and appointments committee. And Dean asked us to review all these faculty positions and say which ones could we live without, where the college had some discretion. His contract was up and decided not to renew it. And it was because he was, it was not because he was a leftist or pro-Palestinian. After all, Bard has created a liberal arts college on the East Bank for Palestinians.
SM (00:20:37):
Right.
ML (00:20:38):
So, there is no one who has put his neck further out on this issue than Leon Botstein. But I think also Joel's feelings were hurt. I mean, even though he, if he would not pretend to be a sentimental guy, I think underneath it all, he is a little bit. And I think if they had been, taken a different tactic with him in severing the relationship, that he might have been a little less upset. And it turned out that to be a tempest with little staying power, and the issue died pretty quickly, I think.
SM (00:21:13):
He had been there how many years?
ML (00:21:15):
Eh, probably 15 maybe, 10 or 15. He got appointed to Bard had been good to Joel.
SM (00:21:21):
He was only part-time too.
ML (00:21:23):
Well, he had been full-time, but we came in, he had been part-time, and had been on leave, and, I mean, hardly ever saw him. So anyway.
SM (00:21:31):
What were the most significant events during the period you described, the events that shaped the era, but also had lasting impact on the lives of boomers and the body Politic? I have, you break your book down into three phases, the phase up to present, from the (19)50s through the assassination of President Kennedy, then you have the period from when Johnson came into power through (19)68, that very tumultuous year, and then you have that period (19)69 to (19)73, so, in those three phases, what, of all the events that took place, what do you feel personally has stayed within the body politics? I say this because, when I interviewed the late Gaylord Nelson, who I know quite well from our leadership on the road trips, and [inaudible] to Westchester twice, he said that the Vietnam permanently affected the body politics forever. And he said 100 years from now, the effect will be in the body politics, it will not necessarily deal with the issue of healing, but. So, your thoughts on what you are talking about?
ML (00:22:51):
Well, I do think, I would say that there is no question that the Vietnam War ultimately destroyed the Cold War consensus. And so, in that sense, that redirected the political dynamics of the country. And to some degree, the Vietnam War absorbed the civil rights protests. I mean, it transferred into the military. But I would say also the assassination of President Kennedy, only because, not because Kennedy was so vital as a president, but because as an icon and a symbol of transformation. Again, he was the first, I think he was the first president born in the 20th century. So, and I also just the way it affected many of us who are these happy-go-lucky children of the suburban era and of the prosperity of the post-war era, and yet we are idealistic, I would say. And my brother, partly in response to the Kennedy magic, joined the Peace Corps. And it is, my brother’s, one of these people who in his heart is a boy scout but is also a cynic. And Kennedy had a little of that quality to himself also. He could appear to be a black scout, but he was kind of cynical.
SM (00:24:39):
Right.
ML (00:24:40):
It also, I think, in a causal way, certainly in having Johnson become president, this is hotly debated, people write about it all the time. I have a graduate student who I adopted when I was at University College Dublin, who is writing a book about Robert Kennedy in Vietnam.
SM (00:25:03):
And you doing it right now?
ML (00:25:07):
Mm-hmm. And he is, I think it is clear that Kennedy would, to me anyway, that Kennedy would not have pursued the same course in Vietnam that Johnson did. I do not think that he would ever have resorted to escalation, or certainly not on the scale that Johnson did. It seems to me Johnson that, there was a side of Johnson where he essentially threw the dice. I do not know that he believed he was gambling at this level, but that he just believed that if the Americans showed up in force, the other side would wilt, and that would be the end of it, and that he would then do his Mekong River Delta Project, and he would pay help [inaudible] off, the way they do in Texas, and that things would work out, because he is willing to give, as well as to receive. And I think Kennedy had been made all the more cynical, because of his experience in the Bay of Pigs, and was much more cynical about the CIA, about the military. And finally, he did not have that hang-up that Johnson had about his, had virility, different kind of hang, he had the Tiger Woods hang-up.
SM (00:26:35):
Oh yeah.
ML (00:26:35):
Predatory hang-up. But I think that Johnson had an experience in Texas politics where you had to be the big enchilada, and it bothered Johnson that he would be seen as a weak sister, or that his mom. And so, I do think that Kennedy would have been a different kind of president, how much they could have held off. Of course, a lot depends on, also on, it is like with a great awakening, or as opposed to the Salem Witch Trials. Some of the historians posit that you have this phenomenon of extraordinary behavior, and you can either choose to stigmatize it, and become frightened by it, and assume that it's the work of the devil, or you can say it is the hand of God, and the spirit is with us, and embrace it. And so that I think that was one of the things that also happened in the (19)60s, is that so many of the people in authority chose to stigmatize the behavior, felt threatened by it, having anesthetized themselves with habituates, and tranquilizers, and alcohol, and what were the drugs of choice of the older generation. They could not see that there was any comparability in the drugs of choice of the (19)60s generation, and chose to criminalize them, and in a sense, declared war. That is again why I call it, partly where the idea of uncivil wars come from. And there were some, lots of exceptions, like a lot of the ministers, who tried to keep the religious vital by tying into this youthful energy and quest for spiritual meaning and moral life and whatnot. But-
SM (00:28:56):
You raise a very good point there about alcoholism, because I saw it in the (19)50s myself, not from my parents here, but friends and so forth. I mean, everyone's drinking. And I will never forget when I interviewed Steve Gaskin, the communal leader who was in San Francisco, and [inaudible] the farm. He said that Janis Joplin committed a sin when she was around the hippies. She drank. Hippies did not drink. They only did drugs.
ML (00:29:30):
Yeah, well they-
SM (00:29:33):
And they were literally upset at her for drinking, because they did not believe in drinking.
ML (00:29:38):
Yeah. Yeah. Well that certainly was true. I mean, alcohol was the drug of the man, and the drug of the uptight, spiritually dead type. So, yeah. No. And that was why it was interesting to me. I grew up in a totally alcohol-driven social world. Parents were both alcoholics to one certain degree, and most of my parents' friends were alcoholics by anybody's standard of it. I mean, it is just that we also were given that mentality that all other drugs led to heroin, which was this almost like mannequin view of the world. And when we found out that it just was not that simple, that it was sort of like, oh. You know?
SM (00:30:55):
Yeah, I can remember, because at [inaudible] Bay, when everybody was-
ML (00:30:59):
Doing drugs.
SM (00:30:59):
But I did not. Now people, they do not believe me, the people that know me, because they thought I was always high on life. I need to get high on drugs. But I will admit, I inhaled.
ML (00:31:12):
Yeah.
SM (00:31:12):
But I did not actually swallow-
ML (00:31:14):
Well, I never took LSD.
SM (00:31:17):
I never got into anything of that stuff.
ML (00:31:18):
I tried a little cocaine once upon a time, and it was good. But it is like, okay, so, I mean, to some degree, I am a little bit like too, I mean, I am a sort of a high energy person, and so I do not need it. I mean, I like to get mellow rather than to get high or get ecstatic.
SM (00:31:40):
See, when I interviewed Paul Krassner, Paul is, when you talk to Paul, he is a very respectful person. Of course, he was the founder of the Yippies, and he knew Abbie real well, and he makes a lot of sense of drugs.
ML (00:31:58):
Mm-hmm.
SM (00:31:59):
And so, my project is not about being a judge of anyone. It is very important to certain people, and it has not affected their lives in any respects, so more power to them. One of the things that, I have talked to a lot of people about the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement and the women's movement, and I talked to a lot of the leaders of the gay and lesbian movement, some of the top people. Have not talked to very many Native American leaders, although I have been trying to, and certainly-
ML (00:32:34):
Unfortunately, an awful lot of those ones from that era died.
SM (00:32:38):
Dennis Banks, which you cannot get ahold of the guy, and I interviewed Paul Chop Smith down at the Native American Museum in Washington, but he is controversial. But the question I am coming up with is, you talked a little bit about the new identity movement, which is the environmental movement, the feminists, the gay and lesbian movement, and Latino and Native American. I would like a little more information about how important the Latino and the Native American movements were. I know about the American Indian movement from (19)69 to (19)73, but you do not hear a whole lot about the La Chicano Latino Movement and the Puerto Rican Movement of the young lords that kind of copied the Black Panther. Just your thoughts on the other movements of the (19)60s?
ML (00:33:27):
I do think that it is probably regional to some degree. That is, if we had lived in the southwest, the Brown Power, Chicano Mexican America, you would have been much more conscious of it. If you are in New York City, Puerto Rican politics would have had a higher profile. I do think, as I said in my book, that the Latino community in America is really diverse communities. You have Cuban community, Puerto Rican community, and- You have Cuban community, the Puerto Rican community, and the Mexican community, and they have very different historic cultural backgrounds, and very weak communication amongst themselves. So, it was hard to coalesce about practically anything. And also, their numbers were not so large then as they are now. And so, I think that it tended to marginalize them a little bit. So, it is a combination of diversity and regionalism. Plus, I think that one of the funny things, the difference is like Cesar Chavez, and he was very Catholic. And I have always believed that the Latin American community has a very conservative side to it, politically, and would be socially conservative, and would to some degree line itself up with some of the (19)70s, (19)80s, evangelical, fundamental, some of their political ...They should be anti-abortion, probably anti-gay to some degree, whatever. But the nativist streak that underlies a lot of conservatives ... Thank you. This is my wife.
SM (00:35:39):
Hi. How you doing? Nice to meet you.
GL (00:35:39):
Nice to meet you.
SM (00:35:44):
Yes. It is going to get in the (19)90s at the end of the day.
ML (00:35:51):
And the same thing with Native Americans. They tend to be in the northeast, even though their reservations and whatnot, they are really isolated. And to some degree that was true around the country except where you had significant Indian populations within the urban areas. But I think that symbolically, they were important in that it was a constant reminder of the sort of attack on WASP dominance. And that was part of the ideas of social justice and civil rights being inclusive as possible. And so that if you kept discovering these things having not been part of your consciousness as you discovered, "Well here is another group that we have abused and misused and-"
SM (00:36:52):
From the get-go too.
ML (00:36:56):
But I could give you a kind of flip side of this. One of the experiences I had when I was in college is that I grew up in an odd circumstance in that I grew up in a totally Jewish neighborhood. There were very few, a couple blocks from where I lived, they were Catholic enclaves and the public school I went to was 80 percent Jewish, 19 percent.
SM (00:37:21):
[inaudible] was 65 when I was there.
ML (00:37:22):
Okay. [inaudible] was 85 percent Jewish at one point, and now it is 15 percent. There were only one or two other Protestant kids in that school that I knew of other than my brothers and sisters and my son. And one of the interesting things was that when throughout the (19)50s, we never heard practically any reference to the Holocaust or the World War II experience, except once in a while you would hear somebody say, "Oh, so and so, that they were in Europe during the war. They died in Europe during the war." But no, I did not ever talk about it with my friends at all. It was just not part of their active conscience that I was aware of. Now also, some of my friend's parents would talk Yiddish to each other when they wanted to talk about things, they would not want us to know about. But when I got to Cornell in the 1960s, there really was what I think of, and I think in some literary circles that this is actually a concept of the Jewish Renaissance of ... One of the things that triggered it. So, talk about formative events in the (19)60s. And actually, in many ways, I think this was one, was the Six Days War.
SM (00:38:44):
Oh yeah, (19)67.
ML (00:38:46):
Yeah. Because I think one of the things that happened is the Israelis showed a kind of military competence and David flinging Goliath that spoke to the feelings of a certain number of people. But I think even more than that, it gave American Jewish kids a reason to think of themselves as Jewish much more actively than they had ever before. One of my experiences that a lot of my Jewish friends went to a private day school in Buffalo, which was WASP dominated. And so, you had to become sort of Waspy within this, not Jewish, but upper middle-class gentry. Gentrification. And at Cornell there was an awful lot of blurring. Although there were enclaves, there were Orthodox Jewish communities at Cornell. And Cornell had a very large student body as well. But that is really began to shift. And then part of it was the emergence of the whole mass generation of Jewish writers of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth subsequently. And it is just a very high cultural profile, plus a lot of our faculty were Jewish in ways that-
GL (00:40:33):
I am going to interrupt you for a second. It was just the electrician and the, Whitaker?
ML (00:40:35):
Yes.
GL (00:40:35):
First name is Wayne.
ML (00:40:35):
Whit.
GL (00:40:35):
Whit.
ML (00:40:35):
We call him.
GL (00:40:35):
[inaudible].
ML (00:40:38):
Yeah, it is Dwayne Whitaker.
GL (00:40:43):
Dwayne Whitaker.
ML (00:40:44):
But he's known as Whit.
SM (00:40:47):
It is interesting that during my interview process, I had not been thinking about this, but when a lot of the people that I have been interviewing have been Jewish and then the people that were the leaders of the free speech movement that went to Freedom Summer, that were the hippies, the yippies. I just put two and two ... They are all Jewish.
ML (00:41:08):
It was a very high profile.
SM (00:41:09):
Yeah, a high proportion of activism. Susan Brown Miller who interviewed was Jewish. She brought it up of some of the ... In women's movement. I got thinking about that. And of course, I think it was Todd.
ML (00:41:29):
Todd [inaudible] is also Jewish.
SM (00:41:30):
Yeah, Todd is Jewish, but so is Mark Rudd. And Mark Rudd said ... There is no question in his book, The Underground, the links between what happened with the Holocaust having an effect upon him that never again. But you speak up and you speak up not necessarily about Jewish issues, but about justice.
ML (00:41:46):
Right. And then I think one of the things is that people started talking about the Holocaust in the late (19)60s. They began to go back and reconnect with their historical experience in a way that was very redefining.
SM (00:42:04):
And the history too, and I will get back to my questions here. We had James Farmer on our campus during the time of the Hymie incident with Jesse Jackson. And James Farmer had always been very close to the Jewish Americans and the Civil rights movement had been an African American. Jewish and African American were together so many times and it was making it look like they were enemies when historically they have been so together. It is amazing. And the conference that was at the Jimmy Carter Center. That was on Charles Corral one Sunday morning where this gentleman said, "Well, I am going to bring back the African American leaders and the Jewish leaders because they are all passing away to document these things at the Carter Center." And so, I saw that in Charles Corral. Then I drove down to Washington DC, went to the Jewish Center there, and I spent two solid days watching the tapes. I just felt I had to watch them. And they gave me a total access. And so, I have taking all these notes down. And so forever in a day, if anybody ever says that the alliance between Jewish and African Americans is a weak one, they do not know what they are talking about. They do not know their history. And that is why history is crucial here. They are more friends than they ever were.
ML (00:43:18):
No, there was question that certainly in the (19)60s, that civil rights consciousness was much more intense among the Jewish kids that I knew than it was anywhere else. It was not exclusive, but it was very disproportionate. And the Jewish students at Cornell tend to be the most liberal, the most activist.
SM (00:43:45):
I am from Ithaca.
ML (00:43:46):
You are?
SM (00:43:48):
Yeah, I am from the Ithaca, Cortland area. I grew up there. My aunt went to Cornell in 1927. My mom was five years old. I remember jumping on her bed the year that Babe Ruth did all those homerooms. And she was older than my mom. And then my cousin Nick, he graduated in Cornell School of Architecture. He married the homecoming queen. He is a successful architect in Boston. I got in there too, to Cornell. But my parents were now well off. And even though I could have lived at home, the tuition and such, I got into Binghamton. They thought it was important for me to go to SUNY Binghamton because it was a little bit farther away and it would not be as expensive. And I was always back because Stuart Park, we did functions with Cornell students a lot. And we were over going, and we brought our girlfriends over to Stuart Park. And that was always the place where the Cornell and Binghamton students’ kind of met. They were friends. A lot of people do not know the relationship between the two schools. And I have never [inaudible] the college students there.
ML (00:44:51):
Anyway, you asked about the defining events. I did write this essay for when I did the contrast with Andy Rotter at Colgate.
SM (00:45:01):
Yeah. How do you spell that name?
ML (00:45:01):
R-O-T-T-E-R.
SM (00:45:08):
Okay.
ML (00:45:09):
And where they were talking about 1968. And so, I was making an argument that you could consider 1964, 1973, to be every bit as transformative as 1968. And then I made another argument that there was actually an event that occurred, although I was torturing the chronology here a little bit, but that is probably the most transformative event of the (19)60s that nobody ever talks about. And that was that in 1968, the State Department announced that America's domestic oil production would peak within the next year and then begin a steady decline. And it began in 1970 that when demand kept rising, but oil production began to fall. And so, the US became more and more dependent on foreign oil resources. Well, we get most of our imported energy from Canada and Mexico coming from the Western hemisphere. But one of the reasons it was so vital is that for the entire 20th century, the United States had always been the country with the reserve capacity. So that when there were disruptions in the international markets, the United States could correct them at least over the short run. So, during World War II, we supplied Britain and the Western allies with a lot of their petroleum resources. I think a statistic was something like 40 percent of all goods shipped overseas during the war. It was petroleum or petroleum byproducts. So, one of the things that happens is that what this had meant is that after 1970, the United States could no longer play that role. We could not control prices and production. Saudi Arabia could. And so, we became dependent on our ties to Saudi Arabia to manage the world energy market. And so, one of the consequences you have in 1973, we are in the OPEC Boycott.
SM (00:47:29):
I was in the lines in Columbus.
ML (00:47:32):
And American middle-class prosperity has never recovered from the recessionary impacts. The middle class has been shrinking, that a lot of the major sectors, say, just think of auto workers as perfect example of this. Their wages have been declining in real terms ever since and their number of jobs has shrunk. So, what had created that sort of prosperous world that was part of the magic of the 1960s really begins to unravel. And then again, if you then project out into the future and think of all of the major war threatening crises or actual war events, you have the Iranian Revolution. You have the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. You have the first Gulf War and the second Gulf War. You have the constant friction between the Arabs and Israelis. So that for the United States, really in the post-Cold War era, it is the Middle East is our Balkans. And so, one could argue that in the 1960s also, one of the failures of the era was that even while we are focused on Vietnam, was the failure to respond to the growing energy crisis and to think about what it meant to have a society that basically ... It is the preference of the post-war, World War II model was to solve social problems through growing the economy by creating more and more wealth so that even though you were not going to seriously attack income and wealth inequality, you going to improve the standard of living for everybody. And that was essentially what Johnson was doing with a great society. That was part of his trying to revitalize the post-war, World War II Economic Opportunity Acts and the GI Bill and the whole apparatus that came into play after World War II. Johnson was trying to extended out into the future and reached more broadly with it. One of Nixon's most enduring acts in the early seventies was to extend Social Security benefits much more broadly and to put in cost-of-living indexes in the Social Security. So, I think that when we get focused on the political (19)60s, the cultural (19)60s, we sometimes lose track of these sort of deeper forces or determining elements of the world that we have constructed, that we live in.
SM (00:50:37):
I do not think it is doing a very good job for costal living increases.
ML (00:50:41):
Yeah, well that is probably certainly true.
SM (00:50:43):
Yeah, because my dad, when he passed away, he did not have any. Yeah, I do not remember him getting ... He had the same check, the very same amount every year.
ML (00:50:54):
Really?
SM (00:50:55):
Yeah, he died in 2002.
ML (00:50:57):
Yeah, but it was supposed to be indexed to some degree though.
SM (00:51:02):
It was not. They said that from last year, this year there had been no change.
ML (00:51:06):
Well, that may be. They may have frozen the for the time being.
SM (00:51:11):
What are your thoughts on that? This is a very controversial subject because at the very beginning of the Students for Democratic Society, they were a good group. I will admit they were. A lot of people did not like him because they were anti-war, and they protested and all the other things. But then they eventually moved as ... Mark Rudd [inaudible] in his book The Underground. And he is the one member of that particular group that is wrong. The only one that I can remember, Bernadine Dohrn spoke at the Kent State Conference, and I particularly do not care for her. But I know he considers her a sister. But I want your thoughts on, if you feel this was really the end of the movement was when they turned to violence. And that is not only SDS to the weatherman, but there is a question whether the Black Panthers were violent, even though they had the food programs. The Young Lords, the Puerto Rican group, they followed the Black Panthers in many ways. So, what the Black Panthers did, the Young Lords did in the Puerto Rican community. Then you had the American Indian Movement which started out with Alcatraz, which was a very good idea of a consciousness raising with Jane Fonda and so forth. And then he ended up with Wounded Knee and Violence in (19)69. Then you even had a (19)69 Stonewall, which was, it was about time the gay and lesbians’ kind of said, "We have had enough." But there was a lot of violence there at Stonewall too. And there was a lot of violence after Harvey Milk's murder in San Francisco. I was out in the Bay Area back then and I could not believe the violence in downtown San Francisco. They just went after windows and everything else. Just your thoughts about when movements go violence.
ML (00:53:00):
Well, first, I always argue that there was no movement per se, that there never was a kind of umbrella thing, that there were lots of interactive. People often had beat in many camps, that as you beat anti-war and pro civil rights and pro women's rights and smoke dope and whatnot. And so, there were constellations of causes and commitments about the affected people across quite a range. But also, well that every one of the movements, whether it is the anti-war movement, whether it is civil rights, whether it is gay rights, and not, every one of these movements when you look at them have a kind of conservative wing. They have a kind of liberal progressive wing and then they have a radical wing. And one of the arguments I was making in my book is that lots of times what the public sees, but partly because of the way the press both demonizes but also zeroes in on the outrageous so that they are intrigued by some of the outrageous, outlandish things. It is like the burning bras at the Miss America pageant, as we know never happened. But I mean the pageant happened, but the bras did not get burned. And that one of the problems that every movement has is that notice that, how do you find across those divides of conservative, liberal radical, how do you find a common agenda? So, like the feminists for a while settled on equal pay for equal work on abortion rights on ... I do not remember. They are very important. They wanted take care for women. They want to get rid of the barriers making women equal. But then you have got these constant things where the feminists who believe that patriarchy is the handmaiden of capitalism and that it is inherently exploitative. And so as long as you have a capitalist culture, you are going to have female oppression and you are going to have black oppression and you are going to have minority oppression in general. And so, in fact, you cannot, cannot ultimately reference. So, these movements, because one of the things, again, I would argue in a sense, they start looking at the world through an essentialist lens, which is anti-liberal, that liberals always tend to look for the common thing that makes us commonly human. All men are created equal. All people are created equal. Jefferson would have said it. He wrote that a little later. And I think what the radicals tend to argue is that ... There is a wonderful little essay that I use with my students in environmental history, which is about this idea, it is called the Search for Root Causes. And it is about the battle between Joel Cabal. He is one of the participants in this and Murray Bookchin. And then people like Paul Ehrlich and Barry Commoner. They all want to save the environment, but they all want to say, "Is it technology that is to blame? Is it capitalism to blame? Is it patriarchy?" Why is it that human beings are just destroying the natural world around them? And so, the environmental movement, like all these other movements, fractures. And often that many of the participants, and this is often a case where egos are involved or self-promotion gets involved, that they wind up spending more time lacerating each other than they do in fighting their common enemy if they put a degree on who or what that was. I often remember going to rallies and SDS meetings and whatnot. And this partly my peculiar personality, and it's not unrelated to one of the inherent qualities of (19)60s politics that is revived in the Tea Party Movement. And that is the suspicion of authority and also the assumption that people who want to run things or rule things are dangerous, this kind of anarch equality. But I was constantly made aware of the kind of presumptuous of my contemporaries getting up and making these profound moral judgments about other people's behavior and calling for violent overthrow of this, that and the other thing. And I kept sitting there thinking, but the other side, they have got guns and they know how to use them. And violence has been there. It's how they rule. It's by controlling the instruments of violence. You are going up against that. All you are going to do is get a lot of innocent people killed. Because I always believe that the revolution had to be cultural rather than cultural and take place in people's hearts and their heads rather than ... I really do not buy the model of political revolution.
SM (00:59:06):
Everything I have read shows that violence leads you nowhere. And if the experiences of activists in the (19)60s and early seventies is anything for today's young people, they can learn from people like you and me in our age That violence will get you nowhere except for a bad label. People who will not like who you are and what you stand for because of your actions. Also, universities are somewhat afraid, I think, of activism today like it was in the (19)60s. They like volunteerism because that is safe. Activism is a little threatening. But again, if activists are right on top of things, then if activists from the (19)60s are great teachers and role models for young people today, you do not disrupt the classrooms because you do not disrupt someone's education for the sake of a cause. And I think that is something we hopefully learn from.
ML (01:00:04):
Yeah, sometimes you do come up against the problem of civil disobedience. And what Martin Luther King would say, "It is never a good time. There is always a reason not to do it." But at some point, you have too actually. Have to move. But I think in King's case, he paid his dues and he put his body on the line. And some of these, not those middle-class kids, I am speaking my generation get out there. And like I say, are passing, just standing there, passing moral judgment. And they had almost no experience doing anything. Even at the time, I thought this had been presumptuous. And it certainly is not the stuff of which real politics, effective politics has ever constructed. So that I always often found myself walking away from these meetings saying, "This ain't for me." So, I never joined SDS. I mean, I was sympathetic to SDS. And for me, one of the most grueling episodes I ever lived through in the (19)60s is that I got married in 1968, which was a very crazy year, a crazy year. And because I had spent a year after my undergraduate years teaching in Buffalo, and I wound up the year they eliminated the graduate school to ferment for first year graduate students, but not for second year graduate students. So, I was subject to the draft and my parents knew the local draft board and they said, " Your boy, he is high on our list. So, you got to get him into the reserves or something." And my grandmother, who is not this kind of person at all, but she was worried about me, knew somebody who turned out to be very highly ranked in the New York State National Guard and got me in the National Guard. So, I was what I would call a conscientious acceptor, a term that I had stolen.
SM (01:02:29):
CA instead of CO.
ML (01:02:31):
Right. And it turns out that when I was at Yale, there was a large cohort of us who had decided that we wanted to go. We had found our calling in life, that we did not want to go to Canada, but we were sure as hell we were going to go to Vietnam. We are just looking for a convenient way out, call it George Bush. And so, I got two or three of my friends into the Connecticut National Guard, got them transferred from New York to Connecticut. And lo and behold comes 1971. And then we have the Bobby Seal trial.
SM (01:03:11):
Oh, I remember that.
ML (01:03:12):
In New Haven. And every radical group, including Jerry Ruben and Abby Hoffman descended on New Haven with the intention to burn the place down and destroy Yale and stick it to the man and whatnot. And we all got called out for this. And so, our friends on campus are all planning demonstrations and political events and whatnot, and we are being told to go and police the streets. And we were traumatized by this because our political sympathies were somewhat divided in that we were sympathetic to the politics and the injustice being done to the Black Panthers. But on the other hand, we were also sympathetic to Yale in that Yale had changed its institutional dynamic dramatically in the (19)60s, changed its whole admissions profile and had become a real progressive academic institution in ways it had never been before. And so, it seemed to me that Yale was really one of the decent forces in the American world. I mean like contemporaries at Yale, Hillary and Bill were there. Clarence Thomas was a student there. There were a whole slew of-
SM (01:04:40):
The mayor of Baltimore was there, Kurt Schmoke. He was a good leader.
ML (01:04:42):
He is a little bit later. He is a little bit later than that. But anyway, we did not get called out for that event. And I tell this story about historical contingency because part of the narrative of what happened in New Haven at that time was that Yale had such incredible connections both in a government through George H. W. Bush, the CIA and this and that. Six of the nine Supreme Court Justices at the time, they had Yale connections. And there was one episode before the event where a shipment of 48 M-16 rifles that were going to a Connecticut Army Reserve post got hijacked. And there was this panic about who has got them. And so, Yale, through one of its connections, asked the mafia people if they had them. And they said, "No, but we know who has got them." And it turned out it was a right-wing paramilitary group of wow who took them.
SM (01:05:54):
Wow!
ML (01:05:55):
I think they assumed that they were going to defend Connecticut against all these communists who were coming in.
SM (01:05:59):
Oh, wow.
ML (01:05:59):
And so, the day of the event, or the day before the event, my wife dropped me off at seven in the morning at the Armory. You take your duffle bag. You are skipping out to the war. And I go in and the first sergeant says, "Oh." I was in OCS at the time. He said, "So you do not have a regular slot, so you do not have to be here." I said, "You have got to be joking. I do not have to be here." So, I rushed out. I called my wife, said, "Come get me. I do not have to be here." So, I go out on the street. I am waiting for her to take me away, and there is an NBC News crew there. And so, they start interviewing me.
SM (01:06:46):
Oh my God.
ML (01:06:48):
And I tell them ... They said, "What do you do when you are not in the [inaudible]?" I said, "I am a graduate student at Yale at like Jean John Chancellor." And all of a sudden out of the building, these guys come running out of the building and physically grab me and drag me back into the building.
SM (01:07:03):
Oh, no.
