153 10 1775 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/0c1104ed0fb3a0a1e44aa826908d9bcf.jpg 6ece1a61dab48f9a1fbf3271a03ac523 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/32917909293bb94458f8389ee5f641d2.mp3 66d45c3b65f66d3125cca06306c3f673 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2011-02-12 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Michael Kazin, 1948- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Michael Kazin is a historian and professor at Georgetown University. Kazin's research focuses on the American social movements from the 19th and 20th centuries. He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master's degree in History from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. &quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:7043,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Dr. Michael Kazin is a historian and professor at Georgetown University. Kazin's research focuses on the American social movements from the 19th and 20th centuries. He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master's degree in History from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford 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 MicroCassette Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;George McGovern; Foreign policy; Conservatism; Generation gap; The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam; Vietnam War; McCarthyism; Montgomery Bus Boycott; The moon landing; John F. Kennedy inaugural address; Neo-liberal; Radicals; Higher education; African Americans; Pop culture of Nineteen sixties; Richard J. Hughes; New Leftist; Harvard University; Students for a Democratic Society.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">George McGovern; Foreign policy; Conservatism; Generation gap; The Wounded Generation: America After Vietnam; Vietnam War; McCarthyism; Montgomery Bus Boycott; The moon landing; John F. Kennedy inaugural address; Neo-liberal; Radicals; Higher education; African Americans; Pop culture of Nineteen sixties; Richard J. Hughes; New Leftist; Harvard University; Students for a Democratic Society.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:54:16 Subject LCSH Historians; College teachers; Georgetown University; Social movements--United States--19th century; Social movements--United States--20th century; Kazin, Michael, 1948--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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Michael Kazin Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 12 February 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:02): Testing, 1, 2, 3, testing. MK (00:00:11): [inaudible] if you rather, but this is more comfortable. SM (00:00:12): That is fine. It carries pretty good. MK (00:00:16): You got two of them, huh? SM (00:00:17): Yep. MK (00:00:17): Stereo. SM (00:00:18): For the last maybe hundred interviews I have had two, because Peter Goldman gave me some advice there too. He said, you need to have two interview tapes because if you are redoing the tape and something that happens to one, you got a second one. Could you tell me a little bit about your growing up years? I know you had a famous dad who was a literary critic and a very well-known critic, but what were your early influences? Who were your role models, teachers, historians, and how important was your dad in shaping who you became? MK (00:00:53): Well, I will deal with him first, I guess. I was born in 1948. My parents were actually divorced when I was one and a half. I have no memories of them living together. So direct influence in terms of being by the house, there was not any, I saw him once a month or so. We had a difficult relationship. He was not very good with little kids. He was only comfortable with people if he could talk about books and ideas. And when you are five years old, you do not really do that. So, we had a difficult time, but by the time I started at junior high or high school, at least, I do not remember exactly when people said, "Oh, are you the son of Alfred Kazin?" He was part of this world of what Irving Howe called the New York Intellectuals. And I grew up in a suburb of New York, Pinewood, New Jersey, near just a one exit off the South East Parkway from George Washington Bridge. SM (00:01:53): It is Englewood, is not it? MK (00:01:54): Yeah, Englewood. So I kept hearing about him. I read his work when I was in high school and we argued about politics. When I was in high school. He was a Cold War liberal, and I was beginning to be an anti-war liberal. And then of course, later on, a radical. So I think the conflict between us, which was partly personal and partly political, was constructive, I think, to teach me how to argue about politics with someone who is very smart. And also I learned to take ideas very seriously. And also, without thinking about it at the time, I certainly learned that you could have a pretty good life being a teacher and a writer, which of course is what he was. He was more writer than teacher. He taught all the time, but his real passion was for writing. He taught only because he could not make enough money writing. If he could have made enough money writing, he would not have taught. Which is not true for me. I love teaching. So other influences. My mother, of course, who I grew up with, who was on the left politically. She had gone to Russia in 1936 when American liberals as still thought Russia was a pretty good place, at least a lot of them did. And just as a tourist, she went. And she had been involved in various popular front groups in the thirties, a fellow traveler, old term for that. And she had friends who I met, some of whom were emigres from Nazi Germany, who got out just in time in the thirties, and I met them growing up. And our next-door neighbors were left-wingers. They subscribed to a magazine [inaudible] called the National Guardian, which was a left-wing magazine. You might know of it. Again, late (19)40s. In fact, one 4th of July they had a barbecue, and they had The Weavers over to sing- SM (00:03:59): Oh my God. MK (00:03:59): In the backyard next door. SM (00:04:01): Pete Seeger. MK (00:04:03): That was pretty cool. This is, I forget exactly the year, sometime in the (19)50s. So I grew up in, what I understood later was a particular kind of left liberal background, people who had been close to the Communist Party at one point, but no longer were, it was mostly Jewish, not all Jewish, certainly. And my schools, I will not go into great detail, but my schools were influenced too. I went to a public school until seventh grade in my hometown, in Englewood, New Jersey. And it was an integrated school. And in fact, my first two teachers were Black, first grade and second grade teachers. And so, I think, again, in retrospect, I never had an experience of seeing Black people always under me. And I was a great baseball fan, still am. And I used to go to games in the [inaudible] grounds in Englewood and crowd was almost half Black at that time. Baseball was a very popular sport among Black people then, much more than this now. And that was important too. I was a Dodgers fan. The Dodgers had signed Jackie Robinson. So this was all part of the gestalt of politics and culture at the time. So, I would not say I had any role models per se, but clearly my parents were the biggest influence on me and being part of this whole milieu. I met my father's friends. I met Norman Mailer, met Robert Loeb, Richard Hofstadter, who was his best friend. These, in retrospect, very important intellectuals. But at the time, I just thought were my father's friends. And I identified very early with left-wing causes, civil rights movement. There was a sit-in Englewood for integrated schools. And my mother would not let me go, but I talked about it at my school. SM (00:06:19): How old were you at that time? MK (00:06:20): 14, I think. SM (00:06:20): Okay. Wow. MK (00:06:22): She was afraid of violence. I wanted to go to the March on Washington (19)63. I forget why I did not go, but I did not for some reason. But I started to go to anti-war demonstrations very early in early (19)65. And also my stepfather, Mario Salvadori, who was a professor of engineering Columbia, helped to sponsor the anti-war teach-in at Columbia. It was one of the first anti-war teach-ins in, I think it was January (19)65, February (19)65. I do not know exactly when. And I ran for a school president at one point too. And I was [inaudible] because I had talked about my views about the war and so forth. And I remember one poster of the candidates who ran against me showed Khrushchev on one side, Castro on the other side and me in the middle all of us shaking hands. So, I lost, that is why I lost. And also, I worked on political campaigns. I worked on John Kennedy's campaign as a 12-year-old in Englewood. And at the time, when Englewood was basically Republican and Nixon was very popular. I worked on Johnson's campaign in (19)64. I was head of a group called Young Citizens for Hughes. Richard Hughes was running for reelection as governor of New Jersey. So I was not a new leftist yet. I was still a liberal Democrat. But I like a lot of people I knew, there was a continuum in some ways between being a liberal Democrat, at least there and being leery about the Cold War. My mother took me to a SANE nuclear policy, the group SANE rally in Madison Square Garden in I think (19)58, which was part of their campaign for a nuclear test ban treaty. And I heard Dr. Spock speak, he was a lead speaker at the time. SM (00:08:25): William Sloan Craws was connected to that. MK (00:08:25): So as I said, there was a lot of stuff going on. SM (00:08:28): Did you talk to your dad? When I looked at what your dad, the people that he liked the most, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, they were the really big thinkers of the 19th century that he, and, of course, they were role models to a lot of people on the left, especially Thoreau and Emerson. Did he ever talk to you about them? MK (00:08:45): Not so much. Part of our conflict was that I tried to stay away as much as possible from people he liked. He loved Henry Adams, I did not meet Henry Adams until I was much older. He loved Dreiser loved. I did not meet Dreiser until I was much older. So if my father wrote about somebody, I made a point of not reading until I was older. SM (00:09:00): I can understand. MK (00:09:01): We read Thoreau and Emerson High School a little bit. SM (00:09:07): How did you end up at Harvard? How did you pick Harvard? MK (00:09:12): Well, it was Harvard. Obviously, back then, if you get into Harvard, you would try. And also, my father had always wanted to teach there. He was a great admirer of people. He was friends with [inaudible] Junior. He looked up for Perry Miller, a great scholar of the Puritans who was a Harvard teacher. And he would have wanted to teach at Harvard if he could have. So certainly, to get into Harvard back then for a upwardly mobile intellectual Jewish kid was the pinnacle of academic success. So that is why I applied. I did not think I would get in, but I did. I applied other schools. I did not get in everywhere. I did not get into Stanford where my daughter goes Now, I did not get into Haverford, but I think I was very political. Harvard probably liked that in my application. I think my statement I wrote about why I wanted to be US Senator. I said, "I do not want to be president because it is not time for a Jewish kid to be president yet. But I would like to be Senator." SM (00:10:27): Was Chuck Schumer in your class? MK (00:10:30): He is one year younger, I think. SM (00:10:31): And was David Eisenhower also there at that time? MK (00:10:39): Yeah, actually, no, he went to Amherst, I think. He did not go to Harvard. But in my freshman dorm, he was friends with one of the kids in my freshman dorm. And we used to have parties and he and Julie Nixon would come to these parties and bring their own bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label. Like the secret of service, they do not drink from anybody else's. SM (00:10:58): I remember years ago reading about him that Fred Grandy, the actor, his father had picked him to be kind of the role model for David when he went there as a first-year student. MK (00:11:10): I think it was Fred's room where the parties were. SM (00:11:13): Yeah. Fred was a year older than him. Anyway, now, you were very active at Harvard and you became president of the Students for a Democratic Society, which had one of the largest- MK (00:11:23): Co-chairman was the actual name. SM (00:11:26): That was one of the largest chapters. Even I remember this back then, it was the one of the largest chapters of SDS, I think, in the country at that time. MK (00:11:34): I am not sure. SM (00:11:37): What was your student life like? I really want you to talk about the experience of the Harvard Yard experience because that is a historic event. When you think of Columbia of (19)68, when you think of Harvard in (19)69, when you think of Ken State in (19)70, these are really historic events to me, as a person who studied the (19)60s. What was the main issue? Describe what was going on there in (19)69, how this all evolved. MK (00:12:08): Well, of course, this happened after the student of the left had been growing for a couple years, beginning with in many ways, with the free speech movement from Berkeley in (19)64 and going onward. And of course, things got really amped up with the escalation of the war. And then with the Columbia strike in the spring of (19)68. In Some ways there was a kind of emulation competition going on. I think without emphasizing it too much, we felt, "Well, Columbia SDS can shut down their school. How come we cannot shut down our school?" Because I had a lot of friends in Columbia SDS, some of whom died in the townhouse explosion. Ted Gold and I was friends with Mark Wood. We worked together at SDS regional office in New York in (19)67. So, I knew a bunch of people. But anyway, the key issue, of course, was the war as it was everywhere. That is why you had a large new left as you know. It would not have happened without that. And we were very responsible, I think, contrary to the image that a lot of people have about the students running amok and going crazy and smashing things. We believed in organizing. We had a careful campaign, which is probably detailed in that WHRP book. We began in the fall of (19)68, some ways coming off the Democratic Convention in Chicago where I was and got arrested. And we decided, "Well, what is the main tentacle of the octopus of the war machine on campus? Well, it is RTC." Now, there was not much. RTC maybe had 30 people in it. It was not a big deal. But other people in the country were attacking RTC. It was one way we could localize issues of the military and the war. So, we started petition to, in a very responsible way, to try to get the administration to abolish RTC on campus. And they refused. And so we kept going to meetings and making some noise, faculty meetings, and some people got arrested for disrupting a meeting. But in the end, we got, I do not remember how many, but we had many thousand signatures because the war was very unpopular at Harvard, as it was a lot of campuses like that around the country, so it was not a problem. And then had house meetings at the Harvard houses. We had house meetings in Harvard Yard where the freshmen lived. We did what organizers have always done. I spent probably, that was my junior year, I spent most of the year organizing, not much time on classes. And we basically had The Crimson on our side, the daily newspaper, which was useful, of course. They would report on our meetings. I do not want to go into great detail about this, but we had two pretty antagonistic factions within SDS as you probably read about. One was my faction, which is we sort of called the new left faction. It was sort of loose. We liked rock and roll, and we thought there was nothing wrong with smoking dope. And we wanted a sort of vaguely radical democratic society. Was not too sure what that might mean. We were very pro Vietcong, we were pro the Cubans, but we were very supportive of Black Panthers and other Black power groups. But we were very critical of what we saw as sort of dogmatic Marxism. And of course, the other side was the Progressive Labor Party, which was a group, as you probably know, that was [inaudible] for the Communist Party in the early (19)60s over supporting the Chinese and the Sino-Soviet Split. And they were very hard-nosed about how you have to organize workers and do strike support and men should cut their hair, women should wear dresses and very counter-culture of all kinds. So we had a lot of divisions and they tended to be actually on campus actions more militant than we were. So when it came down to deciding, when the faculty did not agree to abolish RDC, we had to decide what to do. And at first, people in our faction were not in favor of taking a building, taking University Hall, which was the administration building on campus, the main one. But the PL group called the Workers Student Alliance always was in favor of it. They believed in being more militant. And also they wanted to build their faction nationally. And they knew, if they were the leaders of a chapter which shut down Harvard, this would be a feather in their cap. And there were three co-chairs of SDS. I forget exactly why we had three, but that is the way it evolved. Two of them were from their faction. I was the only one from our faction. But PL because they were so hard line on dogmatic had a certain, was not as popular in the wider student body as our faction was. So, a lot of people who were not in SDS looked to me, I think more as a leader than they did to those people. So again, and this, of course, is always true at the time, if you want to have a militant action, you do it when the weather is nice. And, of course, up in the Boston area, it did not really start until April. So April 9th I think is when we took over University. Again, this is all detailed in these books. But we had a very tempestuous meeting the night before going back and forth. And I thought we had to seize the moment or seize the time as the Black Panthers used to put it. And so if we were going to force the issue, we had to do it then. So, I was always in favor of taking the building, even though the first votes in this meeting were not in favor. So somewhat manipulatively, I must admit, I kept the issue alive. And PL was prepared with that too. So in the end, I think the vote was inconclusive. I forget exactly what the vote was, but I have not gone back and looked at these books to check. But we decided we were going to have a march after the meeting was over that night, I guess April 8th it was and march through campus. And I had a list of our demands. And I, the historian already, nascent historian, I knew about Martin Luther tacking these 95 theses up on the door of the cathedral in Germany. So, I decided to go to the President's office and tacked the demands up on his door and made some little speech of some kind. And then as we walked around Cambridge after that, our faction and the PL faction decided we were going to take the building. So we spent much of the night putting together leaflets, passed them out on campus. And at noon we went to University Hall and kicked the deans out. PL people picked the deans up and took them out. They wanted to show them a little of who they were, which in the end they got arrested. Some of the people who did, they got arrested for that. And you want me to go into University Hall, what happened there? SM (00:19:41): Yeah, you took over the hall. How long did it take? MK (00:19:45): We were there for basically from noon until about 6:00 AM the next morning when the police came in. And there was a big debate. Actually, I was not inside University Hall when the police came in. I thought someone should go out of the hall and first of all see if they were in and if they were, tell people that the police were coming. And then I thought I would go back in the hall. But I went outside and the police started to come in almost as soon as I got outside. So, I said, "Well maybe I will stay outside and not get arrested and get the stuff going." And also, to be honest, in retrospect, I was a little scared too. I did not like the idea of just sitting there and getting my head beaten. And again, I think it was probably a good decision because the other leaders of the chapter were arrested. So I was able to start a rally on the steps of Widener Library right in Harvard Yard, denouncing the police and calling for a student strike as other people were doing too. And the student strike basically started spontaneously, in large part, not necessarily because everybody at Harvard thought we had done the right thing by taking the building. There was a lot of people... Got the dog on your tape there? SM (00:21:05): Yeah [inaudible]. MK (00:21:06): A dog passed by [inaudible], but it is her turf. SM (00:21:08): Brody does the same thing. MK (00:21:10): Zoe shut up. SM (00:21:13): Brody just barks because he does not want anybody to leave. MK (00:21:15): Really? She gets upset when we go on a trip. As soon as we bring her back downstairs, she knows what is going there. SM (00:21:22): Oh, boy. Does she bark? MK (00:21:23): No. Sits in front of the front door and says, "You are not getting past me." Where were we? Oh yeah, the strike. So as often happened, it happened at Columbia too, other places, the student movement grew large partly because students were in support of our basic anti-war position, even if they were not in support of our specific politics, dogmatic imperialism, supporting the people fighting American troops and so forth. But they really got active when they saw their friends getting clubbed by police. And we would not have had a huge, good strike without that if we just sat there. In fact, ironically, if the administration just let us sit in that building and they just waited us out, we probably would have had to leave in defeat. But in the end, the calling the police in, which of course they had a legal right to do, galvanized the student strike. And we had big meetings at the Harvard stadium across the river, 10,000 people, 12,000 people, obviously the cover of Black Magazine because it was Harvard. Now, what we were doing was not all that different really from what was happening on hundreds of campuses around the country. SM (00:22:45): In happened in Hamilton too. MK (00:22:45): It was Harvard. That is the reason it was a big deal. And we knew that. We knew we would make a splash by doing this. I must say though, one of the things that I realized, and I have written about since then was, you can see how happy or glad I should say, the police were to bust our heads when they came in. And this a [inaudible], the idea of driving their cruisers into Harvard Yard, leaving deep ruts in the grass of Harvard Yard. These were mostly middle class white guys from Cambridge, from other parts of the Boston area who all thought Harvard was these stuck up, privileged, rich people. And to them, I think, even though all of us certainly were not rich, lots of [inaudible] kids and so forth, but to them it was pretty clear, they took a certain glee I think in smashing into Harvard and smashing up these unpatriotic freaks who had [inaudible]. SM (00:23:48): James Fallows was there too, I believe around that time. MK (00:23:50): Yeah. [inaudible] here now. SM (00:23:52): And then, of course, just recently, the death of John Wheeler, the murder. And I had interviewed him for my book. And he had been at Harvard too later on after he had served in Vietnam. MK (00:24:02): Jim was president of Crimson. I am not sure if it was that year, but maybe the year before. SM (00:24:09): And he had written a lot about how guilty he felt about avoiding the draft. MK (00:24:12): [inaudible]. SM (00:24:12): Yeah, yeah. And of course he became close friends of Jack Wheeler over time, The Long Green Line, the book that was written. You went on to Portland State and then you went on to Stanford. Were you as active politically on those campuses? MK (00:24:25): Oh, yeah. SM (00:24:26): Now when- MK (00:24:27): Did not have much at Stanford. By then it was the mid (19)70s. And if you are getting a PhD, you do not have much time. But I got active in the early (19)80s again in the nuclear freeze movement. But Portland State, well first of all, I went to Portland not to go to school, not to go to university, but because I was kicked out of Harvard in the fall of (19)69 for leading a demonstration against the people of the Center for National Affairs, which Henry Kissinger had set up, sort of a think tank/elite department. And I went to New York, started work on Liberation Mews Service, this underground press service, sort of like the AP of the Radical Press and long story. But basically they had taken a feminist turn. There were too many men on the collective. They said I could work there, but I could not join the collective. My girlfriend who I met there was not happy about it, but basically, I would not be able to stay there as a man. So, they liked my work a lot. So, I looked at all the papers that were coming to the office there from all around the country, all over the world, for that matter. And the one from Portland, Oregon was a really nice paper. And I always like the idea of living on the West Coast for a while. I had lived in Berkeley for a while, in the summer of (19)69. Actually. Oh, it was (19)68. And so I called up the Portland paper, I said, "Do you need a staff member?" They said, "Sure, $25 a week." And so I hitchhiked out to Portland. And while I was there, the paper, long story, it fell apart basically after about a year. And I had a few jobs, working restaurants and working at Portland State University and Tate Library. And I said, "Well, I always liked history. The revolution might not be happening. I would better think of something to earn a living. I do not want to be short order cook for the rest of my life." So, I applied to Portland State history program just to try it out. SM (00:26:41): And then you went on and got your PhD? MK (00:26:42): Yeah, but while I was there, I was involved in the anti-war movement, which, of course, still going on. SM (00:26:47): A very liberal area out there too, Portland. MK (00:26:51): Yeah. And of course, we had that newspaper that I helped edit, called the [inaudible] Bridge. And I got involved in a free clinic. I was involved with a group called Medical Committee for Human Rights, which was in favor of national health insurance. And actually, it had been originally started by this guy, Howard Levy, who was an army doctor who turned against the war. And I was also involved in, we had a little campaign to impeach Nixon during Watergate. So whatever was going on, I was involved in. And I worked for McGovern, which was sad. But I did for a short time. SM (00:27:26): That was quite at a defeat. I saw McGovern in 1972 when he flew into Columbus, Ohio. He got off the plane but never really left tarmac. And I could not see him very well, but I heard him, Ohio State had a big contingent there. Big. MK (00:27:39): Is that where you went to school, Ohio? SM (00:27:43): Yeah, grad school. I was there for five years I noticed that you had been a professor, and adjunct professor at a lot of different schools from San Francisco State, Stanford, Santa Cruz, even went to Europe for a while and taught there. And then of course- MK (00:27:59): I went to Europe; it was after I was already a tenured professor. SM (00:28:03): And that of course, you have taught at American and now at Georgetown. When you look at your peers, and you have probably been asked this before, and it was not any condemnation of the two generations that have followed the Boomer generation in terms of... But when you compare the students from your era, the students that you went to class at Harvard and Portland and so forth and the students that you have been teaching over the years, do you see a big difference within the generations? And what would those differences be? Because I like the millennials that are today. I know they are doing a lot of things, but... MK (00:28:43): I do not think as deeply about generations as some people do, I guess. I think about groups within generations and they have to all... We know from polls today that Boomer generation is probably more conservative on a lot of issues and has been for a while than younger generations are, certainly on issues like gay marriage, on abortion, on US foreign policy. So, the image that people often have that the Boomer generation was full of leftists, it was not true then, and it is not true now. There was a certain group within it who certainly were, and college students tend to be more than people that did not go to college. But I often tell my students that the most popular candidates in 1972 among people who were from my generation, a lot of them had been voting for the first time, were both for George McGovern and George Wallace. So rebellious figures were popular, it was just not necessarily rebellious figures on the left. And I have written a little about this in my book on populism. So, there is a real division within the generation, I think, more than there was some lock step. One of the things which is true though, and of course, I see these younger generations mostly through my kids who are now 19 and 22 and through my students over the years, and one thing I have noticed since I have been teaching for, wow, 35 years now in college and some in high school too. I taught some high school in the late (19)70s. One of the things I see is that there is less desire, I think, to mix it up ideologically, less desire to really fight over essentials, more inclination to be civil towards other people's opinions, sometimes to a fault, I think. I am always trying to get my students and talk my kids too, to really see that that is a lot at stake in these different points of view. And there is nothing wrong with having sharp arguments about these things. But I notice, especially kids my age, to a certain degree, I have noticed this for the last 10, 15 years of my students too, that they are loath to really take on someone from their own generation, really argue fiercely with them about issues. They feel somehow being impolite or perhaps that in the end, the differences do not matter as much as getting along matters. And that is very different from our generation's feeling as you know. We can be accused of a lot of things, but not taking politics seriously is not one thing we cannot be accused of. SM (00:31:48): Kind of the Rodney King mentality, cannot we all just get along? MK (00:31:50): Yeah. And it is fine. I am not in favor of revolution. I have not been for many, many years now. I am a liberal democrat basically today and I think conservative Republicans have terrible ideas. And I think if they do not explain why I think they do is fine. And I have considered this with my class and I am very empathetic with them. I draw them out, evaluations they give me show that they respect that, and they know I do not agree with them, but they do not argue for conservatism as much as I would like them to, to be honest with you. There is a lot of lazy liberalism on my campus anyway, and my views in general. And I think it is important for my liberal students to hear arguments well-articulated and well defended and vice versa. [inaudible]. SM (00:32:42): I was feeling, when I read the first biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton, I remember when she was in high school, her teacher- MK (00:32:49): In Illinois? SM (00:32:51): Yeah, in Illinois. She was a Goldwater girl, and her friend was a big supporter of LBJ. They had a project, you probably know, have heard about this, and she wanted to debate her friend representing Goldwater. Well, he said, "If you are going to learn about the other point of view and the positions of the people that you are opposing, then you need to learn backwards and forwards what they stand for. So you are going to represent LBJ and your friend's going to represent Goldwater in the debate." And as a result of that experience, Hillary became a liberal. That is a true story. MK (00:33:26): I did not know that. SM (00:33:27): And it was all based on this teacher who realized the true learning and we tell this to students all the time that you can be emotional about your feelings, but knowledge is just power. Know the issues. When you hear Newt Gingrich make statements about President Obama, well you study President Obama and where he stands on things, but you need to study Newt Gingrich too. Just do not take a line here and then- MK (00:33:51): I started to write about conservatism about 20 years ago and it was partly because I wanted to understand why they were doing so well, for someone who did not agree with them. But also it is useful because you learn to not demonize the other side and actually- MK (00:34:03): It is useful because you learn to not demonize the other side. And actually it leads to more civil dialogue, I think. It does not mean you agree with them more, but you at least understand why they have come to that position. SM (00:34:13): Do you like the term, the Boomer generation? I get a sense you like groups within the generation as a- MK (00:34:20): I mean obviously generations matter. I mean they listen to some similar kinds of music. They are affected at the same time of their lives by certain kinds of events. So, I am not saying generations do not matter. I just think this is a big, big country and it is also a big, big world. And to assume that somehow generational experiences are all the same, that is just not the history. I mean also more and more historians; it is just sort of transnational ways of looking at things. And I do that some too and obviously the generation I was part of, especially the cohort of it, there were people in Italy and France, and Germany and Britain, and Japan and Argentina, and Mexico were going to a lot of the same experiences. And to generalize about how the experiences affected them would be presumptuous. What I really know about without studying it, about what a kid growing up in Tokyo who happened to join Jim [inaudible], the Japanese left-wing kids’ organization. What specifically was driving that person? Was it same thing as driving me as a Jewish liberal New Yorker? Probably not. Some things, yes, some things, no. SM (00:35:34): The generation gap is a term we all know. It was defined as the disagreement between the older generation, the younger generation or between parent and child. And if you remember 1968, Life Magazine had that front cover with a guy with glasses on. It was kind of a black silhouette with the fathers pointing at the son and the son pointing at the father. So the Generation Gap was well known. But in the book, the Wounded Degeneration, which was a book that came out in 1980, there was a symposium that included James Fallows, Phil Caputo, Jack Wheeler, a young man then. Who else? Bobby Mueller and Jim White was an unbelievable symposium. And basically they were talking about a lot of different things, generation gap. And they brought up this very important thing. MK (00:36:22): All men are all white. SM (00:36:24): Yeah. And there was another writer that I cannot remember, he was a columnist though, not a vet. And the issue came up and said that the boomer generation has always been labeled as a service generation. That is not what your country can do for you. That Kennedy inspired so many people in the Peace Corps Vista. Well one of the gentlemen in the conversation said that this is a myth, that this generation is a service generation. The reason it is a myth is because they did not serve in the war in Vietnam. A service generation is one when your country calls, you go. And this was Jim Webb I believe, who was the at the time was... And so, he said when we start talking about the generational gap between parents and children, I think it is equally important to talk about the intra generational gap between those who went to Vietnam and those who did not. MK (00:37:19): And those were in the military, and those who did not. As you know, most people went in the military, did not actually go to Vietnam. And that chart, that was chance of circumstances, other charts since then, I always show my students because they have the sense of you in the army and you in combat. Not true. But obviously the idea of being in the military and making that decision when if you are from a certain background like my background, you could get out of it, which I did. That was a huge division as well. I always tell my students about when I had my physical in 1970, it was May 18th I think 1970 if I remember exactly, it was in the middle of the student strike after Ken State, after Jackson State, the biggest of student strike in American history. And I would come from Cambridge, I dropped out of Harvard, but I was a student anymore. But it was clear they did not want anybody from Cambridge like me. And I got out, I will not go into the details of how I got out, but it was not hard and walked out. There was this guy sitting there, short hair, looked pretty gloomy. And I believe that counselor, I said, "Hey, I just got out. You want me to help you get out?" I said, "Where are you from?" He said, "I am from South Boston." Irish, catholic kid probably, I am not sure. And I said, "Get out. Hell, I do not want to get out. If I do not pass this physical, my parents' going to kill me." Because everybody's family had had been in the military and he actually was afraid he would not pass, because he would bring disrespect on his family. So that was an important experience to me to have that interaction. SM (00:38:57): Did you have any conflicts with any of your fellow students in Harvard or Portland regarding over the war or any of the other issues? That would be the intergenerational battles. And then did you have battles within your family with your mom? MK (00:39:10): No, my mom was very- SM (00:39:11): And your dad. MK (00:39:12): My father was opposed to the war. By the time I was eligible for draft, it was (19)66. Because I had a two S for a while, then I burned my two S card. Actually, I am sure you will love this for the book, I actually rolled a joint in my two S card and smoked it. SM (00:39:30): Oh my gosh. That is a magic moment. You cannot go to jail. MK (00:39:41): Yeah, right. Well it was a party. It was party. I got pretty stoned in my dorm. But I mean I thought, again, it is a class thing that Fallis talked about in an essay. I thought the draft system was the cemetery against other class people, which it was. And so, I wrote to my draft board and said, I understand I am doing my draft, but I said, "I am giving up my two deferment and this is a terrible system." And of course the draft boards were all local. So they wrote to my mother or my father, I forget who in the state. "He is putting himself up eligible for draft." And I said, fine. So I went to physical but then failed. I purposely failed the physical. It is not that I wanted to go, it is just that I did not think it was fair for me to have a legal way out when a lot of other people did not. So where were we? So basically, yeah, so that was my experience with that par generation gap. And I went to a private high school in New Jersey, Englewood School for Boys, it was then called. Now it is called Dwight-Englewood School. And there was only one kid I knew who went to my high school, who went to the military and he enlisted, he became an officer. But clearly, I mean that itself shows, I mean this is a whole generation of people. When the draft was on, none of whom, as far as I know, were actually even drafted. He enlisted. SM (00:41:01): Wow. I got so many different angles here. I am coming with this interview. And in your opinion as a historian, a person who studied social movements, I was going to have you do comparisons here, but I am really going to concentrate on the movements of the late (19)60s and (19)70s. But the first question I want to ask, is there any link between McCarthyism of the (19)50s and the red baiting in the late (19)40s and (19)50s that we all know about? Because there is a lot of fear of speaking up. People sometimes felt they were being watched and many were reported and people that were all fear of being linked to somebody or something connected to being a communist. Is there something between what was happening in the (19)50s and what we call in the six (19)60s where we have seen more and more people speaking up and thus, we see these great movements because there is no McCarthyism happening now. MK (00:41:56): Well, there is an attempt. They did not fail. SM (00:42:00): Yeah, it is an attempt. We have seen precedence in, we know that there is prices that people pay for standing up for the beliefs. We know that. So many of the anti-war people that I have talked to believe that they are veterans as well as the people that served in Vietnam. Not in terms of military veterans, but in terms of the damages, broken noses. I have had a few people that- MK (00:42:19): Even though I am supportive of most of what I did then- SM (00:42:22): You are not going to go that far. MK (00:42:25): Got the stretch. I mean we purposefully put ourselves in danger. So whereas if you were drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam, you might not like it, but you had orders. Nothing. SM (00:42:36): Those movements really could not have happened in the (19)50s though. Could they? Even civil rights was happening and people were taking the risks and Dr. King and- MK (00:42:46): That is a different matter. That is a different matter. I am talking about people like me, white middle class kids who were in the [inaudible ]. That was a different matter? No, of course if you were a black person in Mississippi or Alabama and you took your left hand if you wanted to, wished to vote. I mean that was very different. That was very different. Well, I think that the impact of McCarthyism did not last really much since the (19)60s. As you know there was this famous demonstration, Francisco City Hall to protest The House Un-American Activities Committee hearing 1960. And the people who were supportive of the committee, made a film, Operation Abolition, which they thought would expose the communist threat trying to abolish this stolen, patriotic anti-communist committee. And the film was left at it, it felt completely flat. And more people saw the film, said, "Hey, that is a kind of cool kid protesting." And the police attacked them and so forth. So it was a backlash. Todd Gitlin has written his book on the 60s talk about this. Todd's a friend of mine. And so I think that certainly in the south, the civil rights movement with the COINTELPRO program, really with Hoover trying to tar... King with being a communist. So his aid, Stanley Levison having a communist of course has to basically get out of the inner circle and so forth. Under all that was going on, Hoover was still a powerful figure. But among people I worked with, sort of middle class whites, especially in places like New York City and the Bay Area in Chicago, college towns and Swarthmore and Wellesley, and even some places like Chapel Hill, Madison, Wisconsin, McCarthyism was not a cause. These were liberal places would never like McCarthy anyway, and never liked Hoover anyway. And so, the real division was between people who were supporting the Democratic administration and people like us who were denouncing it. So that conservative anti-communism did not really have a place there. I remember there was this guy, Joe Mulotmuraz, his name was, he was from Hungary and he had immigrated after the revolt of (19)56 have been put down by the Soviets and their allies. And he used to show up at every FDS meeting, every FDS rally at Harvard, anywhere in Boston home of the Hungarian Freedom Fighter. He is also an anti-Semite, which has a long history in Hungary. And he had a sign saying communism is Jewish and denounced this. And it was a joke. I mean no one took this guy seriously and he was not the antisemitic, he was like the crazy right wing anti-communist who always showed up. And after a while it became a sort of pat. It was like, "Hey Joe, we missed you last time." I mean he was so serious and he was not convincing anybody. SM (00:46:06): How important were the following events and shaping the times that boomers were alive? And what I am referring to here is, it is amazing how people book state the number of boomers there are, I think 79 million is the actual figure. I heard 74- MK (00:46:22): I think about the (19)60s as well as was active in it. That number, I do not know. SM (00:46:26): 79 is, let us give or take a few amount. But what I am trying to get at here is we know that the new lesson, we know that the anti-war movement was a small number of people comparison to the entire generation. And basically, what I am trying to get at with this question is not so much that these particular events influence and created protests, but that it is subconsciously affected the entire generation in terms of their lives as young people and their lives since as the oldest Boomer turns 65 this year. So, I am listing these events and just simply say which ones are few that you feel really get all of a generation. Congresses Board of Education in (19)54, the Montgomery Bus Boy Act in the (19)50s, the lunch counter protest in (19)60, freedom Summer in (19)64, the Free Speech Movement in (19)64, (19)65. Kennedy's election and his inaugural speech in 1961, Sputnik in 1957, the Kennedy assassination in (19)63. MK (00:47:36): You want me to go each one? SM (00:47:38): Oh no, no, not each one. I am just saying which ones you feel really affected all. And some of them may not affect all, they might affect the new left more than the Civil Rights Act of (19)64, (19)65, the year 1968 when Nixon was elected and certainly Ken State and Jackson State in 1970. And the election or loss of George McGovern in (19)72. And certainly, the escalation of the Vietnam and Reagan's election in (19)80. MK (00:48:04): Well make course without doing research specifically about that, I am just going to speculate because again, it would be great research project to take and maybe someone is doing it to take a scientific cross section of the boomer generation, different cohorts chronologically, different regionally, racially, men and women, et cetera. Yeah, as far as I know, no one has done that. It would be interesting to do that. Someone should do it. Or maybe someone is doing it. Maybe someone has. I should know. But again, just speculating pretty wildly because I believe in research. Clearly the most important events that influenced everybody were ones that influenced all Americans, which is presidential elections. I mean, you forgot about things like the moon landing for (19)69, Woodstock, which probably more if people think about what they still think was important about the (19)60s, those things are more important than any of the things you mentioned except perhaps Kennedy's election. And so Kennedy's inaugural. But again, at the time, how many people actually watched it? Probably not that many. Well a lot did, but there was in American Divided at the end, I think we found a poll done late (19)90s. I think when the first edition of our book came out, people actually, Americans were asked which these things about the (19)60s are most influential to you. And it was the Beatles, Woodstock, and the moon landing, none of them specifically political events. And that is important to realize, partly because people like to remember things that made them feel good. And all the things made people feel good. I mean, human beings are like that. Our lives are fairly short. We rather think about the Beatles than think about Vietnam. And that is probably true of people in Vietnam too. So I mean clearly the war, everyone knew the war was going on. All young men, unless they had some easy out had to think about, do I want to go in or not? And the civil rights stuff you mentioned clearly was any black person, any African American, could not be influenced by those things in one way or another. They were all over the black class, all over. People knew people who were involved in them. Whites, again, I do not know for sure again the research project to figure that out. But if you were in Greensboro, North Carolina, then obviously, or around near any place, citizens were taking place in 1960 that mattered If you were involved in a school that was beginning to be desegregated sometime after Brown, as it took a while, yes. For that to happen, all the liver speed was meant really slow most places and so close cases to actually make it happen after that. I think I am always amazed. I have my students in my 1960s lecture course, which I am teaching right now. I have taught it many times, have them do oral histories. Someone like you are doing with someone from the (19)60s and they have to put in a more demo context. Really do it about race, and they do it with a white person and race is central to it. I am almost amazed how unaware most whites were about what was going on in these terms. I mean, again, most people are making their own lives. They do not feel themselves being involved in making history. Dick Flacks you might know is- SM (00:51:54): Oh yeah, I interviewed Dick. MK (00:51:55): Yeah. He wrote an essay called, Making History. And then he wrote about and read his book on the left, he read his book. And he talked about that. And it is obvious in ways, but somehow a lot of historians forget that, that people do not see themselves as part of this world, historical things. They think about their family, they think about maybe their ethnic group, they think about their church and their religion, but basically they neither have time nor interest in thinking about the larger world and politic people somehow forget that. After the Democrats lost the house in (19)94, I had lunch with Dick Gephardt who had been the majority leader and would have been the speaker of the house if they won. And with some other people, was not just me, in his spacious office, he was about to lose because Republican was taking over. And he said sort of tongue in cheek, he said, "We have polls which showed that 75 percent of the American people neither consume nor wish to consume politics." And that sort of stuck with me. And he was a pretty skillful politician and he understood that most people really, really, we just assume politicians go away and politics go away. SM (00:53:12): In your own words, can you describe... The boomers are reaching 65 this year, the front edge boomers, I think I read that 3,500 people a day are going to be turning 65 until the last Boomer turns 65 from the group from 64. And so, the question I am trying to ask you- MK (00:53:39): I just say, just one quick thing about that, again, the generation really 18 years, I always question that. Barack Obama is a boomer, but is his experience of the (19)60s is really, really much like that of yours and mine? I do not think so. SM (00:53:54): That is what Todd said. And many others besides Todd. Todd said he does not like generations period. He does not like the greatest generation, but Tom Brokaw kind of emphasized, did not like Generation X and you did not like anything. He was like, what you were saying, things within generation. I have learned from this project that the people that were born between 1937, (19)38 and 1945 are closer to the first 10-year boomers, the first front edge boomers than the last 10 years in the boomers. MK (00:54:23): No- SM (00:54:26): Because if you can remember as students, one of the first things you learned and I learned in grad school when I went to Ohio State is the Harry Edwards book where he breaks down the differences between the radicals, the activists, the anomic activists, the militants and so forth. And the revolutionary. And he talked about it and he said a lot of the young people in college, they were being led or inspired by graduate students, students who were in their mid to late twenties. Now those are people born between (19)40 and (19)45. And one thing I have learned from Missy Havens, Richie says, "I am a boomer. I was born in 1941, but I am a boomer and it is because of the spirit of the times that has nothing to do when I was born. It is the spirit." George Hower was born in 1916. He is part of the spirit of the time. So that is one thing I think you really hit the mark. And this is one thing I really learned by doing this book is- MK (00:55:30): Well, I think Mr. should be better sociologist often than, and one of the things sociologists teach is that who influence you the most in politics, as you say, people who are just a little bit older than you. It is peers and people who you see as leaders. And Todd, he is five years older than me, Tom Hayden is maybe six or seven years older than me. I am not sure. I mean, I was in FDS. The people who founded FDS were obviously going to be my mentors in a way. And they were all, as you say, were born before (19)46. SM (00:55:59): Yeah. Rennie Davis was the same. And that whole group is there. I would like your feelings though, in terms of, just as a historian, you teach the (19)60s. When you teach the (19)60s, you have to talk about the (19)50s and certainly the late (19)40s. MK (00:56:15): The first lecture I did was on the (19)50s. SM (00:56:15): And between (19)46 and (19)50 too. Cause when we started being born at that timeframe. Just in your own words, describe America in terms of whether it be culturally, politically activists wise between 46 and 60? MK (00:56:33): That is a good question. Well, it is a combination of clearly economic growth and shared economic prosperity. More shared than any other time and American history. Any other time in world history actually, we know now, given what is happening in Europe and Japan, even in the Soviet plot. Eric Hobsbawm, his book Age of Extremes, wonderful book, which is a world history of 1940, 1989. And he calls these years the golden age, late (19)40s, early (19)70s. It began after World War II, of course. But at the same time there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear that nuclear war had happened, that communists were gaining. There was a lot of racial tension in the cities in the north as much as south. My friend Tom Sugrue has written a book that sort of a very important book called, the Origins of the Urban Crisis. I do not know if you know that book. SM (00:57:39): I know Tom Sugrue, but... S-U-G-R-U-E, right? MK (00:57:43): S-U-G-R-U-E. Yeah. And he points out that about Detroit. Other people have written about this in other cities at the time. If black people tried to move into white neighborhood in late (19)40s, early (19)50s, they often would meet with mobs saying, forget about it. And even though civil rights laws were on the books and some of these states from late 1940s on, it was very hard to, if you are a black person, to get an apartment or a house in a white neighborhood, realtors and final council. And then if they decided, of course, famous block busting- SM (00:58:19): Got 30 minutes, I think we still got 30 minutes. MK (00:58:23): Yes. SM (00:58:23): Because I know that was the one order there. MK (00:58:35): That does not matter, but I am just looking at just ordinary black people wanted to move with the white neighborhoods who did not have any politics to speak of. SM (00:58:43): Yeah, we are okay. MK (00:58:44): Because of course that shows not just racism, but also insecurity on the part of white people in this neighborhood that they felt understandably, that if black people began to move in their house, which is what they had more money stock into than anything else, was going to go down at value, they were afraid their schools would be problems. Of course, they were afraid that their daughters and sons might get involved manically with black people. And so just on and on and on. So, the glory of (19)50s was glorious economically in the aggregate compared to other times in American history. And compared to recent times too. But it was clearly still a time of great insecurity and in great anxiety, many people who were doing better were not so sure that the better times was going to continue. It was a time when institutions were very strong. Labor unions. People forget, were stronger than ever before in American's history. And that had something to do with the prosperity. And obviously corporations are strong. People thought they could go to work for big corporations, GE or Westinghouse, or thrift meat packing or Ford, and you could work for the rest of your life until you retired. And then when you retired, you would have a pension. You would not have to put your money in the stock market like you do now. But at the same time, people would come out of the depression, come out of the war, and they did not know whether this could continue. They did not have great optimism that their kind of country would always be as prosperous as it was. And of course, with the Cold War there, in 1960 debates, when Kennedy talked about the missile gap, which was of course a complete lie, it was all on the other side. But nevertheless, people believed him enough because they said, well, Soviet Union seems to be gaining and all these countries are communists and communists are causing trouble around the world. And so there is this fear that, yeah, the United States are in pretty good shape now, but who knows what the future will bring. And of course, there was youth revolt in the (19)50s too. Rock and roll riots and Elvis, and juvenile delinquents and all this stuff. SM (01:00:53): Gangs. MK (01:00:53): Yeah, exactly. So comic books, there were congressional investigations into comic books. SM (01:00:59): James Dean. MK (01:01:00): It seems hilarious now that people be thinking comic books were a threat to the republic. But nevertheless, as in history, nothing is spontaneous, nothing comes from nowhere. And everything happened in the (19)60s, the seeds were sewn for that earlier. I mean, a lot of them before the (19)40s and (19)50s too. But certainly, in the (19)40s and (19)50s already, you have debates between my uncle Daniel Bell and C. Wright Mills about whether the United States is a plural society or is one run by a power elite? All that is taking place in the (19)50s already, a rather kind of debates between liberal and radicals that we think about in the (19)60s already happening, beginning to happen in the (19)50s. SM (01:01:44): How about the period 1961 and 1980? MK (01:01:49): What about it? How would you contrast it? SM (01:01:50): It is the same thing. Yeah. How would you contrast it with that whole period from John Kennedy's inaugural to Ronald Reagan's inaugural? MK (01:01:57): I think I am not a Marist anymore, but I am enough of a... I believe in important of economics lives enough to believe that when a boom ends, then a lot of other things are affected by it. And that happens in beginning in the late (19)60s, but really as in the early (19)70s with stagflation with the oral crisis. And so, I would, like most of historians and days, I would say the period is more (19)61 to (19)73 than it is (19)61 to (19)80. I mean, the rise of conservatives would be, of course, who knows kind of factually. But it can only be understood in the context of inflation, unemployment of fear that Keynesian remedies are not working anymore. That one of the reasons Americans were willing to elect liberal presidents from Roosevelt to Truman, to Kennedy to Johnson, and have not been willing to ever since, perhaps Obama's exception, but he did not run as a liberal, is because they saw liberals as whether they remember or not, as people who basically said the government will take care of you. The government will keep the economy afloat. And it did not. Even though Nixon was in power when the worst of it happened, the programs were basically the Keynesian programs. And Nixon was the first president, said he was a Keynesian. They are all Keynesian now. So I think that that was a key that you took a win. The (19)60s ended, it ended in the early (19)70s with the economic crisis, of course, with the end of the war. SM (01:03:40): Yeah. And I am the only person that said this. And that is that I knew in the fall of (19)73 that the (19)60s was beginning to end when streaking happened. And I am working on my first job at Ohio University, and I get a call from all my buddies that are still in graduate school there at Ohio State and Jones Graduate Tower. And they said, "You have got to get back here tonight." And I said, "What do you mean I got to get back there tonight?" "Oh, they are going to be doing the Rockettes behind the law library." And I said, "The Rockettes?" "Yeah, the girls are going to come out all naked and then the guys are going to file suit and then there is going to be a big streak across the oval tonight, and then they are going to streak the Olympics all weekend." And I did not believe it, but then I went, I said, "Oh my God, this is in the (19)50s where they just stuck themselves into-" MK (01:04:35): Telephone booths. SM (01:04:35): Telephone booths or in the laundromat. Oh I said, "Oh, boy." MK (01:04:39): Or a panty wave. Right. That is a good point. SM (01:04:42): So that particular period, so when you say the next period really is the onset of, I think the late (19)70s and the (19)80s is the era of Reagan and conservatism, would not you say? MK (01:04:56): Politically, yeah. We talked about this in America Divided, and I think culturally, people on my side continue to gain even, we did not have a movement per se, but feminism continues to percolate in various ways and continues to affect women. I mean, college students today, women, just think if you told them, well, what else we need, that you cannot really think about the engineer because that is a man's job. They would say, "What are you talking about?" The idea that is a man's job, a woman's job. But of course, we were growing up in the (19)50s, that was taken for granted. Ads in the papers said, help wanted, man. Help wanted, women. It was just expected. And I think race is lots a lot more complicated now because of immigration, partly, but also because I think people no longer, again, I mean the civil rights movement did not succeed in all the things he wanted to do. As king was an economic radical, not just a civil rights person. He really wanted a guaranteed annual wage health insurance. He was basically a democratic socialist. In fact, he said so in private. But clearly culturally you cannot be a public racist anymore in this country, and you cannot justify things on the base of race. Now you can still justify the basis of not like the immigrants, and that is partly racial, but that is more recent. And the whole thing about sexuality, which of course gays and lesbians have been able to more open sexuality and people thinking, if you love each other, why not have all the right to anybody else? That is a creature of the (19)60s, I think, too. SM (01:06:39): And the age crisis, which infuriated many of the gay lesbian leaders, because Reagan refused to even mention the word. And many believed that he cost thousands on thousands of people that dying because he could not even say the word. MK (01:06:53): Which is ironic, because as he was not anti-gay personally. I mean, Nancy had lots of friends who were gay and this whole Hollywood scene it was, and designers and stuff, he was hardly a fundamentalist on these issues. So in that sense, yeah, conservatives, I mean, we talked about this in American Divided, conservatives won for the most part politically. Though again, there is limits too. I mean, as you know, when they attack the healthcare bill last year, this year, they attacked it for jeopardizing Medicare, which of course Ronald Reagan said was socialism at the time. So there is a lot of these conflicts. I mean, America's never been as liberal as some people thought in the (19)60s. It was not as liberal then as its people thought, and it is not as conservative. And it was not as conservative in the (19)80s as people thought either. We have these conflicts in American history, which in many ways go way back and neither side wins a complete victory. SM (01:07:47): Would you say the culture was as ongoing with respect to even how they look at Bill Clinton and George Bush the second? Because here you have two boomers, one conservative, one liberal, and they are comparing them, and this guy is this way and this guy's that way. Is that just part of the culture- This guy is this way, and this guy is that way. Is that just part of the culture wars, the ongoing culture wars? MK (01:08:05): Well, the partnership was obviously very strong. SM (01:08:07): The Vietnam War. MK (01:08:09): If you look at it-it in the larger perspective, neither Clinton nor Bush... But both Clinton and Bush were, in many ways, Clinton was sort of center left. Bush was sort of center right. Neither was trying to roll back "New Deal", "Great Society" programs to any great degree. Bush was not a Tea Party person at all. We were not. And Clinton was certainly not a far-off liberal, either. And yet of course, both sides jumped on the other one, partly for Bush was because of the war, of course, in Iraq. But even before that, people saw him as illegitimate winning the presidency and everything else. And I think one of the results in the (19)60s is that people were politically active, which is not most Americans. People who are politically active really believe that the other side is evil. And I was saying before, earlier in the interview, that I think it is important to take a strong stance. But it does not mean that that Democrats and Republicans, as parties, are really ideologically bound parties. They are more than there used to be, certainly. But still most Americans who vote for Democrats, Republicans agree with some of the things the other party is for, too. Most Americans are not deeply ideological. SM (01:09:33): A major question I have been asking every person from the very first interview with Senator McCarthy is the issue of healing. Whether you feel that there is an issue within this generation of lack of healing for those who were... Support for the war, against the war, for the troops, against the troops, the divisions between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight. This question comes because a group of students came up with a question, they wanted to ask Senator Edmond Muskie when we took a group in 1995 to meet him in his office. And because they had seen the film on 1968 and they thought we were close to a second civil war. And they were not born yet, but they had seen the riots, some of the films in (19)60s, they had seen the riots. They saw two assassinations, King and Kennedy. They saw the Chicago Eight trial, they saw the terrible confrontation in Chicago that year. And they came up with a question and they thought Senator Muskie would talk about (19)68 and all the divisions. And I will give you his response after I hear from you. Do you think that part of the divisiveness that we have right now, that there is a link between what is happening today and what happened back then? The bitterness, the somewhat hatred between people with opposing points of view, that this is continuing, ongoing and that the generation itself, either consciously or subconsciously, because you cannot talk about 79 million, but it is something that I have brought up to everyone, and they have all had different answers to this. Do you think we have an issue with healing as a generation? And that many will go to their grave still bitter toward people who had opposing points of view, no matter the issue? MK (01:11:26): Again, it depends on who you are talking about. I think you have to separate people who were activists then and continue to think as activists now. People who were not much activists then, or they might have gone to a demonstration or they might have gone to a rock festival or something, but they were just sort of riding on the wave, whatever the wave happened to be. But those who actually started the waves and continued to want the waves to continue and not to break on the shore, that is the right metaphor. I think yes. I think on both sides, if you talk about two sides, continue to say that if you are on the left, that conservatives now are the same people who are wrong back in the Cold War in (19)64 and supported the war in Vietnam and liked the police cracking people's heads in Chicago and so forth. And of course, on the right, mirror image, "These crypto communists think America's not exceptional." I just wrote a piece. I have a column for the New Republic, and I just wrote a piece on American exceptionalism, how Obama can maybe take advantage of that concept. But as I said before, I think that if you look at issues though, there has actually been some healing. Or I would rather think of transcendence than healing. I am not sure it is healing. As often happens in history, after a while people no longer care to argue about certain issues. It is just not relevant anymore, either to their lives or to the society. It is not politically opportunistic to argue about it. I think we are approaching that with gay rights. Certainly already approached it with gay military. That is over. And I think we will approach with gay marriage in the next five to 10 years, as well. Already at the Conservative Convention downtown, the CPAC convention- SM (01:13:27): CPAC. MK (01:13:27): Happening now. No one. Did anybody talk about gay marriage? Not because they might not believe that it is wrong, but because they realize that most people do not care enough about that to vote on that basis. Abortion is still a very loud issue, and in fact, young people are probably more anti-abortion now than they were a few years ago. But again, it is not something that is central to the dialogue. And someone who is in favor, pro-choice and yet hopes that people do not have to have abortions, I think that in many ways that is where the center of Americans are. They do not want to make abortion illegal, but they would like it to as few abortions possible. So, there is ways in which people are transcendent to those debates. Foreign policy... Again, I will not go into all the issues, but yeah, I think that is basically where we are. That activists, core activists on both sides will not surrender. But the large majority of people from the boomer generation, I think, have transcended the idea that there are two sides. They have a more complicated position depending on the issue and depending on their experience. SM (01:14:37): Do you think the Vietnam Memorial, the wall... I want to ask you, when you went there for the first time, what did you first think in terms of... Were you having flashbacks of your youth? MK (01:14:48): No. SM (01:14:48): When you went to the wall for the first time? I am going to get back to this question of healing, but as part of it, Jan Scruggs wrote a book called "To Heal a Nation". And of course the goal of the wall was to heal the families of those who lost loved ones in Vietnam and also those who served the nation in Vietnam. And many are still going through unbelievable problems upon their return. Just your thoughts on whether Jan Scruggs's idealism of hoping that that wall would heal the generation, because we were so divided over the war, I do not know if there has been healing between Vietnam vets and anti-war people, but your thoughts on going to that wall and whether it will heal the nation anymore. MK (01:15:34): My first thought as someone who was spent important years of my life in the anti-war movement were that this was an anti-war memorial, because it is black, it is a gash in the earth. SM (01:15:44): Yeah. MK (01:15:44): It is right next to the Lincoln Memorial, which is a memorial to a war that was won. At least by the north, it was won. Great Greek temple, it is like a Parthenon. That one is also a war memorial. And I think it is a brilliant piece of public art. She is a brilliant architect, Maya Lin. But also, I was aware that people going there were able to have a mourning experience publicly and privately that they had not been able to have before. So I think it was wonderful in that sense. By the time it started, I forget when I first saw it, maybe two years after, three years after it was finished... (19)85, I think I came here first. I was living in California before then, so I had not been back there to see it. I was blown away by it. I really thought it was one of the most beautiful pieces of public art or architecture I have ever seen, because it allowed you... It made you think right away about the war. It did not tell you what to think the way I think the World War II Memorial does, which I hate. I hate that memorial because it just... SM (01:16:57): Ooh. MK (01:16:59): Oh, "All hail the concrete heroes." Wars are not that simple. People die in large numbers. And anyway, and the Vietnam, our memorial, I saw people there. I saw people crying. I went there at night, I think, the first time, and saw the candles there and people's faces reflected in the black marble, which is a brilliant effect. Now, clearly, this came out of a desire to heal those divisions, which even though those divisions were very raw, clearly enough people got on top of them, the Vietnam vets groups, scrubs, and others to realize that this was not a good thing. And it was not helping either side. Was not helping Vietnam vets, either. And of course, Vietnam vets themselves, we provided, as you know. SM (01:17:48): Oh, yes. MK (01:17:49): A lot of donors were Vietnam vets. We thought they had been betrayed by the country. So some folks, they were betrayed by the country for having sent them there in the first place. Some folks were betrayed by the country for not supporting them more once they were there. So, it is a mix. So, I thought, I still think it is a wonderful place, and partly because it allows all kinds of things to happen. Of course, a lot of people who go there and have petitions against Jane Fonda and people who were there and sold the flags of "Do not forget the MIAs, the POWs", even though there is hardly any evidence, there is still people there. It enabled a debate to take place on a more rational basis, which is very important. SM (01:18:30): But the bitterness towards Robert McNamara is still pretty evident, even though he wrote those two books. Because what he wrote, "In Retrospect"... I will never forget going to the wall. I went to the Vietnam Memorial, which I have been to the Vietnam Memorial, Memorial Day and Veterans Day, ever since I knew Lewis. And after he died, since (19)94. And the very first year I was there... "In Retrospect" was (19)95, I believe. And I have some unbelievable shots that I took there that because, so there were two "In Retrospect" books left at the center, and they had bullet holes in them. They had been taken to a firing range with bullets and left there. And I took about 25 pictures at different angles. Sure. Unbelievable. So the bitterness... But I interviewed Craig McNamara there in California. Craig's unbelievable. I do not know if you could ever get him into your class, if he is ever back in the east. He is a gem. MK (01:19:24): Has he written anything? SM (01:19:25): No, he does not write. No. But he runs a farm out in the North, up in the Napa Valley. It is a walnut farm. He has done very good. And I really respect him. He was an unbelievable person. He was anti-war. MK (01:19:39): I was friends with Bundy's son while in California. He married a friend of mine who was a radical sociologist. And Bundy came to... When I was in the freeze early (19)80s, he came to is this is McGeorge Bundy, [inaudible]. SM (01:19:59): Oh yeah. MK (01:20:00): He came to a meeting and he was very impressive, partly because he was so guilty. SM (01:20:05): Of course, what is really amazing about McGeorge Bundy is McGeorge Bundy, just like Robert McNamara, knew very early we should have gotten out it. MK (01:20:11): Yep. SM (01:20:11): And I bet... And I know both of them went to their grave thinking that. It might have even helped. MK (01:20:17): Well, the fair fact, McNamara commissioned the Pentagon Papers. SM (01:20:21): Yes. MK (01:20:22): It showed historicalness, but also when he quit, it would have been a huge impact if he had said "This was a mistake." But of course, he did not do that. SM (01:20:30): In (19)70, he went to Ashton. I got him in trouble. Do you say one of the qualities that defined the entire generation, though, is their lack of trust? It is not a trusting generation. Again, I am talking about... MK (01:20:42): I think America in general, since Johnson escalated the war in (19)65 and sent American troops in large numbers that year. I think Americans, since then, have not been trusting of any generation. I am not sure... Again, like Todd, I am dubious about thinking about the generation as a whole. And polls showed that. Polls showed it. As you probably know, from World War II up to (19)64, Americans... As you know, Gallop Poll has this every year. "Do you trust this institution, the authorities to do the right thing? Government, church, military, universities, et cetera?" And since that point, government has never had majority. Sometimes it is low, it is like in the teens, like during Watergate. Sometimes it's a little higher, like right after 9/11. Universities are, I do not know, twenties and thirties. Churches are a little higher. Military's usually higher. But in general, Americans as a whole do not have huge amount of trust for any major institutions or authorities. SM (01:21:51): I know specifically, for me, as a young person going into I think sixth grade or something like that around the time, it is that Eisenhower lied at the U2. That is the first time I ever saw a President lie. MK (01:22:03): Yeah. SM (01:22:03): Because I think everybody was shocked that this grandfather figure had lied to us. MK (01:22:12): Of course. Absolutely. Famously, FDR, who I think was a great guy, he lied. He knew the US was going to get into World War II, but he was not going to say it. SM (01:22:22): I wanted to mention that the result of the response to Senator Muskie to that question. Senator Muskie did not even mention (19)68 and then did not mention anything that was happening in America. The students were totally shocked because they were all waiting for this great answer from the Vice-Presidential candidate in (19)68. And he said, "We have not healed since the Civil War in the area of race." And he went on to give a lecture and he said, "I have just seen the Ken Burns series in the hospital. We lost 430,000 people in that war. Almost an entire generation of Southern..." MK (01:22:53): Civil War? SM (01:22:53): Yeah, Civil War. MK (01:22:53): It was more than that. It was 600,000. SM (01:22:53): Yeah. Well, the thing is, he went on to talk about that and he showed his emotion too, by the tears. And actually witnessed what the news media had talked about. The guy had emotion, and there is nothing wrong with that. (01:23:08): One of the things here, too, is the violence. You were a member of SDS. I do not know if you know Larry Davidson. MK (01:23:15): I was living there for a short time, too. SM (01:23:15): Yeah, I am going to bring that in. Larry Davidson founded at Georgetown. He was the founder, he is a history professor at Westchester University., And he founded SDS at Georgetown. MK (01:23:26): I never- SM (01:23:26): Lawrence Davidson. And he was on the front newspapers, he got arrested. His parents were not too happy with him because his father was in the military. But the question is this: he quit SDS because it went to the weatherman in violence. And so many quit. Do not you think? And Mark's done a great job in "Underground". I have interviewed Mark and I was with him for a whole evening at the Kent State last year. MK (01:23:53): I saw him. It is funny, I do not know if you know this. We had lunch, he had not finished the book yet, maybe three years ago. And he had come to Washington and I said, "Why come to Washington?" He said, "Well, the FBI invited me to Quantico to talk about terrorism." SM (01:24:06): You are kidding me. He did not say that he was there. MK (01:24:10): That is hilarious. So, he stopped to Washington on his way out of Quantico. SM (01:24:11): Oh my God. Well, I really like Mark. I love Mark. MK (01:24:16): I liked him back then, too. SM (01:24:18): But he admitted the mistake that was made that he would not have supported violence. And he says about it in the "Underground" book, really, that he was against it. And I think that is where he has had different disagreements. MK (01:24:29): He was not against it soon enough. [inaudible] Right? SM (01:24:31): Bernardine. I am interviewing Bernardine in about two weeks. But your thoughts on, SDS going to the Weather Underground the biggest mistake ever made by SDS was that? MK (01:24:41): Well, no, I think it began before then. And the biggest mistake we ever made was to basically think that revolution was possible in the United States, and talk that way. And to support people like the Black Panthers. This is for Weather Man, who basically talked about revolution. We really thought that. We are so angry at this country... People who run this country, what they are doing, and also at a lot of Americans for supporting what the country's doing, that we basically are not going to identify with the country and not going to make an analysis that any political person should be making of what is possible, and whether what we are saying is jeopardizing what is possible. So, on the one hand, yes, we have built some important movements and the anti-war movement, most important of them, at least for people like me. Of course, the Black movement was also on before then. But I think we... I just finished a book on History of the American Left. I have been thinking about this a lot. It is coming out in August. But ever since the New Left collapsed, there has not been a mass radical movement in this country. There has been campaigns here and there. There has been things like Chomsky and Howard Zinn who speak for radical causes and radical ideas. SM (01:25:58): Right. MK (01:25:59): But basically I think we did not... And it is not just our fault. Context has changed, too. But basically, we did not think about the future. We just thought... Look, we were kids. That is part of it. My wife is always reminding me that when you are 20, 21 years old, you can do a lot of things, but reflecting soberly is not usually one of them. And that is part of all that falling apart. We did not have mentors. And so I think our mistake was an analytical mistake, which came out of our putting emotions ahead of thinking. And some of that was useful. Being angry was important, but we should have coupled our anger with a long-term strategy. And we did not. We thought somehow that everything was coming down around us and we would somehow be able to take advantage of that. And you probably know the history of Nazis a little bit. Famously, the German communists had these battles with German socialists in the streets of Berlin where the Nazis were