ML (01:07:04):
And am I worried about my first amendment, right? Not one bit. I am thinking I am going to have to spend four days in this stink hole and this is going to be awful. And also, my wife pulls up again and I said, "Look at those dogs over there. Is not that disgusting?" And grabbed my duffle back and ran out, got in the car. I was not there. And then afterwards, the first sergeant said, "Oh, I forgot what I meant to do. I was going to ask you to go out and collect intelligence for us." Send me out as a spy. Fat chance. But my friends did have to stay there, said that one of the scariest things, they were in the army with a detachment of Connecticut State Police. And the state police were so bloodthirsty. They wanted to get out in the street with crack heads and shoot people. And really... create crackheads and shoot people. Really, show them what it is for. They were morally and politically outraged, but the other thing about historical contingency is that Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, they are all trying to stir the crowd up and get them to tear the place down and whatnot. Partway through this, a bomb went off under the entrance to the skating rink at Yale. It was an Eero Saarinen designed building. Looks like one of the terminals at La Guardia or at JFK. But nothing quite jelled but one of the people who was subsequently when I was assigned to a Connecticut National Guard unit full regular assignment. My platoon, our battalion had been patrolling the streets that day. The platoon I was in, the mortar platoon had a lot of vehicles, so they were driving around doing peripheral, periphery patrols, and crowd observation, and management, and whatnot. The Guard at that time, a lot, a disproportionate number of people were police officers because police were not allowed to have second jobs-
SM (01:09:22):
Oh, wow.
ML (01:09:23):
... because they had to be available at any time. But they were allowed to be in the Guard. So, it was a way to pick up some extra income, so there was this jeep with three guys in it. All the guys had been told that they were not to load their weapons. So of course, they did and one of the things I observed when I went into the company headquarters and whatnot was that almost all the guys in there were packing private handguns. Or just secreting them away in their back and on their-
SM (01:09:54):
Wow.
ML (01:09:56):
... duffels and whatnot because they were afraid, they were going to be out in the street and people are going to start shooting at them.
SM (01:09:59):
Wow.
ML (01:10:00):
They would not be allowed to use their Army weapons so they said, "Damn, if I am going to get shot, I will ..."
SM (01:10:04):
Oh, my God.
ML (01:10:07):
So, these guys are driving along, and this guy is sitting in the back of the jeep. I think with his rifle and his rifle's loaded. As they are driving along, and these are nice Catholic boys from the Naugatuck Valley. All these young women are coming up to them pulling their shirts up and saying, "Would not you like to fuck this, you pig?" These guys are just ... They do not want to be there. They have no interest in being there you know what I mean?
SM (01:10:36):
Yeah.
ML (01:10:37):
All of a sudden, out of the crowd comes this guy wearing Army fatigues, obviously secondhand Army fatigues. He reaches in and he pulls out a gun and points it at the guys in the jeep. The guy in the jeep who is a police officer, has some weapons training turns around, and is about to blow this kid's head off, when the kid says, "Bang, bang. You're dead." It was clear that it was a cap gun and so this guy was a nanosecond from blowing this kid's head off. If he had pulled the trigger, the whole narrative of that weekend in New Haven could have been absolutely different, I mean.
SM (01:11:15):
Unbelievable story. So that was 1960-
ML (01:11:19):
(19)71.
SM (01:11:21):
(19)71? Wow.
ML (01:11:22):
Yeah.
SM (01:11:23):
Can I use the restroom real fast?
ML (01:11:25):
Oh, sure.
SM (01:11:26):
I am going to turn this over. We are halfway through here.
ML (01:11:27):
Okay.
SM (01:11:27):
This tape must be going ... There we go. One of the things that I had mentioned in several of my interviews, the last couple interviews, is that when I look at the 1950s, this is just me now. Three adjectives come out quite clearly for if you use the term boomer, which I do not ... I am really starting to not like the term myself and we will certainly raise this in the book, but if you still do use the term from (19)46 to (19)60, there are things that I remember as a little boy that now, upon reading history and understand history better, I define the (19)50s with these three terms, fear, being naïve, and being very quiet.
ML (01:12:16):
Hmm.
SM (01:12:18):
And let me explain. We all know about McCarthyism, but I see the McCarthyism as a little boy on the floor watching the television set and hearing this man, " Are you or are you not?" I just remember that and the HUAC Committees as well. Then of course, we have COINTELPRO and then we have the threat of nuclear attack. Then this feeling that you needed to shut up because I knew several teachers who were fired because they were communists. One was in my high school. Then of course, the Enemies List that we had from Richard Nixon, which is actually a (19)60s thing. Naïve is because I think (19)50s TV made us naïve with Howdy Doody, Walt Disney, (19)50s Westerns, the John Wayne mentality. Very few Blacks on TV. I think with Amos 'n' Andy, which was slapstick and a six or seven-week Nat King Cole Show and that was about it. When I interviewed Martin Duberman, you never heard anything about gays in the (19)50s.
ML (01:13:24):
No. You did not.
SM (01:13:24):
They were totally hidden and then of course, women were mostly in positions of housewife or teachers, which all my teachers were young, not married yet.
ML (01:13:35):
Right. Actually, wrote an essay about that. Also, it is in After the Fact. We have this chapter that is called, From Rosie to Lucy.
SM (01:13:44):
Oh, I get it.
ML (01:13:44):
Rosie the Riveter to Lucille Ball and the question of the chapter is, that if the theories about cultural conformity in the (19)50s were correct, and they're about the suffocating impact of the media, where did the women of the (19)60s come from?
SM (01:14:04):
Good point. Yeah. The quiet thing was just shut up or lose-your-job type of mentality.
ML (01:14:14):
Well, actually you could relate the quiet thing to the point I was making about civility.
SM (01:14:18):
Right.
ML (01:14:19):
I mean, they are not unrelated notions.
SM (01:14:22):
Yeah. C. Wright Mills' White Collar was a very important book that we read in sociology class. So, your career depended upon promotion. You had to fit in. You could not speak up. Tell me what I want to hear instead of what I need to hear, which is very bad role modeling for leaders today. But your thoughts on whether that is really right on, if those are three good adjectives to describe the (19)50s boomer-
ML (01:14:47):
Well, I think that they certainly define the sort of middle-class, conventional (19)50s as we look back and think about it. But I think when you pry the door open a little bit, you got a somewhat different look in that I would say that in terms of generative-cultural phenomena, the (19)50s were probably more lively than the (19)60s. There was sort of the introduction of modernism into American literature, and architecture, and painting, and certain kinds of music. So that it was a real kind of innovative spirit and there was all kinds of transformative technologies that really began to have a big impact on American life. So that this idea of conformism is more like just sort of reading America as a mourning middle-class society. I mean, that became the real center of gravity of American life. So, I think that and again, you sort of have to, as you said yourself, these things are so determining and so shaping. But where does all the turmoil come from? What caused people suddenly to reject, to stop being quiet, and stop going along to get along, and whatnot? So that was part of the puzzle I said for myself, but I think that this is sort of the accident of history writing history. I started the book on the (19)60s in 1990, 1991 and did not publish it until 2006. In the interim, I put it down a number of times. My publisher lost interest in it. The editor who had signed the book moved and it was clear that he had envisioned this series of books. It was going to be The Home Front During Major Wars and he originally suggested to me that I do the Korean War. I said, "How about I do the (19)60s?" He said, "Fine." But none of those other books ever happened and so mine was just this oddball thing sitting there.
SM (01:17:19):
Glad you got the oddball.
ML (01:17:21):
So eventually that editor went to Oxford, and I switched publishers, so that my publisher was Oxford. Instead, it was McGraw Hill, but in the process, one of the things that happened is that I really began to work intensely on the book again around when I was in Ireland in 2000, 2001. Part of that was also there was the parallel between the Troubles in Ireland, which began with the civil rights upheavals in the United States. Most people in Ireland were very much connected, the Irish part of the sense that the Catholics had in Northern Ireland for-
SM (01:18:02):
In Dublin, yeah.
ML (01:18:02):
... being oppressed and whatnot. The idea of civil disobedience and protest, pardon me, in part came out of mirroring the American experience. But I lost my train of thought there for a second. But the parallel with Ireland got me off the track. Where was I?
SM (01:18:37):
You were talking about the (19)60s, how you are writing your book.
ML (01:18:42):
Oh, yes. That is, it, sorry. So, what happens is that in 2000, 2001, George Bush gets elected, and you have the 1994 conservative landslide in Congress. You have the emergence of the Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reillys of the world and FOX News. This idea that there is this revolutionary conservative movement and you think to yourself, "Well, a lot of these guys cut their teeth in the (19)60s." So, one of the things that I began to realize is that one of the real political revolutions of the (19)60s was really the conservative revolution. It was the Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan phenomena, and it was many ways more enduring politically, certainly, than the politics of the left of the 1960s were. Also, many of the divisions that existed then and created a lot of the friction and even some violence never went away. The people remained divided about their political values and there were always issues, drugs, which remained contentious. They got redefined in the (19)80s with the crack cocaine thing. But then, abortion rights stayed out there and also the cultural content of media. These are all issues that stayed on the front burner for a long period of time. So, it was one of the reasons that originally, I had thought about the book that the historical puzzle is, where did the (19)60s come from? We have the placid conformist (19)50s. How did all of a sudden it blow up? Well, there was civil rights and there was the war in Vietnam, but I think it is one of the things that are needed. I do not think I satisfactorily, to my satisfaction developed this in the book, was that it was a religious revival moment, and it was a spirit. A lot of it was spiritual, I mean, you can think of the shtick of Timothy Leary. You could think of him as kind of a barnyard huckster, a [inaudible]-
SM (01:21:11):
Ram Dass.
ML (01:21:11):
Yeah. But these guys were selling smoke and mirrors but in a sort of Aimee Semple McPherson realm, but I do think that there was a profound spiritual yearning because the Jesus freaks and the campus evangelical movement. The reidentification of Jewishness and there was a lot of interspersing with Catholic politics and the era of Vatican II, and of the Berrigan brothers.
SM (01:21:56):
Zen Buddhism was very big. That is Peter Coyote. 35 years is in this.
ML (01:21:58):
But I think that was all part of that. An awful lot of what was going on was this kind of religious sensibility. Again, when you think about the hippies and how self-consciously apolitical, they were. They were not only against alcohol, they were also against political engagement.
SM (01:22:15):
Right.
ML (01:22:15):
And so does trucking. Well, how different was that from the tradition of the evangelicals in the United States? A remarkable number of the hippies did come from socially conservative, Republican middle-class families. So that was one of the things that had I published my book a few years after I started, it would have been a very different book than I wound up writing from the perspective of the Bush years, so.
SM (01:22:45):
Yeah. Those people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. I think Pat or was it Dobson, Bob?
ML (01:22:51):
Yeah.
SM (01:22:53):
They are major figures in this time frame, Ralph Reed, who is a history professor and very smart, but certainly the epitome of the-
ML (01:23:02):
Well, one of the most intriguing guys is Richard Viguerie.
SM (01:23:05):
Yes-yes.
ML (01:23:07):
So, he is a (19)60s figure.
SM (01:23:12):
It is amazing because that gets into ... I got to make sure the tape goes. It will come to an abrupt end here and then it will ... It seemed like in the (19)50s people went to church. We went to church. Even my friends SUNY Binghamton, most of them are Jewish. At one point, when they got to Binghamton, they even got a synagogue now. As soon as they said, "Goodbye mom and dad." But there is also a lot of experimenting too, because students used to go to ... I went to a synagogue, and I went to a Catholic Church. I was a Methodist and I think that there is a lot of experimenting on the parts of many students just to experience going into a different church. I do not understand it and then there are a lot of people who did not do it at all. They just felt more of an inner peace, something inner and I think that was a lot of the change it seemed like. Religion was very big in the (19)50s and it kind of waned in the (19)60s.
ML (01:24:02):
Right.
SM (01:24:04):
Then we get into the (19)70s and we can look at the Beatles and what happened to them. It happened to a lot of people too.
ML (01:24:12):
Well, I think that it seems to be conventional wisdom now. The (19)50s is that the religion of the (19)50s was much more of a social than a spiritual phenomenon and that is you have an enormously transient population. You moved from one place to another. How are you going to make contact with people who are like you? You join a church, or you join a synagogue. So that you are going to church not because you have a need for faith, or bearing witness, or whatnot. It's because you want to meet people who share your values.
SM (01:24:48):
Right.
ML (01:24:48):
So that was big in the (19)50s and I think what happens in the (19)60s is that a lot of kids who grew up in that kind of what they saw as a kind of spiritually vacuous or emotionally- flat, religious life in the (19)60s were looking for some kind of spiritually transcendent. So, drugs is one. The transcendental notion of LSD that Timothy Leary is selling or the Zen, Eastern religion, or evangelical Christianity. So that the evangelicals do very well, grow a lot. I think the mainstream denominations were shrinking in the (19)60s and continued to shrink in the (19)70s, then you have evangelicals. So, during it, it is just that most of us were virtually unaware of the phenomena. I saw little bits and pieces of it when we visit friends of my parents who lived in Upstate New York, in these small little towns. But you knew about Billy Graham. But you never knew that there was this vast-
SM (01:26:02):
Yeah. Alan Watts wrote a book of Zen. Anyway, Peter Coyote, when I interviewed him said for 35 years, he has been a Zen Buddhist and he said, "I would if it was not for my Zen ..." Zen Buddhism to him is the most important thing in his life. If he cannot take that time to be quiet and reflect during the day. And I said, "Are you meditating?" I had done a little study in Zen Buddhism before I asked him these questions. And he said, "Obviously you do not understand Zen Buddhism. It is not like people tell you. You look at a dot and you try to look at the dot. Close your eyes and not think of anything for 30 minutes. That is not the way it works. You could have your eyes open. You have got to just not think about anything else except spiritual or ..." I do not quite understand it but one of the things here, you discuss the three phases. I would like your response to three events as symbols of what you are saying about the three phases you talk about in your book The Uncivil Wars. Phase one is of course, that period from the 1950s through Elvis, through the assassination of John Kennedy, and to me, values was very important during that time frame. Nothing better than Kennedy's inaugural speech where he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." Then secondly, "We will bear any price, or we will-
ML (01:27:35):
Bear any burden, pay any price.
SM (01:27:37):
... yeah, to guarantee liberty." Of course, a lot of people felt that is the beginning of the Vietnam War. The Cold War mentality continuing through Kennedy that was transferred from Eisenhower. Then of course, the concept of service. Are you really saying this? Is that a good example of what that first phase was all about?
ML (01:28:00):
Well, I guess it is a political marker. If I had to pick something that was a good example of what the first phase was all about, I would be more inclined to look at something like the emergence of popular folk music as being more sort of a cultural phenomenon that anticipates a kind of shifting set of values. There are certain events like the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is certainly defining too because we all sat around thinking, "This is it."
SM (01:28:43):
Oh, yeah. I know what you mean.
ML (01:28:47):
"Sayonara." And it pretty nearly was, so again, it is one of those things. If when you want to find something that is emblematic, I mean it is sort of emblematic of what? So again, I am more inclined to look into the cultural realm.
SM (01:29:04):
Okay.
ML (01:29:05):
So again, it would be things like the introduction of the birth control pill or these things that have unintended consequences or are liberating in some fashion. That was one of the reasons when I constructed the book also, I have a chapter about ... It is a bit of a potpourri, but of cultural literary events like the making of Dr. Strangelove or the publication of The Feminine Mystique. That is when I first wrote about Rachel Carson was because of the impact Silent Spring has in 1962.
SM (01:29:49):
Oh, yes.
ML (01:29:52):
So that is why I guess it would be hard for me to think of a single, encapsulating, to some degree, it is like people said. It would have been the 1964 New York World's Fair-
SM (01:30:14):
And which I went to. The Globe was still there. It used to be outside Shea Stadium. The second phase then is probably cultural too, but one that is really stood out between (19)64 and (19)68, which was when there was so much antagonism between groups. I put the epitome of it was when Senator Abraham Ribicoff was speaking at the Democratic Convention and he is saying to Mayor Daley, "Your gestapo police." or whatever. He is swearing at him. That was the epitome of the-
ML (01:30:47):
It was and one of the ironies of it is that in private, Daley was opposed to the Vietnam War. He thought it was a loser, but he is a loyal Democrat.
SM (01:30:59):
Yes.
ML (01:31:01):
I would guess it would be a toss-up between the riots in Detroit, and lots of riot. Detroit, Newark. That was one thing and then the march on the Pentagon.
S
M (01:31:22):
Yeah. That was the levitating?
ML (01:31:23):
Yeah. They were going to levitate. It was where Norman Mailer ... I still think Norman Mailer is book Armies of-
SM (01:31:29):
Armies of the, yeah.
ML (01:31:31):
... the Night is one of the best books written in about the 1960s. Norman Mailer drives me crazy. I am being such an egotist and whatnot, but sometimes he is so acutely tuned in. He gets some things, either he gets them right or at least illuminates them in a way that I find really effective. So anyway, I think that there are cluster in more of 1967 events really than (19)68. There is no question that the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were also importantly transformative. I mean, I think that is when people who believed there was a middle way lost all hope. Thought that the world was going to hell in a handbasket no matter what we tried to do. Some people like Mark Rudd went one way and others just sort of divorced themselves and drew back in other things, but-
SM (01:32:34):
Have you read Underground?
ML (01:32:35):
Underground, his book?
SM (01:32:36):
Yeah.
ML (01:32:36):
It is a good book, yeah. He always annoyed me, so.
SM (01:32:39):
Yeah. Well, I interviewed Daniel Bell. He is 91 years old. I am not sure if he was all there when I was ... He was eating his food and he had a maid ... in his home not far from Harvard Square. He kind of spent all his time blasting Mark Rudd.
ML (01:32:59):
Yeah. Well, you see, I think that Daniel Bell was part of the group that became the neocons and who found the incivility, the crudeness, and what they would have thought the insanity of these people like Mark Rudd were, and how destructive they thought that was. I think also, as Jews who struggled so hard to enter the establishment, to have somebody, have these young, sort of bad-mouth poorly, what he would say poorly educated kids come along and essentially attack the structures of the things that they had fought so hard to become part of, that were profoundly offended.
SM (01:33:47):
Oh, I tell you, when I interviewed Daniel Bell, I really appreciate the hour I had with him, but he got retired very fast because he is up there in years. But he responded about Mark Rudd and then I asked him about books that I thought might have been the most influential. I wanted his thoughts on Charles Reichs Greening of America and Theodore Roszak's The Making of a Counterculture.
ML (01:34:15):
He had nothing but contempt for either.
SM (01:34:16):
He hated them both. He said, "There is no ideas in there. They are nothing. Actually, they are nothing. There is no thinking at all in there." Then I said, "Well, how about Eric Erikson's books and also Kenneth Keniston?" He says, "Those two guys are fakers."
ML (01:34:36):
Right. See, but they were both sociologists and contemporaries of his. I actually knew all of them a little bit at Yale, not well, because they were all around the campus, at least Charlie Reich was and Eric Erikson.
SM (01:34:53):
Keniston?
ML (01:34:58):
Keniston, I think was not he in-
SM (01:35:01):
He was at MIT, I think.
ML (01:35:03):
Maybe he was there. Maybe he was not around, but so it was Eric Erikson. Anyway, it was Bill Coffin was married to ... Was not he married to ...
SM (01:35:21):
They had him on campus too.
ML (01:35:24):
He was married to oh, Erikson's. Was he married to Erikson's sister or something like that, Gretchen?
GL (01:35:36):
Who, what?
ML (01:35:38):
Bill Coffin. Oh, no. No, no. He was married to Arthur Rubinstein's daughter.
SM (01:35:47):
Oh, okay.
GL (01:35:47):
Daughter, yeah.
SM (01:35:48):
On the third phase here, I just said something from my interviews of Vietnam vets that really upset them. It was Nixon's peace with honor in Vietnam and as many Vietnam vets says, "What a joke. Peace with honor after killing all those people and destroying the land?"
ML (01:36:05):
Oh, there is something in a way deeply cynical about it from Nixon's point of view is he wanted to get the U.S. out of the war from 1969 on. But he wanted to do it in a way that would not interfere with his ambition to create that permanent Republican majority. I mean, I think one of the dynamics of the era in a sort of presidential political level was that Kennedy and Johnson both realized that the problems of Korea killed the Democrats in 1952. That part of Kennedy's appeal, as you said before, his Cold Warriorism was a way to take back the national security issue to the Democratic Party. It did lock both of them into a position where they could not give much ground. You could not lose Vietnam, or you could not lose the Dominican Republic, or just the way the Republicans lost Cuba. That is one of the reasons why Kennedy got trapped into the Cuban fiasco was because part of his new frontier was going to be to solve the problems of Eisenhower, to reinvigorate the Cold War. But I think one of the things that make Kennedy different, which ironically, he shared with Ronald Reagan is a profound anxiety about, and distaste for nuclear weapons. I think that is one of the things that guided him throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis. But if there was an event ... To some degree the object of a war is more I think, had more impact than the end of the Vietnam War because it also, it pointed to the kind of structural weakness of the American economy at the time because remember we have been through-
SM (01:38:05):
Yeah, you just told us that.
ML (01:38:05):
... the stagflation crisis.
SM (01:38:07):
Right.
ML (01:38:08):
The economy was really tottering. Inflation was aggressive. I think it was five, 6 percent range by then, so it was one of the major lines of assault against the environmental regulation was the charge that environmentalists were driving. Making the U.S. less competitive and driving up the cost of goods, and creating employment, and whatnot.
SM (01:38:34):
In your own words, please define these time periods since World War II and I always put them down here because these are the years that defined term boomers have been alive. The oldest boomers are now 64 and the youngest are 48. So, there is no spring chickens anymore in the boomer generation. Their youngest are heading toward 50, but I am putting these terms down and it could just be a few words. It does not have to be anything in-depth, but just something that when you define the period. So here is the first one, 1946 to 1960. What does that period mean to you?
ML (01:39:16):
I would just say that it means the Cold War, domestic and foreign, and it means prosperity. Probably the period of the greatest economic growth in the history of the American economy in loan percentage terms, I mean.
SM (01:39:34):
The period 1961 to 1970.
ML (01:39:39):
I would say upheaval.
SM (01:39:41):
Yeah.
ML (01:39:44):
Uncertainty and factionalism.
SM (01:39:51):
1971 to 1980.
ML (01:39:54):
I already labeled that in our textbook as the age of limits.
SM (01:39:59):
Age of limits. 1981 to 1990.
ML (01:40:05):
A conservative moment. The conservative revolution.
SM (01:40:08):
1991 to 2000.
ML (01:40:14):
That one is a little tougher. I would say that is the internet era.
SM (01:40:17):
That is the Bill Clinton era too. 2001 to 2010. Is that 9/11? Is it-
ML (01:40:29):
I would say that this is the beginning of the end. This is the era which the Americans got so far off track and failed so deeply to address the structural weaknesses that it is what I will always hold against George Bush. Did not respond to global warming, did not respond to the energy crisis, misdirected the American response to 2001, and of the World Trade Center bombing, that he just misread. He had no sense of the historical situation of the United States, and he had too much of a Texas mentality because one of the things I suggest that is happened in the United States over the period since the (19)60s and was happening in the (19)60s it became more and more Southern. The popular culture becomes more Southern with NASCAR and country and western. The culture of Bubba and SUVs. Just the shift of population and wealth.
SM (01:41:46):
Even brought us a Southern president, for sure, too.
ML (01:41:50):
Brought us a whole string of them if you think about it. They are all Sunbelt-
SM (01:41:51):
Yeah. Both Clinton, Jimmy Carter-
ML (01:41:54):
Ronald Reagan, they are all Sunbelt presidents. They have been until Barack Obama.
SM (01:42:01):
You even saw that when President Kennedy was in power because he knew-
ML (01:42:03):
He even saw that when President Kennedy was in power, because he knew that the Democrats at the time he became president, the powerful Democrats were for segregation. And when he had to make decisions on whether to allow the march on Washington in (19)63, he was afraid of a riot, possibly, he brought them in. He was fearful that he would lose the Southern Democrats. So, the pragmatic politician that he was, he was a little hesitant at the time. That is why people did not think he really had to push John Kennedy on civil rights at times.
SM (01:42:35):
Oh, absolutely. No, I think that Kennedy and Johnson both knew that that civil rights was going to be the end of the Democratic party of [inaudible]. And persuaded one of the reasons that Johnson was so aggressive about jobs and public programs that were designed for lower income, lower middle class, it was to win back and win new Democrats to make up, to cover the loss that they were going to experience from civil rights. Although, one of the things that apparently, I do not know who has done the work, but that have made a pretty, was convincing to me, argument that the shift in southern politics had less to do with civil rights and more to do with suburbanization in the South. That as the South became more prosperous and whatnot, middle class southerners became Republicans. And they created middle class white institutions, Christian schools and churches and whatnot, that were pretty heavily segregated. So that is been a real trend, that the center of gravity of American life shifted southward.
ML (01:44:03):
Yeah, I would want to just put this for the record in the interview. These are things that really stood out in the (19)50s. And you have already talked about how important you think the (19)50s were, even some respects from the (19)60s, in terms of helping shape the (19)60s. So, I am not taking away from anything you have said, but again, it is getting back to some of the history that people see when they think of the (19)50s as being the groundwork for the future. Obviously, the Cold War, the fear of communists in all walks of life. We all know about the Hollywood [inaudible] movie out recently about one of them. I know that university professors and government employers were fired because of their links. And I know from college and high school, some teachers that were fired. Sputnik in (19)57, because of its importance in terms of the beginnings of a being strong in science and math and the whole business about education, which is real important, we have not talked about. Suburbia. Of course, lots of babies were being born. When we talk about juvenile delinquency, I think in terms of gangs back then, white gangs. Because I grew up in the Cornell, Ithaca area, and I saw gangs. They met at parks, but they were not going to kill people, they were just going to beat people up. Kind of the Jimmy Dean kind of thing. Women were most of the teachers, there were not too many men. Higher ed grew, the knowledge industry, as Clark Hurst said. That capitalism seemed to be revered. And then I say here, black and white, very innocent. But we did have Edward R Murrow, Dave Garaway, and Mike Wallace on TV, so we did have some really good news people. And then I always think of Arthur Godfrey, Steve Allen, the game show, the Breakfast Club. These are the kind of things that people in the (19)50s grew up with. This leads me into my question here. Oftentimes over the past 30 years, we have heard general statements from conservatives like Newt Gingrich, George Will in just about any book he has ever written. Some of his essays. Mike Huckabee today on TV, others, that the reason we had problems in today's world is due to the times in the (19)60s when anything goes i.e., very negative on the family structure, values, the destruction of an America we loved in the post-war era. That is Reagan kind coming into power. And so, what Newt Gingrich, when he came to power in 1994, he made comments about the breakup of the American family, the welfare state that Johnson created, the attack on the system of government, economy, the increasing divorce rate, the ongoing drug culture, the lack of respect for authority, the creation of special interest groups that only state what is in it for me rather than what is in it for us. Your comments on these statements, that even today are being made by people on television, that a lot of the way we are today is negative because of that era.
SM (01:47:22):
Well, one has to ask, how negative are we today, really? How profound is the negativism? I do think the economic downturn has darkened a lot of people's mood and whatnot. But I think to some degree, the media invents these narrative frames as ways of presenting presidential administrations, errors in history and whatnot. And they are fictions. They are organizing fictions that have some truth to them, but do not really accurately describe what's going on. And so, if you were to go back to the (19)60s and say, "Okay. Well, who was it that destroyed," for example, faith and government? Well, they would say, "Well, it was the radicals and the attack on the military during the Vietnam War and whatnot." Well, there was nobody who was more visceral in their attack on the government and governing institutions than the conservatives. And particularly the far-right conservatives, who thought the government was the government of communist conspirators. Accused Eisenhower of being a Commie. And then if you look at the agenda of the Buckley conservatives, part of it was that they wanted to tear down the New Deal and the idea of activist progressive government as a force in their lives. Was a wonderful quote, that some article that was just written in a Massachusetts newspaper by one of his colleagues at Mount Holyoke, where the guy said, he was talking about Tea Party libertarianism, which is a big part of the 1960s, I believe. That is do your own thing in your own time, easy rider mentality. A lot of that is Tea Party-ish. Just leave me alone, man. And this guy drew the analogy, he said, "This rhetoric of anarchic libertarianism and whatnot." He says, "It is great. He said, "It is like if somebody dropped you in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean in a rowboat with a couple of oars. You would be free to go any direction you wanted."
ML (01:49:36):
It is interesting, when I interviewed Noam Chomsky, I got an hour with him up at MIT, and we talked about anarchism. Because everything about his life is linked to it. Everything. So how serious was the generation gap between parents and their kids, who were reared after World War II? We had parents obviously born and raised in the Depression. And they were very young as World War II began. So, we had this generation gap that, remember, I do not know if you remember the front cover of Life magazine with a guy with the glasses and the guy, I had the magazine framed, and the father screaming at the son and whatever. And the divisions were obviously many. In The Wounded Generation, the book that came out, I think in 1980, there was a symposium which Phil Caputo, James Fallows, James Webb, several people were in there, and they were talking about the generation gap between their parents and the kids. And what really came out of it was really revealing. That yeah, we all know about the generation gap between the parents. It is well documented. But we do not talk about the real generation gap. The generation gap within the generation, between those who's went to war in Vietnam and came home and served their country, and those who did not serve, who protested against the war, became conscious objectors, particularly those who evaded the draft, as James Fallows admitted he did. And even James Fallows will say that, to evade the draft, and at the same time, not protest against the draft, he said That was wrong, that was wrong. And James Webb, who is now our United States senator, who I am trying to get an interview with, said that really, what we have to think of here is, we talk about the (19)60s generation as a generation of service, that came to the ideas of Kennedy. "Ask not what your country can do for you." So many went into the Peace Corps, many went into Vista, many went to the Vietnam War. But in reality, they are not a generation of service. Because a generation of service will, when your nation calls, you go to war.