gaining in votes. And when the German communists were asked why it was more important to eliminate their rivals on the left than it was to fight the Nazis, the slogan was, I forget the German, basically "After Hitler, us. Hitler will not make it. Germans will not follow this crazy guy. And then they will want communists to go in power." And in fact, we believe that. I remember in (19)68, there was a chance Reagan would run for president, even though he had just been elected governor of California. And George Wallace, of course, is running for president. And I thought, "What would it be like if the presidential election came down to Reagan against Wallace?" Two people who, from my point of view, were both crazy right-wingers. And I asked some friends of mine from SDS, and they said, "Great. Country deserves that. Country deserves to go to hell that way." And when I was a Weatherman, long story, but basically people who were in my collective had to give these very short speeches on the subway at one point. Like 30 minutes. And one of the guys in my collective was a working class kid from Northeastern University, from Southie, actually, Irish Catholic kid. Jimmy, I forget his last name. Jimmy O'Toole, I think. And he was reticent about speaking. He just was not used to public speaking. He had to come up with something. So, the subways stops and is quiet all of a sudden. And Jimmy said, " This country sucks." A lot of people thought we thought this country sucks. That is not a way to convince the majority of Americans. SM (01:28:39): Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. Know your stuff. MK (01:28:41): Anyway, so the message that many Americans received from SDS was "This country sucks." And that that is not a message that a majority of Americans... You are not going to convince the majority of Americans to hate their country. You are just not going to. SM (01:29:00): Yeah. MK (01:29:01): And you should not, either. So that is why- SM (01:29:03): One thing- MK (01:29:04): The Weathermen came out of that. See, the Weathermen did not come out of nowhere, it came out of that. We basically said, "Yes, this country sucks. Let us bring it down." SM (01:29:11): You were not in the group that was hiding, were you? MK (01:29:14): No, I left before it went underground. I did not go underground. SM (01:29:17): How we doing time wise? We got five minutes? MK (01:29:19): Five, 10 minutes. SM (01:29:20): Okay. These are just very important terms that, again, the people that are going to be reading this, this is going to be geared to our college students, high school students, and the general public at large. But mostly I want this to be in the (19)60s courses. I have got some great interviews. Jack Wheeler interview, Mike [inaudible], you cannot believe that interview. MK (01:29:36): You are going to have to cut it. You are going to have to make it shorter, though, because college students- SM (01:29:38): No, I know that. MK (01:29:42): [inaudible] pages. SM (01:29:43): Yeah. Just your quick definition of these terms, if you can do it. "Counterculture". What does that mean? MK (01:29:52): It means a set of behaviors and ways of thinking. Stop a sec. SM (01:30:00): Yep. MK (01:30:05): Basically behaviors and attitudes opposed to what people perceive to be the dominant behaviors and attitudes about sex, about drugs, about a lot of things. Friendship, music. It was, I think, more of a youth culture than a counterculture, per se, because so many people were able to be part of what we think of the counterculture, who were just basically consuming differently. Not necessarily changing their minds. Some of them changed their minds. But for the most part, again, they were activists. Everyone with counterculture was not Abbie Hoffman. SM (01:30:43): Right. Participatory democracy, which we know about was part of what SDS's foundation was. And also I believe participatory democracy was very important in the Freedom Summer and the Civil Rights Movement itself. (01:30:56): Bye. Nice meeting you. Take care. (01:30:58): Definition of participatory democracy. MK (01:31:10): Well, again, that is more easily defined because it was the New Left, White New Left, especially, but soon to be Black New Left's attempt to project a vision of the way they thought politics should work. As small scale as possible, as much based on ordinary peoples having a voice as possible, as opposed to representative democracy. It was utopian and impossible to run a society that way. But I think it gave rise to a lot of people joining groups. And in some ways it goes back to Tocqueville and goes back to the flowering of volunteer institutions, voluntary associations in various parts of American life. And I think it was important part of the New Left's appeal that people believe that everyone should be able to have... What was the SDS's slogan statement... Something like "Everyone should have a,..." I forget exactly. "Should be able to help decide, make the decisions that affect their lives." And that makes sense to me. SM (01:32:35): It is people as opposed to one specific leader. That was very important. Black Power. MK (01:32:42): Well again, Black Power had a specific definition at the time in the late (19)60s when it began to be talked about by Stokely Carmichael and others. Clearly was, in many ways, the latest phase of Black nationalist ideology. Black nationalism goes all the way back to Martin Delany and people like that, even before the Civil War. That Black people have to [inaudible] themselves to free themselves, and should also be proud of who they are culturally, how they look, how they dress, their history. So it was both connected to Jewish ethnic assertion, Italian assertion, Irish assertion and identity, and different from it because the history of African Americans in the United States is different from that of any other group for obvious reasons. SM (01:33:35): Why was Che Guevara so important to many people in the New Left? Mark mentioned, when we started having our conversation, he immediately started talking about Che Guevara and how important he was. And he was reading at Columbia. And even since then, why is Che Guevara, Herbert Marcuse, why are they so important? MK (01:33:56): But they are very different. SM (01:33:57): Yeah, I know. MK (01:34:11): Che was much more important than Marcuse. You want about Che? SM (01:34:11): Yeah. MK (01:34:11): Well, it was not that important to me. Ho Chi Minh was more important to me. But he was... First of all, he was cool. He was beautiful-looking. He was international. He saw himself as a citizen of the world. He had been in different countries, Congo, and he was Argentinian, but he was in Cuba helping to make the revolution. He was a writer, an intellectual, as well as being an activist. And that was of course what people like me in the left wanted to be, as well. And he was a martyr, and martyrs are always important. We would not have Martin Luther King Jr. holiday if Martin Luther King was still alive. SM (01:34:51): He was a doctor too, if I am correct. MK (01:34:55): Yes, he was. That was less important to me. And he wrote Guerrilla Warfare, and of course people were beginning to have this romance with guerrilla warfare. And Cuba had a special place. You probably read some of that Van Gosse book, "Where the Boys Are" and so forth. Cuba had a special place in the minds of New Leftists. C. Wright Mills wrote a book before he died called "Listen, Yankee", supporting the Cuban Revolution. And it was in our hemisphere, a lot of Cubans had been in the United States. Of course, then, we tried to overthrow the government. So it was in the minds of people becoming leftists, people already were leftists. It was going to have a very important place. A lot of people have been there. My in-laws, Beth's parents who were in the Communist Party took their honeymoon in Cuba in 1953 or something. SM (01:35:49): You were part of that group called the Vencer... MK (01:35:53): [inaudible] Yeah. I went to Cuba. SM (01:35:54): Yeah, did that- MK (01:35:55): That was after Che died. That was (19)69, (19)70. SM (01:35:57): Did that get you in trouble in terms of the FBI looking at you? MK (01:36:01): Well, I was already in trouble after I was a Weatherman. I was already in trouble because I had been a Weatherman. But yeah, I think my name was mentioned at Senate hearings. I think Senator Eastland from Mississippi said we were "little capsules of revolution", some metaphor he used. "Little missiles of revolution." SM (01:36:17): Has that affected the rest of your career in any way? MK (01:36:20): No, not really. Academia is a pretty safe place for people. SM (01:36:26): This is very important because Tom Hayden, when he came to our campus, really had to almost give a lecture to students on this, the difference between power and empower. Your thoughts on the difference between them. Students sometimes feel they have power, and then you use the term "empower" and they look like this. And if you use this term to boomers who are my age, who are conservative, "Oh God, the (19)60s." So just your thoughts and difference between power and empower. MK (01:36:59): I do not use the term " empower" too much because it seems like jargon, but... Well, power is obvious. Power is you have the ability to get people to do things you want them to do, either because you control institutions or because you have people believe that you are their leader. And "empower" has a connotation more of ordinary people feel that they have the ability to get power and to influence people in power. That is what I think. SM (01:37:35): And then just the difference between the Old Left and the New Left. MK (01:37:38): Well, again, the Old Left was people who became radicalized, mostly 1930s, some earlier. Again, generationally, it is complicated. But people whose primary ideological paradigm was Marxist and was focused on the working class and on the labor movement. Not to say they [inaudible] other things. And people who thought the battle over whether the Soviet Union was a good place or not was absolutely crucial to everything else. The magazine I am co-editor of now, Dissent, was very much part of the Old Left when it got started. And Patton, Irving Howe and other editors battled with people in the New Left, in the late (19)50s, because they thought New Leftists were naive about communism because they were socialists. And for them, the Bolsheviks and then Lenin and Stalin and all those people in the American Communist Party and other communist parties had destroyed any real hope for socialism, because it had made socialism equated with tyranny. In retrospect, I think they were probably right. But at the time, I thought... At the time most of them... I was an anti-anti-communist. I thought anti-communism was just a way of saying "People in power in this country continue, are okay. They might be doing some things wrong, but at least they are not communist, so we cannot really oppose them any major way." And of course, War in Vietnam, a lot of the people, the anti-communists Old Left, were either supportive of the war in Vietnam at first, or very ambivalent about it. Because after all, this was a war against Stalinists, as they put it. And the New Left of course, were people like me, mostly Baby Boomers, not all, as we talked about before, who got radicalized in the late (19)50s and (19)60s, when the key issues were first Black freedom, inequality, then Cuba, and then the war in Vietnam. And the issue of... Marxism was influential, labor. They were pro-labor, but these are not their priorities anymore. SM (01:39:48): And also the difference between neocons and neoliberals. MK (01:39:54): Well, neoliberals means something very different in Europe than it does here. Neoliberalism, here, was a term that was coined I think in the late (19)70s, early (19)80s, by people who were Democrats, capital D, who understood liberalism was in decline and disrepute. And they wanted to move somewhere to the right, less regulation, dubious about affirmative action, try to win back majority. And people like Paul [inaudible] were neoliberals. I am trying to remember some of the names now. It did not last very long. In many ways, Bill Clinton could be argued was a neoliberal. The Democratic Leadership Council, which just went out of business this week, was- SM (01:40:36): Did it? MK (01:40:37): Yeah. Was very much a neoliberal bastion. The think tank called Progressive Politics Institute still exists, but that DLC does not exist anymore. And it also is a way to show businesses, which of course all is very powerful in the politics of this country, that we are not just anti-business; we are just anti-business going off on their own and opposing regulation. So with neoconservatives, the term was coined by, I think, Michael Harrington, who was of course a socialist, or maybe Peter Steinfels, who was a left-wing Catholic. There were people who had been liberal-driven radicals in their youth in the (19)60s, mostly Jewish, who began to move to the right because they opposed the New Left, they opposed Black Power, and they identified with Israel and opposed the Soviet Union. Part of the Soviet Union was, they thought, tyrannical, and part of the Soviet Union was anti-Israel. And they thought that supporting Israel, supporting what they saw as mainstream centrist government was being attacked more by the left and by the right. And of course, most of these people ended up just being conservative, like Billy Crystal. And then his son, Billy. But at the time, they continued to support the welfare state as they understood it. They just were opposed to---Continued to support the welfare state as they understood it. They just were opposed to what they saw as some people on the left, who were trying to move things beyond where they should go. Anyway... SM (01:42:11): Two final questions. What lessons had the institutes of higher education learned from the student protests of the (19)60s and (19)70s? Are they lessons learned, and lessons lost? I say this, because when you look at the Free Speech Movement in (19)64, (19)65, it really did not have to happen, although I think eventually it would have happened because the war was coming, and so forth. What really gets me is that when Mario Savio, the things that always stand out, and why I think he is a very important person in the history of activism in America, but also in terms of what happened in free speech and higher education, is the fact that ideas matter. I know your father, ideas matter. Universities are about ideas. All ideas should be presented, all points of view. Yet the universities were still were at that time being controlled by corporations. MK (01:43:11): Well ... SM (01:43:12): The reason why I bring this question up is when you look at universities today, and I have been in higher education for 30 years until I left two years ago, fundraising, scholarships, doing a program, everything seems to be linked to we got to raise money. We got to raise money, we got to have a corporate link to this, this, prove that this program has value because is it bringing money in? MK (01:43:39): I think I told you now that was then, actually. SM (01:43:40): Yeah. When I interviewed two great educators, Arthur Chickering who wrote Education and Identity. One of the things in higher education in masters and PhD programs you learn about is seven vectors of development. The ultimate for all students is that they have a sense of integrity. That is what we all shoot for, knowing who they are. Like you, you know who you are and what you stand for. Activists have lived a lifetime. They have integrity because they are genuine. When I interviewed Alexander Aston and Arthur Chickering, I asked them, "Is there one disappointment that both of you have in higher education today now that you are," well, one is retired, one is still there. Yeah, corporations have taken control again. They are running the universities. MK (01:44:24): I think it depends on the university. I think it is less true at wealthy universities because they can get money from wealthy people who went to school there. Harvard, I do not think is owned by corporations. I think it is certainly true. We have a new business school, and we only have it because corporations have financed that. It does make sense in some ways, you want people to learn how to work in corporations, corporations might as well pay them, help them do that. SM (01:44:52): Yeah. MK (01:44:55): Part of the whole context of the (19)60s as I was talking about, was this unprecedented prosperity. I mean, state university campuses were being founded Every year. I mean, Ohio had 78. Pennsylvania, California, New York, I mean places that did not exist before for World War II. I think in some ways, people who grew up in that period, and then went to higher education, I did get a sense that sense of entitlement, I guess is the best way to put it, that we should be supported for whatever we think, and whatever we want to do. Now, I believe in tenure, I believe in free speech, of course. At same time, there are some people, and I say this as person on the left, some people on the left in academia who feel like somehow whatever they want to do, whatever they want to say should be, is sort of immune from criticism from outside. I mean, the war Churchill is the worst example of that, of course. Because, he even lied about what he did, but who he was. I think that one of the good things, not corporate takeover isn't good, but I do think that there is a lot of programs in universities now, at least in mine, others which where people do go back and forth between the outside world and world university, they all have internships and so forth. I think that is really good because it is important for the university to be in the world. Of course, you cannot avoid being in the world to certain extent. The whole ivory tower thing I think was and is a little over over-hyped. I think the best professors, to me, the best professors I had in college, the best professors now that I know of, are people who are continually in dialogue with people outside. I see myself as doing that because I do a lot of journalism, and I am still active in various things. I think certainly everyone has got to do that. I think it is important to have an important cohort, people in universities who do that, who do not see themselves as just completely apart from everything else. Now, at the same time, if you are an Aristotle scholar, I would not expect you, or want you necessarily to be involved with having ... Politically in your town. You cannot be if you want. Cannot be, you are not. But, for political scientists, for example, who studies, let us say Congress, not to care at all about what people think of Congress outside is a mistake, I think. SM (01:47:25): Of course, David Horowitz and Phyllis Schlafly, when I interviewed both of them, they were pretty clear that they feel that the universities are now run by the troublemakers of the (19)60s. MK (01:47:38): Yeah. See that is also, take it the other way. SM (01:47:41): That is the culture wars. Again, the whole concept of PC, being politically correct and everything, that is all part of the... MK (01:47:46): Yeah-yeah. I mean, I always say about conservatives when I have been on lots of church committees in history departments, both in American University, and here at Georgetown, here in Georgetown. We never get conservatives applying. It is not that we will not hire conservatives, it is ridiculous. I mean, conservatives do not go into history, or philosophy, or for the most part, or English departments, or American studies, or anthropology, or sociology. They go into government some, and economics, of course, and business schools. In general, students have decided that universities are hostile to them, or they just want to make more money. SM (01:48:29): That is what they go, many of them to think tanks like the heritage organizations. MK (01:48:31): Well, local schools too. Yeah. SM (01:48:34): The last question is kind of a three-partner here and oh, you put it all into one. I do not like to use the term the boomer generation either, starting to feel the same way as you and Todd, but when the Best history book, you are a scholar, you have written books. Your book on the 1960s was written in (19)95, I believe? MK (01:48:53): The first edition came out in (19)99. SM (01:48:54): (19)99. I think. MK (01:48:56): The 4th edition comes out in a couple months, actually. SM (01:49:02): Yeah. Well, I like the first edition. MK (01:49:02): Okay. SM (01:49:03): Because, I actually given a couple first editions to my family. MK (01:49:09): Oh, great. Thank you. SM (01:49:09): I have the original. MK (01:49:09): We keep updating it. SM (01:49:10): Yeah, something about the first ... I like first editions. I like the hardbacks. I am a hardback guy. When the best history books are written, I remember Steven Ambrose saying before he passed away, that the best books on World War II are usually 50 to 75 years after the period has happened. I guess this question came about when I go to the Civil War battlefield every year, and I spend a lot of time over at Gettysburg. I go there five, six times a year. There is a statue there. The last person who was alive, who was around during the Civil War, and they had a name person who participated in the war. What will be the legacy? What will historians and sociologists be saying? Do you think, I know it is hard to say when the last boomer has passed away? For the last ... Yeah. That might be the, and also, what would be the, what is the legacy of the generation? What is the legacy of Vietnam, and the legacy of the movements? Because, some people think the movements have gone backwards. MK (01:50:11): Well, I mean, I guess we should look at the new conclusion, the latest conclusion of the fourth edition of our book. Because, I am responsible, we provide the chapters, Morrison, I am responsible for that, for the conclusion. I wrote that mostly. It is a huge question. Again, never know for sure. I think that, as I said before, two things are going to be essential. One is the framework of prosperity, and the assumption on the part of a lot of people that prosperity would continue. There is insecurity, but nothing like now. Two, obviously the cohort, and the way in which it shaped, it divided people, and it taught people that there is only two choices in the world, either freedom or capitalism, and freedom or communism, as in this country, or in Soviet Union, socialism, or exploitation. I think that sort of dualism in the world, even though, of course, it was more complicated than that, but that expectation that has be on one side or the other, is something which is no longer true. It was not true for the most part before then either. It is very rare when we have a two-power world. We do not have one now, and we did not have them before then either. That shaped possibilities in many ways. Part of what, even though we were not necessarily aware of at the time, I think part of what the new left was trying to do was to find space in between those two. Basically, we liked the individual freedoms America afforded, and we liked the idea of a more collectivist, more egalitarian society that socialism. We wanted to put those two together. We were not successful. I think that impulse of ... Ray Mills talked about this basically his, before he died, he was trying to put together a conference of ... I think he even called it the Third Way, E.P. Thompson, the great, British historian I interviewed back in the early (19)80s. He said Mills was trying to put together, he was trying to invite the Cubans, and the Yugoslavs, and Martin Luther King Jr, and all these folks. He died before he put it together. Maybe he would not have been able to put together even afterwards. But that I think was the impulse that was there among new leftists. It was a good impulse, I think, in retrospect, but we were not able to carry it into fruition for all kinds of reasons. SM (01:52:46): Any final thoughts on the boomer generation? MK (01:52:49): No-no. SM (01:52:51): The legacy of Vietnam? MK (01:52:52): I think we had better music. SM (01:52:54): Yeah. MK (01:52:57): I always tell my kids, I stopped doing this, but I say, "Tell me which group that you like now, people will still listen to in 50 years the way they are still listening to the Beatles, stones, Motown and so forth." They have a hard time because they say, "Well, a whole musical genre, we might listen to hip hop, yes, but anyone hip hop artist, I mean...", so that is what was fun. SM (01:53:17): That is a great legacy too. MK (01:53:19): Yeah. SM (01:53:20): I think one of the legacies of the boomer generation is all the progress that has been made in so many different areas in terms of women's rights, and stuff. MK (01:53:29): Yeah. SM (01:53:30): It is interesting. I constantly put on my Facebook (19)60s and (19)70s. I got, in fact, with the Valentine's Day coming up, I just put on the Beatles song, which I think they did one of the greatest love songs of all time. And they- MK (01:53:44): Words of Love, that one? SM (01:53:46): One. Yeah. All you need is love. What is interesting, if you go to the YouTube, if you can find it is just, it is a classic. It is ... they are all dressed up. They got flowers in their ears. I remember that. MK (01:53:56): Yeah. SM (01:53:57): Then in the audience is Jagger. I mean, things are just sitting there listening. MK (01:54:01): Yeah-yeah. SM (01:54:03): It is like, "Oh man, what a time." What it is like forever. I often wonder, somebody who complained against the boomer generation often said they never grew up. I have had a couple people tell me that. MK (01:54:15): But again, it is a danger of generalizing by this generation. SM (01:54:16): Yeah. MK (01:54:16): I mean, usually when people talk about their generation, they are thinking about two or three people they knew. SM (01:54:16): Yes. Well, we at Westchester University, we are done. But, close off, thank you very much. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. 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Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Michael Kazin Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kazin, Michael, 1948- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Historians; College teachers; Georgetown University; Social movements--United States--19th century; Social movements--United States--20th century; Kazin, Michael, 1948--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Michael Kazin is a historian and professor at Georgetown University. Kazin's research focuses on the American social movements from the 19th and 20th centuries. He received a Bachelor's degree in Social Studies from Harvard, a Master's degree in History from Portland State University, and a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-02-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.72a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.72a Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. 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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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-02-09 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Dr. David Kaiser Language English Digital Publisher Binghamton University Libraries Digital Format audio/mp4 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Baby boom generation; Individualism; Drug culture; Free Speech Movement; Identity Politics; Gay and Lesbian Movement; Feminist Movement; AIDS; Chicano Movement; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Anti-war Movement; Vietnam War; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; College student protests; Healing; Vietnam Memorial;Woodstock; Kent State; Summer of Love; Counterculture; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weathermen; Black Panthers; Black Power.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Baby boom generation; Individualism; Drug culture; Free Speech Movement; Identity Politics; Gay and Lesbian Movement; Feminist Movement; AIDS; Chicano Movement; Native American/ American Indian Movement; Anti-war Movement; Vietnam War; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; College student protests; Healing; Vietnam Memorial;Woodstock; Kent State; Summer of Love; Counterculture; Hippies; Yippies; Students for a Democratic Society; Weathermen; Black Panthers; Black Power.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 106:26 Subject LCSH College teachers; Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kaiser, David--Interviews Biographical Text Dr. David Kaiser is a historian and educator. He also served in the Army Reserve from 1970 to 1976. Dr. Kaiser was a Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the United States Naval War College from 1990 until 2012 and has taught at Carnegie Mellon, Williams College, and Harvard University. He is the author of several books and articles. Dr. Kaiser received his Bachelor’s degree and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University. 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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: David Kaiser Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 9 February 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): David Kaiser. February 9th, 2010. Plug it in- DK (00:00:10): By the way- SM (00:00:11): I am going to start out with some of the general questions, and then we will get into some of the specifics here. First off, I want to say, I think your book, American Tragedy is great. DK (00:00:23): Thanks. SM (00:00:24): Yeah. The way you talk about the Eisenhower administration, it is very, very good. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin, and what was the watershed moment when it began, and what was the watershed moment when it ended, in your opinion? DK (00:00:44): Well, I have come to think of this in the terms that were defined by my dear late friend, Bill Strauss and Neil Howe. Rather than talk about the (19)60s, they used the term awakening, which they see as a recurring phenomenon in American history. I would say that the awakening began in 1964 or 1965, and that it continued for approximately 20 years. Although by the end of that time, it was not primarily visible in politics, and there had been a swing to the right in politics. But with respect to social changes and whatnot in American life, it was certainly continuing into the early 1980s. It is interesting, and it was important of things to come really, that it is fair to say that the first baby boomer, even using the relatively narrow demographic definition, who held a major policy position, was I think David Stockman as Budget Director under Reagan. SM (00:02:01): Oh, yes. DK (00:02:01): That was an interesting portent as it turned out, of the political influence that adult boomers were actually going to have. SM (00:02:12): Could you explain that a little bit more? Because I remember David Stockman, I think he was... If I remember right, he resigned or was- DK (00:02:20): No. SM (00:02:21): Forced out? DK (00:02:22): Kicked out the first term. SM (00:02:23): Yeah. DK (00:02:23): He got into trouble for making some intemperate statement, but I think he finished out the first term. Then, again, in a typical boomer move, he wrote a very frank memoir explaining that he never believed most of the things he was saying, and that what the administration had been trying to do could not possibly work. Loyalty is not one of the big virtues of our generation. SM (00:02:48): Right. DK (00:02:49): Then he got onto Wall Street, and I believe he has been in some legal trouble, although I do not remember exactly how that came out, since then. But what I mean to say is, that perhaps because we are so self-centered in politics, we turned out to have a much more conservative impact than one would have cast way back in the (19)60s. SM (00:03:15): You make reference there to a quality that you think was part of the boomer generation. I know it is very difficult to generalize for 70 plus million people. I have heard that from many of my interviewees and a lot of them based their experiences on the people that they knew, grew up with, have worked with, have become friends with and so forth, so then they are able to talk about boomers. Is there some general positive qualities or negative qualities that you think are really linked to this group? DK (00:03:48): Oh, I definitely think so. And remember, again, thanks to Strauss and Howe, I have been thinking about these questions very intensively and discussing them with well-informed people for about 15 years now. I think that the positive contribution came from taking individual feelings seriously, from taking the idea of individualism seriously, and of addressing a lot of personal emotional issues that previous generations, particularly the GI's, our parents, for the most part, at least among the older boomers, had swept under the rug. I think that probably made boomers much better parents than their parents had been, for the most part. On the other hand, I think a major characteristic is a rather terrifying faith in our own opinion, which again, the older generation played into by making the catastrophic mistake in Vietnam, and a belief that whatever we want must be best, not only for us, but for everyone else, and that there really cannot be any serious objections to establishing whatever we regard as good, and right, and just. Now, you see the thing that Strauss and Howe really taught me, for which I am grateful, is to see these qualities on both sides of the political fence. In the same way that some of my contemporaries at Harvard thought it would be great to transform Harvard University, if not to bring it to a halt in 1969, and to eliminate ROTC, and form Black Studies Department, and do all sorts of things right away, no matter what the cost, the same kind of certainty informed our contemporary George W. Bush when it became obvious to him that overthrowing Saddam Hussein and setting up democracy in Iraq was just a thing to do, and that would put the whole world on a great new track. SM (00:06:29): That is interesting you say that about Bush, because when the two boomer presidents, a couple of people have commented, and they do not go into any great detail, but they say, "Look at our two new boomer presidents, Clinton and Bush. There you have all the qualities of the boomers." And then I got to say, "What do you mean by that?" DK (00:06:46): Well, I do not entirely agree about Clinton. And in fact, Clinton did not have a typical boomer childhood at all. He had a very difficult childhood. Clinton, while he certainly is narcissistic and he could be irresponsible in his personal life, he actually was a natural politician and a conciliator who did not try to insist on putting through his own views. I think Hillary is much more of a traditional boomer, in that respect. I would make a little bit of an exception for him in that regard, and that is probably what made him a much more successful president, actually. SM (00:07:35): Yeah. See, one of the things that many of the boomers felt when they were young, is they were the most unique generation in American history up to that point. DK (00:07:42): Absolutely. SM (00:07:44): I can remember being on college campuses, feeling that we can be the change agents for the betterment of society, that we have the power within us to end racism, and sexism, and bring peace to the world, and a utopian mentality. DK (00:08:01): Oh yeah. Wait, how old are you exactly? SM (00:08:03): Oh, I am the same age as you are. DK (00:08:03): Oh, fine. Okay. Yeah. SM (00:08:04): I graduated from Binghamton University in 1970. DK (00:08:07): SUNY Binghamton? SM (00:08:08): Yes. DK (00:08:10): Did you know Camille Paglia? SM (00:08:11): Yes. Oh, I knew of her. Yes. I saw her in classes, but I did not know her personally. Of course, I tried to approach her once with no luck, when I tried to take students to meet her. She was there, and I think she was a graduation speaker in 1969, a year before I graduated. DK (00:08:34): I think she graduated in (19)68, actually. SM (00:08:37): Was it (19)68? DK (00:08:38): The three of us are all the same age, but I think you were a year late, apparently, and she was a year early. SM (00:08:43): Yeah. DK (00:08:44): Yeah, I think that is right. SM (00:08:45): Yeah, and I stayed an extra semester too because I double majored- DK (00:08:49): I see. Anyway, okay. Do you, by any chance, remember a guy named Barney [inaudible]? SM (00:08:53): No, I do not. DK (00:08:54): All right. He was there too, and he went into the Navy, and he taught with me here in the (19)90s for a while. SM (00:09:00): I know the president was one of the good presidents when I was here, Dr. Bruce Dearing. DK (00:09:05): Yeah. Okay. SM (00:09:06): He went onto Upstate Medical Center, but I guess he retired because the students got to him after a while. DK (00:09:11): Sure. All right, well, let us get back to our- SM (00:09:14): Yeah, but anyways, the uniqueness, could you comment on that feeling? Because even if you talked to some boomers who were 62 and 63, some of them still feel that way. DK (00:09:25): Well, again, Strauss and Howe see a repeating cycle. What that means is, that there have been generations like boomers, but we did not know them or at best, we met a few of them when they were very, very old, as I did. The characteristic of these generations, which they call profit generations, that they are born in the wake of great national crises. There was a similar generation born after the foundation of the Constitution. And actually, that was a very long generation that went from sometime in the 1790s till about 1820. Those were the men and women who gave us the Civil War. There was a similar generation, which Strauss and Howe called the missionaries, born from the early 1860s until I would say about 1884. They also had a very strong sense of moral purpose, very intense sense of themselves. I am actually studying them now, in connection with a book about American entry into the Second World War. SM (00:10:35): Oh. DK (00:10:36): I have to give them credit for a lot more self-discipline and realism than boomers have shown, which is an interesting issue. Those are the parallel generation, but boomers are very different from any of the other living generations, yes. And furthermore, not only do they pride themselves on being different from other generations, but they pride themselves, and here I would certainly have to include myself, on being individually unique and on being different from each other. SM (00:11:18): Yeah. One of the things about the boomers that I have been... Everything seems to be placed in context. In other words, did the event shape the boomers or did the boomers shape the events? Because when you talk about the baby boom, you are talking about the largest... I think there are more millennials now, though. Boomers can no longer say... There are more millennials now than there were ever were boomers. DK (00:11:45): That is probably true. Well, again, I think it is a mix. I am convinced now, and again, this is thanks to Strauss and Howe, that there would have been a rebellion against the values of our childhood, no matter what. On the other hand, there is no question in my mind that the Vietnam War made that rebellion much more intent and had tremendous long-term consequences in a lot of ways because it convinced so many boomers, including ones who became very important in one way or another, that we could safely disregard everything our parents had ever said, and toss aside so many aspects of the world they had created without any caution, or regret, or anything. SM (00:12:54): How important were the Beats in this kind of an attitude? This was a group from the silent generation, the Ginsburg's, the Kerouac, the Anne Waldman Serengeti, that particular group of writers that seem to have they were small in number, but their influence seemed to be large in many ways in the (19)50s because they were the epitome of not showing a whole lot of respect for the status quo and- DK (00:13:24): Yeah. Well, again my wife- SM (00:13:26): They were pre-boomers. DK (00:13:27): Well, yeah. Well, they were skeptics, certainly. I do not know if I would call them pre-boomers or not. My wife would have a lot to say about that. She is actually a year older than we are, and she was aware of them from a very early age. They certainly were providing an alternative voice. Also, there was Morton Sahl, the comedian. SM (00:13:55): Oh, yes. DK (00:13:56): There were the early folk singers. That was a kind of wedge in the door. For instance, I can remember in high school, my friends and I getting a little kick out of the song that I think was actually written by Pete Seeger, Little Boxes on the hillside, and things like that. They did provide an alternative view, but I do not think their influence was extremely widespread. SM (00:14:33): When you look at the boomer generation, I have had to clarify to many of the people I have interviewed, they said, "Are you talking about the 70 million, Steve, or are you talking about the 15 percent who were the activists?" Because they said, "I can talk about the activist. They can talk about all those people involved in all those movements, anti-war." DK (00:14:56): I do not think, okay, well, first of all, there is this definitional issue. The demographic definition I know includes people born from what, (19)46 through (19)64? SM (00:15:11): Yes. DK (00:15:12): Okay. The Strauss and Howe definition is different. They started around (19)43, which I think is the shaky boundary and run it through 1960. In terms of experience, I think that is a better definition. Essentially what that means, and this is what I say, they never said it this way, boomers are people who do not remember FDR, but who do remember Kennedy. That is the way I would define it. No, the comments I am making certainly do not refer simply to the activists. SM (00:15:55): Okay. DK (00:15:57): Although the activists demonstrated a lot of key generational characteristics. Now, what you will find and remember, I have a very different kind of student body, and I teach a generations course, and my students who are no longer boomers, most of them are Gen X now, but they write autobiographical papers and I hear about their parents. You can find people born even as late as we were, who either did not go to college or who somehow got on track in life very early so that they were already launched when the awakening began around 1965. Many of them are different, but that would be... Those people could not be significantly younger than we are. I think that everybody, by the (19)70s, certainly, again, there are regional differences too, but by the (19)70s, everybody was growing up in a very different world than the world people had grown up in the early (19)60s. SM (00:17:09): You keep saying the awakening around (19)65. Are you making reference... The Vietnam War, of course, it was around (19)65 that started to get bigger and bigger, and then by (19)67, we know what was happening there. DK (00:17:22): The Vietnam War gave the awakening a political trust. I am talking about different music, I am talking about different ways to dress, different ways to wear your hair, different sexual morays, drug use, which arrived at Harvard, interestingly enough, in a big way in the fall of 1966, brought in by the incoming freshman class, many of whom had done drugs in their last year in high school, particularly [inaudible]. SM (00:18:01): That is my class. DK (00:18:04): Yes, right. And things like that. All that was getting going. There is a wonderful piece. I do not think I referred to it in American tragedy, although I found it doing American Tragedy. It is a piece from the New York Times that appeared sometime in the first six months of 1965, and it is called Narcotics the Growing Problem Among Affluent Youth. It is quite an extraordinary read, in retrospect, and one of the more prophetic pieces that Deborah appeared. SM (00:18:39): I know there is brand new book out right now on Timothy Leary and the drug culture up at Harvard. DK (00:18:45): Oh, okay. SM (00:18:46): Yeah, and that just came out. DK (00:18:47): Right. SM (00:18:48): One of the things I want to talk about here is Newt Gingrich, when he came into power, who is a boomer, by the way- DK (00:18:59): Yes, he certainly is. SM (00:19:00): When he came into power in 1994, I read some of his commentaries about attacking that generation of the (19)60s generation and that era. George Will oftentimes has, when he gets an opportunity, either in his books or his articles, will take shots at the (19)60s generation. DK (00:19:22): Yeah. SM (00:19:22): I think he is a pre-boomer, I do not think- DK (00:19:24): Oh, he is a silent. Yes, he definitely is. SM (00:19:27): Yeah. They are just examples. And then Pat Buchanan in a recent video on the Weatherman, really blasts the (19)60s generation, regarding 1968, and when he was working with President Nixon. Basically, all three of them claiming that all the problems we have in American society today can go right back to that period of time- DK (00:19:51): Well, actually that is a fantasy, which actually I used to share, from a different political perspective. Without Vietnam say, we might have stayed in the early (19)60s indefinitely. I now think that is a fantasy. But what I want to stress, is that Gingrich is being a complete hypocrite, in my opinion, just the way George W. Bush was, when he would criticize the (19)60s and say, "The problem is that for too long we have been saying if it feels good, do it." Well, I blogged a good deal about this, and I can tell you where to find it. It was one of the first things I did back in 2004. George Bush's whole presidency is a testimony to, if it feels good, do it. I want to get rid of Saddam, so I will do it. Do not tell me this is too hard. Do not tell me we do not have any allies. I want to cut taxes, so I am going to do it. Do not tell me about the deficit. He is as much a part of that as anybody. You see this now again, in the total irresponsibility of the Republican leadership in Congress, which is composed entirely of boomers, I think now. Whereas interestingly enough, the Democratic leadership is still composed mainly in silent, which is part of the reason they are such a pushovers compared to the Republicans. SM (00:21:26): You just made a comment there. It is almost as if George Bush sounds like Woodrow Wilson, if you go back to- DK (00:21:34): No. That would be a long discussion and a complicated one. I think that is been unfair to Woodrow Wilson. It is true that they were similar. They were more similar from a personality point of view. Wilson was very intolerant of dissent, and felt it was everybody's duty to agree with him. He was a genuinely very subtle thinker, in a way that Bush certainly never would be. SM (00:22:08): Yeah. I know he had problems with the leadership of the Republican party when... He did not consult with anybody. He was a hero in Europe and then he did not consult with anybody back in the Congress. DK (00:22:21): No. And he refused to come. SM (00:22:23): Yeah. That leads me right into this question here, it is- often times we cannot generalize about an entire generation, but can you see the results this time passes on the influence that one generation can have in America? DK (00:22:36): Oh, yeah. SM (00:22:36): Does the 70 plus million deserve praise or condemnation for any of the major flaws we see in our society today? Have the boomer leaders of Congress, the office of the president, the governors, the state assemblies, and local governments been good or bad overall? Because they have been running things. Generation X's are now in there too. How would you grade them as a whole? DK (00:23:00): I think that they are in politics. They do not even deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as the GI's, as our parents' generation. I think that the silent generation was pretty good in politics, never did get anybody into the White House. They have now pretty much been chucked aside. I think the boomers have had a terrible influence in the economy, although there the silent generation shares the blame, but I would give a lot of it to the boomers, and we are going to be living with that for a long time now. Again, the GI's having lived through the Depression, understood that you needed restraints on the financial community, on industry, and various regulation to avert another catastrophe. Naturally, we assumed that none of that applied to us. A lot of those regulations have been either repealed or simply disregarded, and here we find ourselves once again in a situation parallel to the (19)30s. The other area, and this is my personal view, but it has been acquired at great cost, may I say, I think in academia boomers have been a complete disaster and have done damage that I do not see how it will ever be repaired. SM (00:24:44): Can you talk about that? DK (00:24:47): Sure. SM (00:24:47): A lot of the professors... I have worked at quite a few universities and I have heard for years about the attacks on today's faculty members, particularly in the humanities and social scientists as political correctness and all the attacks by the conservatives toward the universities today, that the people that run the universities, and they were making reference to administrators too, administrators and faculty are basically examples of the (19)60s generation all over again. DK (00:25:19): Well, I think there is some truth to that, but I think again, the biggest single problem... Well, there are two problems, which you see in particular in my own discipline of history. The first is a rejection of the idea of objective truth, and an endorsement of the idea that reality is different for everyone, and that they are entitled to express their own reality, which makes evidence much less important than running history. And secondly, the idea that it is the job of the historian to study the oppressed and the people who have not had any voice in the past, to the almost complete exclusion of studying people in power. The prevalence of that idea, is the reason that I, who has written not only American Tragedy, but five other books, three of which are on the same scale as American Tragedy, more or less, has to teach at the Naval War College because there is literally no room in any history department in the country anymore for somebody like me. This is still happening. We just hired a young guy from a very distinguished university, just finished his PhD, who has written the thesis on the... Well, I do not want to get too specific here because this may eventually be published- DK (00:27:03): Well, I do not want to get too specific here because this may eventually be published. He has written a thesis on a major diplomatic issue in the Cold War, and I heard from a third party that that cost him a chance at a job at a university because the bulk of the people in the department said, "This work is simply too traditional". Yes. So that has been very serious. In economics, the boom generation of economists, with very few exceptions, have swallowed the idea of the rational market, and that which has gotten us into the mess that we are in today. In political science, most of the quote, "cutting edge work", is now based on what is called rational choice theory, which does not really describe human beings at all. And in literature, postmodernism has had a terrible effect. And again, if you could get her to talk to you, Camille [inaudible] would be the best person to talk to about that, but I know she has become almost impossible to approach. And I have tried to approach her several times with no luck, and I have given up. SM (00:28:22): I approached her once. DK (00:28:23): But again, that is somebody else who is probably the outstanding literature scholar of our generation and who works in an art school. SM (00:28:33): It is interesting because the person I just interviewed this past weekend, Dr. Franklin? DK (00:28:38): Yes. SM (00:28:39): Said that because in an article that he wrote criticizing something that somebody had written, he had a hard time finding a job. And he had written three books, very well-established books. DK (00:28:54): Well, that is possible, although the job market has been so tight for the whole of my career. SM (00:29:00): Well, that was back- DK (00:29:01): There could be so many reasons why people have had trouble finding a job. SM (00:29:04): Well, that was 20 years ago though. DK (00:29:06): Okay. But I mean, the other thing that... You see, another problem, which we did not invent, to be fair, in modern academia's specialization, and that also leaves no room at all for somebody like me who has never written the same book twice or written on the same subject twice. And I know that cost me many opportunities. SM (00:29:31): One of the events that took place in the (19)60s, historic event, was the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in 1964 and (19)65. DK (00:29:40): Sure. SM (00:29:42): And Ronald Reagan came into power based on two things. Number one, that he was going to stop those students who were protesting on college campuses that took their lead from the free speech movement, and secondly, he was going to end the welfare state. I suppose those are two of the big issues. And so he took those issues on as, and of course they support him in California and he won election. But I want to, the question I am basically asking here, is there a fear of activism on university campuses today? Did the universities learn anything from the Boomer protests on their campuses in the (19)60s and (19)70s? I asked that question. And second part of the question is, we did a couple panels at our university when I first got there in the late (19)80s, early (19)90s, where I had boomers in Generation Xers on stage, and they did not like each other. It was very obvious they did not. And it was the current students who were Generation Xers, and some of the faculty who were boomers, and some people from off campus who were boomers. And I can remember the split. There was either two responses between the Generation Xer and the boomers. One, "I am sick and tired of hearing about your nostalgia and the way it was. Shut up. I am tired of it. I do not care about it". And the other one was, "I wish I lived when you lived because you had issues and we do not have them today". So then, there was nothing in between. But, so I am really asking about activism here. Art in today's universities are run by boomers and [inaudible]. DK (00:31:29): Well, no. Well, if you go back to Berkeley, and I assume you are familiar with that documentary, Berkeley in the (19)60s. SM (00:31:36): Yes, I am. DK (00:31:37): Good. Yes. Basically, and I remember this very well, even though I started college year after that, those kids were reacting to the idea that the whole purpose of the educational system, which was run by GI's then, was to turn them out as copies of their parents. So they were dressing like their parents, they were acting like their parents, and so on. Now, Vietnam, again, gave the protests a completely different character and a political character. And nothing like that has happened since. Now, as soon as you get to Gen X, you are dealing with kids, many of whom are short on cash, are borrowing money to go through school, and who are focused on their future. And that was one of the great things about being a relatively young boomer, is that you just assumed that was not going to be a problem. Now today, and I have not followed it that closely, but as you know, there are significant protests going on in the UC campuses again, you have a very different story because you have got millennials who have been told all their lives, here is what you have to do, do it, and you will be rewarded. And they have responded to that very enthusiastically. And I got, you see, I did get a glimpse of this firsthand because I was a visiting professor at Williams College three years ago. That was just for one year though. And now suddenly, they are in a situation where it is not clear the rewards are going to be there, and that could have significant repercussions. But you see, our protests were based on moral criticism, and we had the luxury of focusing on moral criticism because of the extremely secure environment in which we had grown up. And that is the paradox, as I say, of every prophet generation, from the transcendentals after the Constitution, through the missionaries, and right up to us. SM (00:34:06): Well, that free speech movement all started actually by chance, because of the fact that they told a group of young students that they could not hand out literature in... DK (00:34:17): Right. SM (00:34:18): [inaudible] Plaza. And even the students that did not like that group that was handing out literature, when they saw that their fellow students are being attacked, they came together. DK (00:34:28): That is right. SM (00:34:29): And it was, " You cannot tell us what to do". And of course, Clark Kerr made that mistake, and then he gets fired by President Reagan, or not President Reagan, governor Reagan. DK (00:34:38): Governor Reagan. Right. SM (00:34:39): Because he was not tough enough on the students. I have a question here, looking at the presidents that were during the lives of Boomers, and that includes Harry Truman too, even though they cannot hardly remember him. But I remember him as a little boy. DK (00:34:58): I remember the (19)62 election. SM (00:35:00): Yes. DK (00:35:01): I do not have any specific memories of Truman as president. I am sure I knew he was president. SM (00:35:06): I just knew as was a little boy, he did not like McCarthy. Which of the presidents do you feel had the greatest impact on the generation? And when I look at it, I am talking about Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama. Because they have been all the presidents of during the time that- DK (00:35:29): Well, that is a big question. SM (00:35:30): That is a big question. I know Kennedy had an influence. DK (00:35:33): I would say Kennedy had the biggest emotional impact, even now. I think Johnson clearly had a huge impact because of the decision to fight in Vietnam. SM (00:35:47): Right. DK (00:35:49): Now, you were touching on something important when you talked about Reagan, mainly that the awakening in the anti-Vietnam War protest was a major factor in destroying the existing Democratic majority and leading to Republican domination of the White House for a long time. Okay, I think Reagan did have a very big impact, coming along when he did, in making conservatism and consumerism respectable among boomers, just as they were in their thirties and having kids and things like that. And that was very important. And, you know, based on the data I saw, boomers split pretty evenly, even in the last election. Just as they split evenly in 1972, even. So they have never been, as a group, a strikingly liberal group. It was Gen Xers and millennials who put Obama in the White House. Now, Clinton, I do not know, I guess I will leave it there with Kennedy, and Johnson, and Reagan, as having the probably biggest impact. Obama is very interesting because this is the end of Boomer tenure in the White House. I mean, he clearly is not a boomer, and if you do not believe it, ask him because he will tell you. SM (00:37:43): Yep. DK (00:37:44): And he is not acting like one. SM (00:37:46): Yeah. And he is being criticized for [inaudible]. DK (00:37:48): If it will ever get back in the White House is not at all clear. SM (00:37:51): There is three things here. First off, on President Obama, he is being attacked because people think that he is bringing back the (19)60s. And then with Reagan and Bush, the thing that really strikes a lot of boomers about Reagan is that, when his bold statement, when he became President, "We are back". We are back. And he was referring not only to the military coming back to the way it used to be, but certainly the country. And then George Bush Sr. made a very important statement that really, if you were cognizant of it at the time it happened, "The Vietnam syndrome is over", and that, to me, whoa, that is a pretty strong statement. So to me, all those really kind of had strong impact on boomers as their agent. DK (00:38:37): Well, maybe so. Maybe so. I would have to think about that. I do not think of Bush as a, I think he was actually, Bush Sr. was a very underrated president. And in foreign affairs, actually, he was a very fine president, but I did not feel he was terribly influential. He did, of course, put the first boomer on the Supreme Court, namely Clarence Thomas. Another interesting example of a, well, that is a fascinating point. It partly has to do with the Republicans being better strategists about the Supreme Court. Well, except for [inaudible]. Now, all the boomers on the court are Republican and they are acting like it. SM (00:39:33): Yeah. Well, explain that. Explain that the boomer Supreme Court justices are acting like boomers. Get some specific- DK (00:39:41): If they do not like a law, they throw it out. If they do not like a precedent, they throw it out. SM (00:39:47): Who are the boomers, again, on the court? DK (00:39:51): The boomers on the court are Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Sotomayor. No, I cannot say that about her yet. I mean, she has not done anything like that yet. She has not been around very long. And then you have got, Stevens is a GI, and so that would leave us with four silence. It would be Kennedy, Scalia, Breyer, and Ginsburg. That is right. That is right. SM (00:40:24): When you place a label on the generation, and the boomers had had a lot of labels, but which of these do you think truly defines the group? The Vietnam generation, the Woodstock generation, the (19)60s generation, the civil rights generation, the [inaudible]- DK (00:40:41): Certainly not the civil rights generation. SM (00:40:44): All right. DK (00:40:44): That is a complete fantasy. SM (00:40:47): Yeah, because that was more in the (19)50s, I believe. DK (00:40:49): That was in the (19)50s, in the early (19)60s. And in fact, boomers and especially African American boomers, to be blunt about it, destroyed the civil rights movement. SM (00:40:59): Are you talking about black power and Black Panthers? DK (00:41:03): Yes. SM (00:41:04): Could you go into that a little bit? Because that was one of my upcoming questions. DK (00:41:07): I am talking about not only that, but I am talking about the whole shift from a well-organized mass movement that was a very effective pressure group, into much smaller organizations focused on identity politics and turning their back on the system and things like that. But I would say, when you talk about Vietnam generation or Woodstock generation, you are talking about older boomers like us. So I do not know. I guess my generation would probably be the best one if I had to just think of one. But again, I think there is, well, yeah, the tendency is to focus on people about our age who actually lived through such fantastic changes as young adults. I mean, if you or I just think about what college was like the day we entered and the day we left, I mean, those were staggering changes. SM (00:42:19): Oh, yes. DK (00:42:21): But that was just the leading edge of the generation, of course. SM (00:42:27): You mentioned identity politics, the many movements that came out of the Civil Rights movement. Well, of course the anti-war movement took place, but you had the gay and lesbian movement, the women's movement. DK (00:42:37): Yes. Now, those could be- SM (00:42:40): Native American, environmental movement, all those movements. DK (00:42:43): Well, the feminist movement, although started by silence, it was certainly boomers who really picked that up and ran with it. And the gay rights movement was very much a boomer movement, although I guess a lot of the boomer gay rights leaders were decimated by aid. Actually, I have a younger brother who is gay, and he was written a good deal by gay issues. He has been in the gay journalist organization, and he was very fortunate health wise, and he has written a lot about that. But those definitely were boomer movements. And again, that is where I think we do have some things to be proud of, in terms of opening up personal options for people. SM (00:43:43): How would you mention the Chicano movement and certainly the Native American movement with AIM and the environmental movement that worked closely with the anti-war movement? DK (00:43:56): Well, I would have to look at exactly what they accomplished in the same way you would have to look at it for civil rights. Again, the basic pieces of environmental legislation were passed by bipartisan GI majorities, like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. SM (00:44:24): I am going to change this. Okay, go right ahead. DK (00:44:33): Now again, as boomers have gotten into power, the environment has not been doing very well, so I would not be able to take very much credit there. Now, again, the identity politics issue among Native Americans, Chicanos, and so on, is something that I am very ambivalent about, because I think that, and this is where I am still true to my childhood and the values I learned in my childhood before the awakening, when you focus on things like that, you are making it harder to form the kinds of coalitions that will get actual national action on anything. And that is why you see, at the individual level, I think boomers are pretty good at the... But anything requiring organization, leadership, coalitions, they are pretty hopeless. SM (00:45:42): One of the things that you remember during the anti-war movement, there seemed to be signs for all the groups together. The anti-war movement in its heyday seemed to bring all groups together. And then as you go later on into the (19)70s, (19)80s, (19)90s, you see more of a separation of... DK (00:46:01): Well, sure. But there was plenty of splintering in the anti-war movement, too. SM (00:46:04): Right. Especially around when the weatherman came in and... Yes. And of course, then the Vietnam veterans against the war took over the anti-war movement around (19)71. DK (00:46:17): That is right. You see, one thing you should understand about me, which I certainly think comes out in American tragedy too, is that, you see, my father had been in and out of, he had been in government through my whole childhood in various ways. I had met many leading Democratic office soldiers. I was too involved in that world to give up on the system completely, even after I turned against the Vietnam War. And that is why, unlike most of my contemporaries, I have not changed that much since I was in college. Now, that is also why I am extremely depressed at what I see happening around me now because I do not see those values I grew up with coming back. At least not yet. And I am beginning to wonder if I will ever see that. But that is another story. SM (00:47:17): Of course, the big issue now is, what will boomers do in old age? Because supposedly they are going to change even old age, how people retire. Dennis Hopper has that advertisement on TV about, of course, he is a perfect example of a- DK (00:47:33): Well, he is a silent. SM (00:47:34): Yeah. He is a silent, but still they use him for the advertisement. So the next 20 years still have to be written with respect to how they are- DK (00:47:44): What is interesting, and this makes me very sad. I mean, my wife and I talk about going back to the Boston areas to retire, and we are sure as hell not going to the Sunbelt or anything like that. SM (00:47:57): Right. DK (00:47:59): Well, actually, I think we talked into going to Austin, Texas, but that is a special case. But when you go to The Brattle Theater in Cambridge now, which was one of the great sites of my youth and where my cultural experience was broadened, most of the audience is going to have gray hair. So that, I think there is a good chance boomers will remain more focused on cultural things in retirement. I am kind of curious as to whether there will be any kind of, how shall I put this, self-denial movement having to do with the medical profession? And actually, it would be a great thing if boomers could set an example by accepting the idea that they will die and that it is not worth half a million dollars to prolong their life through four miserable months and things like that. But obviously that will be a very individual manner and we will just have to wait and see. SM (00:49:16): Yeah. Here is a question. So obviously we know that the TV was a big influence on boomers in the (19)50s because the World War II was obviously the radio and the fireside chats and everything, and then TV came about. Of course, today we have the technology and Facebook and the millennials and Generation X have been formed with a whole, and that is kind of split the generations too, just the technology issue. But the question I ask, and this is, I always think of my 1950s and I have had, I have interviewed people and of course an African-Americans experience in the (19)50s was different than a white person, and a female was different than a male, and certainly the gay and lesbians experience and all the other things here. But generally, when we are talking about TV, I am going to read this here. This was the first generation and they saw the news on TV, they saw sitcoms and black and white in the (19)50s. How important was TV in shaping the boomer lives with typical shows of when they were very young with Howdy Doody, Captain Kangaroo, Hopalong Cassidy, TV westerns, which we always saw, the Native American was the bad guy, the variety shows, the game shows, the live coverage of historic events, even early on, we saw the McCartney hearings and the Mickey Mouse Club, the median shaping lives both consciously and subconsciously. Of course, you did not see many people of color on TV in those days. Was there something happening that, what did the media do? Besides being the first TV generation, we saw the Vietnam War on TV in the (19)60s, but what is it about the media that truly shaped this generation? DK (00:51:03): Well, that is a very complicated question. I think that when you look at the TV from the (19)50s, now, I am struck by the sterility of it. I am struck by the use of laugh tracks often as a background of things that were really very funny. And I think it was all giving you a lot of messages about what you were supposed to feel. And that was part of what we eventually rebelled against. So that is one thing I would say. On the other hand, well, there is so many issues here. The news is very good. The news was much better than it was now. The (19)60s is probably the greatest age of TV news, I would say. And it was straightforward, it was no nonsense, and they had a real commitment to giving you the fact, and they would take some time for a complicated story in a way that they never would now. Now, I do think the single most important medium for changing the generation though, much more important than television, was music. And second most important, I would say, was movies. And again, the boomers were the audience for the cultural explosion in film in the late (19)60s. By the (19)70s, a few boomers were even making the new movies. And again, that was a great achievement and a really positive transformation of American life. Again, it is very sad that now that boomers run the studios, they do not sponsor making movies like that. I mean, for instance, if you say, I teach a course called Generations of Film, and it is all Gen Xers now, and the pivotal movie that I use to explain what the awakening was about, not the only one, but the pivotal one is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and... SM (00:53:52): Jack Nicholson. DK (00:53:53): Yes. And not only is it a great movie, but I believe it was the top grossing movie in 1975. And although my students really enjoyed seeing it and got a lot out of it- DK (00:54:03): ...my students really enjoyed seeing it and got a lot out of it. They unanimously agreed that it would not be a hit today. It is only because it moves too slowly. That is kind of sad too. There was one thing I did want to say. You mentioned the Mickey Mouse Club. There is something I will never forget the Mickey Mouse Club, and it was the end of the introduction, the announcer would read every day, which is very prophetic. It was dedicated to you, the leaders of the 21st century. All I can say is little did they know. It seems to me that the key thing about that was there were only three networks. There was very little difference between the networks. It was an aspect of the uniform, mass-produced culture that we grew up in and eventually rebelled again. I am putting down today's movies justifiably, but actually today's television, if you know where to look, there are a lot of tremendous things on today's belt, particularly on the cable channel and things that you certainly could never have dreamed of way back then. SM (00:55:40): Is there one specific event when you were young that had the greatest influence on you? DK (00:55:50): What kind of influence? SM (00:55:53): It impacted your life. A lot of people say the Kennedy assassination affected... DK (00:55:57): Well, certainly that. That is why- SM (00:55:57): That innocence. DK (00:55:59): That was my next book after American Tragedy and it was about that. SM (00:56:02): Yes. DK (00:56:04): That was the most traumatic event of my life, and it probably still is the most traumatic event of my life. Although, I did not really realize that at the time. The depth of that only emerged later. But no, the most influential event for me was definitely the Vietnam War. SM (00:56:21): Right. Almost everybody remembers where they were when they heard about President Kennedy was shot. DK (00:56:27): I remember exactly. SM (00:56:28): What is your personal experience of remembering that moment? DK (00:56:33): I was in boarding school in Connecticut, and we had been let out of lunch at 1:45, and I had to go see a dean or something in his office. I was in his office and some kid ran in and said, "Hey, they said the president has been shot." But, the way he said it, he clearly did not really believe it, and I did not either. Then I started to walk back to the dorm, and then I began to realize this was serious. I remember, I think I started to run, and when I got into the dorm, the radio was on and everybody knew this was really serious. Then I went down the hall to where the teacher on the floor lived and went into his place and he had TV on. I saw Cronkite read the announcement. When Cronkite read the announcement, I was still in a denial phase and I was sitting there saying, "No, please. Let us stop this tape now." I was not using that language, but that was the way I was feeling. This is all happening too fast. My most vivid memory about all that is I spoke to my parents that day. They were in Washington at that point, and they were very shaken. My father particularly, it was probably the most shaken I ever heard him. The next weekend was Thanksgiving weekend, and I went home. They had a huge party on Saturday night of that weekend with all their administration friends. I could not find anybody at that whole party who wanted to talk about Kennedy. All they wanted to talk about was Johnson and how well he was doing and what was going to be happening in the future. I was very shocked by that. It took me a long time to realize what was going on there. My real personal awakening was in 1968 as a result of Ted Johnson's withdrawal and my own complete reevaluation of a lot of my thinking about American foreign policy. SM (00:59:24): What were the most important books that you read when you were young and what were your peers reading? What were young people reading when you were a college student? DK (00:59:40): I would say the most important book for me, in the context of what we are talking about, and many others was Catch 22. I remember that I finished it on the night before my 21st birthday. That was in June of 1968. That was a great moment to be reading it. I had tried to read it earlier in the decade and I could not get into it because the idea of turning World War II into a joke just turned me off, as it turned off a lot of the older generation at that time. By 1968, I was ready for it. SM (01:00:30): You have actually written a book on Vietnam, An American Tragedy. The venue that I am dealing with here is an oral history and oral interviews. In your opinion, why did the Vietnam War end when it did? What was the main reason that it ended? Secondly, how important were the college student protests on the college campuses at ending the war? DK (01:01:12): How important were the college student protests at ending the war? Until Nixon, not at all. We now know that Nixon, in November of (19)69 decided not to massively escalate, in significant part because of the protests. He denied that at the time but we now know that that is true. Obviously, the reaction to Kent State meant that he was going to have to continue deescalating for political reason. Now, the protests did have another impact, I think, which in the long run was going to be far more significant, which was the end to the draft. Which is certainly not a bad thing. In fact, to some extent, and this is something that we have touched on already, you could also make a case that the protest prolonged the war because Nixon remarked to Haldeman, and I think to Henry Kissinger too, but certainly to Haldeman frequently, that the student protests were a godsend [inaudible] because older people hated the students so much. Again, Johnson decided not to escalate again and to withdraw in the winter of (19)68. I do not think that was mainly because of protests. I think it was because Clark Clifford had been convinced that it was useless, and because of very severe international economic strain that they had to pay attention to. Why it ended was that, I think Henry Kissinger, actually, there is some credit for trapping Nixon into that. The real reason was that they had this other huge agenda with the Russians and the Chinese, and Kissinger simply did not want to drag just to drag on for a few more years. As we now know, knew very well that this is likely to leave the collapses South Vietnam, but he did not care. SM (01:04:39): Could you talk a little bit about the atmosphere in America at the time of the Vietnam War? Particularly in the period between (19)67 and (19)71, (19)72 when deferments were happening all over the country and it basically became a poor man's war. People that did not have the power or the influence and the tensions between those 3 million boomers that served in Vietnam and the rest of the boomers who did not? DK (01:05:21): They lived in different worlds because for the most part, the ones who served were the ones who had not gone to college and vice versa. I do not think there was a lot of hostility between those two groups. I went into the Army Reserve in September of 1970, and I did basic training in (19)71. And my company was divided about 50 50 between draftees and enlistees on the one hand and National Guard and Reserves like myself on the other. That was so late that even the draftees were not living in terror of what was going to happen to them. They knew that their chance of dying in combat by that time was very low. That undoubtedly tanked things somewhat, but I did not feel there was a lot of hostility or much hostility at all based on that. I think it is very interesting that there was so much protest among college students who basically were protected from. One accusation that I think is false is the idea that they were just protesting because they were scared. I do not think that is true. SM (01:07:08): There is always these books out called Spinning Image. You have probably heard of that book where the troops had come back and they were spat upon when they- DK (01:07:16): My understanding is- SM (01:07:17): That really happened. DK (01:07:18): That that is largely amiss and that there are very few documented cases of that happening. I remember, I mean, I was not very lucky. I did my basic training in Fort Leonard Wood in the wilds of Missouri, but I got to go to St. Louis a couple times and I did not wear my uniform when I went. Some people did. I certainly did not hear about anybody getting a negative reaction to wearing their uniform. Of course, in that part of the country I do not suppose you would have. I do not remember ever hearing anything like that from anybody I met. SM (01:08:07): I go down to the Vietnam Memorial on Memorial Day in Veterans Day every year. You see some of the tensions of the commentary against those who were against the war, whether they be Jane Fonda or even when Bill Clinton- DK (01:08:21): Jane Fonda was- SM (01:08:23): Even when Bill Clinton came to the wall. DK (01:08:24): It is true that you can still get a rise out of almost anybody. SM (01:08:26): They booed Clinton when he came to the wall too. Quite a few veterans booed him in the background when he spoke there in (19)93. DK (01:08:35): Who? SM (01:08:36): Bill Clinton. Then when the Vietnam Veterans of America formed the anti-war group, there was tension between that group and other Vietnam veterans, which goes right into the Kerry situation in the 2004 elections. These tensions are still there. DK (01:08:56): That is true. I think that the Jim Webb type of veteran is a very vocal minority and I do not think is all that representative. The whole time I was in the Army, I did not meet one troop who was a developed believer in that war. And that is a fact. SM (01:09:30): Yeah. Even A Rumor of War by Phil Caputo, in his book talks about 1965, how they were starting to go against the war even then by some of the things that were happening. That is the troops thinking that. I have a very important question here that we actually asked Senator Muskie when a group of students that I took to Washington about maybe eight years ago, before he died. We asked him this question, do you feel that the boomers are still having problems with healing due to the extreme divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? The divisions between black and white, between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Do you feel the boomer generation will go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the following statement true? Time heals all wound. Is there truth in this statement? DK (01:10:34): No. SM (01:10:34): Your thought on whether [inaudible] healing. DK (01:10:38): There will never be a consensus among boomers about the war, about religion, about almost anything. That is the nature of the generation and what is likely to happen. We are in the third great crisis of our national life now. After the Civil War and the Depression of World War II, it is the profit generations that bring about those crises. As soon as the crisis is over, they are stuck into the attic. At some point that will happen again and no one will care what we think anymore. At that point you will see bipartisanship in the Congress and things like that, again. As long as we are around, those qualities