SM (01:52:18):
Yeah, but what if the war is on poverty instead of on Vietnam? They are being very simplistic about this. There are wars and there are wars. I think that many people felt they were doing their country a service by protesting the war in Vietnam, which was destructive for the United States, destructive for Vietnam, and was fought on false premises. One of the things, again, that makes, you talk about the veterans talking about [inaudible], when Henry Kissinger wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Or Nixon could have had the peace that they got in 1972, (19)73, they could have gotten it in 1969. He just did not feel like he could deliver it politically and persuade his base well, that he had done the right thing. But part of this is, I think it is the destructiveness of a certain part of the conservative American political mindset, which has been slaying false gods and creating monsters where they do not exist. They have consistently, from the beginnings of the domestic Red Scare, used the Cold War as a political device to attack New Dealism, to attack social democracy, to resist the Civil Rights Movement. And that they created, I believe, their mentality created a sense of division where that was not nearly as serious as they felt. Or many of them, I think, honestly believed this. But I think that the idea, they totally misread the Soviet threat, misread Khrushchev. The threat that the neocons really sold in the late seventies and that Reagan made the cornerstone of the thing, was false. We know the Soviet military buildup was based on a lot of profound corruption and ineptitude. Look what happened to the Soviet army when it got into Afghanistan. This was the army that was supposed to bring us to our knees. I feel like what the conservatives has consistently succeeded in doing is to move the political discourse, move the center in the United States to a place where it should not be. So, for example, the incapacity now to respond in any meaningful way to the energy crisis and global warming. The bankruptcy of the whole process over healthcare. This is one of the things that came out of living in Ireland and living in a social democratic culture for a couple of years. Quality of life in Ireland is every bit as high and higher than it is in the United States. And the materialism is not quite as grandiose, but it is getting there. But you have had this sense in Ireland, the way I always put this, my poor wife hears these things over and over again, but American conservative culture demands losers. There is a need to have somebody to stigmatize, some other by which you can demonstrate your own virtue. I did it. I say, "I am a hard worker, I did this. I am taking care of myself. I am taking care of my family; I am taking care of my community. I am not like these losers, who always want to be on the government doll, who always need a handout and whatnot." But they also are not willing to commit public resources to education, to job protection, to a whole series of things, that often forces people who are on the margin, turns them into losers. So, they do not want to extend jobless benefits, they do not want to put in program, they do not want to do deficit spending for jobs creation and whatnot. Because they do not like the government and they do not believe the government can do a good job. And they keep arguing the private sector, all you have to do is cut taxes. That is just horseshit of the first rank. One of the things that, what is interesting, the Irish are filled with prejudices, as I am sure you know. They are homophobic, they are racists often. They do not get stigmatized for, say, racism because it never was that much of a racial problem. But we saw evidences of it all the time.
ML (01:57:06):
And we know about England too.
SM (01:57:08):
Right. But one of the differences is the Irish are embarrassed by it. They are not proud of it the way Americans often are. And they punish it. Like when bus drivers would treat Africans badly, they would fire them. Or fine them or whatever. But it also, you saw in their healthcare system. Was not terrific, but everybody had it. And they had a parallel system of private insurance, of people who felt they wanted it to pay for it. But you could go to a public facility, and they would have things taken care of. And they were not overmedicated, and they were not over CAT scans and whatnot. And I just feel that one of the reasons, underlying reasons, is that particularly in the conservative Republican community, again, nativism is one of the core values of an awful lot of people, that they resent profoundly the darkening, the Africanizing, the Latinizing of American cultural life and the social life and what. They feel like they are being marginalized in their own country. To some extent, they are, compared to what it was in the (19)50s. That they are romanticizing. But it prevents them from doing, if you take the flip side and say, "Well, how do the Irish suddenly become wealthy?" Well, one of the things they did is they committed themselves to universal education. Anybody in Ireland who wants to go to college and qualifies, goes for free. So, when the companies of the world were looking for a literate, educated, English speaking, technically competent workforce, bingo, they came to Ireland. Now, Ireland is such a small economy, such a niche, it's hard to say that this would work on the grand scale. But I think that it is clear now that in a world where, I cannot remember the statistics, they said if you are one in a million in China, there are a million people just like you. But-
ML (01:59:36):
Yeah, you are probably right with the population.
SM (01:59:36):
Like in India and China, where they are cranking out 300,000 engineers a year and we are turning out 30 to 60,000. And where, now, they are outsourcing legal work. I guess. They are all of these hungry college university, English-speaking people out there who will do the same work for a lot less money. And Americans have to figure out how to maximize their mental resources if that is the future, as far as I see it.
ML (02:00:18):
One of the things that I think has come out of the (19)60s on, I would like your thoughts on this, then I will go to these last three pages here, is that there seems to be... Bill Clinton was often looked upon as a centrist. [inaudible].
SM (02:00:34):
Yeah, mm-hmm.
ML (02:00:35):
He's a Liberal. Even President Obama, when he came in, says he was more, even though they say he is as liberal as you can get [inaudible] the extreme right. Yeah, I think he looks upon himself more in the center as well. But other people look at him differently. There seems to be a fear in America toward those who were on the extreme left or the extreme right, whether it be the new left or the Evangelical Christians. Everybody is okay if they kind of go toward the center. But is not it true, when you talk about people like her, she was not a centrist. Not in the area of the environment, because she was a subversive who did her homework, did her research, got her knowledge. And with knowledge is power and knowledge is a threat. And I think a lot of the people on the new left, some of the writers you talked about, and even the ones on the extreme right, who I do not care for, whether they be, Ralph Reed's a perfect example, because I think he is very well-educated and I think Newt Gingrich is very well-educated. So, they are a group that I think you have to listen to because they have knowledge of power.
SM (02:01:48):
Oh, I think that one of the things that happened is that there was a major shift where, from the New Deal into the (19)60s, most of the ideas about public policy came from the left. If you look at the major academics and whatnot. Now, a lot of those people shifted from the left to the right. And so, they took their intellectual baggage and their energies to the conservative movement. But the conservatives had been the consumer of and generators of ideas in the recent past, and sort of big ideas, more than the liberals are. Now, it does not mean I like those ideas or that I feel that they are constructive or appropriate, but there is a kind of intellectual vitality there. And although I love these things, it is like there are a lot of pretenders also, people who pretend to be [inaudible]. I cannot remember the evangelical from Houston, who is the guru to Marilyn and Dan Quail. And Garry Wills has an essay about it in his book on religion in America. This was from the eighties or nineties; this was a while ago. But he went down to interview the guy. And the guy always claimed, because he was educated in Greek and Latin, that he could read the ancient scriptures and interpret them in ways that were far more powerful and meaningful than the less educated clergy could do. Well, little did he know that Garry Wells is a classist and really can read. He can really read ancient Hebrew and Latin. And Wells, who [inaudible], this guy totally misreads. Does not really have a clue what half this stuff means anyway. But that is a pot shot. But I really feel like, it is obviously a clash ultimately, a clash of values or sensibilities or attitudes. But I just think the European model is a much healthier model for constructing an effective civil society. I think that one of the things that Bush tax cuts and a lot of the economic planning that happened in that era, besides just creating massive mountains of debt, public and private, was to increase the bankruptcy of the middle class or the marginalizing of the middle class, on the presumption that the old Republican notion that the creation of wealth would lead to the creation of wealth. But what you did not anticipate was that these Wall Street geniuses were going to figure out how to create obscene amounts of wealth that was going to be almost all fictional money. Is it going to be things that were purportedly had value, that had no value whatsoever. And I think that the failure to read that was almost criminally negligent. There was a lot of criminality involved. And it was just, when you look at what various regulatory agents [inaudible] you are talking about minerals management or you are talking about the SEC, or you are talking about the Federal Reserve. Here, Allen Greenspan, we now know, turns out to be a fool. That he sat upon it and nurtured and financed, with low interest rates, financed a lot of the subprime mortgage pool. And refused to accept any of the doubters, who could point out with some substance, how really fraudulent a lot of this was and how dangerous these instruments were. 2005, when Hank Paulson shows up as the head of Goldman Sachs, that persuades them to suspend the reserve limits that were on the big New York brokerage firms. And so, they went from 13:1 debt ratios to 35:1 debt ratios.
ML (02:06:47):
A lot of inbreeding in Wall Street and government.
SM (02:06:47):
It actually was not so much inbreeding. There were two crippling things. One was the suspension of Glass-Steagall in 1997, so that commercial banking and investment banking got reintegrated. And the other, it was the thing that happened in the 1980s. This is Michael Lewis, when he wrote Liar's Poker. Well, it happened at Bear Stearns, under, what is his name? Gutfreund. John Gutfreund was the head of Bear Stearns at the time. Or Solomon. It was Solomon. Anyway, Solomon [inaudible]. Took them public. Gretchen's uncle worked for one of the old time, classic New York Wall Street investment firms. They were partnerships. So, when you underwrote a bond or stock offering, it was your money, ultimately. The partners, it was their capital that they were using to make this. What Gutfreund succeeded in doing is the people who ran the brokerage firms, it is the stockholders' money that they are playing with. So, when they award themselves $200 million in bonuses, they are taking it from the stockholders. And they're paying themselves, all they added to this was chutzpah. Maybe a little vision here, a little shenanigans there and whatnot. But they had no downside risk, as became evident when these guys would get $50 million payoffs after having bankrupted their investment firms. And I think that this was partly a process that has got set in motion in the seventies, when the Americans really went to a paper debt economy far more aggressively than ever. That is the world that, remember when you got your first credit card?
ML (02:08:49):
Yeah. When was that? When I got out of grad school. I did not have one in grad school. I did not want one.
SM (02:08:55):
No. And that is what happened to us, like mid to late seventies. And I almost always thought that the thing was a little bit of a devil. I was dangerous. I did not trust it quiet. And Gretchen and I were talking to some friends about this the other day. How what for most of our married life, at the end of the year, when we wanted to do our taxes, we would have a stack this high of canceled checks. Now, we have stacked, we do not even get the cancel checks anymore, just get pictures of them.
ML (02:09:26):
That is right. Yeah. The checks are going to be a thing of the past.
SM (02:09:30):
Right. And actually, they are ending checking in Britain within five years or something like that. Yeah.
ML (02:09:36):
That is what the debit and credit cards are all about.
SM (02:09:38):
Yeah. Well, right. But it is a way of changing how one does business and how one manages one's money and whatnot. But it has made debt just an incidental part of everybody's everyday life. That was certainly not the case in the (19)60s or the (19)50s.
ML (02:10:08):
No. Yeah, it is amazing how... Yeah, nobody had credit cards. But I think they put it [inaudible] you owe so-and-so. There was trust in customers. Put it on layaway. Layaway was a big thing.
SM (02:10:21):
But there was store credit cards or store credit accounts.
ML (02:10:24):
Yeah. Store credit accounts, where you have until so many months to pay it off or whatever. [inaudible].
SM (02:10:28):
But I do think it has been transformational. But in a way, it's sort of unfortunate. I sent one of my friends a check the other day and I said, "I am not sure if it's legal to use non-electronic money anymore."
ML (02:10:43):
Oh my God. Sometimes people say that the only boomer presidents have been Bill Clinton and George Bush II. I call him George Bush the second.
SM (02:10:55):
George, the...
ML (02:10:57):
Yeah. And they say, "Well, it is very obvious they are boomers." What do they mean by that?
SM (02:11:03):
Well, it means they are using that shorthand that they grew up in the sort of go-go prosperity of the (19)50s and that they are part of this generation that sees themselves as better educated, more socially mobile than their parents' generation were. That they went through a time of great opportunities and of material growth, wealth creation and whatnot. And also, they have been part of the generations who's basically its preoccupations have defined the public agenda almost all the way through. In the (19)50s it was about creating schools and housing for the baby boom generation. And the (19)60s was expanding colleges and creating enough space for the baby boom generation. Now it is social security and retirement benefits and pension funds for the baby boom generation. And I think it is partly because they represent a huge market, in so far as markets to determine-
ML (02:12:28):
See, right now, if you stay till (19)66, you can get your full social security. But the majority of people are not dead, they are retiring, and they are getting it ahead of time figuring, "Well, I can get it for so many years. And then if I die." So, the difference would still be, I would still make-
SM (02:12:48):
The actuarial, I think the consensus that I have gotten from people who do not need it but collect it, and others, is that it is best to wait till you are 66.
ML (02:13:00):
Yeah, you get more.
SM (02:13:02):
You get more, but you get even more if you wait till you are 70. I think the difference is between getting, say, I think you get about, I cannot remember what it is now. It is about $2,300 a month, if you are maxed out. But it goes up to $2,900 a month if you retire when you are 70. But the kicker is, that when you do the math in your head, you got to live to be 80 something to make up the difference of income you have let go by-by not collecting. And also, if you continue working, your benefits still go up some, not as much as-
ML (02:13:43):
You can get, I know, because-
SM (02:13:45):
You are paying into social security while you are collecting.
ML (02:13:47):
I am 62 now, so I am collecting it because that is how I... But I took a big cut in what I would get, but-
SM (02:13:56):
But you also collect, you are going to collect it for four years or five years. So, in those five years, I do not know. I am just going to guess there is probably, say you get 1,600 or a month or something like that.
ML (02:14:10):
Yeah. Then you got to take the taxes out.
SM (02:14:11):
Right. No, but I am just saying, so what you are giving, what you are going to give up is $700 a month, say $10,000 a year when you are 66. But you will already have collected 70 or $80,000, so it will take five or six years before it crosses over.
ML (02:14:34):
Yeah, and you got to-
SM (02:14:35):
And you will actually be at a disadvantage.
ML (02:14:37):
Yeah, and you got to live. And if you die, you are-
SM (02:14:40):
Right. It is all gone.
ML (02:14:41):
There is no heir to anything. So, it is like-
SM (02:14:45):
So, I think it is not a bad calculation. And if you need it, you need it.
ML (02:14:50):
Well, I need it [inaudible]. But you can get the $14,300 in earnings if you want to. It does not affect your social security. When you go beyond that, then they take one out of every $2 at that point, and then they, yep.
SM (02:15:04):
Because I think after 66 you can earn as much as you want.
ML (02:15:06):
You can.
SM (02:15:06):
It does not matter.
ML (02:15:10):
This is an important question I have asked everyone. We took a group of students to Washington DC in 1995, part of our leadership on the road programs. Where we met Senator Ed Muskie. Gaylord Nelson organized this meeting for us. He had just gotten out of the hospital, and he was not doing too well, but it was a great meeting. Students came up with some of the questions, and this was one of the questions they came up with. Keeping in mind that none of these students were born in the (19)60s, but they had seen videotapes [inaudible] up and everything. Their question was, due to the divisions that took place in the (19)60s for the boomer generation, the divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, with all the riots taking place during the (19)60s, they had seen these things, and they had also saw what happened in the 1968 convention where police were clubbing students-
SM (02:16:03):
... convention. So, the police were clubbing students, and there were assassinations that year, and the president resigned, or withdrew from running for president. All the crazy stuff was happening. Do you think the boomer generation, the generation of the (19)60s, the Vietnam generation, is going to go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not healing? That the divisions were so intense, particularly between Vietnam vets and those who were anti-war, and vice versa. The people that fought for Black rights, because my books about everyone. Someone said when they saw the term "boomer", they thought of white men. But boomers are everybody. They are African American, Latino, gay and straight, Native American. It is everybody. I encouraged students to come up with this question because if you go to Gettysburg, there is a statue there of a man who the last survivor of the Civil War was. He died in 1924. So, the last person who participated in the Civil War died in 1924. Over there, I have been to some symposiums where that generation never healed, obviously. Do you think there is a problem within the Boomer generation? It is like Gaylord Nelson said, "They do not walk around Washington DC with, 'I have not healed' on my sleeve," but do you think there is a permanent split between some of these people, particularly those that were involved as activists, that they are never really getting over the divisions?
ML (02:17:51):
Actually, no. I mean, yes, there is some people who never get a life or whose experience of that time or its impact on their lives is so profound or defining that it frames them forevermore. Then there are also like the Bloody Shirt Generation. They are all kinds of politicians who are going to flog that dead horse forever and ever. But one of the things people forget is that when they held Civil War reunions, they would go to Gettysburg and the Confederates, and the Union guys would all come, and they would camp out together and they would reminisce and whatnot. It was the politicians who kept alive, because the issue of race and segregation in the South and Jim Crow. It was the politicians, I think, who exploited the divisions as a way of seizing power and looting the South to some degree. There are certain issues from the Civil War that have never been reconciled about state's rights, the extent of federalism, the degree to which the federal government can enter into people's lives, create rules and regulations and whatnot. I think those were flaws that were inherent in the original Constitution. The Constitution never took on the problem of race. It created a fiction. It solved the problem. So, I do not think it has to do with the (19)60s so much. So, it is like when somebody interviewed me about the Tea Party phenomena, I think the Tea Party phenomena is a version of populism that comes back over and over again. There is a libertarian sensibility to it. There is an anti-elitist sensibility to it. There is a nativist wing in it. There is a kind of evangelical part of it. But these things are always out there. They are always there. They have been there since almost the founding, but certainly since the 19th century and with immigration, whatnot. And so, one of the things that makes the United States distinct from, although this is also [inaudible] one of the reasons we do not have a social democracy is because we have these much larger racial ethnic divisions. And so, like in Ireland, if somebody says, "Okay, well, I am being taxed for social security." They are thinking, "Well, it is going to go to somebody who is like my mom." Not maybe my mom or maybe my mom is dead, but "It is going to go to somebody who is like me."
SM (02:20:40):
Who needs it.
ML (02:20:40):
Whereas here, people say, "Well, it is going to go to those welfare queens and it's going to go to things. And I do not want that, I do not want that."
SM (02:20:48):
It is a different mentality.
ML (02:20:50):
It is a very different mentality. And I think what happens is that as has happened in Yugoslavia under the Serbian nationalism, that people step in and they exploit these anxieties, these fears of marginalization, these economic uncertainties. And they say, "Okay, if you are a Serb, the only one who is going to take care of you is a Serb. If you are a white middle class male, it is white middle-class males who are going to take care you. Those other guys are trying to pick your pocket and give your money to the undeserving." So back to your question somewhat, the sense that we are hopelessly forever divided. Yeah, Americans are a nation that... The idea of the nation itself is a fiction. It is like Ed Morgan wrote a wonderful little book called Inventing the People. And there is another wonderful book out there, Imagine Nation. It is Benedict Anderson's book about nationalism and national identity.
SM (02:22:10):
Are they recent books?
ML (02:22:12):
Ed Morgan's books about 15 years old, 10 years old. Benedict Anderson's book is from the 1980s. It is called Imagined Communities. But one of the things that Anderson, he was a professor at Cornell, an Irishman, my background. It is the most often cited book in social science literature. Imagined Communities.
SM (02:22:36):
What is his first name?
ML (02:22:37):
Benedict.
SM (02:22:38):
Benedict.
ML (02:22:39):
But one of the purposes of the book, it is a very brief old book. It is like 200 pages, and he is a specialist on Southeast Asia. But one of the ways he put it is, "Why is it that if some guy from California gets kidnapped in South America?" He would not have used this specific, but an example like this, "Why is it that you and I feel aggrieved? We will never meet the guy. We do not live in California. The guy lives 3000 miles away and we are pissed off. What is it that makes us see ourselves as part of the same community?" And he develops some theories in there about that. But one of the things that I argue to my students that creates division is a lot of people live in different cultural space and different cultural time. Some people embrace metro sexualism and multiethnic and multicultural. They live in a world that they do not think it is odd to see somebody who is Japanese with somebody who is Nigerian. It is the world they live in. They both got good jobs. They both love the party. Of course, they are together. Whereas in our generation, if you saw something like that, people would be absolutely agog-
SM (02:23:57):
Guess who is coming to dinner [inaudible].
ML (02:23:59):
But one of my colleagues was saying, she is an African American woman, grew up in the Catskills, and she was down on the subway in New York City in the last 10 years or so and they have got down towards the battery and whatnot. And I think the train was headed to Brooklyn ultimately. And she looked around the car and, in the car, I do not think there was a single white person in the car, but Asians and Africans and Indians and this and that, just this mélange of people, classic New York City. All of sudden the door opens, these four people get on it, and they are wearing satin Ole Miss baseball jackets. And they take one look at this car, one guy turns the other and he says, "Are we in America?"
SM (02:24:49):
Well, that is America.
ML (02:24:53):
Yeah, exactly, it is. And the question is, for them in Mississippi, and this was not a racist... This was not some guy who has called the Klan to attack the car. It was just they had never experienced this. And it is like whenever we are in New York, you just look around yourself and you think, "I live up here in vanilla heaven." But New York, the diversity is so profound. And I think that there are people who embrace that and live in it, are cosmopolitan. And there are people who are frightened to death of it. And they are all Americans. And those divisions, the biggest divisions in the US have always been east versus west and urban versus rural and Protestant versus others. So, those things are still with us, and I think always will be.
SM (02:25:56):
Well, Senator Muskie, he said that... He did not even comment on 1968, was he thought the students... Because he was the nominee. He thought they would talk about the convention. And he said in very simple terms, he did not answer right away. We have this. I had the videotape of this too. He died six months later. And he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War on the issue of race." And he started going and talking about it. And then he said, "We lost 430,000 men." He had just seen the Ken Burns series in the hospital, and it really touched him. Almost an entire generation had been wiped out. The other thing I wanted to ask is the issue of... Well, a couple things. Many members of the boomer generation thought they were the most unique generation in history because they were going to be the change [inaudible] for the betterment of society. They were going to end racism, sexism, homophobia, war, bring peace. Nothing was ever going to be the same again. So, there was a real optimism, a sense of community, a sense of comradery, togetherness, the movements, there seems to be arm and arm. Whereas today, many people think that that arm and arm has now become very special interest. Rarely do they come together except in crises, which we see on university campuses. Do you think this generation was the most unique in its history? And secondly, is one of the major characteristics of this generational a lack of trust, that they just do not trust people because they saw so many government leaders lie?
ML (02:27:30):
Well, Americans have always been [inaudible]. Remember Mr. Finley, Peter Dunn, Mr. Dooley, "Trust everyone, but cut the cards." I think cynicism about public figures and about public life is fairly entrenched. Whether it is the most unique, I think only demographically, only by size. Not in terms of its culture or cultural values. Every generation is unique, just different. I think that one of the ways to get a handle on this, and I think that Thomas Frank, he had a book on advertising-
SM (02:28:19):
Oh, not that one.
ML (02:28:20):
What is the Matter with Kansas?
SM (02:28:22):
Yeah, that is the one.
ML (02:28:25):
He, I think, was really on to something. And I think that what has changed America that makes it seem like... Leads to the world of Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone. The Bowling Alone one. Part of it is just that the shift of women into the workforce, so that a lot of community building that went on in the (19)50s and (19)60s had to do with women who created community organizations, PTAs and this and that. Well, now that women are working full time and whatnot. There is much less time and energy left for civic engagement or even social civic engagement because there are all kinds of organizations and whatnot that are troubled, are struggling to survive, struggling to keep volunteer fire companies that... And the other thing I think that happened is that from the (19)20s into the (19)50s, you really had truly the development of mass media. And that is somewhat uniform, with some exceptions. There were local... Say local newspaper, local radio. But you really did get this creation of a broad mass national culture and mass national institutions like those Hollywood studios and the broadcast networks and big publishing houses. The music industry was dominated by five record companies, that sort of thing. And it is really the advent of cable television and the internet. And also, this is one of those arguments that also James Gilbert made his argument in his book on the (19)50s on juvenile delinquency, that advertisers began to shift away from seeing broad mass audiences to which they wanted to sell Marlboros or Chevrolets or Whirlpool dryers, to demographically fragmented markets. Teen market that you could sell teen products, you could sell Clearasil, or you could sell transistor radios and whatnot. And that increasingly, when growing up as a kid, you knew exactly what your friends watched on television because you had one or two... Now, Ithaca was different to some degree because they had cable television early because there was no transmission into that area. So, they had to bring it in by cable. So, you may have had two-
SM (02:31:15):
We had four. Well, we got Syracuse because my mom liked Kate Russell. Do you remember her?
ML (02:31:21):
Yeah.
SM (02:31:22):
She was on. And then there was Ed Murphy, with Hollywood Matinee on the... But in the (19)50s, they showed a lot of those films during the summertime. But we watched ABC, NBC, CBS. We got cable. We had a cable channel.
ML (02:31:38):
Well, that is what I am saying is that was... Because I remember that in Ithaca when I was a student there, you could sometimes get New York City stations, they would come on the cable. But I think that what has happened is that the market is now heavily fragmented. So, you have programming that is designed for old farts, the news, 60 Minutes. And advertising that is targeted for specific demographics. And so that what the mass media has become factional, meek media. You got 200 plus channels that you can watch so that, you have 500,000 people watching the Food Channel and 500,000 people watching Comedy Central and 500, 000 people watching AMC and maybe have a few million who are watching ABC.
SM (02:32:36):
Then you got the college students watching Family Guy. They do watch it.
ML (02:32:44):
And I think that what means also is that people now get their news from their evangelical station, from Fox News, from PBS, depending on what your prejudices are. So, you can educate your prejudices. You are not forced to negotiate contested space. And so, I think that feeds this sense of self- importance or you can be anything you want to be or have it your way. It is this celebration of self and that every life is a project self-creation in which we underplay the degree to which we are dependent on-
SM (02:33:35):
It is like the [inaudible] now that the advertisement that is geared toward the boomers, it is because they taught the constant retirement. The advertisement is about retirement. Dennis Hopper, before he passed away, was on that ad, "You are going to be different here."
ML (02:33:47):
But it used to be James Whitmore who advertised to the elderly. Now it is the boomers themselves. But yeah, and the advertising, it is sort of like, "Where's the money? Where is the market?" And it is always a question of identifying markets. But now, the biggest demographic is 24 to 45 because they are the highest spending demographic, and they buy big ticket items, cars, and whatnot. Whereas people, when they get over 60, they already have their house, their furniture, their this. They are not consumers in the same way. So, they will buy health insurance, or they will buy a retirement property or something like that. Again, it is the way election campaigns are now run. And it is why the national parties are increasingly irrelevant because there is a local demographic that determines how every congressman's going to run, how every senator is going to run, whatnot. Because they have their peculiar local demographic, which through gerrymandering, they can make exquisitely the way they want it.
SM (02:35:12):
Were there specific books that you felt were important to you, books that you read when you were in high school and college that were very influential and because you liked them, and you read them, and they influenced you?
ML (02:35:33):
There definitely were things like Catcher and Rye, Mark Twain. I tended to like cynical types. I read all the things that other... Lord of the Flies and that generation of literature. But I was interested in history early on and read about the Rise and Fall Reich and read a certain amount about politics.
SM (02:36:01):
And were you a Landmark Books person?
ML (02:36:03):
I was. I read them all. When there were 50, I read them all. And I read Battle of Britain, I read about 12 times.
SM (02:36:09):
By golly, I still have mine. Do you still have yours?
ML (02:36:10):
Yeah.
SM (02:36:12):
Yeah. And how about the Bruce Catton books on the Civil War, which were popular?
ML (02:36:17):
I did not read those. I was never a Civil War buff, though since then I have taught the Civil War [inaudible]. And I am interested in the Civil War as a historical phenomenon. And I also, I think the episode of Ken Burns thing, when they get to Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address. I get tears in my eyes. Listening to the Gettysburg Address in the context of the battle and whatnot.
SM (02:36:46):
They have redone the building. I go about 10 times a year. I only live an hour and a half away. And I see something every time I go, different times a year. And they would redone where he wrote... Well, he arrived on the train, stayed at this hotel, and [inaudible] paid $3 to look into a room, which was the most ridiculous thing. I refused to do that. Now you go into the hotel. It is really the way it was. He redone it the way Lincoln... Exactly the way it was. Yeah, I just wrote down some books here that the people were influenced on. I had talked about The End of Ideology, because I think Daniel Bell's book was a major piece of literature. And Charles Reich's Greening of America and Roszak's Making of a Counterculture was required reading in our graduate school program.
ML (02:37:32):
But see, I think those were later. A lot depends on when... One of the things I argue in my book also is that there were certain kinds of mildly subversive, or like The Affluent Society or Organization Man.
SM (02:37:50):
White Collar.
ML (02:37:51):
White Collar, C Wright Mills. The people who said to you, "Things are not what they seem," or "There are other ways to think about this, that all is not perfect in the kingdom. And check out the emperor's clothes." And there was a whole string of his and Betty Friedan and Rachel Carson.
SM (02:38:11):
And certainly, the beat writers.
ML (02:38:13):
The beat writers, also. Michael Harrington.
SM (02:38:16):
Oh yeah, the other America.
ML (02:38:18):
And then there was... What is his name? Paul Goodman and so forth. So, there were a whole range of these things out there if one had an appetite for them. And actually, one of the most formative mind shifting moments for me came when I was taking diplomatic history at Cornell from Walter LaFeber.
SM (02:38:39):
He is a good get.
ML (02:38:40):
I think he was a new left historian, a student of Fred Harrington's and William Appleman Williams at Wisconsin. Where you got to the end of the World War II, and we are talking about the decision to drop the atom bomb. And this was the year that Gar Alperovitz published Atomic Diplomacy, which none of us were aware of but Walter LaFeber clearly read it. And he said to us, "People have always thought that the had a bomb was dropped on Japan to end the war quickly, which is what Truman explained." He said, "But in fact, there is serious evidence that indicates that the bomb was dropped on Japan, not to end the war quickly, but to send a message to the Soviet Union." And this was just one of those accepted truisms of Cold War America. It never occurred to you that it was anything but the way it had been always explained to you. And then the idea that there was another way to understand this phenomenon. It was like, "Huh?" It really shook the foundations. And it was not that... I was capable of certain amount of cynicism. It was just that there were just certain building blocks that no one had ever had the courage to publicly attack him and until Alperovitz. Now most of us do not agree with Alperovitz, we think that his case is distorted, et cetera. And there's truth to it. But he certainly changed the debate about the decision to drop the atom bomb.
SM (02:40:20):
What is amazing is one of my last interviews, a person I talked about the first time he became cynical, he said, "It is because I admired Eisenhower. I looked up to him. He was a World War II hero. But I also watched him on television when he said that Gary Powers was not a spy. And then within a week or two later, they had to admit that he was a spy. He lied to me on television and all of a sudden, a light bulb went on."
ML (02:40:51):
Yeah, right. I do think people do have those defining moments where the unthinkable, you see, it is right there in front of you. And that belief is not viable any longer.
SM (02:41:05):
I had these... These were mostly (19)60s books, but the Soul on Ice with Eldridge Cleaver, and certainly... Harold Brown wrote a book that I thought was very influential.
ML (02:41:14):
Love Without Fear. Or that was Norman-
SM (02:41:16):
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. Do you remember that book?
ML (02:41:19):
I do not know that I do remember that. This was not Harold Brown who went on to be Secretary of-
SM (02:41:26):
No-no, no-no. The Harold Browne that ran on the... I think it was a Green Party ticket for a while. He was an independent, he passed away.
ML (02:41:34):
I was thinking of Norman O'Brown who wrote a book on love and death or something.
SM (02:41:39):
Yeah, this guy was... He wrote a book, How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. And then the other one was Dr. David Rubin, What You Need to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.
ML (02:41:52):
That was big. And I also included Playboy and Hugh Hefner and Mad Magazine. Mad Magazine was big. It was so irreverent that...
SM (02:42:06):
I still have some old Mad Magazines here.
ML (02:42:08):
Have you ever read, by the way, there is this wonderful book, The Wonderful World of Kavalier and Clay?
SM (02:42:14):
No.
ML (02:42:15):
Michael Chabone, I think his name is.
SM (02:42:17):
No.
ML (02:42:18):
It is such a wonderful read if you like the world of comic books and whatnot.
SM (02:42:21):
Oh, yeah. Well, I have a box of comic books that are from the (19)50s, but most of them are all Westerns. I kept all my Westerns.
ML (02:42:30):
All I can tell you is this is mostly about creating the superheroes and whatnot. But it is a wonderful read. I highly recommend it.
SM (02:42:39):
I am getting down to my last two questions here. This tape goes for about two hours, I think. So, we are getting near the end there. These are some questions about Rachel Carson. Because I just think... I have two other biographies on her, so I want to learn even more about her even from... This is so good. But I just have to say it. You indicate in your book on Rachel Carson that she was different from the outset in many ways. A female scientist where men dominated the profession. She had role models like [inaudible] where money was less important than ideas. Is not her story, like many of the boomer generation who recognized injustice and tried to write it or, like her, saw nature threatened and tried to do something about it, this kind of, what I consider, a selfless as opposed to a selfish reason for doing things? The second thing I say here about Rachel Carson, Rachel Carson was a woman who was aggressive in her style, very obviously she was. And she spoke up at a time when women were supposed to be seen and not heard. A great role model for feminism and the environmental causes that were to follow her life, especially with Earth Day in 1970 and the women's movement that was searching for role models. I think this book, as well as other books, need to be read more by more people because her life has meaning. I have read Silent Spring a long time ago as a book, but I really never read in depth about her as a person. So, I just think she is an unbelievable... She is a one of a kind.
ML (02:44:28):
She is a uniquely talented person. One of the things that you wanted to do, psychologize her, if you look at... She is like Franklin Roosevelt in that she is her mother's special prize.
SM (02:44:45):
You are right. Marian or is it, Maria? I forget.
ML (02:44:49):
Maria Carson.
SM (02:44:50):
Maria, yes. Yeah.
ML (02:44:50):
But this was a case where her mother essentially devoted her life to Rachel. So, in many ways it was confining, but in other ways it was very liberating. And I think that it gave her a sense of specialness all her life. And one of the things I always found remarkable is she never seemed to resent the demands her mother made on her. Although I think they became more extreme as her mother approached the end of her life, and that she was always very satisfied with the living arrangement that they had because it did free her to do her work in a lot of ways. And also, to have somebody who teaches you how to notice, who teaches you how to record and to discriminate and just spends a lot of intimate mental time with you. And I think that it made Rachel Carson different from other kids. I am sure any community she was in, that people always saw her as a little bit over there. Not dangerous, not offensive, not threatening really, but different, very different. But she was comfortable with the difference. So, I do not think she was one of these people who was particularly vulnerable to the potential taunts and jeers of... I do not think she really provoked them, does not seem that she provoked them very much. And I think that this is also somebody who was always basically quite serious. It was not that she did not have a sense of humor, but I think she took the world very seriously and her causes profoundly seriously. And in that sense, she was an extremely private person who in some ways lived a public life. Always that kind of contradiction. But she's somebody who hated public speaking, much preferred to write. And as I say, that is one of the things that intrigued me about her and also daunted me when I took up the book is how do you write a book about somebody who was such an elegant writer, but the person you're writing about is in a sense so much more...?
SM (02:47:28):
Well, you bring up also very important in here because I am a higher ed person about role models and people. You referenced several faculty members, and I had very important faculty members when I was in graduate school too that had an influence on me and pushed me to be better than I could ever be. They had faith in me, and she had people who had faith in her, a couple women, the one at Johns Hopkins, and one was even going to get married, but decided not to get married, her career was more important at that particular juncture. That was a very important role models, because we were talking... She died in (19)62, but we are talking the 1950s here. Is she truly symbolic of many women who were smart, well-informed, well-educated, but because of the attitudes that men had toward women in those days, do not speak up, be seen and not heard, she is the epitome of a role model that... "No-no. We have something to offer."
ML (02:48:31):
There was the occasional person like Paul Brooks, her editor or her boss at the Fish and Wildlife, who recognized her talent and nurtured it and created opportunities for her. But yeah, if you think about the job she had, she was basically an exquisite secretary for all the scientists who were too lazy or too incompetent to write literate reports for the Fish and Wildlife Service. They went to her, and she edited them and published them. And so, she was taking care of their business for them. She ran a small publishing company that served their interests, though she was paid decently for it and whatnot. And within her little realm, she had some authority. But by and large, hers was a service operation, not... And somewhat secondary to the primary purpose of the agency. She did however, being a resourceful person and socially adroit in some ways, she created lots of opportunities to go to visit facilities around the country and develop her network of friends in the science community and whatnot. And so, she was the author of a lot of her own success. I wish I had asked questions when I interviewed Senator Nelson about her because his-
SM (02:50:01):
... about her because his hero or the person he really looked up was Leopold.
ML (02:50:07):
Oh yeah. He is from Wisconsin.
SM (02:50:08):
Yeah.
ML (02:50:10):
[inaudible] a homeboy.
SM (02:50:12):
And of course, during the anniversary this past year, because I interviewed Tia, his daughter.
ML (02:50:20):
Tia Nelson or Tia LaFeber?
SM (02:50:21):
Tia Nelson, a daughter of Gaylord.
ML (02:50:23):
Was that your classmate, Gretchen?
GL (02:50:26):
Who?
ML (02:50:26):
Was it William Proxmire or Gaylord Nelson's daughter who was a classmate of yours in high school? One of them, I am pretty sure you said was.
GL (02:50:36):
Do not remember.
ML (02:50:38):
He is the senator from Wisconsin. I thought it was Gaylord Nelson.
GL (02:50:46):
No, I do not think so.
SM (02:50:48):
Tia said that... This was the big anniversary year of Earth Day.
ML (02:50:54):
Yes, the 40th.
SM (02:50:55):
She was fearful that they were starting to forget Gaylord Nelson, that other people were.
ML (02:51:01):
Some of us remember.
SM (02:51:04):
But I bet you if Gaylord Nelson, if she had been alive, probably he would have picked her to be one of the main speakers at Earth Day.
ML (02:51:11):
Oh, absolutely. She would have been natural for it. And she most certainly would have written another important book in the interim. And actually, there were a whole series of majors. I just happened to read just before you came, I finished a manuscript for University of North Carolina Press, which is sort of a history of DDT in which she obviously figures quite prominently.
SM (02:51:36):
Oh, you are writing a book on it.
ML (02:51:38):
No. This is a book I read the manuscript for the press. Should they publish it or should not they? And one of the things he talks about is the later thing where there was this series of in Michigan, then Wisconsin, and then in Washington of legal battles over the toxicity of DDT and the ability of state or federal agencies to regulate or eliminate it. And so, she certainly would have been very centrally involved in that discussion. It would have interesting to see where she would have gone next.
SM (02:52:20):
How old is she? She was...
ML (02:52:21):
She was 57 when she died.
SM (02:52:23):
Too young. Too young. Too young. I just mentioned here that there is the light bulb thing. Obviously with Rachel Carson your book goes into when her light bulb went off in terms of pesticides and so forth. But Jane Fonda is a very controversial figure within the anti-war movement. And I have had people for and against her, but one of them has said point-blank that she really wanted to get out of the Barbarella mentality. She talked about Vietnam and came back from France because she had a mind, she just was not a body. It was kind of a light bulb there too, and certainly Betty Friedan being the housewife. How did you become who you are? What were your college years like and how did you become professor?
ML (02:53:21):
Well, my interest in history, partly probably the person who most shaped it was my grandmother, who was a professional librarian but always interested in foreign affairs and read history. I was quite close to her. And also, it was just partly I was intrigued by her history, because her father had been in the New York State legislature with Theodore Roosevelt and her husband was, I think he was editor of the Princeton newspaper, yearbook, something, when Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton. And that is how my mother's family became Democrats. They came from a very Republican world, and they converted to being Democrats because of Wilson's influence. My parents were both heavy readers. But the big thing after that was when I went to... And I always did well in history; I have a memory for it. I read, like you read, the landmark books and was interested in biography and intrigued by the people's life stories and whatnot. And when I was an undergraduate at Cornell, the history department there was fairly young and filled with people who became real luminaries, but who were real teachers and in some ways mensches. David Davis was there, Don Kagan, the [inaudible], was the conservative. He's father of Bobby and Freddy Kagan.
SM (02:55:07):
Wow.
ML (02:55:07):
And good, close personal friend of George Will. But Don was there. And Michael Kammen won the Pulitzer Prize when I was an undergraduate. So did Davis won it. And Walter LaFeber was my advisor.
SM (02:55:26):
He wrote a book on Vietnam, I think. Did not he? I thought he wrote something on...
ML (02:55:29):
LaFeber?
SM (02:55:30):
Yeah.
ML (02:55:30):
He did eventually, but his big book at that time was called The New Empire, and it was sort of the basis for his career, where he revisited the causes of the Spanish American War and argued against the idea of accidental empire. It is really a book about empire by design. But it was about the new colonialism, the non-administrative economic colonialism. Anyway, he is somebody who you develop a kind of hero worship when you are a kid. Well, I admire him as much today as I did when I was an undergraduate. He had enormous influence on me, partly because he was a really wonderful family person. And then at the time, most of the faculty children are crazy. And I thought the price of going into higher education is to have a nutso family. Well, I think a lot of the people who entered into academia in the (19)50s and (19)60s were not tradition, because there was so much expansion that a lot of non-traditional types, Jews and ethnics and whatnot, went into academia. And they were very ambitious. They wanted to be accepted and be as good and better and whatnot. And I think he took a big toll on their family lives. But from Walter LaFeber, I thought you can be politically relevant and engaged but still be an academic and you can be a family person. One of the things that was a characteristic of the (19)60s, it was in my graduating classic at Cornell, of the 25 top ranked liberal arts students, 23 of them, and I was not one of those 25, but all went into non-for-profit career tracks. And I would guess from the 1980s and on, the pattern was reversed. That 23 out of 25 probably went into finance, law, business of some kind. And so, relates to your question you asked earlier about service and whatnot, I do think that there was a sense of wanting to make a difference, of contributing. It did not mean military service. And I am now a powerful, I feel this powerfully, I am not doing much about it, but a real believer in public service. That at some point, whether there probably should be two moments in somebody's life, either when you graduate from high school or when you graduate from college, where you have to do a year of public service. It does not have to be in the military; it could be in the military. It could be in the forest service. It could be health service. It could be Peace Corps. It could be create some [inaudible] job corps where you work, mentor to inner city kids, or you work in retirement communities, or whatever. But for a year you have to be trained to do something useful to help other people.
SM (02:58:45):
Buckley talked about that in his book, Gratitude, William Buckley, which I supported. Of course, students do not want to be told what to do, but I support two years of public service, similar to what happens in Israel. You do not have to go in the military, but I believe you need to give back in some way. And I think we have a president now that if he saw more of that, then it would help them toward their graduate degrees if they want to go on to graduate school and things like this.
ML (02:59:17):
Well, and also, I think it would change people's trajectories. I think a lot of people who just, for the lack of imagination or the lack of exposure, just fall into, "Oh, my father is a lawyer; I will be a lawyer." Or "Bankers make a lot of money; I will be a banker." Or whatever. I think that if you got training in something, you might decide, "I could make a life out of this. I could do this." Not everybody would, but not everyone should. But it would make a huge difference. And I think people would value themselves more than they do.
SM (02:59:54):
Can you list some of the tangible results or deeds of members of the boomer generation? They are 48 to 64. We all know about Bill Gates, we know what he has done, and Steve Jobs. We know they are boomers. But are there boomers that stand out? I only got about 10 minutes here left. And this might end, and I got a little dinky tape in here to end it. Are there boomers that really stand out, that you think really they had lived the idealism of the (19)60s throughout their entire lives?
ML (03:00:26):
Oh, maybe somebody like Paul Farmer.
SM (03:00:29):
Now, who is Paul Farmer?
ML (03:00:35):
Way out in the mountains, the guy who is in Haiti, the doctor in Haiti. There certainly have been a fair number of creative people who left an imprint. Funny the way you have framed the question, are there heroes of sports, heroes of science?
SM (03:01:03):
I did not say anything about sports.
ML (03:01:06):
Well, there have been some sports figures. Well, he was not a baby boomer, so... Oh, he may have been actually, like Curt Flood.
SM (03:01:14):
This is my last question here, so I am going to get to it.
ML (03:01:24):
I have had friends that have gone on to high achievement and people that I know who have lived good life, my older brother. Although he was not a boomer, because he was born in 1940, but he was involved in public education his whole life and always committed to it. There have been academics, like one of my classmates at Yale also. Again, I do not know if he is quite a baby boomer, but Donald Worcester and Bill Cronon as historians have been pioneers in the environmental studies movement, environmental history. So, there are not any, probably when you are gone, I will think six right in a row, particularly impressed with or done great things. A lot of courageous women who have broken a lot of barriers along the way.
SM (03:02:38):
[inaudible] the tape.
ML (03:02:40):
Hillary deserves a lot of credit.
SM (03:02:42):
Oh, definitely.
ML (03:02:43):
What she is accomplished, not without controversy.
SM (03:02:53):
This is getting down to the last question here really before I have a question on a legacy that ends it. Here it is. It is a little takeoff of what I just asked. What personalities between 46 today do you feel had the greatest impact on the generation that came of age after World War II? I broke it down into names, events, and trends. I like your comments. These are the people that I felt were the most important to the boomer generation and they had the greatest impact on. JFK, Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, Jackie Robinson, Lyndon Johnson, Walt Disney, Hugh Hefner, the Beatles, Elvis and Reagan. Now those are the people that I thought had the greatest impact on the boomer generation.
ML (03:03:47):
And do you mean outside of the context of the (19)60s? You mean in the entire post-war era?
SM (03:03:56):
Yeah, both good and bad.
ML (03:03:57):
Okay. Nobody mentioned Jim Morris. I am joking.
SM (03:03:58):
Yeah, I know.
ML (03:04:03):
I am joking about that. I would have to say that there have been some writers, certainly. I think of people like Barry Commoner.
SM (03:04:13):
Okay.
ML (03:04:15):
Ralph Nader.
SM (03:04:17):
Let me-
ML (03:04:25):
... coming up behind us. But then we have got to be careful that we are looking through a clear windshield and we see the road ahead as well. That is best I could put it.
SM (03:04:37):
The free speech movement in 1964, which was at Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65 was the precursor to many things that filed on university campuses in the late (19)60s. But keeping in mind that the free speech movement also was linked to Freedom Summer when many of those students who were down, a lot of them, Jewish, white Jewish students, and Catholic students, and Catholic priests, and African Americans who went south and came back to college campuses, and Berkeley was one of them. And of course, their whole free speech movement was about ideas and challenged the corporate mentality. And that, from one thing to the next, and freedom of speech is important, and liberty is important, because I know you are a man who loves liberty. And liberty is what it is all about, and freedom of speech is a very important part of it. And I think when you talk about what you talked about-about Chicago in (19)68, I think what you are saying is that it was sad that there was confrontation there, but that freedom of speech should always be guaranteed no matter what. And that liberty is why we are all here. I hope what you are saying is that liberty, some things, like you talked about the Republican Party, they are doing things that from the past they should be reinventing themselves or whatever, but liberty is forever. And so, whenever freedom of speech is denied, we need to be out there guaranteeing that it continues. Are there any thoughts you have on this generation that grew up after World War II? They are now 64 years old; they are going into senior citizen status right now. They probably will change it. But any thoughts of how the history books will write about this period in terms of-
ML (03:06:39):
Well, Tom Brokaw has already written about the Greatest Generation. You are wanting me to look ahead beyond that, I guess. And somehow, I have the feeling that they are going to do all right. I am not a purveyor of doom and gloom.
SM (03:07:01):
Good.
ML (03:07:02):
I do not think the world is going to end tomorrow if somebody's political program is not adopted in haec verba, in all particulars. I think we will find a way. I have great reverence and respect for the capacity of the free American spirit. Sometimes it lags a bit, takes some time to catch up, but I think our freedoms will endure.
SM (03:07:40):
You were in Congress in probably one of the most exciting times in American history, the (19)60s and seventies. To me, they were exciting times. Because you even talk about the constant of change, which is what the boomer generation wanted, but a lot of the people in politics were doing the very same thing. Just from the going to work every day and working with other congressmen, senators and having people come in that cared about civil rights and all the other issues that we were facing in America at the time. You talked about the moment you are most proud of, which was the 1968 law that was passed. You obviously talked to a lot of people. Give me a feel, because when we are talking about boomer times, we're also talking about congressional times. (19)60 to (19)80 was the key time when young people were growing and evolving from that generation. And you were in Congress at the time. What was it like? Who were your best cohorts? Who did you love working with?
ML (03:08:54):
Mo Udall.
SM (03:08:55):
Oh, what a great man.
ML (03:08:56):
Mo Udall from Arizona was my bosom friend, and I wish he had won the nomination and been elected president in 1976, because then I would not have had to run in 1980. He would have been running for his second term, and I would have been supporting him. So, I think that good men and good women are going to arise as the need occurs that will keep us on the path that we should be on. I just have a great feeling of confidence in the capacity of the American system for renewal and for a new generation to provide the kind of leadership that is needed. I am not one who believes our best days are behind us. I think that they still lie ahead.
SM (03:10:07):
And Mo Udall was your best friend then?
ML (03:10:09):
Yes, he was. Head and shoulders above anyone else.
SM (03:10:14):
He was a good man. No question about it. I think his brother just passed.
ML (03:10:20):
Well, it has been great talking to you.
SM (03:10:21):
Yep. Thank you very much. Let me take four more pictures and then I will go.
ML (03:10:23):
Yeah, that is right. You have got to take some at the end.
SM (03:10:24):
Yep.
ML (03:10:28):
I did not even look to see whether my hair was combed very well.
SM (03:10:32):
You are fine.
ML (03:10:32):
I hope it is.
SM (03:10:34):
You are fine.
ML (03:10:34):
And I am sitting here in my stocking feet and my leisure clothing.
SM (03:10:43):
You still talk to any former congressmen now, that you worked with?
ML (03:10:48):
Well, occasionally.
SM (03:10:59):
Was not there one, a powerful one? Phil Burton from California.
ML (03:11:03):
Oh, Phil, yes.
SM (03:11:05):
He's still alive, I think. He was a powerful congressman. And then of course there was Ron Dellums.
ML (03:11:12):
I am not sure that Phil is still alive. I think he has gone.
SM (03:11:15):
Oh, is he? There is Ron Dellums, who is now the mayor of Oakland.
ML (03:11:20):
Yes, I remember him.
SM (03:11:20):
All right.
ML (03:11:24):
All right, well, can I just sit here and look at you?
SM (03:11:27):
Yep. I am going to have one last picture in front of your books, because I always like to take pictures. Bear with me as this focuses here. Ready? Sit.
ML (03:11:38):
All right?
SM (03:11:40):
And one more from here, then two by your books, and then we are done.
ML (03:11:43):
All right.
SM (03:11:47):
And then I guess two over here with your books.
ML (03:11:49):
Do you want me standing over there?
SM (03:11:51):
Yep. Is that your congressional, did you have that in Congress?
ML (03:11:58):
What?
SM (03:11:59):
This at your desk.
ML (03:12:02):
That was given to me while I was in Congress, yeah. I cannot remember who gave it to me.
SM (03:12:07):
All right.
ML (03:12:09):
I have got another one over here. Mary. Yeah, I guess it is the same thing. You want me here?
SM (03:12:16):
Yep.
ML (03:12:18):
All right.
SM (03:12:18):
You are not allowed to take anything away from Congress?
ML (03:12:21):
No.
SM (03:12:21):
You cannot take your chair and all desks have to go back?
ML (03:12:25):
The desk? No, I bought that.
SM (03:12:28):
That is your congressional desk?
ML (03:12:29):
You are allowed to buy your desk. That is a congressional desk.
SM (03:12:31):
That will be my last shot, you at your congressional desk.
ML (03:12:34):
All right.
SM (03:12:34):
So, this is the desk to used when you were in Congress?
ML (03:12:37):
Oh yeah. That is from my office from my 20 years.
SM (03:12:40):
My gosh. It is nice.
ML (03:12:43):
It is a little untidy right at the moment.
SM (03:12:46):
Well, that is pretty tidy to me.
ML (03:12:48):
All right.
SM (03:12:49):
In fact, I think this is one of your books right here. That is the one. I have that book.
ML (03:12:54):
All right.
SM (03:12:56):
Okay.
ML (03:13:01):
I definitely agree that people, even though I am not totally sympathetic to them, but people like Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan had a heavy political footprint, but there have been people like Steven Spielberg or more of John Lucas have been creative. Steve Jobs. I know they are people in there. Stewart Brand.
SM (03:13:39):
The Whole Earth Catalog.
ML (03:13:40):
But he created Wired magazine also and has been continually active and generating ideas and connecting people from interesting walks of life. There are obviously some of the people like Sabin and Salk. And I have forgotten the guy who did the birth control pill.
SM (03:14:04):
Sanger?
ML (03:14:05):
No. There was some guy who was at, I think, the clinic in Worcester or whatnot who developed the birth control pill. I cannot remember who it was, but there is some person who is centrally identified with it, although it has been a variety. Obviously, someone like John Wood, the realm of sports, at least as a role model. Or Vince Lombardi, a different era.
SM (03:14:44):
I have not been doing any sports business related to this, although [inaudible] Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood and Muhammad Ali.
ML (03:14:52):
Muhammad Ali was a big deal. He was in many ways, embodied a lot of the (19)60s characteristics. I would say Barack Obama recently. I was amazed how politically re-energized many of my friends became, my contemporaries, who got interested in politics in a way that they either never had been or had not been for 30 or 40 years. And I think that they found in him a sensibility that, partly it is because he just embodies the idea of merit. Now, it is a very privileged kind of merit. He is well-educated from beginning to end, and he is the essence of professionalism in a way, but with charisma. A professional with charisma. I used to like to think that Barack Obama and Tiger Woods were similar and that they were the best at whoever did what they do, except now we know Tiger Woods is-
SM (03:16:08):
Falling apart.
ML (03:16:09):
Deeply corrupt. And so, the analogy is not all that flattering any longer.
SM (03:16:16):
His wife got a certain lot of money. How many millions? But the events that shaped the boomers more than any other events, I just listed these. And again, you can add or subtract, just terms. Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the three assassinations: JFK, MLK, and Bobby Kennedy, the Chicago Convention of (19)68, Kent State, the McCarthy hearings, the Free Speech Movement, the Vietnam Memorial opening in 1982, the Civil Rights Acts of (19)54, (19)64, (19)65, and (19)68, Watergate, the Berlin Wall coming down, the hostage crisis in Iran, the communism falling all over the world, and 9/11. Those are the events that I consider to be the... And I did not say Yom Kippur War, which I should have.
ML (03:17:19):
They are also, they are events of several different orders. They are like apples and oranges in a way when you think about them. Some of them are public political events and some of them are cultural events or whatnot. A lot, again, depends. That is why if I made the argument that it is about something to do with demographics or some tipping point in an argument I made about the decline of US oil production, something like that. You already did Sputnik. I think that was a biggie. I think that there have been some cultural moments that are like The Graduate. I would say The Graduate probably had more impact than, say, The Greening of America or any of those books, because it had a much broader, wider public audience.
SM (03:18:34):
Plastics. Have you thought about plastics?
ML (03:18:42):
A cute moment. I think that that was either Buck Henry or Terry Southern wrote that line. I am not sure.
SM (03:18:51):
I do not know. It is a great line. That was 1967, and he was 29 years old. Dustin Hoffman was no youngster when he did that.
ML (03:19:01):
No, actually he was in his thirties. I think he was 32. But you know what the age difference between Mrs. Robinson and Ben Braddock really was?
SM (03:19:11):
Oh, probably only about two years.
ML (03:19:13):
It was six years or seven years. She was 38 or 39.
SM (03:19:17):
And he was 32?
ML (03:19:18):
He was 32 or something like that.
SM (03:19:20):
I never could figure out why she married Mel Brooks.
ML (03:19:23):
Well, she is a nice Italian girl. Mel Brooks has got to be one of the funniest guys there is.
SM (03:19:30):
Yeah. That was quite a marriage.
ML (03:19:32):
But they stayed married, I think.
SM (03:19:34):
Yeah, they did. And then course she passed away. The movies obviously that come out are certainly Easy Rider and Zabriskie Point was another one that I remember. Or Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice.
ML (03:19:48):
Although I think that the movies that really had it, Bonnie and Clyde, have had more impact. Because I think that one of the things that happens culturally in the late (19)60s and seventies and affects movies, but more broadly American culture, is the conflation of pornographic sexual and pornographic violence. And that is really what Bonnie and Clyde was about. It was sort of the pornography of violence in which the eroticism of the most erotic moment, in a way, is that balletic death at the end of the movie. There is another version of it in The Wild Bunch, which comes out shortly afterwards, which is Sam Peckinpah. It is where, I like to point out to my students, if you watch a Busby Berkeley movie in the 1930s, there will be these moments, the [inaudible] will be marching towards the camera. The camera will be down low, and the shot will be from low to the high. And they are coming at you, and the camera is focused almost on their crotches. And you start to get a little embarrassed. Should I be looking at this? Is not this getting a little too intimate? And then the person turns away; it cuts away. So, you had this certain confidence that the camera would never let you see more than you should see. In the 1940s and (19)50s, you watch a lot of the westerns, and somebody gets shot, you do not see blood on the wall. They collapse. They get shot; they die. But what happens in these movies is the camera lingers over the scene, and then you think to yourself, "I am watching this, and I am fascinated." I am also repulsed, and I am shocked, but I am watching. There is a certain voyeurism involved in it, just as there is with pornography. And I think that this is one of the things that you see as a consistent trend. So, if you think of a movie like Pulp Fiction in the nineties, where it has now become comedic, where the same things happen. And it is like John Travolta accidentally blows the kid's head off in the backseat of the car, and kid is spattered all over the car and whatnot. And it is sort of like, "Holy shit, why do we do that? How do we fix this?" And I think that that was one of those shifts in the cultural sensibility, which is one of the things that conservatives, and particularly evangelical conservatives, what they are most offended about, is the pornographic elements in contemporary culture. The rules are gone, the censorship is gone, and it has gotten into television. It was already in publishing, in books. So how do you protect your world?
SM (03:22:53):
I know that people were upset with the play Hair, and because I am in Columbus, the nuns were protesting in front of the theater downtown as we walked in, saying we were all going to hell for going to see Hair because of nudity that was shown in there. So, Jesus Christ, Superstar, Hair, and a lot of the other movies or plays were interesting. And certainly, the movie Taxi Driver too, which was, "Are you talking to me?" That kind of the psyche of the Vietnam veteran coming back and the Vietnam movies.
ML (03:23:27):
And again, also this dystopian, pathological world. There is a certain kind of psychological disarrangement in the (19)50s, and a lot of it has to do with Freudianism and madness. But this has to do with a kind of profound pathology.