will be towards applying. SM (01:11:41): I guess I am really- DK (01:11:43): I would not necessarily put it in terms of wounds and healing. The point is that we wear our heart on our sleeve and we are so obsessed with being right. Most of us will die that way. SM (01:11:58): So, just as there is 70 million different people in the boomer generation, 70 million people have different responses to the issue of healing. DK (01:12:08): Exactly. SM (01:12:11): What do you think the wall has done? Jan Scruggs wrote the book, To Heal a Nation. It is supposed to be a non-political entity to heal the veterans, those who served and the families of those who lost loved ones. He goes further and says we want to heal the nation on this. What do you think the wall has done to not only heal veterans but the nation? Just your thoughts. DK (01:12:38): That is a difficult question for me to answer. I am very pro wall. I am very moved by it. I think its significance may increase in a way. This depends on what is going to happen in the next 20 years. I constantly have to remind my own students, for instance, most of whom now were born when the war was over, that the entire casualties in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or certainly the killed, the wounded it might be a little different, do not add up to half of 1968. When you look at that wall, it is brought home to you that even though that was thought of as a relatively small war, it was being fought on a scale which would be unimaginable today. That is progress to me, very important progress, which I hope not to see reversed in my lifestyle. There was an aroused minority that resented the wall. One advantage I have, although I have been writing about the US now for 20 plus years, I started out as a European historian, and my teaching here is still involved in the history of a lot of other nations. All great nations have made terrible mistakes and suffered terrible catastrophes as a result. Some of them much worse than what we suffered in Vietnam. Thus, it is not difficult for me to regard this as the kind of mistake that sadly any great nation is going to make once in a while. The wall, to me, can be viewed that way. People have complained that it makes it look like it was a traffic accident. To me, that is fine because I do feel it is a kind of a manmade catastrophe, though quite unnecessary [inaudible], but this is part of life. SM (01:15:11): The other area that I want to look into is the issue of trust. The boomers obviously experienced many leaders who lied to them and were dishonest in many ways. The result is that many, if not most did not trust their leaders. No matter what their role in society, they could be a President of the United States or of a university, a congressman, a senator, a corporate leader, a religious leader, anybody in a position of responsibilities. There did not seem to be any trust toward any of them. The question I am asking, is this a very distrustful generation or is that just a natural thing? I was a political science history major and I learned early on that lack of trust is something that is okay in a democracy because it challenges other points of view. Do you feel that this is a generation that did not trust, and if they did not trust, are they pass this on to their children and thus their children's children? Just your thoughts on that. I bring this up because I can remember in a Psych 101 class once in college, the professor saying, we are going to talk about trust today. In that class he said, "If you cannot trust someone, you will not be a success in life personally. You have got to be able to trust somebody." I have always remembered him saying that, and then seeing the generation that I was around in that classroom not really trusting anybody. Just wondering if that is really part of this generation. DK (01:16:57): I think it is part of the generation. While, I think it is a healthy impulse to distrust your government to a certain extent, I think that as with so many other things, we pushed it much too far so that it has prevented many boomers from looking at leaders of all kinds, realistically, at all. They are too quick to write them off based on one transgression. As a historian, it is my job to make meaningful comparison, not to compare everything to some hopeless ideal. So, that is a problem. On the other hand, that most definitely is not what boomers passed on to their kids. The millennials are very trusting of authority, almost shockingly so. Although, they do resent it very much if authority changes the rules in the middle of the game. That is the one thing that will really freak them out. They just want you to tell them what needs to be done so they can do it. I was shocked. Again, I did the same generations in film course at Williams and had them write autobiographical papers and you would have to waterboard these kids to get them say anything nasty about their parents. That is not true about GenX, at all. SM (01:18:49): Right. DK (01:18:50): And obviously it was not true about boomers. SM (01:18:53): It is interesting. Boomers had that big generation gap of their parents and there was a friction between boomers and Generation Xers. I found in my work in college that millennials get along pretty well with boomers. This is an important point to make. I have read some of the how, and I have read the latest book on millennials. I have read that. DK (01:19:16): I only read a little of that. SM (01:19:18): One of the things is that millennials do want to leave a legacy. But, it is when they want to leave it, that is the issue. They want leave a legacy once they are 40 and beyond. They want to get their job done, raise a family, and they just want to enjoy themselves in the twenties and thirties. Then in the forties, they want to give something back to society. Whereas, the boomers always had this feeling that they wanted to make a difference in the world. Maybe that is where they have a uniqueness, a link, both generations want to make a difference in the world. One wanted to do it when they were young and maybe have failed as they have gotten older. The others do not want to do it when they are young and they want to do it when they are older. DK (01:20:15): Boomers change their own world. I think their record of actually making a positive difference in the world at large is not very strong. I keep going back to that. It is interesting. I have a son who is a kind of an older millennial. He is already the principal of the charter school in Brooklyn. He works 16 hours a day and he has been under tremendous pressure, but he wants this to be the best middle school in New York. He may in fact be successful with that. SM (01:20:52): Wow. That is good. DK (01:20:58): He got into an interesting argument at Christmas with my wife, who is not... Christmas with my wife, who is not his mother, she is my second wife, and what she was trying to claim that the work he was doing was somehow inspired by Boomers. And, he said very politely, "If Boomers have had any influence on the positive changes in American education, I have not noticed it." SM (01:21:22): Wow. DK (01:21:25): And, he said, he came out of Teach for America. And, he said that for everybody who has been in Teach for America, the focus is totally on what works, what does not. What has actually shown results, what has not. And that is all. So, they probably will leave much more of a legacy. But, again, if you look at the transcendentals, I mean the legacy of the Civil War was that the union was preserved, but that was about it. And, they did not have the follow- up power to turn that into a real positive outcome, I think. In either the North or the South. And, the missionaries on the other hand, I mean, they left an enormous legacy. That is another the story. SM (01:22:16): You keep saying that the Boomers are not leaving much. DK (01:22:23): Not at an institutional level. SM (01:22:28): Well, where are they? DK (01:22:29): Personal level, maybe they are. SM (01:22:33): It is like individuals doing good things for others, but not as a community? In the hope- DK (01:22:37): No. And, also opening up emotional lives, opening up opportunities for minorities. I mean, the gay rights movement is a very revolutionary development and obviously a good one. The whole way that the therapeutic profession, the mental health profession has changed and become very important thanks to silencing Boomers. That is a huge step forward. Whereas remember in the (19)50s, to the extent that there was psychiatry, it was based on a very narrow Freudianism that assumed that your problems were in some sense of your fault. And, it certainly was not a result of something somebody had actually done to you or something like that. And, we have gone beyond that, and that is very important. So when you see, in the movies I use about Boomers, when I want to show a positive image, it is something like Goodwill Hunting and the Robin Williams character there who's a therapist. Or possibly An Officer and a Gentleman in which Foley, the drill instructor, is clearly a Boomer although Louis Gossett, the actor is [inaudible]. And, when I want to show a negative image, it is something like Wall Street and Gordon Gekko. And, we are where we are today because of many Gordon Gekkos. SM (01:24:15): Do you share Taxi Driver? DK (01:24:18): No. SM (01:24:18): That is the Vietnam vet who goes nuts. DK (01:24:22): Well, that is an interesting movie. Although I do not think, well, we could have a long conversation. I do not think that movie has a lot of broader significance the same way. Actually, I also have a particular theory about that movie. SM (01:24:40): There is the other movie- DK (01:24:40): Then there is the climax is a [inaudible]- SM (01:24:43): Yeah. There is the other movie too, that Jane Fonda was in. I forget it. It is Vietnam. DK (01:24:48): Coming Home. SM (01:24:50): Yeah. Coming Home. DK (01:24:50): Still have not seen that. SM (01:24:51): Yeah. DK (01:24:53): [inaudible] enough. I do not know why. I think [inaudible 01:24:52] movies about Vietnam are fabulous. SM (01:24:56): One of the things, I interviewed Richie Havens, I want to talk a little bit here about the music. We all know how good the music was, the influence it has had on the generation with all its social messages and all the types of music. Folk, rock, and obviously Motown. But, Richie said something pretty interesting. He said, "People make sometimes fun of Woodstock. One of the things I want to correct about Woodstock is that half the people of the 450,000, that there were not Boomers, they were older people who brought their families and they were World War II generations. So, it is not all about young people if they really study what Woodstock truly was." But, he said what it was is that it finally, "They cannot hide us anymore." And, it is in his book. "They cannot hide us anymore." And, he was referring to the Boomer children, the Boomer kids. He felt that the way the music and the media had tried to hide the Boomers and Woodstock really brought it out that the Boomers- DK (01:26:07): I was not there, but I have to dispute his facts as to the composition of the crowd. SM (01:26:13): Right. DK (01:26:13): I mean, I am sure there were good many silent there, but I certainly do not think there were very many World War II generation people there. And, in fact, one of the funniest things in the movie is that there is some dialogue among towns folk who are very divided, if you remember. SM (01:26:31): Oh yeah. DK (01:26:32): About the whole thing. SM (01:26:32): Yep. Yep. DK (01:26:33): And that is a great scene, actually. But, I suppose that is true, yes. That it did put the generation on the map. But again, the reaction from the older generation was not positive there. SM (01:26:56): But who were your role models when you were growing up? You personally? DK (01:27:04): Oh, what a difficult question. That is a terribly difficult question. I suppose some of the professors I had in one way or another. I had a very strange relationship with my own parents, in that we had very intense family life and they never understood that I was really a completely different person. I was pretty close to a couple of uncles. I had one in particular who was very much of the GI. I was also very... Let us see. There were a number of silent generation women who I became quite close to, who I think sort of picked it out very early on that the Boomers were more interesting than the GI men they were around. And, a lot of what I learned about movies, literature, and whatnot, was from people like that. One in particular actually, who is still alive, but there were a number of them. But, then I was more influenced by contemporary. SM (01:29:00): One of the things that is come up on some of the documentaries about the (19)60s and the Boomers when they were young in that period, is we came close to a second civil war. And, I have had people respond differently because so much was going on here with the cities going up in flames in the early (19)60s. You got Watts and then of course there was the fear when Martin Luther King died, cities were burning. I can remember with my brother going to baseball game at Connie Mac Stadium, were taking the train in from New Jersey, and we had to keep our heads down because there were snipers all over the place shooting at the subways. So, seemed like there was a second civil war happening. And, I would like your thoughts on that, because when people make comments about, and some of these documentaries about the Civil War, they say the next real era of that problem was not the depression World War II, it was the (19)60s. DK (01:29:57): All right. SM (01:30:01): And, then I had something that Malcolm one of my guests said and then we will close. Your thoughts on that? DK (01:30:11): Well, there were plenty of people who would have been willing to be foot soldiers, but I think it was misleading because the older generations who were in charge still, had shared values. Shared belief in institutions, and in fact all of that, by the mid (19)70s, they had not shaken the political structure very much so I think that was an illusion. Again, you could go back to around 1900 and you could find a lot of very violent strikes. You could find bombings, terrorism, things like that, and make the same kind of argument. But revolution, civil war only happens when the old order is really dying, which is what we have right now. SM (01:31:13): Yeah. DK (01:31:14): So, I think that no was, I think that is an exaggeration. SM (01:31:23): So, you make a very important point like what is happening now. I interviewed Malcolm Boyd last week. DK (01:31:28): Yeah. SM (01:31:29): I had a two-part interview with him. And, he mentioned that, that what is happening now in America has a greater chance of tearing this nation apart than anything that happened in the (19)60s. DK (01:31:43): Definitely. SM (01:31:44): Because- DK (01:31:44): Definitely the case. SM (01:31:45): I got you. DK (01:31:46): And, you see now we have got the total paralysis in Washington that at no time did you have anything like that then except maybe briefly during Watergate. SM (01:31:57): Why do you think so many people are actually trying to criticize President Obama? They may not like his policies, but they say he is just bringing the (19)60s back again. You have probably heard that before. DK (01:32:07): Well, that is ridiculous. SM (01:32:08): Yeah. DK (01:32:08): I mean, that is conservative propaganda. And, he is not a (19)60s person at all. But, that is what they pulled out against the Clintons too [inaudible]. SM (01:32:20): And, my very last question, this is it. What has the Boomer generation left to future generations? What in your opinion, have they done? Now remember, they thought they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. They were going to- DK (01:32:36): They have changed things enormously for more than half the population that is women and homosexual. And, that is not trivial. Meanwhile, they have unleashed a lot of raw economic forces with very unfortunate consequences. And, they have done great harm to the Western intellectual tradition. So, those are both positive and negative things. SM (01:33:25): Can you say a little bit more about the great harm to the Western intellectual tradition? DK (01:33:30): I already have. SM (01:33:31): Okay. DK (01:33:31): I mean, they have propagated the idea that reality is an individual matter, therefore standards of evidence do not matter. And, they have cut off universities from the real world to an extent that is almost medieval, in my opinion. So, that in a couple of centuries, or even in one century, if people are reading the articles that are appearing today in the American Historical Review, it will be just as difficult for them to intellectually engage those articles as it would be to engage medieval religious controversies. SM (01:34:18): Very good. All right. DK (01:34:20): No, well, I mean, I did not know what this is going to be like, but in terms of, and again, I really am very tired and in general, Mike. SM (01:34:29): Yep. DK (01:34:30): But in fact, what I am going to tell my wife, you may hear from me again about her. I think she expected that you were going to be asking a lot more questions about the interviewee's actual life and that is what she would be interested in bugging you about. SM (01:34:52): Well, I could have done that too. DK (01:34:54): Well, you see, because she actually, she was a hippie. She became a homesteader in Arizona. SM (01:35:00): Oh, yeah. That is- DK (01:35:00): She built this ranch from scratch. So, if you would like to talk to her about things like that, then you should. SM (01:35:06): Yep, definitely. Because, each interview has been different. DK (01:35:10): All right. Well then let me just give you her name and number. SM (01:35:13): Okay. Hold on a second. Let me write this down. Okay. DK (01:35:15): Yep. Patti, P-A-T-T-I. Cassidy. 4-0-1 4-2-3 3-9-0-6. SM (01:44:12): 4-2-3 3-9-0-6? DK (01:44:14): That is right. SM (01:44:16): Does she have an email or do you? DK (01:44:18): Yes. Let me make sure I got that right. Wait a second. Hold it. She has a tricky email. I want to make sure it is right. Yeah. T-A-P-I-T-1. SM (01:44:41): P-A? DK (01:44:42): No-no-no. T as in Tom. T-A-P-I-T-1. That is an anagram for Patti you see, @gmail.com. SM (01:44:55): Say that one more time. DK (01:44:57): T as in Tom, A-P as in Patti, I, T as in Tom, one the numeral. SM (01:45:05): Okay. DK (01:45:06): @gmail.com. SM (01:45:08): Why did you want me to ask more about your personal life or? DK (01:45:11): No-no-no, that is fine. But, we did [inaudible]. SM (01:45:13): Yep. Okay. Very good. Because you are the historian, I think, and you said some things about what made you who you are too. And- DK (01:45:21): I did a little bit. Yes. SM (01:45:23): Yep. DK (01:45:24): You see, it is very interesting. A friend of mine is Jamie Galbraith, who is John Kenneth Galbraith's son. And, John Kenneth Galbraith, by the way, did express himself publicly about American tragedy, which meant a great deal to me. SM (01:45:43): Yes. DK (01:45:44): And, Jamie is an economist at the University of Texas, and he is a new deal kind of economist, of which there are almost none left. Krugman is the best known, but practically none of them left. And, again, I think it is because he was too involved in our parents' world just to completely turn his back on it and decide that he could forget about everything we had ever learned. And, that was certainly the case with me too. SM (01:46:21): Well, one of the things that is come up on some of the documentaries about the (19)60s and the Boomers when they were young in that period is we came close to a second civil war. And, I have had people respond differently because so much was going on here with the cities going up in flames. And, the early (19)60s you got Watts. And, then of course there was the fear when Martin Luther King died, cities were burning. I can remember with my brother going to a baseball game at Connie Mac Stadium, we were taking the train in from New Jersey, and we had to keep our heads down because there were snipers all over the place shooting at the subways. So, seemed like there was a second civil war happening. And, I would like your thoughts on that, because when people make comments about, in some of these documentaries about the Civil War, they say the next real era of that problem was not the depression World War II, it was the (19)60s, and then something. DK (01:46:22): All right. SM (01:46:22): And, then I had something that Malcolm, one of my guests said and then we will close. Your thoughts on that? DK (01:46:23): Well, there were plenty of people who would have been willing to be foot soldiers, but I think it was misleading because the older generations who were in charge, still had shared values. Shared belief in institutions and in fact all of that, by the mid (19)70s, they had not shaken the political structure very much. So, I think that was an illusion. Again, you could go back to around 1900 and you could find a lot of very violent strikes. You could find bombings, terrorism, things like that, and make the same kind of argument. But, revolution civil war only happens when the old order is really dying, which is what we have right now. SM (01:46:23): Yeah. DK (01:46:23): So, I think that no was, I think that is an exaggeration. SM (01:46:23): So, you make a very important point, like what is happening now. I interviewed Malcolm Boyd last week. DK (01:46:23): Yeah. SM (01:46:23): I had a two-part interview with him. And he mentioned that, that what is happening now in America has a greater chance of tearing this nation apart than anything that happened in the (19)60s. DK (01:46:23): Definitely. Definitely the case. SM (01:46:23): I got you. DK (01:46:23): And, you see at now we have got this total paralysis in Washington that at no time did you have anything like that then, except maybe briefly during Watergate. SM (01:46:23): Why do you think so many people are actually just trying to criticize President Obama? And, they may not like his policies, but they say he is just bringing the (19)60s back again. You have probably heard that before. DK (01:46:23): Well, that is ridiculous. SM (01:46:23): Yeah. DK (01:46:23): I mean, that is conservative propaganda, and he is not a (19)60s person at all. But, that is what they pulled out against the Clintons too [inaudible]. SM (01:46:23): And, my very last question, this is it. What has the Boomer generation left to future generations? What in your opinion, have they done? Now remember, they thought they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society. They were going to- DK (01:46:23): They have changed things enormously for more than half the population that is women and homosexual. And, that is not trivial. Meanwhile, they have unleashed a lot of raw economic forces with very unfortunate consequences. And, they have done great harm to the Western intellectual tradition. So, those are both positive and negative things. SM (01:46:23): Can you say a little bit more about the great harm to the Western intellectual tradition? DK (01:46:23): I already have. SM (01:46:23): Okay. DK (01:46:23): I mean, the idea, they have propagated the idea that reality is an individual matter, therefore, standards of evidence do not matter. And, they have cut off universities from the real world to an extent that is almost medieval, in my opinion. So, that in a couple of centuries, or even in one century, if people are reading the articles that are appearing today in the American Historical Review, it will be just as difficult for them to intellectually engage those articles as it would be to engage medieval religious controversies. SM (01:46:23): Very good. All right. DK (01:46:23): No, well, I mean, I did not know what this is going to be like, but in terms of, and again, I really am very tired and just like, but in fact, what I am going to tell my wife, you may hear from me again about her. I think she expected that you were going to be asking a lot more questions about the interviewee's actual life. And, that is what she would be interested in bugging you with. SM (01:46:23): Well, I could have done that too, actually. DK (01:46:23): Well, you see, because she actually, she was a hippie. She became a homesteader in Arizona. SM (01:46:23): Oh yeah. DK (01:46:23): And, built this ranch from scratch. So, if you would like to talk to her about things like that, then you should [inaudible]. SM (01:46:23): Yep. Definitely, because each interview has been different. DK (01:46:23): All right. Well then let me just give you her name and number. SM (01:46:23): Okay. Hold on a second. Let me write this down. Okay. DK (01:46:23): Yep. Patti, P-A-T-T-I. Cassidy. 4-0-1 4-2-3 3-9-0-6. SM (01:46:23): 4-2-3 3-9-0-6? DK (01:46:23): That is right. SM (01:46:23): Does she have an email or do you? DK (01:46:23): Yes. Let me make sure I get that right. Wait a second. Hold it. She has a tricky email. I want to make sure if I... Yeah. T-A-P-I-T-1. SM (01:46:23): P-A? DK (01:46:23): No, no, no. T as in Tom. A-P-I-T-1. That is an anagram of Patti, you see. @gmail.com. SM (01:46:23): Say that one more time. DK (01:46:23): T as in Tom, A-P as in Patti, I-T as in Tom, one the numeral. SM (01:46:23): Okay. DK (01:46:23): @gmail.com. SM (01:46:23): Why did you want me to ask more about your personal life or? DK (01:46:23): No-no-no, that is fine. What we did was fine. SM (01:46:23): Yep. Because, okay, very good. Because, you are the historian, I think, and you said some things about what made you who you are too. DK (01:46:23): I did a little bit. Yes. SM (01:46:23): Yep. DK (01:46:23): I was, you see, it is very interesting. A friend of mine is Jamie Galbraith who is John Kenneth Galbraith's son. And, John Kenneth Galbraith, by the way, did express himself publicly about American tragedy, which meant a great deal to me. SM (01:46:23): Yes. DK (01:46:23): And, Jamie is an economist at the University of Texas, and he is a new deal kind of economist, of which there are almost none left. Krugman is the best known, but they practically none of them left. And again, I think it is because he was too involved in our parents' world just to completely turn his back on it and decide that he could forget about everything we had ever learned. And, that was certainly the case with me too. SM (01:46:23): Well. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. David Kaiser Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kaiser, David ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kaiser, David--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. David Kaiser is a professor of Physics and the History of Science at MIT. He received his Bachelor's degree in Physics at Dartmouth College and Ph.D.s in Physics and the History of Science at Harvard University. His historical research focuses on the development of physics in the United States during the Cold War. Additionally, his research in physics studies the early-universe cosmology, working at the interface of particle physics and gravitation. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-02-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.71a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.71b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 106:26 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5aef0a6d32788bc27ada8bda1827064e.jpg 07681f522885a1b08913d6d3a1552cfb https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/8a2aafbcbabbb3fda9a2a838570c961f.mp3 e02039ebee5c7734eea10d0d3b306211 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource Audio interviews Title A name given to the resource McKiernan Interviews Description An account of the resource Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br /> <h3>The McKiernan 22</h3> <div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div> <ul> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li> <li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li> </ul> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stephen McKiernan Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Template: Simple Audio Player (Amplitude.js) This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-03-08 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cleve Jones Language English Biographical Text Cleve Jones is the founder of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. He began his lifetime of activism in the 1970s, in part, due to his friendship with pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Jones worked as a student intern in Milk's office after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. After realizing the seriousness of AIDS, Jones created the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983.&nbsp; He conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt at a candlelight memorial for the late Harvey Milk.&nbsp; Since then, the AIDS Memorial Quilt became the largest community art project memorializing the lives of 80,000 Americans who died from AIDS. He has received international and national awards from AIDS and gay rights organizations, religious conferences, state, and national health associations, and the legislatures of California and several other states. Cleve Jones lives in San Francisco, where he serves as a community organizer for Unite Here, an international union representing hotel, food service, casino, and restaurant workers. He is also an author, lecturer, and activist who travels the country talking about his life, the AIDS Quilt, and gay activism since his early days as a student at San Francisco State University. 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.) 86:20 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Public experience; Purdue University; Gay liberation movement; Vietnam War; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Racism; National Liberation Front; Saigon; Democratic Party; Assassination of Harvey Milk ; Drug Culture; Sexual Revolution; Newt Gingrich; Sexual Freedom; AIDS; LGBT; Civil Rights Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Equal Rights Amendment; Feminist Movement; Healing; Hippies; Baby boom generation; Activism.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305}}">Public experience; Purdue University; Gay liberation movement; Vietnam War; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Racism; National Liberation Front; Saigon; Democratic Party; Assassination of Harvey Milk ; Drug Culture; Sexual Revolution; Newt Gingrich; Sexual Freedom; AIDS; LGBT; Civil Rights Movement; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Equal Rights Amendment; Feminist Movement; Healing; Hippies; Baby boom generation; Activism.</span> Subject LCSH Human rights workers; Authors; Gay liberation movement—United States; Jones, Cleve--Interviews Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Cleve Jones Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jones, Cleve ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Human rights workers; Authors; Gay liberation movement—United States; Jones, Cleve--Interviews Description An account of the resource <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Cleve Jones is a human rights activist, author, and lecturer. He joined the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s and worked with one of his early mentors, Harvey Milk, a politician and LGBT activist. During the AIDS epidemic, he co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:14275305},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Cleve Jones is a human rights activist, author, and lecturer. He joined the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s and worked with one of his early mentors, Harvey Milk, a politician and LGBT activist. During the AIDS epidemic, he co-founded the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.</span> Cleve Jones is the founder of the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. He began his lifetime of activism in the 1970s, in part, due to his friendship with pioneer gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Jones worked as a student intern in Milk's office after his election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. After realizing the seriousness of AIDS, Jones created the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 1983.  He conceived the AIDS Memorial Quilt at a candlelight memorial for the late Harvey Milk.  Since then, the AIDS Memorial Quilt became the largest community art project memorializing the lives of 80,000 Americans who died from AIDS. He has received international and national awards from AIDS and gay rights organizations, religious conferences, state, and national health associations, and the legislatures of California and several other states. Cleve Jones lives in San Francisco, where he serves as a community organizer for Unite Here, an international union representing hotel, food service, casino, and restaurant workers. He is also an author, lecturer, and activist who travels the country talking about his life, the AIDS Quilt, and gay activism since his early days as a student at San Francisco State University. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-03-08 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.70 Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 86:20 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b23acbbcd1928fd974fd03904286aecc.jpg 935992e3805a8b9cbabc62b6d0785cda https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/5a545cf806c07167fa222b644703b538.mp3 0b36c0c7745429296c80212ed4cfcff0 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2010-09-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Susan Jacoby, 1945- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including The Age of American Unreason. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including <em>The Age of American Unreason</em>. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry.</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 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 173:52 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Women in the Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; women; Anti-war movement; Activism; Tom Hayden; Pat Tillman.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Women in the Vietnam War; Baby boom generation; women; Anti-war movement; Activism; Tom Hayden; Pat Tillman.</span> Subject LCSH Authors; Jacoby, Susan, 1945--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: Susan Jacoby Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 10 September 2010 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:03): Testing one, two. SJ (00:00:03): Do you want test and see if you are getting it? SM (00:00:12): Oh, I know it will not. Testing. [inaudible] this one has already started. SJ (00:00:14): No problem. SM (00:00:16): I am going to read these to make sure that I get these right too. I am all over the place here. And the first question I was going to ask is that you wrote a piece in the Wounded Generation, which was a book that came out in 1980. It was a paperback on Vietnam. SJ (00:00:32): Back in the Dark Ages. SM (00:00:37): That was back in the Dark Ages. This is the only question I have on that because I have interviewed just about everybody else who was at the symposium. Women in the Vietnam War wrote a piece in the book, in the Wounded Generation on women in the war. How are boomer generation women wounded psychologically, personally, from that war? And how important were they in the anti-war movement? SJ (00:01:05): I will tell you honestly. I think that women who were older than the boomer generation were more important in the anti-war movement than women of the boomer generation. The contact that women of the boomer generation had with the anti-war movement, although there were lots of women obviously involved, just as there were lots of men, but the fundamental thing is the women were not subject to the draft, did not have any danger of having to fight in that war. So I think unless a woman had a brother or a husband who is actually in the fighting, and this would be very different, the attitudes of people who came from the social class that did most of the fighting, which then as now meant people who were not going to college, basically blue collar people, they were not as represented in the anti-war movement as were college educated boomer women. So I really do not think that that women were affected in the same way that men were, except that women in general were more anti-war than men. And that was true not just for boomer women, but for all women. SM (00:02:26): Right. Let me just... Here we go. SJ (00:02:32): Let me see if I can get this guy again. SM (00:02:33): Okay. Very good. SJ (00:02:33): That is done. My cell phone is back in my purse. That is it. SM (00:02:40): Okay. SJ (00:02:43): Okay. SM (00:02:46): I have read a little bit about your background from going on the web and also in the book, but how did you become who you are? In terms of, who were your mentors, your role models? I know you went to Michigan State starting in (19)63, but who are the people that influenced you the most in your early years? SJ (00:03:07): Do you mean by my early years, do you mean when I was a- SM (00:03:09): High school. SJ (00:03:09): Kiddo? SM (00:03:10): Yeah. Let us say high school, college. SJ (00:03:17): That is an interesting question. I will preface it by saying that I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a kid. And I wanted to be a newspaper reporter because everybody in my family read newspapers and that is what I wanted to do. At Michigan State, my college career was somewhat different from other members of the boomer generation. I did not want to go to college. I was an idiot. I was a classic example of someone who was not at an age where I could most benefit from education. And unlike most people of my generation who stayed in school as long as they could, men because of the war and women for other reasons, I was determined to get out. I grew up in Okemos, Michigan, which is right near Michigan State. I went to Michigan State for one reason and one reason only. They had an honors college which enabled you if you kept up a certain grade point to take as many credits as you want and get through as fast as you could. I graduated in just a little over two years. At a better university, I would not have been able to do that. At Michigan State, I did. And the reason I did that was I knew that if I had to be in college for four years, I would become a dropout. And there was no way a woman was ever going to get a job as a newspaper reporter if she was a college dropout. I think this is important because I am just on the edge of the baby boom generation born nine months before it actually started. So when I went to college, it was between 1963 and 1965. This was before what people think of as "the (19)60s." When I entered Michigan State, there were parietal rules. I was almost expelled for being found doing nothing in a boys' off-campus apartment. That is what the real... In other words, this is a totally different experience from being that age five years later when all of that stuff had gone out the window. So in many ways, things for me at that age were more like what they were for people in the (19)50s than they were for the boomers who came of age only five years later. And I knew I could not stand living under this regime which kept you as a child, particularly if you were a woman. This is before feminism and so I wanted to get through as fast as possible. Nevertheless, I have to say, I took any course I wanted because that is another thing you could do at the honors college. I took Russian. I majored in journalism and there were some great journalism professors there. A lot of them were people who had been newspaper men in Wisconsin during the McCarthy era and had lost their jobs because of it. And John Hannah, who was then the president of Michigan State, hired a lot of those people. He was very strong about McCarthy. Did not like him. He was a liberal Republican, they were still liberal, and the chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission as well, which practically made you a communist to the eyes of the McCarthyites. Anyway, but the best thing my professors did for me was they made me realize I had to have a huge amount of professional experience by the time I got out of college to get a job as a woman. And I did. And they were my mentors. One of them was named George Huff, who is still alive. One of them was named Bud Myers. And so I went to work as a campus stringer for the Detroit Free Press. SM (00:07:18): Oh, okay. SJ (00:07:19): Michigan State was one of the two biggest universities in the state and it was a source of news. And when I went to interview at the Washington Post in the spring of 1965 for a job, I had a huge professional string book from the Detroit Free Press. So I would say that things worked out for me, although they should not have. My real education came later on. SM (00:07:45): Yeah. Gets me right into my next question here. As a journalist in the (19)60s and (19)70s, do you feel the media only went after what was sensational? And by that I mean the drug culture, the long hair, the clothes, the violence, the protests. And there was little coverage of the majority of the young people that were not involved in any of this kind of activism. SJ (00:08:13): I mentioned this in the age of American Unreason. SM (00:08:17): Right. Right. SJ (00:08:18): And it was not that they went after just what was sensational. That was as much a part of the (19)60s as anything else. It was that the media mostly, it is absolutely true, was then and is now, the media was liberal. Reporters who were close to the age of the students who were protesting shared their views. We did not know anything about the things we now know. I knew nothing about fundamentalist religion. And in fact, there was a whole other (19)60s. That whole other (19)60s is represented by George W. Bush and all of the neoconservatives who first got into government under Ronald Reagan and really began running things under George W. Bush. They were there in the (19)60s too and they were drawing quite different conclusions about what was going on around them than people like me who worked for the Washington Post were. I was not aware of what I now call the other (19)60s at all then. I have become aware of it in the last 20 years, but I never thought about it then. SM (00:09:27): Well, you brought it up. You are one of the few people that is really brought it up in any detail. When I interviewed Lee Edwards, a historian down in Washington, he said one of the things in all the books on the (19)60s is they do not ever talk about the conservative students and the Young Americans for Freedom, for example. SJ (00:09:43): That is right. SM (00:09:44): And other groups like that. And of course the importance of the Goldwater election and the links to Ronald Reagan. Why was that? SJ (00:09:52): As I said, I think why it was is that the social class of the media was very different from the social class... First of all, in the early 1960s, there was no intellectual right wing. There was William Buckley in the National Review and that was that. But there was not any... Now, there is a whole right wing intellectual establishment as well. There was no right wing intellectual establishment then. There was Bill Buckley and his followers, and that is who it was. But there is something else too, I think just as important as that, is the fact that the (19)60s were the years when the fundamentalists established their kindergarten through college network of education and began to train the generation that has had so much influence on public life for the last 30 years. We did not know those people. SM (00:10:49): Well, it is interesting cause you bring up the Campus Crusade for Christ. [inaudible]. SJ (00:10:54): They were just getting started then. SM (00:10:56): Being a college administrator, actually, I have worked with many of those students. But it is interesting about how they used the dress of the (19)60s but they had a different point of view. SJ (00:11:08): Well, sure. SM (00:11:08): Yeah. And so a lot of people do not even think about the Campus Crusade for Christ when they are talking about the (19)60s. SJ (00:11:14): But they were in the (19)60s is when the Campus Crusade for Christ really, it actually was started in the (19)50s, but it did not really have any traction on anything but religious campuses until the late 1960s when they really got started. And one of the things that they were presenting themselves as was an alternative to the drug culture. You can be cool. You can be hip like the Jesus Electric Light and Power Company. You can be cool, you can be hip, but you do not have to share the views of all of those hippies about free love and all of that. And remember, also by the late 1960s, there were a lot of kids who had been involved in the drug scene and so on and were disillusioned with it, were looking for something else. SM (00:12:02): Right. You talk about what they call the grateful and the Ungrateful Generation. Define those. SJ (00:12:10): Well... SM (00:12:10): Because the people that are going to be reading these interviews may not have read your book. SJ (00:12:14): Well, the Grateful Generation was my parents' generation. I call them the Grateful Generation, not the Greatest Generation. SM (00:12:21): And they are not linked to the Grateful Dead. SJ (00:12:23): They are not linked. The Grateful Dead is part of the Ungrateful Generation. But my parents' generation, the World War II generation was the Grateful Generation. These were people who, my mother who is still alive, is a very typical example. Brought up in a blue collar family, first member of her family to go to college. My grandfather, her father, they were blue collar people. My parents, the generation that emerged from World War II as young adults, first of all... In the case of my father it was a little older, but a lot of them went to college on the GI Bill. They came from families where a generation earlier, they would not have been able to go to college. The Grateful Generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest Generation, they had a lot to be grateful for. One of the things they had to be grateful for is unlike people getting out of the service today, they got to buy houses with mortgages at 4 percent with VA loans. They went to school on the GI Bill. They came of age at a time when, although there were ups and downs, America's economic prospects were good. All of those members of the Grateful Generation who went to school on the GI Bill, enjoyed a standard of living which their own parents could never have dreamed of. So they had good reason to be grateful. And the idea, it was always taken for granted that they would send their own children to college. That was not even a question then. And the thing is-is they expected their children who had so much more than they had had when they were growing up during the Depression when they were coming of age during World War II, they expected their children to be thrilled with the middle-class life they had achieved and to which they so aspired. And why I called us the Ungrateful Generation then, again, only some, but particularly among those who are college educated, turned around and said, "We do not want your ticky tacky houses. We do not like these universities. We do not like what they are teaching. We do not like your war." SM (00:14:54): It is interesting. I interviewed Tom Hayden this past week at the follow-up interview that I had [inaudible] for... I interviewed him for almost two hours. And then of course about a year ago I interviewed Todd Gitlin. And they hate the term boomer generation. Both of them. SJ (00:15:08): Well, they are not boomers. SM (00:15:09): Yeah. Well, yeah, they were 42 and 40, I think. SJ (00:15:13): They are not boomers. SM (00:15:14): Todd's younger than Tom. But Tom Hayden, I would like your response to this. Because Tom said he does not like even Tom Brokaw's book The Boom, because he says boom is an indication of something being shot out, showing violence. And boom, that is way the Tom [inaudible]. And then the fact that it happened so fast that the boomer generation was insignificant. It was just a short time period in history. So he was attacking the term boom. SJ (00:15:51): Well, I think if you will pardon my saying so, he is being a bit of naturalistic in his interpretation. The word baby boom was used beginning in the 1940s, and it did not have anything to do with violence. All it meant is all of these people were having all of these children. Did not have anything to do with the idea of the boomer generation as it was taken over in the (19)60s. Tom Hayden, if he says that, his mind is still in the (19)60s, which does not really surprise me. And as for the boomer generation being a short moment in time, well, he does not know much about demography then. Now, there really are two boomer generations. 1957 was the highest birth rate in American history. It was the exact midpoint of the baby boom generation. After that, the demography tapers off a little. But there are really two halves of the boomer generation. One is people born between 1946 and 1957, the older boomers, and people born between 1957 and 1964, the younger boomers. There is a big difference between them. One of them being that it is only the older boomers who came of age in the late 1960s. The younger boomers came of age in a much more conservative era. And in fact, they are more conservative politically in many ways than the older boomers. Barack Obama is a younger boomer. SM (00:17:23): Right. 52 years old, I believe. SJ (00:17:26): He keeps trying to dis-identify himself from the baby boom generation, but he is a boomer. And here is the one thing that the older boomers and the younger boomers have in common. And again, Hayden and Gitlin are not boomers at all. They belong to that half generation born, really, between the middle of the depression and the end of the Second World War. And they have some different... Although you are right, they were involved in in fact, what people think of today as a lot of the activities of the boomer generation. But what the younger boomers and the older boomers have in common is this. They both grew up in spite of the recessions of the 1970s, in times overall that were a rising economy in which they expected and in fact did get access to a lot of things their parents never had. And this is true when you think about Barack Obama. In fact, the younger half of the boomer generation that was Black benefited a lot more from these things than the older Black baby boomers, simply because of the achievements of the civil rights movement that were won when Barack Obama was a baby. So the younger boomers and the older boomers have in common, it did not cost them a fortune to go to college. The real rise in college tuition did not happen until the mid 1980s, after even most of the younger boomers were through college. The younger boomers, Blacks and Hispanics benefited from scholarships and things that did not exist for Blacks, for the older boomers. And something else also, which is that the younger boomers... Again, the Obamas are perfect examples of this. They moved into a path that had been paved by the older boomers, which was if you were 20 in the 1950s, you were expected within two years of graduating from college, if you were a girl to be married, if you were a guy, you were not expected to be married till you were 30, if you were a guy to have a good job. And when the boomers who came of age in the (19)60s came along, they pioneered a path in which it was okay not to get married right away and it was okay to stay in school longer, to take some time out, find out what it was you really want to do. Now, when you look at Barack Obama's career in the 1970s, the timeout he took from school before he went back to law school, these are things that, for instance, a young Black man from the older part of the boomer generation, his parents would have gone nuts if he had said, "I want to wait to go to law school. I want to find myself." SM (00:20:19): Yeah. SJ (00:20:21): Yeah. These possibilities, which are that your life is not set in stone when you are 22, that was a way of living that was pioneered by the older bloomers. When Tom Hayden says this was just a moment in time, he was utterly wrong. SM (00:20:38): He was referring to that term boom and he was referring to Tom Brokaw's book. Yeah. So- SJ (00:20:43): This is a book being written 40 years after all of this is taking place. SM (00:20:47): Right-right. SJ (00:20:48): And I do not know what Tom Brokaw means by boom, but maybe Tom Hayden does not know that the term baby boomer became current in the 1940s. It was not an invention of the 1960s. SM (00:20:58): I know when I interviewed Richie Havens, Richie said, "I was born in 41, but I am really a boomer." SJ (00:21:03): Yeah. SM (00:21:04): Because of his spirit. And that is- SJ (00:21:06): Well, what happened with the boomers of Tom Hayden's age, and the pre-boomers is the things came along in the 1960s and they took advantage... You are absolutely right. A lot of what is thought of as the boomer activities of the late (19)60s was really carried out by this half generation to which both Todd Gitlin, whom I love, and Tom Hayden belong. SM (00:21:34): Yeah. And so did Richie. SJ (00:21:35): Yeah. And Richie too. SM (00:21:36): Yeah. One of the things that I was curious, you already made reference to it, before the real strong women's movement and feminism and so forth, and what was it like being a female reporter? You said you had two people who were really strong role models for you, men, who- SJ (00:21:54): Not role models. They gave me great advice. SM (00:21:55): They gave you great advice. SJ (00:21:57): They were not role models at all. SM (00:22:01): But what was it like to be a female reporter in the early or mid (19)60s? SJ (00:22:05): Well, I applied for a job at two places. The Detroit Free Press and the Washington Post. Fortunately, the Detroit Free Press did not hire me, so I was hired by the Post, which was great. SM (00:22:17): Right. SJ (00:22:20): The Free Press refused to hire me for anything but the society section. This is 1964. Although I had been covering regular stories for them for years because they said a woman could not be out at night if there were a story that came up at night. The Post was a different kettle of fish. They hired me as a regular reporter, but I was only the second reporter, female reporter who did not work in what was then called the society section. However, I think I would have encountered a lot more trouble at the New York Times then than at the Washington Post, because the Post was then expanding. It had a lot of really young reporters on it. It was not a disadvantage to be a woman in the same way as it would have been at the New York Times in the early 1960s. SM (00:23:09): I have a couple, you have a quote in your book, this book. "In this increasing illiterate America, not only the enjoyment in reading, but critical thinking is at risk." And the way I really want to ask this question is, is this a direct link to the (19)60s? Because a lot of criticism of today's young people today is they are smart, but they do not know their history. SJ (00:23:42): Blaming it on the (19)60s. Well... SM (00:23:48): Is there a link between this quote in the (19)60s. SJ (00:23:55): Yes and no. Yes and no. In the 1960s, books were still really important to all of us. I can remember when Portnoy's Complaint was published in 1969. SM (00:24:05): I read it. Yeah. SJ (00:24:07): I can remember. I had heard about this book. I can remember just rushing to the bookstore, just dying to read this book. I do not think anybody rushes to a bookstore dying to read a book at all today. I really think more than the (19)60s, although there is a connection with the (19)60s which I will circle back to, but I really feel that the older boomers belong more to the previous generation in terms of their attitudes toward reading. The younger boomers belong more to the next generation because there was not any internet. There were not any computers before the 1980s. So that we grew up in a society in which if you read, books were important. As far as not knowing history goes, this has gotten worse every year. It did not start in the (19)60s. There were actually some polls from the 1930s which show how little history Americans knew in the 1930s too. But I do think that what happened in the 1960s, nobody could have imagined the internet then. Nobody did. But there were certainly a lot more forms of entertainment began to intrude on time that had once been devoted to reading. Look. The transistor radio, the small portable transistor radio, I think played an important role in this. For the first time, although it was nothing like now, it was nothing like an iPod, it was nothing like computer access 24/7, but for the first time, you could bring your music with you everywhere. I think it was the beginning of a change which was a descending curve that was fairly soft in the (19)60s. I do not think it really takes a sharp downward turn until the 1980s. This is going to be a problem, I think. SM (00:26:12): We can move to... SJ (00:26:13): Well, there are not any tables. SM (00:26:14): [inaudible]. SJ (00:26:18): Because this guy is talking awfully loudly. All right, well let us... They will not stay there. SM (00:26:26): Yeah. You were in the middle of [inaudible]. SJ (00:26:34): No, that is the way it is. Okay. There is one aspect of the (19)60s that I think does have something to do. And it was really the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. I think in general, student demands are blamed in general by conservatives for watering down of the university curriculum. Now, it is true that students were demanding a lot of bullshit things in the late 1960s, early (19)70s. And I do not believe that their criticisms of the curriculum were justified at all, their criticisms the way universities were run was. But I think what happened in the (19)60s, it was bad that was entirely the fault of the faculty at that time is for some reason they were actually scared of these student demands. And you had two kinds of people. You had had younger faculty members, many of whom threw in their lot with the students who wanted to teach women's studies and so on. And you had older faculty members, the people who wanted to teach the way they always had. The dead white European male curriculum. And they both got their way. And I think it was a very evil and stupid compromise. What they did was they shunted it off, instead of developing a great African American studies curriculum which was taught to every student of American history, they shunted it off into minority studies departments. Instead of including women writers in every English class and making women's studies part of the whole, they shunted it off into women's studies departments. This pleased everybody on campuses. And I was an education reporter for the Washington Post at the time this was happening. It pleased the old guys because they could continue to teach their white studies, their white male studies exactly the way they always taught them. And it pleased the new people because it meant more jobs and more tenure. Everybody got what they wanted. It was bad for education in general. The kind of Balkanization of things that every kid ought to be learning started in the late 1960s. And it was not the fault of the students. It was the fault of the faculty who were supposed to be the grownups but they did not act like it. SM (00:28:58): Yeah. You mentioned in the book too, that tenure was something very important in the (19)50s on college campuses, and then when the (19)60s, mid-(19)60s in particular to maybe around the mid-(19)70s, tenure was not that important. It was basically they were involved in the reacting to the social movements that were happening. SJ (00:29:18): That is not what I said. SM (00:29:19): No? SJ (00:29:20): I did not say anything about tenure at all. But in fact, the way things worked out, the way things worked out, everybody got tenure. People who were involved in the social movements of the (19)60s are the tenured professors who will not leave because they cannot retire on college campuses today. Tenure did not have anything to do with whether you were fighting the establishment than at all. Those people got tenure too. Those women's studies professors got tenure, the African American studies... And there are campuses with African American studies departments. Harvard is one of them, [inaudible] where in fact, lots of kids of all races go. But what happened in most campuses was they became an enclave for minority students and meant that the minority students were not learning everything they should learn, and the white students sure as hell were not learning everything they should learn. But as for tenure, that is my whole point. Everybody got it. That is why everybody was happy with what happened. SM (00:30:19): You do a great job also in the book of the criticisms of the neocons toward anybody that was involved in any kind of protest or activism at that particular time. Bring up Irving Crystal and Norman, is it Podhoretz? SJ (00:30:35): Podhoretz. Well, they are ancient. SM (00:30:39): Yeah. And commentary. But they were the old left, and their attitudes toward the (19)60s. How do you react to the current neocons? When New Gingrich came into power in 1994, when the Republicans came in, he made some strong commentaries. SJ (00:30:55): Remember, the Newtster was coming of age of the (19)60s. SM (00:30:58): Yeah. SJ (00:30:59): He was part of that other (19)60s. SM (00:31:00): Yeah. Yeah. He was there and then you had the Bill Crystals of the world who were coming on. And then even today on Fox, you see a lot of the criticisms of the (19)60s. There is a lot of the reasons why we are having a problems in our society today was looking back at the drug culture. SJ (00:31:27): Well, by the way, those people in Fox do not know any more about the (19)60s than most of America knows about ancient Greek or Latin. They do not know anything about it. There is this image of the (19)60s frozen in time. I think that is probably really what Tom Hayden was objecting to. The idea that people who were protesting things in the (19)60s were just free lovers and dopers and that was it. And that is all there was to the (19)60s. People who wanted to do anything that they wanted to do. SM (00:31:58): One of the things, it is a generation gap. It was very obvious. I remember on Life Magazine, they had that front cover with that young man and he had his glasses on. In one side of the glass was his father pointing at him and he was pointing back at his dad. So the generation gap between parents and their kids was very obvious at that particular time. But also in that book, the Wounded Generation, Jim Wetton made a commentary at the symposium back in 1980 that the real generation gap was not between parents. The generation Gap was those who served in Vietnam, and when they were called to serve their nation, they went and those who did not. SJ (00:32:38): Well, that was not a generation gap. That is a culture gap. SM (00:32:41): But he called it a... And actually, he went even further by saying that oftentimes the (19)60s generation is supposed to be the Peace Corps generation, the Vista, the service, that they took the words of Kennedy and they used it whether to go into service or to go into the Peace Corps. He says they are not a service generation because they did not serve. A lot of them refused to serve. SJ (00:33:05): Jim Webb, by the way, is not a baby boomer, I believe. SM (00:33:09): I do not know. I think he is about 44. SJ (00:33:12): Yeah. He is very young. But I would say that that is true. That in general, all of the children of the (19)60s were not the service generation. But if you go back to Vietnam, to say that people who did not serve were just motivated by selfishness, that is not just wrong. It is true that they did not want to get shot at, but they did not want to get shot at for this particular thing. I do not know whether Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile or not. I do not to this day think the Vietnam War was worthwhile. What did we get out of it except all of those dead? And Vietnam is now what it was always going to be. A communist country far from our sphere of influence. And the countries we are fighting in now, Iraq and Afghanistan, are going to be Muslim countries far from our sphere of influence when all of this is over. I do. But I think as somebody who remembers the Vietnam War, I think not just somebody who has heard about it, which is all Jim Webb has. He has heard about it. He does not remember the Vietnam War. He knows only what he has been told at the Military Academy about the Vietnam War. And I like Jim Webb. SM (00:34:31): Well, he served in Vietnam. SJ (00:34:37): He served in Vietnam? SM (00:34:37): Yes, he did. SJ (00:34:37): Oh. So he is not [inaudible] then. SM (00:34:37): No, he served in Vietnam. SJ (00:34:37): He did? SM (00:34:39): Yes. SJ (00:34:40): Are you sure? SM (00:34:40): Yes. And of course his son is serving in Iraq- SJ (00:34:43): Right. SM (00:34:44): Has done two tours. SJ (00:34:45): Well, if Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile, I do not agree with him. And if he thinks that in order to be of the service generation you had to serve in Vietnam, I do not agree with him. You could call young Nazis members of the service generation too. They served the Nazis. And I do not buy that... These members of the service generation too, they served the Nazis. And by that, I assure you I do not mean that people who served in Vietnam were Nazis. I mean, because you do not choose a particular kind of way to serve. But I will tell you this, that I think far worse than anything that happened in terms of culture division in Vietnam is what is happening today. I think that to have an all-volunteer army, which of course was the direct result of the fact that so many people did not want to serve and used education and privilege to get out of the draft, I think the all-volunteer army is far worse. I think the reason that even now, I do not think America is paying any attention to these wars, to how many people are being killed, and I think the direct reason they are not paying any attention to it is that their sons and daughters do not have to go if they do not want to. My parents were moderate Republicans who opposed the Vietnam War. My father was a veteran. They did not think the Vietnam War was worth fighting. They opposed it because they were terrified that their son was going to get drafted, my brother. He did not, but I do not think they would have any position if they were the same kind of people today on the Iraq War. They would not have to worry about my brother being drafted. My father saw absolutely no analogy between Vietnam and World War II, and he was not a liberal. SM (00:36:42): When you look at the whole Jane Fonda situation, and I have interviewed- SJ (00:36:49): Jane is another one of those iconographic (19)60s people. SM (00:36:52): Yeah. We saw her when she was at the New School this past year, I think it was in February, talking about her whole career. It was unbelievable. It was a tremendous hour and a half program there. But when you look at... Oftentimes entertainers themselves are being criticized today. You should just be an entertainer. That is not your role. SJ (00:37:13): That is ridiculous. SM (00:37:14): When you go back to the (19)60s, you can always remember John Wayne, Martha Ray, Bob Hope, which would be- SJ (00:37:22): Of course. SM (00:37:23): ...The gung ho for the troops. Then you had the Donald Sutherlands, the Jane Fonda, the [inaudible] SJ (00:37:30): There is no reason why entertainers should not use their celebrity any way that they want. And by the way, while I am thinking of it, this is not a question you are asking, but you know were asking about boomers and boom and all of that. I do not know about boom, but of course now the boomers... I have a new book coming out in February. SM (00:37:53): You do? SJ (00:37:54): It is called Never Say Die, the Myth and the Marketing of the New Old Age. And here is another thing, and here is why Tom Hayden is very wrong that this was just a moment in time. Oldest boomers turned 65 next year in 2011, the oldest boomers turned 65. By 2030, unless there is some kind of a catastrophe, which of course there always could be, there are going to be 8.5 million Americans over the age of 85, most of them boomers. Now, there is a... And this is related to the age of American unreason because there is also one thing older and younger boomers have in common: a kind of forever young state of mind, whether they are or not. This is hitting the boomers hard now, and this is what my next book is about. There is now the same kind of propaganda about the New Old Age that there was in about boomers being completely different from their parents, in that there is a mindset that says, if only we live right, if only we work hard enough, this phrase defying old age comes up all the time. It is a boomer mindset, a mindset in which... And it is also very much a mindset of the (19)70s after the (19)60s, the retreat into the personal growth kind of thing. But if you just work hard enough, if you live right, your old age is not going to be at 90. I went to this panel two years ago, three years ago called "90 is the New 50". Jane was in the audience, by the way. Well, I could answer you whether 90 is the new 50. It is not, but the boomers are going to be affecting ideas about old age thus far in a very unrealistic sort of way for quite a while. As far as a lot of boomers are concerned, the only people who get Alzheimer's disease are people who did not exercise enough and who ate too many carbs and got too fat. If you live to be more than 85, you have a 50 percent chance of getting Alzheimer's disease. It is evident. Facts cannot be denied. And that is something that a certain fantasy part of the boomer generation has always tried to do. The Boomer attitude toward old age now is exactly like the attitude of aging boomer women who wanted to have natural childbirth, which is they believed if they only it, childbirth would not hurt. SM (00:40:37): Well, I know that boomers do not want to have senior citizen centers. SJ (00:40:41): Hell no. SM (00:40:44): They want to get rid of that word senior citizen. SJ (00:40:48): Look, I used the word old in my new book. The word old is the word boomers hate. Hello, I am just 65. How many 130-year-old do you see walking around? I am not middle aged. They are not middle-aged. By 2030, none of us are going to be anywhere near middle-aged. We are going to be old. SM (00:41:11): It is interesting, you go to any park or any place, people are running, walking, exercising, biking. Doctors will say that will extend your lifespan. SJ (00:41:22): No they do not. They say it is good for you now. No good doctor says... It is good for you in a million different ways. Whether it will extend your life, your healthy lifespan, is completely unknown. I know the AARP which is now run by boomers, of course, the AARP for which I have written for many times, and God bless them, I love them. The AARP, the attitude about the new old age is this: it is okay to be old as long as you pretend you are not. So as the AARP concentrates on the 95-year-old sky diver, the 90-year-old who are having great sex, of course there cannot be very many of them among women because most women who are 90 years old do not have partners. And if you noticed ads for Viagra, which was actually intended either for people who had things like diabetes or for people over 65, 70, the people in ads for Viagra are all in their 40s. They do not want to present the real age at which Viagra is really aimed. What they want to say in these commercials is that if you take Viagra, it will be just like it was 20, 30 years ago. SM (00:42:40): Well, you hit on some... SJ (00:42:41): But this is related to the boomer generation. SM (00:42:43): Oh, yes. SJ (00:42:45): ...Because the boomers are getting old. SM (00:42:48): And I think when they were younger, they felt... This is another thing too. When I was in school, there was this feeling that we were going to change the world, we were going to end the war, bring peace, end all the racism, sexism, homophobia, clean up the environment. There was this attitude that... Not a hundred percent of the people, but the activists had that they were going to make a difference in this world. SJ (00:43:14): And we did make a difference in a lot of ways. Look, would you rather be Black in America today or would you rather have been Black before the Civil Rights Movement? Would you rather be a woman in America today, or would you rather be a woman from Mad Men? These changes in women's lives, and I am not discounting for a minute that what we are seeing now is ugly, and the idea that this was kind of eradicated either then or now is ridiculous, and anybody with their brain in their head knows it. But the fact is the progress that was made in opportunities for minorities, the progress that was made in opportunities for women, is absolutely undeniable. It was not better to be African American or Hispanic or female in 1960 than it is today. It is much better to be all of those things today. SM (00:44:06): You talked a lot about – SJ (00:44:06): Wait until he gets done with this. SM (00:44:16): Busy park. How we doing time-wise? SJ (00:44:18): We have been at it for about- SM (00:44:20): 45 minutes? SJ (00:44:21): Oh, more than that. We can go on. I am comfortable here and get this done maybe. SM (00:44:26): I forget what I was going to ask. Oh, I will come back to it. When you look at the period that boomers had been alive, which is 1946... Oh, I know the question I was going to ask. Many people have said to me during my interviews, when you look at Bill Clinton and when you look at George Bush number two, you can tell they are boomers. Just a general comment. You can tell they are boomers. What do you think they are seeing when they say that? SJ (00:44:57): I have no idea. I mean, they both behave like boomers politically in a sense. I do not know what they mean by that, if you look at them, you can tell that they are boomers. But I can tell that they are boomers because I know they are the age they are. They have to be boomers. I actually do not have any... I cannot venture a comment on that because I do not know what they mean. If they mean a style of politics which is a little less buttoned up, maybe that is what they mean, but I do not know what they mean by if you look at Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, you can tell they are boomers. Do they both smoke pot? Yeah, when they were young. I do not know what that says. SM (00:45:43): I think some were referring to George Bush as well, my way or the highway kind of mentality that some of the activists had in the (19)60s and Bill Clinton with his Monica Lewinsky. SJ (00:46:00): Well, yeah. As we know, politicians who are not boomers never have extramarital sex. This is ridiculous. There is this tendency on the part of the right to attribute everything they do not like, that they imagine to be true about the boomer generation to it being the boomer generation. How can anybody make this ridiculous statement about Monica Lewinsky being an example of a typical boomer mindset? Exactly what generation of politicians has not had sex scandals? The only difference was in the past is that the public did not know about it because the press did not write about it. SM (00:46:38): What did that period, 1946 to 1960, how did that shape the very, very young boomers with respect to the issue of fear? We already talked about McCarthyism, which was on television in the early (19)50s, so the front running boomers would have seen that. Then you had the- SJ (00:46:58): It affected... I remember the air raid drills when we would crouch under the desk, which was supposed protect us from radiation. I do not know a single person my age or who was a sentient being in the early (19)50s who does not remember the fear of the bomb. Exactly how much that shaped us, I do not know. The nature of being young is not to be fearful. I can remember the air raid drills and thinking it was silly, but I do not come from a typical family. My family, while they were not liberal or left at all, but they were sort of completely indifferent to that sort of sort of thing. SM (00:47:46): I think across the board, whether it is accurate- SJ (00:47:51): I think a lot of it would have depended on what kind of a family you came from. SM (00:47:56): Well, three adjectives that I lean on here in describing the early life of boomers as a whole is fear, and fear being that you talk about the bomb and growing up with the Cold War and obviously the communist, looking for communists everywhere. Naive, naivety, because I believe that (19)50s television was all about that, and you really had to read between the lines. And being quiet. SJ (00:48:27): Quiet? SM (00:48:30): Being quiet. I think that history thought boomers really never started speaking, I mean, being outspoken until the (19)60s. SJ (00:48:41): Well, first of all, boomers in the (19)50s were little kids. SM (00:48:41): They were in the junior high school, though, in the early (19)60s. SJ (00:48:46): We do not tend to take down the utterances of little kids, but I think you are very wrong about. I think you are conflating something, the silent generation, which was people who came of age in the (19)50s, with the boomers. I think on the contrary, child-rearing was much more permissive in the 1950s. I do not think people are wrong for good as well as for bad, to say that Dr. Spock's ideas about child-rearing, which while in some ways very traditional, were much freer than the kind of child-rearing people of my parents' generation were brought up with. I think in fact, although boomers, every little word was not taken as seriously as kids are today, I think that boomers grew up in a much freer, more outspoken atmosphere and said things that would not have been allowed for their parents to say when they were children, but I do not think... The (19)60s did not come out of nowhere. They did not come out of nowhere. It is not like a switch was turned on. And you have got to remember that the election of John F. Kennedy, the oldest boomers were 14 when John F. Kennedy was elected, in some ways, that was still the (19)50s, but in some ways too, that also felt like the dawn of a new day. I would say quite the opposite. Yes, there was the bomb and all of that. Did I really think anybody was going to drop a bomb on me when I was... I think, in fact, the boomers were brought up with a great deal more security and entitlement than their parents were. I would say it was quite the opposite of fear. Life was pretty nice for a child in the 1950s if you came from a middle class family. And I do stress that if you came from a middle class family life growing up in the 1950s. If you grew up in a ghetto, or if you were a poor white or black person growing up in the South... Bill Clinton's early life was very different from mine, but what was different by the time he got into college in the (19)60s is there were scholarships for bright young [inaudible]. Bill Clinton, he had been born in generation earlier, he had have been no one. He had have been white trash, because there would not have been any way for a boy like that to go to college. SM (00:51:09): Right. You cannot forget about Native Americans as well during the 1950s on the reservations. SJ (00:51:15): They were not on the radar at all, but the life of the poor and the middle class and the (19)50s was very different. It was certainly as different as it is today, and you just cannot... That is one of the reasons why a lot of the anger today was there... A lot of the other (19)60s were not just the rich people like the Bushes, it was also working-class people. And there are people who did not make it out of the working class in the 1950s and the 1960s. My family made it out of the working class in the 1950s and their children, there was never any thought that we were going to be part of that blue collar class, which was only a half generation away in our family. But a lot of Americans do. SM (00:52:05): This afternoon, I will be speaking to Marvin [inaudible]. He is going to talk about growing up African American in Detroit in the (19)60s. SJ (00:52:12): How old is he? SM (00:52:13): Oh, he has got same age as [inaudible]. He has got to be probably mid-(19)60s. SJ (00:52:18): He is the same age as I am. SM (00:52:20): Yeah, and he does not live in America anywhere. He lives in Mexico. He just happens to be visiting friends here. SJ (00:52:25): Well, that will be a very interesting interview because Detroit in the mid (19)60s was changing rapidly, and the mid (19)60s is a period when the whites just basically abandoned Detroit and Detroit was just abandoned. That should be a very interesting interview. SM (00:52:42): He and another person wrote a book on the labor unions in Detroit at that time and how they took on the black power and the Black Panther mentality in the labor union. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end, and what was the watershed moment? SJ (00:53:00): Actually, I think the (19)60s really began around 1963, and not just with the Kennedy assassination. I think one of the things that you definitely felt when you were a teenager in the early 1960s, there is a big cultural change that started to happen. Although the early (19)60s, Man Men is not wrong about this. In some ways, they were more like the 1950s than they were the later prior to the (19)60s, but in some ways they were not. And one thing that happens in the early (19)60s is that, first of all, there begins to be strong concern in mainstream America about peace. You get movies like On The Beach, which was a big hit. Movies of the kind that would have been considered commie only five years before. You have 1964, you have two movies, Dr. Strangelove, which is an iconic movie, and Fail Safe. The Fail Safe movie came out just before that. What they both were about were movies suggesting that war might happen by accident, not by the evil of communism, and we do not want to be thinking about that. There is a very big change that starts in those early years of the (19)60s. Not exactly at 1960, but I would say that the minute John Kennedy began talking about nuclear disarmament, which coincided with this cultural moment when movies questioning whether war necessarily arose from the total evil of the enemy, I think that is where the (19)60s really begin. They end with the end of the Vietnam War. You have a lot of things. I consider the women's movement, which is really early (19)70s, really it is a (19)60s phenomenon. Although the women's women really does not begin to... Boy, they sure empty the garbage a lot, which is good. I think the (19)60s really end with the end of the Vietnam War and kind of the beginning of the consolidation of what the women's movement was gaining. [inaudible] and women's movement is really the late (19)70s, not the (19)60s. SM (00:55:32): Give us a watershed moment. Was there a watershed moment? [inaudible] to pick a moment that stands out. SJ (00:55:49): As to when the (19)60s ended? SM (00:55:49): No, just the whole period of the (19)60s. SJ (00:55:49): Well, to me, the watershed moment was... Of course there is document original about this, it is 1968. It was not when the (19)60s ended, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy within months of each other, it certainly changed my frame of mind about what was possible. This is followed right away by the election of Richard Nixon, and the election of Richard Nixon, it was not just old people who voted for Richard Dixon. The (19)60s were not going to turn out to be a turning point in history toward what I would have said were my values, this becomes pretty obvious by the end of 1968. SM (00:56:33): Do you remember the exact moment you heard that John Kennedy was killed. Do you remember the... Most people do. Where were you when you heard? SJ (00:56:40): I was buying a dress in a shop in East Lansing, Michigan, but what I remember more and what meant more to me is I also remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was killed and when Martin Luther King was killed. And when Martin Luther King was killed, I was at home at my house on Capitol Hill, my apartment on Capitol Hill, and I just immediately jumped in a cab and went straight to the Washington Post because I knew that the city was going to go up in flames, which it did. I was a reporter for the post. When Robert Kennedy was killed, I was in Frankfurt Airport changing flames for Kenya where I was going to meet my fiancé. Everybody in Frankfurt airport was crying. And that is when I learned and I said to myself, this is the end of my hope. It was not, of course, but it felt like it. SM (00:57:36): As a person has written a lot of great books and analyzed America from different angles, when you look at the assassinations of Kennedy, King, and Kennedy again, what does it say about America? Is it that if you speak up too much, they are going to do you in, or what does it say? SJ (00:58:11): What it says to me, and believe you me, I have been thinking about a lot this week, what it said to me is that there is a lot of free-floating anger and rage in our culture, which I do not think it had anything to do with speaking up per se, but when you do become a lightning rod for people who feel threatened, there is no shortage of the true combination of craziness and evil that takes a gun out and shoots. And I have been thinking about that a lot. It feels to me, I am not saying it is, but what is going on right now feels to me very much like things felt to me in the late 1960s. Only worse because- SM (00:59:06): Hold that thought. I am want to turn my tapes over here. SJ (00:59:17): Well, it feels to me in 2010 as we approach this anniversary of the terrorist attacks, it feels to me, although it is not the same cast of characters, but I have the same really uneasy feeling I had in 1968, which is I have this feeling that anything could happen. That there is a lot of unfocused rage out there added to even more ignorance than existed in 1968 because I do believe people know us. I do believe that the 24-hour news cycle, the web and so on have made us stupider, not smarter. They have given us more information, but I believe in terms of logical thinking, in terms of the ability to remember anything that happened before 10 minutes ago, I think we have a worse and more stupid culture than we did in 1968. But I feel the same kind of anger around me. I am not saying I am right. I am saying it feels kind of the same to me now, which is bad. And that it feels the same to a lot of people who live through that time right now, I have this feeling that I do not know where the ground quite is beneath me, what is going to happen next. When some crackpot leader of a congregation of 50 people in Gainesville, Florida gets a call from the Secretary of Defense begging him not to burn the Quran, it makes me feel like almost anything could happen. SM (01:00:58): And also recently with- SJ (01:01:01): I hope that this is a feeling and not a fact. SM (01:01:04): Well, I have a feeling because I have been studying lately the football player that was killed by friendly fire. SJ (01:01:11): Pat Tillman. SM (01:01:12): Pat Tillman. Unbelievable. And the latest is that he was murdered because he was going to come back in the United States and be an anti-war protestor. He and his brother had, some of his close associates had seen enough. He was going to finish his time, but he was going to come back, and there was a worry that he would come back and that would be terrible to have the number one guy that everybody know about- SJ (01:01:44): Well, what I would say about this, that this idea is around, is part of what makes it feel like 1968. This is probably not true, probably it is just the Army covered its ass, as it always tries to do after friendly fire. But the fact that this rumor, that these conspiracy theories are all out there, and we see more of them on the right than on the left at the moment, but the existence of conspiracy theories in which a lot of people believe... Not saying whether they are true or not, but it is a sign that there is a lot of dangerous anger out there. SM (01:02:22): I agree. And of course we all worried about President Obama when he came into power as somebody wanted to knock him off. SJ (01:02:30): Well, I am still worried about that. SM (01:02:32): Who won the battles in the (19)60s? Who won the battle? SJ (01:02:39): Which battle are you talking about? SM (01:02:40): Basically the liberals versus conservatives. Who really won? It was very obvious- SJ (01:02:46): The left won the culture war, the political war was a draw as we see very well. If the left had won the political war, we would not have the kind of problems that we have today. Richard Nixon would never have been elected President. Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president. Loads of baby boomers voted for Ronald Reagan. SM (01:03:10): Yes, I know. SJ (01:03:13): So the left definitely did not win the political war, but I said the left won the culture war, it did in the sense that a lot of the lifestyle changes of the (19)60s were adopted on the right as well as the left. SM (01:03:27): Nixon always used the term silent majority, and the silent majority, there were a lot of young people that were in that silent majority as well. SJ (01:03:35): That is right, that is right. SM (01:03:37): And one of the criticisms of the (19)60s generation or the boomers or the activists, they always say that in the generation of 78 million, only about 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. Even some of the strongest activists I have talked to have said 15? It is more like five. SJ (01:03:58): Yeah, I would agree with them. But that alone is not a measure because there are a lot of ideas which were shared by people who were not activists. Again, in a way I am atypical, but everybody says this. When I was 24 years old, I got married to the Moscow correspondent to the Washington Post and moved to Moscow with him for two and a half years where I wrote my first book, and did not go back to newspaper writing because I wanted to write books and magazine articles. But I was very affected by my time in Russia in this, that many of the cultural concerns of my contemporaries seemed very trivial to me when I came back. And it also affected me very much after [inaudible] some of the bad educational things that happened in the (19)60s. I was in Russia, a country where there was no such thing as popular entertainment that was bearable. If you wanted to do anything that was fun in Russia, it was listening to classical music, it was reading classics, because those were the only kind of good books that were available. And so that in a way, in Russia, I got the education that I missed when I was in college because there was no such thing as a popular entertainment culture there that was anything but anything but controlled by the party. So in a way, in Russia, I had to read poetry and classics with an intensity that I had never read before, and the only kind of music I could hear was good music. I just laugh. I just laugh when I see this silly book about Bob Dylan, that Sean Wilentz, who is another child of the (19)60s, just published. The idea of Bob Dylan is a great artist, to me, is ridiculous. And I know why it is ridiculous to me. Because when everybody else was listening to The Stones and Bob Dylan... I know who genius poets were. They were [inaudible] and [inaudible]. Bob Dylan is not a genius of a poet. And it is an example of a low educational standards of a lot of my generation, that this guy is taken seriously as anything but a singer of his generation, which in that respect, he was perfectly good. SM (01:06:23): What did you think of Rod McKuen? SJ (01:06:25): Rod McKuen was the worst. SM (01:06:28): How about the beat writers? SJ (01:06:31): The beat writers fall a whole different category. They were earlier and after something else. Al Ginsburg is a great poet. Rod McKuen is not. Rod McKuen was liked by both the left and the right, by the way. In a lot of pop culture of the (19)60s, you have a cultural... That is why I say the left and in general stupid won the culture war in the 1960s. 1960s is when you begin to see a lot of decline in a lot of things that I value. I am not sure if I had not spent... Ages 24 to 26, I was in Russia. These are very formative years. I was not listening to The Stones or Bob Dylan. There was a little pot in Moscow. SM (01:07:24): What do you consider to be the major failures of the movement? The movement or the movements? SJ (01:07:40): I do not think the Civil Rights Movement failed in any way, except in the sense that undermining something as potent as racial discrimination and racial stereotypes in a country that was founded upon slavery is not the work of 10 years or 20 years, or as we see now, to paraphrase John Kennedy, even in our lifetime on this Earth. I do not think the Civil Rights Movement was a failure at all. I think it was a complete success. They failed to persuade probably 25 percent of people in this country now as then that they were right is not a failure. They persuaded a lot of people that they were right. When we got through the Civil rights movement, you heard about anybody being lynched lately? No. I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure in any way. The anti-war movement was clearly a failure. It failed to end the war. It was not the movement's fault. The entrenched nature of what Eisenhower called the military industrial complex is too much for anybody burning their draft cards and American flags on college campuses. Clearly, the anti-war movement, in terms of changing a kind of reflexive respect for the military, was a failure. I would say that one of the greatest disappointments of my adult lifetime is, as far as I can see, to me, the war in Afghanistan resembles the futility of the war in Vietnam much more than any other, that we did not learn anything from our experience in Vietnam. We did not learn much about the limits of American power in a totally different culture, very, very far from home. And by the way, when you think about that war now, when you think about, let us say the Viet Cong and the Taliban, you understand the Viet Cong were practically kissing cousins in relation to us compared to the values of somebody like the Taliban. As we now see, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with- See, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with Vietnam. Vietnam is part of the world in which we live. The parts of the Muslim world controlled by people like the Taliban are not. But so I would say the anti-war movement was absolutely a failure, both in the short term in the war went on for years until 1975, and in the long term, in terms of making people more skeptical about this kind of careless exercise of American power. The women, the women's movement was a success in that it opened up a lot more educational and economic opportunities to women. Whether, I think it probably was, I would not say that the women's movement was a failure. People say things are still bad for women who want to raise a family and have a career. That is true, but I do not exactly see that as a failure any more than I see the fact that that Americans who hate Barack Obama will not admit that race has anything to do with it today. I do not see that as a failure of the civil rights movement any more than I see the fact that it is still tough to have a family and a career as a woman. I see those as entrenched structural problems that the civil rights movement and the women's movement made a good start on that nobody could have expected would be solved even by now. SM (01:11:39): You do not have to go into any sense of detail, but then you have got the Native American movement, which many people felt was only a four-year movement. With aim starting in Alcatraz and ending at Wounded Knee, although the Native American movement had been going on for a long time. And then of course you had the Chicano movement and farm workers and of course the environmental movement and the gay and lesbian movement, so they were all- SJ (01:12:06): Well, the gay and lesbian movement, it starts where the (19)60s end really. I mean, I am in the gay rights movement. I mean the enormous chance that has taken place that started at Stonewall, but it really does not begin to, all you need to do is look at the different attitudes of young people and older people and as the difference between people who are not old enough to be boomers and boomers too. Boomers have far more negative attitudes about gay than the next generation down. Our parents have far more negative attitudes about gay than the Boomers did. These things take a long time. I do not think that the gay rights movement has failed because a lot of people still hate gays, and I think that the one thing that has not changed in American society is the vast influence of a very retrograde form of religion, which is unique to the United States, which is something that progressives in every generation, beginning with the deists of the 18th century have thought were going to be gone by the next generation that has not. The influence of fundamentalist religion, and I do not mean evangelical religion, I mean fundamentalist religion, the kind of religion that takes seriously and believes that lives should be ordered by the writings In Sacred Books. The Taliban are fundamentalist Muslims. The fundamentalist Christians are fundamentalist Christians. The Jews out in living in their little Hasidic sheddles in Brooklyn, are fundamentalist Jews. They believe that all of this is to be taken literally, they are a real threat in American society. The biggest threat are the Christians, simply because the fun there are more fundamentalist Christians than there are fundamentalist anything else in America. It is unique. It is a failure. It is a failure. I will not go into a lot of this. Read Free Thinkers if you want to, but it is something that is, we are the only country in the developed world in which a third of our citizens do not accept that evolution is not a scientific reality. SM (01:14:22): You talk about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that came out of the (19)60s, but you did talk about how during John Kennedy's three years, there was a hope there that there was an intellectual development taking place because of the people that he hired, the thinkers, the idea people, and of course dealing with the sciences and Sputnik and all the other, but then you see the comparison. Mario Savio in 1964 said that- SJ (01:14:53): I still have a Savio for state senate. SM (01:14:56): Well, I like the guy. He was right on target and he said that the fact is that the battle in the university should the university's about ideas. It is not about being the corporate takeover of everything. SJ (01:15:10): Exactly. SM (01:15:11): And we are back to the corporate takeover of everything right now. SJ (01:15:15): Well back. We are at a worst place. Yeah, it is in relation to that than we ever were then. Yeah. Well, we did not know what a real corporate takeover of everything was then. We only thought we did. SM (01:15:29): Well, Clark Kurt talked about the knowledge factory, but what did the universities learn from the (19)60s that makes them better prepared to work with the student activist in particular today? SJ (01:15:41): First of all, there are not any student activists today. I mean, there are few, but the universities did not learn anything from the (19)60s as far as I can see, and what they learned, what the universities learned from the (19)60s was how to dumb down their standards enough to please stupid students that were among the activists as among everybody else. There were highly brilliant activists. I think Mario Savio was one of them, by the way. I had the greatest respect for him. Yes, Todd Gitlin too. There were student active-. There were two activists. He got less smart as he got older. There were student activists who were smart and there were student activists who were dumb. The university never had any ability to distinguish between those two groups at all. The reason they did what they did was they did not want any shortage of their gravy train. They actually, I do not know who told you 15 percent was too high an estimate, but they were right. SM (01:16:43): Several people, several people. SJ (01:16:44): But somehow the universities actually thought that parents were going to stop sending their kids to college if they did not shut up these activists on campus, which was never going to happen, and so they got the worst of all possible worlds when instead of truly reforming the curriculum in a good way, that would have added the knowledge that people need about every part of history to the general curriculum. They shunned it off into ghetto studies. By ghetto, I mean ghetto women's studies. Ghetto queer studies, which is ridiculous too. Whatever is necessary to know about any minority is necessary for everyone to know. It is not necessary only for the minority or the interested few to know. SM (01:17:32): After the Kennedy assassination, I think you said that things changed in the universities, that the Sputnik, and the science, and math, and the importance of those things. But then when he died and then the university, something happened within the university. Clark Clerk talks about it, the knowledge factory. It is like the IBM mentality. SJ (01:17:50): The emphasis on science did not change at all. That was right. That is when the money was always there for science, but what changed the late 1960s and largely as a result of faculty yielding to this pressure of this 5 percent or whatever it was, was that people were not required to learn a common core of knowledge. I think that, by the way, I think they are right, people like Diane Ravitch are absolutely right about that. And Arthur Schlesinger Jr, who of course came from the opposite political thing. I think that they are absolutely right about the decline of common core knowledge. I think that as far, I think that the faculty of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s covered itself with disgrace by settling for this non-solution of dumbing down general humanities courses. Telling students they could decide basically what they wanted to take, and there has been a swing the other way, but so much has been lost. So much has been lost in terms of what people have been not required to learn over the last 30 years, but I do not know if anything can ever- SM (01:19:05): Well it is a well-known fact- SJ (01:19:06): And computers have made it so much worse. SM (01:19:09): It was a well-known fact as I experienced it myself, that students of the (19)60s would make demands within the university knowing that if those demands were met, they would demand other things that they could not demand. So nothing would ever please them. SJ (01:19:26): Of course. SM (01:19:26): Do you think that kind of a mentality of that small percentage of activists who were really publicized highly by the media as the example of the (19)60s- SJ (01:19:34): The spokesmen. SM (01:19:37): Spokesmen of the (19)60s, has anything to do with the atmosphere that we had today, which was probably the same back then as not listening to each other? It is my way or the highway kind of mentality. SJ (01:19:51): Well, again, I think it is worse now beyond anything we could have imagined then. Again, I do mean in a way I agree that the power of the quote activists was exaggerated. Look, I mean, I know a lot of these people were thought to be flame throwing activists. Some of them turned into extremely intelligent great scholars by the end of the 1970s. Some of them did not. But I think what, what is going on now, I do not relate it in a direct line to the (19)60s at all. I think that people, I cannot imagine, for instance, anybody like Sarah Palin even being listened to in the 1960s. When if you think who was the conservative political hero in the (19)60s, Barry Goldwater, if you think about him and Sarah Palin, just put them in the same time. Put them in the same frame for a second, and if you want to see an example of the degeneration of political and intellectual culture, just see that. Barry Goldwater is a giant compared to Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is somebody who knows nothing and is proud of it. There were people like that in the (19)60s, but they were not proud of it. They did not build careers out of it. SM (01:21:15): I have a couple quotes here and we will end on these quotes. SJ (01:21:19): Okay, I got to stop for you because I am losing my voice. SM (01:21:24): You have a quote here. "The denigration of fairness has infected both political and intellectual life and has now produced a culture in which disproportionate influence is exercised by the loud and relentless voices of single-minded men and women of one persuasion or another." SJ (01:21:41): More true now in the second year of Obama than it was when I wrote them in 2007. Sadly, one of the most bewildering things that is that is happened is that Obama, forget about whether you agree with some of the things he does or not. Obama is clearly a man of reason. I think in many ways he got elected because people were sick of the dumbness of George Bush, but when people got him, the biggest criticism made of him is that he is too cerebral. He is out of touch with what ordinary people feel. I think undoubtedly Obama's great strength and weakness is that he is a reasonable man and I do not think he could really believe that so many of his countrymen are as unreasonable and irrational as they are. I think it is a difficult, I think then this could be fatal to him if he does not understand it, that he is dealing with a lot of people who cannot be reasoned with it all. SM (01:22:43): Would you also say, and I think you have said this in your book, that in the 1960s, at least on college campuses, when someone came in from a different point of view, students will be there in numbers protesting? SJ (01:22:55): Absolutely. SM (01:22:55): And challenging, whereas today it is all like-minded people. SJ (01:23:02): Absolutely. It is all like-minded people who go to your like-minded people. SM (01:23:05): I got two more quotes and then we are going to end. I love this and it is in the introduction here. "In today's America, intellectuals and non-intellectual alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. This obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism." SJ (01:23:29): Yes, I agree with agree with that writer. SM (01:23:31): Yeah. I got a lot of quotes here and my last one here is you put Thomas Jefferson's quote at the very beginning. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." SJ (01:23:45): That is right. Why do not they just replace In God We Trust on the coins with ignorant and proud of it? I do not think in this book, I do not think that you should neglect religion. I think that- SM (01:23:56): I am not going to. SJ (01:23:58): Now, I think there were, there is a lot, remember the big-time cover story in 1968, God is Dead. Well, that is a real big mistake we made in the 1960s, and again, the whole fundamentalist upsurge was not something that the media and in liberal intellectuals were aware of at all. SM (01:24:18): The Terry Falwells of the world- SJ (01:24:21): Unfortunately, not only is God not Dead, I would not care if he were alive for reasonable people, but a particularly unreasonable kind of God is not dead. SM (01:24:33): Last question and I know it is hard. Boomers are now reaching 65, as you say, and the youngest ones are getting towards 50. When we are long gone, when Boomers are long gone. What do you think the historians, people like yourself, sociologists, writers will say about this generation or better yet the period that they lived? What do they say about them? SJ (01:24:59): Well, a lot of it, like a lot of history, will be a crock. It will depend on which history books they are reading. It will depend on whether they are reading my version of the (19)60s or Todd's version of the (19)60s or Bill Crystal's version of the (19)60s. It will depend to some extent on what they think. But I will tell you one thing, and I think about this a lot as a writer and as a scholar. There is one thing I can say for certain. That getting any kind of a rounded picture of who our generation was is going to be much more difficult for a historian 50 years from now than it is for us say to get a picture of people who were born in 1920. Why? We stopped writing letters in the 1960s. This is before the computer. We stopped writing letters when long distance phone rates went way down and we have stopped writing them almost all together since the advent of computers. There is very little record, except for a video record, of the inner lives of people of our generation. The kind of inner lives, you can write an excellent history of what intellectuals and activists, too, in the 1930s were thinking. The record of what people were thinking except for those who actually wrote books stops around 1970. You will never find out, for example, what my life was like from reading my personal correspondence because I do not have any anymore. Because people stopped writing me back around 1975 and that is when I stopped writing that back. Email has done nothing about this. Email is a totally different, non-reflective, instrumental form of communication. SM (01:26:55): You are right on that. SJ (01:26:55): It is gone. I think this is one of the most important things is we are never going to have any sense of what the inner life of this generation was like. Historians are going to find it very difficult. SM (01:27:07): We took students to see John Culver, the former senator from Iowa who was a close friend of Teddy Kennedy, and this is back in the (19)90s, and he said, now that the interview's over, I want to take it back into my office. And he said, I want you to look at these. Have you ever seen these? These are letters, these are love letters between my mom and dad. Have you ever written a letter? No. And we are talking (19)90s now, right? This is in the (19)90s. So love letters. Have you ever sent a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend? No. So John Culver is saying, just you look at these and see how beautiful they are. I am going to end with this. SJ (01:27:44): I have just about had it. SM (01:27:47): Yep. Barney Frank said, it is in his book. He wrote a book- SJ (01:27:50): I love Barney Frank. SM (01:27:51): In his book, Speaking Frankly, he said, The Democratic Party to survive, must separate itself from George McGovern, the McGovernites, the people, the anti-war people, all those people that were involved in those movements. If it is to survive this Barney Frank, speaking frankly. SJ (01:28:10): What makes Barney Frank think anybody remembers George McGovern. That is why that would be my question to him. SM (01:28:15): Book in the (19)90s, Speaking Frankly though, he said, and he was saying, and he was not attacking it as a conservative, he was attacking it as a liberal basically saying, if we are going to survive, we have to disassociate ourselves from those people that were in the counterculture and the people that supported George McGovern in (19)72. SJ (01:28:36): And just where does Barney think his place in the party looks to people who think that the Democratic Party ought to disassociated self from people like Barney Frank. He is really, I will tell you, he has really got a nerve. I love him. SM (01:28:51): That was (19)92 though, so anyways. Testing. One, two. (01:29:07): I certainly will. SJ (01:29:08): College guys. Do you want test and see if you are getting a test? SM (01:29:16): I do not know about testing. I know this one is, this is my prize one. This one is. Double check. SJ (01:29:22): Testing one, two. But I am not going to be talking that loud. I could talk a lot louder out here than I can in the cubicle in the library. No, that is okay. SM (01:29:35): We are fine. I will be coming and this one has already started. SJ (01:29:46): No-no clapping. SM (01:29:49): I am going to read these to make sure that they, I get these right. So I am all over the place here, and the first question I am going to ask you is that you wrote a piece in the Wounded Generation, which was a book that came out in 1980. It was a paper back on Vietnam. SJ (01:30:05): Black In The Dark Age. SM (01:30:07): This is the only question I have on that because I have interviewed just about everybody else who was at the symposium. Women in the Vietnam War wrote a piece in the book on the, in the Wounded generation on women in the war. How are Boomer generation women wounded about psychologically, personally from that war, and how important were they in the anti-war movement? SJ (01:30:37): I will tell you honestly, I think that women who were older than the boomer generation were more important in the anti-war movement than women of the Boomer generation. The contact that women of the Boomer generation had with the anti-war movement. Although there were lots of women obviously involved just as there were lots of men. But the fundamental thing is the women were not subject to the draft, did not have any danger of having to fight in that war. So I think unless a woman had a brother or a husband who was actually in the fighting, and this would be very different, the attitudes of people who came from the social class but did most of the fighting. Which then as now meant people who were not going to college, basically blue collar people. They were not as represented in the anti-war movement as were college educated Boomer women. So that I really do not think that that women were affected in the same way that men were, except that women in general were more anti-war than men, and that was true not just for Boomer women, but for all women. SM (01:32:02): Let me just, I will check this one here to make sure. SJ (01:32:03): Let me see if I can get this guy. SM (01:32:03): Oh, okay. SJ (01:32:04): Well, my cell phone is blocking my purse. That is it. Okay. SM (01:32:13): Well, I have read a little bit about your background, from going on the web and also in the book, but how did you become who you are in terms of who were your mentors, your role models? I know you went to Michigan State starting in 63, but who were the people that influenced you the most in your early years? SJ (01:32:33): Do you mean by my early years? Do you mean when I was a kiddo? SM (01:32:37): Yeah, I would say high school, college. SJ (01:32:43): That is an interesting question. I will preface it by saying that I always wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I wanted to be a newspaper reporter from the time I was a kid. And I wanted to be a newspaper reporter because everybody in my family read newspapers and that is what I wanted to do. At Michigan State my college career was somewhat different from other members of the Boomer generation. I did not want to go to college. I was an idiot. I was a classic example of someone who was not in an age where I could most benefit from education, and unlike most people of my generation who stayed in school as long as they could. Men because of the war and women for other reasons, I was determined to get out. I grew up in Okemos, Michigan, which is right near Michigan State. I went to Michigan State for one reason and one reason only. They had an honors college, which enabled you if you kept up a certain grade point to take as many credits as you want and get through as fast as you could. I graduated in just a little over two years. At a better university I would not have been able to do that. At Michigan State. I did. And the reason I did that was I knew that if I had to be in college for four years, I would become a dropout, and there was no way a woman was ever going to get a job as a newspaper reporter if she was a college dropout. I think it is important because I am just on the edge of the baby boom generation, born nine months before it actually started, so when I went to college, it was between 1963 and 1965. This was before what people think of as quote the (19)60s. When I entered Michigan State, there were parietal rules. I was almost expelled for being found doing nothing in a boys off-campus apartment. That is what the real, in other words, this is a totally different experience from being that age five years later when all of that stuff had gone out the window. So in many ways, things for me at that age were more like what they were for people in the (19)50s than they were for the Boomers who came of age only five years later. And I knew I could not stand living under this regime, which kept you as a child, particularly if you were a woman. This is before feminism, and so I wanted to get through as fast as possible. Nevertheless, I have to say I went to, I took any course I wanted because that is another thing you could do at the Honors College. I took Russian and I majored in journalism, and there were some great journalism professors there. A lot of them were people who had been newspapermen in Wisconsin during the McCarthy era and had lost their jobs because of it. And John Hanna, who was then the president of Michigan State, hired a lot of those people. He was very strong about, not about McCarthy, did not like him. He was a liberal Republican. They were still liberal and the chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission as well, which practically made you a communist in the eyes of the McCarthyites. Anyway, but the best thing my professors did for me was they made me realize I had to have a huge amount of professional experience by the time I got out of college to get a job as a woman, and I did and were, my mentors, one of them was named George Huff, one of them who was still alive. One of them was named Bud Myers, and so I went to work as a camper stringer for the Detroit Free Press. Michigan State was one of the two biggest universities in the state, and it was a source of news. And when I went to interview at the Washington Post in the spring of 1965 for a job, I had a huge professional string book from the Detroit Free Press. So I would say that things worked out for me, although they should not have. My real education came later on. SM (01:37:01): Yeah. Gets me right into my next question here. As a journalist in the (19)60s and (19)70s, do you feel the media only went after what was sensational and by that, I mean the drug culture, the long hair, the crows, the violence, the sex, protests? And there was little coverage of the majority of the young people that were not involved in any of this kind of activism? SJ (01:37:27): Well, I mentioned that this In the Age of American Unreason. And it is not that they went after what was, just what was sensational. That was as much a part of the (19)60s as anything else. It is that the media mostly is absolutely true was then and is now. The media was liberal reporters who were close to the age of the students who were protesting, shared their views. We did not know anything about the things we now know. I knew nothing about fundamentalist religion, and in fact, there was a whole other (19)60s. That whole other (19)60s is represented by George W. Bush and all of the Neoconservatives who first got into government under Ronald Reagan and really began running things under George W. Bush. They were there in the (19)60s too, and they were drawing quite different conclusions about what was going on around them than people like me who worked for the Washington Post were. I was not aware of what I now call the other (19)60s at all then. I have become aware of it in the last 20 years, but I never thought about it then. SM (01:38:39): Well, you brought it up. You are one of the few people that is really brought it up in any detail. When I interviewed Lee Edwards, the historian down in Washington, he said one of the things in all the books on the (19)60s is they do not ever talk about the conservative students and the young Americans for Freedom, for example. SJ (01:38:54): That is right. SM (01:38:55): And other groups like that. And of course the importance of the Goldwater election and the links to Ronald Reagan. Why was that? SJ (01:39:02): As I said, I think why it was is that the social class of the media was very different from the social class. There was first of all, there was no, in the early 1960s, there was no intellectual right wing. There was William Buckley in the National Review, and that was that, but there was not any, now there is a whole right-wing intellectual establishment as well. There was no right wing intellectual establishment then. There was Bill Buckley and his followers, and that is who it was. But there is something else too, I think just as important as that is the fact that the (19)60s, where are the years when the fundamentalists established their kindergarten through college network of education and began to train the generation that has had so much influence on public life for the last 30 years. We did not know those people. SM (01:39:57): Well, it is interesting because you brought bring up the Campus Crusade for Christ. SJ (01:40:00): They were just getting started then. SM (01:40:04): Being a college administrator, actually, I have worked with many of those students, but it is interesting about how they used the dress of the (19)60s, but they had a different point of view. SJ (01:40:15): Well, sure. SM (01:40:16): Yeah. So a lot of people do not even think about the Campus Crusade for Christ when they are talking about the (19)60s. SJ (01:40:21): But they were in the (19)60s as when the Campus Crusade for Christ. It actually was started in the (19)50s, but it did not really have any traction on anything but religious campuses until the late 1960s when they really got started. And one of the things that they were presenting themselves as was an alternative to the drug culture, you know, you can be cool. You can be hip, like the Jesus Electric Light and Power Company. You can be cool, you can be hip, but you do not have to share the views of all of those hippies about free love and all of that. And remember also by the late 1960s, there were a lot of kids who had been involved in the drug scene and so on, and were disillusioned with it. We were looking for something else. SM (01:41:07): Right. You talk about what they call the grateful and the ungrateful generation. Define those. Because a couple of people that are going to be reading these interviews may not have read your book. SJ (01:41:19): Well, the Grateful Generation was my parents' generation. I call them the Grateful Generation, not the greatest generation. SM (01:41:26): And they are not linked to the Grateful Dead. SJ (01:41:28): They are not linked. The Grateful Dead is part of the Ungrateful generation. But my parents' generation, the World War II generation was the Grateful generation. These were people who, my mother is a very still alive, is a very typical example. Brought up in a blue collar family. First member of her family to go to college. My grandfather, her father, they were blue collar people. My parents, the generation that emerged from the World War II as young adults. First of all, it was not the case of my father who was a little older, but a lot of them went to college on the GI Bill. They came from families where a generation earlier, they would not have been able to go to college. The Grateful generation, what Tom Brokaw calls the Greatest generation, they had a lot to be grateful for. One of the things they had to be grateful for is unlike people getting out of the service today, they got to buy houses with mortgages at 4 percent with VA loans. They went to school on the GI Bill. They came of age at a time when although there were ups and downs, America's economic prospects were good. All of those members of the Grateful Generation who went to school on the GI Bill enjoyed a standard of living, which their own parents could never have dreamed of. So they had good reason to be grateful. And the idea, it was always taken for granted that they would send their own children to college. There was not even a question then. And the thing is they expected their children who had so much more than they had had when they were growing up during the Depression, when they were coming of age during World War II. They expected their children to be thrilled with the middle class life they had achieved and to which they so aspired. And I call that the Ungrateful generation, then. Again, only some, but particularly among those who are college educated, turned around and said, we do not want your sticky, crappy houses. We do not like these universities. We do not like what they are teaching. We do not like your war. SM (01:43:54): Well, it is interesting. I interviewed Tom Hayden this past week as a follow-up interview I had. I interviewed him for almost two hours. And then of course about a year ago I interviewed Todd Gitlin, and they hate the term Boomer generation, both of them. SJ (01:44:05): No, they are not Boomers. SM (01:44:07): Yeah. Well, yeah, they were 42 and 40. SJ (01:44:10): Yeah. They are not boomers. SM (01:44:11): Todd is younger than Tom, but Tom Hayden, I would like your response to this. Because Tom said he did not like even Tom Brokaw's book Boom. Because he says, boom is an indication of something being shot out, showing violent and boom, basically Tom. And then the fact that it happened so fast that the Boomer generation was insignificant, it was just a short time period in history. So he was attacking the term boom. SJ (01:44:46): Well, I think if you, pardon of my saying, so he is, he is being a bit of anachronistic in his interpretation. The word baby boom was used beginning in the 1940s and it did not have anything to do with violence. All it meant is all of these people were having, all of these children. Did not have any. As all of these people were having all of these children. Did not have anything to do with the idea of the Boomer generation as it was taken over in the (19)60s. Tom Hayden, if he says that his mind is still in the (19)60s, which does not really surprise me. And it is for the Boomer generation being a short moment in time. Well, he does not know much about demography then. Now there really are two Boomer generations. 1957 was the highest birth rate in American history, is the exact midpoint of the Baby Boom generation. After that, the demography tapers off a little. But they are really two halves of the Boomer generation. One is people born between 1946 and 1957, the older Boomers, and people born between 1957 and 1964, the younger Boomers. There is a big difference between them. One of them being that it is only the older Boomers who came of age the late 1960s. The younger Boomers came of age in a much more conservative era, and in fact, they are more conservative politically in many ways than the older Boomers. Barack Obama is a younger Boomer. SM (01:46:15): He is two years older, yeah. SJ (01:46:16): He keeps trying to dis-identify himself from the Baby Boom generation, but he is a Boomer. And here is the one thing that the older Boomers and the younger Boomers have in common, and again, Hayman and Gitlin are not Boomers at all. They belong to that half generation born really between the middle of the depression and the end of the second world war. And they have some different... Although you are right, they were involved in fact, what people think of today as a lot of the activities of the Boomer generation. But what the younger Boomers and the older Boomers have in common is this. They both grew up in spite of the recessions of the 1970s, in times overall that were a rising economy in which they expected, and in fact did get access to a lot of things their parents never had. And this is true when you think about Barack Obama. In fact, the younger half of the Boomer generation that was Black benefited a lot more from these things than the older Black Baby Boomers, simply because of the achievements of the civil rights movement that were won when Barack Obama was a baby. So the younger Boomers and the older Boomers have in common, it did not cost them enough fortune to go to college. The real rise in college tuition did not happen until the mid 1980s, after even most of the younger Boomers were through college. The younger Boomers, Blacks and Hispanics, benefited from scholarships and things that did not exist for Blacks, for the older Boomers. And something else also, which is that the younger Boomers, again, the Obamas are perfect examples of this. They moved into a path that had been paved by the older Boomers, which was if you were 20 in the 1950s, you were expected within two years of graduating from college, if you were a girl to be married, if you were a guy you were not expected to be married until you were 30, if you were a guy to have a good job. And when the Boomers who came of age in the (19)60s came along, they pioneered a path in which it was okay not to get married right away. And it was okay to stay in school longer, to take some time out, find out what it was you really want to do. Now, when you look at Barack Obama's career in the 1970s, the time out he took from school before he went back to law school, these are things that, for instance, a young Black man from the older part of the Boomer generation, his parents would have gone nuts if he had said, "I want to wait to go to law school. I want to find myself." These possibilities, which are that your life is not set in stone when you are 22. That was a way of living that was pioneered by the older Boomers when Tom Hayden says, "This was just a moment in time." He is utterly wrong. SM (01:49:20): He was referring to that term Boom. And he was referring to Tom Brokaw's book. SJ (01:49:26): This is a book being written 40 years after all of this is taking place. And I do not know what Tom Brokaw means by Boom, but maybe Tom Hayden does not know the term Baby Boomer became current in the 1940s. It was not an invention of the 1960s. SM (01:49:39): I know that I interviewed Richie Havens. Richie said I was born in 41, but I am really a Boomer because of the spirit. SJ (01:49:47): Well, what happened was the Boomers of Tom Hayden's day and the pre Boomers is that things came along in the 1960s and they took advantage. You are absolutely right. A lot of what is thought of as the Boomer activities of the late (19)60s was really carried out by this half generation, who was both Todd Gitlin, whom I love, and Tom Hayden belong. SM (01:50:14): And thought of Richie. SJ (01:50:14): Yeah, and Richie too. SM (01:50:15): Yeah. One of the things that I am curious, you already made reference to it, before the real strong women's movement and feminism and so forth, and what was it like being a female reporter? You said you had two people who were really strong role models for you. Men who treated- SJ (01:50:32): Not role models, they gave me great advice. SM (01:50:34): They gave great advice. SJ (01:50:35): We were not role models at all. SM (01:50:36): But what was it like to be a female reporter in the early or mid (19)60s? SJ (01:50:42): Well, I applied for a job at two places, the Detroit Free Press and the Washington Post. Fortunately, the Detroit Free Press did not hire me, so I was hired by the Post, which was great. The Free Press refused to hire me for anything but the society section, this is 1964, although I had been covering regular stories for them for years because they said a woman could not be out at night if there were a story that came up at night. The Post was a different kettle of fish. They hired me as a regular reporter, but I was only the second reporter, female reporter, who did not work in what was then called the society section. However, I think I would have encountered a lot more trouble with the New York Times then. But at the Washington Post, because the Post was then expanding, it had a lot of really young reporters on it. It was not a disadvantage to be a woman in the same way as it would have been at the New York Times in the early 1960s. SM (01:51:45): I have a couple... You have a quote in your book, this book, "This increasing alliterate of America, not only the enjoyment in reading, but critical thinking is at risk." And the way I really going to ask this question is, is this a direct link to the (19)60s? Because with a lot of criticism of today's young people today is they are smart. They do not know their history. SJ (01:52:14): Blaming it on the (19)60s. SM (01:52:25): [inaudible] Between this quote and the (19)60s. SJ (01:52:26): Yes and no. Yes and no. In the 1960s, books were still really important to all of us. I mean, I can remember when Portnoy's Complaint was published in 1969. I mean, can remember I had heard about this book. I can remember just rushing to the bookstore, just dying to read this book. I do not think anybody rushes to a bookstore dying to read a book at all today. I really think more than the (19)60s, although there is a connection with the (19)60s which I will circle back to, but I really feel that the older Boomers belong more to the previous generation in terms of their attitudes toward reading. The younger Boomers belong more to the next generation. Because there was not any internet, there were not any computers before the 1980s. So that we grew up in a society in which, if you read, books were important. As far as not knowing history goes, this has gotten worse every year. It did not start in the (19)60s. There were actually some polls for the 1930s, which show how little history Americans do in the 1930s too. But I do think that what happened in the 1960s, I mean, nobody could have imagined the internet then, nobody did. But there were certainly a lot more forms of entertainment began to intrude on time that had once been devoted to reading. Look, the transistor radio, the small portable transistor radio, I think played an important role in this. For the first time, although it was nothing right now is nothing like an iPod. It was nothing like computer access 24/7, but for the first time, you could bring your music with you everywhere. But I think it was the beginning of a change, which was a descending curve that was fairly soft in the (19)60s. I do not think it really takes a sharp downward turn until the 1980s. This is going to be a problem, I think. SM (01:54:36): We can move to... SJ (01:54:37): No, there are not any tables. Because this guy is talking awful loudly. All right, well, they will not stay there. SM (01:54:47): You were in the middle of [inaudible]. SJ (01:55:01): No, that is the way it is. Okay. There is one aspect of the (19)60s that I think does have something to do, and it was really the late (19)60s, early (19)70s. I think in general, student demands are blamed, in general, by conservatives for watering down of the university curriculum. Now, it is true that students were demanding a lot of bullshit things in the late 1960s, early (19)70s. And I do not believe that their criticisms of the curriculum were justified at all. Their criticisms the way universities were run was. But I think what happened in the (19)60s that was bad and was entirely a fault of the faculty at that time is for some reason they were actually scared of these student demands. And you had two kinds of people. You had had younger faculty members, many of whom threw in their lot with the students who wanted to teach women's studies and so on. And you had older faculty members, people who wanted to teach the way they always had, the dead white European male curriculum. And they both got their way, and I think it was a very evil and stupid compromise. But what they did was they shut it off. Instead of developing a great African American studies curriculum, which was taught to every student of American history, they shunted it off into minority studies department. Instead of including women writers in every English class and making women's studies part of the whole, they shut it off into women's studies department. Now this pleased everybody on campuses and I was an education reporter for the Washing Post at the time this was happening. It pleased the old guys because they could continue to teach their white studies, their white male studies exactly the way they always taught them, and it pleased the new people because it meant more jobs and more tenure. Everybody got what they wanted. It was bad for education in general. The kind of vulcanization of things that every kid ought to be learning started in the late 1960s, and it was not the fault of the students was the fault of the faculty who were supposed to be the grownups that did not act like it. SM (01:57:12): You mentioned in the book, too, that tenure was something very important in the (19)50s on college campuses and then in the (19)60s, mid (19)60s in particular. So maybe around the mid (19)70s tenure was not that important. It was basically they were involved in the reacting to the social movements that were- SJ (01:57:29): That is not what I said. I did not say anything about tenure at all, but in fact, the way things worked out, the way things worked out, everybody got tenure. People who were involved in the social movements of the (19)60s are the tenured professors who will not leave because they cannot retire on college campuses today. Tenure did not have anything to do with whether you were fighting the establishment then at all. Those people got tenure too. Those women's studies professors got tenure, the African-American studies. And there are campuses with African- American studies departments, Harvard is one of them, where in fact, lots of kids of all races go. But what happened in most campuses was they became an enclave for minority students and meant that meant the minority students were not learning everything they should learn, and the white students sure as hell were not learning everything they should learn. But as for tenure, that is my whole point. Everybody got it. That is why everybody was happy with what happened. SM (01:58:26): You do a great job [inaudible] of the criticisms of the neocons towards anybody that was involved in any kind of protest or activism of that particular time. You bring up Irving Crystal and Todd Hortz. SJ (01:58:47): Todd Hortz. Well, they are ancient. SM (01:58:48): And commentary, but they were the kind of old left and their attitude toward the (19)60s. How do you react to, because the current neocons, when Newt Gingrich came the power in 1994 when the Republican came in, he made some strong commentaries. SJ (01:59:01): Remember the Newtster was coming of age of the (19)60s. He was part of that other (19)60s. SM (01:59:02): Yeah. Yeah. He was there and then he had... You had the Bill Crystals of the world who were coming on, and then even today on Fox, you see a lot of the criticisms of the (19)60s. There is a lot of the reasons why we are having the problems in our society today, just looking back. SJ (01:59:33): Well, by the way, those people on Fox do not know any more about the (19)60s than most of American knows about ancient Greek or Latin. I mean, they do not know anything about it. There is this image of the (19)60s frozen in time. I think that is probably really what Tom Hayden was objecting to. The idea that people who were protesting things in the (19)60s were just free lovers and dopers, and that was it, and that is all there was to the (19)60s. People who wanted to do anything that they wanted to do. SM (02:00:01): One of the things, the generation gap, it was very obvious. I remember on Life Magazine, they had the front cover with that young man, and he had his glasses on and one side of the glasses his father was pointing at him and he was pointing back at his job. So the generation gap between parents and their kids was very obvious at that particular time. But also in that book, the Wounded Generation, Jim Webb made a commentary at the symposium back in 1980s. But the real generation gap was not between parents. The generation gap is those who served in Vietnam, and when they were called to serve their nation, they went and those who did not. SJ (02:00:49): So that was not a generation gap, that is a culture gap. SM (02:00:49): He called it... And actually went even further by saying that oftentimes the (19)60s generation is supposed to be the Peace Corps generation, the Vista, the service. They took the words of Kennedy and they used it, whether it be go into service or to go into the Peace Corps. He says they are not a service generation, so they incur. A lot of them refused to serve. SJ (02:01:04): Jim Webb, by the way, is not a Baby Boomer, I believe. SM (02:01:07): I do not know. I think he is about 44. SJ (02:01:11): Well, he is very young, but I would say that that is true. That in general, all of the children in the (19)60s were not the service generation. But if you go back to Vietnam and to say that that people who did not serve were just motivated by selfishness. That is not just wrong. It is true. But they did not want to get shot at, but they did not want to get shot at for this particular thing. I do not know whether Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile or not. I do not to this day think the Vietnam War was worthwhile. What did we get out of it except all of those dead. And Vietnam is now what it was always going to be a communist country, far from our sphere of influence. And the countries we are fighting in now, Iraq and Afghanistan are going to be Muslim countries far from our sphere of influence when all of this is over. But I think as somebody who remembers of Vietnam War, I think not just somebody who has heard about it, which is what all Jim Webb has, he has heard about it. He does not remember the Vietnam War. He knows only what he has been told at the military academy about the Vietnam War. I like Jim Webb. SM (02:02:25): Oh, he served in Vietnam. SJ (02:02:31): He served in Vietnam? SM (02:02:32): Yes, he did. SJ (02:02:32): So he is not in his 40s then. SM (02:02:32): Well, he served in Vietnam. SJ (02:02:32): He did? SM (02:02:32): Yes. SJ (02:02:32): Are you sure? SM (02:02:35): Yes. And of course, his son is serving in Iraq on two tours. SJ (02:02:40): Well, if Jim Webb thinks the Vietnam War was worthwhile, I do not agree with him. And if he thinks that in order to be of the service generation you had to serve in Vietnam, I do not agree with him. I mean, you could call young Nazis members of the service generation too. They served the Nazis, and by that, I assure you, I do not mean that people who served in Vietnam were Nazis. I mean, because you do not choose a particular kind of way to serve. But I will tell you this, but I think far worse than anything that happened in terms of culture division in Vietnam is what is happening today. I think that you have an all-volunteer army, which of course was a direct result of the fact, but so many people did not want to serve and use education and privilege to get out of the draft. I think the all-volunteer army is far worse. I think the reason that even now, I do not think America is paying any attention to these wars, to how many people are being killed, and I think there is direct reason they are not paying any attention to it is that their sons and daughters do not have to go if they do not want to. My parents were moderate Republicans who opposed the Vietnam War. My father was a veteran. They did not think the Vietnam War was worth fighting. They opposed it because they were terrified that their son was going to get drafted, my brother. He did not, but I do not think they would have any position if they were the same kind of people today on the Iraq war. They would not have to worry about my brother being drafted. My father saw absolutely no analogy between Vietnam and World War II, and he was not a liberal. SM (02:04:30): When you look at the whole Jane Fonda situation, and I have interviewed a lot- SJ (02:04:39): Jane is another one of those iconographic (19)60s people. SM (02:04:40): You saw her when she was at the New School this past year, I think it was in February, talking about her whole career. It was unbelievable. It was a tremendous hour and a half program there. But when you look at, oftentimes entertainers themselves are being criticized today, you are just being entertainers. SJ (02:04:59): That is ridiculous. SM (02:05:00): And when you go back to the (19)60s, you can always remember John Wayne, Martha Ray, Bob Hope, which would be gung-ho for the troops. But you had the Donald Sutherland, Jane Fonda who were against. SJ (02:05:16): Here is no reason why entertainers should not use their celebrity anyway that they want. And by the way, I would like, while I am thinking of it, this is not a question you are asking, but you know were asking about Boomers and boom and all of that. I do not know about boom, but of course now the Boomers... I have a new book coming out in February. It is called Never Say Die, the Myth and the Marketing of the New Old Age. And here is another thing, and here is why Tom Hayden is very wrong, that this was just a moment in time. Oldest Boomers turned 65 next year in 2011. The oldest Boomers turned 65, by 2030, unless there is some kind of a catastrophe, which of course there always could be, there are going to be 8.5 million Americans over the age of 85, most of them Boomers. Now, and this is related to the age of American unreason because there is also one thing older and younger Boomers have in common, a kind of forever young state of mind, whether they are or not. This is hitting the Boomers hard now and there is now, this is what my next book is about. There is now the same kind of propaganda about the new old age, but there was in the about Boomers being completely different from their parents in that there is a mindset that says, "If only we live right, if only we worked hard enough, the phrase defying old age comes up all the time." It is a Boomer mindset, a mindset in which, and it is also very much a mindset of the (19)70s after the (19)60s, the retreat into the personal growth kind of thing. But if you just work hard enough, if you live right- SM (02:07:06): [inaudible] exercise. SJ (02:07:08): ...your old age is not going to be... At 90, I went to this panel two years ago, three years ago, called is 90 the new (19)50s. Gene was in the audience, by the way. Well, I could answer you whether 90 is the new 50. It is not, but the Boomers are going to be affecting ideas about old age thus far in a very unrealistic sort of way for quite a while. But as far as a lot of Boomers are concerned, the only people who get Alzheimer's disease are people who did not exercise enough and who ate too many carbs and got too fat. If you live to be more than 85, you have a 50 percent chance of getting Alzheimer's disease. It is evidence, facts cannot be denied. And that is something that a certain fantasy part of the Boomer generation has always tried to do. SM (02:08:00): Yes, exactly. SJ (02:08:00): The Boomer attitude toward old age now is exactly like the attitude of aging Boomer women who wanted to have natural childbirth, which is they believed that if they only wanted it, childbirth would not hurt. SM (02:08:14): Well, I know that Boomers they do not want to have senior citizen centers. SJ (02:08:20): No-no. SM (02:08:21): They want to get rid of that word senior citizens. SJ (02:08:25): I used the word old in my new book. The word old is the word Boomers hate. Hello. I am just 65. How many 130-year-old do you see walking around? I am not middle-aged. They are not middle-aged. By the 2030, none of us are going to be anywhere near middle-aged. We are going to be old. SM (02:08:48): It is an interesting, you go to any park or any place, people are running, walking, exercising, biking. Doctors will say, that will extend your lifespan. SJ (02:08:58): No, they do not. They say it is good for you now. No good doctor says it. It is good for you in a million different ways. Whether it will extend your life, your healthy lifespan is completely unknown. I know, I know. The AARP, which is now run by Boomers, of course, right? The AARP for which I written many times, and God bless them, I love them. The AARP, the attitude about the new old age is this, it is okay to be old as long as you pretend you are not. So as the AARP concentrates on the 95-year-old sky diver, the 90-year-old who are having great sex, of course there cannot be very many of them among women because most women who are 90 years old do not have partners. And if you noticed ads for Viagra, which was actually intended either for people who have things like diabetes or for people over 65, 70, the people in ads for Viagra are all in their 40s. They do not want to present the real age at which Viagra is really aimed. What they want to say in these commercials is if you take Viagra, it would be just like it was 20, 30 years ago. SM (02:10:12): You hit some- SJ (02:10:14): But this is related to the Boomer generation because the Boomers are getting old. SM (02:10:19): Yeah. And I think when they were younger, they felt... This is one thing too. When I was in school, there was this feeling that we were going to change the world. We were going to end war, bring peace, end all the racism, sexism and homophobia, clean up the environment. There was the supposed attitude of not 100 percent of the people, but the activists had, but they were going to make a difference in the world. SJ (02:10:46): And we did make a difference in a lot of ways. Look, would you rather be Black in America today or would you rather have been Black before the Civil Rights movement? Would you rather be a woman in America today, or would you rather be a woman from Mad Men? These changes in women's lives, and I am not discounting for a minute that what we are seeing now is ugly, and the idea that this was kind of eradicated either then or now is ridiculous, and anybody with a brain in their head knows it. But fact is the progress that is made in opportunities for minorities, the progress that was made in opportunities for women is absolutely undeniable. It was not better to be African American or Hispanic or female in 1960 than it is today. It is much better to be all of those things today. SM (02:11:33): You talked a lot about- How we doing time wise? SJ (02:11:47): Well, we have been at it for about- SM (02:11:47): 45 minutes? SJ (02:11:48): Oh, more than that. We can go on. I am comfortable here and get this done maybe. SM (02:11:52): Yeah [inaudible] I will come back to it. When you look at the period that Boomers have been alive, which is 1946... Oh, another question I was going to ask. Many people have said to me during my interviews, when you look at Bill Clinton, and when you look at George's Bush number two, you can tell they are Boomers. Just a general comment. You can tell they are Boomers. What do you think they are saying when they say that? SJ (02:12:24): I have no idea. I mean, they both behave like Boomers politically in a sense. I do not know what they mean by that. If you look at them, you can tell what they are Boomers. But I can tell if they are Boomers because I know they are the age they are. They have to be Boomers. I actually do not have any... I cannot venture a comment on that because I do not know what they mean. If they mean a style of politics, which is a little less buttoned up. Maybe that is what they mean. I do not know what they mean by, if you look at Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, you can tell they are Boomers. Do they both smoke pot? Yeah, when they were young. I do not know what that says. SM (02:13:06): I think some were referring to George Bush as well, my way or the highway kind of mentality, but some of the activists had in the (19)60s and Bill Clinton with his Monica Lewinsky. SJ (02:13:20): Well, yeah, as we know, politicians who are not Boomers never have extramarital sex. But this is ridiculous. There is this tendency on the part of the right to attribute everything they do not like that they imagine to be true about the Boomer generation to have been the Boomer generation. How can anybody make this ridiculous statement about Monica Lewinsky being an example of a typical Boomer mindset? I mean, exactly what generation of politicians has not had sex scandals? The only difference was in the past is that the public did not know about it because the press did not write about it. SM (02:13:58): Look at that period, 1946 to 1960, how did that shape the very, very young Boomers with respect to the issue of fear? We already talked about McCarthyism, which was on television in the early (19)50s, so the front running Boomers would have seen that- SJ (02:14:18): It affected... I remember the air raid drills when we would crouch under the desk, which was supposed to protect us from radiation. I do not know a single person my age or who is a sentient being in the early (19)50s who does not remember the fear of the bomb. Exactly how much that shaped us, I do not know. The nature of being young is not to be fearful. I think I can remember the air raid drills and thinking it was silly, but I do not come from a typical family. My family, while they were not liberal or left at all, but they were sort of completely indifferent to that sort of sort of thing. SM (02:15:03): I think that across the board, whether it is that- SJ (02:15:06): I think a lot of it would have depended on what kind of a family you came from. SM (02:15:12): The three adjectives that I lean on here in describing the early light Boomers as a whole is- SJ (02:15:21): Fear? SM (02:15:22): And fear being what you talk about the bomb and growing up with a cold war, and obviously that the Communist, looking for Communists everywhere. Naive. Naive, hey, because I believe that (19)50s television was all about that, and you really had to read between the lines. And being quiet. SJ (02:15:40): Quiet? SM (02:15:40): Being quiet. I do not think Boomers [inaudible] thought Boomers really never started to do things. I mean, being outspoken, until the (19)60s. SJ (02:15:48): Not, well, first of all, Boomers in the (19)50s were little kids. SM (02:15:48): They were in junior high school, though. SJ (02:15:59): We do not tend to take down the utterances of little kids. But this I think you are very wrong about. I think you are conflating something, the Silent Generation, which was people who came of age in the (19)50s with the Boomers. I think on the contrary, child rearing was much more permissive in the 1950s. I do not think people around for good as well as for bad to say that Dr. Spock's ideas about child rearing, which while in some ways very traditional, were much freer than the kind of child rearing people of my parents' generation were brought up with. I think in fact, although Boomers, every little word was not taken as seriously as kids are today. I think that Boomers grew up in a much freer, more outspoken atmosphere then. And said things that would not have been allowed for their parents to say when they were children. But I do not think the (19)60s did not come out of nowhere. They did not come out of nowhere. It is not like a switch was turned on. And I mean, you have got to remember that the election of John F. Kennedy, the oldest Boomers were 14 when John F. Kennedy was elected. In some ways, that was still the (19)50s, but in some ways too, that also felt like the dawn of a new day. I would say quite the opposite. Yes, there was the bomb and all of that. Did I really think anybody was going to drop a bomb on me when I was... I think in fact, the Boomers were brought up with a great deal more security and intelligence than their parents were. I would say it was quite the opposite of fear. Life was pretty nice for a child in the 1950s if you came from a middle class family. And I do stress that if you came from a middle class family. Life growing up in the 1950s, if you grew up in a ghetto or if you were a poor white or Black person growing up in the south, Bill Clinton's early life was very different from mine. But what was different by the time he got into college in the (19)60s is there were scholarships for bright young boy. Bill Clinton, he had been born in generation earlier, he would have been no one. He would have been white trash because there would not have been any way for a boy like that to go to college. SM (02:18:15): You cannot forget about Native Americans as well during the 1950s on the reservations. SJ (02:18:21): They were not on the radar at all. But the life of the poor and the middle class in the (19)50s was very different. It was certainly as different as it is today, and you just cannot... I mean, that is one of the reasons why a lot of the anger today was that a lot of the other (19)60s were not just the rich people like the Bushes. It was also working class people. And there are people who did not make it out of the working class in the 1950s, the 1960s. My family made it out of the working class in the 1950s. And their children, there was never any thought that we were going to be part of that blue-collar class, which was only a half generation away in our family, but a lot of Americans did not. SM (02:19:07): This afternoon I will be speaking to Marvin Serff. He is going to talk about growing up African American in Detroit in the (19)60s. SJ (02:19:07): How old is he? SM (02:19:07): Oh, he is like same age as Alan Wolf. He has got to be probably mid (19)60s. SJ (02:19:07): Yeah, he is the same age as Alan then. SM (02:19:22): Yeah. But I think he does not live in America anymore. He lives in Mexico. He just happens to be visiting friends here. SJ (02:19:28): Well, that will be a very interesting interview because Detroit in the mid (19)60s was changing rapidly and the mid (19)60s are the period when the whites just basically abandoned Detroit and Detroit was just abandoned. That should be a very interesting- SM (02:19:48): Another person wrote a book on the labor unions in Detroit at that time, and how they took on the Black Power and the Black Panther mentality in the labor room. In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and when did it end? And what was the watershed moment? SJ (02:19:57): Actually, I think the (19)60s really began- Actually, I think the (19)60s really began around 1963 and not just for the Kennedy assassination. I think one of the things that you definitely felt when you were a teenager in the early 1960s, there is a big cultural change that started to happen. Although the early (19)60s, Mad Men is not wrong about this, in some ways they were more like the 1950s than they were the later part of the (19)60s. But in some ways, they were not. But one thing that happens in the early (19)60s is that, first of all, there begins to be strong concern in mainstream America about peace. You get movies like On the Beach, which was a big hit movie, movies of the kind that would have been considered commie only five years before. But, yeah, you have 1964. You have two movies, Dr. Strangelove, which is an iconic movie, and Failsafe. The Failsafe movie came out just before that. What they both were about were movies suggesting that war might happen by accident, not by the evil of communism, and we all ought to be thinking about that. There is a very big change that starts in those early years of the (19)60s, not exactly at 1960, but I would say that the minute John Kennedy began talking about nuclear disarmament, which coincided with this cultural moment when movies questioning whether war necessarily arose from the total evil of the enemy, I think that is where the (19)60s really begin. They end with the end of the Vietnam War, and we have a lot of things... I consider the Women's Movement, which is really early (19)70s really a (19)60s phenomenon. I think of it as... although the Women's Movement really does not begin to... they sure empty the garbage a lot, which is good. I think the (19)60s really end with the end of the Vietnam War and kind of the beginning of the consolidation of what the Women's Movement was gaining. The high-water mark of women's movement is really the late (19)70s, not the (19)60s. SM (02:22:15): What was the watershed moment? Was there a watershed moment? One particular moment that stands out? SJ (02:22:15): It was to when the (19)60s ended? SM (02:22:15): No, just the whole period of the (19)60s. SJ (02:22:15): Well, to me the watershed moment was of course, I mean you got the original about this, it was 1968. It was not when the (19)60s ended, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy within months of each other, it certainly changed my frame of mind about what was possible. This is followed right away by the election of Richard Nixon. And the election of Richard Nixon, it was not just old people who voted for Richard Nixon. The (19)60s were not going to turn out to be a turning point in history toward what I would have said were my values. This becomes pretty obvious by the end of 1968. SM (02:23:20): You remember the exact moment you heard that John Kennedy was killed? Do you remember? SJ (02:23:20): I sure do. SM (02:23:27): Most people do. Where were you when you heard? SJ (02:23:32): I was buying a dress in a shop in East Lansing, Michigan. What I remember more and what meant more to me is I also remember where I was when Bobby Kennedy was killed, and when Martin Luther King was killed. When Martin Luther King was killed, I was at home in my house on Capitol Hill, my apartment on Capitol Hill, and I just immediately jumped in a cab and went straight to the Washington Post, because I knew that the city was going to go up in flames, which it did. I was a reporter for the Post. When Robert Kennedy was killed, I was in Frankfurt airport changing planes for Kenya where I was going to meet my fiancé. Everybody in Frankfurt airport was crying, and that is when I learned, and I said to myself, "This is the end of my hope." It was not, of course, but it felt like it. SM (02:24:33): As a person who has written a lot of great books and have analyzed America from different angles, when you look at the assassinations of Kennedy, King and Kennedy again, what does that say about America? That, if you speak up too much, you are going to be in or what does it say? SJ (02:24:53): What it says to me, and believe you me, I have been thinking about it a lot this week. What it said to me is that there is a lot of free-floating anger and rage in our culture. I do not think it had anything to do with speaking up per se, but when you do become a lightning rod for people who feel threatened, there is no shortage of the true combination of craziness and evil that takes a gun out and shoots. And I have been thinking about that a lot. It feels to me, I am not saying it is, but what is going on right now feels to me very much like things felt to me in the late 1960s only worse because- SM (02:25:46): Hold that thought. I want to turn my tape here. Yeah, you are bringing up some very interesting- SJ (02:26:01): So one thing my throat is getting sore. SM (02:26:03): Yep. Okay. SJ (02:26:07): Well, it feels to me in 2010 as we approached this anniversary of the terrorist attack, it feels to me, although it is not the same class of characters, but I have the same really uneasy feeling I had in 1968, which is I have this feeling that anything could happen, that there is a lot of unfocused rage out there added to even more ignorance that existed in 1968 because I do believe people know-know us. I do believe that the 24 hour news cycle, the web and so on, have made us stupider not smarter. They have given us more information, but I believe in terms of logical thinking, in terms of the ability to remember anything that happened before 10 minutes ago, I think we have a worse and more stupid culture than we did in 1968. But I feel the same kind of anger around me. I am not saying I am right, I am saying it feels kind of the same to me now, which is bad, but it feels the same to a lot of people who live through that time. Right now, I have this feeling that I do not know where the ground quite is beneath me, what is going to happen next. And some crack pot leader of a congregation of 50 people in Gainesville, Florida get the call from the Secretary of Defense begging him not to burn the Koran. It makes me feel like almost anything could happen. SM (02:27:44): And also recently with the fact- SJ (02:27:48): I hope this is a feeling and not a fact. SM (02:27:50): Well, I have a feeling because I have been studying lately the football player that was killed by friendly fire. SJ (02:27:57): Pat Tillman. SM (02:27:57): Pat Tillman. Unbelievable. And the latest is that he was murdered because he was going to come back to the United States and be an anti-war protestor that he and his brother and some of his close associates had seen enough. He was going to finish his time, but he was going to come back, and there was a worry that he would come back and that would be terrible to have the number one guy [inaudible] else about. SJ (02:28:28): Well, what I would say about this is that this idea is around is part of what makes it feel like 1968. This is probably not true, probably it is just the army covered its ass as it always tries to do after friendly fire. But these conspiracy theories are all out there, and we see more of them on the right than on the left at the moment, but the existence of conspiracy theories in which a lot of people believe, not saying whether they are true or not, but it is a sign that there is a lot of dangerous anger out there. SM (02:29:05): I agree. And of course we all worried about President Obama when he came into power and somebody wanted to knock him off. SJ (02:29:13): Well, I am still worried about that. SM (02:29:16): Who won the battles in the (19)60s? Who won the battle? SJ (02:29:21): Which battle are you talking about? SM (02:29:22): Basically the liberals versus conservatives. Who really won? It was very obvious- SJ (02:29:31): The left won the culture war. The political war was a draw as we see very well. If the left had won the political war, we would not have the kind of problems that we have today. Richard Nixon would never have been elected President. Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president. Loads of baby boomers voted for Ronald Reagan. SM (02:29:50): Yep, I know. SJ (02:29:52): So the left definitely did not win the political war, but I said the left won the culture war. It did in the sense that a lot of the lifestyle changes of the (19)60s were adopted on the right as well as the left. SM (02:30:05): Well, Nixon always used the term silent majority and there were a lot of young people that were in that silent majority as well. SJ (02:30:14): That is right. SM (02:30:16): One of the criticisms of the (19)60s generation were the boomers, or the activists is they always say that in the generation of 78 million, only about 15 percent were ever involved in any kind of activism. Even some of the strongest activists I have talked to have said, "15? It was more like five." SJ (02:30:33): I would agree with them, but that alone is not a measure because there are a lot of ideas which were shared by people who were not activists. Again, in a way I am atypical, but everybody says this. When I was 24 years old, I got married to the Moscow correspondent of the Washington Post and moved to Moscow with him for two and a half years where I wrote my first book and did not go back to newspaper writing because I wanted to write books and magazine articles. But I was very affected by my time in Russia in this, but many of the cultural concerns of my contemporaries seemed very trivial to me when I came back. It also affected me very much apropos of some of the bad educational things that happened in the (19)60s. I was in Russia, a country where there was no such thing as popular entertainment that was bearable. If you wanted to do anything that was fun in Russia, it was listening to classical music, it was reading classics because those were the only kind of good books that were available. And so that in a way, in Russia, I got the education that I missed when I was in college because there was no such thing as a popular entertainment culture there. There was anything but anything but controlled by the party. So in a way, in Russia, I had to read poetry and classics with an intensity that I never read before and the only kind of music I could hear was good music. I just laughed. I just laugh when I see this silly book about Bob Dylan that Sean Wilentz, who was another child of the (19)60s, just published. The idea of Bob Dylan is a great artist to me is ridiculous and I know why it is ridiculous to me. Because when everybody else was listening to the Stones and Bob Dylan, I know who genius poets were. They were Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky and Boris Pasternak. Bob Dylan is not a genius of a poet, and it is an example of low educational standards of a lot of my generation that this guy is taken seriously as anything but a singer of his generation, which in that respect, what he was perfectly good. SM (02:32:49): What do you think of Rod McKuen? SJ (02:32:51): Well, Rod McKuen was the worst. SM (02:32:54): How about the beat writers? SJ (02:32:55): But Rod McKuen? Well, the beat writers fall a whole different category. They were earlier and after something else. Al Ginsberg is a great poet. Rod McKuen is not. Rod McKuen was liked by both the left and the right, by the way. You have a lot of pop culture of the (19)60s. That is why I say the left in general was stupid, won the culture war in the 1960s. 1960s is when you begin to see a lot of decline and a lot of things that I valued. Ages 24 to 26 I was in Russia. These are very formative years. I was not listening to the Stones or Bob Dylan. There was a little Pat and Oscar. SM (02:33:47): What do you consider to be the major failures of the movement? The movement or the movement? SJ (02:34:01): I do not think the civil rights movement failed in any way except in the sense that undermining something as potent as racial discrimination and racial stereotypes in a country that was founded upon slavery is not the work of 10 years or 20 years or as we see now. To paraphrase John Kennedy, even in our lifetime on this earth, I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure at all. I think it was a complete success, but they failed to persuade probably 25 percent of people in this country now as then that they were right is not a failure. They persuaded a lot of people that they were right. We got through the civil rights movement. You heard about anybody being lynched lately? No, I do not think the civil rights movement was a failure in any way. The anti-war movement was clearly a failure. It failed to end the war. It was not movement's fault; the entrenched nature of what Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex is too much for anybody burning their draft cards and American flags on college campuses. Clearly, the anti-war movement in terms of changing a kind of reflexive respect for the military was a failure. I would say that one of the greatest disappointments of my adult lifetime is, as far as I can see, to me, the war in Afghanistan resembles the futility of the war in Vietnam much more than any other. But we did not learn anything from our experience in Vietnam. We did not learn much about the limits of American power in a totally different culture, very, very far from home. And by the way, when you think about that war now, when you think about the Viet Cong and the Taliban, you understand the Viet Cong were practically kissing cousins in relation to us compared to the values of somebody like the Taliban. SM (02:36:12): Yes. SJ (02:36:12): As we now see, we are a country with all sorts of commercial relations with Vietnam. Vietnam is part of the world in which we live, with parts of the Muslim world controlled by people like the Taliban are not. So I would say that the anti-war movement was absolutely a failure both in the short term, in that the war went on for years until 1975, and the long term in terms of making people more skeptical about this kind of careless exercise of American power. The women's movement was a success in that it opened up a lot more educational and economic opportunities to women. I would not say that the women's movement was a failure. People say things are still bad for women who want to raise a family and have a career. That is true, but I do not exactly see that as a failure any more than I see the fact that that Americans who hate Barack Obama will not admit that race has anything to do with it today. I do not see that as a failure of the civil rights movement any more than I see the fact that it is still tough to have a family and a career as a woman. I see those as entrench structural problems that the civil rights movement and women's movement made a good start on, that nobody could have expected would be solved even by now. SM (02:37:47): You do not have to go into any extensive detail, but then you have got the Native American movement which many people thought was only a four-year movement with AIM starting at Alcatraz and ending at Wounded Knee. The Native American movement had been going on for a long time. Then of course you had the Chicano movement, the farm workers and of course the environmental movement and the gay and lesbian movement, so they are all- SJ (02:38:08): Well, the gay lesbian movement, it starts where the (19)60s end really. I mean, I am in the gay rights movement. The enormous change that has taken place that started at Stonewall. All you need to do is look at the different attitudes of young people and older people, and it is a difference between people who are not old enough to be boomers and boomers too. Boomers have far more negative attitudes about gay than the next generation down does. Our parents have problem negative attitudes about gay than the boomers did. These things are take a long time. I do not think that that the gay rights movement has failed because a lot of people still hate gays. I think that the one thing that has not changed in American society is the vast influence of a very retrograde form of religion, which is unique to the United States, which is something that progressives in every generation, beginning with the ideas of 18th century, have thought, "We are going to be gone by the next generation." That has the influence of fundamentalist religion. I do not mean evangelical religion, I mean fundamentalist religion. The kind of religion that takes seriously and believes that lives should be ordered by the writings in sacred books. The Taliban are fundamentalist Muslims, the fundamentalist Christians are fundamentalist Christians. The Jews out living in their little Hasidic shtetls in Brooklyn are fundamentalist Jews. They believe that all of this is to be taken literally. They are a real threat in American society, the biggest threat of the Christians simply because there are more fundamentalist Christians than there are fundamentalist anything else in America. It is unique. It is a failure. It is a failure. I will not go into a lot of this. I read free thinkers if you want to, but we are the only country in the developed world in which a third of our citizens do not accept that evolution is not a scientific reality. SM (02:40:19): You talk about the anti-intellectual atmosphere that came out of the (19)60s then, but you did talk about how that during John Kennedy's three years, there was a hope there that there was an intellectual development taking place because of the people that he hired, the thinkers, the idea people, and of course dealing with the sciences and Sputnik and all the others- SJ (02:40:42): Well, you know they- SM (02:40:42): Do you see the comparison? Mario Savio in 1964 said that the- SJ (02:40:47): I still have a Savio for state senate bumper sticker! SM (02:40:52): Well, I like the guy. He was right on target and he said that the fact is that the university's about ideas. It is not about being the corporate takeover of everything, and we are back to the corporate takeover of everything right now. SJ (02:41:07): We are back. We are at a worst place in relation to that than we ever were then. We did not know what a real corporate takeover of everything was then. We only thought we did. SM (02:41:23): Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory, but what did the universities learn from the (19)60s that make them better prepared to work with the student activists? SJ (02:41:31): They are not- SM (02:41:33): In particular, today. SJ (02:41:37): First of all, there are not any student activists today. I mean, there are few, but the universities did not learn anything from the (19)60s as far as I can see. What the universities learned from the (19)60s was how to dumb down their standards enough to please stupid students. There were among the activists, as among everybody else, there were highly brilliant activists. I think Mario Savio was one of them, by the way. I had the greatest respect for him. Todd Gitlin too. There were student activist- SM (02:42:02): Tom Hayden was smart, too. SJ (02:42:03): There were two activists. Well, he got less smart as he got older. There were student activists who were smart and there were student activists who were dumb. The university never had any ability to distinguish between those two groups at all. The reason they did what they did was, they did not want any shortage of their gravy train. I do not know who it was that told you 15 percent was too high an estimate, but they were right. SM (02:42:30): Several people. SJ (02:42:31): But somehow the universities actually thought that parents were going to stop sending their kids to college if they did not shut up these activists on campus, which was never going to happen. So they got the worst of our possible worlds. When instead of truly reforming the curriculum in a good way, that would have added the knowledge that people need about every part of history to the general curriculum. They shunted it off into ghetto studies, and by ghetto, I mean ghetto women's studies, ghetto queer studies, which is ridiculous too. Whatever is necessary to know about any minority is necessary for everyone to know. It is not necessary only for the minority or the interest in you to know. SM (02:43:16): After the Kennedy assassination, I think you said that things changed in the universities, that the Sputnik and the science and math and the importance of those things. But then when he died, something happened within the universities. Clark Kerr talked about the knowledge factory. It is like the IBM mentality. SJ (02:43:38): The emphasis on science did not change at all. That is when the money was always there for science. But what changed the late 1960s and largely as a result of faculty yielding to this pressure of this 5 percent or whatever it was, was that people were not required to learn a common core of knowledge. By the way, I think people like Diane Ravitch are absolutely right about that, and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who of course came from the opposite political thing. I think that they are absolutely right about the decline of common core knowledge. I think that the faculty of the late (19)60s and early (19)70s covered itself with disgrace by settling for this non-solution of dumbing down general humanities courses, telling students they could decide basically what they wanted to take, and there has been a swing the other way, but so much has been lost. So much has been lost in terms of what people have been not required to learn over the last 30 years, but I do not know if anything can ever- SM (02:44:43): It is a well-known fact- SJ (02:44:44): And computers have made it so much worse. SM (02:44:46): It is a well-known fact as I have experienced them myself, that students of the (19)60s would make demands within the university knowing that if those demands were met, they demand other things they could not demand, so nothing would ever please them. Do you think that kind of a mentality of that small percentage of activists who were really publicized highly by the media as the sample of the spokesman of the (19)60s? SJ (02:45:07): [Inaudible] SM (02:45:07): Has anything to do with the atmosphere that we had today, which was probably the same back then as not listening to each other, my way or the highway kind of mentality? SJ (02:45:24): Well, again, I think it is worse now beyond anything we could have imagined then. I do, in a way, I agree that the power of the quote activist was exaggerated. Look, I know a lot of these people who are thought to be flame-throwing activists. Some of them turned into extremely intelligent great scholars by the end of the 1970s. But I think what is going on now, I do not relate it in a direct line to the (19)60s at all. I cannot imagine, for instance, anybody like Sarah Palin even being listened to in the 1960s. When you think about who was the conservative political hero in the (19)60s, Barry Goldwater, if you think about him and Sarah Palin, just put them in the same frame for a second. If you want to see an example of the degeneration of political and intellectual culture, just see it. Barry Goldwater is a giant compared to Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is somebody who knows nothing and is proud of it. There were people like that in the (19)60s, but they were not proud of it. They even built careers out of it. SM (02:46:45): I had a couple quotes here and we will end on these quotes. SJ (02:46:47): Okay. I have got a spot for you because I am losing you. SM (02:46:51): You have a quote here. "The denigration of fairness has infected those political and intellectualized and is now produced a culture in which disproportionate influences exercised by the loud and relentless choices of single-minded men and women of one persuasion or another." SJ (02:47:07): More true now in the second year of Obama than it was when I wrote them in 2007. Sadly, one of the most bewildering things that that is happened is that Obama, forget about whether you agree with some of the things he does or not. Obama is clearly a man of reason. I think in many ways he got elected because people were sick of the dumbness of George Bush, but when people got him, the biggest criticism made of him is that he is too cerebral. He is out of touch with what ordinary people feel. I think undoubtedly Obama's great strength and weakness is that he is a reasonable man and I do not think he could really believe that so many of his countrymen are as unreasonable and irrational as they are. I think this could be fatal to him if he does not understand it that he is dealing with a lot of people who cannot be reasonable to [inaudible]. SM (02:48:05): Would you also say, and I think you said this in your book that, in the 1960s, at least on college campuses, that someone came in from a different point of view, students will be there in numbers protesting- SJ (02:48:16): Absolutely. SM (02:48:16): And challenging us today. It is all like-minded people. SJ (02:48:21): Absolutely. It is all like-minded people who go to your like-minded people. SM (02:48:26): I got two more quotes and then we are going to end. I love this and it is in the introduction here. "In today's America, intellectuals and non-intellectual alike, whether on the left or right, tend to tune out any voice that is not an echo. The obduracy is both a manifestation of mental laziness and the essence of anti-intellectualism." SJ (02:48:47): Yes, I agree with agree with that writer! SM (02:48:52): I got lot of quotes here and my last one here is you put Thomas Jefferson's quote at the very beginning. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." SJ (02:49:03): That is right. Why do not they just replace "In God we trust" on the coins with "Ignorant and proud of it." I do not think, in this book, that you should neglect religion. Remember the big Time cover story in 1968, "God is dead". Well, that is a real big mistake we made in the 1960s and again, the whole fundamentalist upsurge was not something that the media and liberal intellectuals were aware of at all. SM (02:49:35): The Jerry Falwells of the world. SJ (02:49:36): Unfortunately, not only is God not dead, I would not care if He were alive for reasonable people, but a particularly unreasonable kind of God is not dead. SM (02:49:43): This is the last question. Boomers are now reaching 65, as you say, and the youngest ones ever getting towards 50. When boomers are long gone, what do you think the historians, people like yourself, sociologists, writers will say about this generation or better yet the period that they live? What do they say about them? SJ (02:50:11): Well, a lot of history will be a crock. It will depend on which history books they are reading. It will depend on whether they are reading my version of the (19)60s or Todd's version of the (19)60s or Bill Kristol's version of the (19)60s. It will depend to some extent on what they think, but I will tell you one thing, and I think about this a lot as a writer and as a scholar. There is one thing I can say for certain that getting any kind of a rounded picture of who our generation was is going to be much more difficult for a historian 50 years from now than it is for us to get a picture of people who were born in 1920 are. Why? We stopped writing letters in the 1960s. This is before the computer. We stopped writing letters when long distance phone rates went way down and we have stopped writing them almost all together. Since the advent of computers, there is very little record except for a video record of the inner lives of people of our generation. You can write an excellent history of what intellectuals and activists too in the 1930s were thinking. The record of what people were thinking except for those who actually wrote books stops around 1970. You will never find out, for example, what my life was like from reading my personal correspondence because I do not have any anymore because people stopped writing me back around 1975, and that is when I stopped writing. Email has done nothing about this. Email is a totally different, non-reflective, instrumental form of communication. SM (02:51:57): Wow, you are right on that. SJ (02:51:59): I think this is one of the most important things is we are never going to have any sense of what the inner life of this generation was like. Historians are going to find it very difficult. SM (02:52:09): We took students to see John Culver, the former senator from Iowa who was a close friend of Teddy Kennedy. This was back in the (19)90s, and he said, "Now that the interview's over, I want to take it back into my office". And he says, "I want you to look at these. Have you ever seen, these are letters, these are love letters between my mom and dad. Have you ever written a letter?" No. And we are talking (19)90s now, right? She was in the (19)90s, so it is love letters. Have you ever sent a love letter to your girlfriend or boyfriend? No. So John Culver is saying, "Just you look at these and see how beautiful they are." I am going to end with this. SJ (02:52:46): I am just about had it. SM (02:52:47): Yep. Barney Frank said at the very end, he wrote a book- SJ (02:52:50): I love Barney Frank. SM (02:52:51): In his book, Speaking Frankly, he said the Democratic party to survive must separate itself from George McGovern, like McGovernites, the anti-war people, all those people that were involved in those movements if it is to survive. Mr. Barney Frank is speaking frankly. SJ (02:53:08): What makes Barney Frank think anybody remembers George McGovern? That would be my question to him. SM (02:53:13): In his book in the (19)90s, speaking frankly though, he was not attacking it as a conservative, he was attacking it as a liberal, basically saying, if we are going to survive, we have to disassociate ourselves from those people that were in the counterculture and the people that supported George McGovern in (19)72. SJ (02:53:31): And just where does Barney think his place in the party looks to people who think that the Democratic party ought a disassociated itself from people like Barney Frank. I am sorry, he has really got a nerve. I love him. SM (02:53:46): Well that was (19)92 though, so anyway. Okay. Well, thank you. (End of Interview) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Susan Jacoby Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Jacoby, Susan, 1945- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Authors; Jacoby, Susan, 1945--Interviews Description An account of the resource Susan Jacoby is an author and has written twelve books, including <em>The Age of American Unreason</em>. She is a graduate from Michigan University and she now lives in New York City, where she is the program director of the New York Branch of the Center for inquiry. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010-09-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.69a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.69b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 173:52 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/452f0fe05e924e1a7221f51da635fbd2.jpg 8271af811647c16d2b6b6b9162071982 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/08465f1a4d3db4bce08cd1cc191cf17a.mp3 a83e1374ece0de7d8e4a0435b73cce42 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-10-10 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Rennie Davis Language English Biographical Text Rennie Davis (1940-2021) was a spiritual lecturer and an activist. Davis was an American anti-Vietnam war protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven defendants. He appeared on several shows, including <em>Larry King Live</em> and <em>Barbara Walters</em>, and provided business advice for Fortune 500 companies. Davis was an alumnus of Oberlin College. 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 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 125:41 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Voting rights; Drug culture; Baby boom generation;Healing; Vietnam Memorial; Hippies; Yippies; Peace Corps; Trust; Mistrust of government; Kent State; Watergate; Richard Nixon; Democratic Convention; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam Veterans; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon Johnson; John F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Voting rights; Drug culture; Baby boom generation;Healing; Vietnam Memorial; Hippies; Yippies; Peace Corps; Trust; Mistrust of government; Kent State; Watergate; Richard Nixon; Democratic Convention; Weathermen; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam Veterans; Eugene McCarthy; George McGovern; Lyndon Johnson; John F. Kennedy; Robert F. Kennedy; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Malcolm X.</span> Subject LCSH Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Political activists--United States; Davis, Rennie--Interviews Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Rennie Davis Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers Date of interview: 10 October 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 0:02 RD: That is probably worse than what happened to [inaudible] finding, you know, Christianity as a religion that did not really make any sense at all, so Tom kind of went through, what in the world? I mean, it was just, you know, I was viewed by myself too. I was a self-image, but other people too, just so stable in my politics and my consistency, what I believed and what I would do, you could count on me you know, and it was nice to have. Then all of a sudden you could not count on me anymore and I thought, oh what happened? 0:44 SM: How did you used to be for the record questions? I answered? How did you become who you became? 0:50 RD: In the (19)60s? 0:51 SM: In other words, experience? Yeah, when we when and when students on college campuses saw you and Tom. You know, a lot of us knew about Tom because of the Free Speech Movement and, and the poor Iran statement, and we were reading about that young man from Michigan. But where did you come from? How did you get? How did you get the 1968? Chicago? I mean? 1:16 RD: Well, my dad was the Chief of Staff of Truman's Council of Economic Advisers, and was a, had left University teaching when Roosevelt came in, you know, and but basically saw himself as supporting a government trying to do recovery with stimulation. And so he was pro Liberal government, you know, Liberal Democrat, I would say that it risen to the highest level of his profession. And I grew up in an environment, a climate, I mean, he lost a job when Eisenhower was elected president. 2:10 SM: Definitely a democrat. 2:12 RD: He had purchased this 500-acre farm about seventy miles west of Washington and decided because he had himself grown up on a farm in Sao Paulo, Ohio that he was, you know, from his perspective, black balled and Washington, he could not get a job, you know, in his profession, at least for a while. So he decided to make a go of it on the farm. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to us, you know. At first we were kicking and screaming, but so we all moved out to the farm and it looked like we were farmers. I mean, you know, the nearest neighbor was almost a half a mile away, it was a very isolated place, but beautiful place, but, and I went to, you know, a local high school and I guess I found myself about a year ahead of everybody, academically, just coming from the Washington School to a rural country Virginia School. But right away, started making good grades for me, you know? And then I got active in activities in the in the school too. I was president the student body, I was editor in chief of the school newspaper. I became kind of um, I won the state championship in 4H, poultry judging. I won the eastern United States poultry judging contest. Then I had a stolen from me in Chicago. That was my view, but it was not really. So I had the farming thing and I was, I suppose you could say I was high school activism and I was doing a lot of things in high school. 4:03 Unnamed speaker: You were telling me about a rally that you did in high school, didn’t you? 4:07 RD: Valley? 4:08 Unnamed speaker: A rally did not you do a rally in high school or something like a demonstration? 4:13 RD: Well, we had a dance thing that we moved off, you know, we rented a place I had a band, I played the piano, and we had a nightclub type of thing, you know, but there were not any chaperones. We were just doing it on our own, you know, and it was became a big controversial thing with the principle of the school. I would not call it too political but anyway, during this period, I asked my dad, you know, I had a worldview and thinking about issues I sort of you know, I was I went to an all-white high school. You know, I did not really fully glock segregation when I was in high school. I had a very high-grade point average, which, you know, I fortunately, got me into a decent undergraduate school, I went to Oberlin College in Ohio. And I, in the first year was terror of trying to catch up with everybody and then by the second year, I became roommate with a guy named Paul Potter, who was, who knew Tom. Tom was at the University of Michigan, we were at Oberlin. And it was it was very interesting. I mean, you were in January 1960, you really could not tell that it was not still the 1950s. There was no signs of anything really. It was my first intuitive moment, I would say, you know, I knew in January 1960, something immense and huge was about to happen. And I could not really say what it was other than it felt like the entire generation was going to come together and really make a difference in the world, you know, but there was there was zero, so I mean, there was nothing going on. I mean, before Kennedy was elected. Well, yeah, this would be maybe with Kennedy. Kennedy, what would have been a January 20, 1960. So the election was happening. I mean, you could say also the, you know, I mean, I watched the Stevenson campaign with Eisenhower. And we were drawn to the elegance of Stephenson, and his family and so on. But there was no civil rights movement. I mean, there were there were things let you know about now, historically, but not in the media. But it was just it was just entertaining. There was just like a vibration or something. I do not know that is probably not the right word, it was a knowingness that, that I was a part of something that was huge, you know. And I knew that really before the, right there at the end of (19)59, very early (19)60. And then, for me, the thing that launched everything was February 4, 1960. When four students that A&T college, you know, sat down in Greensboro. And you know, we watched this thing through the media. Now, Life magazine came out with this picture book story and it was mostly it was just shocking, you know, I mean, I mean, I grew up in an all-white school. And yet, for me, the idea that blacks had no justice, they could not have a hamburger, you know, there were two whites and negro toilets. And they, you know, it was just like, I did not know where I was, I mean, I did not get it, you know, before, but now I could see, you know. So it was a little bit of my father's values about justice, fair play and equality and you know, those kind of principles. Yet, you know, beating reality that was like, shocking and like oh, my God, you know. So, it was by February, early March, and by February, I would say we were full tilt 100 percent into a movement that really technically did not even exist, but talented kids, it was like, wow, here we go, you know? And from that day forward, I would say it was pretty much nonstop, twenty-four seven for thirteen years, was the only thing that was really our focus. Tom showed up. Well, I wound up organizing a political convention in Oberlin College, where students nominated a mock convention, you know, you nominate a presidential candidate. I was the campaign manager for Hubert Humphrey, who at that moment was considered kind of a liberal. 5:52 SM: Yeah. That must have been a great experience. 9:22 RD: Yeah, and then Tom showed up, you know, one spring day at school and basically, oh, and we from there we formed the political party called the Progressive Student League. And these are all unheard of concepts. Yeah. I mean, they were just seemed like we were ingrained with this or something it was weird, because nothing was telling us to do any of this was sort of natural. You know? So we so we ran up a slate of candidates for student government. I was the chairman of the party; I did not run as a candidate, but our slate swept the whole thing. So, we controlled every single seat on Student Government [laughter] Like all at one time. Now I was really powerful. 10:17 SM: You were empowered. 10:18 RD: I was empowered, yeah. 10:19 SM: Tom talks about them, you know, when he came to our campus, that our students were having a hard time. [inaudible] When you hear, when do you think the (19)60s and the (19)70s began? What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of that period? 10:47 RD: Well, that was what I was just sharing. I would say the sense of the (19)60s started around December 1959 and January (19)60. There were some events like Kennedy running for president. But quite honestly, what I said was not apparent. And what it was, was a sense of a generation, young people generation, who was going to make the world a better place? Really make a difference. And there really was not any objective, tangible evidence that I can, you know, that I noticed anyway, for that, it was just an internal sense. Then the external event for me was the February fourth sit in. 11:45 SM: Okay. 11:46 RD: So that launched me into a full time into a campaign to you know, the (19)60s movement. 11:56 SM: That would be, that was my next question here. Is there one specific event that shaped your life when you were young? What was that event? 12:02 RD: Well, that was the event that triggered everything, yeah. 12:08 SM: When did you sense that, not only within your group, but within the boomer generation and again, when we define the boomer generation now, because there have been books written about, they kind of define those individuals born between 1946 and 1964. And we know that a lot of people that were leaders in the anti-war, movement, civil rights, and a lot of these other movements were older than that. But when did you start sensing that the boomer generation, this post-war generation was- 12:44 RD: January 1960. 12:46 SM: That very same period. 12:47 RD: That is what I am talking about. That sense that there was a new generation that was going to change the world was internally sensed. Then the external launch was February 4th but they, you could say, well, that the SDS has not really got started, or there was not that much activity going on. But the mood shifted, the climate changed. I mean, the media was driving the sit-ins, and, you know, that was all happening, but to say that by - we organized this mock political convention, and it had the quality of the movement already, you know, occurring. And then then we formed the political party and it caught on. I mean it was, unheard of you know, probably, I do not know if any university ever really did that. I mean, maybe they did, but, you know, to us for the (19)50s. I mean, that was just, you know, I mean, we were you ran for student government over, you know, the right that visit women's dorms or things, you know, I mean, it was social issues locally. I mean, we were on it, we ran on our campaign of recognizing China as a government! Okay, that was one of our platform, plans, you know, civil rights for black people. It was all political. That was in the fall that was in the spring of well, I guess that would be (19)60. January (19)60? Yeah. Spring of (19)60. Then Tom Hayden shows up and basically is promoting a student organization nationwide. And he has already formed a political party in Michigan at the University of Michigan. It is almost identical, in concept of what we have just done at Oberlin, and we never talked about it, there was no communication about it. We just like, obvious to do this. And it had never been obvious before, you know. And so we were all excited. Yeah, let us go National and get things going and we were sending, you know, we were sending money, and support to students that were then forming themselves in, in the south. And so SDS emerged, Students for a Democratic Society and simultaneously at the same time, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee emerged. All of this, you know, in the spring of (19)60 and SDS was now a support system and a fan club for SNCC. You know, then basically, from there, we were starting to recognize that there was a national, I guess, you could say, leadership group sort of forming and we came together to produce a kind of a Tom Payne common sense pamphlet for the present time. And that became known as the Fourth Huron Statement. I mean Tom did, you know, a very elegant first draft, but a lot of people were involved in the writing of that, you know, quite a few. It was a group of people that, you know, emerged, Todd Giblin and, 16:29 SM: I did interview Todd. 16:30 RD: Yeah, yeah, I mean, there is a lot of people that, you know, contributed, Al Heber, myself, to the writing of that, you know, then that sort of caught on like wildfire on the campus, the Fourth Huron statement, and then we were looking for what are our next steps, and we felt like the next steps for us was to organize in communities, black communities, with a focus on voting rights, and also poor white communities with a focus on economic issues. And so, I became the director of something called the Economic Research and Action Project or ERAP in, let us see, I think we, we formalized that in the fall of (19)63 at a meeting in New York. Bob Dylan actually came to that meeting, sat in the back, you know, he was, and, you know, we were all thrilled with Bob Dylan you know! I mean, the immediate, he was similar, you know, he was just out of nowhere comes this voice that seems to be expressing something that we all, you know, aligned with, it was just like, it was all happening naturally. Without, I mean, there was a lot of work and organizing. But the thing that I do not think has ever been talked about, from anything I have ever read, was how self-organizing, it occurred. How the mood of young people just changed kind of overnight, in a flash and there was suddenly a base, where, you know, everywhere you went, there were people, you know, it is like two societies emerging, you know, a new nation just appearing overnight with I mean, yeah, it was organized to death and that made all the difference, ultimately, but what never really been understood or explained or talked about from, from what I have seen out there, maybe it has been, I just do not read everything, but just how this thing appeared kind of out of nowhere, you know, if you wanted to believe that human beings exist, after they die, or come in, you know, with a plan, not that you need to do that but just to be hypothetical for a minute, it was almost as if an entire generation chose to come in and do something. It was. It was just, it was weird, almost, you know. It was not, it was as, as if something had been pre-planned, you know, they all show up to be in this huge experiment of love and democracy and, you know, personal experimentation and breaking from society. Or it was it was just like a new culture, suddenly appeared overnight. And there were clearly two cultures, there was cultures of the fifties that still continued right into the (19)60s that was, you know, normal Americans, adults, you know. And then there was young people. And so, you know, you could, I did this many times I mean, I would just get a whim to go, I mean, I might be living here in Washington and decide to go to San Francisco. And so, you know, I would, you know, have a coat, I mean usually an army fatigue and put a toothbrush in my pocket, and probably nothing more, you know, and then just walk out onto the street, right in front of my house, and you did not have to be a main thoroughfare or anything. I would just stick out my thumb and the chance, I mean, within five minutes, there would be this painted van coming along, you know. 20:32 SM: I remember that. 20:33 RD: I mean, this was happening very quickly, you know. It is just like, suddenly we were everywhere. And it seemed like everywhere you turn around there was, you know, like minded people. I do not know how to describe them, free spirits, um, certainly doing some experimentation with pot. Yeah, you know, dressing you know, you know, not in a conventional way. I mean, not too careful. I mean, colorful and long hair. I mean the whole culture started to appear, you know, and appeared very quickly is what I am saying, you know. So we went into, from there, we went into community organizing and then I finally we worked with Bob Moses at a time later, Bob Harris, you know, and his project in Mississippi. And then, you know, we had a similar projects 150 students in ERAP that went into ten communities in the north. That was launched in 1965. The summer of (19)64 - (19)65 which is how it all started. 21:48 SM: How do you respond to in 1994, when Newt Gingrich came to power, he loved to make comments about the boomer generation and George Willis continued to do so with a lot of his writing and other political commentators, that the, the reason for the breakdown of American society goes back to that boomer generation: the reason why we had the divorce rate, the reason why we do not trust leaders, the reason why we have divisions between black and white, those who voted for the troops and against the troops, it was all for and against, for and against, and it created an environment that we have today where nobody talks to each other. They do not trust anybody. And Newt Gingrich and George Will, are two of the people that have written a lot on this. And actually, you know, Newt is a boomer, a lot of people think he is from Georgia, he is from Pennsylvania, born in Pennsylvania, until the age of twelve and of course, Ronald Reagan, when he became president, he made also comments: "We are back", you know, "We are back". You know, "America is back, love America", it was really a condemnation putting blame on that generation or those people that were linked to that generation, how do you respond to that? To those commentators? 23:12 RD: I think evolution, is, I can appreciate that. That point of view. I really can. But on the other side, would be on the other side. You know, taking the kind of shots at, I think maybe the better sociological study on this question with Paul Ray. With just doing a massive, one of the large probably the largest survey that has ever been done, recent, sort of recently about this society is Paul Ray's work where you know, it is, it is statistically scientific and try to actually measure the values of the whole society. And so, he finds that the smallest segment is the is the group that that Newt is talking about, that he describes this traditionalist, small town, rural, local, America first right or wrong, homespun values, you know, you, you trust the people you know, you do not trust, big government, Washington, farming roots, you know, agricultural roots, that sort of thing. And I forget the percentages, I mean, you can look those up. But then there was the rationalist which basically tended to include the modern big city, financially oriented. Rationalist meant that there really was not a guiding set of principles the way traditionalists had, they were more, doing what is practical. They were, you know, cosmopolitan and smart and, you know, they would, you know, they could create derivatives in a nanosecond, you know, or whatever was coming up, you know, that that kind of idea. They were not necessarily Democratic or Republican, but probably more democrats in general. They were not really that political, they were more practical, you know, pragmatist, that sort of idea, you know. And they were the dominant result in the study. But then there was this third group. That was actually this was the new emerging group, because the rationalists and the traditionalists had defined this country, historically, all through every generation. Now, suddenly, there was this new group that had this set of values that had reached critical mass. And they clearly had their roots in the (19)60s. They were oriented to environmentalism; they were curious about world events. They could take a position and study the point of view of another country about this country. And it was not America, right or wrong, it was like, they could see an international perspective. They tended to you know, favor participatory democracy kind of idea. And there was also within them, although they favored women, they favored blacks, they had all those kinds of things, but there was also within them a, an interest in spirituality, and not religion. But something else, you know, that never got clearly defined but it was more open ended, you know, seeking the truth, you know, answering the question, who am I, you know? Sitting quietly in nature, and just musing with yourself a little bit. Some of the things that happened after the drug explosion, when people went into nature and just tried to find themselves a little bit, and, you know, just be beautiful, and you know, love life, and that sort of thing, you know, kind of weird thing. I mean, if you are a farmer, where I grew up, you know, go and sit on a rock, and just adore of the sunset, I mean, he kind of do, but not really, you know, you work up until it is time to go to sleep, and then you get up and you work some more. And then you die, you know? It is a little more like that, where this idea of leisure time and introspection and finding out who I am, you got, a wa-wa things that I am putting into the rubric of spirituality. This was discovered by Paul Ray too, you know, that this was one of the components of this group, you know. And that this group was redefining the political landscape of this country. Now, all groups want to blame each other for you know, their misery and their problems. And that until human being changed their awareness stage and realize a little more about how the world really works, you know, that is going to be a natural thing. So people, people think that, you know, the republicans are doing it to me, I would say, though, that, that we live in the moment right now, where this basic, you could call it a fissure or separation is now intensifying, and peaking potentially, to the potential ending of the human species. Whether the human race will actually survive or kill itself off. This, the seeds of that question are planted right now in what we were seeing when you just turn on the television watching a talk show. I mean, all conflict is intensifying, all blame is intensified. I am not talking about which side to be on I am just talking about side-taking itself. Okay. So side-taking itself is intensifying, no one can hear anybody. And, you know, I mean, you can be Keith Oberlin or you can be Glenn Beck. You know, the point is that I am trying to make is that neither one can hear each other. They are both demonizing the other side, no one sees human beings anymore. They just see hatred for the opposition and blame everything that is wrong with, on the other side. We are actually moving now into a moment of the first what I would call the first stage of hysteria, the same kind of hysteria that is always been behind all wars. Okay. So war has officially ben the historic byproduct of this kind of hysteria. And what I just said, I do not see, I do not see in the right or the left, any understanding of this, okay. Everybody was so immersed in their position that the idea that you are attacking humanity itself, that it is not about which side you are on, it is about side kicking itself. Okay. It is reaching a level where this leads to war. Okay, civil war or international war? But that is where it ultimately goes. And then nobody say that everybody, you know, buttons down. 31:17 SM: Very good. Paul Ray. How do you spell that last name? 31:21 RD: R. A. Y. 31:23 SM: Has he written a book? 31:25 RD: Yeah, he wrote, he calls this third group Cultural Creative. It would be good for you to look at it because a lot of good, you know, statistical information about the very subject that we are talking about here. I think it is the best study so far really. 31:47 SM: If you look at the boomer generation, now, the seventy to seventy-five million, what would be some of the strengths of that group and what will be some of their weaknesses? As someone who not only worked with many of them, and inspired many of them, and I am sure you got frustrated with many of them, and as you look at them when you were younger, and when they were younger, and how you look at them now is there; now, first group has now reached I think sixty-two or sixty-three? Social Security, I think is the first group now right now, the sixty-two-year-olds. 32:22 RD: Uh huh. 32:24 SM: What do you see as their strengths and weaknesses, if you were to describe them as a group? 32:36 RD: I look at strengths and weaknesses, through the eyes of evolution. What furthers the growth of humanity? What allows humanity to come out of a very immature stage of awareness into a more mature stage of awareness, not, not as a judgment, but just as a trend, you know, where, and so from that point of view, humanity at an immature stage of awareness, has some of these qualities. They are very closed. Okay, their bodies are closed, their, their thoughts are closed, they are very, they have identities that protect whatever their belief system is. It is a little bit my way or highway kind of thing. And for humanity to mature, humanity needs to open and open is tied also to respect. When you disrespect, especially life, you close. You make judgments, you close, you do not really, you are not aware, you do not really see nuances or subtleties. So, from an evolutionary point of view of how the human race might survive, grow, and one day evolve into the magnificence that it actually could be, I am looking for human beings that can listen, human beings that can be rather than just be so caught up in their thoughts that they cannot really hear anything. The human being that is open, respectful of life, you know, recognizes that nature is living, not just an inanimate object, so you know that the only thing that is on this planet is human, and nothing else is really that important, really. So from that point of view, these guys have evolution. I would say that the boomer generation was on the whole, hopeful. The drug part of it is sort of good news and bad news in a way. I mean, the, what the, what the drugs did was to essentially remove inhibitors between the brain and the mind. You know, we all have inhibitors. We have inhibitors about sex, we have inhibitors about pretty much everything really, you know. So, you remove some of those inhibitors and if you are in a kind of a beautiful setting, you know, you might see your future, you might see a big picture, you know, you might get a little glimpse of how just beautiful you really are, you know. You might see yourself, as not just the human body, just things like that. So, the LSD, the peyote, though, you know, the hallucinogenic drug part of this, you know, caused many people do have an altering perspective on things, you know, that, you know, I am not defending drugs, I am just saying this was not a bad, you know, that did come out of this. Now, Newt Gingrich would be all upset that this happened, but it was expansive on the whole, there was also though a, the roots of, of humanity itself, were there too. And so, if you looked at the, say, the drug experience, you really could see, there were two levels. You know, there was the- what today would be the rave party experience, you know, just, you know party, you have no respect for anybody's space, while you are on this journey is there is no such thing as a sacred journey, you know. You know, you do not care about the clutter in the room as you do your trip. And, and out of that, inevitably really would have come bad trips, you know, you could actually scar your mind you, I mean, you see some things that you have repressed that, you know were sort of dark and upsetting, you know. Then there were those that, you know, went into nature and, you know, really cared about their environment and saw it as a sacred thing, and would set their intentions for what they hope would come out of. And you know, would actually have a pretty beautiful, expanded experience from it, you know, so within the drug experience, you had both groups going on within the boomer broad, broadly speaking. And you saw the same thing, too. I mean, there was a period in the (19)60s, where you really could just jump in a car, as a woman, travel across the country and feel really safe. I mean, you know, hitchhiking be safe, you know, you were not going to be raped, attacked, or anything you were really love, you know, happening, you know, for a little period of time, you know. You know, then you had, you know, the call the dark side, whatever were things that sort of, you know people turned on each other, you know, it was not safe anymore. And you know, and so, we kind of lost that innocence, you know. But there was a little moment of innocence in the cultural part of this equation, not so much the anti-war movement part, but in the cultural part. There was an innocence and that from an evolutionary, human evolutionary point of view, that is precious. That is very precious, you know, and so that was there. So within the strengths and the weaknesses, we brought as a group, our own strengths and weaknesses of humanity. And you know, the dark side came up, that repression came up, the hateful things came up, but also the innocence and the beauty and trust and the respect for life. And so there were there both things were present no different than the people themselves. Now, you know, when the whole thing closed, and everybody moved on, you know, then people when you know started or you know, money became important again, and having a household and, you know, family and children, you were going to pay rent now, and you know, it was not such a free carefree world anymore. The, sense is, though, that people were nevertheless affected by whatever it was, you know, there was an underlying beat river, to the whole thing. And it may be that that deep river appears again, you know, in another time, maybe this time, but not so much from the sixty-year-old but from younger people. It was, it was a life changing event. That would be really hard to find in this country's history any parallel. 40:08 SM: Good that brings me right into my next question and that is when I was on college campus there was this feeling of oneness even if you did not know a lot of the people there was a feeling. You hit it right on the point there about this innocence. Because I can remember specifically, because I did a lot of hitchhiking. Hitchhiked to Boston. Hitchhiked with my friends. I never was worried about it ever. And I remember some of the girls on the college campuses at that time were hitchhiking too then something happened in 1970-(19)71 school year, then all of a sudden, if the girls, the women are going into Binghamton you need if you have accompaniment, (19)71, (19)72, (19)73 things started change then. But the question that I want to ask is, there was this feeling that we were the most unique generation in American history. A lot of boomers felt they were very unique, because they wanted to change the world, they bring peace, that all kind of this utopia kind of feeling. And just you are thoughts on, on that. Just this feeling. And some a lot of boomers still feel it as sixty-year-olds despite all the criticisms, just your thoughts on whether they were the most unique or? 41:35 RD: Well, I would like to not turn it into self-aggrandizement for the generation you know, but you if you can kind of get out of self-importance about it because you happen to be one or something, I would say that I do not, the only generation that either remotely comes close would be the founding fathers. There you had a more of a leadership group, maybe similar to some of the people that were around SDS, and so on, that really carried an incredible legacy from kind of a controlling institutional world, whether it was a monarchy or a church institution. But all over the news, force and torture and so forth, to maintain a power base. Life was not safe, life was not really, you did not feel excited, you did not feel open, you watched your back, you know, your womb. And then coming into Europe comes so called enlightenment philosophers, John Locke, Descartes, you know, different, different writers who, you know, kind of set the stage. And the stage is all read by these founding fathers who follow what they were called. They, they envision, a- you know, a government that is really a new concept in the world, you know, it is it is very similar to SDS. It is not called participatory democracy. But it is democracy, you know, and it is, and it checks and balances over the excesses of egos of human beings. There is a lot of wisdom, you know, being expressed. And there is a country that, you know, has always been fine with Great Britain, that for a variety of reasons shifts and, gets motivated and inspired by philosophical visions. Especially the reading of Common Sense of Tom Payne. So suddenly, you have got a popular base that is buying very visionary concepts for that time you know. Well, when you look at all the other generations, Roosevelt, certainly, you know, had a had a gift for words and holding people together, not unlike Obama now, although Obama has his critics, Roosevelt did too, but it just was not the same. It is hard to see a group of people, creating a new vision, like a new humanity, a new vision of humanity with a mass base behind it that is trying to act and live and walk its talk as best it can and except for the founding time of the country, which is even there, it is a little bit of a stretch, I mean, you got certain elements to it. This, the (19)60s generation just is pretty unique. You know. From a point of view of personal growth, from the point of view of social change, from the point of view of freedom from stereotypes, moving away from racism, moving away from women oppression, you know, equality of all people, the very themes that the founding fathers are trying to say. I would say the (19)60s, grasped the vision, and had a mass constituency, attempting to do it. 45:51 SM: Hold on a second, make sure I turn this tape. Okay, its going. 46:02 RD: Ok, for a lot of people, and by a lot I mean, millions of people, it was the defining event of their life. It defined who they were as a person and it might spill in today into being a democrat rather than a republican or something but that kind of misses the point. It was more like founding father time, you know. Big, big thinking, big philosophy, inspiring humanity to its greatest potential. Freedom as an individual, not buying into authority concepts anymore. You know, society be damned! We are forming a new society! You know, we are democrat! We are a democratic society, you know, kind of thing. You had a mass base, that divided into two elements. One was sort of the political side, the other was the cultural side although they overlapped a lot. And taken together, they made for a time and a people that, you know, can have no parallels in American history. 47:20 SM: Very well put very well put. I wish I knew it Newt was here. 47:28 RD: I do not know; we might not be able to have our conversation then. 47:32 SM: I want to I am going to read this part here. Do you feel that boomers are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? Divisions between black and white divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize. Division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. How has the wall, the Vietnam Memorial wall play in healing the divisions? Not just for veterans but beyond the veterans and their families. And do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave like senator Edmund Muskie said to our students, when we met with him before he passed away, that they will be like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has forty years made the statement "time heals all wounds" truthful? Just your thoughts about, have we healed as a nation since all the divisions back in the (19)60s, early (19)70s? 48:35 RD: Well, you know, healing like everything else is in the eye of the beholder. Do people who are baby boomers taken as an aggregate, walk around with a lot of hurt and scars over the divisions of the country that Newt Gingrich might say were caused by the baby boomers? Do they really have that sense of they really, you know, the divisions were there? You know, something that weighs heavy on them. Do the Traditionalists feel so deeply like Newt was expressing that the country is forever scarred and ruined by the (19)60s Boomer world? And so they can never go to the grave feeling they never healed the country back to the Reagan vision or something like that. Well, I, I think that if I you know, I do not know you maybe probably know that better than I do, really. But I would say for my main point is that I do not think the baby boomers have a lot of hurt and things to heal in themselves relative to this question. I really do not. I think that they may be disappointed that they did not achieve their agenda. They may wish they could go further. They may look to Obama as the current modern expression of what this is all led to. But they may be frustrated by, you know, the prejudice and the separation and the traditionalist value thinking but I do not think they are going to the grave hurt. I mean, Vietnam veterans coming back maybe pain our pain, many of them. There may be elements like that there might be somebody that had a bad trip that has psyche scars that, but I think those are the minority. I mean, I do not think those is defined the whole baby boomer world, you know. I think the baby boomers are kind of healthy on the whole, you know, relative this question. If, if there had to be an evaluation between the traditionalist and the baby boomers, it might be that the traditionalist is more hurting about this than the baby boomers. But I do not know that that is so deep, either. I mean, I think that they reject what is happening in the modern world, if you want to call baby boomers the modern world. They do not buy into it. But I do not think that they are hurt by it. I think what you have is two cultures, you know that and then in a certain way, Newt is on to something, you know, what you have got is a country that has really divided into segments, you know, two different cultures. The (19)60s certainly example of it had the stick, you know, the normal culture, and then you had the weirdos the (19)60s, hippies, yippies. You, you know, and but if you were a hippie, you did not, you were not upset about it. I mean, this was your life. I mean, this was great. This is far out. And this was American flag and apple pie and America right or wrong. That was fine, too. They were two different worlds. And they were not really exchanging ideas, interfacing with each other. They did not see each other as all human beings, it was very rare to see, in this modern time, a true coming together as humanity. The maybe the last time he saw it at all was the night of the millennium. In a very unexpected way, where all of humanity kind of came off without anybody blowing anybody up, killing anybody. Everybody just yeah, big time, you know, that, you know, the Olympics is it occasionally. But still the leading light, I would say in the world relative to seeing something that is, all humanity is participating in a great competitive sport. But it all comes together at the end, and we are all human beings. So, the thing that has been lost by the process that we are in apparently, it is too early to tell the outcome, is our humanity. So, baby boomers do not see humanity in traditionalists. They do not. They do not see humanity when they look at George Bush, they do not see humanity when they see Newt Gingrich, they do not see humanity when they hear Glenn Beck. They do not. And the same is true the other way you know, there is no humanity being felt for Obama. There is no humanity being felt for Rachel Maddow. You know, probably from the whether you call it the right or traditional equivalent, I call it you know, there are two cultures in this country. And the, the biggest group, which is the rationalist, but just make money, let us be smart, savvy, and sophisticated and all mature and grown up, do not really think deeply. You know, they are not really into philosophy, they do not really grasp the big picture. You know, they are more about the short-term gain that and those games get shorter and shorter and shorter. It used to be a quarter focus. Now it is daily, hourly, you know, kind of thing. It is very self-aggrandizement in its orientation. It is not really worried about global warming. Or, you know, the world situation. Or I mean, yeah, a little bit but, but that is still the dominant group. So yeah, Paul Ray was right, you still have these three major groups, the biggest group being the rationalist of the pragmatists in the middle, are almost tuned out to the main events that are going on all around them. And the main bent is basically the right wing and the left wing. Okay, the baby boomer thing, the left and the and the traditionalist and the Republican Party being the right. 55:38 SM: How do you deal with another criticism is given to the boomers. And that is that, again, oftentimes, I have read this, ah jeeze, there is seventy-five million people only 15 percent, were ever really involved in any kind of an activism. So that is, you know, for them 85 percent of seventy-five million, that is not, you know, that is not, that means a lot of people did not care, a lot of people were not involved in the generation. 56:06 RD: The baby boomers? 56:06 SM: The baby boomers. 56:07 RD: Uh huh. 56:08 SM: But the common I have always said, you need to talk about 15 percent of seventy to seventy-five million, that is a hell of a lot of people. 56:15 RD: Yeah. 56:15 SM: And secondly, I just like your thoughts, because it seems to me that the subconscious is just as important as the conscience here. And so, we might say that 15 percent were involved in activism, but the other 85 percent had to be affective somewhat because they were part of something. Unless they were closed in a room someplace away from, it really had to affect them in some way. 56:41 RD: Yeah. 56:41 SM: And, and, and I think, so I liked your thoughts on that. That is another criticism given to the boomers. And secondly, the influence of boomers have had on their kids, and now grandkids in terms of passing on this sense of activism, or lack thereof, just your thoughts on a two part question there. 56:59 RD: I agree with what you are saying, you know, 15 percent of a society is a huge number, quite honestly, 2 percent of a society produces critical mass. Critical mass starts to develop this mysterious thing that our science as an "envi" is the Hundredth Monkey Effect. I say our science because they, you know, it was WWII you know, they went on to an island where no human beings have been and monkeys watched, you know, the Americans doing their thing and pretty soon the monkey started washing their hands and peeling the bananas like humans did. And that was, you know, observed scientifically and noted. But then islands that were nearby that had no contact at all, the monkeys started to peel their bananas and wash their hands, as well. And so, there is a transfer of some, some mechanism is occurring, or at least it theorizes by the Hundredth Monkey Effect, that a small group of people reaching a certain critical mass can profoundly affect the entirety of humanity. And, you know, I could give you my own science on that, but that is not necessarily for this purpose, you know. You would have to come tonight for that. 58:26 SM: Right. 58:27 RD: But, you know, there is a science to it, there really is and so you are on to it, you know. 58:33 SM: Right. 58:35 RD: A relatively small group of people still reaching critical mass, but changing their awareness changing how they see the world, changing their perception can have a positive or a negative effect, depending on what the change is. 58:51 SM: Is not that was the Peace Corps was about? 58:53 RD: Well, I guess so, you know, that is the that is the vision of going out and, you know, creating examples and being an example of bringing your enthusiasm into an area where basically is- a little drudgery and hard work and suddenly, you have got creativity and excitement and new and a helping hand carrying some water buckets too. It is certainly the concept. The thing is, though, that what the baby boomers seem unable to see in their expanded awareness, is that the people that are opposed to them. Let me see if I can explain this. A lot of baby boomers today have moved from politics and the (19)60s into more of personal growth. They are still political, they still vote, they still do things. But when it really comes down to what they are doing, they are a little more aligned, many of them okay, to the works of Deepak Chopra, or Wayne Dyer. They would go to a workshop that proposes the concept that you create your own reality. You are not a victim in the world, you can get back your life, you can take the reins of your life and there is, you want a positive attitude. Taking care of your health is an individual responsibility, not a governmental responsibility. You know, let us, let us stop the blame a little bit and work on ourselves. Okay, so I would say there is a progression going on in the baby boomers from the (19)60s into the you saw it at the end of the (19)60s and the early seventies. I mean, John Lennon goes to India, you know, sits with Mahatma, you know, the transcendental meditation guy. 1:01:10 SM: He just died last year. 1:01:13 RD: Yeah. You know, you had you know, a spiritual thing occurring kind of you know, gurus, you know, it was not so much the gurus, it was just looking for a new spirituality and the inner world. Well, that now we are all grown up, and we all have jobs, and we can put on suits. And we can talk a little more so that people can hear us. But if we are doing something, somewhere, as a baby boomer, if you were really to look at it, there is one group of activity that is raising money for health care, supporting the Al Gore campaign in some manner. There is that side, but there is also a huge side in personal growth, personal development, Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, I mean, Wayne Dyer, you know make some amazing statements, when you think about it, and he is on NPR, or PBS or whatever, you know, he is a national 1:02:15 SM: Right. 1:02:15 RD: Speaker, you know, saying that, basically, if you want to change the experiences of your life, you have to change yourself. So, in the (19)60s, most people that were activists never thought about Mahatma Gandhi. If you want change the world, you have to change yourself. Okay. But John Lennon when he came into the movement, that is what he thought he did. He was coming into that and what I am trying to say is that there is a deep river underneath the baby boomers that you might want to take note of, okay, which is about, if you want to change the world, you have to change yourself. That is the concept. Now, it turns out, going way into the future, which is, you know, probably, uniquely, something I would do, but I do not know others will really want to do that. I would say that the greatest discovery in the history of the world, which is yet to be made, but it is still it right in front of us. It is not way off either. It is not, it could come from the cultural creatives, but maybe more likely, it is going to come from the field of particle physics, especially this new particle collider outside of Geneva. Okay, so what it is, is that here is the commonsense opinion of everybody on Earth, whether you are a cultural creative, a baby boomer, or a traditionalist okay? Bad things happen for no reason at all. Okay? Things outside myself are real. 1:03:51 SM: Right? 1:03:52 RD: The world outside myself is solid, objective, and independent of myself. This is the everybody okay? I do not care who you are. I mean, everybody operates as if that was the truth or the, the physics let us call it the physics of this world. Well, it turns out that that is not the physics of this world at all, is completely misinformed. The only comparison historically that you could find, I think, is in the sixteenth century. I mean, you got the earth is stable in space, and the sun orbits the Earth. And what I mean, just look out the window, those clouds are slow moving, the idea that the earth is hurtling through space at 67,000 miles an hour around the Sun is absurd. And you know, and then one man Nicholas Copernicus makes the argument that sorry, but everybody on earth is completely misinformed. Well, it is very similar today to the greatest discovery ever is that this world and this can come from a true understanding of the atom, The atom is operating on a mirror principle. It is simply reflecting back to you your own residual self-image. No one is doing anything to you. No one has ever done anything to you. The origin of everything you are experiencing is coming from 60,000 thoughts across your brain every twenty-four hours. That is the origin of everything. Now the baby boomers do not know that. And the traditionalists do not do that, and no human being on earth really understands that. But the baby boomers, especially this underlying river, about personal growth, you know, that sort of thing, are in a direction that is very similar to the field of particle physics. So, who is going to win the Nobel Prize for making the world's greatest discovery could be particle physics, understanding the mystery of the atom, or could be cultural creatives understanding the mystery of their self? Okay, either both basically produce the same discovery that it is all coming from you. Now, this is a devastating concept to every political system on Earth. That is that absolutely is rooted in the blame game. And, and it now makes mincemeat of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann, there is no, I mean what can you say. 1:06:21 SM: Did you go on TV and talk about this? 1:06:23 RD: No. 1:06:23 SM: Have you been invited? 1:06:25 RD: I do not know, I do not really seek out an invitation to this thing that I am doing right here today is a completely brand-new thing for me, you know, I mean, I am writing a book, is what I am doing, you know, and the book will, is profound for me just completely profound, and many, many subjects are addressed. And that is really my focus right now that would be my legacy. I would like to look, look away in the future and bring it right back to the present. But I do that, I mean, if you were to come tomorrow at the workshop, now, this is not an encouragement to come. 1:07:10 SM: Cannot go I have two winter meetings. 1:07:12 RD: What you will see is, not many people will come, you know, a few people will show up, but it will be the most impactful life changing event that they have ever had. I mean, they will feel like, their whole life has been waiting for this moment, that pretty much you know, if I do anything that is, and people can hang in there, you know, that is usually what it does. 1:07:35 SM: Right. 1:07:35 RD: It is quite a big deal, you know. But anyway, I see the baby boomers as being the seeds for a change of awareness. Ultimately, you know, starting with the (19)60s, going into nature, returning to the world, wanting to make the world a better place, environment, that sort of thing, keeping the spiritual side. And then the work to the extent that, you know, for a lot of people, Wayne Dyer, you know, he paused. It is a- it is not, I am just using them as archetypes. Not that they are the all that important. But inner work. You know, meditation is not weird or funny to a lot of these baby boomers, they may not talk about it. And they definitely think they are the only one who thinks this way. They do not recognize the collective, you know. I mean, they still think they are all by themselves. And it just even though there is 30 percent of the country is now makes up this group. They still think they are- no one thinks like me. But they are, they are the best possibility. Because what I understand is what is about to happen on earth. And what is about to happen on earth is you will never understand it unless you can understand evolution. So evolution is where an awareness change changes, okay? That- It is unheard of. We have no knowledge of it as a human race, okay? Because it is never here is the beginning of human, human there was there was something before human and then it was human. And then humans Marshall long. And now, this is the generation where human’s kind of come to a place where they are either going to evolve or they are not. 1:09:30 SM: Yeah, there is no. 1:09:32 RD: Right or wrong about it. There is just evolution is coming through with you or without you basically, yeah, so the, the baby boomers are, you know, may not make this jump. They may not, you know, because they fund the fundamental jump is partly even contemplated, or even considered by anybody, except those that are doing this inner work. They do not live it, but they understand it. They have been exposed to it; you know. So the awareness is that I mean, here would be the short version. The only power tool that you have as a human being is perception. So, the whole world, reflects your own perception. So how you see others is how you see yourself. How you see yourself is how you experience the world. This is not a philosophy, this is a physics, this is how it works. Okay? Now, it these details, a lot of information will defend that position, but I am able to defend it in detail to a science. Completely, you know, to the point where people will either think I am a great theoretician or run out of the room. But perception, it is all coming from ourselves from inside the world is not objective, real or solid. The world is a psychological construct whose origin is yourself. And the case is made by understanding the atom. 1:11:05 SM: That is going to be in that is going to be in your book. 1:11:07 RD: Yeah. 1:11:07 SM: When is the book supposed to be out? Are you going to go on college campuses? Because I think you need to. 1:11:13 RD: I would like to, you know, if I had good speaker’s bureau, and somebody who can you know, gets what I am a little bit. I think going back on campuses, which would be cool. You know, I am dabbling with that I have been, I kind of dropped out for fifteen years, I have not really talked to anybody you know. 1:11:28 SM: I think it would be really good on college campuses, there is just this whole- 1:11:34 RD: My answer to that, you know, the choice of birth, who chooses the parent? Does the child choose the parents or whose parents choose the child? The answer is the child chooses the parent every time to choose is the death? The Mack truck that runs out of control comes across the divide and is heading right your way. And the truck drivers little drunk to boot, you know? Is that the accident that was completely? Or are you yourself creating this whole experience? Meaning the truck coming right at you okay, or her? Okay? Well, it is, it is very challenging at this stage of awareness to even hear it, you know, because the fact is, is that she created her own timing her own death, her own way of going out. It was probably created before she was born. By herself. 1:12:29 SM: The drunk driver that killed her. 1:12:30 RD: I am sure there was, but I know. So, what I am saying is that the entire world of victim is self-inflicted. No one is doing anything to you. Therefore, everything I did in the (19)60s was a misunderstanding. As soon as you blame anyone for anything in your life, you turn your power over. And this is a huge, this is huge and you know. 1:13:03 SM: This is the change that Tom was asking you about? Right. Tom was? 1:13:07 RD: Yeah. I mean, Tom does not know about this but yeah, I mean, it was. So, you know, I have been on my own journey to kind of come around slowly to a point of view. And I have been the beneficiary of a lot of understanding not unlike Einstein got his information in waking dreams. You know, Einstein did not figure out the speed of light all by himself without any scientific instrumentation any more than Mozart wrote a perfect Sonata at age six. first draft and no changes, you know. He had help, you know. So I have help too you know. And that is fine. You know, I am not trying to be anything with it. You know, I have messenger. So to speak. 1:13:50 SM: I have a couple more questions that I just had some names here. Would you like to have some coffee now? 1:13:56 RD: I do not know. I am pretty good, actually. 1:13:59 SM: Sure, you do not want coffee? 1:14:01 RD: What time are we getting to here, ten to four. I do need a little bit of time to you know, get oriented. 1:14:07 SM: We have got about another twenty minutes. 