SM (03:23:46):
And Coming Home and Klute with Jane Fonda. That was her big role. She won the Academy Award. The last thing is trends. I had already talked about events and names. Trends to me, the Beat Generation and the (19)50s... trends to me, the Beat Generation now, the (19)50s, and it seems like Ginsberg went through it all. You could see him everywhere. The counterculture, the communal movement, the alternative religions that we talked about, and certainly LSD and Leary. Those are the kind of trends that I saw that developed. I do not know if there is any more that you...
ML (03:24:28):
Well, part of it is just different order of trend. There is this way in which capitalism and technology are very restless, and where broadcast technologies are redefined, where the internet emerges in the late (19)60s. ARPANET was created in the late (19)60s, where there is this endless flood of consumer technologies. There is a wonderful book, by the way, which I have out there. It is called The Way We Were.
SM (03:25:08):
I saw this movie. I saw the movie.
ML (03:25:10):
But this is a book, I have forgotten her... The woman who wrote sounded like Roberta Kleinfeld or something. But it is just an almanac of events from the mid-(19)50s through the mid-seventies. Each year, it tells you the big events of the years, new technologies, new terms, sports firsts, movie firsts television firsts, the top hit songs of the year. It is this catalog of stuff. And you go back, and you look at it, "Well, this is the year that Pop Tarts were created. This is the year that the term walk became popular." Or whatever. It is sort of like-
SM (03:25:49):
The Walkman.
ML (03:25:50):
And one of the things you are amazed at is the varieties of new cultural references and whatnot. The term WASP becomes popular in 1968.
SM (03:25:59):
Do you know what the number one hit was in America the week that John Kennedy was killed?
ML (03:26:05):
I shudder to think.
SM (03:26:06):
(singing)
ML (03:26:10):
It was the Singing Nun?
SM (03:26:10):
Yes, it was.
ML (03:26:11):
Yeah.
SM (03:26:13):
Because there was a song, you have to go into YouTube, there was a song that was from the... I forget the name of the group. It was the first two days of that week, but then Dominique came in on Wednesday, he was killed Friday, so the number one hit changed, and it was the Singing Nun.
ML (03:26:38):
There are trends. I guess the biggest trends I would say in the (19)60s really was the shift of the American cultural center of gravity, South and West. And also, demographics, the population moves as well. It becomes so that you have booming populations in the Carolinas and Florida and Texas, Arizona, California.
SM (03:27:03):
You see the shift of what it was like in the late (19)40s and (19)50s, then you go into the (19)60s, then you see with Reagan, the desire to go back to the (19)50s again, because Reagan came to... I interviewed Ed Meese. I booked an interviewed him for an hour in Washington, and I only talked to him, not about his years with Reagan in the White House, I wanted to talk about his years in California under the governor.
ML (03:27:27):
Well, because he was Attorney General, was not he?
SM (03:27:27):
Yeah, and he was-
ML (03:27:27):
In California?
SM (03:27:30):
Yeah, he is the guy that oversaw People's Park.
ML (03:27:32):
Oh, right, yeah.
SM (03:27:32):
He is the guy, and he was also the assistant DA in Oakland at the time... Excuse me, Alameda County, when the free speech movement was happening, so he was dealing with that too, but he was not dealing... He was not reporting to Reagan. He was reporting to someone else, but Reagan heard about him during the free speech movement (19)64, (19)65.
ML (03:27:56):
Oh, this is the kind of guy he likes-
SM (03:27:56):
And that is the kind of guy he would like. And I will tell you a story at the very end here, about him and another person. I know I said this was the last thing, but this is just quick one or two word, just quick responses to these words. These are all people from the (19)60s or events in the (19)60s. You do not have to go into any elaborate...
ML (03:28:18):
This is a free association.
SM (03:28:19):
Free association. Alcatraz?
ML (03:28:25):
Indian takeover.
SM (03:28:27):
Anita Bryant?
ML (03:28:29):
Orange juice and homophobia.
SM (03:28:33):
Hard hats versus long hairs on Wall Street.
ML (03:28:37):
Yes. John Lindsay and the beating up... Or the war protests.
SM (03:28:44):
University response to student protests nationwide?
ML (03:28:49):
How can we shut them up?
SM (03:28:50):
Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsberg.
ML (03:28:53):
A shock.
SM (03:28:57):
Watts.
ML (03:28:59):
Disturbing.
SM (03:29:00):
Earth Day?
ML (03:29:02):
Earth Day? Hopeful.
SM (03:29:04):
Ford pardons Nixon?
ML (03:29:07):
Politically necessary, politically unfortunate.
SM (03:29:13):
Nixon's Cambodia speech?
ML (03:29:17):
Final, desperate effort.
SM (03:29:19):
Chicago Eight or Seven Trial?
ML (03:29:23):
Farce.
SM (03:29:27):
Hippies?
ML (03:29:29):
Hippies were kind of naive saints.
SM (03:29:31):
Yippies?
ML (03:29:31):
Yippies? Cynics.
SM (03:29:31):
FDS?
ML (03:29:40):
Flawed.
SM (03:29:42):
The Weathermen?
ML (03:29:44):
Dangerous.
SM (03:29:46):
Cesar Chavez.
ML (03:29:47):
A secular saint.
SM (03:29:53):
Muhammad Ali?
ML (03:29:55):
Admirable.
SM (03:29:56):
Jackie Robinson?
ML (03:29:59):
Equally admirable.
SM (03:30:00):
Curt Flood?
ML (03:30:02):
Somebody I have great respect for.
SM (03:30:05):
I met him. He was the Oakland A's. He was at a game.
ML (03:30:08):
Yeah.
SM (03:30:09):
Got him to sign a thing I had. It is a-
ML (03:30:11):
One of my students at Bard wrote his senior project about Curt Flood and free agency.
SM (03:30:16):
But did he get Kurt Flood's book? Did he read his book?
ML (03:30:20):
I think he read his book. I do not think he ever met... I do not know if he ever got to meet Kurt Flood.
SM (03:30:22):
He died so young. He was 50. He was the same age Jackie Robinson... 51, 52?
ML (03:30:28):
Yeah, yeah.
SM (03:30:30):
Benjamin Spock.
ML (03:30:31):
Benjamin Spock? Patrician.
SM (03:30:37):
Henry Kissinger?
ML (03:30:38):
A criminal.
SM (03:30:41):
Robert McNamara.
ML (03:30:45):
Unfortunate.
SM (03:30:47):
Dwight Eisenhower?
ML (03:30:49):
Avuncular.
SM (03:30:51):
Harry Truman?
ML (03:30:53):
Over his head.
SM (03:30:55):
John Kennedy?
ML (03:30:58):
Admirable, but corrupt.
SM (03:31:01):
Lyndon Johnson?
ML (03:31:03):
Egotist.
SM (03:31:04):
Hubert Humphrey?
ML (03:31:06):
A weak-kneed liberal.
SM (03:31:10):
Richard Nixon?
ML (03:31:11):
A Black Irishman.
SM (03:31:17):
Spiro Agnew?
ML (03:31:19):
A crook.
SM (03:31:21):
Eleanor Roosevelt?
ML (03:31:23):
An admirable woman.
SM (03:31:27):
The United Nations?
ML (03:31:29):
In over its head.
SM (03:31:31):
Robert Kennedy?
ML (03:31:33):
Robert Kennedy? Combative.
SM (03:31:35):
Eugene McCarthy?
ML (03:31:37):
Lazy.
SM (03:31:39):
George McGovern?
ML (03:31:41):
Well-intentioned.
SM (03:31:43):
Geraldine Ferraro?
ML (03:31:45):
A person before her time.
SM (03:31:50):
Angela Davis?
ML (03:31:52):
A striking figure.
SM (03:31:56):
George Jackson?
ML (03:31:58):
George Jackson? An unlikely hero, I guess.
SM (03:32:05):
Tom Hayden.
ML (03:32:06):
Tom Hayden? Embodied the inability of moral consistency in politics.
SM (03:32:17):
Jane Fonda?
ML (03:32:19):
Jane Fonda? An idealist.
SM (03:32:22):
Bobby Seale.
ML (03:32:23):
Bobby Seale? He was complicated. I met him.
SM (03:32:29):
That is all I need. How about Stokely Carmichael?
ML (03:32:32):
He was very charismatic.
SM (03:32:35):
Huey Newton?
ML (03:32:36):
Huey Newton was a fraud.
SM (03:32:38):
Eldridge Cleaver?
ML (03:32:40):
A little less of a fraud.
SM (03:32:42):
Kathleen Cleaver?
ML (03:32:44):
I do not know Kathleen Cleaver well enough to...
SM (03:32:46):
H. Rap Brown?
ML (03:32:48):
H. Rap Brown was also a bad dude.
SM (03:32:53):
Yeah. His brother came to a conference we did. George Wallace?
ML (03:32:56):
George Wallace was slicker than Willie.
SM (03:33:00):
Barry Goldwater?
ML (03:33:05):
Righteous figure, I guess.
SM (03:33:09):
William Buckley?
ML (03:33:11):
A glib intellectual.
SM (03:33:14):
Thurgood Marshall?
ML (03:33:17):
A man who earned his stripes.
SM (03:33:19):
Ronald Reagan?
ML (03:33:20):
A man who was not as bad as I thought.
SM (03:33:24):
George Bush, the first.
ML (03:33:28):
A solid public servant.
SM (03:33:32):
Bill Clinton?
ML (03:33:33):
Bill Clinton is a morally flawed human being.
SM (03:33:38):
Bush II?
ML (03:33:39):
A man who is profoundly over his head.
SM (03:33:42):
And Obama?
ML (03:33:45):
Person with the best qualities to be president who has ever been president.
SM (03:33:49):
Gloria Steinem?
ML (03:33:51):
A very interesting conversion, I guess.
SM (03:33:57):
Bella Abzug?
ML (03:33:59):
She was florid, shall we say?
SM (03:34:02):
Betty Friedan?
ML (03:34:06):
She was another person who is quietly subversive.
SM (03:34:11):
Jimmy Carter?
ML (03:34:13):
A righteous populist.
SM (03:34:14):
AIDS?
ML (03:34:17):
AIDS is tragic.
SM (03:34:21):
Let us see here. The hostage crisis?
ML (03:34:25):
Hostage crisis was... I do not know, it was humiliation, I guess.
SM (03:34:35):
Stonewall?
ML (03:34:36):
Stonewall? Liberation.
SM (03:34:39):
And then the POW?
ML (03:34:45):
POW? I would have to say that was a phony issue.
SM (03:34:48):
Okay. The Ho Chi Minh?
ML (03:34:53):
A Vietnamese nationalist.
SM (03:34:56):
General Ky?
ML (03:34:58):
A kleptocrat.
SM (03:35:01):
President Thieu?
ML (03:35:03):
Another kleptocrat.
SM (03:35:05):
And Wayne Westmoreland?
ML (03:35:07):
He looked like a general but was not.
SM (03:35:10):
And Dennis Banks?
ML (03:35:11):
Dennis Banks? Let us say-
SM (03:35:14):
The Native American Movement.
ML (03:35:15):
I know, I was trying to capture him as a tragic hero, I guess.
SM (03:35:23):
And Harvey Milk?
ML (03:35:24):
Another tragic hero.
SM (03:35:27):
And the last three here is, I have put these on... This ends at, what does the wall mean to you? The Vietnam Memorial? You have probably been to the wall. When you-
ML (03:35:38):
I have. I wrote a little piece about that also, actually, about-
SM (03:35:43):
Did you go to the wall?
ML (03:35:44):
I have been. Yeah, I think it is one of the most powerful and effective pieces of memorialization. I just think that we had an interesting experience out in Seattle, of going to see an installed exhibit of Maya Lin's work. And she is one of these people that has the ability to redefine space. She is a genius. We actually have a portrait of her [inaudible]-
SM (03:36:19):
Yeah, there is a sculpture at Yale too, was not there?
ML (03:36:22):
Yeah. She is a Yale graduate, but-
SM (03:36:26):
What was your experience when feeling, because you were... This is part of your life too, and your wife as well. When you went to the wall, what was the feeling? What was going through your mind when you saw it for that first time?
ML (03:36:42):
I felt that what it did was, instead of focusing our remembrance on the war, it focuses our remembrance on the people who died in the war. It made the war about them, which it should be. The memory of it, since the war is so hard to remember, that making the soldiers the subject, rather than some heroic or nationalist image, the way the second sculpture, to me is, it represents all that is wrong about the wars.
SM (03:37:21):
The three-man statue?
ML (03:37:22):
Yeah, it is too artificial. It is too contrived. Whereas I think what she did was that she found a way to our hearts.
SM (03:37:34):
They say that the three-man statue is always overlooking the wall now, and the Women's Memorial is very important for the women as well.
ML (03:37:42):
Yeah, but those were political gestures, I think, more than they were... They do not have the kind of innovative way of...
SM (03:37:55):
What did Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? May 4th, 1970, to me, is one of the... November 22, 1963, obviously, but for anybody in that first wave of boomers, May 4th, 1970, is another one. And then 10 days later, Jackson State.
ML (03:38:13):
Oh yeah, no, those things were truly stunning. I went to a series of public gatherings on the Yale campus, where people were trying to make sense out of it. In some ways, it seemed to be just one more step towards, we are at war with ourselves. It is one of the refrains that we picked up from Vietnam. Who is the friend and who is the enemy? And it seems like it was emblematic of a gulf that had... Or wrenching a rift in America that had grown too wide to bridge. Turns out it was not altogether the case, but that was how we felt at the time. Kent State, yeah, if it had been Wisconsin or if it had been Berkeley or Yale even, it would have still been tragic, but it would make more sense. One of the things that always struck me is the people who were in the guard were not that different from the students who were on the campus.
SM (03:39:28):
Yes, you are right. Same age.
ML (03:39:29):
Yeah.
SM (03:39:30):
Watergate. What did Watergate mean to you?
ML (03:39:33):
Watergate was some of the most absolutely intriguing political theater I have ever witnessed. I think the ultimate moment of Watergate was when you could not believe... It is like one revelation after the other and you say, "Cannot get any nuttier than this. You cannot believe it." Suddenly it turned out that Spiro Agnew was resigning, because he was taking bribes in the White House. I thought, this is melodrama becomes farce.
SM (03:40:05):
Do you think John Dean was kind of a hero on this? Because a lot of people thought he was a culprit in the beginning, but he was the beginning of what they call the... And Ellsberg, the same thing. They were the tattletale people that-
ML (03:40:21):
Yeah, right, and being a snitch is always frowned on in America. They did make On the Waterfront to help us explore that terrain, but I do not think that Dean has quite the moral fiber to be heroic, but I do think that he shows the capacity for self-reflection and for reinvention in a constructive way, and so I admire him for having pulled himself together. I think partly it is hard to distinguish how much of what he did was to save his own skin and how much of it was that he was morally offended by what was going on around him. I think it was a little of both and I think over time, the latter, the moral offense, took over from the self-serving side of it. I think Daniel Ellsberg was truly troubled. Ellsberg had been in the war when it was like that.
SM (03:41:17):
Yeah, he had been a Marine too.
ML (03:41:20):
He had done the dirty. He had been there. And I think that Ellsberg, again, was somebody who ultimately just became morally burdened. And actually, one of the things that I was curious about that event is that the Pentagon Papers were not a problem for Nixon, they were a problem for Johnson, who was not quite dead then, but was about to be dead around the time. Oh, actually he might have been dead by the time they came out.
SM (03:41:50):
I remember the day he died-
ML (03:41:51):
He died in (19)72.
SM (03:41:53):
... in (19)72 was the same day something else happened.
ML (03:41:55):
I think it was the day they signed the Paris Peace Accords.
SM (03:41:58):
I think you are right. Yes, that is right. Nixon made a reference to the death of the President in a speech, yes-yes.
ML (03:42:06):
I do not know.
SM (03:42:10):
In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what was the watershed moment?
ML (03:42:14):
I still would argue partly that they begin sometime in the mid to late-(19)50s. I think, for a variety of reasons, again, some of the cultural reasons, that the groundwork for the (19)60s... Because I think that what you needed first was a process of delegitimization. Somebody, I think Robert Darton, did a similar study where they discovered that pornographic representation of establishment figures increases on the eve of political revolutions. It is sort of like the delegitimizing of... Mockery of... First, you have to destroy authority before you can overturn it. I think that was one of the things that happened. That black comedy, for example, black humor of the Dr. Strangelove types was, we took the strategic air command, which had this image of technical and vulnerability and of space age candoism, and turned it into this rip-snorting nuthouse, so that you never could look at this Curtis LeMay and the Strategic Air Command the same way again.
SM (03:43:31):
That was Andy Devine, was not it, that was on the missile, going-
ML (03:43:34):
No, that was Slim Pickens.
SM (03:43:35):
Oh, Slim Pickens, okay. [inaudible]-
ML (03:43:36):
You have got the wrong... Andy Devine was a regular, both the Roy Rogers Show and in John Ford movies.
SM (03:43:47):
When did the (19)60s end?
ML (03:43:50):
I would still argue, I have not shifted, even though I do not think there is a specific moment, but the coincidence of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War, the end of the draft, the end of around (19)73, (19)74, the turning off the fuel supply, so that there's nothing to keep the fires burning as hot or bright as they had.
SM (03:44:20):
Was Vietnam a watershed moment? Just the ongoing from (19)59 to (19)75?
ML (03:44:25):
Well, we did not even know from Vietnam until about 1962- 3, somewhere in that. We still did not think about it even until the Gulf of Tonkin. That was the first time we really thought about it.
SM (03:44:38):
(19)64, yeah.
ML (03:44:38):
And I think people stopped thinking actively about it as the Vietnamization of the war, and one of the interesting things... The point that Phillip Epstein pointed out a long time ago, when he was talking about the distortions of news, but right around the time that the Peace Talks started in (19)68, (19)69, the news media stopped actively photographing the war and shifted their attention to the peace talks. Even though the war was far more violent from 1968 on, you saw much less of it, so it was not a constant reminder. Every so often, there would be an eruption of protest or an eruption, like Kent State would happen, or a Cambodian incursion would happen. Then things would gear up again, but then they would fade again. I do not think it was the same time.
SM (03:45:40):
Is there one watershed moment that you can define, or just...
ML (03:45:44):
Yeah, I met my wife at the [inaudible]-
SM (03:45:45):
Okay, I got that on record.
ML (03:45:53):
No, I would say, probably in terms of just emblematic experiences, probably the first time I smoked dope, that was sort of crossing a line.
SM (03:46:07):
You are the second person that is said that. The first one was the professor of history and political science at the University of Delaware, Dr. Smith. Do you know him? He wrote a book on Vietnam.
ML (03:46:16):
I do not know him personally.
SM (03:46:18):
Yeah, he is really good. He is a top political scientist. He was heading to become a priest. He was at the... I do not know what church it was, and a friend of his came by accident with his brother, and they said, "Hey, you want to try a..." He said, "No, I am going to be a priest." "Oh, come on." They went into the church and went up into the steeple someplace and he is smoking... Anyways, that was a very important moment for him.
ML (03:46:47):
I think the only reason I would say it-it was not that anything so unusual happened or anything. I enjoyed the experience. I was at a party at Johns Hopkins visiting at friend, and Johns Hopkins is a pretty straitlaced place. This was the fall, I think, the fall of 1967, something like that. But I think what it was is that once you crossed over to the world of dope, that you were willing to do things that were illegal. And also, you deepened your identification with the anti-authority, anti-establishment mentality. It was a kind of, I guess, what I would say, it was like an initiation ritual.
SM (03:47:41):
The Vietnam War, it ended. In your reason, why did it end? Some people say it ended because when body bags start coming home, when Middle America saw their sons coming home, they said, "It is time to end this war." And most of them were White. Now, we are not talking about the African Americans now, we are talking about the White... Others think that Kent State was the magic moment, that it is all over from there.
ML (03:48:06):
In 1967, when McNamara resigned, he knew the war was lost. Johnson could not persuade himself to wrap himself around that realization. He was too politically invested. It was too much his war. And Nixon was very cynical about it. Nixon knew the war was a loser. He wanted to get out as soon as he became president. He just wanted to get out on his own terms. I think that the war... And the war did not end. In many ways, the war did not end, certainly did not end in (19)72, it did not end in (19)73. It sort of ended in (19)75, but there was still violence galore going on. And so, it is when did the America's Vietnam end, is what [inaudible]-
SM (03:49:02):
Yeah, the American War, as opposed to the Vietnam War. Two more associations real fast. Timothy Leary. I did not get your
ML (03:49:11):
Huckster.
SM (03:49:11):
And the last one is the Free Speech Movement, (19)64, (19)65, of Berkeley with Mario Savio and Bettina Aptheker in that group.
ML (03:49:19):
I would say, transformative.
SM (03:49:22):
Very last question, and I swear to this, and your wife can verify this now, I have been here a long time; the best history books are written usually 50 years after an event. A lot of the best World War II books are 50 years after. I remember Stephen Ambrose being interviewed, and he talked all about this. The best history books are history, sociology, whatever books are written after the last boomer has passed away, the last Civil War, and I am sure we will be able to document that someday down the road, in the census. What do you think historians who were not alive, or sociologists who were not alive when all these things happened, will say about this generation and this period? The 74 million that... What do they say about it?
ML (03:50:15):
I think they're going to say that around the Vietnam War era and around the failure of this generation to come to grips with some of the fundamental contradictions in American history, some of the big ones being environmental, actually, that this was the beginning of the decline of the American Empire, a little bit in this period. Whether they will specifically say it was the Vietnam War era or the Bush era, one of the two, but they are going to mark this as the decline of American hegemony and new age globalization, a different kind of globalization. That is what I think.
SM (03:51:03):
What is really interesting about President Obama here, he has stated outright that he does not want to be identified with the (19)60s generation or the boomer generation. Of course, he is a boomer. He is only two years old, but-
ML (03:51:17):
He is the tag end of the-
SM (03:51:18):
Yeah, but his biggest critics say he is the reincarnation of the baby boomer generation. They say he is the most liberal president we have had since Roosevelt.
ML (03:51:27):
Yeah, but the-
SM (03:51:28):
Here, we got a president who does not want to be identified with it. He has so many people in his administration that are some of the leaders of the (19)60s in that particular respect. Most of them are brought up in the (19)60s, and yet he is being criticized for being the...
ML (03:51:48):
Yeah, but who is doing the criticizing?
SM (03:51:50):
Well, the conservatives.
ML (03:51:54):
Because I do not see him as the most liberal. I see him as a Rooseveltian pragmatist. He is somebody, he will take what the times will give him. He has an agenda that is liberal, it is social-democratic, but he also inherited an agenda that demanded social democracy, because the privatization of America bankrupted it. That is what Bush accomplished. We are going to have public services, we are not going to pay for them, and where we need regulation and controls, we are not going to have them, and he created financial economic anarchy. I think that Obama, part of the success that I measure, it is one of the reasons that I think Theodore Roosevelt stands out somewhat, is that he created political movement more theatrically. It was not like the outcomes were there to be grabbed, it took real presidential manipulation, management and whatnot to achieve some of the things that he did. I think that Franklin Roosevelt was less successful in that regard, that he had a potentially more opportunity to seize than he had the temperament to seize. That is, he could have been far more progressive and liberal than he was, but he was really... He had some very conservative side as well. I think that that Barack Obama is more disciplined and intelligent than any president who's ever been... Modern president; I cannot compare them to Jefferson or Lincoln or whatnot, but in the end, it almost does not matter, because it's how you play the hand you're dealt. George Bush was headed to oblivion in a one turn presidency until September 11th came along, and then when the country needed a cheerleader, man, he was golden. Then he got a cheerleading opportunity, and lacking an agenda, but wanting to be in charge and being around all of these ideologues and dark visionaries, he went right down the toilet.
SM (03:54:09):
Yeah. I tell you, President Obama, in the (19)60s, families were split and torn apart. Well, even my family, my brother's a diehard, cannot stand Obama, I cannot understand it. He knows it upsets me, yet he still sends it. Everything is about getting him out in the next four years, or the next two years or whatever, and it bugs me. He prefaces it by saying that... And this will not be on the tape, but that it is... I am not doing this because he's Black, I just do not like... I was taught in graduate school, I will not say this to my brother, because my advisor was Dr. Johnson. He was at Johns Hopkins University, and he said that whenever you hear somebody saying, "Well, I am not doing something, because my best friends are..." Or "It's not because he's female or male." You do not say that, just say it. You do not need to-
ML (03:55:10):
Preface it, yeah.
SM (03:55:11):
Yeah, if you do not like the guy, just say you do not like the guy.
ML (03:55:14):
Right, right. No, and I think that part of the reasons people do not like him is not because he is Black, it is because they feel diminished by him. They feel he is too good.
SM (03:55:26):
I think he is very good.
ML (03:55:27):
He is too smart.
SM (03:55:28):
Oh, I agree.
ML (03:55:28):
They do not trust him, because they think he is going to outsmart them and whatnot.
SM (03:55:33):
Just like her.
ML (03:55:34):
Yeah.
SM (03:55:35):
What we teach students and what you probably do in the classroom, and that is what another lesson that the (19)60s activist can teach young people. You do not just do things based on pure emotion. You study, you research, you understand your point of view, and also you study the other side.
ML (03:55:52):
That is what the conservatives under George Bush refused to do because, as they said, "While the liberals are studying and coming up with good policy proposal, we are changing the agenda. Reality is what we say it is. It is not what it is, it is what we say it is."
SM (03:56:08):
Is there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask? I think I have asked a million.
ML (03:56:13):
If there was, I have forgotten.
(End of Interview)
Description
2 Microcassettes
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Interview with Dr. Mark Lytle
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Lytle, Mark Hamilton ; McKiernan, Stephen
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Scholars; College teachers; Bard College; Lytle, Mark Hamilton--Interviews
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Mark Hamilton Lytle is a scholar and educator. He received his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University and his Master's degree and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Yale University. He is a professor of History and Environmental Studies, Chair of the American Studies Program at Bard College, and has written many volumes of history and biography.
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2010-08-09
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.84a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.84b
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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236:17
-
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b4feaffecf8b7b138fce7a3d1181bd96
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/7f601bbdb30687ff8efc7d750f8cecb3.mp3
536dac3bfbec1c0fa095cff2e5d26b10
Dublin Core
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-10
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Robert Jay Lifton, 1926-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist, author, researcher, and educator. He studied medicine at Cornell University and New York Medical College. He works mostly on the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. He has written and published many books on his work."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6531,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist, author, researcher, and educator. He studied medicine at Cornell University and New York Medical College. He works mostly on the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. He has written and published many books on his work.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"American Woman; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; SDS; John F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Platoon; Catholic Church; Dr. Spock; Ronald Reagan; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Cambodian Campaign; Activism; Civil Rights protest; Ken Burns; Civil War; Empowerment; Parents; College; Birmingham campaign; Ted Turner; Tom Hayden; Jerry Rubin; Timothy Leary."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">American Woman; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; SDS; John F. Kennedy; Vietnam War; Platoon; Catholic Church; Dr. Spock; Ronald Reagan; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Cambodian Campaign; Activism; Civil Rights protest; Ken Burns; Civil War; Empowerment; Parents; College; Birmingham campaign; Ted Turner; Tom Hayden; Jerry Rubin; Timothy Leary.</span>
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104:57
Subject LCSH
Psychiatrists; Authors; War—Psychological aspects; Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926--Interviews
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Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Robert Jay Lifton
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Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Psychiatrists; Authors; War—Psychological aspects; Lifton, Robert Jay, 1926--Interviews
Description
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Dr. Robert Jay Lifton is a psychiatrist, author, researcher, and educator. He studied medicine at Cornell University and New York Medical College. He works mostly on the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence. He has written and published many books on his work.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-08-10
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.81
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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104:57
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Dennis Peron
Date of Interview
2010-08-12
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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2 Microcassettes
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Interview Format
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Audio
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88:23
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dennis Peron (1945-2018) was an activist and businessman who became a leader in the movement for the legalization of cannabis. Peron served in the Air Force in Vietnam. After the war, he became a Yippie and he also supported gay rights. He sold cannabis from storefronts in the Castro and advocated for medical cannabis. Peron also co-founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Additionally, he co-authored California Proposition 215 which got passed in 1996. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,4884200],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dennis Peron (1945-2018) was an activist and businessman who became a leader in the movement for the legalization of cannabis. Peron served in the Air Force in Vietnam. After the war, he became a Yippie and he also supported gay rights. He sold cannabis from storefronts in the Castro and advocated for medical cannabis. Peron also co-founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Additionally, he co-authored California Proposition 215 which got passed in 1996. </span>
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"San Francisco; Bay Area; Gay Rights; Human Rights Movement; Ronald Reagan; Vietnam Memorial; Medical marijuana."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">San Francisco; Bay Area; Gay Rights; Human Rights Movement; Ronald Reagan; Vietnam Memorial; Medical marijuana.</span>
Subject LCSH
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Marijuana—Law and legislation; Gay rights; Peron, Dennis--Interviews
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Interview with Dennis Peron
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Peron, Dennis ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Veterans; Marijuana—Law and legislation; Gay rights; Peron, Dennis--Interviews
Description
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Dennis Peron (1945-2018) was an activist and businessman who became a leader in the movement for the legalization of cannabis. Peron served in the Air Force in Vietnam. After the war, he became a Yippie and he also supported gay rights. He sold cannabis from storefronts in the Castro and advocated for medical cannabis. Peron also co-founded the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club. Additionally, he co-authored California Proposition 215 which got passed in 1996.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-08-12
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.158a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.158b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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88:23
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/c63f658341d98781e2861cd788225c39.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Format
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-13
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
George S. (George Stanley) McGovern, 1922-2012
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"George McGovern (1922 - 2012) was a professor, author, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election. McGovern earned a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University and taught at Dakota Wesleyan University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":7051,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">George McGovern (1922 - 2012) was a professor, author, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election. McGovern earned a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University and taught at Dakota Wesleyan University.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
MicroCassettte
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
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55:06
Keywords
<span>Baby Boomer; Gary Hart; Bill Clinton; Richard Nixon; Dwight Eisenhower; Robert Kennedy; Henry Ford; Henry Kissinger; Robert McNamara; Depression Era; New Deal; Vietnam; Viet Cong; J. William Fulbright; Mike Mansfield; Frank Church; John Sherman Cooper; Dissolution ; Mistrust; Paul Zhan; Jerry Rubin; Benjamin Spock; Tom Hayden; Ralph Nader; Martin Luther King Jr.; Eugene McCarthy; Lyndon Johnson; Spiro Agnew; George Wallace; Bobby Seale; Eldridge Cleaver; Huey Newton; Betty Friedan; Bella Abzug; Gloria Steinem; Shirley Chisholm; Shirley MacLaine; Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Jimi Hendrix.</span>
Civil Rights Movement; Great Depression; WWII; Women's movement; Vietnam War; Abbie Hoffman; Jane Fonda; Malcolm X; John F. Kennedy; Berrigan Brother; Black Power Movement; Hubert Humphrey; Muhammad Ali.
Subject LCSH
College teachers; Authors; Legislators—United States; Presidential candidates—United States; McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922-2012--Interviews
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Senator George McGovern
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers
Date of interview: 13 August 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
0:04
SM: The first question I wanted to ask you is, one of the concerns that I see as a person who is a boomer is a lot of the criticisms that are being directed toward boomers today, whether it be politicians or media critics, basically claiming that a lot of the reasons why we have problems in America today is because of the boomers: break up the family, increase in drugs, lack of respect for authority, and a tremendous amount of lack of trust in all leaders in America. Could you comment on whether you consider that criticism really fair for this generation, which is basically individuals born between 1946 and 1964, sixty million strong?
0:47
GM: Well, all five of my children are baby boomers. They came in at that period in the ten years, that marks the last year of the war and the next ten years afterwards, and I would not accept that criticism about any of my youngsters or most of their peers. I think it is overdone. To me the greatest difference between the baby boom generation and my generation is an economic difference, and that they did not experience the Depression. They did not experience World War II, money came easier to them. They did not develop the sense of sacrifice and struggle, it was characteristic of my generation. And that obviously, may have produced a somewhat softer generation I use that term soft not in a derogatory sense but to indicate they have not been hardened by the fires and the discipline and the struggle of the Depression the years of scarce income in the home and money available for other things. This is a generation that has grown up expecting to get what they want. If they want $120 pair of shoes, they expect it. If they want a hi-fi set and CDs and Cokes and Big Macs and movies, things that I could only dream about as a child my children have always taken for granted. And I think that in that sense the economic circumstances may have produced a softer generation and one may be less appreciative of struggle and discipline and effort. I noticed in politics, I am kind of racing ahead of your questions here but, I just had said some things I wanted to say about this generation. I notice in politics that they do not bring the degree of passion and deep personal conviction to public issues that I think characterized an earlier generation, they had that kind of reaction to the Vietnam War. But I became somewhat disappointed to discover that a lot of it had to do with the immediate impact of that war on their own convenience and their own lives and plans. And I do not see other issues that they have seized on with the same passion that they brought to their opposition to the war. Even a person like Bill Clinton, it seems to me does not bring the degree of personal conviction to politics that I would like to see it is more management of politics, use of communications, a skillful employment of techniques and pull with consultants. And I saw some of that same thing with some of the other political figures produced by this generation, not in my opinion, the degree of conviction and, personal passion about issues that I have always thought were important aspects of public commitment.
5:09
SM: To follow up on that question. As a boomer, I have always felt in comparing today's college students and young people today who were the sons and daughters of boomers and comparing them to their parents of another, that the people of the (19)60s and early (19)70s had more passion than the young people of today. Could you comment on the impact or lack thereof of what the boomers have done with their kids, today's young people?
5:38
GM: Well, there was somehow we have inculcated this current crop of young people with much more skepticism about politics, much less faith in the capacity to use political effort to achieve worthwhile goals. Much less confidence in the leadership of the country. And I think there is some explanations for that. The whole series of shattering events that has taken place beginning with the assassination of the two Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, my overwhelming defeat in 1972. And then the accompanying dissolution over Watergate, Vietnam, Irangate, the [inaudible] scandals and subsequent events I really think has had a shattering impact on both the boomers and their children and undercutting a lot of the enthusiasm and passion that we had in the 1960s and at least the early part of the (19)70s. My experience on college campuses over the last ten years, which is very extensive, I have been on over one thousand campuses since I left the senate some fifteen years ago, has led me to believe there is a lot of decency and a lot of admirable qualities in these youngsters today. But there is also a kind of a clear disillusionment and turning away from what was very important in my life, which was active participation in public issues and Public Affairs.
7:38
SM: Getting back to the boomers again, that sixty plus million born between (19)46 and (19)64. And obviously, even within the boomer generation, there is a lot of differences between the older ones, some Bill Clinton's age, and the younger ones who are like thirty four - thirty five years old right now. Could you in a few just give a few brief story perceptions of the positive qualities that you saw in the boomers and then some of the some of the negatives?
8:07
GM: Gary Hart generation yes.
8:08
SM: And Bill Clinton and the positives and their negatives.
8:12
GM: Yeah. Well, one, they have a more cosmopolitan exposure to the world through the communications, advances through television, through proliferation of information of all kinds, and I am very much impressed by the wide information and knowledge that these young people have about the whole culture as a scene I do not mean by that they are better educated than we were fifty years ago, but I do think that they have a broader range of information, I am struck with my own grandchildren on what they know about the arts and that whole scene, the world around they know an awful lot that went beyond my horizons with the time I was that age. [Hello!] I also think that I have to say this carefully that the measure of skepticism that they bring towards public figures and towards our political process is not entirely bad. Perhaps there was too much naiveté in my time about public leadership and what the governments were doing and so on a certain measure of skepticism probably is, to be admired rather than scorned. You can carry that too far as you know, to the point where it becomes inaction and non-involvement but a certain healthy skepticism is a good thing. And I think in the long run these young people may be able to balance out their skepticism with their need to do something about things that they are skeptical about.
10:21
SM: Those are positives and negatives. If you were to, again, another term to look at the boomers because boomers are now just reaching fifty.
10:28
GM: Yes.
10:28
SM: And so they got a lot of life is still ahead of them.
10:30
GM: Clinton just turned fifty this year.
10:31
SM: Right. And Al Gore, I think, turns fifty next year, and Mrs. Clinton turned fitty this year, too. As you see the boomers today in 1997, what has been the greatest impact they have had on America to this point?
10:50
GM: I suppose it is on our lifestyle. The values and practices that they brought to relations between the sexes. The kind of entertainment that is popular, the kind of television and radio and press stories and features that we get. I think this generation does have a unique lifestyle. It is more relaxed compared toward the old guidelines on marriage and sex relations and, the races and [inaudible] even clothing styles. I think our culture to a great extent today is shaped by these boomers and by their children. I noticed one of the ads on the Super Bowl yesterday run by Holiday Inn which you think is one of those establishment places with a transvestite, trans, uh. You can get away with that on television ten years later, with this gorgeous looking woman ̶
12:14
SM: Bob? Or something like that!
12:16
GM: That kind of thing bring a laugh now to everybody but it would have brought a gasp of horror when I was the age of most of the people that are watching that game yesterday. That is an impact. That is a contribution to the youth culture and a dramatic change in the role of women in our society that is a real revolution. It is a bigger revolution than the racial changes that have occurred. The fact that women are now filling up the rosters of basketball teams, races, stock market, driving their own cars and managing their own portfolios. I think that the boomers and their children did that. They brought they brought about the change in the role of women in our society.
13:25
SM: How do you respond that the Christian Coalition says that is a negative?
13:28
GM: Well I disagree with the Christian Coalition on that part. I think it has been altogether good. It is brought about strains on the family we have not learned how to deal with yet. There is no doubt in my mind that the divorce rate increase is associated with the emancipation of women in the workforce and their greater sexual freedom, all of these things it has had an impact on the family that at least is transitionally difficult. I think we will sort that out in due course. Learn how to share the raising of children between the sexes and sharing the work and sharing career opportunities. These things are difficult, but I think they will come with time.
14:16
SM: Looking, talking about the women's movement but when you look at the issues that are identified with boomers, certainly the ending of the Vietnam War, protests against the war and certainly the civil rights movement. Could you comment on your thoughts in terms of why did the war end? Were the college students on college campus ̶ The main reason for the war ending or why did the war end? Okay.
14:42
GM: I think the young people probably did force an end to the war in Vietnam, it was not only those who were protesting on this side but the morale collapsed in the forces that were fighting in Vietnam. General Abrams told me his biggest problems are not the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese but morale problems and venereal disease and drug addiction and desertion. So I think the morale was collapsing over there. At the same time that it was quite clear, young people were resisting the whole war ever here and I think they were the decisive factor in forcing an end to it. I probably couldn't have won the nomination in (19)72 on a straight out antiwar platform had it not been for that. Not that there weren't a lot of older people with us too but they provided the shock troops and the volunteers and a lot of the emotion that carried me to the nomination. I do not think I could have won without the young people, the boomers in other words ̶
16:00
SM: Looking at that time again, knowing how you just stated that there were a main reason why we left Vietnam. Looking at the divisions that were in America at that time, tremendous divisions.
16:14
GM: Yes.
16:15
SM: And certainly in 1982, the Vietnam Memorial was built, hopefully to heal the veterans and to heal the nation as Jan Scruggs said in his book.
16:23
GM: Yes.
16:24
SM: Have we really healed since the Vietnam War, in terms of the divisions for those who were for and against? What are your thoughts on the whole concept of healing? Have we healed or do we have a long way to go?
16:39
GM: We have made progress on it in considerable part because so many people who then supported the war now say that it was wrong. I think that it comes as close as you can get to a confession and redemption for the people who supported the war and McNamara's book is he most celebrated example of that. But I think now most Americans who lived through that recognize the war was a mistake. And that general acceptance has been a big healing factor. The fact that we are opening up relations now in Vietnam has been another factor. But I would say there are still continuing scars in those divisions. I do not entirely trust people who were so gung ho for the Vietnam War, and I do not think that some of them fully trust me, just to put it in personal terms. The divisions were so deep that I was totally convinced the people that supported that war effort were out of their minds and I think they thought those of us who were opposing it had lost our balance so they ran very deep, as you know, and it takes a long time for that to heal. We have not gotten over the scars yet of the Civil War entirely.
18:00
SM: Yeah, I want to thanks for bringing that up because when I took students to meet Senator Muskie, a couple years before he died at his office. It was arranged just like we did and Gaylord Nelson arranged it for us. We asked a question about the 1968 convention and the lack of trust in America at the time, and it was a pinpoint question. And I as a boomer wanted to reiterate to him that I still have a problem with trusting people in positions of power and authority based on that timeframe. And some of the students remember looking at me saying, what are you saying, Steve? But then Senator Muskie In response, was almost like a one minute silence. And then he had tears in his eyes. And then he said, he talked about Ken Burns' series about the Civil War and he said, we have not healed as a nation since the Civil War. Do not just do not talk about Vietnam.
18:52
GM: I think that is so.
18:53
SM: And the question I am asking, if so many people in that generation went to their graves still having bitterness toward their opponent, the north and the south, despite all the Civil War reunions that took place. Are the boomers going to be in the same trap of, you know, many people say what really does not affect my life but does consciously and subconsciously affect most people? That the divisions were never truly healed and they are all going to go to their graves, with a lack of healing?
19:19
GM: There will be some of that. I think that I guess what I am saying I do not think the healings complete. I think we have made a lot of movement in that direction. And you can now talk about this issue with less heat and passion and [inaudible] But no, I quite agree that people probably will go to their graves with some measure of hurt and injury from the Vietnam, especially the veterans. I do not think that a lot of them have healed at all. And I think that a lot of the verbal participants in the war, those of us that were out of the combat zone that were waging the arguments verbally here at home. I think those arguments left wounds too. I am sure they did. I am sure that Dean Rusk you know, went to his grave, with deep scars and Rich Bundy who died recently.
20:20
SM: Oh, he did? I did not know that.
20:22
GM: I think that people were scarred as committed hawks on the war. But I also think that the critics of the war still have problems dealing with that war situation.
20:40
SM: How do you feel about Robert McNamara who wrote the book In Retrospect that seemed as draw the ire are so many Vietnam veterans and it is like too late is one of the ones we always hear. What were your thoughts on McNamara then and that effort through that book was actually about healing, really.
20:57
GM: I thought at the time that he was one of the most [inaudible] wretched and wrongheaded people on the national scene. All during the war, I couldn't see any indication of doubt or openness on our policy there. It seemed to me that he was a total apologist for what we were doing there and had a kind of a gung ho, straight ahead, attitude about it. I am glad he wrote that book, and confessed, however late in the day that he was wrong during all of that period. We have not had books like that from some of the people who were just as wrong as he was including Henry Kissinger, others who will probably never concede that they were wrong. But I think that it was just woefully late in the day. It is better than he did it too late and not at all. It is terrible that it took so long and baffling to me how anyone, supposedly intelligent person could have been that blind to the historical forces that are opposing it. He says in that book, he did not know until I think he said 1988 and Ho Chi Min was more of a nationalist than a communist and that was brought out in the most elementary teach-ins way back in the early (19)60s and mid (19)60s. Day after day it was reiterated and reiterated unendingly on the Senate floor by Fulbright and Mansfield and Church, Cooper and McGovern and God knows how many other senators that were painstakingly spelling out all these things in the mid (19)60s. Then McNamara said he did not learn until the late 1980s. He said it was because the Joe McCarthy drove the Asia experts out of the State Department. Well what about the experts in the Congress and in the universities, and about Walter Lippmann and the other respected journalists who are spelling all these things out day after day, you do not have to depend on the experts in the State Department for common sense.
23:14
SM: I want to get back at that issue of trust, because it seems to be a problem. I have a problem with it still. And I am, as I approach my late forties and so forth, and I think a lot of boomers still have that problem of trust. And getting back to the ̶ we were the TV generation, the first generation really grew up in the (19)50s and (19)60s, looking at television, seeing the body counts and everything they were coming back. Could you comment on not only the way Lyndon Johnson dealt with the Tonkin Gulf resolution, which lots of people do not trust him on that particular issue because we have and then I am going to go right into the Americanization of the war with Richard Nixon? So we had two presidents back to back then we also had presidents who preceded them with John Kennedy, who we find out later may have been involved with the killing of Diem and so forth and given the okay, so, and then we actually really got involved even when Eisenhower was there. So we were seeing a succession of presidents from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson, Nixon and then Ford getting us out of there. But your thoughts on the national leadership in the president's office during those five presidencies?
24:25
GM: Well, I think they all failed as beginning with Eisenhower on Vietnam, there was an awful lot of clandestine movement, beginning with the Eisenhower administration going through Kennedy on to Johnson and Nixon. All four of those presidents were mistaken on Vietnam, Johnson and Nixon more than the others and practically all the killing took place during the Johnson and Nixon years, but the seeds for our involvement there were sown in the Eisenhower and Kennedy period. I thought that the Gulf of Tonkin was just a flagrant piece of deception, in which the Congress of the United States was deceived, the American people, the press; everybody was deceived by this phony contention that our ships had been attacked in an unprovoked way on the high seas. It turned out later those ships for on missions themselves that are not entirely [inaudible] there is a grave doubt and lack of any kind of proof they ̶ where ever attacked. So that was a major deception in the war, but so was this whole Nixon policy for four years he kept talking about peace with honor while we were just obliterating Southeast Asia with the heaviest bombardment of the war. So that the whole Nixon policy on Vietnam is a deception. It is true that he disengaged most of the American forces during that period, but all the while accelerating the war in the air and from the sea and the artillery attacks and napalm to defoliate. And people knew about that eventually. So that produced enormous disillusionment, I think on the part of well-informed people.
26:29
SM: When you look at, you know, it is tough to define sixty million young people, but the boomers were between 60 and 65 million at that time. Maybe I am wrong in this, but I personally feel that the subconsciousness of all boomers, not just a 15 percent of people say we were involved in some sort of activism during that timeframe. But even the eighty-five who just went about with their daily activities in their lives, is somehow in some way, they were all affected by what happened when they were young.
27:02
GM: No, no doubt.
27:03
SM: Many may deny it. But I sense it.
27:06
GM: I agree with that. It is very hard to prove, because of the absence of active political participation. But I think that continues to this day. An awful lot of that 50 percent of the people who do not even bother to vote, are disillusioned with the political process, even though they have no investment in it. They have not bothered to register and go to the polls. But I talked to those people just as I talk to people who were not actively engaged in the (19)60s and (19)70s. And there is no question but they are influenced by the prevailing political culture the time in my opinion, I think it infects the whole society. You know if I can personalize this a little bit, I got I got a little less than 30 million votes in 1972, I would dare say that most of those people thought that I was an absolutely honest, straightforward, sincere person, which I think I was. They also, they also came to feel that Nixon was a crook. And really a disgrace to the presidency of the United States. So when they saw him win in of the biggest landslides in history, that was a massively disillusioning experience for the thirty million Americans that voted in worked and sweated the other way. I have had people tell me that we had a choice between good and evil in 1972, and it makes me feel a little self-conscious even to use that phrase again, because it sounds so self-righteous, but I think basically, that is true that you had a candidate who leveled with the public and who said what he thought and he was honest about public questions, defeated by one of the most deceptive and clever and unethical men ever occupy the White House. He not only won, he won overwhelmingly, and I believe that left a tremendous, malaise in the country on the part of the nearly 40 percent of the public or for me, and then those who were for Nixon, they shared the disillusionment after the Watergate thing began to unfold, they felt like fools, I assume they did, they should have if they did not. And so that; nobody's ever really measured the impact of that (19)72 experience. We know about the impact of the assassination of John Kennedy. We do not know about the trauma (19)72 and what that did to recovery.
29:55
SM: I am not aware of any studies being done by any scholars at the present time. I want to get into the area of civil rights too, because we talked about the Vietnam War and civil rights was another issue that were on the minds of a lot of the boomers. Freedom Summer in 1964. People remember that. But basically boomers were about sixteen at that time. They were just coming to the fruition but they saw these things. The Free Speech Movement at the Berkeley campus started in (19)63. Boomers are really coming to themselves in the late (19)60s. But in 1970, there was a split between those who were against the war in Vietnam and those who were involved in the civil rights movement and I noticed on college campuses, black students would no longer be seen Vietnam War protests. And the white students. There is a big split there. And of course,
30:45
GM: That was in the (19)70s, the mid (19)70s.
30:47
SM: Right. Well, I know in 1970 at Kent State, when the protests happened, African Americans were not to be seen anywhere. There was a direction on the campus I was at SUNY Binghamton at the time, but I went to Ohio State [inaudible] and I remember we were reading about it.
31:01
GM: Even Martin Luther King was grappling with that question.
31:04
SM: Right. Can you comment on the civil rights movement and the civil rights movement in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, with the rise of black power, certainly Doctor King dying in (19)68, there was a big struggle going on at that time. But still, there was a hope that we were working together to solve the problems of the nation, to solve the problems of the poor seemed like we all cared. What has happened between again another issue of those times in terms of division of America. Is it still the most important an important item on the part of many Americans and where the boomers?
31:07
GM: The civil rights issue?
31:12
SM: You had a civil rights issue that was on the minds of many boomers. How important is that and Boomer lives now?
31:52
GM: Yeah, I do not think it is all that important in boomer lives. I think that is one of the disappointments about the contemporary scene and American politics is that we still have not really seized the high ground of the civil rights movement to finish that effort. There does seem to me to be a kind of an indifference towards it on the part of whites, young and old across the country. It is lost some of its passion and enthusiasm. I suspect that part of that is a reaction to the fact that a great many whites, especially white males, are fearful that the civil rights emancipation has brought into the workforce a lot of people who have been shown favoritism, the affirmative action programs and they have seen a lot of the top jobs go to blacks, Spanish Americans, to women and others who have been assisted by affirmative action, and they were not always comfortable with that. They have also seen, you know, related thing, Michael Jordan, earning twenty-five million a year in the top slots in professional sports and television anchors and other high paying jobs go to blacks and so on. And I think that has created a kind of an unease in the country that maybe we have gone too far. And trying to deal with the concerns and the aspirations of blacks and a lot of other people are having some difficulty with recognition and advancement are cooling off somewhat in their passion for the civil rights movement. I do not know whether that is a major part of the explanation, but I think it is one part of it.
34:05
SM: Of course, the statistics will show that really there aren't that many positions being taken by African Americans. Carl Rowan writes in his latest book, The Coming Race War: A Wake Up Call. It is one of those misperceptions. It is a myth.
34:18
GM: I think is a misconception but it is a reality that perceptions do influence public attitudes. I hear these concerns expressed all the time. That is why I am bringing it up.
34:35
SM: Do you consider? Would you? One of the slogans of boomers used all the time was the ̶ we are the most unique generation in American history. We are different than any other generation that came before, or probably will come after. We are. We are the change agents of society. We are going to change the world for the better. Could you comment on that kind of mentality? Because I know I heard it when I was in college. We are very proud in many respects of the things we were involved in. We felt empowered. There was a concept of feeling that we could do things. A status quo was no longer something that we accepted. That IBM mentality of the same of everybody coming out of the house, kissing his wife wearing a hand getting into the same car. Not us.
35:21
GM: And four kids.
35:21
SM: Right? Not us. But then we were going to save me the changes for the world. And now here we are, in 1997. Boomers are most of them are in middle age. Your thoughts on that kind of mentality and were they the most unique generation our history?
35:39
GM: I am not sure that they were and I am not sure that the changes they were talking about were always that fundamental. When you consider the change that took place in American society, Depression, the New Deal and World War II. And I am speaking now about my generation. I think those changes were more fundamental and terms of American society than the changes the boomers had in mind after World War II. There was ̶ were more changes in lifestyle, ours were changes in the possibilities for justice, for opportunity, for equality, for collective action and dealing with international problems. I do not know that we have had anything from the boomers yet on the scale of the New Deal in terms of the impact it has had on American society. I used to listen to Gary Hart talk about change and I have listened to Bill Clinton talk about change and listened to Paul Zhan let us talk about change. These are all boomers who were very much into the rhetoric of change. But when you look at the changes, they were advocating, in most cases, they weren't that fundamental, they tended to be style changes in procedural changes. Watch Bill Clinton today, the changes he is proposing are really quite minor. And some of them are more symbolic more than substantive. So I think somehow that boomers may have exaggerated the extent of their commitment to genuine change. They were throwing off some of the restrictions and some of the inhibitions and some of the traditional ways of doing things but I am not sure to what extent they were really fundamentally altering American society with the exception of the women's movement, which I did not want to minimize that was very important. And I give a lot of credit to young people for bringing about that change.
38:19
SM: When the best history books are written about this era. What do you think the history books are going to say about the boomers?
38:26
GM: Well, they'll give them high marks for rejecting the Vietnam War. We will give them high marks for the women's movement to whatever extent they enlisted in the civil rights movement, they will get high marks. Beyond that, I do not think history will single them out for a really unique and powerful instrument for constructive reform and change. They may not come off as much as my generation did. To think the New Deal, Depression, World War II generation it was remarkable truly. Shaped by history. It was the said somewhere just recently that it takes great events to produce great people and we certainly had the challenges. The Depression and war and the leadership of Roosevelt in the New Deal was really great events with great leaders.
39:45
SM: Things I have been trying to do with most of these interviews is to list some of the names of the individuals who were from the era. And just give a couple quick words in terms of how you feel about these individuals. Because these individuals are identified with the boomer generation; the (19)60s many some of them have passed on, and others are still alive today. The first two would be Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
40:10
GM: I do not think they were major figures. I always thought they were somewhat frivolous in their impact on American politics. They played absolutely no role at all in my campaign which was one of the more serious efforts in that period. I never took them very seriously and I still do not.
40:33
SM: How about Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden?
40:36
GM: More serious, more perceptive more important. More correct in terms of identifying with the real problems of the time. Both serious people.
40:51
SM: How about Benjamin Spock?
40:55
SM: Another thoughtful, perceptive emancipated man who did a lot to improve our understanding of children. That was his major contribution in terms of his contributions on the international scene, and American policy. I thought he was a serious, thoughtful man, but probably not very effective as a political spokesman.
41:26
SM: Ralph Nader,
41:27
GM: Very serious, constructive reformer, genuinely committed to improving the conditions of life for Americans. I always had a high regard for him, I think history will treat him very kindly.
41:45
SM: Two African American leaders of the time, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
41:51
GM: Well, Malcolm X was an important figure he spoke to the angrier, more disillusioned, more troubled the members of the black community. I think he tended to frighten whites. I think that the ̶ did not from that standpoint, broaden the civil rights movement, he may have narrowed it and focused a bit more on the understandable anger of blacks. Dr. Martin Luther King was a leader who spoke not only for blacks, but he spoke to the whole conscience of the nation. He probably had a bigger impact on whites than we realized at the time. I think he was the central inspiration for the civil rights of the civil rights movement for both blacks and whites.
42:49
SM: John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.
42:53
GM: John Kennedy was a cool calculating politician who is not marked by personal passion for public issues as much by a desire to lead and to achieve power. And who had a sense of history, a knowledge of history. A more cautious, less passionate figure than Robert Kennedy. Perhaps the time that something to do with it. Robert Kennedy was more of a product of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. John Kennedy really came out of the (19)50s and emerged in the (19)60s when he was elected that that year but he there was even there was a rather marked difference in the personal passion and commitment that they brought to public issues. I think the civil rights movement and the war on poverty and Vietnam, those three things all engage Robert Kennedy in a way that John Kennedy never experienced.
44:21
SM: Eugene McCarthy.
44:23
GM: McCarthy was an important figure in that he had the wit and imagination to seize on the antiwar leadership by coming up to the presidency in 1968. I thought that was his central contribution and that he was willing to challenge a sitting president in his own party in the primaries, and was willing to do that before anybody else.
44:52
SM: Lyndon Johnson
44:55
GM: Probably one of the most talented and able domestic political leaders we ever had. I think he was on the level with Franklin Roosevelt and others in terms of domestic politics. I think he was remarkably effective, and strong senate majority leader and he knew how to marshal political support for domestic political objectives. I thought he was lost in international affairs. I think Vietnam, almost destroyed the Johnson presidency.
45:36
SM: Get into Richard Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew.
45:41
GM: Well, Nixon was, was a tragedy. He was a pretty good president in terms of domestic issues. He had a pretty good knowledge of Foreign Affairs, but he demagogue’d the Cold War and its domestic side fights from the very beginning. He just simply showed no standard for decency and fair play, in the way he handled the anti-communist mood of the country and the way he exploited that for his own political ends. Which explains his whole difficulty later on his willingness to use politics without any ethical underpinning at all. Agnew is cut from pretty much the same cloth, not as clever as Nixon but equally lacking and moral guidance.
46:45
SM: Well, he certainly created a lot of enemies within the boomer generation. They are going on the college campuses.
46:52
GM: Agnew you mean.
46:52
SM: Yes, Agnew.
46:54
GM: Effective in the role he played.
46:57
SM: I hear Pat Buchanan wrote a lot of his speeches too I heard.
47:00
GM: Yes, I heard.
47:01
SM: George Wallace.
47:03
GM: Wallace got better with the passage of time he got religion on race relations and he really did have a concern about the poor the disadvantaged. He was a demagogue on race issues and the first years of his career, he was terrible on the Vietnam issue. But I will say for Wallace that he had a genuine popular streak, which some other races in the south had, that he used to advance the well-being of poor people, whites and blacks. And in the last years of his political career, he was pretty good even on race relations,
47:43
SM: How about the Berrigan brothers, the Catholic priests,
47:46
GM: They were two interesting and dynamic figures. I think they brought clean hands to everything they did. I rather admired them.
47:59
SM: The Black Power Advocates Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, that group.
48:05
GM: Well, I put them sort of in the Malcolm X category, they really angry young man of the black movement and I think they played a certain role in advancing civil rights and that they send a signal to the United States and to the American people of what was in store if they rejected the more moderate appeals of a person like Martin Luther King.
48:34
SM: Guess we get into also some of the women of the time, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug. Gloria Steinem, Shirley Chisholm.
48:43
GM: Betty Freidan was very important. She was a pioneer in the women's movement and very intelligent and a somewhat pragmatic one. Bella was more the political activist. More of a front for women's activities. Gloria Steinem is a unique figure I always admired Gloria in that she obviously brought high intelligence to everything she did. And I think she thoroughly understood the women's movement. I think she also understood some of the hazards of the movement, in terms of the political fallout. I found her quite pragmatic as I did Shirley MacLaine during the (19)72 campaign, in understanding that you had to move on women's issues with some measure of respect to the difficulties that we had to overcome that you couldn't accomplish everything in one sweep. If I had any criticism of Gloria, it would be that I think she did not always fully understand as well as one would have hoped the somewhat differing perspectives that housewives and young mothers had about women's issues. Gloria have seemed to speak more to the emancipated career woman
50:15
SM: How about Gerald Ford.