1:14:09 RD: Okay, that sounds good. Yeah. 1:14:10 SM: I want to ask you, when did the (19)60s end, in your opinion when did the (19)60s end and what was the watershed moment that made it end? 1:14:19 RD: Well, for me, it is more how I would answer it, then some sociological understanding. You know, the big blowout event was the student strike in the spring of 1970 over Cambodia and Kent State right. Then comes Time magazine with the cover story "The Cooling of America" and basically for some people they would say that was the end right there. I mean, you could not get any you could not get SDS. SDS was now down to the hardcore was not like a big mass thing anymore. Nobody came. I wanted to go to Washington to do civil disobedience at that time. And I was the coordinator of the antiwar coalition at that time. And the coalition rejected my proposal, because they just did not see how it was possible and that it would fail. And so I actually went out on my own. Now, when I went on to a campus, everybody was still right there, everyone wanted to know what was happening, and personality showing up brought I mean, you know, the smallest group I had was 10,000 people anywhere I went, you know. Nobody could get twenty-five people in a room, but they would all come and hear me. And so, I realized, so when the- we had the opening day of the demonstration, I have 350,000 people, and one week later getting ready to be arrested 100,000 people. So then at that point when that was over, I thought, okay, this, it is over. You know, I mean, whatever that magic was, it is over. But then I was watching television and on comes John Lennon and Yoko Ono, okay, sitting in a bed in Canada, somewhere and they are clearly I mean, it is a little strange press conference, but I realized they are coming into the movement. And so pretty soon I am you know, I am in John Lennon's apartment, and we are planning to bring a million people to the republican convention. And our first we are going to tour the country. John's going to play. I am going to speak we will all have speakers and entertain, you know, we will have guests, entertainers and now we have gone to Ann Arbor first 25,000 seat venue, the show sells out in forty-five minutes. Stevie Wonder is the unannounced guest entertainer, my guest speakers of the Chicago Seven, you know, and we are High Five, you know this. So suddenly, John Lennon basically, individually breathes life right back into the whole thing again. And then Nixon comes down on Lennon and basically pulls the plug and starts deportation proceedings, and John has pull out. And so, I for me, that is where I was. Now I kept doing things I went to, the republicans changed their convention site to Miami, I went there. But you know, we had like, 10,000 people, we did not have a million people. I did a forty-two-day water fast to try to give a little, you know, oomph to the whole thing, you know, then, when Nixon was inaugurated, we did put 100,000 people on the ellipse or whatever, that the White House area. And then I went to Paris to be a part of the peace talks, or the signing of the Peace Accord. And I would say, I mean, to me when John Lennon left, that was it. We had 100,000 people at Nixon's inauguration. That was a little last fling, you know, and after that for me personally, it was over. I mean, there were subtle stuff going on things but not, you know, whatever it was, it was done. 1:18:31 SM: Just you are, this does not have to be an in-depth response. But all of those movements that happen that the antiwar movement, obviously in the civil rights movement, the women's movement, Chicano gay, and lesbian, environmental movement, they all came about around that time, how important were boomers and all those movements? 1:18:48 RD: Totally important. 1:18:49 SM: Because some people say, criticized the boomers as not being that important in the civil rights movement, because basically, it was already done, by the time they were eighteen years old. 1:18:59 RD: Yeah. Okay. Maybe? Well, it is true, maybe from a definitional point of view, see, I just see it all as one continuous thing. And I am not so fixated on these ages, the fact that people were in high school, when, you know, I was doing, you know, Cambodia stuff. You know, I just saw that whole spectrum as the same thing. You know, the, the civil rights movement had gone on for a long time. But it was the popular base, it was the country and that is now what do we want to call these? I mean, do you want to call the (19)60s generation the boomers? I mean, to me, 1960 up to 1973 is the period that we are talking about here. And for me, it was all one thing you know, now you are trying to do a book on the boomers and maybe the boomers are a more specialized element or component within that spectrum. And that is for you to sort out, you know, but for me, the sense that we are together, the sense that we are changing, the sense that we are experimenting, that we were open, we were, were exploring big picture thinking much like the founding fathers, were, we were about changing ourselves to change the world, we were going to change the world, we are going to make the world a better place. That was a thirteen-year window. That for me was one thing, the group that came in, you know, and did all this did not seem to quite fit the boomer age requirements or something, you know. It was 1960 college students, 1973, which included boomers, adults, you know, all kinds of people all through society, they've been brought along by that whole momentum, that entire constituency, is what turned on and then turned off. 1:21:06 SM: What do you think? You told me your story about with your dad and the farm and so forth in the 1960s but what happened in the 1950s, to these children during their elementary school years and beginning of junior high? They were given everything by their parents. Well, you know, of course, you are talking about, you know, you can talk about economics, that you talked about poor whites, and Appalachia talk about African Americans, the United States, their story, obviously, is quite different. But a lot of white students at that particular time were given a lot by their parents, because they've been through the Depression. Why did these young people who basically had everything rebel against like, I always think of that IBM image of five people of walking out of a house with a hat and going to work and everything. The IBM image. 1:22:00 RD: Yeah, well. 1:22:02 SM: They went to the university, and they, the multiversity. 1:22:06 RD: Well in, in the way that what you have been calling the baby boomers created a cushion and popular climate for black people, women and all these political movements to get a get a footing and get things going. The parents of the students, that it created a certain economic security, middle class life, that sort of thing. So that money, was not worried about, you know, money was not something, you grow up, just, you know, you know, you start farming when you are eight years old, and you know, it is day and night day and night. That, that sense of survival was removed. Thank you, Mom and Dad. And, and so it became possible to have a mindset in the, as a student, and particularly in the (19)60s, where you did not worry about it, you know. And you criticized the parents for being you, whatever, you know, put a spin on it. But the fact is, it created a base for. It is very similar to any society that begins to create a little bit of leisure, a little bit of relax. Time for a vacation, you know, an opportunity to go on a sabbatical and a retreat, you know. I think it can go degrade but also it goes creative, into philosophy and reflection and big picture thinking and, you know, positive human things. So, I, I do not see it as a negative at all, I see it as a steppingstone of evolution, I see humanity through the eyes of evolution. And I see that this whole (19)60s period as a precursor to something else that is coming. Call it change of awareness. 1:24:10 SM: One or two more questions that I just had and just quick responses, and we will finish here. This is the issue of trust, because you got into the issue of healing. One of the things I found in the, from the time I first interviewed Eugene McCarthy, just about every interview for Vietnam vets and activists like Tom Hayden is this issue of trust is something or lack thereof, many of the boomers had. Trust of leaders 1:24:35 RD: Of leaders yeah. 1:24:36 SM: And I say this because it is not just Lyndon Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin. It is Richard Nixon and Watergate. It is as we bring you read and even the time we have learned about John Kennedy and what happened the Diem. We have learned we saw on national television, U2 the lie that Eisenhower. I mean, he lied to the American public on TV in 1959. And I know he went to his grave regretting it. But this ongoing there is no trust in religious leaders, no trust in university presidents, I know in our campus any administrator, no trusted anybody a position of responsibility no matter what they were, the question I am asking you basically is, is this a characteristic that has gotten within this group? And has this been passed on to their kids and their grandkids now? So that we have now three generations with lack of trust. And I can remember a psychology professor and my 101 class in college saying in the very beginning doctor Price at Binghamton he said, if you do not trust in your life, somebody, then you are going to have a pretty miserable life. You have got to be able to trust somebody. Just your thought on this trust businesses, even part of what we have been talking about here today. 1:25:55 RD: I do not think so, you know, I went to Vietnam, I saw Hanoi being bombed every day, I came back and made statements to the press about what I saw, the Pentagon came out and said, I had been brainwashed. And I was in shock, because I realized that this is a government agency, communicating to the public something that I absolutely know, from my own direct experiences is, is a lie. It is not, you know, there is a manipulation going on a public opinion, that I found at that stage of my life to be, you know, shocking, and startling, you know, because I did not think that really existed that way, you know. And so, there were many things like that that occurred in the (19)60s that sort of deepened that. I would say, though, that distrust of big government is also, you know, what you are seeing a lot with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Tea Parties. You know, it is, it is all over the place. The real question is, does a president let us say, if you do not trust the president or the government, that you elected, okay, is, what is the real relationship here? Is the is the trust inside yourself? That basically all that is really happening is you do not really trust yourself therefore, the, the government that represents you, you do not trust that either. It is a mirror principle; it is mirroring back to your own lack of trust. Now, lack of trust, from that perspective, seems to define every single generation of this country. It is hard to find a single generation that had trust, I mean, maybe periods somewhat better, but or, for that matter, the entire human condition of the whole of humanity has been. Here is the belief: bad things happen for no reason at all. If one thing does not get me something else will. And victim is the nature of this world. Bad things happen for no reason at all. And is this really the nature of our world? Well, the answer is, of course, it is the nature of this world, as long as this is our own residual self-image. Because the world reflects back to us whatever we however, we see ourselves as a physics principle. So will humanity at this stage of evolution run off the cliff and kill herself off? Maybe, you know, maybe, and will those contributing to it be the traditionalists are the baby boomer? Both. It is not about which side you are on. It is about side taking itself. It is about the attack of whatever you condemn is what you are going to experience. Let us put it that way. Whatever you fear is what you are going to attract. Let us put it that way. So this does not, this understanding does not presently exists in human awareness. You know, there has been little philosophy, seeds drop from time to time, but I am saying that this is the way it works. Okay. And that this will be discovered. And will the baby boomers be able to get it. Those that are basically doing this reflective work this inner work as personal growth would be the place that I would put my best hope right now, for a group of people being able to heroes. Oh, I will lay this out tonight. And this group will, you know, they will have a few people might have a problem because they came to hear about the (19)60s. But for the most part, even if it is a small group, everybody will be there. What they will appreciate is that I am so thorough, and I have such a commanding understanding of it. And I am so formidable in the details that it is a breath of fresh air. But the big thing is I create my own reality. If you want to change the world, you have to change yourself these themes, okay, are already there. They are very small. They are an underlying river of the group that we are talking about here. And this is really where humanity is going. Okay, one day, there will be no judgement at all of anybody. Humanity is currently in a stage of awareness that I would call the journey of good and evil. I am right, and you are wrong. ok? As opposed to whatever I am experiencing, I am creating myself, I do not like it, I change myself. That is a completely different way of thinking. A million years in the future, everybody will understand what I am talking about. 1:26:17 SM: I think a lot of people fear what is upcoming. 1:31:13 RD: Yeah, and the fear brings it off. 1:31:15 SM: I think, for example, last night on the news, because of the situation in Iran, and nuclear, ok? They are talking about another cold war now. I am saying another fifty years of Cold War [inaudible] Iran out because [inaudible] of course if they do, then who knows what could happen? So, we are really heading into a really. 1:31:38 RD: Absolutely. We are going into hysteria. That leads to war, that is the current direction. What I am trying to say to you, which if you will, really 1:31:52 SM: Testing 123 testing. 1:32:03 RD: This is a very, very- 1:32:05 SM: I have some questions for you to kind of respond, just insert responses and just your feelings. What does the wall mean to you? What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you? And when you went to the Wall for the first time, what kind of effect would that have on you? 1:32:22 RD: Well, you know, I did not quite get caught up in the emotions, probably of the family that lost their son, or, you know, that that sort of thing. I have just as much regard for the, the, you know, the Vietnamese that lost their lives by maybe 1000 to one over with the Americans, I do not know what the ratio is, but you know, it was a lot, you know, so, you know. It was a tragedy, you know, there was no doubt about it. And to remember the fallen and those that died and sacrificed their lives, you know, seems to be, you know, appropriate. Quite honestly, in my picture, though, it is, I would, I would feel the same way about the wall that I would feel about all the monuments of World War II all the monuments in World War I, all the monuments of everybody that died in inquisitions in the Middle Ages, and all the way back. I mean, we are a warring species. I also know that people choose their own time of death. Okay, and so therefore, I do not get all guilt ridden and blame oriented over any death. Okay. In the history of the universe, no one has died so far. Which is quite a statement, you know, and so, so I do not really quiet, I do not mean to see callous, because I am not, you know, I would like to end the dead zone entirely. I think. Death is a human creation. You know, death is the issue, that humans have created that as a collective. And so what we need to do is to get out of our anti- life strategies in thinking and into a pro-life strategy. And I do not mean the life thing of the portion move right at all, you know, I mean, to the abortion people, I would say that all abortions are chosen by the child, not the mother. I mean, that would be blasphemy, you know, and there is reasons for it, you know, so the, the morality of the thing is just confused. People do not even understand the fundamentals of death and what happens, no one knows what happens when you die. Or the idea that the soldier chooses his own time of death, goes to Vietnam to do it is just wow, you know. 1:34:40 SM: I remember, Elisabeth Kubler Ross is the one that was very popular talking about death. 1:34:45 RD: Yeah. 1:34:46 SM: Then she finally died. 1:34:47 RD: Right. Yeah. That seems to happen everywhere. 1:34:50 SM: Yep. 1:34:50 RD: So, I have a little different thing with it, I guess. 1:34:52 SM: I guess. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? 1:34:56 RD: Well, I mean, it was a trigger point, and it was shocking, you know, American citizens being shot by National Guard troops was amazing and Jackson State was another trigger point. So, I do not know, I do not really have much of a story about it. I mean, I was a part of the Chicago seven, we call for a nationwide student strike in response at Kent State and 90 percent of the universities in this country walked out of school. So I could say I was, I was involved. I remember it. But right now, what I care about is how can humanity survive? You know, so going down memory lane, okay, over a bunch of misunderstandings in the first place, you know, does not really draw me in, you know, I mean, it is, it is all fine. But 1:35:49 SM: What does Watergate mean to you? 1:35:51 RD: [laughs] Well, it is back to that trust issue, I suppose or back to, you know, my coming back from Vietnam being horrified that, you know, the Pentagon would actually issue misstatements about, you know, things that I knew better. It is, it is very easy to keep the blame on Nixon. Okay, and basically, that Nixon was a control freak, who abused his power as a president, and, you know, ruined the legitimacy of the office, by senseless act of burglary, you know, against the opposition party, is one of the great stains on the democratic tradition. I mean, everybody would probably say something along those lines, you know. I would say that Nixon was a reflection of the American people. The things that Nixon was doing, was basically being represented by the aggregate of thoughts inside the country. If you wanted to understand the petty theft, the burglary, the disrespect for other people's personal property, the horrors that you want to push on the Nixon, then just look at yourself, because the American people are the origin of Watergate. Nixon is merely a mirror. Nixon is merely a reason I am not, you know, saying he did not do it. I am not saying anything like that. I am just saying, what is the origin of the things that we get so upset about? Watergate - the origin is ourselves. So, and now, if we could ever understand that, that is a future world. Okay, that is what is going to transform this planet. And it is pretty hard to imagine, but one day, it will happen. Well, I 1:37:53 SM: Have right here because I know your name the year 1968. Yeah, just that whole year, and of course, the Democratic Convention and then, of course, Chicago eight and Chicago seven, could you reflect on what happened in Chicago that year and then the trial? How do you look at it now? 1:38:15 RD: Like a past life! I would say that, you know, I like the fact that when I go speak, I would get a large turnout, because people sort of thought that I was important to hear or something like that. And I had that pretty much from the get-go in the (19)60s. But then when Chicago started, everything was transformed. I mean, I was on I was doing a press conference, it was carried by all three networks, pretty much every single day from mid-July, through the convention. And then after that, I was indicted. And after that, I was, I was in a presidential size press conference for six months. And so that changed my relationship to the public. You know, when I came to Washington, DC, like we are right now, I would, you know, I could not really sit here like this. I mean, people would come up, you know, like, like a celebrity, like a Hollywood type of thing, you know, what my autograph or have something mean to say! Or, you know, everybody, I was a recognizable figure and that for me personally, that was more how things changed, okay for the trial and Chicago you know. And then May Day too. After that things sort of wore down a little bit and I like that, you know, looking back now it is interesting. You know, it is it is a part of my life, I grew from it and so forth. But I so love where I am now. And, and everything for me has been a steppingstone to right now. And so I feel I finally have maybe something to actually contribute for the first time in my whole life right now. So it is not so much. I look back and you know, get all teary eyed or, you know or nostalgia about how the great days in the past. 1:40:08 SM: I have always wondered how a person like you and Tom Hayden and a lot of the other, a lot of my friends were arrested too in smaller protests but, feelings of being arrested, going to jail, and you ever thought, even when you were young, this is going to have a negative effect on me when I am fifty? 1:40:30 RD: Yeah 1:40:30 SM: Which is what a lot of people are writing about today that the reason why young people are not like, people, the (19)60s or the boomers is that they want, they do not want anything on their record, and it will be on the record, and they will never be hired. 1:40:44 RD: Yeah, right. I can, I can understand how the nature of social consciousness sets in and so forth. It was just a different time. And especially for someone like myself, I mean, a lot of people went to jail, and you know, if some got beaten up and tortured, you know, for their protest against discrimination or racism. It was, was not that way with me. But when I went to jail after the trial, we went to jail for two weeks, basically, until we raised money for appeal got out on bond. I mean, the, that night, there were 30,000 people outside the jail. When I went in, it would be like being Al Capone. Okay. I mean, in a positive way, to me, the inmates saw me as a hero, you know, for standing up to the judge. It was not like it was some oppressive, terrible. I mean, no, I was like, they were the whole prison was a fan club. You know, it was the largest riot in American history. The night I went to jail. I mean, more people rioted okay. I mean, burned down banks. And you know, I am not saying that is a greatest thing. I am just saying, we produced the largest riot in American history. But when we look at it, you felt before and whenever I have gone to jail, it was more, theatrics and support, you know, it was not like, the way everybody else goes to jail. You know, it was not so I cannot really have I do not have any complaints about the times I have gone to jail. You know, it was all kind of cool. Really. 1:42:22 SM: Just real quick thoughts here. Your thoughts on hippies and yippies. Just a, because you knew Abbie, and you knew Jerry, just your thought on the whole yippie group. 1:42:34 RD: Well, there was a cultural phenomena going on, you know, dress, love, trust, you know, probably some pot in there too. You know, it was a cultural thing, young people. And you know, Abby and Jerry were a little bit more like me. They were political but their base was more the culture. And so, what they were trying to do is to politicize the culture a little bit, get them a little more into the issues, but at the same time, give voice and expression to the culture. And so, you know, I am sure in a drug induced night, you know, they came up with youth international party. And then they called it 'yippie' you know. 1:43:27 SM: Jerry Rubin in his book, "Do it." Remember that? 1:43:29 RD: Yeah. Yeah. 1:43:30 SM: He said that. They were they did not know what the name their group, and then somebody was yelling in the background, "yippie" and he was like, there is, the- we will name it the yippies. You know it is interesting. this is just an anecdote. If you knew Abbie. A lot of people make fun of him. And that really upsets me because I remember when he passed away, he committed suicide and it was over in Bucks County now apart from Philadelphia. And I remember they did a bigger article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about him. And he had left the note when he killed himself, and he supposedly had only $2,000 in the bank. And in the note that he left was "no one is listening to me anymore." How sad. Because when you, because I remember when you came on the Phil Donahue show, after he came out of hiding and changed his nose or whatever. He had been working on the Hudson River, saving the Hudson River for years, unbeknownst to the American public. And a lot of people said that worthless son-of-a-gun. You know, he just a, but in reality was a person of substance. I felt- 1:44:35 RD: Yeah. 1:44:36 SM: And it was sad that he killed himself. 1:44:38 RD: Well, I do not know. Sad, I mean, maybe. We create our own experiences out of, out of. So, you know, basically, his ego got inflated in the (19)60s and then when it went down to being a normal person again, his ego could not handle it. So let us check out. I do not have a judgment about it. I do not call it sad, but I do not call it egotistical either. I you know, it just the way he chose to unfold himself. What I would say about Abby that I truly appreciated it was that Abbie taught me the great value of humor. And I saw I mean, we were, he came out and supported me during the May Day demonstrations when no one else did in the coalition. And as a result of his support, it was the two of us that got indicted for that. And we got off, they dropped the charges, but we are facing twenty years in jail. And on the day of the big arrest, you know, I mean, it is the biggest arrest in American history. We were arrested and we were being taken into the Justice Department, by the FBI, a large number of the maybe twenty men, okay, and Abbie was behind me, and I was in front, and we were marching down this empty corridor. And I would say, it was a fearful environment where the, the level of seriousness and hatred for us, okay, although professional, okay, was just, you know, I mean, it was not time to crack jokes, okay. It was, it was more like being in a concentration camp. I mean, it was a pretty serious moment, we are facing twenty years, we have no idea what is going to be dropped or anything like that. It was a very serious moment, I thought. And Abby just started making jokes with the guys that were with him. And, and he was just, it was breathtaking. I mean, in no time at all, he had the entire group of FBI agents, just friendly, laughing. Just, I mean, he just disarmed the whole mood and tenor of the whole thing, you know. And I saw him do that quite a few occasions. And I, I found that part of him to be totally inspiring. I mean, I tried to do better in that department myself, but I could not I could never compete with him. He was the best. He was, he was great. He was funny. He was a funny guy. And he was full of love and life and joy. 1:47:19 SM: "Steal this book" 1:47:20 RD: Yeah, Steal this Book. 1:47:21 SM: A lot of people stole it! 1:47:22 RD: Yeah, I am sure they did! 1:47:25 SM: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the Young Americans for Freedom, which were conservative, just your thoughts on those groups. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War kind of took over for SDS because SDS was waning, and they kind of took over the antiwar movement in those early seventies. 1:47:43 RD: I do not know, SDS was more to me, taken over by The Weathermen. 1:47:47 SM: Oh, yeah well, they kind of, violence. 1:47:50 RD: The vets, you know, the vets um, you know, everything kind of sort of went downhill a little bit as the ending occurred, you know. The, I mean, you had the John Kerry event, at the May Day demonstration with veterans to turning in their medals. You know, it was a pretty, you know, in a way, their way, a high minded thing, and bitterness and anger and that sort of thing, you know, as the dominant theme that came a little later, you know. And the Young Americans for Freedom was, you know, the current, I mean, sort of, you know, it was just a right wing group that, you know, were trying to hold on to traditional values. And, you know, use attack, and defend mode, it was a local thing, I do not really have a comment about that just side taking again you know. 1:48:44 SM: I am going to throw names, and then real quick responses and then, that is it. I am going start with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubins. 1:48:52 RD: Well, I told you about Abby, I think Abbie was pretty cool. And, you know, and I know, he checked out and they went that way. You know, I guess, you know, would have been nice if I could have talked to him before that. But I did not so you know, it is what it is. I do not have any judgment about it. You know, Jerry, same thing he checked out, you know. I mean, Jerry went into trying to make some money, you know, and, you know, network marketing. He was kind of cool, but he fought a lot. Very analytical thinking, pretty intense, you know, this is broke, something was wrong. 1:49:26 SM: He was killed jaywalking. 1:49:28 RD: But he just, you know, he was not paying attention to the world that he was in and he- But, you know, it did not mean that he was wrong. It did not mean that he did not choose to die in that way. That is how he chose to leave. So that is fine. 1:49:43 SM: How about Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda? RD: Well, I went on to a military base, I think it was in North Carolina, we had a coffee shop that I had helped organize to support GI's called SOS, Support our Soldiers. Jane came down and you know, came to the coffee house. She was with Tom at this point. I mean, and Jane said, well, let us go on to the base. And so, we went on to the base, and you know, and in a second, we were surrounded by 20,000 troops. And it was, it gave me an appreciation but I thought it took a lot of courage. You know, I mean, I, I had a lot of courage too but I never expected it from anybody else. Jane Fonda I mean you could have lost your life right there. You know, he was very intense. And so I like Jane, and I thought she stood her ground. And she was, you know, spoke what she believed and, you know, she has moved on like everybody else now. I tip my hat to her for her courage and courage is what stands out for me about Jane Fonda. Tom is a friend, you know, Tom, and I were partners all the way. You know, I, I know I disappointed him when I kind of took a turn on the road went inward. And that even today, and it is not really, you know, understood, you know what happened. And I do not understand it really about it. But I know that I disappointed him. But he was mature. And he has kind of moved on. So, when we see each other now from time to time, you know, he is beautiful, you know, I put on an event at the summit. And, you know, at 1992 I guess it was in Brazil and you know, Tom flew down to be a part of my event. It was really cool. SM: He has gotten a brand-new book out to you know? "(19)60s Activism" yeah. 1:51:53 RD: So that is what it is called? 1:51:54 SM: He did the book "Reunion" which was very popular in paperback, then he wrote a book on Ireland because he loves the Irish. 1:52:01 RD: Yeah, he does. 1:52:02 SM: Then he has gotten involved with the gangs, talking about the guns in LA. 1:52:05 RD: Is that what his current book is on? 1:52:07 SM: No, no, no, this has nothing to do with the gangs, it is about the whole (19)60s movement, the (19)60s period. Putting it all in a capsule. 1:52:14 RD: He is a good writer, and a great speaker, and I you know, he is a smart guy. 1:52:19 SM: How about Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. 1:52:24 RD: I like Gene McCarthy. I really did. You know, I was so surprised by what happened you know? I mean, I thought we would bring a half million people to Chicago. But you know, I also thought Linda Johnson was going to be the nominee. 1:52:37 SM: Oh, I know! 1:52:38 RD: Ben Johnson withdraws and then Gene McCarthy comes in second. And I mean, or wins I forget, when did it come in second, or win? 1:52:45 SM: Well, he came in second. 1:52:46 RD: Second, yeah so anyway, you know, it was just like, wow, you know, suddenly, you know, everything was moving back into power to electoral politics, you know, which was not where I was at, at the time. But, you know, I, you know, and then just recently we, in 1996, the Democrats went back to Chicago, and I was a hermit, you know, I was living in the Grand Canyon, and I had not talked to anybody, you know, and I did not talk to an adult for four years. And so, I was really inward, you could say, but I felt to go, and I did and, and, you know, immediately I am on Larry King Live, and there is Gene McCarthy, you know? And, you know, I thought he was a good man. Really. I liked him. 1:53:37 SM: How about McGovern? 1:53:38 RD: Yeah, well, I, you know, I liked him, too. I mean, he had the courage to make the run and the fact that, you know, it was an overwhelming, you know, point of view, different point of view by the country. What it takes to come to that level, I do not care who you are, I mean, you may be number two, but the when the party's nomination and the make a run for president is exhausting. It is exhausting. It takes everything to hold yourself together and articulate yourself over and over again, and, and make it credible. You know, I tip my hat to anybody who, you know, he attempts that and pulls that off. And so, you know, and then he and he stood for, you know, I thought good things. And so, yeah, I have nothing but fond memories for McGovern. 1:54:29 SM: The Kennedys. Certainly, Bobby and John and Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. Could you get an interesting contrast between those four, just thoughts on those four gentlemen? 1:54:41 RD: Well, I thought Kennedy captured the spirit of the, of the of this group that I am talking about, you know? We ourselves may have not seen it that way. You know that. But he did. You know, he was the hope, he was the new generation. He was, you know, America trying to reach for its highest best philosophical side. And, you know, in that way, I think he is similar to Obama, you know, I do I thought for that time and everything. So you know, and he, I really respect the fact that he did so well, in the job that he had while going through so much physical pain. Pain is very tough to handle in any job. And as the President Roosevelt too, I mean, that is, that takes you know, as my admiration really does. Part of the king was a friend, I really thought highly of him. He also had the Mahatma Gandhi view, let us change yourself to change the world. You know, I met him first in Chicago, he had come to do an open housing march in Cicero. And he was very impressed that I was able to bring several thousand poor white people to that marsh. He went out of his way to; he just did not believe it was possible. But it was, you know! He kept hearing that we were coming and it was like, no way. And then when we showed up, and the people were cool, too. I mean, they were really there. Completely. They were not, you know. 1:56:26 SM: His Vietnam speech, too, was just incredible. 1:56:28 RD: Oh, it was incredible yeah, totally incredible. He was just one of those chosen guys. You know, mean, he really was. I never knew Malcolm X truthfully. So I mean, I followed his course and I did become good friends with Bobby Seale and sort of in a certain way, the Black Panther Party, and Malcolm X had a similar track. They were kind of on I guess. 1:56:55 SM: Your thoughts on the black power challenge of people like Dr. King and Byard Rustin and James Armour, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins. There was a challenge to that group. Black Power all of a sudden, your time is past. Stokely Carmichael. There is a historic picture. We have only got five more minutes I know you are getting tired. But you probably remember that picture Stokely standing next to Martin and Martin was like this. Martin was pretty upset, because his time was passed. 1:57:25 RD: It is tough, you know, when you are when you are basically trying to build a nonviolent movement, and you know, within your own ranks there emerges, pick up guns, and, you know, let us, let us fight back and that sort of thing. You know, it is threatening your fundamental identity. And you try to put a good face on it, because, you know, they are important. They are young people; they are important to the movement. I mean, we had the same thing ourselves when I was trying to hold together a nonviolent coalition and in comes The Weatherman. And you know, and it was similar, you know, it was and these were friends and people I knew, and yet, there was a big disagreement on strategy and tactics. So you know, those are challenging moments and they are for anybody. 1:58:12 SM: I remember Dr. O'Neill from well, I interviewed the professor who wrote "Coming Apart" said he was the adviser to SDS at the University of Michigan. Then he went to Wisconsin, and he said, I did not know what I got myself into. 1:58:25 RD: Its very true. 1:58:27 SM: LBJ and Robert McNamara. 1:58:30 RD: What about it just reactions? 1:58:32 SM: To both Johnson and McNamara, Spiro Agnew, that whole group? 1:58:36 RD: Well, they are not all, to me they are all very different. You know, I think I was pretty judgmental about Lyndon Johnson in the (19)60s. But I do not feel like judgment today. I, you know, I think he was a hard working politician. Who just got over his head with Vietnam, as all Americans did? And, you know, it just more showed the lack of understanding of other cultures. You cannot win in Vietnam. You know, you could make the same argument. You cannot really militarily win in Afghanistan too. I do not know about Afghanistan, but I do know about Vietnam. And, you know, it was, I mean, the French were there fighting for 100 years, and then their military defeated at the Dien Bien Phu know, and when you study that, I mean, West Point studies that battle its brilliant. I mean, it is incredible. I mean, here is this, here is a society that can mobilize 3 million people at one time, you know, just no country can, you know overtake it. And when you understand their culture and how they have been doing this for 3,000, 2,000 years, you know, they defeated the nephew Genghis Khan in the thirteenth century, and people out in the rice paddies tell that story like it was yesterday or something. They just did not understand what they were dealing with. 2:00:01 SM: I think that Obama is going to find out the same thing about Afghanistan. 2:00:05 RD: I mean, that is the concern that people have. I do not know about Afghanistan. But so you know, and then Johnson, you know, withdrew. And, you know, I do not know, I never really, you know, what was interesting to me was McNamara who was so bright and, you know, groomed in the military way of thinking and everything, rises to the level of Secretary of Defense, you know, becomes certainly the architect of how to do it. And then basically has a reflection period and, you know, rewrites history and comes out, you know, criticizes himself with the whole [inaudible]. And I, you know, we were also superficial, in a way in our criticism of our archetypes, you know, for any human being to do that, we would all do well to reflect on doing that ourselves. Okay, that is to really look at yourself, and then let the whole world you know, see 180-degree shift, okay. And where you are, you know, you are basically saying that I was wrong, you know, on a matter involving 1000s and 1000s of lives, you know, it is pretty incredible, really. So I kind of feel inspired by McNamara, truthfully you know. I hated him in the (19)60s. I mean, he was the bad guy. But not now. I say that was pretty- 2:01:37 SM: When I interviewed McCarthy, it was right after "In Retrospect" came out, In Retrospect came out in 1995 and 1996 was when I interviewed McCarthy. In my first interview McCarthy says piece of garbage, and I will not read it. I mean, he was pretty critical of it. 2:01:52 RD: Then Spyro Agnew, I mean, he called me the most dangerous man in the United States on national television and from that point of view, I mean, he kind of made my career, you know, I mean, it was probably the best thing that ever got said about me. I do not really think it was an accurate statement, all things considered, but it certainly helped me with my base. 2:02:17 SM: The two last people are groups, the Barrigan brothers, just your thoughts on the Barrigan Brothers. 2:02:22 RD: They were, they made a real contribution. They brought a certain morality and spiritual religious side onto things. They were very courageous. They went to jail. And I, they were never really close into the coalition. It was interesting. They kind of did their own thing. They were always a part of it, but not quite what I, you know, I was about the coalition, and they were sort of there but really, you know, but I always tip my hat you know, I think well of them. 2:02:51 SM: The last, the last ones are the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug of the feminist movement. Because the thing is, when you read, the feminist movement came about because in the antiwar movement, it was run by men. And so women got sick of the men being dominated, dominating those movements, and then created the women's movement. Now, your thoughts on that statement number one, and just your thoughts on their effectiveness and their value? 2:03:21 RD: I think it is sort of the traditional role of a movement, you know, your social change movements tend to identify with a particular constituency, they then look around and see what is suppressing that constituency. They do not really say start off by let us change ourselves to change the world, they said, let us change, man, let us change the races, let us change them, you know. And that is, that is pretty standard and usually, it, it starts by trying to have some coalition building and conciliatory, you know, like, like, Obama would love to do get a bipartisan something going. But, you know, over time, I am more, you know, a more focused approach tends to emerge, you know, and his writer writes, it is like, the difference between King and Stokely Carmichael, that sort of thing. And so, Betty Friedan, kind of gives rise to Gloria Steinem. You know, and then from there it goes even more that way. I do not, I do not have a judgment about anybody's politics. That is right and this is wrong, you know, I do not really do that anymore. I used to but I do not buy it. 2:04:46 SM: You are evolving. 2:04:47 RD: I am evolving! That is it. Yeah. 2:04:49 SM: I think that is a word. I think it is a word we ought to use more too because some of the things you said, I have been in university for 30 years. 2:04:58 RD: Yeah. 2:04:58 SM: And I have seen things. 2:04:59 RD: Yeah 2:05:00 SM: I think you are right on. I think you can really appeal to a lot of the young people today. 2:05:05 RD: Yeah 2:05:06 SM: The spirituality is important. 2:05:08 RD: Yeah, yeah. it would be cool. 2:05:09 SM: Why am I here? What is my purpose and all of those kinds of things? 2:05:12 RD: I am very good at those kinds of questions. 2:05:15 SM: Was there any question I did not ask you that you thought I was going to ask you before we end? 2:05:19 RD: Not really, you know, I had no idea what we are going to do truthfully. I was all good. I thought you were well prepared. Well done. And I wish you all the really sincerely the very best with your effort. I know it has been a big effort. You have talked to a lot of people and, and, you know, wherever I fit in, it is completely up to you. 2:05:37 SM: No, you are going to be in there. (End of Interview) Accessibility Copy/Paste below: Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>. Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Rennie Davis Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Davis, Rennie ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Chicago Seven Trial, Chicago, Ill., 1969-1970; Political activists--United States; Davis, Rennie--Interviews Description An account of the resource Rennie Davis (1940-2021) was a spiritual lecturer and an activist. Davis was an American anti-Vietnam war protest leader of the 1960s. He was one of the Chicago Seven defendants. He appeared on several shows, including <em>Larry King Live</em> and <em>Barbara Walters</em>, and provided business advice for Fortune 500 companies. Davis was an alumnus of Oberlin College. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-10-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.68a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.68b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 125:41 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/c821b9f1eb472b8cc3de22f0c389fceb.jpg d6a55fd77b87963a1f1c9246afc96644 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/74bd2d3e7d136bd3d2d3b682feb60d89.mp3 6031a794024318f0faa053ae62ba756e 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Lawrence Davidson, 1945- Language English Biographical Text <span>Dr. Larry Davidson is a retired History professor at West Chester University. He is the author of&nbsp;</span><em>Islamic Fundamentalism</em><span>&nbsp;and&nbsp;</span><em>Cultural Genocide</em><span>, and is an expert on the Middle East. As a student, Davidson was an SDS (Student for A Democratic Society) leader at Georgetown University who made the front page of the&nbsp;</span><em>Washington Post</em><span>&nbsp;along with other students protesting the war in Vietnam. Dr. Davidson received his Ph.D. in Modern European Intellectual History from the University of Alberta in Edmonton.</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 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; War protests; Anti-war movement; Civil Rights Movement; Daniel Ellsberg; John Dean; John Mitchell; Women's Rights Movement.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; War protests; Anti-war movement; Civil Rights Movement; Daniel Ellsberg; John Dean; John Mitchell; Women's Rights Movement.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 96:06 Subject LCSH College teachers; West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Political activists--United States; Davidson, Lawrence, 1945--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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Larry Davidson Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: Not dated --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): One, two, three, four, five, six. LD (00:00:08): ... button is? SM (00:00:08): Yes, there is. Pause is right here. LD (00:00:10): Oh, okay. All right. You want to tap? SM (00:00:15): Here you go. You can just kind of sit back and relax. LD (00:00:18): It is running now, right? SM (00:00:19): Yeah. LD (00:00:20): Okay. SM (00:00:20): [Inaudible] toward you and everything. Thank you very much for participating in the interview process here. LD (00:00:27): My pleasure. SM (00:00:29): Second time. First question I would like to ask is a general question. In the news recently, in fact over many years, there has been a lot of criticism of the boomer generation in terms of blaming this group of Americans where a lot of the problems in American society, we have seen it many times from Republicans, we have seen it sometimes from Democrats. We have seen it in a lot of recent books where the boomers are being criticized for the breakup of the American family, the increase in the drug culture, basically any problems facing American society goes back to those times in the (19)60s and early (19)70s. Could you comment on that from your perspective? LD (00:01:12): I always thought it was Islamic fundamentalists that were the new enemy of humankind, but now you tell me it is my generation. I imagine by "boomers" you mean those that were born at- SM (00:01:29): Between 1946 and 64. Which were 60 million people. LD (00:01:34): Oh, okay. Actually, I was born in 1945. That means I am not really one of those. I am a... SM (00:01:38): Dude. LD (00:01:39): All right. Well, I will not pretend. It is an obviously fallacious position. I cannot see how anyone can blame anyone generation for the troubles of the contemporary world. I mean, generations tend to meld into each other. And clearly, in terms of the generation you are referring to, there are people of all stripes and all colors and all ideologies across the American scene. No one group controlled the thoughts and actions of that entire generation, least of all the radicals of the "radicals" of the (19)60s. And I have a feeling that perhaps those are the ones that these critics want to pin all these problems on, if I am not mistaken. And the radicals, I can tell you because I was one of them, and one of them actually still, were just a very small minority within that generation, albeit a very vocal minority, and at least in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, particularly well-organized group. But still, in all, very, very small minority of that generational population. And if you can put a half a million people on the Mall in Washington DC it looks impressive on television. And in fact, it has some effect if you can do it over and over again on the politics of the time, but compared with the overall number of folks in the generation, half a million people is not a lot. And most of the people in the "radical movement" were really quite moderate in their overall politics. It was only a minority within a minority that you could really describe as consistently left-wing. So one has to look for other motives in terms of the critics. Why would they want to point fingers at this particular small group? They're an easy target. They were vocal. They stood out. They opposed a war that opened them up in the long term and at the time to charges of not being patriotic and that sort of thing. They identified themselves with, at the time, unpopular positions, so they were an easy target. And of course, to just point fingers at them means that you do not have to go into any broader analysis, systems-based analysis of the power structure and how it was operating and that sort of thing. So I do not take it really seriously. Obviously, these people write books and get published, but I do not take it really seriously. I do not think it's very near to the truth at all. SM (00:05:06): So when you hear the criticisms of looking back 30 years and blaming the drug problems of today's young people on the boomers of that era and their lifestyles, and the fact that the divorce rate did not happen in the (19)50s, but in the (19)60s, (19)70s and (19)80s, that whole concept of, "You do your thing, I will do my thing; if by chance we come together, it will be beautiful," but that kind of mentality? LD (00:05:41): I do not think that the things that you describe really characterize the majority of people of that generation. Those were the sort of quasi-anarchist feelings of a distinct vocal and picturesque minority within that generation. I mean, Abby Hoffman is not a representative member of the boomer generation. He was very picturesque and he was a great guy, from my point of view, but hardly can he be represented as typical. Just so the kind of free love depicted in, say, Arlo Guthrie's movie Alice's Restaurant. That is not typical of the boomer generation. You want to know what is typical of the boomer generation? Our people are kind of Kennedy liberals, probably more so than Nixon conservatives, but I am not sure how much nor more so. When I was in the SDS there were consistently more folks who stood against us than stood for us. So, what is the real boomer generation? Or are these people, when you throw out those kinds of clichés that you did, which are out there in the press, are those really typical of that generation or are they just the position of a colorful, picturesque, vocal minority that one can easily point fingers to? SM (00:07:25): Larry, I want to just that one more time. That was really good- Larry, I want to ask you a personal question because you said you were involved in Students for Democratic Society when you were at Georgetown. At what point, why did you join Students for Democratic Society, and what was it when you were a young person at Georgetown University that said, "I have got to belong to this group and be involved, and possibly protest against what was happening in America?" LD (00:07:50): It began before I got to Georgetown. I got to Georgetown, I think in (19)68, maybe the September of (19)68. And I had come from Rutgers University, and there was no SDS at Rutgers at the time, at least not on the campus I was at. But I had always been sympathetic to the civil rights movement, and I always knew that I stood against the Vietnam War. And we had a discussion, kind of informal discussion, book reading group, at Rutgers among people who were avant garde. And I guess it was while living and studying among that group of avant garde people at Rutgers that I became really left leaning. Why I was that way? I do not know. My father was a full colonel in the Air Force and I never got along with him. You can delve into some kind of Freudian interpretation of these things. My mother was always a very conscientious, principled passivist, very liberal in her views. I think I have always been just anti-authoritarian. I have always gone for the underdog. So anyway, when I got to Georgetown, there were a bunch of people who wanted to protest not only the war, but wanted to also do analysis and actions around other issues like open enrollment issues or increasing minority participation at Georgetown, getting more blacks and Latinos into the student body and various other civil rights-oriented issues. It was a broad coalition of folks. And at one point, someone said to me, "Maybe we ought to start an SDS chapter if we are really going to be serious about this." And I said, "Sounds good. We should do that. We should organize, at least a leadership cadre, to push this agenda, this sort of liberal... Not even liberal, it is more than liberal. It is sort of a social progressive agenda." And so, it seemed a logical step, so we did it. Subsequently, of course, the House on American Activities Committee chose the Georgetown SDS as a model in its investigation of the organization. And the Georgetown's administration cooperated completely with HUAC in that process. And we all got our ID's pictures turned over to the committee and stuff like that. SM (00:11:09): If you look at the boomers now, that group from (19)46 to (19)64, there is obviously even differences within the generation, perception that I have seen that those who were born in that (19)46 to late (19)50s period are different than those born in the latter part, which are now only in their mid-thirties. But the question I am trying to get at here is, in your opinion, when you look at the boomer generation as a whole, which is 60 plus million, and here they are reaching 50 now, knowing that still that there are probably some people that identify themselves as boomers over in their early (19)50s and maybe even their mid (19)50s. Could you say what the positive things that you feel the boomers have done on American society, and secondly, the negatives? But obviously I feel that you're with the boomers and the fact is you have seen what has happened and what they have done in America over this last 30 years, pluses and minus. What are the pluses and the minuses on the boomer generation in your eyes? LD (00:12:08): I can only respond to that based on my own instincts and my own political orientation. Obviously, I think the civil rights movement is a seminal achievement. There is civil rights movement to the extent that it managed to change people's attitudes and legislate greater equality and openness, essentially was an eminently American democratic step. So it was a way of approaching the ideal, approaching the theory and the ideal inherent in the Constitution. In practice, [inaudible] there are not too many times in American history where you get a giant step in bringing theory in its best sense into practice. I guess reconstruction after the Civil War was another time. But clearly, I think the Civil Rights Movement is that sort of seminal step, and it should be recognized as a great achievement in the course of American history. So, that is a very positive thing. The prevention of carrying the war in Vietnam to an ideological destructive conclusion is a sort of negative yet positive achievement, as far as I am concerned. The war itself was abominable and a betrayal of American principles. We were not in there to promote democracy or representative government. That is all bullshit. We were in fact supporting a corrupt regime. The only difference between the DM regime, say, and the communists were that DM had an allegedly pro-capitalist orientation while the others did not. But American foreign policy has a tendency, despite all the rhetoric, to find dictators, military dictators or civilian dictators, that they latch onto. Latin America, Central America's full of examples like that. And we used to rationalize that in terms of the Cold War as we seem to have rationalized the Vietnam War in terms of the Cold War, but I do not know. I think we would do it anyway. In any case, it was a betrayal of American ideals and I think that to the extent that my generation stopped criminals like Lyndon Johnson and McNamara and these other folks, who I consider to be just plain criminals, from killing even more of Vietnamese and Americans than they managed to do in a bad, in terms of the ideals, anti-American cause. I consider that to be an achievement that each generation has to, at least those who stick to their principles in each generation, have to stand up against these kinds of anti-human, and in the idealistic sense, anti-American acts and behaviors, whether they are segregationist manifestations domestically, or in terms of recent history this sort of inherently evil attack on subsidization of the poor when there is really no economic alternatives for these people, in other words the welfare bill, you have to stand up for that. You have to stand up for your principles and act against that, stand up against that kind of behavior, or you just sell yourself to the devil that way. SM (00:16:41): Those are the pluses, but do you see any negatives in your- LD (00:16:45): Well, again, I would point out that those who did all those pluses were a minority within that generation, that the majority within the generation as majorities always do, went along with the government, went along with the war, went along with segregation. That is why systems can continue as they are within democratic societies, because the majority goes along. The majority of folks are just sheep, unfortunately, so what characterizes... And I mean, the majority of these sheep seems to be somehow necessary to a stable society. I do not want to be too hard on these folks, but what characterizes the boomer generation, perhaps, is that it had a more vocal and more active humanistic minority than other generations before or after it in recent times. And that is why it stands out, and that is why it draws so much flack. So, in terms of the negative, the negative part is that the humanistic minority had to fight so hard just to sway the passive, unthinking majority. I mean, I- SM (00:18:25): [inaudible 00:18:28]. LD (00:18:30): Yeah, we are still going. SM (00:18:33): Okay, point blank, respond to this question. And I have asked this to all... This year done 27th interview, many, and the answers to this question have been as different... Whether you loved Lyndon Johnson or you hated him. Was the student protest movement on the college campuses the main reason that the Vietnam War ended? LD (00:18:59): No, I do not think it was the main reason. I think it was obviously contributive to it, and perhaps like the straw that broke the camel's back kind of thing. I think the main reason that the war ended was that you had a lot of body bags coming back. The anti-war protestors were saying over and over again that this war not only was immoral and a violation of the best principles or ideals that America stood for, but that it was unwinnable, that unless you were willing to use nuclear weapons, ya ain't going to win this thing. And the reason you were not going to win it was because the position that America took was completely and totally unpopular within Vietnam. So, unless you were willing to destroy that country, and we were well on our way to doing that: free fire zones, napalm, defoliation, concentration camps for the Vet, for increasing numbers of the population. I mean, we were well on our way to destroying that country. Unless you were willing to do that and take the casualties that would be necessary to accomplish that, you were not going to win it. And the American people could not see where ultimately South Vietnam was worth, for them, the casualty rates. I knew a fellow who was a Navy medic with the Marines, and he was at... Was it Khe Sanh? Not Khe Sanh. Or Da Nang, or one of those places during the Tet Offensive and the NVA came into the city, and his comment was that the Marines and the other military units in the area could never, ever have stood the assault and won against the Vietnamese at this site during the Tet Offensive for the simple reason that the Vietnamese were willing to take 10 casualties for every American dead. And unless we were willing to match that, we were not going anywhere. This was not World War II, the Vietnamese were not the Nazis, South Vietnam was not France or Normandy, and the American people were not going to sustain those casualty rates. That, I think was the key. Now, the anti-war movement, whether it was students or others, had put forth a message that the war was unwinnable and that in fact, it was a violation of all the best things that America stood for it. Now, that in and of itself would not have changed it, but you combined that with the reality of those body bags, and you can add onto that all the maimed, the injured, the TV, the war was being fought on television and all those visual images, you put all that together and that was it, that is why the war warranted. And even still, it took, what, 10 years to stop it? It is really atrocious. SM (00:22:32): Of course, that new book out by McNamara, which came out a year ago, the memoir In Retrospect. LD (00:22:36): The guy is a criminal. SM (00:22:38): Brought all kinds of feelings about the Vietnam [inaudible]. LD (00:22:45): McNamara's position, is absolutely, absolutely unbelievable. I believe him when he says that in the rarefied air of the State Department and the Defense Department, they actually thought that if Vietnam fell, the Russians would be at the doorstep and we'd be facing nuclear war. That is what McNamara says in that book-book. I believe that he believed that. But the domino theory was so patently contrived, certainly by the 1960s. You might have been able to go with Kennan in the late forties and early (19)50s, but by the late (19)60s to think that if Vietnam falls you're going to be facing a nuclear war with the Soviets, these guys were in a fantasy world and they killed million Vietnamese and 50,000-plus Americans because of this kind of fantasy they could not shake. So, the guy is a criminal, maybe you can make a claim for... SM (00:24:00): So, we [inaudible]? Very good. LD (00:24:03): Maybe you can make a claim from mental illness, as far as I am concerned, but he used to be strung up by his genitals. SM (00:24:10): One of the things, when we look at the boomer generation, is the differences between white Americans and African Americans or people of color that when you look at boomers, there's a differentiation there. We all know, for example, that in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, many African American students on college campuses would not be seen in protests against the Vietnam War because it was not their war, because many people were being sent over who were of color and dying. The question I want to ask is, when we are looking at the war or we are looking at the concept of civil rights, especially in the area of civil rights, many people were not of age when Freedom Summer happened in (19)64, boomers were very young. So in other common criticism we're hearing, and I want your response- SM (00:25:03): Boomers were very young, so another common criticism we're hearing, and I want your response to this, is that the Boomers followed other people in the Civil Rights movement. They were too young, (19)46, (19)56, (19)66, the oldest would have been 18 in Freedom Summer. Could you comment on that, even though it is just an analogy, that really, Boomers were not the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, they followed? LD (00:25:24): I think that the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were African Americans, clearly. I think that those of that generation who were of a socially progressive persuasion, I hate to use the word liberal here, were inspired by King and others like him, and clearly followed in their footsteps, and there damn well was few of us that did that, quite frankly. In terms of the Civil Rights movement, clearly the "Boomers" were not leaders, they were followers in that regard. Now, when I was in the SDS in (19)68, (19)69, (19)70, we had an informal relationship with the Black Panther Party in Washington DC, and I think there is actually a picture that appeared in the Washington Post at some point in (19)68 or (19)69, of myself and Eldridge Cleaver holding a banner, and I cannot remember what the banner said. SM (00:26:43): You do not have that picture? LD (00:26:44): During some march. Someday I will have to go back and go through the newspaper, and look for it. He is holding one end and I am holding the other end, and it was during one of these demonstrations, or something like that. I should really get that and make a poster out of it, even though I am really disappointed the way Cleaver went fundamentalist Christian subsequently. Anyway, we did have this informal relationship, and I think our analysis basically of American society at that time had a lot of points that touched together. There was a big falling off, or break with African American groups like the Panthers and a lot of individuals within the SDS who happened to be Jewish because of the position that the Panthers and other leaders in the African American community took over the issue of Palestine, Palestinians, Israel. There was a big break there between certain individuals and the African American community leadership. But that is a very specific issue, and I am proud to say that I held to my principles, and did not make a break over that issue. Many Jewish kids left the movement over that issue. SM (00:28:15): How would you want to define here on this one, I want to make sure you define this towards the end. Okay. Have you changed your- LD (00:28:27): I do not know whether I answered your question. SM (00:28:30): Well, it was a commentary that among the criticism that people who were, I would not say anti-Boomer, but critical of the Boomers, is that they lay claim to a lot of things that are not true. They were the Civil Rights movement. They ended the war. LD (00:28:48): Well, I do not know who's making those claims. I have not read all the books that you have, but the reality of it is as I described. You can trust me, Steve. SM (00:29:06): Would you say when you look at the Boomer generation, one of the terms that was used often at that time is, "We are the most unique generation in American history." I remember that happening when I was in Ohio State University, and it was always, "We had the opportunity of being the most unique generation in American history," because of trying to stop the war, and the Civil Rights movement. The women's movement came to fruition at that time, the gay and lesbian movement came after Stonewall. There was a Native American movement was happening. Everybody remembers Alcatraz, and the Native Americas taking over Alcatraz, Dennis Banks, that group. And then of course, the Chicano movement also and they were all around the same time. Student leaders from a lot of walks, Cesar Chavez came to power, around that time. Are the Boomers the most unique generation in American history? LD (00:29:58): Obviously, it was a somewhat unique time. Where, as you describe, many of these socially progressive movements came together at one moment in history. Whether that makes it the most unique generational period in the history of the nation, I really do not know. Probably it makes it one of the most socially active times in the history of the nation. I think that is a safer way of putting it, and probably a more historically meaningful way of looking at it than whether one is the most unique generation or not. I think that a sign of the fact that it is, or was one of the most unique periods in the history of the nation. Maybe one of the ways of seeing how unique, relatively speaking, this period of time was, is in fact all the flack and all the controversy that the activities of this generation, or at least this minority within the generation, this active socially progressive minority within the generation. That is my take on it. All the activities and the progress from my point of view that they generated and the issues that they raised and the gaps between theory and practice that they pointed out. So, they certainly set precedents, whether it is the Chicanos, the gays, the blacks, the anti-war folks. They set precedents for trying to close the gap between theory and practice within the American scene. SM (00:32:11): How do you respond to another thing too? LD (00:32:13): And that is why they raised so much flack. That is why they have so much opposition. SM (00:32:18): In your face mentality of that era, the confrontational approach to dialogue. There was such a thing then. The fact that, again, I am just using this as a barometer of yesterday, there was a survey in Philadelphia on what is wrong with Philadelphia. I do not know if you have not seen that. And one of the things that Philadelphians are never really pleased with anything, and I mean unbelievable things in Philadelphia magazine, but the bottom line was this, that Philadelphians are being labeled as a group of people that are in your face, and that brings a terminology of that period that a lot of the people that were involved in the movement were active, were basically in your face people. And so again, I do not know your thoughts on that, but that is again, going back to a criticism that we have heard that the lack of dialogue in society today sometimes can go directly linked to that era. LD (00:33:09): Well, I do not know whether you can trace the lack of dialogue today back to then, but clearly, I mean, you could not be anything but aggressive and confrontational in (19)68, (19)69, (19)70, and likewise, it would be very difficult to be anything other than confrontational and quote in your face during the civil rights period. You were going to get nowhere by polite dialogue. Okay, polite. The desire for polite dialogue is the desire of the establishment, wanting to set the parameters, set the rules for analysis of the contemporary situation. But when you have got a draft, when they are trying to draft everybody into an immoral, unwinnable, deadly war, when people are not allowed to go to decent schools, when black folks get crap and are not allowed to sit at the same lunch counters as white folks and they get crap in terms of their schools' jobs and everything else, what does polite dialogue mean? It means shut up, take it, and if you do not like it, be polite about you are not liking it. I mean, you get nowhere that way. The only way to deal with that is to be in someone's face. It is the only way. SM (00:34:52): What I think about the Dr. King analysis, that non-violent protest is not in your face, but it is certainly. LD (00:34:58): Sure, it is. SM (00:34:58): Well, non-violent protest is, it might be, but it was still a polite, there was a politeness there where they did not create. LD (00:35:05): If it was that polite, they would not have brought the police dogs out. I mean, when we say in your face, we do not mean necessarily that you are going to go some slap somebody around, it means that you are going to stop people from just having business as usual. The tactic that you use does not have to be with guns. I mean, you can just bring a 100 or 200 people into an area and sit down. Stops business as usual. And it is by the establishment's definition, not polite. SM (00:35:37): That is the deal. Have you changed your opinion of boomers over the last 25 years when you were young and now, have you changed? LD (00:35:45): I have simply never ever thought in generational terms. I mean I was part of a minority, political minority and understood that the majority of people of my generation did not agree with me, did not feel the way I did, even though people tend to now use these big categories and lump all people in one generation together as if they all believed the same thing. It's not true. And so when I grew up, I did not grow up thinking of myself as belonging to this generation. I mean, I belong to a distinct political, socially progressive minority that had in it folks of different generations. I mean the people that came together in those anti-war demonstrations, a lot of them, I was in my mid-20s early to mid-20s, and a lot of them were 40 and 50 old 1930s, left-wing working-class type organizers, wobbly types, labor parties, socialist types. So, I never thought of myself in terms of one generation or another, so I really do not care to comment. SM (00:37:00): One of the things about this generation is that one of the greatest impacts was their size. That they were the big, well, it was the biggest generation ever. 60 million plus because of the of course. LD (00:37:09): Right. SM (00:37:10): War and everything. And so again, their size has had a lot to do with their impact too in many respects. LD (00:37:18): Well, that might be true, that might be true. But the bigger the generation, the less likely it is to be monolithic in its outlooks. So, it is a simply mistake historically inaccurate to see it as somehow uniform in its outlooks and its behavior. SM (00:37:38): One of the constants that the literature states is then you have reiterated this in your commentary and that is that probably only about 15 percent of the boomers ever were ever involved in any sort of activism. LD (00:37:52): Yeah, I think that is probably accurate. Yeah. SM (00:37:54): Protest on college campuses and all these other movements that we have mentioned here. I am going to lead right into a question here because one of the basic premises behind this project is to look at the impact the boomers have had on American history both then and now and as they come into leadership roles, but it is also the concept of healing. Please comment on this premise. My premise is that boomers in many respects, and especially a lot of those that were involved, the activists, but even many who were not activists are having a problem with healing from the tremendous divisions that took place at that time. Those were for the war, those who were against the war, veterans who obviously have a different healing because they were treated poorly upon their return. And even though when you look at the boomers, they are still a minority. What are your thoughts on that? Because of the fact that in the many trips that I have had to the memorial, I have overheard veterans, I have seen people talking, I have tried to be an observant, and now I have got to be active in trying to do something when I help people hopefully heal the generation a little bit. That the healing, even though the wall was built to help the veterans and to help the nation heal, there's still a tremendous amount of healing that has not taken place. And I am not sure if it ever will. Could you comment on that in terms of the healing and the divisions? LD (00:39:17): You are right. I do not think it ever will. Again, I personally have never thought in these terms that I understand, and I accept that my attitudes and my reading of history and my attitudes and towards how this country operates is puts me in a perpetual minority, and I simply accept that. And so, given that position I mean there is no healing. I am not sure what healing means in terms of the veterans of the war except in these symbolic ways like the building of this memorial. There is no way that we can go back and give these guys a hero’s welcome. Quite frankly, they do not deserve a hero’s welcome. They are not heroes. That does not mean that they need to be vilified, they should not be vilified, and they certainly should not be blamed for the catastrophic policies of the people, of the leadership who sent them over there. They are victims, all right? They are not heroes, they are not villains, they are victims. And of course, the people who are dead are the most victimized of all. The only way these, so I do not even think that that veterans should think in terms of healing. I do not think it is possible. I mean, I have a very good friend of mine who lost the calves of both legs in a landmine incident in Vietnam. I mean, in what sense does this man heal? I mean, even if the Congress held a big rally in demonstration in which people, and the same number of people come as were in the largest anti-war demonstration, all to say that my friend and people like him are good guys and great guys and did a great service to the country, is that going to heal this guy? I do not know. Maybe it will make him feel better for the moment, but I do not know whether you can describe it in terms of healing. What they need is not healing. They need some justice, some explanation as to why they were sent there and why this happened to them, and something other than all that patriotic crap. I think that if the leaders that sent them there, those who are still alive could get up and say, this was a really big mistake, and like the Japanese kowtow and apologize to these people or their survivors, maybe that would be in some sense justice, but there can be no healing in there. They can never be compensated for being victimized this way. It is just not going to happen. SM (00:42:41): What about the tremendous divisions that happened between those who were for and those who were against the war and bringing them together to try to heal, to understand the passions of the time, whether it be veterans or protestors, those who supported the war? LD (00:42:56): Yeah. Well, I mean. SM (00:42:56): Both divisions. LD (00:43:02): Well, I think that those are useful exercises, but unless those who supported the war can come to understand and admit the erroneous analysis that their position is based on and the disastrous consequences in the physically disastrous consequences, not only for American veterans but for Vietnam, and we have slaughtered over a million of those people. Unless those folks can come to admit that, then I do not see how there can be any coming together unless, oh, I guess also, I mean the people that stood against the war could somehow fall into the trap of saying, oh, we were wrong. And I am, in fact, I know some anti-war folks, leaders who I work personally with, who have subsequently said, oh, we were wrong and we should not have done what we did. That in doing so, these people opened up career doors for themselves. But unless one side agrees with the other side, there is going to be no ultimately no healing. Well, I do not even know what that means, healing. SM (00:44:26): I want to make sure it is recording properly. There we go. LD (00:44:30): Yeah, it might be that, again, I do not think in terms of healing, I am not exactly sure what it means. And for me personally, I do not feel the need for that process. So, it is hard for me to give advice to others who seem to feel the need for it. SM (00:44:49): One of the main reasons this question comes forth is when we took a trip to Washington DC a couple of years back with some, we were on the road students here at Westchester University. We met Senator Musky, and one of the questions that happened during that two-hour session, it came up from yours truly, and it is fact, I talked about the concept of the inability to trust leaders because of what happened during that period, and I have had to deal with that as an individual. But I was especially referring back to 1968 and the protests that happened in Chicago, and he was the vice president as a running mate for Hubert Humphrey and his thoughts about the divisions in America at that time and the healing process. And at that juncture, I did not realize he was not a well man. And he'd been in the hospital and he had a melodramatic pause there for a while and the students looked at each other and did not really respond right away. And then when he did respond, he talked about the fact that he had been in the hospital and that his secretary had been bringing him tapes of Ken Burns civil war series, and he said, you realize a whole generation of Americans were basically wiped out during that civil war. And he says, my answer to your question is thus we have never healed since the Civil War. So you're talking about trying to heal since Vietnam. We have not healed since the Civil War. LD (00:45:55): He can push it further back. SM (00:45:57): Yeah. And the fact is, and there is still things today about the North and the South and their answers for each other. But the question I am trying to ask here is, and this is the direct question, it says, are we going to be another generation like the Civil war generation who went to their graves with bitterness? Now, in many respects, a lot of people who cares, I am raising a family, it does not bother me one bit, but a lot of people, we look at our lives and what we have done and are we going to our graves, whatever it might be, the bitterness, lack of forgiveness, lack of understanding toward the other's point of view, for example, your point of view should be understood by the person who is totally opposite of you to try to better understand where we come from. That is what I am getting at. LD (00:46:42): Well, it is a sweet ideal. This country, its history is a function of division. The American Revolution was the most divisive war this country ever fought, more divisive than the Civil War, even actually. You can look at the personal history of Benjamin Franklin and his son, I mean, which was typical of that. I think that ultimately the lamb does not lie down with the sheep or whatever that biblical analogy is. The lamb does not lie down with the lion. Right? I do not believe that happens. I think that there are very deep serious divisions in this country about social policy and the directions that the country should go in terms of social agenda. I think the vilification of the term liberal is a sign that those divisions are very, very deep, and I do not expect them to be resolved in the foreseeable future. I think that the divisions or around the Civil rights movement and around the Vietnam War are in the same vein as the divisions that we see now between right wing conservatives and liberals, if you want to use that term. That there is almost a hatred on the part of what I consider to be the radical right. I think there is almost a hatred on the part of the conservative elements in this country for people and for ideas of the Democratic left, and I do not think it is the Democratic left or I do not think it is the aging anti-war movement folks who do not want to heal or do not want to dialogue. I think it is the other side. I think it's the people who put up TV ads and other types of propaganda essentially vilifying the concept of liberal, vilifying the Democratic left that are the obstacle here, and not the folks who led civil rights marches or anti-war movements. SM (00:49:29): The generation gap was a term that was used a lot during the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, and in the World War II. Now we see would be young people today on college campuses, 20 somethings may not who also have differences with the boomer generation and themselves, and as the boomers get older, we keep hearing prophecies from, again, writings that there will be a major gap between this generation or because of the social security and a lot of other issues. Could you comment on what you thought was the generation gap of that year of the year. SM (00:50:03): ... [inaudible] what you thought was the generation gap of era of the (19)60s and the (19)70s, the difference between parents and young people [inaudible] between boomers and their kids? LD (00:50:12): Well, first of all, there's always a generation gap. I mean, it seems to be a natural flow of generations for children to contest with their parents, at least in Western culture. It is more submerged than other cultures. But in Western culture, every generation of children contests over one issue or another with their parents. So, it is a sort of natural part of the landscape, of the demographic landscape. Now in the (19)60s though, that natural process of contesting between children and parents was sometimes accentuated by the issues of the day. If they are out there trying to draft everyone who cannot somehow manage a deferment, that is going to add tension. Obviously, it is going to add a lot of tension to one's everyday life. And so, it is going to accentuate whatever else is going on between parents and children. If you have got a household of Black folks, African Americans, where the parents have learned that the best survival skills is to just keep your head down and not let the sheriff even notice you, and all of a sudden you have got a kid who wants to go and sit in at the local lunch counter, that is going to accentuate whatever differences there generally would be, naturally would be within the culture of the parents and the child as the child matures and tries to find his own independent space. So, the extent to which the generation gap was greater in the (19)60s than, say, before or after, is a function of the context, the historical context in which those natural tensions and confrontations between child and parent were being worked out. You understand what I mean? SM (00:52:21): I do. LD (00:52:23): And that is the only thing that makes it different. Now today, I mean, the people who forecast these great problems, the only thing I can say is that I believe ultimately, they are going to if not fix the Medicare and Social Security problems, they will patch it up, perennially patch it up so that it will limp forward. It is just too politically suicidal not to patch it up. So, I have no doubts that they will do that. And in terms of the 20-somethings or the 18-somethings or 19-somethings that I know in abundance here at this university, I do not think most of them could define Social Security for you. And I am not sure if I at 18 could have defined Social Security for you. So I do not want to be too hard on them. So again, I think that the folks that point fingers at these great generation gaps and foretell with great foreboding about future generational gaps are exaggerating, probably for the sake of book sales. I do not know. But I think it is somewhat hyperbole. SM (00:53:44): The term activism obviously is a term that is identified with the (19)60s and early (19)70s. What role does activism play in the lives of today's young people, if any? A lot of people will term the boomers says an activist generation, even though we know 15 percent are really the activists, but are there any activists in today's generation now? Do students today have the passions that a lot of the students of the (19)60s and early (19)70s had? LD (00:54:12): Well, I mean, actually I think the answer is obviously no, not because they are not inherently capable of exercising those passions, but I do not think the issues are there to bring those passions out. In terms of are they more aware or whatever, I mean, you probably could answer that more than I. I mean, you deal with them, or at least a certain segment of folks on this campus, in terms of their political orientations or issues. And so you probably know the answer better than I do. In terms of my students, my students are not politically aware or politically interested. And I think that goes for like 95 percent to 99 percent of them. I think that if there were riots in the ghettos or a big war and they were drafting everybody, probably that would galvanize a greater percentage of them. You have to have issues that affect people's lives to in order to bring out whatever political potential is there. SM (00:55:31): I want to get back to a question. What is the lasting legacy of the boomers? LD (00:55:38): Well, again, I will go back to one of my opening remarks, and that generation, working within the historical context it found itself in, dealing with the issues that were forced upon it, created precedence, the ongoing challenge to bring practice closer to the ideals of the nation, which I see not only as in terms of the Bill of Rights, but also in terms of social justice and what have you, economic justice, to try to bring the practice of the nation closer to the ideals. I think that our generation, at least the 15 percent that was active in it, set a great precedent and actually moved the nation a step closer in terms of bridging that gap. I mean, after all, despite the destructive efforts of Ronald Reagan, and despite the destructive agenda of Newt Gingrich and all those guys, this country today is a better country and a country where the gap between theory and practice is more closed than it was, say, before 1956, and Brown v. the Board of Education. And so you have to keep pushing to try to close that sort of gap between ideal and theory. And I think my generation took a big step in that direction. Now, others today want to reverse that, and they might. I mean, it might be two steps backwards, one step forward, sort of one step backwards, two steps forwards. I mean, it can go either way, but you got to keep pushing. You got to just keep doing it, if you believe in social justice at all. SM (00:57:39): Yeah. What is your thought following that now? What is your thought of taking one step forward, two steps backward, attacks on affirmative action, attacks on a lot of accomplishments that took place? I know there were problems in the Great Society with Lyndon Johnson and all those things, but there was a genuineness to really want to make change to help a lot of people. And maybe there was some failures along the way, but to pointblank say the times are different now in the (19)90s than they were in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, it is no longer necessary to do the things that we did then, what is your thought on that? Because we see it in the universities too. LD (00:58:17): Well, yeah, I mean, if you accept the notion that times are different and it is not necessary to have these programs in place, I will guarantee you that within a generation you will need them again. Because if you take the programs away, you just do not coast at the place where you were when you removed the programs. The inherent instinct of the right is not to stay still but is essentially, from my perspective, to go backwards. And they will do it all in the name of individual rights and the notion of getting the government off your back and all that sort of stuff. But in fact, you just do not stay in idling and neutral. You go backwards if you take away these safeguards. And that is what the programs really are, is safeguards. So, it is cyclical, in many ways. I mean, to a certain extent they will succeed and they will undo a lot of what was done. And sooner or later, you have to just come back and fight all over again. Seems to be one of the imbecilities of human behavior, human organization, that you cyclically go through these things. SM (00:59:42): Now, this next segment of the interview is going to be to throw out the names of some of the individuals that were known at that time, and if you could respond in two ways: number one, your thoughts on their impact then, and basically your thoughts on how they are looked upon today by many of the boomers and historians. Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. LD (01:00:05): Well, I liked them, even though actually, in the late (19)60s, the folks in the SDS were critical of Rubin and Hoffman, because we perceived them at the time as being somewhat fools. And they did not have the type of sort of tight political analysis that we fancied that we had. But I think there was a grudging admiration for their daring. And so I have a warm and fuzzy, loving kind of response to them. Now, I think that of course Rubin sort of went over to the enemy, if you want to point it that way. The really truly consistent fellow was Abbie Hoffman. And of course, I mean, his life ended tragically, driven probably to suicide by this picture of the country going back in a reactionary fashion. SM (01:01:16): I wanted to ask you, before I ask any other names here, mention any other names. When Abbie Hoffman died, I remember there was a small article written in the Philadelphia Inquirer. And there was a note that he had left saying, "No one is listening to me anymore." And I thought, "Wow, that is pretty heavy." I know it is one individual and I know some people characterized him as kind of a wacko, but then he kind of lived a consistent life, even in hiding, on environmental issues. His whole life was really dedicated to activism. But is that what is going to be written on a lot of boomers' tombstones, is "No one is listening anymore"? LD (01:01:55): Well, again, which boomers? SM (01:02:01): Okay, right. Say [inaudible] the boomers that were active. LD (01:02:04): Right. I mean, it is the boomers who were not listening anymore to Abbie Hoffman, not that most of them ever did listen to him. I mean, most of them probably found him contemptuous. But again- SM (01:02:20): Back talking about Abbie Hoffman. LD (01:02:23): Yeah, I think what Abbie Hoffman could not deal with is the cyclical nature of the quote, "struggle," unquote. I mean, progress is not linear. I mean, maybe it is in a technological sense. We do not blow ourselves off the planet. But social progress certainly is not a linear, straight line kind of scenario. I mean, there are setbacks. And those setbacks can be serious. But unless you are willing to simply abdicate to kind of a reactionary, segregationist, anti-human attitude that would write off not only minority groups and their position in our society, but the poor as a lazy group that deserves their own fate, unless you are willing to accept that, you simply have to continue to struggle against these folks, accepting the fact that that progress where it can be had is sometimes hard fought and sometimes hard to keep. I think Abbie Hoffman was ultimately just too fragile to live in a world where you have that kind of cyclical shape to the struggle that he really was dedicated to. SM (01:04:02): Lyndon Johnson? LD (01:04:06): Well, I mean, Lyndon Johnson was a politician who was willing to sell the youth of his country and certainly sell Vietnam down the river for the sake of this sort of Cold War ideology that he had based his politics on. Now, on the other hand, he was perfectly willing to sell the kind of conservative segregationist agenda of his home state of Texas down the river to back the civil rights movement. So Lyndon Johnson was simply a typical American political opportunist. So, you can remember him either way you want to go. SM (01:04:53): Richard Nixon? LD (01:04:54): Well, I cannot deal with Nixon. He tried to kill me. I mean, this guy tried to draft me and send me to Vietnam. And so I always had great contempt for Richard Nixon. I do not give a damn if he opened up China at all. I do not care. And I do not care if, just like with Lyndon Johnson, if he passed legislation that was good for the American Indians, or whatever. I mean, he did not do that from the bottom of his soul. He did it for the same reason Lyndon Johnson did it, because it seemed politically opportune at the time. But Nixon, and particularly Kissinger, I hate that man's guts, I perceive these people as criminals, not only for what they did in Vietnam, but also for what they did in Central and South America, Chile, particularly with Allende and the Pinochet regime that Kissinger helped bring about. These are murderous, criminal people, and they should be tried for crimes against humanity. SM (01:05:59): [inaudible] McNamara, Robert McNamara? LD (01:06:00): Well, again, I mean, I think I have commented on McNamara before- SM (01:06:03): [inaudible]? LD (01:06:05): Yeah, I mean, I guess there is some gradations in the levels of disdain I have for particular individuals. I mean, my gut does not revolt against Russ quite as much as it does against McNamara, but ultimately, they are all of a crowd. And I have not got too much sympathy for any of them. I really do not think that they serve their country well at all. SM (01:06:33): Spiro Agnew? LD (01:06:36): Man, this is sort of a featherweight intellectual political opportunist who had two sets of standards, one from himself, one for everybody else. I think he is going to be forgotten and well gone. SM (01:06:55): John Kennedy? LD (01:06:57): I do not particularly care for John Kennedy either. I mean, I know he is sort of an ideal, and he probably saved that ideal image of himself by dying young. It probably would not have lasted if he had lived longer. But I do not have very high regard for Kennedy. I mean, this is the guy who mounted an invasion of a foreign country for no really good reason, in terms of the Bay of Pigs. And quite frankly, I happen to have a certain regard for Fidel Castro. So, I mean, he does not do much for me, Kennedy. SM (01:07:40): Robert Kennedy? LD (01:07:42): Yeah, I do not have much opinion about Robert Kennedy. I think that his behavior towards Martin Luther King was despicable. And so, Ted Kennedy is probably the best of that family, quite frankly. And so who knows what Robert Kennedy would have turned out to be like if he had lived, but he did not. So, I mean, I just do not have much opinion about him. SM (01:08:15): Martin Luther King, Jr.? LD (01:08:17): Well, he is a seminal figure on the American landscape in the 20th century. I basically agree with the movement he mounted. I have no inherent attachment to nonviolence, I have no principled detachment to nonviolence, as he did. But I think that it was the right tactic for the time and place, that you want to use violence only when it is the last resort. I would not deny it for an oppressed people as a last resort. But if you live within a culture that will allow you to achieve your purposes without the use of violence, if there is that kind of space, and it seems that in this country there is that kind of political space, then I think he understood that. And his tactics were appropriate and they worked. SM (01:09:21): And the same token, Malcolm X? LD (01:09:27): I think that, again, I happen to have a high regard from Malcolm X, almost as high as Martin Luther King. It really is yet to be determined whether King's tactics could carry over beyond, say, desegregation of a lunch counter or a school system into being able to achieve the economic justice that King also aimed at. I suspect that if you could sustain a non-violent movement sufficiently long enough and effectively organize it enough, you probably can get a lot of economic justice out of that kind of movement. But clearly, from the perspective of a guy who is coming out of the ghetto, the Northern ghettos, like Malcolm X, you are going to be very suspicious of that non-violence, I mean, because your reality is the cops are coming in, beating you up all the time, as they still do. And so, it is hard to get out there, dress in a suit and go walk down the center of the street, when in fact they put up barricades, they will not let you walk in white suburbs. So, both King and Malcolm X came out of different social milieus, and those different social milieus created a different perspective and led to different kind of tactics. So I do not condemn Malcolm X for his tactics. I know where he was coming from. And I think that Malcolm X was a man who was eminently capable of evolving, as he in fact did evolve. SM (01:11:29): What about [inaudible] people here, Huey Newton and Angela Davis? LD (01:11:30): Right. Actually, at one point, I think I met both of them briefly. Well, I had regard for Huey Newton. I think he was a man of great organizational skills and incredible bravery, along with the other Black Panthers. Again, he seemed to be doomed to tragedy, as most of these people were, ultimately because unlike the institutional achievements of the King movement, the economic justice that really these folks were aiming at was something that the capitalist system could not accord them very easily. And so they were in many ways doomed to failure. And I think Huey Newton died as tragically as Abbie Hoffman did. SM (01:12:32): Oh yeah [inaudible] situation shut and open [inaudible] like that. LD (01:12:36): Well, perhaps that is fitting. I mean, it is sort of apropos of the whole situation, but- SM (01:12:42): How about Angela Davis? LD (01:12:43): Right. Oh, Angela Davis is an incredibly astute and principled intellectual. And she is a rare individual in that she is both an intellectual and a person of action. It is very rare in history that you get people who are truly intellectuals and also people of action. And I think she is an example of that, and I have a very high regard for her on that basis. SM (01:13:18): How about George McGovern? LD (01:13:20): I think his heart is in the right place. He is ultimately dedicated to the system that he was born and bred to. But I think that that given the limitations of that position, I think his heart is in the right place. SM (01:13:44): Senator Eugene McCarthy? LD (01:13:46): Well, the same thing. Though many people in the SDS at the time dismissed McCarthy with disdain and felt that the whole Come Clean for Gene phenomena was a clever attempt on the part of the quote, "system," unquote, to co-opt the anti-war movement. And they might have been right. I mean, you have to ask yourself, what would have a man like McGovern or McCarthy done if they had been elected president? Would they in fact have essentially stopped the war, or would they have done what Nixon did, simply continue the war while they try to negotiate their way out of it? So, we do not know. SM (01:14:43): Dr. Benjamin Spock? LD (01:14:48): Well, I do not know very much about Spock. And he is obviously a man of high principle and willing to stand up for the principles that he believes in. And since his principles aren't completely different than my principles, I mean, I will go- LD (01:15:03): ... since his principles are not completely different than my principles, I will go with them. SM (01:15:06): The Berrigan brothers, two priests. LD (01:15:08): Right. Right-right-right. Actually, I knew them briefly because they passed through Georgetown. Again, very, very brave individuals. They not only had to risk the displeasure of a wider society that they were part of, but they had to risk the displeasure of the smaller Jesuit Catholic society that they had made careers in. There were many, many priests Catholic priests like the Berrigans. There was one at Georgetown whose name was McSorley. I do not know what ever happened to him. Yeah, who led anti-war protests, night vigils, candlelight vigils, marches and stuff like that. These were brave people who were willing to risk their futures, their careers, and take on popular positions based on their principles, whether the principles were motivated by secular or religious reasons. And so you have to admire them. You have to admire them. Those types of people are what really the best the society really has to offer. SM (01:16:30): Muhammad Ali. LD (01:16:35): I do not know. I have no real reaction to a Muhammad Ali. Again, obviously an outspoken, principled kind of guy, probably whose heart is a humane one. And of course, a leading role model in the African American society, for the youth. SM (01:17:01): George Wallace. LD (01:17:03): Well, again, at least you can say about Wallace is that he had his principles. There was nothing wishy-washy about the guy. So to the extent that you can respect your enemy, because at the very least you can clearly recognize him as the enemy, I will give him some credit. As, again, say Lyndon Johnson, who was kind of a political opportunist. Wallace, he was a politician certainly, but he was clearly a man of his culture. That southern culture. And took a principled Stand for it. It was the wrong stand, it was an anti-human stand. At least you knew where he was coming from. SM (01:17:55): Daniel Ellsberg. LD (01:17:57): Right. Again, I see Ellsberg as an individual that is deep within the governmental system. That is his career line, that is where he's at. And he finds himself in this sort of conflictual situation where he cannot deal with the Vietnam War. Now, I am unclear as to why he cannot deal with it. Now, is it because, for instance, from my point of view that it's a violation of the best principles of the nation and a contradiction in terms of the ideals of the nation? Or is it just that it is unwinnable? And that we are making a mess, we are getting deeper and deeper into this quagmire and we really ought to have to cut our losses? I am not sure where he is coming from, but he is coming from somewhere out there like that. Probably the latter, but I cannot say for sure. But in any case, has got the gumption to blow the whistle on this deal, where the myriad number of his fellows are just going to go along with it. So, you have to give this guy some sort of credit for having the courage to do that. SM (01:19:15): What do you think of John Dean? LD (01:19:19): Right, John Dean. Well, I do not know. If the man had never really... Obviously, john Dean would have probably wished to hell that he had come to the forefront in some other administration than this one and the one he happened to be in. I think he was a little man. An [foreign language], to use that kind of Russian phrase. He is a little guy. He is a cog in the machine. He tries to give Nixon the best advice he can and he gets screwed. SM (01:20:01): John Mitchell. LD (01:20:04): Now, Mitchell is a big cog in the machine. Mitchell is without principle and without conscience. And he, like Averell Harriman, I think it was Averell Harriman during the Truman administration. This is just a short but apropos diversion here. During the Truman administration, there was a debate over the issue of Palestine and whether to support the creation of the Israeli state or whatever. And the State Department and the defense department both recommended against it. And I think it was Averell Herman who was a, and I might be wrong, but it strikes me that is who it was, went and had lunch with a guy who was the assistant secretary of state, whose name I cannot remember now. And the guy said to Harriman, "Look. Recognizing the state of Israel at this moment is going to so screw us up with the rest of the Arab world, where we have real economic interests, that it is not in American national interest to do it." And Harriman looked at him and said, "The reelection of Harry Truman is what is the American national interest." All right? So, I see Mitchell in that light. He confuses the survival of the regime he happens to be tied up with, with American national interests. In other words, ultimately, he confuses his own position, his own outlook, his own ego with American national interests, as I suspect Nixon did too. So, I do not have much regard for those guys. SM (01:21:51): [inaudible] the names here, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan in terms of the women's movement. Thoughts on them. LD (01:21:57): Well, I am, in principle, in favor of "women's liberation." So I basically agree with their analysis of the women's positions in society. And also, to a certain extent, the need for an out front, in your face kind of tactic when it comes to women's issues. Because I do not think, for instance, that polite dialogue is going to get women through any kind of glass ceiling. I just do not think it is going to happen. So, you need the analysis that they gave, and you need a sort of confrontational approach if you're ever going to move women forward in regard to entrenched positions for essentially a man's economic and institutional world. Now, that being said, I do not mistake that for any real faith that women can run the world in a more humane fashion than men because I do not really think men and women are that different, that we are both products of our culture. So, you are going to, and particularly in a culture where the definition and concept of family is really very kind of shaky, I think you see just as many conservative women as liberal women out there on the scene. And so, in just switching men for women is not going to make the world all rosy. But in principle, generally, there should be equality and opportunity. And there's certainly equality in terms of intellect. The SDS chapter I moved in in Washington DC, the person who really was the brains behind that out outfit was a remarkably intelligent and organizationally capable woman. SM (01:24:07): It was a rarity in that time, because women are really [inaudible]. LD (01:24:11): Well, the- SM (01:24:12): [inaudible] criticism that when people were active in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, men were in the leadership roles, women just were the paper shufflers at the thing that many of the people in the movement talk about. LD (01:24:23): Well, this particular woman, she was not at Georgetown, but there was a larger SDS contingent within Washington DC as a whole. Her name was Kathy Wilkerson. Now, she and I had had a parting of the ways when the SDS movement fell apart because she became involved in the Weatherman movement and where I did not. But in terms of conceptualizing an agenda and organizing the daily activities and presenting an analysis of the situation going on, she was the moving force in the SDS of that area at that time. And I have great admiration for her. And it is just my opinion that the differences, the intellectual differences, that are sometimes described between men and women are just false. Women have babies, men do not have babies. And I imagine there is some hormonal and there is some genetic quality differences between the two, but they do not, in my opinion, affect intellectual ability. Even, I think, physical ability is overplayed. There's no reason that women cannot be in combat. Though, quite frankly, I cannot imagine why they or men would want to be. So, there it is. SM (01:26:10): I guess two final questions. I just want to ask you, what does the wall mean to you? [inaudible] over the wall, you have been there. What happened to you? LD (01:26:23): Quite frankly, I think that, for me, it is a symbol of an immense tragedy. I think there ought to be another wall adjacent to it dedicated to all the Vietnamese that we killed, and then the monument would be complete. And perhaps between the two, we can have another stile, another kind of thing with the names of all the butchers who caused this to happen, with the proper epitaph for them. To me, it is just a symbol of a great tragedy. And to the extent that people do not understand the origins of that tragedy, and simply analyze it in terms of an oversimplified patriotism and betrayal of patriotism, that is a horror. SM (01:27:32): The basic premise of that wall was to be a non-political statement. No politics here, just to pay tribute to those who served. What happened. LD (01:27:40): Well, they died. SM (01:27:41): [inaudible] came of those who died. Of course, many have died since, who did serve, for variety of reasons. And many are still living post-traumatic syndrome lives. But majority of them though, have gone on to be successful, which is something that sometimes the media does not portray correctly. But it is supposed to be a non-political, so if you make a comment that there should be Vietnamese, then we are getting into the politics of the war, which is the war was not meant to be. It is supposed to be a healing. LD (01:28:09): I do not care what it is meant to be. I do not care if it is meant to be non-political. It is, of course, inherently political. The war was a manifestation of American politics. Just by saying it is supposed to be not political, does not make it unpolitical. It cannot be unpolitical or non-political because the war itself is a manifestation of politics. SM (01:28:37): What are your thoughts on Bill Clinton went to the wall and spoke? And of course, [inaudible] look at him as like, "Here is the typical boomer, Bill Clinton." But he is president of the United States. But he went to the wall and that was a very, for or against it, a lot of Vietnam veterans will never forgive him for what he did, but still he went to the wall. LD (01:28:55): What the hell did he do? What did he do? He tried to avoid and successfully avoided going and serving in a beastly war that served no real purpose but to betray the highest American principles. So he avoided being a piece of cannon fodder. Now, if, in fact, the Vietnam veterans cannot forgive him- SM (01:29:26): Not all, but some. LD (01:29:27): Right. Or some cannot forgive him for escaping their fate, for not being victimized like they were victimized, then their analysis of their own fate, their own history is simply erroneous. Now, people live with erroneous analyses of their condition all the time, but does not mean how they perceive it is true. Though for them it might be true, but historically it's not true. See, I can condemn Clinton for a lot of things, but I am not going to condemn him for trying to avoid getting butchered in Vietnam. SM (01:30:08): How about Fonda going over to Hanoi? LD (01:30:12): I think it was a brave and necessary act. SM (01:30:14): In fact, that is a name I did not mention. Jane Fonda. LD (01:30:17): Yeah, I like Jane Fonda. I think it was a brave and necessary act. It was a time when you had to be in their face. Nothing was polite in those days. So, you had had to have some sort of shock value kind of statement that says, "Look, there is a significant minority of Americans who are simply not on the side of the government that is doing this." I do not see the anti-war movement as enemies of the American troops in Vietnam. I see the anti-war movement as their very best friends. They were the ones, the anti-war movement people were the ones who were trying to save the lives of American troops. And, for that matter, Vietnamese. And if they had been listened to, you would have had many, many thousands of Americans alive today who are now dead. So what are you going to do? You're going to point a finger at those who are trying to save your neck and condemn them? SM (01:31:22): But how would you respond to, "Well, you're trying to save their neck, but she actually trying to save your own neck"? LD (01:31:27): Jane Fonda's neck, she put her neck in a noose by going there. In what sense was she trying to save their- her own neck? SM (01:31:35): What are your thoughts on Jane Fonda personally? And Tom Hayden? As a follow-up in terms of- LD (01:31:45): I do not know. I do not know. They're divorced now, are not they? SM (01:31:45): I know, but their impact on the boomers and what they did, their lives. What do their lives mean to those who lived in that era? LD (01:31:53): I do not know. I do not know. I basically agreed with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden as they acted in the (19)60s and early (19)70s, and I cannot really comment on their careers beyond that. SM (01:32:06): This is my last question, which is going back to this whole business about healing, where the divisions were so wide in America back then and this concept of trying to heal today, as boomers go into their (19)50s. Is it important for you to heal and forgive? I am not talking about Robert McNamara now or Richard Nixon, but just in general, the concept of maybe forgiving. Do you think, is it important for you to forgive, to heal from this era? Or do you feel the bitterness will remain? LD (01:32:40): Well, I am not sure you can describe my feelings as bitterness or the need to heal. I do not think in those terms. I have certain principles and a certain political position and certain goals, if I can be so bold, for the nation in terms of economic justice, social justice, civil rights, that kind of thing. And those are ongoing struggles. Okay? Now, I recognize that there are people out there who are essentially opposed to me. If I have any bitterness, it is towards the people, of course, who are opposed. SM (01:33:22): It is just for woman the next time. LD (01:33:28): Well, when I say jackasses, who I believe their position is anti-human, that condemns the poor, condemns minorities to second class citizenship, and gets us involved in wars that kill a whole lot of us and a whole lot of them, to no real use. Who screwed up Central and South America repeatedly. So, of course, from my bias perspective, people that are opposed to me are anti-human. They are really nasty, evil people. So, if I have got any bitterness, it is towards them, not towards some grunt in Vietnam, whose interests I think I was trying to look after in the antiwar movement. And it is ongoing. And it has nothing to do with generations. It has nothing to do with Lyndon Johnson's generation against my generation. There is plenty of people in my generation who stand against me. And there is going to be plenty people in the next generation. And so it just goes on until the day I die. And it is part of what makes life meaningful, to continue that struggle. And quite frankly, while I would like to win, I do not expect to win. And ultimately, I do not think that that is the most important thing. Though, I certainly do want to win. But what is the most important thing is to carry on the struggle and to be consistent to your principles and to be able to sleep at night with yourself. And that is what is important. SM (01:35:06): And as we all hope someday, and we all know we are going to pass beyond this planet, that when we reflect on our deathbed, yeah, we might have family around us, but we are alone at the very end and light flashes before us. And oftentimes, it is very important to know that your whole life flashes, but you think of the good about what you have done. And it is not always in terms of the amount of money you have made and the car you had, the possessions you have, but how you have lived your life. LD (01:35:32): Right. And at least at the moment, anyway, I am basically satisfied with what I have done. I have never second guessed myself in terms of what went on in those days. I do not think I have changed in any real way. My politics is the same and I am satisfied with that. And I will continue to fight and struggle for the principles that I did in the (19)60s, and that is the way it is. SM (01:35:58): Well, Dr. Davidson, I want to thank you very much for participating. Thank you. LD (01:36:01): Sure. SM (01:36:01): And have a good day. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Larry Davidson Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Davidson, Lawrence, 1945- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource College teachers; West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Political activists--United States; Davidson, Lawrence, 1945--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Larry Davidson is a retired History professor at West Chester University. He is the author of <em>Islamic Fundamentalism</em> and&nbsp;<em>Cultural Genocide</em>, and is an expert on the Middle East. As a student, Davidson was an SDS (Student for A Democratic Society) leader at Georgetown University who made the front page of the <em>Washington Post</em> along with other students protesting the war in Vietnam. Dr. Davidson received his Ph.D. in Modern European Intellectual History from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource ND Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.67a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.67b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 96:06 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/b627f0b93c60a89e01915fd579024b23.jpg 53f237a85d73da43846c712fc1a7bc96 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/70ee3688d055cc44c17ef43b1707035f.mp3 600d4541e81acb61f48296e17022f2dc 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2011-08-11 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Courtland Cox, 1941- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Courtland Cox spent his childhood between Trinidad and New York City. He went to Howard University and eventually became a civil rights activist. He joined a group called the Non-violent Action Group (NAG) to fight against white supremacy and segregation and then became a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Throughout his years as an activist, Cox helped organized groups in order to prevent segregation from occurring in the world.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4483,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:[null,2,5099745],&quot;10&quot;:2,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Courtland Cox spent his childhood between Trinidad and New York City. He went to Howard University and eventually became a civil rights activist. He joined a group called the Non-violent Action Group (NAG) to fight against white supremacy and segregation and then became a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Throughout his years as an activist, Cox helped organized groups in order to prevent segregation from occurring in the world.</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 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Trinidad; Harlem; Island Scholarships Projects; Bronx; Throggs Neck Projects; Poverty; Caribbean; Segregation; Freedom rides; Bobby Mitchell; Ernie Davis; Racial equality; Discrimination; Black colleges; Black Panther; Montgomery Bus Boycott; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Baby boom generation; Gay Power; Cultural Boundaries.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Trinidad; Harlem; Island Scholarships Projects; Bronx; Throggs Neck Projects; Poverty; Caribbean; Segregation; Freedom rides; Bobby Mitchell; Ernie Davis; Racial equality; Discrimination; Black colleges; Black Panther; Montgomery Bus Boycott; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Baby boom generation; Gay Power; Cultural Boundaries.</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 142:55 Subject LCSH Political activists--United States; Cox, Courtland, 1941--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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Courtland Cox Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 11 August 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:04): Testing one, two. Just hold these tapes as we go. One of the first questions I like to always ask is, how did you become- CC (00:00:16): Would it be better if we sat at a table that you could just- SM (00:00:19): Oh, no, this is fine. I sat many couches. CC (00:00:25): There is a table. Let us look at the other room. You want the lights on here or just- SM (00:00:31): Oh, no, we are fine. Yep, we are fine. Got my new glasses too, these cost me a lot of money. How did you become who you are? The first question I always ask is, what were those early years in your life when you were in elementary school and secondary school before you went off to Howard? And I always like to find out a little about where you grew up, your family, what your parents did. Who your mentors, role models were, before you ever met Bayard Rustin. CC (00:01:04): Well, I was born in the United States in Harlem, actually. And my mother had moved here from Trinidad. And when I was four years old, my mother sent my sister and myself back to Trinidad to live with my grandmother because she was a single parent in the United States, so it was very difficult. So we went back and I lived in Trinidad from the time I was four, until my grandmother died in (19)52, and came back here around 11, 12 years old. I think probably the biggest influence on me, in that period, was the emphasis on education that my family had. Even though my mother's generation did not go to college, my grandmother had nine children and probably about seven survived. And each of them, education was big for their families and many of them, and those who were ahead of me, had won at that time what they called island scholarships. Some attended Cambridge, some attended Oxford, some went to LSE, London School of Economics, others came to the United States. So probably the first big influence in my life was the huge stress for education and becoming educated. When I came back to the United States, around 12, we were moved out of Harlem into the projects in the Bronx, called Throggs Neck Projects. And at that point, I observed America from that vantage point. And so in (19)53, (19)54, America was a much different place as it dealt with the question of race. But a lot of the pathologies that we see today were present at that point. Kids were getting on drugs. There was heroin at that point, smoking marijuana. A lot of them were not going to school. There were no jobs. People overtly told them, "Why go to school? You are not going to have a good college education." So all of that was emphasized in the society very openly. They absorbed it. And as kids 15, 16, 17, by that time, their initiatives were already destroyed. But the thing for me was the background that I had from Trinidad in terms of education, in terms of emphasis, in terms of my mother's view, that kind of inoculated me from that environment. And so therefore, while all of them were dropping out of school, I was going to school, I was fit. My sister and I were probably two of the four people that continued to go to high school. But we dealt with high school anyhow. So that is before I got to Howard University. The whole emphasis on education, my upbringing in the Caribbean was probably the major influence of my life. SM (00:05:12): At what point when you were young, you could be junior high or senior high, when you're reading about the history of the United States, and you come from Trinidad and how important education is in your family, that you read the history of the United States and there was a point in time when African Americans were not allowed to read. They were punished if they were caught reading. And this is going back to even to the founding of the nation and what happened in the 1800s. CC (00:05:49): I think the discussion I had with the guys who were 15 and 16 years old, it was now I think about it, their analysis of the society and what was open to them and what was real or not real was very profound. I am now understanding a lot better. I think my discussion, because coming back to the United States was a culture shock in the sense that all the frames of reference that were here was something I did not really have. I was coming from one culture to another culture, but my understanding of the American environment really, my first impressions were really developed with talking to the young people who, at the end of the day, whether they be in jail, killed or so forth, but they understood what the discussion was. SM (00:07:05): If you were to talk about mentors and role models as you got older, obviously Bayard Rustin was one, and there were many others, Dr. King. Was there, even in your schooling here in the United States, you had your grandmother, you had your family, but was there a teacher, was there some teacher in school or some figure in the news that in the 1950s that stood out for you as a young [inaudible]? CC (00:07:36): I would say the name that comes to mind, but this was in the Caribbean, Ms. Curry. But when I came back to the United States, my mother sent me to Catholic schools to make sure that that shield was there. My sense is that when I came back, I went to a school that was, finishing the eighth grade or so, was the all black order of nuns at St. Aloysius School. I think it was the name after St. Martin De Porres. So that was my first thing. And then I went to Catholic high school. But that was a different shock because there were four blacks in the whole school. SM (00:08:39): And how many were in the school? CC (00:08:41): Probably hundreds of kids. Literally the whole school. And I think we were the first class. And by the second year of high school, I was the only black, no, I think there were two of us, but third year I was the only one. So coming from the contrast from Catholic school where you're the only black or one or two in back to the projects, the contrast was quite interesting as I remember it. SM (00:09:22): And were there any books as a young boy or young man that you read early on? Writers that inspired you? CC (00:09:35): I do not know inspired but the one that James Joyce, The Portrait. Reading that in Catholic school, that was quite, and also my sense is that the other one that impressed me was Zola's book. The title does not come to mind right away. SM (00:10:12): Émile Zola? CC (00:10:14): Émile Zola's book. We talked about the trial. But I think at that point, the whole discussions of right and wrong and good and bad, seems to me those kinds of things attracted my attention, the things that focused on that, right and wrong and good and bad and so forth. SM (00:10:43): My next question gets into the Howard years. How did you end up at Howard University? Why did you pick that school? And talking about your years in Howard, how did you become an activist for the first time? And do you remember the first time that you ever spoke up about a subject that upset you and you really became vulnerable for the first time? CC (00:11:09): My sense is that after I got out of college, no, while I was in high school, my mother's place was the place, that was the stop that everybody came to from Trinidad, my relatives. And my cousin, Erskine, had been accepted to Howard. So he was going back and forth to Howard, I think I was working in the post office and I was 18 or 19, I was making in 1958, (19)59, I was making $2 an hour plus 20 percent plus 10 percent night differentials. So I was making $2.20 an hour, which was a lot of money during that time. But I said to myself, "I really do not want to be doing this all." I was a postal clerk. It was not like I was- SM (00:12:27): This is after you graduated high school? CC (00:12:30): The year after I took the test, I became a postal clerk, which was a career for most people. And I was, after six months, I said, "Nah, there must be a better way. Must be a better way than this." And so I talked to my cousin about Howard, Erskine Arlene, because at that time Howard just gave a test entrance exam. You did not have to take SATs and all that. You had an entrance exam. So one day got on the Greyhound bus, came down to Washington, I remember it was snowing in New York, when I got to Washington it was sunny. And took the test and went back home. And short time later, they said, "Hey, you passed. You are good if you want to come." And at that point, it cost $7.50 a semester hour to go to school. And so it was like $107.50 for 15 hours, $40 room and board, $40 for food. And so I was working at post office making serious money and so I saved my postal money and came down to Howard to go to school. SM (00:14:08): And you were there four year. CC (00:14:08): Four years, that is right. SM (00:14:10): What years were those now? CC (00:14:13): I came down in (19)60 and left (19)64. SM (00:14:18): Harris Walford went there, but I think he went to law school there, did not he? CC (00:14:21): Who is this? SM (00:14:21): Harris Walford. CC (00:14:23): Walford? I do not know. I am not sure. He was a little ahead of me, I am sure. SM (00:14:28): I think he went to law school. CC (00:14:30): Law school there, right. SM (00:14:36): During those years, what was being a student at Howard during those years? CC (00:14:39): I am telling you a lot of energy. I think we started out, we did a number of things at Howard. We did the civil rights discussion. We did the newspaper. We did a Project awareness. We did a bunch. We were the energy bunnies. We started out- SM (00:15:11): Who is "we" now? CC (00:15:13): People like Stokely Carmichael, Bill Mahoney, Mike Thelwell, Ed Brown, people like that. We were at Cleve Sellers, who's now president of Voorhees. We started out in trying to, when I came here in (19)60, a number of things were in Washington. First, Glen Echo, the amusement park was segregated. The Washington Post had ads for coloreds and whites. They were huge swaths of the city that blacks could not live in. A number of stores, the better stores, blacks could not try on clothes. The police force was mainly guys from the south who could not find jobs elsewhere being put on the police force by the congressional people. The district was run hands on by the Congress of the United States. So we came into this environment and we started off by, right after the Freedom Rides and right after the whole question of the sit-ins, we started testing the kind of segregated facilities that they had in Washington. And we formed a group called the Non-Violent Action Group, which was one of the student groups that comprised SNCC, Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. So that is how I started getting into it. Looking at the situation that was here in Washington in terms of the segregated facilities, the segregated political structure. The segregated economic structure. Not only does that mean Washington Redskins had no black players. So one of the first things I did was picketed RFK, what we call RFK Stadium now, because they had no black players on their team. SM (00:17:45): Was Bobby Mitchell the first? CC (00:17:47): Yeah, he came the year after. SM (00:17:49): From the Cleveland Browns. CC (00:17:51): He came in after. I think the first thing they were going to do was they were to get, what is his name from Syracuse who died? SM (00:17:59): Ernie Davis. CC (00:18:01): Ernie Davis, yes. But he died and then they brought in Bobby Mitchell. And the Redskins owner name is not coming to me now. What's his name? SM (00:18:16): [inaudible] CC (00:18:16): No-no-no. I am talking about why back, because the Redskins was a team of the South. Because remember, most football teams at that period in 1960 did not exist in the South. They did not go to the south till later on. Most of the teams, they had maybe 12 teams. You were talking about the Cleveland. The football was an industrial, northern industrial phenomena. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, New York, places like that. Philadelphia. So when you talk about the South and the West, they did not come until after (19)60 when you had the AFC and all these other guys coming in. So you got to remember that the Redskins were the team of the South. That is what everybody, there was no Dallas Cowboys, or there was no North Carolina Panthers or Atlanta Falcons. They did not have all that. They had the Redskins. This was their team. And so if they are broadcasting in the South they were not going to have a lot of black people on North's teams. So that was particularly important. SM (00:19:34): It is interesting because Ernie Davis, I am from Syracuse, right? So Ernie is dead from Leukemia, so sad. CC (00:19:45): He had a lot of potential. A big guy. We started with that non-violent action group. We had a group coming together, as I mentioned some of the people, Ed Brown, Cleve, Stanley Wise, Stokely, Mary Felice Lovelace, Muriel Tillinghast. We had a group of very, very bright people. SM (00:20:20): How big was the student population at that time? And were you the rare group, the ones that were really activists? CC (00:20:29): We were the rare group, the student population I could not tell you. Probably had to be, I do not know, probably at least maybe 15, 16, maybe 2000. I am not sure, but about at least that. But we were the group that we were seen. Interestingly enough, we were seen by the students as unusual. We were seen by the professors as their children of hope. So we were treated by the professors, at least certain professors, but I think a number of them, with a certain kind of, "We are behind you. We want to talk to you. We want to nurture you." And probably the lead in that was Sterling Brown. Sterling Brown, he did for us a number of things. He would come and he would lecture about the blues in our dormitory. We could get him to do it. He would come and talk. He would read his poetry. He would talk about jazz. But more importantly, for a small group of us, Butch Khan and Ed and Tom Khan, and people like that. Tom and Butch were also very key in this discussion. He would take us over at his house, open up some bourbon and talk about the voice, talk about the people that he knew. So it was not a book discussion. He is talking about friends. Because one of the things that interests me today, because when I am talking to people in SNCC, it is always a discussion about your life. It is always a discussion about memories. It is always a discussion about a number of things. My perspective is really just, these are the things I did. That is what it is. It is only when people are talking to me that there is a sense of history. And so what Sterling Brown did was took us inside the lives of the voice, about what he liked, what he liked to eat, what did he like to drink, how'd he wear his pass, what people would say about it, the whole discussion. He gave us a sense, there were people like Conrad Snow, who was a professor up there. People like Emmett Dorsey. They were all people who really said to us, "You are not radicals. You are not outside the mainstream." The message to us constantly from those professors were, "You are the hope of our future." And I think enough has not been said about a lot of those professors who, like Patricia. Patricia, she ran for mayor. Patricia Roberts Harris, she was secretary of HUD. She was also an ambassador too. And I remember in a little while, but she was also Dean of Women at Howard University. And Mary Felice Lovelace, who was going out, she and Stokely were an item for a long time. They went out. And when she would come back late from demonstrations, while it was a strict rule for the other women, Harris, "Well, you are coming in from demonstrations. All right." So they gave us space. And so I think on that side of it, we did that at Howard. While we were also viewed as a small band, people also looked at what we were doing. And I think probably Stokely had the biggest impact on this, is that he would also involve the other students, and going out to demonstrate. He would tell them that we were going in a demonstration, but there was a great party afterwards. And so to go to the party afterwards, these kids would go demonstrate. So we would swell our ranks with that. Now, I think for both Stokely and myself in particular, and Tom Khan, Tom obviously was very close to Bayard, but we also knew, coming from New York, both of us, knew about some of the discussions that were going on. So one of the things that we did, and this is really Tom Khan's brainchild, we created a thing called Project Awareness. And the same NAG people who were doing the demonstrations were the same NAG people who did the organization of the Project Awareness. And the first event was a debate between Bayard Rustin and Malcolm X on separation versus integration. SM (00:27:14): Is that the one where they are on the stage and it was taped? CC (00:27:17): Yeah. SM (00:27:18): That is a story. CC (00:27:19): Yes, it is. But it is interesting. This work in a number of ways. First of all, it revealed to us a split at Howard University. The head of the political science department, his name was Martin, Professor Martin, thought that it was unworthy to have Malcolm X at Howard University. Emmett Dorsey, who was a professor who was very strong on the African American status in the United States, shot pool down at the pool hall with the guys and so forth, embraced Malcolm and then moderated the debate. And he was the one that did that. Now, this was our first debate. Cramton Auditorium had just opened up. It held 1500 people. And you asked me how many people we had. We had 1500 people there. The place was packed to the gills, not only packed to the gills, they were people banging all night on the doors trying to get in. And Bayard did something that was very interesting. Each speaker had, I think, half an hour to present their case, and Bayard was up first, he spoke on the question of integration. Malcolm was speaking on the question of separation. Bayard spoke for 15 minutes, and he said, "You always-" CC (00:29:03): ... 15 minutes. And he said, "You always hear my point of view. I am going to give Malcolm 15 minutes of my time so that you can fully hear his." And I am telling you, Malcolm was one of the best speakers around. You could not believe... I mean, he had a profound effect. So after that first event, people looked at us even more... And the professors were even more embracing, and the students were amazed. "God, how could you do that? How could you pull that off?" The next event we had on the Project Awareness was called Whither the Negro Writer. It was moderated by Sterling Brown. We had Ossie Davis, we had John Killens. We had Jim Baldwin. And it was just, again, another fabulous thing. And we used to have little after parties for the guests. Sidney Poitier flew in, said, "I heard you guys were in town. I just thought I would come and party, hang out." I mean, it was like... So now we really think, "Wow, what is going..." And then the third thing that we had was on thermonuclear warfare with Herman Kahn from, I think it was the Hudson Institute, and Norman Thomas debating the issue of thermonuclear warfare. So now we have established not only the demonstrations about trying to go against the large society, but on the big issues of the day, we are now driving that train. And in addition to that, also, Mike Falwell, who was part of the NAG. SM (00:31:12): Group, was the editor of the newspaper, The Hilltop, which received award after award. So not only now we are part of a group that does this in terms of outside the campus, this in terms of the campus, and then Stokely and Tom Kahn were on the student council. And Tom was very smart. He says, "I do not want to be the president. I just want to be the treasurer." He ran for being the treasurer. And he understood that was where it is. So basically we had spread, we had an entity, an organizing entity that functioned both inside and outside the campus that had a profound effect on what was going on. And the other thing was that we were probably some of the best students in the campus too. So this is, I think for even today when I talk to the people we were in school with today, they remember that, the energy we brought to the discussion. So I would say that the profound discussion at Howard to me was that. Now I think off-campus, I think probably, I would say the smartest person I had ever seen politically in terms of these things was Bayard. Because he had seen a lot of these movies. He had understood the politics. And at that point we had a lot of things with the Trotskyites and the Stalinists and all that kind of stuff. And he had been through all of that whole era, and he was able to help us sink through and deal with all of it because we had a focused message. We did not need to go into the battle of who lost Moscow and all that kind of stuff. We wanted to know what is it we were going to do here? Where were we going to go? So my sense is that, at least at Howard, through that whole Howard period, there are a number of things I found to be very important. First, I guess sense from the professors that we were Children of Hope. I think the second thing was that the energy that we were able to bring to the discussion, whether we were dealing with demonstrations or whether we were dealing with the newspaper articles, we were able to practice our craft of being very good at whatever we did. We did not lose. The whole organizing discussion, we were very good at it. The third, we were big influences of the young people who were on campus as to what was going to be their future, breaking the barriers that they had come into. And so I think in the political sense, probably Bayard was the most important. I think on the cultural historical sense; Sterling Brown was the most important. Whatever became of Sterling? CC (00:35:16): He died. SM (00:35:17): How long after? CC (00:35:20): Sterling was in his high (19)80s. Sterling was in the high (19)80s, and I assume Sterling died maybe, it seemed like 15, 20 years ago. SM (00:35:36): Okay. CC (00:35:36): Yeah. SM (00:35:38): Hey. That is a great description of your time in Howard. And the thing is, I did not know Stokely was there. I knew Ed was there. CC (00:35:47): Stokely was there. SM (00:35:48): Stokely was very- CC (00:35:50): He was very profound. And Cleve Sellers, Stanley Wise, Muriel Tillinghan. I mean, those people were very... Not only that, let me just also go one other point. In terms of SNCC. You had two kinds of views coming out of SNCC. The one is John Lewis's view about nonviolence. And his view was that this was a philosophy, a way of life. And what you were trying to do was appeal to people's better selves. The Howard people did not have that view. Howard people believed, thought that nonviolence was important because you did not have enough to be not non-violent. And that at the end of the day, that people operated out of their own interests, not out of any kind of goodness at the heart. So I think probably the thing while at Howard and the big debate, the NAG group in terms of SNCC, was from the beginning, our views were much sharper, much more political than the Nashville group with John and Diane Nash Bevel, and those others. SM (00:37:30): That is James Bevel's wife, right? CC (00:37:32): Yes. SM (00:37:32): And he died at about two years ago. CC (00:37:33): He died about two years ago. SM (00:37:35): We had him on campus twice. CC (00:37:37): Right. Yeah. Right. SM (00:37:37): And so you really met Bayard right there at Howard. CC (00:37:41): Yeah. Met Bayard at Howard. SM (00:37:42): In that debate. CC (00:37:43): He came to the debate. Yeah. SM (00:37:47): Now, how did he continue to influence the people? He came to the debate and Nelson came and they went on. You guys were with SNCC and you had your issues on campus. You were involved with many other people. Did you still stay in touch with them? CC (00:37:58): Oh yeah. SM (00:37:59): And the Congress of Racial Equality too? CC (00:38:01): Yeah, because one of the things, especially in terms of the demonstrations, I stayed with in touch with Bayard a lot, probably more than the others. But I think that he was very helpful in terms of trying to get us through the political thickets that we found ourselves, particularly in the demonstrations in Baltimore and the various kinds of people interests who wanted to come and take over. So, Bayard, I remember once we were in a big fight with some people in Baltimore, and Bayard got the national headquarters of court to make him a representative. So he came into the meeting as the National Representative Corps, and he just devastated the people who wanted to go against us. But the other big thing was, you remember also, Bayard was the organizer, I guess for the second March on Washington, second proposed March. So... That is definitely you. SM (00:39:30): Hello? Hello? How would they get my number? Bye. Amazing. I am on Facebook a lot. CC (00:39:53): Oh you are? SM (00:39:55): Yeah, I am on Facebook and I have friends, and I belong to certain organizations through Facebook. They sell your name to everything. CC (00:40:03): Well, guess what? I avoid that. SM (00:40:06): Facebook? CC (00:40:09): Yeah. SM (00:40:09): I am starting to see the dangers of it. Definitely seeing the dangers of it. Now, I will get back here. Amazing that they got up. They should have my home phone. They should not be having my cell phone number. CC (00:40:22): Well, that is easy to get. SM (00:40:23): Yeah. One of the things, you worked on the March on Washington. CC (00:40:30): Right. Yeah. SM (00:40:31): And you were the- CC (00:40:32): Representative of SNCC. And let me say to you that I am not sure SNCC would have been represented at the march in Washington, unless it was reason I argued for it. And I argued because my trust with Bayard. The people in SNCC were not at the initial points just ready for it, because you have got to remember, there were a number of competing interests in March and Washington, Dick Gregory and others had a view of something much more radical in terms and much more disruptive. And Bayard had something in a much more organized, much more important in terms of that. So SNCC people were torn in this discussion. And because of by my trust in Bayard, I was able to convince the SNCC people to participate. And their view was, since you want to do it, you go represent us. And that was that. So that is how we got into it. Now, I think it was an important for us to be there historically, as history has proven it was an important event. And to see Bayard having to maneuver where those guys, Roy Wilkins and the rest, I mean, he did have the protection of A. Phillip Randolph. Nobody was going to separate him from me, because as you remember, that time, the whole question... There are two issues that are much different now at this point than they were at that time. The question of homosexuality, that was just death. And the second was the question of communism and did you ever, or whatever. And Bayard had both of those on him. And so his ability to maneuver his organizational skills in terms of pulling that off under that kind of weight, political weight, because absent A. Philip Randolph, these guys would have never given Bayard the time of day if they could not deal with Randolph. And Randolph was going to have this march, especially after what happened in (19)41. SM (00:43:18): I read about how you were involved with changing John Lewis's speech, and I was reading in another interview that it was happening as the event was happening. CC (00:43:29): Yes, yes. Oh, there's a picture up there that showed we were doing it. One of those pictures we were back at the Lincoln Memorial- SM (00:43:39): Oh, that is that picture there? CC (00:43:39): Yes. Yeah. SM (00:43:39): Oh my God. CC (00:43:39): Yeah. That is what we are doing. I basically, as I said, I was representing the march of SNCC. And John's speech came out the day before, they sent the speech, then I distributed- SM (00:43:58): How come you did not give a speech? CC (00:43:58): Me? No-no. It was John's center. I do not know. SM (00:43:59): Yeah, he was picked by SNCC to be the man? CC (00:44:01): No, he was the chairman at that point. SM (00:44:02): Okay. CC (00:44:05): So John's speech was written, probably a lot of it by Julian. And I distributed it because I wanted make sure that John and SNCC did not get lost in the crowd in terms of the speeches. So I sent it out, gave it out the day before. And what happened was the Kennedy people saw it. And so they called Cardinal O'Boyle, who was a member of the March on Washington group representing the Catholic Church. And he threatened to pull out of the speak thing. And when Bayard came to us about it and asked for our support in terms of that, we told Bayard that it's all right if O'Boyle leaves. But then Bayard brought A. Philip Randolph, and A. Philip Randolph talked about how he had worked with this for 20 years and how it was important. And once he did that, then what we did was we had an old typewriter, you can see we had a portable typewriter, and Jim Foreman, John Lewis, Mildred Foreman and myself in the back of the Lincoln Memorial making the changes to the speech. SM (00:45:35): Unbelievable, the pressure. CC (00:45:35): Oh yeah. SM (00:45:35): The pressure is intense. CC (00:45:42): Oh yeah. But what it did at that point was that this country loves controversy, so basically it made John's speech much more memorable because of the controversy, because it now had something to add to it. So we published a speech at first, and we published the changed speech. Now the SNCC people did call me a sellout, John, Jim Foreman for changing the speech. But we thought that it was better to go ahead and do that. And it got much more historical recognition because of it. SM (00:46:20): That is amazing. And this is important. John Kennedy obviously had reservations about this whole thing. CC (00:46:26): Oh yes, he did. SM (00:46:28): And historically, at the time, correct me if I am wrong, the Southern Democrats, even in his run for the presidency, he was concerned about the Southern Democrats because if he became out too strong towards civil rights he might lose the Southern vote and all the other stuff. Then he becomes President of the United States. And we know the whole history of LBJ and what he did in civil rights. But from your experiences and from talking to John Lewis and Julian Bond and all the people, Bayard, was Kennedy just a pragmatic politician? And did he sincerely care about civil rights? Or was this just a pragmatic move on his part to get support? CC (00:47:13): I think that Kennedy was a smart politician, and I think he began to see the future. I do not think that Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, in any way had any strong belief in civil rights. I think he had an intellectual support of it. But in terms of if he had to choose between his intellectual kind of thing, doing good and doing well, he would choose doing well because he wanted to be president. I mean, it is an ambitious family. And so his call to Martin King was a symbolic thing that would help solidify the, at that point, the Negro vote against... Because you have to remember that Nixon had Jackie Robinson on his side, and most blacks, until (19)36, most black people were Republicans. Because remember, the Republican party was the party of Lincoln. And was only until the Depression and Roosevelt that it started turning around. And so you have people like Jackie Robinson who were Republicans who were supporting, and Jackie Robinson was a big hero. So King was a counterweight to Jackie Robinson on that side. The other thing is that I do truly think that probably the one that started to get it later on in life was Bobby Kennedy. I think that after his brother was shot, I think he became a lot more introspective. And I think only somebody who had really understood what the deal was could have given that speech the night King got killed. He's only one that you really... This was not an off the top of the head speech. This way a, I understand this. I understand this more than any of you really understand it. And I think that he understood it after his brother got killed. But before that, they were, for example, Tom Khan, Butch Khan, Stokely, and myself, we sat in his office, in Bobby Kennedy's office. And what was funny is that they decided, okay, just leave him. Wait until the building closed down and then take some wheelchairs and wheel him them out. So they knew that... And Bobby Kennedy, at the end of the day, when they had to face... They did not want to be pushed. But when they were pushed, they took the right decision in terms of sending in troops. But even at the same time, they were trying to isolate Bayard and others from Martin King because they thought they were quote, "the radical communist element." So they were doing both things at the same time. So they were very scared, both of the Southern discussion, which was centered on race, and the communist discussion, which was huge at that time. SM (00:51:06): And even Dr. King, if I remember correctly, he was at that group with Miles Horton. He was in the audience and they said, "He is a communist" for being at that. They were making comments about Dr. King. CC (00:51:24): Yeah, obviously, look, and Bayard and Martin parted ways on this issue of communism because they did not want to take the heat. And the only group that really did not care about it was SNCC. I mean, we associated with Anne Braden, we associated with Miles Horton. We went out to his place. I was in Mississippi in 1963, and a lady came up to me and she said, "I am sure glad you communists are here to help us." So she got the message about communists, communists, communists. But she said, "Well, if these guys are scared of the communists, they must be here to help us." So I just think that at the end of the day, the thing I think that SNCC did that, especially in the early days, they did two things that were very profound. Well, maybe three things. First, they broke the back of this communist discussion because they did not care and they were not old enough to be influenced by the discussion. Two, they were able to organize and stay in the communities with the people that they worked with. They did not come in and go out. And the third is that because of that, they were able to function and not be paralyzed by terrorist tactics. I think those three things, I think distinguishes SNCC in a lot of ways, especially in the period from (19)60 to (19)64. SM (00:53:22): And of course, did you go down to the South yourself during the Freedom Rights? CC (00:53:28): Yeah, yeah. No, I did not go down South for Freedom Rights, no. Stokely was there. Bill Mahoney, John Moody, a number of people from Howard, but I did not go. Dion Diamond. SM (00:53:38): Freedom Summer was a special year. CC (00:53:43): It was (19)64. Yeah, yeah. SM (00:53:43): Yeah. And the Schwerner, Chaney, Goodman. Boy, that must be- CC (00:53:45): Yeah, that was terrorism. I mean, that is basically send the message and these people, kids, would get scared. And while people were scared they were not paralyzed. And that is seems to be the key question. SM (00:54:03): I have a question here. Did you or your family personally experience racism? Do you ever remember yourself experiencing it personally? CC (00:54:15): Yeah. My sense is that at that time it was just pervasive. The messages were very clear. You never saw any people of color on TV. You got to remember that. It is just profound how... I mean for me, you never saw anybody of color. You were always told, "We could not find any qualified." You were always told that. I mean, I never went to an apartment and somebody told me, "No, you cannot rent here." That was not never the case. But it does seem to me that the ability to move within the society without barriers... I mean, I give up racists, okay. During the demonstrations and so forth, I would go to restaurants and we would be refused and that, so we knew that. I guess it is just, so we were told "We do not serve you" or "we do not serve your kind." And what's really funny, especially on Route 40, where we were demonstrating, of course remember at that point, 95 was not the major route to New York, it was Route 40. And it was only after- SM (00:55:42): We went through that route when we went to Florida. CC (00:55:45): Okay. But I remember Stokely and I, after they decided on Route 40 and so forth, to open up and desegregate the restaurants. Because frankly, we have been to hundreds of restaurants and they turned us away. So we went in to eat breakfast. And the food was god awful. And so we said to each other, is this what we have been fighting for? This is bad food. We just go back into the black community, and get some good food. We're not coming back to this food. We're not coming back to this anymore. So I just think that there were several barriers that were known and unknown by us and experienced and anticipated by us coming. And I guess the other thing is police brutality in terms of, we went down in Washington, DC, Butch Con, Ed Brown and myself. We went down to the police station to talk to them, complain to them about what we thought was police brutality. So it was an all-white station. So the desk Sergeant said to us, "Well, when you start paying my salary, you can come in here and tell me what is going on and what we should be doing." And Butch Con spoke up and said, "Well, as a matter of fact, because we citizens, we do pay your salary." The desk Sergeant reached across the thing and punched Butch in the face. SM (00:57:48): Oh my God. So did Butch sue him? CC (00:57:52): No-no-no-no. So what we did, and it was a guy named Wayne Moss, who was the union guy in town. I forgot what union it was, but so we called him. CC (00:58:03): ... in town. I forgot what Union he was with. So, we called him. And he also knew a guy at the Justice Department, who was African American, Duncan. And I think his name... I know his father's name was Todd Duncan, the musical guy. And Duncan was, I forgot, I am not sure what his first name was. So, this African-American comes in, and so we walk back in with this African-American guy whose name is Duncan. So, Duncan says, "I'd like to speak to the person who is in charge." So, they say, "Okay. Well, here is some more of these Black people coming in here, we saw them before." So, the guy says, "Well, we do not exactly know who's in charge." Just dismissive. So, what Duncan did, he ripped out his Justice Department credentials, and said, "If nobody is in charge, I am in charge." They were like flummoxed. They could not believe. Poom! They could not believe it. Then, he took over and directed these guys what they had to do or not do. So, I am just saying to you... And Julius Hobson, who used to, he was with CORE, as you know, he would call us for demonstrations all the time. So, yeah, for me, the reason I do not focus on events of discrimination, because I was always on offense, I was always trying to break the barriers down. Therefore, I never got offended because I was always on offense. So, that is my perspective on it. SM (01:00:10): I see here, just, people that are going to be reading the interviews, a lot of them do not know their history, as you well know, young people. In your own just a few words, what was SNCC, when did it start, why did it start, and what were its basic goals, and who were its leaders? And I know Bob Moses was leading... CC (01:00:37): Oh, yeah, okay. Well, SNCC, really SNCC came as a result of the need to test the law of the land that had just been established. So, you have got to remember, in 1896 this country had declared, separate but equal, the law of the land. So, that went on till about 1954 with the Brown v Board of Education. But with the Brown V Board of Education, and later with the in-Interstate Commerce Commission laws and rulings, all of it was talked about with all deliberate speed. So, for most young Black people, we saw the same thing, the status quo, and therefore, the need to challenge and to say, "If the law on our side, we want the country to act like the Lord is on our side." So, you had the sit-ins, and then you had the freedom riots. So, the sit-ins said, we are challenging the whole concept of our right to be like everybody else and that barrier to go away. The freedom riots said, we can... SM (01:02:05): Hey, you are doing fine. CC (01:02:20): Sure. SM (01:02:22): Yep, that was all right. I am sorry. CC (01:02:26): There you go. So, you have got that the freedom riot said, we have a right to travel without being treated as second class citizens, which means, you have to sit in the back of the bus, you have to give up your seat to any White person, and when you want to use facilities, the toilets and so forth, you do not go to a nasty, dirty place which is labeled "Colored", if you want to drink water, you should drink it from the best fountain. So, all those public accommodation barriers, we were challenging that whether we had a right to do what this country now said, after the 54th Supreme Court decision and other rulings said we had a right to do. So, those two events triggered SNCC. So, what happened was, Ms. Ella Baker called together a meeting at Shore University in February 1st 1960, to talk about how you coordinated all these activities. Therefore, you got Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee. And at first SNCC was a group of campus organizations. So, as I mentioned, you had the group out of Nashville with John Lewis and them, you had a group in Atlanta, the Atlanta Student Movement, you had a group up at Howard called the Non-Violent Action Group. You had groups like that, mostly on historically Black colleges. And that is how... And SNCC functioned like that, probably from 1960 to early 1962, where they were coordinated groups of campus people. Then, what began to happen was, again, some people started dropping out of school and beginning living in the communities, or had finished school, like Bob Moses, and started living in the communities. And there was a whole big debate about whether you continued public accommodations like looking at desegregating theaters, desegregating housing, desegregating lunch counters, or whether you move into the next phase, which was the political phase, deal with voting rights. At the end of the day, people in SNCC decided to go into voting rights. Therefore, with that kind of agenda, the nature of SNCC changed. So, we were no longer just campus organizations where you could, demonstrations all over the place, but you had voting rights in the most dangerous places; Mississippi, Alabama, Southwest Georgia. So, those students... And most people, we were between 17 and 22. Julian, somebody accused Julian of saying, "Well, they were 26 years old." Julian resented that. "No, I was 21, 22 years old." And that is what- SM (01:05:57): He is on my Facebook. CC (01:06:00): Yeah. So, here is a guy, here you have people, if you try to talk to them about whole groups of fear and communism and all this other baggage, no, they see right and wrong, they see people who are supposed to be voting in the United States cannot vote, they see barriers that exist. Therefore, SNCC came in at the tail end of what I characterize as the legal fight with the NAACP and people like that, brought us Brown v Board and all the issues around that, and all the stuff that King brought in terms of testing the legal things. So, my sense is that the period of beginning to either challenge the law, test the law, really came with the sit-ins and the freedom riots. Then, the political era, I would say SNCC was very much involved in that discussion. Started in (19)62 and probably ended in 2008, where the political barriers, where you no longer had poll tax and educational tests and all that stuff to be become a voter and a citizen in the United States. So, my sense is that SNCC went from a campus organization, particularly dealing with public accommodations and public accommodations issues, to moving to become a centralized organization dealing with voting, voting rights, and political organization. And probably, the two huge things that had big impact because of SNCC, at least on the voter registration side, was the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and what it did in the challenge in (19)64, and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization. Those two, I think, had profound impact on this country. SM (01:08:21): It is interesting, Fannie Lou Hamer... I have a question that I have asked a lot of people. A lot of the reason why the women's movement abound was because of sexism that took place within the anti-war