50:16
GM: I always thought Ford a congenial, decent, somewhat nonpartisan man who played a useful role in helping the country heal its wounds. An unfortunate person to have to come in at that time. I had rather pleasant feelings towards Ford then, as I do now.
50:47
SM: How about out Hubert Humphrey?
50:49
GM: Well, Hubert was a great enthusiast of liberalism. I greatly admired his total commitment on civil rights and the welfare of working people and farmers and small business, he understood those issues as well as anyone in American politics. Really a great champion of the American worker, the American farmer, as he was for minorities all over the country. He was in 1948. He was the bugle calls in the Democratic Party on civil rights. And I think he deserves very high marks. He was very good on international affairs with the exception of Vietnam. He overdid the Cold War. That came to unfortunate fruition in his support for Vietnam that was a great blemish on his career.
51:45
SM: You know, some people say that if he had gone against Johnson, he may have been he may have been elected.
51:52
GM: I think he might have even if he'd spent a little more. I think he might have made it.
51:58
SM: Okay. Okay, two more and that is Muhammad Ali.
52:02
GM: Well, Muhammad Ali was a very talented, brilliant, man. I am sorry, I am getting carried away in my mind is jumping back to Malcolm X. Muhammad Ali was not a political figure, in my judgment. I think he had no impact on American politics. But personally I found him one of the most lovable and endearing athletes that we have produced in this country. I think it is a tragedy what has happened to him physically.
52:34
SM: I guess the last one then would be how you look at the musicians of the year of and how the impact that they have had on boomers, the musicians like Bob Dylan, and then Joan Baez and Jimi Hendrix and music of that era seem to have a tremendous impact on Boomer lives because there was clear cut messages in the music.
52:53
GM: Yeah, I think on balance that was very positive. A guy like Bob Dylan and it says great songs. He wrote to were sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, I loved it. And I think Joan Baez, I love her music and the messages that she brought. They definitely had an impact on the anti-war movement and civil rights.
53:16
SM: Okay, are there any other comments you would like to say about the boomers themselves? How you have looked at them over the last twenty-five years when you were running for president, obviously, many of them, millions of them supported you. But you are just last question your overall analysis of the boomers over the past twenty-five years. The ones that work for your campaign and where they are today.
53:39
GM: The one things that pleases me is that most of the ones who were involved in my campaign stayed involved. I mean, it is not an accident that that effort produced two presidential contenders Gary Hart and Bill Clinton. It is not an accident that over 100 of them went to the congress. And that as many as twenty to twenty-five went to the United States Senate, dozens of governors and state legislators, city councilmen and all across this country. To me the most personally gratifying thing is that the McGovern boomers stayed involved in politics. Lot of them became disillusioned with the process but a lot of them stayed.
54:27
SM: When you look at the lasting legacy of boomers was still has to be written. It is ̶ we look at the voting. Boomers do not vote. Their kids do not vote. And that amazes me, especially when there was so much passion at that time. And of course, certainly boomers wanted to vote, they fought for the right to vote.
54:43
GM: I think. I think there is still a pretty good turnout among the boomers, I am more concerned about their children and the lethargy, they seem to break to voting.
54:55
SM: Senator McGovern, thank you very much.
(End of Interview)
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Interview with Dr. George McGovern
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"George McGovern (1922 - 2012) was a professor, author, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election. McGovern earned a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University and taught at Dakota Wesleyan University."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">George McGovern (1922 - 2012) was a professor, author, U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 1972 presidential election. McGovern earned a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University and taught at Dakota Wesleyan University.</span>
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McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922-2012 ; McKiernan, Stephen
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College teachers; Authors; Legislators—United States; Presidential candidates—United States; McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922-2012--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-08-13
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eng
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.86
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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55:06
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/bc9ed303608c04b20c61d2f85c166148.mp3
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-14
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Edwin Meese
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Edwin Meece is an attorney, law professor, author and member of the Republican Party. He was a professor of Law at the University of San Diego until 1981. From 1981 to 1985, Meese served as Regan's counsellor. He was then appointed as the United States Attorney General. Meese is currently serving as the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at The Heritage Foundation. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15107,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Edwin Meese is an attorney, law professor, author, and member of the Republican Party. He was a professor of Law at the University of San Diego until 1981. From 1981 to 1985, Meese served as Reagan's counselor. He was then appointed as the United States Attorney General. Meese is currently serving as the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at The Heritage Foundation. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. </span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
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62:19
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Nineteen sixties; Activism; Free Speech Movement; Women's Rights Movement."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; Healing; Vietnam Veterans; Nineteen sixties; Activism; Free Speech Movement; Women's Rights Movement.</span>
Subject LCSH
Lawyers; College teachers; Authors; Attorneys general--United States; Meece, Edwin--Interviews
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Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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Title
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Interview with Edwin Meece
Contributor
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Meece, Edwin ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
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audio/wav
Subject
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Lawyers; College teachers; Authors; Attorneys general--United States; Meece, Edwin--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Edwin Meese is an attorney, law professor, author, and member of the Republican Party. He was a professor of Law at the University of San Diego until 1981. From 1981 to 1985, Meese served as Reagan's counselor. He was then appointed as the United States Attorney General. Meese is currently serving as the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow Emeritus at The Heritage Foundation. He has a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from Yale University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-08-14
Rights
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In copyright
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.87
Date Modified
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2017-03-14
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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62:19
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
2010-08-15
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
David B. Mixner
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"David Mixner is a civil rights activist, HIV/AIDS advocate, and best-selling author. Mixner is the author of the memoir Stranger Among Friends, as well as Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage and At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow. He is well known as a fearless advocate for LGBT equality and other civil rights."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6531,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">David Mixner is a civil rights activist, HIV/AIDS advocate, and best-selling author. Mixner is the author of the memoir <em>Stranger Among Friends</em>, as well as <em>Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage</em> and <em>At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow</em>. He is well known as a fearless advocate for LGBT equality and other civil rights.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Civil rights movement; Vietnam War; John Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Cold War; Cuban Missile Crisis; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Women's Movement; Gay Liberation Movement; Jackson State; Kent State; LGBT."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">Civil rights movement; Vietnam War; John Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Cold War; Cuban Missile Crisis; Berkeley Free Speech Movement; Women's Movement; Gay Liberation Movement; Jackson State; Kent State; LGBT.</span>
Duration
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80:57
Subject LCSH
Civil rights workers; AIDS activists; Mixner, David B.--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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Title
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Interview with David Mixner
Contributor
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Mixner, David B. ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
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audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Civil rights workers; AIDS activists; Mixner, David B.--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
David Mixner is a civil rights activist, HIV/AIDS advocate, and best-selling author. Mixner is the author of the memoir <em>Stranger Among Friends</em>, as well as <em>Brave Journeys: Profiles in Gay and Lesbian Courage</em> and <em>At Home with Myself: Stories from the Hills of Turkey Hollow</em>. He is well known as a fearless advocate for LGBT equality and other civil rights.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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2010-08-15
Rights
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In copyright
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.88
Date Modified
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2017-03-14
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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80:57
-
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/50390d6b654343b5dd0a4abf5ed8646a.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player with Transcription
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Date of Interview
2010-08-16
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen Mckiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Sara M. (Sara Margaret) Evans, 1943-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Duke University and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":4995,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,5099745],"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Duke University and received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
92:32
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; McCarthy hearing; Middle class; Second-wave feminism; Betty Friedan; Ronald Reagan; Family values; Third-wave feminism; Rebecca Walker; University studies programs; Environmental Studies; Women in the nineteen-fifties."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792}}">Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; McCarthy hearing; Middle class; Second-wave feminism; Betty Friedan; Ronald Reagan; Family values; Third-wave feminism; Rebecca Walker; University studies programs; Environmental Studies; Women in the nineteen-fifties.</span>
Subject LCSH
College teachers; Evans, Sara M. (Sara Margaret), 1943--Interviews
Accessibility
Copy/Paste below:
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Sara Evans
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: 16 August 2010
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:04):
Testing one, two. All right, let me get going here. I have got my sheet free. The first question I have is, who were your role models growing up? The teachers or the parents, the leaders that helped you become the person you are? I follow that up, also, as part of the question that I asked Dr. Baxandall when I interviewed her up in Massachusetts about a week ago. If you were in a packed house of 500 female college students today, and one of the students stood up and asked you to name three or four events in your life that made you who you are, the person you are today, what would those events be? It is kind of a combination, two-part question.
SE (00:01:03):
Well, the role models, when I was a child, I certainly have to talk about my parents. Because my father was a Methodist minister in South Carolina, and my parents were the only white people I knew who thought segregation was wrong, and I grew up in the segregated South.
SM (00:01:32):
Oh, wow.
SE (00:01:33):
That is very fundamental to who I became. My mother told me when I was, I do not know, about second grade, "They are going to teach you in school that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War, but it is." That is probably far and away the most important. I loved school. I had a number of teachers that I adored. I remember my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Holler, and I am not sure I can name any other one, but I had a number of teachers that I cared about very much. I always thought I wanted to be a teacher.
SM (00:02:32):
Right.
SE (00:02:32):
It is what I turned out to be. I wanted to teach every grade I was in except eighth grade and that is because, it is not because of the teachers, because the kids. I thought that that would be very hard.
SM (00:02:45):
Right.
SE (00:02:45):
I think I will stop at that for role models and-
SM (00:02:56):
Are there any specific-
SE (00:02:58):
Go ahead.
SM (00:03:00):
Events in your life besides the role models, who helped shape you?
SE (00:03:07):
Sure. There's no question that the civil rights movement changed the world I lived in and, certainly, changed my life. I can think all the way back to 1954 when I asked my students to think about some time when they became aware that history matters. And I say, 'I will tell you mine." I was on the playground and we were arguing about who should have won the war. Then, of course, I made them figure out what war and it is the Civil War. It is a playground in Columbia, South Carolina, and it is about 1954. The fact is, we were arguing about Brown versus the Board of Education.
SM (00:04:00):
Right.
SE (00:04:01):
That was what was really going on. So growing up in segregation in the (19)50s meant that the civil rights movement was both, was just a huge relief in a way and an opportunity to act on values I was raised with. I started college in 1962 and became active in the movement there in Durham, North Carolina, soon thereafter. I, also, another important event or experience was that in the summer of 1964, I went to Africa as a... It was after my sophomore year in college. There was a program called Operation Crossroads Africa. I do not think I had ever been out of the country. I went to Africa in an interracial group of college students, my first interracial experience, really, and laid bricks in a country that received its independence the summer that we were there, the little country of Malawi. We even got to be in the stadium and watched the British flag come down and the Malawi flag go up. That summer changed my view of the world because I saw the United States from outside. I discovered colonialism. I began to understand the impact of our country on the rest of the world. For several years, anyway, focused on African studies in my academic life. It framed when I began the next year to think about the war in Vietnam. I thought very differently about it because of having had that experience, so that was pretty fundamental.
SM (00:06:23):
I wrote this question up that I have asked probably the last 12 people I have interviewed. Since I am writing a book on the boomers, a lot of people have had a problem with defining the boomers.
SE (00:06:35):
Right.
SM (00:06:36):
Because the textbooks say it is anyone born between (19)46 and (19)64. But so many of the people that were the leaders of the anti-war movement were born between 1938 and 1945.
SE (00:06:52):
Right.
SM (00:06:52):
Many have told me, that I have interviewed have said, "Steve, you have got to think a little different here because the first half of the boomer generation, yes, they were really impacted. But a 10-year-old in the second half?" So I am just dealing with what higher ed defines as generations-
SE (00:07:13):
Right.
SM (00:07:13):
And what sociologists have been saying. But the question I am coming up with here deals with the (19)50s. I have a couple questions here. To boomers, and correct me if I am wrong, grew up very naïve. They learned that the meaning of fear stood for being quiet, obeying orders, do not question authority. So I came up with three qualities here that I feel defined boomers in the 1950s. The concept that there was fear, there was a sense of being quiet and there was a sense of being naive. Then the (19)60s and (19)70s came, it was just the opposite. There were lots of injustices and people spoke up. They challenged authority and certainly the students did. So they had to deal with these issues from the (19)50s that they grew up with. Whether it be the McCarthy hearings, the Cold War, the bomb, obviously, injustices in the South, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Am I on target here? I read your book, Personal Politics. It's one of the best books I have ever read, in fact.
SE (00:08:25):
Thank you.
SM (00:08:27):
I got it right in front of me. Actually, I destroyed it underlining it but I got to get another copy. It is a tremendous book.
SE (00:08:35):
Thank you.
SM (00:08:36):
But are those three qualities really what the boomer generation when they were young lived through in the (19)50s? I am not just talking white people. I am talking about African American, gay and straight, you name it.
SE (00:08:53):
Well, I think it is really hard to apply something like those qualities completely across the board. I was born in 1943, by the way, so I am in that earlier group. I always tell my students that the uptick in fertility took place a lot sooner than 1946. So I do not think the boomer generation should be counted just from (19)46, but that is a different issue. Fear. Let us talk about that one just a little bit. Certainly, I was aware that there was a danger of atomic war, for example. On the other hand, I think African Americans in the rural south lived in a kind of perpetual fear that is not really about the decade of the (19)50s. It is about centuries of suppression. So those things are very different and their links to time are somewhat different. On the other hand, I would say a lot of people think of the (19)50s as a time of tremendous optimism. Think about Happy Days, that movie, that TV series. A lot of Americans became middle class for the first time. We had been through a depression and then a war. Now people were beginning to have a life of material wealth and opportunities to seek higher education, to own automobiles or refrigerators, or use telephones, watch television. All of those things were becoming a part of ordinary American life, so there is an optimism in the 1950s that linked, also, to the Cold War ideology, "We are the best. We are the most wonderful. Look at us." The Cold War both had produced fear because of war. We had come out of a war and now war seemed threatened all the time. This sense of, "We are the best and we are only getting better and we will win." It was all modulated with that. The naivete of many in my generation was linked to that sense of well-being that gets shattered as we discover. I cannot say that I feel participating in this because I grew up in the segregated South, and I grew up knowing that something was deeply unjust about American society. But I think there were many in my generation in other parts of the country who did grow up with the sense that all is well and getting better, until they discovered that children go to bed hungry in this best of all possible societies. The civil rights movement brought segregation and the brutal suppression of segregation to their television screen. Then the Vietnam War, of course, brought others. Your themes are not, I would not say they are completely wrong but, like any stereotype, you need to push them a little bit because they are never going to fit perfectly.
SM (00:13:25):
The second wave is something you have written about in one of your latest books. What are the major second wave accomplishments, in your opinion? What are the failures or maybe things that were not achieved in the second wave, so far?
SE (00:13:46):
Well, the second wave, certainly, in many ways, created a revolution in American life. We can look at that on many dimensions. It made a lot of legal changes, of course, so that it is no longer legal to pay women less than men for the same work. It is no longer legal to advertise jobs as men only or women only. It is no longer legal for professional schools, medical schools, law schools, and graduate schools that have quotas and only admit 5 percent women. It is no longer legal to prevent women from serving on juries. That whole edifice of legal discrimination fell apart in the late (19)60s and in the 1970s, mostly in the early part of the 1970s. It is also no longer the case that women are expected to stay home through their adult lives and care for children and tend to the house. Now, that was never a reality for very large numbers of women no matter what. But it was a cultural ideal that was lived out mostly in the middle and upper middle classes. That the revolution of women's labor force participation was not caused by the women's movement, but it interacted with it. In some ways, it was a cause of the women's movement because all those women were running into barriers, discrimination, finding only dead-end jobs. Only women only work available to them. Younger women with higher education who sensed potential in themselves would be discouraged, or not admitted to school, or whatever, so there was an interactive effect there. But in the aftermath of that movement, women and men participate in the labor force on an almost equal basis in terms of numbers. There are many ways in which that movement did not... I think I want to credit it with creating a revolution and also notice that it is far from achieving the goals that it set for itself, which was genuine equality between men and women in American society. There are many ways in which it is far more equal than it used to be, but we still have, in many ways, a double standard. There is discrimination still but it's much more subtle, much more subtle. It is important that we had a woman run for president in 2008 who could have won. That is the first time. We have had women run for president many times but this was a new one. I think it is a real marker that Hillary could have won.
SM (00:17:41):
I think she is going to run again down the road.
SE (00:17:44):
She might, she might. We will see. There are a lot of built-in attitudes that I have been distressed to see the sort of casual sexism that was rampant in my childhood, some of that is back. I do not know if you look at movies and that sort of thing, they certainly are better than they used to, but there is still a lot of those themes are there. I think what we did not do was change the way society regards family. Even though families have changed, we offer no support for single-parent family. It is... When it was married couples raising children, women still do more than half, although, at least it is not 90 percent. But they still do more than half of the work of caring for children and families and households. Our labor force offers very few breaks for people who want combined meaningful work and child rearing. There are other countries, particularly in Europe, that have gone much further down this path. We do not offer paid childcare leave. We do not offer them for men, as well as women, except in some places six weeks. But that is not what we need. We make it very hard for people to deal with ill children. We create this competition between these two arenas that are both essential for the future of our society. So you have people hiring nannies that are... People with really high paying jobs, hiring nannies and hardly ever get to see their children. People with really low paying jobs find it very difficult to find decent childcare and children end up in not very healthy situations.
SM (00:20:26):
When you look at the, I am going to use the years the boomers have been alive, of course, they have been alive since 1946 through today, and the oldest is now 64 years old, and the youngest is 48 going on 49, so there are no spring chickens anymore within this generation. I think they finally realized that maybe, like a lot of generations, that they are mortal.
SE (00:20:53):
That may be what?
SM (00:20:56):
That they are mortal. That they-
SE (00:20:59):
Hello?
SM (00:20:59):
Are you still there? Can you hear me?
SE (00:21:05):
Hello? Are you there?
SM (00:21:06):
Yes, I am here.
SE (00:21:09):
I think I lost you for a second.
SM (00:21:11):
Can you still hear me?
SE (00:21:13):
Yes, I can.
SM (00:21:13):
Okay. Yeah.
SE (00:21:16):
You need to know that my telephone works through my wireless.
SM (00:21:21):
Okay.
SE (00:21:22):
Because I am in a very remote place, so every now and then it blinks out.
SM (00:21:26):
Okay. All right. I do have your number if it does disconnect us. What was it like, and you can just give a few examples or just explain it briefly. What was it like being a female during these different periods that boomers have been alive? You did a great job in your book, Personal Politics, about explaining about the young women who were being reared in the 1950s, seeing their moms go to work-
SE (00:21:59):
Right.
SM (00:22:01):
And so forth. So they saw some of the experiences that their mothers had to go through. It helped shape them, too, that it was not going to be easy for many of them.
SE (00:22:11):
Right.
SM (00:22:12):
But what was it like being a woman in the United States from 1946 to 1960? I am breaking these down according to timeframes, from that time at the end of World War II-
SE (00:22:24):
Right.
SM (00:22:25):
Until the time John Kennedy became president?
SE (00:22:28):
Okay, well, I am assuming you are asking me about my experience as opposed to-
SM (00:22:32):
Yes-yes.
SE (00:22:37):
I was born at the end of 1943, so I do not have a lot of memories of (19)46. But the main thing I would tell you is that I had a mother with a college degree and the passion of a scientist, who should have been a scientist, who never thought she had that choice. So I grew up aware of my mother's frustrated potential and anger and depression. I think that really did shape me in some important ways. I did not want to end up in that situation. When I read in 1963, this is outside your timeframe, but when I read Betty Friedan's book, a light bulb went on like, oh, I do not have to make that choice. But I think in the (19)50s, girls in the middle class, which I certainly was, the way we thought about our future was not, what are you going to be when you grow up? When I was really little, I was going to be a nurse because kids did ask that question.
SE (00:24:03):
I was going to be a nurse, because kids did ask that question or asked that question. But in high school, what I recall is conversations among girls about who would you like to marry? Would you like to be the wife of a lawyer, a doctor, a minister? Those kinds of... It was being the wife of and not being those, not having those professions ourselves, that was presented as how to think about yourself in the future.
SM (00:24:38):
How about that period? You already talked about Betty Friedan's book that came out in (19)63, but the period 1961 to 1970.
SE (00:24:49):
Well, that is when things got really revolutionary, and you almost have to talk about that year by year, because it is different year by year. Certainly this mobilization of women is beginning by the mid (19)60s, and with the presidential commissions on women and so forth. I read Betty Friedan in college because one of my professors told me to read it. And at that point, I decided along Betty Friedan's prescription that I could be several woman. I would have a career and I would have a family too and it would not even be hard. But it was in 1967 that I landed in a women's liberation group. And from that moment on, became a very active feminist, and saw the need to transform American society and the way it defined gender and gender roles.
SM (00:26:03):
How about that period, 1971 to 1980?
SE (00:26:10):
Well, again, I am really reluctant to just slap labels on decades like that, because they changed so much from beginning to end. The high point of the women's movement in terms of mobilization was the mid (19)70s, just in terms of sheer numbers and actions and so forth. The high point of legislative change was about 1972 to (19)74, in terms of legal transformations. I think young women, coming of age then, and you need to talk to them, because I was moving from my late twenties into my thirties at that point, in graduate school. But for younger women, I think there was a sense of, the sky is limit. Everything is opening up.
SM (00:27:13):
Then you get into that Ronald Reagan era, from (19)81 to (19)90.
SE (00:27:21):
Right. Well, and that was a time of tremendous backlash. The backlash got going in the (19)70s, the anti-ERA movement, for example. And I actually think it is important to remember that some women growing up in the (19)60s and in the (19)70s were living lives that were not so different from the women growing up in the (19)50s. There were places in America, from suburbs, from small towns, that were not touched as deeply or thoroughly or whatever. So changes, change always has a ragged quality to it. It is certainly far from uniform. And in the (19)80s, you have, on the one hand, Reagan and all the talk about family values and people openly saying that women should go back home and take care of the kids and be women again. And on the other hand, you have women entering all these professions in massive numbers, because now they have been able to go to medical school and law school and get MBAs in the (19)70s. And so the change is still going on and even Ronald Reagan appointed Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court.
SM (00:28:56):
That is right. Then we get into the (19)90s, which is the time of Bill Clinton.
SE (00:29:04):
Right. And I think there is a resurgence of feminism in a new generation. In the early (19)90s, they called themselves the third wave. One of their leaders is Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker.
SM (00:29:18):
We had her at our school.
SE (00:29:18):
You what?
SM (00:29:23):
We brought her to this university. She spoke at our school.
SE (00:29:27):
Oh, great. Yeah, she is quite charismatic. She is quite wonderful. And also, I think in the (19)80s and (19)90s, more and more women and men were discovering how hard it is to live these new lives and have families, and some of the pressure of that is beginning to be felt.
SM (00:29:56):
And then we-
SE (00:29:57):
But I would say by the (19)90s, the women's movement and younger generations were less divided by race. Not to say that race was not still really important, but Rebecca's a good example of a new language of talking about race that begins to be possible. I apologize for the fact that there is another phone here, a landline. Can I?
SM (00:30:27):
Yep.
SE (00:30:28):
Do you mind if I pick it up?
SM (00:30:29):
Nope, go ahead, just go ahead.
SE (00:30:31):
Okay.
SM (00:30:31):
All right. That is fine. All right.
SE (00:30:35):
Chuck, are you there? Are you on the phone? So I hang up? Good. Okay.
(00:30:44):
Okay. Sorry. I am in a very small cabin.
SM (00:30:47):
Okay. That is all right. Then we got the last 10 years, which is George Bush and now President Obama. Where was everything stand in that decade?
SE (00:31:01):
Well, when you say everything, what are you talking about? [inaudible] lose the thread here.
SM (00:31:09):
Well, what is it like being a female today, really?
SE (00:31:13):
Okay. Yes. Yes. Well, and I think for young women today, it is very confusing. They have an immense number of choices, and they know it. They also know that they are often very hard choices. In some ways, I feel like young women today feel something like that old pressure of family or career. They no longer have the illusion that it will be easy to do both. They expect they will do both, and they will have to do both, but they do not see it as something that is going to be a piece of cake.
SM (00:31:57):
I have two nieces that are going through it right now.
SE (00:32:00):
Yeah. No, I think it is very hard. On the one hand, the sky's the limit. On the other hand, you may not be able to ever get there.
SM (00:32:11):
Right. One of the things that is interested, and I have been asking each of my guests recently, is the difference between mainstream feminism and radical feminism. And it seems to me that oftentimes, when people define mainstream feminism, they say that is liberal. But that radical feminism is like the new left that led the anti-war movement in the (19)60s. And it seems to me that it is always the new left or the more extremes that gets things done. Your thoughts on the difference between the two and defining them?
SE (00:32:49):
Well, if you read, obviously, Personal Politics is about the origins of radical feminism. And I notice that liberal feminism is being created at the same moment, but I do not go into that. I am completely unwilling to say one does things more or better than the other. And the reason is, I think they need each other. I think this is true of many social movements, that when the radicals raise the questions in a far more fundamental way and set out to show the world how deep change is possible, the liberals who are saying things that in the previous context would have been considered wildly unthinkably radical, suddenly look moderate and are able to accomplish things. My last book, called Tidal Wave, which is a sequel to Personal Politics, covers from (19)68 into the beginnings of the 21st century. And I look at these two streams, I argue that, by the mid (19)70s, you really cannot draw a line between them easily. There is a spectrum, but not a bifurcation, but that they influenced each other enormously. The radicals, lots of people joined the more liberal organizations because they went looking for a radical movement and they could not find it because it was so decentralized, and they landed in the other movement, but they radicalized it. And I do think legal changes matter. I think it matters that we have an equal pay act and that we have Title IX, which [inaudible] in women's participation in sports. I think the Equal Credit Act matters. So the fact that we got, and Roe versus Wade, for goodness sake. But the person who argued Roe versus Wade came out of a consciousness raising group in Austin, Texas. It was part of the radical movement. But what she did was the way the liberal movement functioned.
SM (00:35:14):
That is Sarah Weddington, correct?
SE (00:35:17):
Exactly. So I am going to resist that either-or kind of question.
SM (00:35:27):
Okay. Yeah. One of the things that is very important, and my very first boss at Ohio University was one of the leaders of the ERA movement in Ohio. And I know Dr. Mensen was very disappointed when it did not pass. I remember being in the office next to her when the final vote came in and I think she was crying, and it is a long story, because she had worked two years on this. But why did it fail? And I also interviewed Phyllis Schlafly in Washington about four months ago. Yeah, I interviewed her for an hour, and I interviewed David Horowitz on the phone. And both of them have said this. They say that the troublemakers of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, which are probably the new left or whatever, now run the universities and they control what is taught. And they were making reference to women's studies, black studies, gay and lesbian studies, environmental studies, all the studies movements. Your thoughts on their criticism, the studies programs in the universities, whether there's truth to that. And secondly, why did the ERA fail?
SE (00:36:35):
Okay. Those are really two different questions. The ERA failed in part because the most important things it was going to accomplish were already accomplished in the legal changes that did take place in the (19)70s. And so on one level, in the end, it was not as devastating to lose it as it would have been 20 years earlier when all that discriminatory stuff was still on the books. But it also failed, I think, because people found change in gender roles very frightening. And people like Phyllis Schlafly played on those ears. And it was similar to how frightening voting, the idea of women voting was in the 19th century. And all of that change which was happening to people and they were participating in it, was also scary, and I think there was a lot of demagoguery, and Phyllis Schlafly was the leader of it, talking about why should people be worried about single sex bathrooms, we're going to say, or they made up things that they said the law would do, but they also said women might have to participate in combat in the armed forces. Well, we have got that and we do not have the ERA. The ERA was not going to make it happen, but it was happening and people were not easy about that. And I think there were also women in more traditional roles, and there's a very good book on this by Jane De Hart and Don Mathews about the Equal Rights Amendment in North Carolina. And what they found were that women who were opposed, it was not only men who were opposed, for sure, but women who were opposed shared a deep distrust of men with the people who advocated it and said, "We need legal equality, because you cannot trust them to treat us right no matter what." But they were in traditional roles and still very dependent on men. And their fear was that if men are not forced to play their traditional roles, they will abandon them. And their fear was that if women and men are treated equally in the public arena, in the workplace, and everywhere else, men will say, "I will not support my family. You have got to go out and work." Or they will get divorced and refuse to pay alimony. Or they will simply abandon their family. And their view was really that men have to be coerced to take care of their families, and women are vulnerable, and they were afraid that equality would mean that women would be abandoned, so. And that is really about how deeply uneasy some of these changes made many people feel. So that is one question. Now, remind me again of what your other one was, because-
SM (00:40:15):
Well, the other one was just-
SE (00:40:17):
Oh, about the studies sequence.
SM (00:40:19):
Yeah, Phyllis Schlafly basically said the troublemakers of the (19)60s and (19)70s now run the university's studies programs.
SE (00:40:30):
Well, that is a right wing attack that is... I could name a number of writers who have made those charges. It certainly is true that the social movements of the (19)60s and (19)70s ask questions that could not be answered within the framework of traditional discipline. And there's an intellectual transformation that follows from that. I have been very involved in women's studies. I wrote women's history and taught women's history. When I was in school, there was no such thing as women's history. And you did not learn about women in any class that you took, because they were considered to be outside of history. So asking the question about where are the women and what are they doing was an intellectual transformation. The same thing with black history. When I was in school, I was taught very little about what life was like for slaves. In fact, in South Carolina, it was assumed that slaves were probably pretty happy. But even in college, we did not know anything about what life was like for enslaved people. But when people started asking about that, there's an amazing amount there to be covered about how enslaved people created a culture from many parts of Africa, speaking different languages, created African American culture and music and religion and family structures and so forth. So I think those studies programs, in fact, were very, very important in bringing previously unthought about and fundamental issues into our intellectual discourse. It's simply not... It is true that a lot of us... I was an activist in the women's movement. I wanted to know, what shoulders do we stand on? Have people like us, i.e. females, ever changed history the way we want to do it, or is it true that women never have made any history? And I felt we needed to know our history, not romanticized, but just to know, as part of the movement. And that drove me into graduate school. And lots of people like me did that. But the implication that our scholarship is purely ideological, that we do not in fact do real research and hold ourselves to rigorous standards, is the right-wing position, that I think is wrong and dangerous. And if you want to say environmental studies, then you are discounting all the environmental science of the last half century. And those are the same people who say there is no global warming, if they want to say environmental studies is a left-wing plot.
SM (00:44:08):
One of the other points, and I had an hour with her, she was at the CPAC conference, and she was very tired, so I think I got a really quality 30 minutes from her, even though she was there for an hour. And we talked a little bit about whether women in the (19)50s, the parents of boomer women, were fulfilled or were unfulfilled as mothers and housewives, and many not even working. And it was her belief that many were fulfilled, that being a mother and taking care of kids was the duty. And so for the women's movement to say that there is a lot of unfulfilled women who never had a chance to speak their thoughts, just raise the kids and so forth, any thoughts on that?
SE (00:45:02):
Well, I had a mother who was not fulfilled, so that was my personal experience, a group of one. I suggest that you read a book by Elaine Tyler May called Homeward Bound.
SM (00:45:16):
Homeward Bound.
SE (00:45:18):
Yes. A very, very important book about the family in the Cold War era and she has data on this that is really important, and I think anecdotally, you will get people telling you everything. Based on what I know from Elaine May's work and other scholars, I would say, and then packing back to my own experience, I would say, in the first place, of course there were some women who were happy doing that, but that does not tell you that they were all happy doing that. The flood, if you go and read the letters written to Betty Friedan after The Feminine Mystique came out, you would be deluged with thousands and thousands of women writing to say to her, "Thank you, thank you, thank you. I did not think anybody else felt this way." And if you look at the numbers of women who go to graduate school, once the barriers are lifted, and the number of women in the (19)60s, there was a big movement in the (19)60s to create opportunities for women to return to college. And that was very, very successful, called the Continuing Education for Women movement. Huge numbers of women wanted to go back, finish degrees and find something else to do with their lives. Maybe they enjoyed staying home, but then they wanted to do something else. And finally, I have to say for Phyllis Schlafly, so why did she have a career? Her own life does not fit that.
SM (00:47:07):
Yeah, I have heard that before. She has been a lawyer, created the Eagle Forum and speaks all over the country, and-
SE (00:47:15):
Right, so she said women should have a role that she never chose to have.
SM (00:47:22):
One of the things about the second wave movement, I remember reading Johnetta Cole's book, several years back, Sister President, that she wrote about her experiences. And this leads me into this question, has the second wave of the women's movement been all inclusive with respect to women of color, women with different sexual orientations? Because I have read quite a bit from other authors that, even Johnetta Cole said, there was pressure within the African-American community to identify as a black person first and then as a woman second, and then she identified with both, but it was very-
SM (00:48:03):
And then she identified with both, but it was very difficult for...
SE (00:48:08):
Well, I think that is true, and I would ask you to please read Tidal Wave because that is a major theme of Tidal Wave. My history of the Second Wave, and it's a functioning part of timing. The Women's Movement started at the same time that the Black Power Movement was in full force. And what seems to me is when you tell this story, on the one hand you have to notice black women and women of color were always there. They started women's groups within all those other movements, which were pretty separated in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. But there were women's liberation committees that raised issues within the Latino movement, with the Chicano movement and the Asian American movement and the Black movement. There were separate organizations, often of women of color, raising very similar issues and often in very similar ways and similar language. But it was a time of such racial polarization that it was very difficult for women to talk across racial minds successfully. And there was tremendous pressure within each of those groups to identify first with their group and then secondly with your gender. So that was true. I would say that the liberal wing of the Women's Movement was more successful, even there, it was not easy, but there were women of color in the leadership from the beginning of the National Organization for Women and of the National Women's Political Caucus. So it is important to notice that, and I discussed it in some detail in Tidal Wave.
SM (00:50:18):
Do you also include the Native American women?
SE (00:50:22):
Yes.
SM (00:50:25):
When did the (19)60s begin, in your opinion? And when did it end? And what do you feel was the watershed moment? This is just you personally.
SE (00:50:35):
Well, I would begin it with the sit-ins in 1960, although it is not hard to push it back to the Montgomery bus boycott since the marker for me is really civil rights. And I am not quite sure how to end it. I would push it well into the (19)70s. But even then, when you try to create a category like that, the early (19)60s and the late (19)60s, (19)70s are also very different times. The early years, the Civil Rights Movement, the Kennedy years, the creation of the Peace Corps, and then the Anti-War Movement and the race riots that happened, and the increasing violence and turmoil is a very different era.
SM (00:51:37):
Did The Beats have an influence on women?
SE (00:51:42):
The Beatniks in the (19)50s?
SM (00:51:44):
Yes, The Beats, because many people have told me they believe that the (19)60s began with the beats because they were anti-authoritarian. They lived their lives. They did not care what other people thought.
SE (00:51:58):
Oh, I think so. I was not living where they were very permanent. But I am sure that is true. They were extremely sexist, and at the same time, they were very anti-authoritarian and into breaking all the rules. So they are forerunners of the new left. They are very... Are you there?
SM (00:52:28):
Yes. I am here.
SE (00:52:28):
They are very sort of nihilistic and they represent some of that side of the (19)50s that says the world is going to blow itself up and recognizing that racism is rampant and so forth, and not feeling very hopeful that any of that can be changed. And the New Left comes along, picks up on a lot of those themes, but says, "Well, hey, we can change it."
SM (00:53:06):
I know that one person I interviewed said that he identified Neil Cassidy. He is the number one Beat because all the books that were written were basically studies about him. And of course, he became one of the Mary Pranksters. But his attitude toward women was basically conquests.
SE (00:53:29):
Right. And that is why I have trouble with a lot of those folks.
SM (00:53:35):
One of the well-known facts that you bring up in your book, Personal Politics, but also, it has been historically documented, is that the sexism that was rampant in the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement drove many of the New Left women that were affiliated with those groups into the Women's Movement in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. So now I have some questions that are directly related to your book, Personal Politics. The people who have studied post-World War II activism know that sexism was rampant in the movements I just mentioned. My question is, how bad was it?
SE (00:54:13):
Well, I would say it was not as bad as in the rest of American society. And I think it is really important to notice that the Women's Movement did not happen in a place where women were treated much worse than they had ever been treated. But rather in a movement that advocated equality but did not treat women equally. And it is that contradiction that women ran into. But they had opportunities to do things, to change history, to go to jail, to stand up for what they believed, to risk their lives, to teach in Freedom School, to take on responsibility for organizing communities. And I think it is the later part of the New Left Act, it became a really massive movement that some of the sexism of the counterculture was much more raw, [inaudible] but the New Left offered women an opportunity to grow and develop leadership. And it also periodically reenacted the sexism that was fundamental to American culture. No surprise. It is not that they were worse, it was that they had not completely transcended everything they had been raised with. And the contradiction is what drove women to name it and act on it.
SM (00:55:48):
You do a tremendous job in this book. I have read the Free Speech Movement. There is a lot of books on that. And a lot of the students that were involved in that movement, were also in Freedom Summer in (19)64, and many of them were even in down south in the (19)61 (19)62 period. And I have interviewed at least six people who were involved in Freedom Summer and male and female. But can you explain, I know, but this is for the people they are going to read this, how important was the student non-violent coordinating committee with respect to not only the Civil Rights movement, but the Women's Movement? And you also in the book do a great job in one section of talking not only about the SNCC, but you talk about the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress on Racial Equality. These are all major groups that were linked to that movement in the (19)50s and (19)60s and beyond. And you talk a little bit about the sexism within those organizations where women were, and you talk a little bit about that.
SE (00:57:00):
Well, I am not going to be able to tell you any more than I already wrote, but the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was one of the most innovative and radical parts of the Civil Rights Movement. It was on the ground and the scariest parts of the South all over the place. And it often does not get its due when civil rights stories are being told. And the focus is on the big leader, Martin Luther King. It was the place where women found the most equality within the Civil Rights Movement, where they learned the most leadership capacities. And it was the organization that gave women an ideology about living out your value in your daily life. That the idea of the beloved community that we were going to enact among ourselves, the values we were trying to bring about in society. And, it really was fundamental to the origins of the Women's Liberation Movement. It gave them a set of ideas, a deeply egalitarian ideology. It gave them a set of strategies and tactics, consciousness raising, and the technique traces directly back to the way people talked to each other in SNCC and spoke from their hearts and tried to reach consensus and not leave anybody behind. So I think that organization was really fundamentally important.
SM (00:59:00):
What is interesting here also is when you look at the March on Washington 1963 with Dr. King, and you see the background of all the people around him. The only females you see are Dorothy Height, who is over to the right. And I know Mahalia Jackson, she sang, but it was all Men. So there is a perception out there, and I think you really correct it in your book that women, they were really secondary in the Civil Rights movement. They just were not there. And-
SE (00:59:44):
A lot of research since then to show, if you look at the Civil Rights Movement on the ground, the things I said that I wrote when I was writing that in the mid to late (19)70s, there is a huge amount more detail about it available now. Because in local communities, women were the leaders. They were towering figures. And SNCC offered role models of older women who risked their lives for what they believed in. And it was in the local communities, those women, they called the Mamas that were so powerful. And if you look at SCLC, what you get is a hierarchical organization in which the top leaders are all black ministers. But there were people like Dorothy Height who is pretty wonderful.
SM (01:00:46):
You talk about the major role played by white women in the South, and certainly African American women as well to end segregation. And they were involved in voting registration drives and so forth. Could you talk a little bit about what it was like being a white woman during Freedom Summer or any of the voter registration drives throughout the early (19)60s down there? Because I do not think a lot of people realize it, many of these people came back to college campuses and actually were the leaders, and several of them were as the Free Speech Movement. Just talk about-
SE (01:01:20):
So like Joe Freeman, for example?
SM (01:01:27):
Yes. Just your thoughts on the women that were involved in with SNCC.
SE (01:01:35):
Well, again, this makes me uncomfortable because I have written it all, and I would love you to quote from my book too.
SM (01:01:43):
Well, yes, I have got quotes that I am going to bring up here next, but I-
SE (01:01:50):
But I do think for many white women, it was stepping outside of the roles that they were expected to fulfill way outside. And when they went south, they found themselves in a movement where there were these powerful black women who became role models, who taught them a different way to be women and a more assertive and self-respecting way to be women. It was for both [inaudible].
SM (01:02:29):
With me. All right.
SE (01:02:34):
And I do not have a whole lot longer, so. I know you planned 90 minutes.
SM (01:02:43):
We got 27 minutes.
SE (01:02:45):
I will try. Anyway, I would say for middle class college kids, black and white, male and female, going into the Southern Civil Rights Movement was a searing experience and [inaudible] and committed them, no matter what happened next, to be engaged with making the world a better place. I doubt many students came out of that experience and went back to their old lives as if nothing had happened. For black students, of course, it would have all sorts of other transforming dimensions. But for white students and for white women, it was such a step outside of their traditional roles that many of them came back to their campuses and were prepared. They felt able to lead. They were prepared to question authority. They were prepared to take public stands. And so the students who went south show up in the leadership of the New Left all over the country and the Anti-War Movement, and then the Women's Movement, and they became the leadership.
SM (01:04:23):
I have two quotes here from the book which are excellent. The first quote is, "These women recognize from the very beginning of their involvement in the movement that they, like their male associates, were at war with their own culture." And the second one is the, "Thus within a movement, young white women have the necessary to forge a new sense of themselves to redefine the meaning of being a woman quite apart from the [inaudible] image they had inherited." And then the third-
SE (01:05:01):
Do not agree with that.
SM (01:05:03):
... One I have here is, "The next generation daughters of the (19)50s grew up with a knowledge that they were identifying roles should be those of wife and mother. But they knew they would probably have a job at some point. They saw mothers with double duty."
SE (01:05:19):
Great.
SM (01:05:19):
So any other thoughts on that or that is good?
SE (01:05:26):
No, I think that is true.
SM (01:05:30):
Then I have another one that I do want you to respond to. It is on the bottom of page 11. Let us see here, you have got, "The straight jacket of domestic idea to challenge it openly would be too frightening in a rapidly changing world clouded with threat of nuclear warfare and the early bush fires of racial discontent and urban decay, where corporate behemoths trained their bureaucrat into interchangeable parts, fewer ready to face the unnerving necessity of reassessing the cultural definitions of femaleness and maleness." So.
SE (01:06:13):
And I am in some ways saying the background of what I was saying earlier about how scary it was, how fundamental the changes the Women's Movement was demanding were. And there was great resistance to raising the issue. And once it was raised, there was a big backlash in the (19)70s. And that is because it is pretty fundamental. Our identities as women and men are pretty fundamental to who we think we are in the world. And so if anybody wants to tamper with that and change it, people get upset.
SM (01:07:00):
You also stated a beautiful quote which is, "Bureaucracy suppressed demotion and passion training its members into interchangeable parts. Bureaucratic values emphasize female traits of cooperation, passivity and security, getting along, being well-liked between new goals."
SE (01:07:20):
And what I am arguing there in [inaudible] is that men were taking on roles that the qualities demanded of them were things the culture labeled females. And so there is an uneasiness already. Things are shifting in ways. So how do men prove their manhood anymore when they are being placed in these kind of settings to work? So when women start saying, "We want in too," or "We want equal chair," or "We want the right to do this and that and the other." For men, it is like, "Well, so what is left?" How will we know?
SM (01:08:06):
You bring up also, and other people have mentioned that the election of John Kennedy showed many people that change is good. And of course, change is one of the definitions of the (19)60s. And certainly John Kennedy was a much younger person. So that is true. And you also bring up the fact that McCarthyism was an attitude that many people were afraid of which is to root out subversion from within. And so there was a fear. That is where I get into the fear again of-
SE (01:08:39):
You are right. McCarthyism did make many, many people afraid. Afraid to advocate change.
SM (01:08:46):
When President Kennedy asked Eleanor Roosevelt to head the commission on the status of women, I believe that was in 1961. She died in (19)62.
SE (01:08:54):
Yes.
SM (01:08:54):
Was he dead serious on that or did Eleanor Roosevelt pressure him to do it because Eleanor had problems with him before supporting him to be president?
SE (01:09:13):
Well, I do not think it was a top priority for him. I think it was a bone that he threw to the women, but he needed women's support. And there was concern within the Democratic Party about pressure for the Equal Rights Amendment. So one of the ways that he was persuaded to do this was that people like Eleanor Roosevelt who were opposed to the Equal Rights Amendment, on the grounds, said it would undo protective legislation that her generation had won to protect women workers. So they wanted to have a commission that would say, "We do not need that." What happened, of course, was something altogether different because that commission uncovered the depth of discrimination against women. And so when they did have one committee that said, "We really do not need an equal rights amendment." That stands somehow at odds with all the other things that they did.
SM (01:10:22):
One other quote I have here that I would like to, if there is any further comments, I think it is another great quote. "Furthermore, having grown up in an era that commoditized sexual intimidation while it reasserted repressive norms, they found themselves living in the ambiguous frontiers of sexual freedom and self-control opened up by the birth control pill. Such contradictions left young, educated women in the (19)60s dry tinder for the spark of revolt."
SE (01:10:51):
Yes. Well, that early chapter argues basically that a Women's Movement was going to happen. It was almost over-determined. There were too many contradictory pressures. It is almost like tectonic plate crushing against each other and something has to give.
SM (01:11:18):
The couple of people you talk about in the book, Stokely Carmichael joked in (19)64 that the only position for women was prone. And I have read about that for a long time in a lot of other books. What did the women at that time think of that? And was he just joking or was he dead serious?
SE (01:11:42):
He was not dead serious. And you can read many other people's descriptions of Stokely Carmichael as being one of the people in SNCC who treated women equally. So it's the implication that he was one of the most macho people around is unfair. It was a joke. It-
SE (01:12:03):
People around is unfair. It was a joke. It was made at the end of a very long, contentious conference, late at night. It was a joke about the sexual relations that had happened frequently within the Civil Rights movement. It is a movement of young people. And what is important about that quote to me is certainly not to vilify Stokely Carmichael, but to notice that the quote when he said that the people around him just laughed. They were tired. They realized yeah, there was a lot of sex that went around. But when other people reported that quote, and it bounced through the movement on a rumor mill, huge numbers of women heard that quote. And to them, it named the sexism that they had experienced in the movement. It is really not about Stokely, it is about how those words resonated with lots of women who had been active in the movement. So in personal politics, I talk about it some, how I had a hard time tracking down someone who talked to me about that quote, but I heard the quote from many people who were not there, many, many people. And that is what I think is really important is not what Stokely really meant, which was basically, there's been a lot of sex around here. But what it meant to people who heard it.
SM (01:13:58):
Casey Hayden and Mary King wrote a position paper that women were treated as second class citizens, just as African Americans were treated in the nation at large. How important was that document? Because I think there has been reference that it reveals the origins of the modern feminist movement.
SE (01:14:20):
Yeah, it was one of the very, very first articulations of the issue of women in relation to the Civil Rights movement. It is the opening shot that you can trace straight from there through a series of other documents to the beginning of the women's movement. So it was very, very important.
SM (01:14:50):
One other quote, this is from someone else, Belinda Rubbalet, and her quote is, "Feminism did not evolve from the sexist treatment within SNCC, but from the organization liberating philosophy and open structure that fostered challenges to authority."
SE (01:15:07):
I think that is fair. What I have been trying to say is it took both. I think she is right. That is the most fundamental, but then there was some sexism, and it's that contradiction of the movement that offered this idea of equality, this very liberating idea and this open possibility to take on leadership roles. And then within that context, when traditional American sexism showed up from time to time as it did, as it could not-not have, women had ideas and tools with which to react to it.
SM (01:16:01):
Yeah. One of the things about that particular comment is also linked to the students for Democratic society, because the participatory democracy, remember Tom Hayden, when he came to our campus, talked about participatory democracy and seems like SNCC was the epitome of participatory democracy.
SE (01:16:21):
It was the epitome of participatory democracy. And SBS took a lot of those ideas from SNCC.
SM (01:16:24):
You also mentioned, I read some place that you thought the 14th Amendment was a slap in the face because it only gave African American men the right to vote.
SE (01:16:36):
No, I did not say that.
SM (01:16:37):
Oh, okay.
SE (01:16:38):
It did. It was experienced by the women who had been active in the abolition movement and the Women's Rights Movement in the 1850s and (19)60s, they experienced it as a slap in the face because it put the word male into the constitution. Some of those women said, "Look, we do not like it, but this is all we can get right now. And it's more important to give Black men the vote than to insist on getting everything." But it raised the issue of voting to the forefront in the women's rights movement in the 19th century, from that point on, focused on the right to vote as its key issue.
SM (01:17:38):
Well, I am down to my final three questions, if that is okay.
SE (01:17:42):
Oh, good.
SM (01:17:44):
Because I am going to do the hour and a half. It's been one hour and 17 minutes, and I am going to keep it to one 30.
SE (01:17:49):
All right.
SM (01:17:50):
So we got 13 minutes. I took a group of students in 1995 to Washington DC as part of our leadership on the road programs, and we met Senator Muskie. And the students I took, helped me develop some questions to ask him. And one of them was about the issue of healing within the nation and within the generation. The question was this, because they had seen, they knew he was the vice-presidential candidate in (19)68, and they knew about Chicago. They had seen what happened in Chicago that year and the assassinations that year. And the question was this, due to all the divisions that were taking place in the boomers' generation when they were younger, do you think that they are going to go to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing due to the divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who were for the war against the war, those who supported the troops or were against the troops? Do you think they are going to go to their grave not healing? And just your thoughts on the whole issue of healing.
SE (01:19:03):
Yeah, I actually do not think so. And of course you have to again say people are different, some people may go to their grave not healed because they want to hang on to their anger for reasons that are theirs. But I would not say that that is true of a generation at all. I think that there are lots of connections across racial lines within our generation that 45 years ago would have been difficult to sustain. I think that there's certainly men and women in our generation have engaged in deep debates about what it means to be men and women and have come to various kinds of resolutions about that. I think separatism, except for a few people who hang onto it, separatism, is not where people are pulling away and refusing to talk to those who are different. And I think most of us, and here, I will just speak personally because I do not really want to speak for my generation, but I personally feel grateful for having been able to live through the things I lived through. And there was a time that was very divisive and fairly painful because of that. But I do not feel I am stuck in that place at all. And the people that I know in my generation are not either.
SM (01:20:46):
I know that Senator Muskie in his response, made no reference to anything in the (19)60s, nothing, not even (19)68 convention. He looked up at the students after about 30 minutes, it looked like he had a tear in his eye. And he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War due to the issue of race." And he went on to talk about that in detail and the loss of life during the Civil War, because he had just seen the Ken Burn series.
SE (01:21:16):
Oh, that is interesting. That is really interesting. Well, I do think that there are a huge amount of unhealed things in American society, but then we're not talking about a particular generation. And if you look at the immigration debate right now, we have got a lot of some of the same awful stuff going on.
SM (01:21:42):
My next to last question is a question dealing with, I have talked to many feminists and I talked to one prominent feminist at her home in New York City about six weeks ago. I will not mention her name, but she likes the National Organization for Women. But she says she is disappointed in it because of the fact that if you walk into their headquarters now, the only things you are going to see as far as pickup materials, this is the first perception you have when you walk into an office. They have literature there dealing with abortion, literature dealing with the pill, and I think literature dealing with AIDS. And her comment was, "Those are all important issues, but there is a lot more issues for women than that." And she felt that that they have been hung up on those three issues.
SE (01:22:39):
And I do not have enough inside information about NOW to make a statement about them and their priorities as an organization. And I certainly think that there is reasons in Tidal Wave, I really wrestled with why the body was so important in the second wave of feminism, and you are lifting up issues that are about that. Also, domestic violence and so forth. But I would agree that we have a huge range of issues, and it is going to take a new generation to articulate a new focus based on their lived experience. Because I think people in our generation, we know what we experienced, but the world has changed in so many ways that we need new generations to clarify where are the flashpoints for them.
SM (01:23:43):
The plan of question here is the issue of trust. One of the qualities that has often been defined within the boomer generation, and that really includes the entire generation, even the activists, I have read this in books, it is just they are not a very trusting generation. They have not been trusting from the get-go, particularly with respect to the leaders that represent them in government. And as a result of the lies that many of them have seen and the disappointments that they have had in their leaders from the time they were young, right into their twenties and thirties. And they saw Lyndon Johnson, and they knew that the Gulf of Tonkin was a lie. They saw Watergate with Richard Nixon. They were questions about President Kennedy's policy on Vietnam. And anybody who was a student, particularly in the first 10 years of the boomer generation, knew that Eisenhower was the first one that lied on national television about the U2 incident. And I had interviewed one person who said that I believe in leaders. And certainly I always believed in Ike until he did that. And everything changed. So we know from history that many of the people in the (19)60s and (19)70s, the people on college campuses did not trust university presidents. They did not trust their religious leaders in the churches and synagogues. They did not trust anybody in corporate leadership. They did not trust anybody in the leadership responsibilities. So the question I am asking, do you believe that that is a negative or a positive within the generation? And I add one other note. The reason why I asked this question, I was in a Psychology 101 class at Binghamton University in my freshman year, and the professors talked for an hour about the importance of trust. And its basic premise was, if you cannot trust, you will never be a success in life. Yet seems like a lot of the movements that came because we did not trust. Women did not trust men; the anti-war women did not trust the leaders in Washington. You got all the movements, so just whether it's good or bad?
SE (01:26:03):
Oh boy, I need to pull your question apart again. You have got a lot of specifics that are true. People learn to distrust leaders who were not trustworthy. You end up with Watergate. But the issue, I am not quite sure about the framing of your issue, because you are saying, here is a generation that discovered as leaders were not trustworthy, did that condemn them to never being a success?
SM (01:26:40):
Well, that was a professor saying that, but I am just –
SE (01:26:44):
I think what it does is put a burden on us to build a democracy in which we in fact do hold our leaders accountable in such a way that we do trust them. And that is a long-term change that we need to work to bring about. And that requires a lot more engagement at the grassroots level. All those ideals about participatory democracy and so forth. Some are not realizable on a large scale, but they create some values that are very important to figure out ways to bring about. And they are pretty, are plenty of people that came in my generation out of the (19)60s as community organizers working at the grassroots level, doing the kind of things that Barack Obama later did. And so that is not just about a negative attitude saying, "Authority is bad," or you that you cannot trust anyone over 30. Well, most of us are maybe double 30. So, problem. But it does raise a question of how do you create a society in which you have leaders that you do trust? Not because you hand off to them responsibility and do not pay attention, but because you are engaged with them and they are accountable to you.
SM (01:28:17):
Since I have two minutes, so can I ask one more?
SE (01:28:23):
Okay.
SM (01:28:24):
And that is the last question.
SE (01:28:25):
I am making coffee in the background. So you are just going to hear little [inaudible].
SM (01:28:28):
That is okay. What do you think the legacy will be of the generation that grew up after World War II when the history books are written 50, 75 years after they are gone? What will historians and...
SE (01:28:46):
I do not know. I do not know. I am a historian, and that guessing about the future is something that I have a tough time with because I really do not know. I do think it is a demographic bump. It had a particular shared experience as a cohort or some sub cohorts within it, was involved in massive changes in American society. But I think there is a lot more that we need to know about what comes after, before we can make those judgements.
SM (01:29:24):
You are right, because we are just talking about boomers.
SE (01:29:28):
We are in the middle of it still.
SM (01:29:29):
Yeah. We are in the middle and they can change a lot of things. And the one thing I did not mention when I was talking about healing, and that is the fact, how is the Vietnam Memorial itself, I am sure you have been there –
SE (01:29:42):
Oh, it is very powerful.
SM (01:29:43):
Yeah. When Jan Scruggs wrote the book To Heal a Nation, his goal was not only to heal the veterans and their families, but hopefully to heal the nation from that war. What do you think that is done with respect to the healing process, not only for vets and anti-war people, but the nation as a whole?
SE (01:30:01):
Well, again, I do not have any data on the nation as a whole. I can tell you my own personal experience of that memorial was extremely powerful. And I have talked about it with my students often when I talk about the Vietnam War and how it tore this country of par. And then talk about that beautiful place, which is like a scar and it names the names and it is a place of mourning and grief, and people leave their wreaths and they leave teddy bears and whatever. It honors without glorifying. And I find that very, very profound.
SM (01:30:46):
And of course, Diane Carlson Evans did a tremendous job making sure the Women's Memorial was there.
SE (01:30:52):
Right.
SM (01:30:53):
And she had to go before Congress, and she had to deal with a lot of issues that women have had to face their whole lives through the hearings.
SE (01:31:00):
Exactly.
SM (01:31:00):
Was there any question I did not ask that you thought I was going to ask?
SE (01:31:04):
No, I was not quite sure what your trajectory was, but I will be very interested. When do you think you are going to finish this book?
SM (01:31:15):
Well, the interviews are going to end at the end of September, and then I am going to be hibernating for about six months and transcribing all of them myself.
SE (01:31:24):
Wow.
SM (01:31:24):
I am not going to –
SE (01:31:24):
That is a lot of work. I know. I have done.
SM (01:31:26):
Yeah, because I do not trust anybody else. Peter Goldman, who I have gotten to know who wrote the book on Malcolm X said he has had nothing but bad experiences handing off transcripts, even when they were covered by grants, he says, "I end up doing them all over again because of the mistakes that are made."
SE (01:31:42):
Oh.
SM (01:31:43):
So anyways, I am hoping that next year it will be done and then I am finishing, like I said, I am going to need two pictures of you though.
SE (01:31:55):
Okay.
SM (01:31:56):
And I do not know if you can mail them to my home address or I can email you just two.
SE (01:32:02):
What kinds of pictures?
SM (01:32:03):
Just –
SE (01:32:04):
Why do not you send me an email telling me what you're looking for? I can send them to you on email.
SM (01:32:08):
Okay. I will.
SE (01:32:11):
So that would be the best way to do it.
SM (01:32:13):
Well, thank you very much.
SE (01:32:14):
You are very welcome.
SM (01:32:15):
And you have a great day.
SE (01:32:15):
All right.
SM (01:32:15):
Bye now.
SE (01:32:15):
Bye.
(End of Interview)
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Sara M. Evans
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Evans, Sara M. (Sara Margaret), 1943- ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Dr. Sara M. Evans is a Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Minnesota. She has helped the university become a center for Women's History and Women's Studies, showing how women's lives impacted society. Dr. Evans earned her Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts from Duke University and received her PhD from the University of North Carolina.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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2010-08-16
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.49
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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92:32