movement, which was really strong. And even, I talked to members of the gay and lesbian group, and they also said it was very prevalent in there. And Civil Rights too. So, when you look at the march on Washington in 1963, we know that Rochelle was involved and Bayard had many young mentees under him and he was delegating them, but obviously, it was not publicized in the media that much, unless you read the bio of Bayard and others. Because when you see all the people in front of the Lincoln Memorial, you see Dorothy Height standing over to the right, and you see Mahalia Jackson singing, but it is all men. CC (01:09:23): That is true. SM (01:09:23): It is all men. And- CC (01:09:24): I think, with the exception of Dorothy Height, there was nobody at the leadership level who was a woman. And she was there and probably there because of Bayard. I think that the involvement of young people... Because the other piece is that some of those guys, particularly Roy Wilkins, did not particularly embrace the involvement of young people either now. So, Roy Wilkins said, "I am not going to have you...," he told me, "I am not going to have your young people come in here and destroy everything we have worked for-for all these years. You will do it over my dead body." So, it seems to me that these guys had built themselves a structure, and were resistant to women, to young people, and other people that they were not "comfortable" with coming into that arena. SM (01:10:38): I think Whitney Young was in the same boat. CC (01:10:40): Oh, no question. He went into his thing, they would coveralls... Oh, he had a fit. He just could not understand how these young people could be so disrespectful, come into this building that Rockefeller gave them, I think on 48th Street, in coveralls. And do we care about any of that? We did not care. SM (01:11:04): The other thing is, James Farmer, who was arrested, I believe, and he was not at the march, he was the one leader that was not there, I believe- CC (01:11:13): Yeah. But I think, by that time, Farmer had given it up to what is-his-face, and he was in Black Mind, Louisiana. But he was down in- SM (01:11:19): Floyd McKissick? CC (01:11:19): Floyd McKissick, right. Yeah-yeah. SM (01:11:24): No, he was not resistant though, was he? He is- CC (01:11:27): No-no-no. I think Farmer came of the tradition much more like Bayard, being Fellowship of Reconciliation, that kind of stuff. He is much more in that kind of tradition than say Roy Wilkins or Whitney Young, and so forth. SM (01:11:47): Some of the transition you are talking about here too, which is really... I have done a lot of reading on Dr. King, and I am really looking forward to the week that is coming because it is long overdue. But one of the things that is interesting, I can remember reading Charles Silverman's book, In Black and White. I was in college, and it was just a tremendous book. And I still, I have got a first edition of it, mint condition. However, my other one's all marked up. But he talked about Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg and the more gradualist approach, again, the Brown v Board of Education, which is so crucial, and then, you saw the resistance that took place right on the part of states to follow the law, and so forth. Then, you have got Dr. King coming along, which is basically, he respected Thurgood Marshall, but he was not a gradualist type of person. He was a guy-who-want-it-now kind of a person, and that is why he was doing the protest. Then, you get the next group, which is the question I want to ask is, did SNCC get into the Black Power issue because Stokely became so unbounded, and they trapped Brown- CC (01:13:01): No-no-no. SM (01:13:03): No? CC (01:13:03): No. I am going to give you a piece that I wrote. I think the Black Power discussion really came after the Atlantic City challenge. SM (01:13:21): And that is (19)64? CC (01:13:24): (19)64. I think up to 1964, the whole concept of SNCC and everybody else was that if you bring the problems out and you make it part of the conversation of the country, then people will in fact deal with it, and that, in fact, it was that your role was to make this situation known, to deal with, so that these guys who were in the centers of political, economic, cultural, and so forth, power, would do whatever they want, do the right things. One of the things leading up to the, and I will never forget this, one of the things leading up to the (19)64 summer project, I think this was (19)63, there were probably maybe 30, 35 bodies found in the Mississippi River. And it was raised with the people in New York Times, and it was about that much space. Nobody cared. SM (01:14:59): More than Emmett Till then? CC (01:15:01): Yeah. It was about 36 bodies found and it was not big news. The reason that Emmett Till was big news was because his mother decided to show the absolute brutality, and it shocked the Black community, and they reacted. And that is one of the profound things that affected me. And it affected a number of people who were in SNCC because they were just coming into their teenage years, therefore, they saw a lot of it. I think Emmett Till had a profound effect. But let us go back to this whole transition to Black power. Basically, what people realize at the Freedom Democratic Party is that even if you brought the issues and even if you played by all the rules and even if you were representing people who had been harmed all these years, the interests of the power structure did not care any of them, by the by. So, you see Ms. Hamer making a brilliant speech building sympathy, and Johnson cutting her off. You see that we have 13 votes to make a minority port, and then people, and Diggs and others betraying us and crumbling the thing. You see that in the church in Atlantic City, everybody, I am talking about Joe Raw, I am talking about Walter Luther, I am talking about Martin King, I am talking about Bayard Rustin, I am talking about everybody sided with the discussion of the Democrats must win, and therefore, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party cannot win what they're rightfully there to do. And we are given some fig leave of two things in the balcony. Therefore, the message to the young people, we were saying, okay, you are told, all right, right and wrong if, it is wrong to discriminate, if it is wrong to do this, it is wrong to do that, and you play by the rules and you do the right things, this is supposed to happen. And we saw we were in a right/wrong game, and people were in a win/lose game. So, basically, we now saw what it meant in terms of win/lose. Therefore, people said it is no longer important to ask those who caused the problem to deal with the nature of the problem. We now have to look after ourselves. We now have to think through what we are doing. So, in Lowndes County, which was 80 percent Black, our model was this, we were not going to go and ask the sheriff to do a better job, we were not going to ask the probate judge and a tax collector and a tax assessor. Basically, the concept of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization was regime change. We were going to get rid of every officer who was there. Now, they want to argue, "Well, these people are not qualified. They are sharecroppers, and so forth." What we did was we created comic books that broke the law down, that people could see the law and understand their roles and responsibilities. We had a bunch of things that encourage people to vote. We had the Black Panther as a symbol because we understood that people, the literacy rate was not high. So, basically, we're using what the Indian, Mahatma Gandhi did and other people did, with people who do not have high literacy rates, they vote for a symbol. So, basically, we said, "Pull the lever for the Black Panther across straight party line vote, and then go home. Do not think about this, that or the other. Pull the lever for the Black Panther, and then go home." So, basically, what you had... And we wanted the Black Panther... And basically the Black Panther, the Democratic Party had a rooster as their symbol for the Right. We wanted a strong black symbol, so they got the, I think the panther is the mascot from Morris Brown, or one of those schools in Atlanta. Either Morris Brown or something like that. I think it is Morris Brown. And I think Ruth Howard brought the idea to us, and Jennifer drew it. So, it was a symbol, big, it was black, and we told people, "The whole thing is pull the lever for the Black Panther, and then go home," because basically, that is a strategy that is been tried with high [inaudible]. And our objective was regime change where our view was, if you are going to get rid of police brutality, then you need to be the sheriff. If you are going to get rid of unfair tax practices, then you need to be the sheriff. If you want the federal dollars that come into the county to work in your way, you need to run the county. So, that is basically the basis on which Stokely starts saying, "You cannot ask these people, after what we saw in Atlantic City, to keep doing for you what you need to start doing for yourself." Therefore, the Black people, which is what he would be dealing with in Lowndes County, needed to assume power. And during the Meredith March, that whole discussion was capitalized in the phrase Black Power. Now, I think that in (19)63, King said, that is why you have that money, "I have a dream that is deeply rooted in the American dream." What the younger generation was saying is, "We do not believe that that dream exists for us unless we, in fact, bring it about ourselves, and therefore we have to move for power." Now, you have got to also remember that at that point, and you said you were doing stuff on jazz and arts, and so forth, you have got to remember, and if you look into this whole discussion, at that point we were Negros, Black was a fighting word, we were considered ugly, our features were considered ugly, things that we were not beautiful were us. So, the whole discussion on Black power, at least on the cultural side, had a very profound effect in terms of how Black people saw themselves, because in this sense, in this country, because of what was going on, you had a situation where the closer you were to White, the better you were off, the blacker you were... So, the whole thing about if you are White, you are right, if you light, stick around, and if you're Black, get back. There was just all, just, negativity. So, my sense is that while, in terms of the White community, in terms of the White activist community, there was a sense where you are rejecting us, and on the White community in terms of the power structure, you are challenging us, you are not connected to us. In terms of the Black community, I think at least on the cultural side, it was very profound in terms of changing their sense of themselves. But also, I think, on the political side, it started bringing the Black communities to start thinking about how, within their communities, they take responsibility for their own existence. So, I think that people really do not understand, at least for me, how profound that Atlantic City thing was, because it basically said, even if you play by the rules, you cannot win. There is no such thing as right and wrong, there is only win and lose. It is a power discussion. It is a discussion of who will run and who will control. It is not about good and bad, and wrong, it is about win and lose. That was the message I got. And at 23 years old, it was very interesting to me. SM (01:25:00): I know there has been two biographies out on Fannie Lou Hamer, and that convention in (19)64 is mentioned in history books, on Johnson doing what he did, and those kinds of things. I do not think there has been an in-depth- CC (01:25:15): You are right. SM (01:25:16): ... that there has not been an in-depth concentrated, just on that convention, on that movement, on those few days. Someone needs to... I am just bringing this up. CC (01:25:29): No-no, I agree with. SM (01:25:30): Someone needs to write a book that just needs to cover what happened there, what led up to it, what happened during the days, what followed, the impact it is had on history or why history has not covered it better. And Fannie Lou Hamer has really risen- CC (01:25:54): But not only that, not only that. In addition to the Black Power discussion, that convention was responsible for the shift of the Dixie crash of the Republican Party. Basically, there is a straight line from that convention to them shifting to the Republican Party. SM (01:26:16): Wow. CC (01:26:18): So, I think this is a very big event. SM (01:26:23): Fannie Lou Hamer did not live very long, did she? I know she was overweight and she had high blood pressure and- CC (01:26:31): She was on a sharecropper, you had been beaten. Other than that, yeah, I do not think she made it to 60. SM (01:26:38): Yeah. I think, getting that same timeframe, maybe it is how the media tries to portray things, but there has always been this perception of, well, when Thurgood Marshall did the Brown... the decision came through based on his efforts at the Supreme Court, Dr. King was there to make the comment as the younger person, "Well, the gradualist approach is fine. Congratulations for doing this, but we're doing non-violent protest..." SM (01:27:03): Congratulations for doing this, but we're doing nonviolent protest and all the other things. And the Montgomery Bus Boycott was happening and then- CC (01:27:10): Yeah, but King did not volunteer. He was drafted now. SM (01:27:17): I know. But then you got the picture and the picture I am talking about, the historic picture of Dr. King with his arms crossed and Stokely's talking to him. But basically, it is a picture, it is a scene from, I do not know, they were together on some stage and I think basically, he told Dr. King, your time has passed. CC (01:27:39): Well, you know- SM (01:27:41): It was referring to Bayard Rustin. He was referring to the big four. He was, your guy's time has passed. CC (01:27:46): It's interesting. We, in 1968 and before King, and it must have been two or three months before King died, was killed. Excuse me. He did not died. I mean, well he died as a result of being shot. We had a meeting at the Pismo Hotel here with SNCC people and they wanted to know if we were going to participate in the Poor People's March. And we told him no. Said, are you going to disrupt it? No. He said, are you going to disrupt it? Because the rumors were going to disrupt it. No. Are you going to participate? No. And because we had always been competing, we had always been all this stuff with King. We had a great deal of respect for King, even though we were always in competition with him. And everybody from SNCC was there. Everybody from SCLC was there. And we said to him, you cannot ask those who press you to deal with the nature of your oppression. And King got quiet and we were told after we let got the press, because I mean he understood that the whole thing that he tried, it was going to be a big, big difference. Because King was coming. Because remember after King gave that speech in (19)63 about which everybody celebrates. King gave some hell of a speeches after that about the Vietnam War. SM (01:29:29): Oh yeah. CC (01:29:29): About poverty. It is like he never gave those speeches. Mean he understood more than most. When you read King stuff, he was a brilliant, brilliant man. And one of the things I do respect, the older I get the more respectful. Philip Randolph, Bayard, Martin King, Thurgood Marshall, I think we brought a lot of energy and we brought a lot of less fear and so forth. And that is what we should bring. Fortunately we had people like Ella Baker who helped us bring perspective, Bayard, who helped bring perspective and so forth. But that is what younger generations do. They go through barriers that people did not think they could go through. And my sense is that as you point out, there is always the transition. We are always going to the next phase. And that is not a bad thing. SM (01:30:37): I remember we had Tommy Smith on our campus, and Tommy, when he gave the Black Power fist, Harry Edwards was the graduate student. He was at Cornell too in (19)69, but Tommy and John Carlos, both of them, the perception out there and he's had to repeat it over and over again and correct people. He said, I was never a Black Panther. I was never a Black Panther that was about Black Power. And he, again, he really got upset. And he was like, now remember, if you're writing an article in the paper about this, I was never a Black Panther. I never supported the Black Panthers. I am a Black Power person. CC (01:31:19): Well, they do not care that, they just did not want them to quote you. Basically those guys point is that you embarrassed the United States in that because in the world state, because you got to remember in (19)69 and so forth, there was still that Russian United States Cold War discussion. And therefore the United States trying to portray itself as the defender of democracy. And the Russians can show to the world, particularly Africa, that this is not serious. Their salute in Mexico in (19)68 had profound international implications for the United States vis-a-vis the Cold War discussion in Africa. And that is why it seared into this country. And one of the things that now, and I guess I will do some writing at some point pretty soon, but it does seem to me that all this stuff has context. So an event that functions here has layers all over the place. And I think that salute. And so therefore the people who are writing this stuff want to say, you embarrassed us and we will say the most despicable things that we think we can say about you. And that is what it is about. SM (01:32:50): And I think Ralph Boston, he did not do the fist, but he did something comparable. He was doing the long jump. And there were many female African American athletes who did the same thing and they concentrated on those two guys. CC (01:33:06): Yeah, because remember that was the elite. See 100 and 200. That is the elite. That is the glamour piece. So therefore when you have in the competition of supremacy, use supremacy, my guys are faster than yours, our guys are stronger than yours, all that kind of stuff, boxing was all that. To get those guys and the heavyweights, those the heavyweight boxers to get those guys saying, making their statement at that time was a profound issue. If these guys were 6,000 meat runners, nobody would have cared. SM (01:33:54): George Foreman though with the- CC (01:33:56): He put the American flag. SM (01:33:56): Flag- CC (01:33:57): I mean they loved it. They loved it. SM (01:33:59): Muhammad Ali was against the war and he paid a heavy price for it. It is interesting. I was up in California and I went to the statue. I had to drive to San Jose because I wanted to see it after Tommy came to our campus. He is a great guy. CC (01:34:14): Well yeah, he was. SM (01:34:15): Ah Mike, and he is well-educated. Smart as a- CC (01:34:17): And not only that, they said in terms of running, he really has some techniques because he broke... you also have to realize that in (19)68, I remember Jim Ryan, I do not know if you remember him. SM (01:34:33): Yes, I do. CC (01:34:35): Okay. SM (01:34:35): Long distance runner. CC (01:34:35): A long distance runner, 1500 meters. And I remember I was with my wife in Montreal and remember listening to the announcer say, blacks will win the short distance races because there is no strategy involved, it is just muscle. And where talks about strategy and so forth, whites were going to dominate that. And that was the year Kipchoge Keino came up. I mean- SM (01:35:06): Since then- CC (01:35:07): Since then, I mean it is Africa, East Africa and East Africa has been dominant. If it is not Somalia, it is Kenya, so forth. Well keep going with your questions cause- SM (01:35:19): Yeah, this is a kind of general question here. I did want to mention that something that maybe you did not know the third person, the guy who finished second, Carlos was third. CC (01:35:31): Right Carlos was third. SM (01:35:32): And he died just before Tommy came to the campus. And I believe Tommy went to his funeral. I forget what country he was from, but did you know that guy supported them a hundred percent? CC (01:35:45): Oh yeah. SM (01:35:45): And Tommy said, do you want me to raise my fist too? That is not known by a lot of people, but Tommy explains it in the book. They liked that guy, the guy that finished second who was totally in support of what the athletes were doing there. And now he said, no, we have to do this and thanks, but no, do not put your fist up. CC (01:36:07): Yeah. Right. SM (01:36:09): So when you look at the boomer generation as a whole, and of course boomers are those born between (19)46 and (19)64. CC (01:36:17): Yeah (19)65. SM (01:36:17): And including all ethnic backgrounds now, all backgrounds. What are your thoughts on that generation? How important were they in the Civil Rights Movement? Because some people are saying, well, they were only 18 or 19 years old when most of the Civil Rights Movement in its heyday was the (19)50s through to maybe (19)65. And so in the boomer generation, they're only coming into, they're going to college starting in (19)65. But they were involved in Freedom Summer, they were involved in a lot of things. But what are your thoughts on this generation now, 70 million strong, that is now reaching the age of 65 this year? CC (01:36:58): One of the things that really is interesting, I think the boomer generation helped to change America. And one of the things that is not generally talked about but seen by people like myself is that the boomer generation fed off of a lot of what we did. And what surprised me, if you look at the letter that Clinton wrote to his draft ward where he talked about the Civil Rights Movement, and he did not know what the hell he was ever running. People thought that they were trying to embarrass him by putting out that letter that he wrote. They were profoundly impacted in terms of what we were trying to do. I think, also, that they opened up for people who may not have been boomers, technically, some space, for example, one of the things that you got to remember right after, let us talk about the Black Power thing discussion. Right after that, you had, and coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and literally coming out of it, you had the Cesar Chavez piece, and you're talking about some of the SNCC people going out to help Cesar Chavez. You had Mario Savio who was in fact in Mississippi. You had the whole discussion of the role of women in the movement and in the country where Casey and Mary King and those guys started a whole lot of that conversation and amplifying on it. You had, after the Black Power discussion, you had gray power where a lot of senior citizens started- SM (01:39:27): They accused. CC (01:39:29): Yeah started talking about that. You had the discussion of gay power. You had a whole sense of, so basically while the boomers may not have been old enough to be in central figures in the Civil Rights Movement, they were the megaphones that had kept, or the mechanism, that kept what the discussion was in the Civil Rights Movement reverberating in a lot of places and a lot of things that kept the society. Because what could have happened was you had a situation where you had that and then things closed up. No-no. They not only did it, but expanded in terms of the view of even stuff like [inaudible] giving him space or Richard Pryor giving him space. So my sense is, one of the things that I said about the Black Power discussion, at least in the black community, the cultural boundaries were broken in terms of poetry, in terms of music, in terms of art, all that stuff were there. And I think in terms of the boomer generation, the boundaries were broken. The kind of industrial Father Knows Best, Ozzie and Harriet- SM (01:41:12): Leave it to Beaver. CC (01:41:13): Leave It to Beaver. All of that stuff started and the (19)60s and late (19)60s and not only that, the other thing that started, and you see it right now with this little stuff you have here. You got to remember in the (19)50s coming out of Civil Rights Movement, you had two or three magazines. You had, Look, you had Life, you had Time. Those were the big dominant things. We had big dominant things. And then people started beginning to diversify. I think what the Boomer generation brought was a sense of diversity in terms of interest. You did not have to fit into a mold in order to be accepted. You did not have to look like this and act like this and be this. Because what happened, it was order in the (19)50s. What you had in the (19)60s was the breaking down of the disorder, particularly in the black community. But then that the breaking down of that order in terms of the hierarchical stuff. So now Look and Life does not exist anymore. People have a thousand magazines. I think what the boomer generation brought to this situation was diversity and the ability for America to be able to have to accept Mao's A Thousand Flowers so that black people could be this, that or the other. They did not have to be in this box. People who were gay did not have to be in that box. Women did not have to be in their place. People who are geeks are now accepted. That is another group that quote been viewed as such and such. So I am saying that I think probably the hallmark of the boomer generation and what is their ability to accept diversity. Now the other thing is that they have things that allow them to facilitate. We were talking about Facebook, we were talking about... Things are not always in the (19)50s when we were coming along in the early (19)60s, it was always from the top down. Now a lot of it comes from the bottom up because people with blogs, people with this, that and the other can communicate to each other that they do not have to watch ABC, CBS TV in order to get the impressions. There are a lot of people who were making other pressures outside of the hierarchy. So the boomer generation disintegrated the hierarchical structure that existed, that was brought to us by guess by the industrial age. SM (01:44:33): You hit it right on the target there. It is almost as if when we discussed the culture wars that we have seen since the (19)80s, (19)90s or whatever, and particularly today, it is trying to change the culture, possibly trying to get it back to the way it was. And actually I am really studying what is going on in England right now. And I think the undercurrent in England, there is a bunch of hooligans and taking advantage of things and copycats, yes. But I think this is a deep-seated problem. This has to do with as Dr. King would always say, we got to deal with the economy because it's not always, it is race, but it is also about your economic status. And I think what is happening in London today and what is happening all over England is the fact that the challenge to multiculturalism, and when I see people who start pointing fingers at the reason why we have problems is because of them. It is because it is a reaction. It is very reactionary and it is scary to me. And that is what the culture wars are. CC (01:45:49): Well I think also with the guy in Norway, his view was we are going to kill anybody who supports this kind of stuff. So that is my sense. But I think that the next phase, I think big phase we have to fight is the economic discussion. And that is going to be, a lot of it now centers on education. I think that is the next big Civil Rights fight. Where I think we have finished, my view is that we are finished with the political, the vote and so forth. We are going to have counteractions in terms of the Republicans trying to narrow the vote, trying to talk about frauds and cheating and stuff. But with Obama, there is a sense that that last barrier as President is broken. Because when I was coming up, the view of a black man being president was probably one of the for taken absurdities. Now, I think the whole question of who is able to participate in the economy, which is the issue that you talked about in England and other places, who is going to be able to participate in the economy? Do you have such a hierarchical piece where 1 percent of the highest income people all have as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent? How do you now begin to, given the diversity I just talked about and intellectual property becoming the raw materials of driving the economic engine, how do you now and particularly the sciences, how do you now deal with new literacies? How do you begin to deal with math and science? How do you now begin to think through the use of computer literacy? How do you now begin to, this is the new struggle. How do you now, the economic struggle, which has always been the struggle. Not all this other stuff is race and gender and so forth, the real core issue. Because African-Americans not here in the United States, not because white people did not like them, they were economic implements. They were in agriculture and agrarian economy. They were economic units needed for labor and therefore that is why they're here. And the issues that we have, have not reached beyond that. We have not dealt with the economic issues. And we are now given all these other layers, the legal layer, the segregation layer, the political layer. Now we now have to focus on the economic issues. SM (01:49:06): And it is interesting because this is a time when labor unions are going down. CC (01:49:10): Oh, they are going down. SM (01:49:12): And I can remember being in California before I moved back east and we were told where I worked, if you were ever to talk to anybody, a union, we would fire you. We met as a group over in Daley City just to hear someone talk to this whole group of people. And we did not know we were being spied on. CC (01:49:39): But here is the thing, labor unions are going down for two kind of reasons. Two or three reasons. But you got to remember, for example, the labor unions come out of the industrial kinds of things or government. Now Google basically what they have, you go out there and see their campus and all that. They get these kids and these young people and they create a different environment. Facebook, all this stuff where the new industries are. It is a whole different reality. So the same diversity that destroyed the look and the life and so forth is the same diversity that also mitigated the influence of the unions. Right now you and I do consulting. Right now. All I need is a computer and a cell phone and I have a laptop or I right now it is getting down to where all you need is a iPad and you can be anywhere and be your office. It is a whole different work environment. And so unions are going to have a tough time if they do not think through different models of what's going to go on. SM (01:51:10): When we are getting down there. We are going on to my next tape here in a second here. But when you look at the presidents, during the time that boomers have been alive, we are talking about Truman through Obama or basically in your lifetime, who are the presidents that, I think the word I want to use is genuine, who generally they may have passed legislation that helped people of color and African Americans. But in your studies, in your life experiences, you worked for President Clinton, but you have seen all these presidents in your life. Who are the genuine ones and who were the fakes? CC (01:51:58): In terms of the issues like- SM (01:51:59): In terms of caring about people who are having a harder time in this society? CC (01:52:07): Well, I think it is interesting. I think probably if you talk to black businessmen and people in that group of people, the president that they think was most helpful to them is Richard Nixon. Because remember Nixon was the one, remember Nixon came in after the riots, the rebellions and Nixon's statement was, what we are going to do is make all these guys entrepreneurs. And he opened up at Commerce through secretary Stands, Sue secretary Stands a minority business development agent was called OBME, Office of Business Minority Enterprise or something like that. Basically Nixon truly believed that the path to salvation was to create businesses that would do that. So he believed in that. I think the other person I think who was familiar and on the voting rights piece and so forth, I would say Johnson was on the voting rights piece. I think he was particularly helpful and he knew the passing of voter rights legislation and so forth. He knew that it would have a huge impact on the Democratic Party in terms of what would happen to it, particularly the Dixiecrats. So he put skin in the game and at the end of the day, while I disagree with him on the war and so forth, I think that on this issue mean he was very important, given as much as presidents can be important. I think the other one who had a profound impact I think was Clinton. And I think Clinton's contribution was his point was, I am going to have a cabinet that looks like America. And so therefore Clinton had somebody in a lot of positions of authority and power that they were not, including Department of Agriculture. He had Espy there, Commerce, he obviously Ron Brown. So it was no longer if you had a black, you put them at HUD. It was no longer the Weaver Pat Harris discussion. Almost any position in the thing you can have, there have only two positions I guess blacks have not really been cabinet secretaries, that is Treasury and Defense. But if somebody nominates a black person for a position, George Bush did for Secretary of State. It's no longer a big issue. So I think the three presidents that probably on the issue that, Nixon on business, Johnson on voting rights, and Clinton, on having a sense that this country needs to diversify in terms of its cabinet. One of the things that when I was at Commerce with Ron Brown, we went to a meeting, Brown called a meeting of the senior staff and they were all white males. So Ron walked in there and said, I do- CC (01:56:03): Ron walked in there and said, "I do not ever want to sit in a meeting that looks like this again." Let me tell you, bells went off. I mean they would ... But the other thing that ... And Ron was good, because I mean, he was very aggressive in terms of promoting American businesses abroad. I mean, the Republicans loved him, because he would be able to open up to Africa, to China, to wherever he went. He was that good in that sense. And he was a fighter in the sense that when Gingrich and them wanted to downsize the commerce, housing, and get rid of education, he fought them tooth and nail. Cisneros gave in, but Ron fought them tooth and nail. And all these guys who were SESs, the top of the food chain who had no respect for Black people before Ron came in, grew to love Ron because he saved their jobs. SM (01:57:16): Wow. CC (01:57:17): So my sense is, I think that the three presidents, I would say Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton, those were the three. SM (01:57:31): You talked about the (19)64 convention, but how about the (19)68 convention? Because the one in Chicago that was on TV- CC (01:57:39): Oh, the Vietnam allotment. SM (01:57:40): Yeah, and the year 1968, the loss of- CC (01:57:44): Was quite a year. But I think that year spoke a lot to diversifying. I mean, you began to see the coming apart. I mean, when I listened to Pat Buchanan, I do not know if you ever see him on Morning Joe and stuff like that. SM (01:58:04): No. CC (01:58:05): I mean, they want to go back to the (19)50s. I mean, basically (19)68 was the continuation of creating diversity, creating a sense of, we all need ... Now, I mean, because we do not need to be a Vietnam. We do not want to be drafted to fight wars that we do not want to fight. Ultimately now what they have done is gotten rid of the draft and mechanized now with drones, and now the people who are poor are fighting. So, I mean, I am not sure the outcomes of (19)68 what everybody wanted it, so they ended the draft. But now people are now forced who are poor. They got no place else to do. But God, when you look at all those deaths, notices, they're either from towns, not in the big cities, and they're all poor people. They are all poor people. And now you also got a lot more mercenaries. I mean, that is, I think what- SM (01:59:13): I only got about four more questions here. CC (01:59:17): Okay, because I got 10 more minutes. SM (01:59:18): Okay. I am trying to remember. It was the (19)68 convention. Oh, my God, I am forgetting what I was going to ask. Had to do with the ... Oh, the psyche. The boomer generation was made up of 70 million people. CC (01:59:34): Right. SM (01:59:37): And that year was unbelievable in so many ways. It was so tragic. And what happens is when you look at the (19)60s and the (19)70s and the boomer generation, they talk about that really 95 percent were really uninvolved in anything and they were going on with their daily lives and everything. CC (01:59:53): That is true. SM (01:59:56): Only 5 percent were really involved in any kind of an activism of any kind, including conservatives too, those conservatives. But I have always felt deep down inside that that year, subconsciously along with what happened in (19)63, subconsciously left a permanent mark on all. For the generation to see two major figures assassinated, to see ... The war in Vietnam was, we were supposed to be in control, and then Tet happened. We saw the conventions with politicians pointing and swearing at each other. And then there is so many worries in the city. It is just a terrible time. CC (02:00:42): No, I agree with you. See, I think it is, I mean, I would not say "a terrible year." I'd say clearly a year of transition. SM (02:00:49): Can you hold- You were [inaudible] CC (02:01:00): I think those people who say that basic 5 percent of activists, probably correct, because I think change is never brought about, it is never a mass movement. I think, however, however, just like I was saying at Howard and just like I was saying at varied people, that the people who were not activists but are more passive, tend to look at what's going on and decide who they're going to support in terms of who they will be supportive of. And I think that for a lot of people in America, they were comfortable with the changes, but were made to be afraid of them. I mean, part of the reason that you have ... And disorder is part of the reason you had Nixon. But it does seem to me that ... I think that for a lot of the boomers and for the younger ones, this was where things were going. They were being empowered. For a lot of those who were older at the time, the country was going to hell in a hand basket, and they did not know what to do. Things were moving too fast. How could this happen? So I mean, my sense is that, yeah, I mean, (19)68 was a very profound year. But I think that while it was a profound year, probably only 5 percent of the people really made it a profound year. SM (02:02:49): In your opinion, when did the (19)60s begin and end, and what was a watershed moment? CC (02:02:57): For me, I mean, I think watershed moment, there's several watershed moments in the (19)60s. The Freedom Rides and the sit-ins were watershed moments. The Cuban Missile Crisis, watershed moment. We became aware of the threat of nuclear warfare in a way that we did not really ... I mean for me, I was in school and I was ... (19)63, a watershed moment. As I said earlier, (19)64, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a watershed moment. For me also, (19)67 was a watershed moment, I mean just personally, because (19)67, I went to what was considered a war crimes tribunal convened by Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre. SM (02:03:58): Wow. CC (02:03:58): I participated in that and understood what was going on. Obviously, as we said, (19)68 was another watershed. So there were several. I mean, the Freedom Rides and the sit-ins began to break down the old order, or challenge the old order that was broken down in (19)54. (19)62, everybody was scared shitless because of thermonuclear warfare. (19)63, how could this happen in America? I think those were the times that made a difference. SM (02:04:47): Was Kent State in there too? CC (02:04:52): I would say Kent State. I would say Jackson. I would say Jackson State, all that stuff that happened on the campus. I mean, all of it was very ... I mean, the (19)60s were very intense because, I mean, a new order was being established, and as that new order was established, you had some disorder. SM (02:05:20): Just a little question, and that is not about Black power, but about the Black Panthers. Some people say when we talk about violence, there was a weather underground. The anti-war movement was not violent because they were very frustrated. Some people say that the Black Panthers, even though they had the food program, that they were violent in their- CC (02:05:41): Right. I mean, their argument is that they were self-defense. You know, first of all, I do not know much about the Black Panthers. My sense is they were ... I think it is SNCC. I mean, I think part of the Panthers that felt the need to relate to the community that they were in and move with them to make change was probably the part that I am most sympathetic to. I think the part that felt the need to show machismo and so forth and audacity and the name-calling and so forth, while I think it was all right, I mean, I guess for young people to feel that that was doing something, the older I get, my sense is that it was not a big change. I mean, my sense is, look, the older I get, the more I understand is, that revolution really is the people who you involve in the discussion. It is not guns. I mean, guns will become a reaction, but at the end of the day, basically when you look at the history of revolution, especially our armed violence and so forth, after one side wins or the other, it is always a then what? And generally when one side wins an armed struggle, it is a continuation of the same, because the people who were excluded before are still excluded now. So my sense is that the big fight is, how do you include those who are excluded, and how you bring them into the discussion and conversation where they can find their own voice? I mean, I think that is long term. That is very tough. And so I mean, I think to the terms of question of the Panthers, to the extent that they involved themselves in the urban communities, that is probably a good thing. But I think the kind of leading with your frustration led to a certain kind of violence, and that violence was felt mostly in the Black community with the killing of each other and all that kind of retribution and foolishness. I mean- SM (02:08:42): I know in California they surrounded the capital in Sacramento. CC (02:08:46): Yeah, I saw that, but at the end of the day, that was nice and a good picture. But probably, at the end of the day, they probably shot more of their own people than they did other than that. SM (02:08:58): And then of course, something that was not related to it was the guns at Cornell University in (19)69. The organizer was Harry Edwards, and- CC (02:09:11): Yeah, I mean, but it is all theater. I mean, to me, that is all theater. It's nice. I mean, the same way I view Cornel West. He is all theater. SM (02:09:18): Two more questions, and this is a very important one because I have asked it to everybody. This was a question that we asked Senator Edmund Muskie in 1995 when we took a group of students to Washington. And they came up with a question because they had seen videos of the 1968 year as a whole. And the question was this, "Due to the divisions that were taking place in the 1960s and the early (19)70s between Black and white, male and female, gay and straight, those who were for the war, or those who were against the war, or for the troops, against the troops, whether ... Will the boomer generation of 70 million go to its grave, like the Civil War generation, not truly healed?" And is healing even an issue here? The Vietnam Memorial was built obviously to try to heal some of the veterans and their families. It was a non-political statement. It was geared toward the vets. But even Jan Scruggs in his book, To Heal A Nation, says that he hopes it goes beyond the vets, that it plays a little part in healing the nation. Do you think it's possible to heal from these divisions? CC (02:10:27): Oh, yeah. I mean, oh, yeah. My sense is this. I mean, I am going to go back to what I said earlier. The Civil War, you had two sides. I mean, you had the industrial north conquering the agrarian south and replacing one economic system with the other, and people were locked in, and the whole bunch of stuff that happened where the north brought the Black community in to solidify their power. I mean, so they never got over it. I mean, I am not sure they are over it yet. But I think in terms of the generation, the boomer generation, if you can isolate them out and the people who were activists and so forth, I do not have a sense that ... I mean, I think, as I said earlier, that what the boomer generation is going to be noted for is that it created space for many. And so therefore, the creating of space for Blacks, [inaudible] for gays, women, this, that, the other, I mean, people have this space. I mean, it was not necessarily ... The boomer generation did not so much create. There was a lot of conflict, but it was not a zero-sum game, which the Civil War was. I win, you lose. The boomer generation, I think, created a possibility where you had multiple winners, and I think that is ... I mean, I may hear, some would say, "Well, people thought before Black power was the good part of the civil rights movement and after that was the bad part." Or, women and men, I do not see them going after each other. I mean, I do not see gays and straights. I mean, I do not see ... I think, well, let us take for the gay community. I mean, you now have in several places. You are not going to have it in Alabama anytime soon, or some places there. But at least Perry, even in his ignorance, had to say, "Well, if the people in New York want it, let them have it." And my sense is that space is being created. I mean, even those who say, "Well, there's no place in the United States for this kind of activity," they're not the dominant discussion. People view as, "Hey, if the people in the state want to ..." I mean, and so forth. Or while he had this whole thing about Obama, whether he is legitimate, whether he was born in the United States, now he's being treated like every other president. Why are not you saving me, you dumb son of a bitch? I am just saying to you that, I mean, I do not think that the boomer generation and the actions that were going on and that created a zero-sum game. They created more space for more people, and therefore the diversity allowed various people in various ways to coexist. I mean, I do not have that view. SM (02:14:32): My last question deals a little bit about legacy. If you could put it in just a nutshell here, how did your experiences at Howard, your experiences with SNCC, even your relationship with Mr. Rustin and CORE, the experience of being one of the main young leaders of the March on Washington in 1963, how have these played a part in your life post-(19)60s and (19)70s? Because I know that you have been involved in many leadership roles. You still are. CC (02:15:15): Right. SM (02:15:15): I have read your background and one thing that always sticks out is that you seem to be a person that always wants to help people who really need help. CC (02:15:29): Well, if I- SM (02:15:30): You stand out there. CC (02:15:31): Yeah. Well, my sense is this. Here is my view. I think my worldview has been defined by the things that you talked about, and it was interesting. I was active for a long time and then I was not active, and now I am beginning to think about these issues again. And it seems to me that my view at 22, 23 is still my view today, my worldview today. I am surprised at ... I mean, I have refined it in terms of historical context, influence of more information. But my sense is that, you try to work with the people who have problems and get them to have their own voice about what is to be done. I am now more convinced ... Probably the big change, I mean, I am more convinced that probably if you want revolution, nonviolence is important in that in the sense that it is not important ... I mean, you do not make change by shooting the people who are in power. You make change by making sure that those who are powerless are empowered. I mean, I think that is the big thing in my mind. I also think that time and energy is more important than money. I also think that it is also important to be an actor and not a reactor. I think that change and diversity are important, and even if that the world is much better being diverse than it is being one color, or being Black and white in the sense that ... So, I mean, those are the things that ... I also think that war has no use, because basically it's fought for the interest of the economically powerful, and poor people are the ones who fight the wars, die, and get nothing from it. Those are the things that ... I have not changed my views on any of that. SM (02:18:13): Those are prophetic. You have made some very prophetic things, that you need to put these into a book. CC (02:18:24): Thank you. SM (02:18:26): Because I think that good young scholars and students and... CC (02:18:29): Yeah. No, I am going to start writing. I mean, people have said I need to start writing and I need to start doing that. I mean, I am going to probably just do ... I will get there. I will get there. SM (02:18:48): I guess the last thing is, I think you have already said it, what do you think your lasting legacy is when people ... You are going to live another 50 years, right? CC (02:18:58): Right, whatever. SM (02:18:59): Well, what will people say when they think of Courtland? And secondly, the legacy of the civil rights movement and the legacy of the boomer generation, because they are in [inaudible] CC (02:19:11): I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that it broke down barriers that were assumed in the United States. That is going to be the importance of that, the racial barriers. I think the second part of that is that it empowered the boomer generation in terms of music, in terms of lifestyle, in terms of various kinds of things. I mean, it was the inspiration for the boomer generation. I think for the boomer generation, as I said earlier, it created space and diversity for Americans to live in, and they did not have to be in Black and white. They could be in whatever colors they wanted to be. I do not know if you saw that movie where it was Black and white, and I mean, the diversity gave the sense of life and explored it. I mean, and I think that it also brought technologies into the conversation that helped give power to more and more people. I am talking about communications or whatever. I mean, just both with the computer and the cell phone. They made a huge difference. And in terms of, I mean, I do not disagree with what King said the night before he was killed, "Tell them I tried to help somebody." I mean, do not tell them this, that, because material things at the end of the day, I mean, as you know, I am not a person who believes in poverty. I would let you know that right away. But I do not believe that it is what it's about. I believe that working to help people and to broaden the base of democracy is probably the important thing. SM (02:21:33): Is there any final comments you want to state, or- CC (02:21:35): No-no, I am good. SM (02:21:37): Any questions you thought I was going to ask? Or- CC (02:21:40): No-no. I got to get out of here. SM (02:21:41): I got to take three or four more pictures of you. CC (02:21:43): Okay. Okay. SM (02:21:44): I guess we will do it this way. CC (02:21:45): Okay. SM (02:21:47): I guess with your glasses off. CC (02:21:50): Okay. All righty. SM (02:21:52): Okay. Reset one. CC (02:21:53): Mm-hmm. SM (02:21:57): Reset two. And that picture in the background looks great. There we go. Ready, set, three. And last but not least, I will do one with grip here. Ready, set, four. That is it. CC (02:22:16): Okay, good. SM (02:22:17): Good. CC (02:22:18): All right. You got a cab up here? SM (02:22:20): No, I drove my car. CC (02:22:21): Oh, you drove here. SM (02:22:22): Yeah. CC (02:22:22): I did not see a car. SM (02:22:23): Yeah. I will just take this in the next room. CC (02:22:29): Okay. SM (02:22:29): Thank you very much for spending the time with me. CC (02:22:33): No problem. I have a 6:30 appointment downtown. SM (02:22:35): Oh, whoa. CC (02:22:38): Yeah, I told them that. SM (02:22:38): Let me get my stuff out of here. 30. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Courtland Cox Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cox, Courtland, 1941- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Political activists--United States; Cox, Courtland, 1941--Interviews Description An account of the resource Courtland Cox spent his childhood between Trinidad and New York City. He went to Howard University and eventually became a civil rights activist. He joined a group called the Non-violent Action Group (NAG) to fight against white supremacy and segregation and then became a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Throughout his years as an activist, Cox helped organized groups in order to prevent segregation from occurring in the world. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011-08-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.66a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.66b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 142:55 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/3b91fb2ecf3f3e25b2f67097ddfb8e39.jpg 7ee80168ea72382994af99a9a0fc8d33 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/73e62013f7973248eaf08f6339ca5d03.mp3 12b65d907f5dfb040b48788033df4dd2 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-11-09 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Joseph T. Cox, 1946- Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:15105,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,0],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10}">Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.</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 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 109:05 Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;The nineteen sixties; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Vietnam War; Colin Powell; Baby boom generation; Cold War; Nineteen fifties; Assassination of John F. Kennedy.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">The nineteen sixties; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Vietnam War; Colin Powell; Baby boom generation; Cold War; Nineteen fifties; Assassination of John F. Kennedy.</span> Subject LCSH Soldiers; College teachers; Cox, Joseph T., 1946--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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Joseph Fox Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: 23 July 1987 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) SM (00:00:12): Testing, one, two, testing. Okay. So again, some of these are specific questions, and some are general. And I will keep looking at this, because the one time, the thing stopped. When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, or that period of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? JC (00:00:33): Well, I graduated from college in 1968, so I think of the things that happened, the first thing probably is Martin Luther King's assassination. I was a senior in high school when Kennedy was assassinated, and then I had graduated from college when RFK was assassinated. But the real turning point in my head was when Martin Luther King was assassinated. It was just a kick in the gut, and just, "What is going on," kind of sense of things. I felt like we had started to slide with JFK's assassination, and you did not think it could get too much worse. And then the next two assassinations just really, I think, affected me. SM (00:01:31): Now, when you went to Vietnam and you came back home, what was the kind of America that you saw upon your return? Now, was it a welcoming America, or were you disappointed in the country that you came back to as opposed to the country when you left? JC (00:01:50): Well, I graduated in (19)68 and went off to Airborne and Ranger School, and then went to Fort Carson Fifth Infantry Division, assuming I was going to go right to Vietnam. And I remember the battalion commander called me in and said, "What do you want to do next?" And I said, "Oh, command B Company if you let me." I said, "I expect to go to Vietnam." And he said, "Well, we have got other plans." And they sent me to Germany to be a General's Aide. So I went to Germany for almost two years before, when I went to Vietnam from Germany. So, I had been out of the country, living in the country for three years. And when I came back it was totally different. I mean, I went to Germany in 1969, early (19)69, and I got back three years later. What is that? (19)71? It was just a- SM (00:02:47): (19)70s? JC (00:02:49): Late (19)71. It was just different... It seemed very, very different. And I felt alienated from that country that I came back to. I was told on the... I left Vietnam in my tan uniform, and we were told, "Going into Travis, do not wear your uniform," which made me a little bit stubborn. I just made.... I was going to wear my uniform. Nobody is going to tell me I could not wear my uniform. And I felt like people were staring at me. I felt ostracized. I thought the price of beer in the San Francisco airport was outrageous. It was probably a buck 75 or something like that. And I just felt kind of alienated to some things. And I remember that the 4th of July after I got home, I actually went down on a Gettysburg tour, and the buses that were touring Gettysburg, while Vietnam was still going on, were practically empty. But it was something I did just to kind of reconnect with soldiers and organize my thoughts about whatever. And I just felt a bit like an outsider. And as a funny piece to this, because I ended up staying in the Army for 30 years, and I am not sure why I stayed in the Army for 30 years. I could give you a lot of reasons. Probably the main reason was I enjoyed the people I worked with, and every job you have in the Army, the next job is kind of a challenge. You do not think you are really ready for it, and I liked that. But I stayed in for 30 years. And right before I was going to get out, I really had this anxiety over getting out. I could not understand it. And I reread Tobias Wolff's In Pharaoh's Army and that section where he is thinking about riding the bus and thinking about getting out of the army after he got back from Vietnam. All of a sudden, I identified with it, and I honestly thought, "Okay, this is what you were afraid of all the time. It is one reason you probably stayed in the army." And it really kind of put my mind at ease. And I retired after 30 years and a day and never looked back and felt very good about it. But it all was still connected with Vietnam, and it was all still connected with coming back to a country that had changed, seemed like that was different. And another thing that happened in coming back, all of a sudden, I had this huge passion for baseball. I could not play enough softball, I could not watch enough baseball. And I never had this passion prior to that. I liked baseball, but I did not play in high school, played little league and stuff. But I, all of a sudden, had this passion for baseball, and it was unexplainable except that I had been away from the United States. And that is when I came back, I identified baseball at the United States. It was strange. SM (00:06:13): When you went in, what college did you go to? JC (00:06:15): I went to Lafayette. SM (00:06:17): When you went to college, did you know you were going to go into the military? JC (00:06:20): No. SM (00:06:20): Or what were your goals when you first started? JC (00:06:23): Well, I grew up in Springfield, Mass. I went to Springfield Technical High School, and I thought I was going to be an engineer. I had a wonderful English teacher in high school, and he prepared me better than I realized. I got to Lafayette, I started, and I realized coming out of probably a pretty good high school, but I realized it was a lot of work in college. It was tough. And the only thing that came easy to me was writing in my English course, thanks to the guy who actually had a PhD and was teaching in a big inner city technical high school. So I ended up an English major, because I got my best grades in English, and I knew I was going to have to concentrate on something eight hours a day. And in addition to going to classes, and it turned out it was what I enjoyed. So I had no idea what I was going to do. I thought I would probably coach and teach English. When I went to Lafayette, they had mandatory ROTC. And I was in the ROTC program, and my father had been a sergeant in the Second World War, and then was a warrant officer, a full-time warrant officer in the National Guard. So, he did not make a lot of money, and the bills were piling up, college bills. And they offered a two-year ROTC scholarship at Lafayette. I think another guy and I were the first two to get the full scholarship, books, tuition fees, and a hundred dollars a month. So they paid for everything. There probably were not a lot of takers in 1965, (19)66. And I got that scholarship. And then I knew I was going to have to serve in the Army, but I wanted to serve in the Army. I wanted to go to Vietnam. I had read too much Hemingway, probably. So I had kind of a perverted sense, a perverted desire to go to war. And as I said, I graduated in 1968. I was a regular army officer and was sure I was headed to Vietnam. When I was in Vietnam, my boss was a man named Bill Reno, retired as a Lieutenant General. And in Vietnam, I was planning to get out of the Army, and General, or Major Reno, then I was a captain, asked me what I was going to do, and it was back to the same plan. "I am going to teach. I am going to go somewhere, get a Master's degree in English, teach and coach." I did not really know the prep school path, but I probably would have ended up at a prep school as an English teacher/coach. And that was always my plan. He said, "You can do that in the Army." I said, "Oh, I doubt that." And he said, "No, you can." And he paved the way, and I ended up going up to West Point, getting an interview. And the Army sent me to University of North Carolina for my Master's degree. And when I got up to West Point, I think those of us who were not West Point graduates were in a minority. And I ended up teaching four years at West Point before I went back into the regular Army. SM (00:10:12): [inaudible]. When you went to Lafayette College, what was the environment like? Obviously, there was a lot of anti-war people going on at that time on most college campuses. Did you feel the pressure that was going on in America regarding the anti-war movement? And how did you feel about your fellow peers that were your age who were against the war? And how did they treat people like you, who were in ROTC? Because I can remember when I was in college at Binghamton, we banned, they banned ROTC from the campus. JC (00:10:47): Lafayette was all male. And it is a fairly conservative school. Out of about 400, I guess in my class, I think 52 of us were commissioned in one service or another. It was small. People knew each other. I was in student government, I was elected to the student council. Also, I washed pots for my meals in a social dorm. There were 19 fraternities, and there was this social dorm. And I ate all my meals in the social dorm, and the social dorm had the radicals. So I would sit at supper time, and we would read Jim Reston's editorials in the New York Times and discussing, or breakfast and then discussing. So some of the guys who were the biggest "protestors" were the people I broke bread with, so they were friends. I was in student government with them. Actually, at that time, and again, this is (19)66, (19)67, things were falling apart, (19)67, (19)68, my senior year in Vietnam. But I did not have a sense, it was not Berkeley. It was much, much more conservative and much more civil. And it was funny, I was one of the two battalion commanders in the ROTC unit, and we would march through our drill and go back, put our weapons away, and guys would bomb us with water balloons. They were the same guys I would have supper with a half an hour later. And it was not as confrontational and as bitter as it might have been in other places. I think it probably got more difficult, but at least I came into Lafayette in kind of an innocent period in (19)64. They still had us wearing beanies and singing. We could still sing the alma mater, because they made us memorize it. And it was a big fraternity dominated school. So it just was a little bit different, because it was a smaller school. And you had formed friendships, and there were differences of political opinion. But it was all actually pretty healthy. One of my best friends is a man named Lowell Lifschultz, who is a lawyer now. Not as often as I would like, but we still talk to each other. But Lowell was a very, very bright guy, and intellectually would give me a hard time over it. But I was destined. I had signed the paperwork, and I was getting the scholarship. And I knew where I was going, and I had no illusions about that. SM (00:13:58): Did you feel that when you were over in Vietnam that a lot of the things that were happening in America were divisions between Black and white, drug culture, the different styles, different political viewpoints forward against the war was actually also taking place within the Army and the Marines? Someone said to separate the Marines, Army. Someone told me separate the Marines, because they were gung ho. I am not sure if that is true. Because the hip people would say that the Military went really down during that (19)67 to (19)71 period, and then around (19)71, (19)72, it started changing. So just your thoughts that some of the issues that were actually happening in America were happening in the armed forces in Vietnam. JC (00:14:45): Well, I think units that... I think every experience was different depending on where you were, and especially when you were there. And I think things were a lot different in 1968 than they were in 1971. And I think by 1971, there were deeper racial divides. There were drugs... There were real lines between the people who used alcohol and the people who used marijuana. And then I know I was with a combat engineer unit. There was hardcore heroin use, where the heroin was so pure and so plentiful, the guys would melt it and put it on a cigarette. And the efficiency of that is fairly low, but it was so plentiful they could do it. So, you were dealing with those things. And I think people had no illusions about winning the war. My role as an Army captain with essentially seven platoons that were spread out in MR2, building roads, was to make sure that I did not do anything stupid to get somebody hurt. And my year started, what? My countdown started the day I got there, and everybody else had a different countdown. So, there was not a real cohesion, which did not help things either. But all the tensions that were there, I thought, as I said, from Germany to Vietnam, it was probably racial tensions were higher in Germany. And there were few by the Germans too than they were in Vietnam where people were more isolated and had a common mission. But they were there, and I am not... It was still a draftee army. So that created interesting combinations of people. I also had McNamara Project 100,000 soldiers in my unit. SM (00:17:05): Oh, wow. JC (00:17:06): I had a young man, and I wrote about him in one of the poems, who was just an incredibly hardworking young man. And he was very efficient, and I wanted to promote him. And I sat him down, and I said, "Larry read this." And he said, "Sir, I cannot read." And I said, "Quit kidding around. Read this. I want you to go before the board, and I want to promote you to sergeant." He said, "I cannot read." He started talking about his life. He had had a child when he was 14. He was from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and he had dropped out of school. And there was a project, 100,000 soldiers who were not mentally up to it, but I do not know if it was 100,000, but they brought some soldiers in. I looked at his records and realized that he was one of these soldiers. And it was just a very interesting social experiment. In the same unit, I had a guy who had a Master's in classics from Columbia, and then I had Larry, and another kid who... Larry was very, very productive. The other kid was like a little kid, and we had him take care of the dogs and paint the walls, and he was like everybody's little 12-year-old brother, who was kind of sad. But it was an interesting microcosm. SM (00:18:29): Did most of the people you served with feel that they could have won this war if the government had given you more support? And it depends on who you talked to again, but how many people really were against the war that was in this service over there? And how many were upset that they were not given the [inaudible] necessary to win the war? So, there is two different questions there. JC (00:18:57): Yeah. I think again, it is what time you were serving. And I was serving late in the war, and I do not think anybody had those... Honestly, I do not think anybody really felt... And again, we were building roads, we were trying to... We were turning the war over to the Vietnamese. So, I do not think anybody had a sense of not having permission to bomb here, or do this, or do that. I never really got into those kinds of conversations with folks. It was, again, taking care of ourselves, doing what we had to do. I did not have a sense of that kind of frustration, and I did not sense that even among my peers subsequent to the war. That was never really a big part of the conversation. And again, it was because we were so late in the war. SM (00:20:12): And you were there from what time to what time? JC (00:20:15): I am trying to think now. It was 1971 till, I may have come home in February of (19)72, so it was a year. SM (00:20:27): Before the last people really came out in (19)73. JC (00:20:30): Yeah. SM (00:20:30): The helicopter. JC (00:20:31): Yeah. Yeah. So it was later in the war. And all those kinds of thoughts were kind of... I think those had gone away. The being for against the war, that too was shaped by the inevitability of our withdrawal, which we were there to withdraw. And I remember going into Vietnam, and I had a choice. I could have gone to the 101st, or to, I think, the 25th. And I deliberately asked to go to an engineer unit, because I did not want to... We knew the combat units were getting pulled out, and I did not want to go to a combat unit and then go and get pulled out. I was there, I wanted to experience it. And I deliberately remember not making that choice. And they were pulled out while I was there. A lot of our security was turned over to the Vietnamese, which was an interesting experience, because we did not feel as secure. And it really created a whole different feel about it. It made it a little bit more wild west. It was just different, because we were coordinating with the Vietnamese for security. And in the Koreans, the White Horse Division, it was very much, I think, a different experience than some other people had, because the fighting actually was being done by the Vietnamese than the South Korean units. SM (00:22:25): When do you feel, individually, that the (19)60s, the genre, the (19)60s actually begin? Was there a specific event? Was there a series of specific events? Was there a specific year that separated, say, the boomers when they were in the (19)50s, when they were elementary school kids, basically? And I have had a lot of different responses to this. Just your thoughts of, was there anything, do you feel- JC (00:22:58): November 23rd, 1961. That begins the (19)60s. And I think that is the assassination of JFK, isn't it? SM (00:23:03): It was (19)63. JC (00:23:03): (19)63. Okay. SM (00:23:03): Yeah. November 20- JC (00:23:03): Yeah, (19)63. SM (00:23:03): November 22nd. JC (00:23:11): November 22nd, (19)63. Here I am, so sure my date. (19)63. That, to me, was the beginning of the (19)60s, because that was a loss of innocence, and that was a turning point. And for me, it was the beginning of the (19)60s, because I was a senior in high school. So, I am just starting to come into my consciousness of the world around me. I remember the Bay of Pigs. I remember the tension. I remember thinking... This tells you more about maybe what a weird kid I was, but I remember getting off the bus and walking to high school, thinking, "Should I go down, lie about my age, and enlist in the Marines?" Because something is going to happen, which is- SM (00:23:59): Yeah. JC (00:23:59): ...pretty dumb on my part. But that was a period I remember. But I honestly see the turning point is, and I do not know why I keep saying (19)61, because maybe that is the Bay of Pigs. SM (00:24:14): Yeah. JC (00:24:14): (19)63- SM (00:24:14): Or (19)62 was the Cuban Crisis. JC (00:24:17): Yeah. SM (00:24:19): Do you remember the exact moment when you first heard the Kennedy was shot? JC (00:24:24): Yeah. SM (00:24:25): A lot of people that were boomers were in school, and they heard it in a class, or a teacher said it. How did you first find out about it? JC (00:24:29): I was a teacher's writer for our high school newspaper, and it was the newspaper period. So those of us who worked on the newspaper, we were fairly close, and it was informal. And Mrs. Shea was crying and told us, and we just could not believe it. It was an afternoon, I guess, near the end of the day in school. SM (00:25:02): Yeah. JC (00:25:03): And it was interesting, because I just had my 45th reunion, and we were talking about- SM (00:25:08): Oh, wow. JC (00:25:11): ... about that. And there were about three of us, or four of us at the 45th year of reunion, who actually had first heard it together. So we were sharing that memory, and Mrs. Shea. It was- SM (00:25:28): And you lived on the East Coast at that time? JC (00:25:29): I lived in Massachusetts. SM (00:25:30): Yeah. So if you were in class, it was probably close to the end of the school. JC (00:25:33): It was the end of the school day. SM (00:25:35): One period left. Probably one period left. JC (00:25:35): Yeah. That was our last period. SM (00:25:36): Yeah. JC (00:25:37): And my father, being a Boston Irishman, non-practicing Catholic, but he had the Boston Irish stubbornness. And I remember one time in Holyoke, Massachusetts, they used to paint the center stripe green. And one time, John Kennedy was leading the parade, and they went by, my father got right in my face and said, "Someday, he's going to be president." I did not say this to my father, because I did not talk to my father this way, but I am thinking, "Do not get mad at me, dad. I am not sure... Why are you..." And it was that stubborn Irish pride. And my neighborhood was very... It was Italian and Irish. So I grew up in a very ethnic Catholic part of Springfield. So, it was a big deal. SM (00:26:38): But you just said it was a magic moment. See, that reason why I am titling my book A Magic Moment is that in every interview I have had, there has been magic moments that I did not expect. And I only picked that when I think I was on my 30th interview, and I had not gone up for the title yet. And someone said, "We have already talked about the magic moments that you have had in some of these interviews. That would be a great title for your book." JC (00:27:03): Somebody else has had said the same, Kennedy assassination, have not they? SM (00:27:03): Yes, they have. JC (00:27:03): Oh, yeah. SM (00:27:03): Yeah. And other- JC (00:27:03): Not that magic. SM (00:27:10): Some said Kent State. JC (00:27:11): See, I was out of the country. SM (00:27:13): Yeah. Kent State. Well, that was the one that... No, when you look at the boomer generation, which is those born between (19)46 and (19)64, and of course, a lot of the people that were in the anti-war movement were born in (19)43 and (19)44. And a lot of the people I have interviewed, over half are not in boomers. They lived during the time that boomers were young. So all their opinions count. What is your thoughts on the boomer generation, this generation of 70 to 74 million, depending on... The millennials now, the young people that are here in this school, now are part of the largest generation in American history. They are 80 million strong. And I think boomers would be a little sensitive to know that they are no longer the biggest group. But just your thoughts on the boomer generation, what you- SM (00:28:03): But just your thoughts on the boomer generation, what you think are some of their strengths or their weaknesses? JC (00:28:08): Well, I think boomers were idealistic, obviously idealistic in both left and right causes. I saw Vietnam as part of the Kennedy's column. I was idealistic. I do not think I had any illusions about it, but I still saw it in those terms. And so I think very, very idealistic. Very, I think selfish in many ways. I think for whatever reasons, I think boomers think of themselves as a chosen people. Special time in history, unique time in history, deserving more than perhaps we think we should. In contrast to my father's depression era attitudes, we always just thought that things should be ours, material things should be ours in ways that I do not think too many generations before us felt that way. And I think we are selfish in... Although there is an awful lot of rhetoric about one world. I think Americans are, I think, we are uniquely ethnic centric about our experiences. I do not think we are very open-minded, even those who... I just do not think we are that open-minded. I think the kids today have a much more real sense of how flat the world is. I do not think we still even have that sensed the way we should. Let us see. It is hard to characterize a group of people. I think we... I do not know. I have a sense that something has owed us and it is an unrealistic sense that something he has owed us. And it is going to be interesting as we become the non-productive age, the non-productive part of our society, how that is going to work itself out. Because I do not think other generations have that sense of entitlement as much as our generation does. SM (00:31:21): That was one of the questions, and you already answered it, that there was a feeling of uniqueness. That we are the most unique generation of history. And not only when they were young, there was this feeling, I remember being around it, that we can really make a difference in this world by ending war, by bringing the races together, by showing equality toward all groups, stealing the... Like a panacea, a cure-all. We are going to be the group that is going to be able to do it. And even talking to some people today that are our age who still feel... Some have gone on and made a lot of money but some still feel it. JC (00:31:59): That is good. I am encouraged. I just felt... I do not know. I understood all that and felt that a lot of people feel that way. And there is a lot of generosity. Part of it too is the Vietnam experience. Paul Fussell said, "Once a pissed off infantry man, always a pissed off infantry man." And I could always tell when I met somebody in the army, a career soldier in the army, I could always tell a fellow officer who had served in Vietnam or one who had not, there's an element of cynicism in the person who had served in Vietnam and there is a skepticism there. Part of my more pessimistic take on the idealism of our generation is probably a result of that Vietnam skepticism because so much was promised there and so much in the delivery was so short. SM (00:33:12): How do you feel when... George will does this all the time. He will write an article, and he has done it for years in all his books. He loves to take shots at the older generation, the (19)60s generation and prove that he was against the war and then supported McGovern (19)68 and (19)72 and the whole history there. And certainly in (19)94 when Newt Gingrich came to power, he loved it too. He has made a lot of comments about it. I tried to get him to be in this project, he has rejected twice and I know people close to him. But what are your thoughts when you hear people like that who will just condemn the generation as all the reasons we have problems in America today. That all of our problems will go back to that time when things were loose, the sexual revolution, they just had a television show on that the other night and we saw it. It was unbelievable, there were things I never saw before. And division between black and white, those who supported the war, those who were against it. Just your thoughts. The blame game. JC (00:34:18): I think that is too easy. I just think there is certain tensions in society that exist, have always existed. Lots of good people trying to do good things to relieve those tensions, and the tensions are still there. I think a lot of it is a function of just society. And I think trying to blame a period or trying to blame a generation, that is a cop out. That is just too easy. I never really had that sense. Here is an interesting moment for me. Going back to graduate school, coming back from Vietnam, playing softball for the English department softball team, graduate team at University of North Carolina. One of my teammates was a man named Gordon Ball. Gordon Ball wrote Ginsberg Verbatim. Gordon Ball was my fellow graduate student at Carolina and he gets nominated for one of the best... He gets a Pulitzer nomination for a critical book, Ginsberg Verbatim. Gordon was a North Carolina farm boy. When Ginsberg started a farm, a co-op or whatever, Gordon's there and he actually knows how to run a farm. He is part of it and he takes the notes and writes Ginsberg Verbatim, which is a pretty good book. Well, he likes to play softball, I like to play softball. We are teammates, we are friends and both of us from probably different directions are completely outraged by Watergate, completely outraged by the abuse of the presidency. And so Gordon and I at University of North Carolina manned a petition booth together. And we are about as far away from each other politically and in every other way that you can imagine. And we are both just upset about what happened and just outraged by the abuse of power and the abuse of fundamentals and the constitution and so on. That is a bookend event for my generation. SM (00:37:01): It is a very interesting thing that, Max, because when I interviewed Chic Canfora, who is the sister of Allen who was a Kent State, she is a professor, she is a dynamic professor there. But she was one of the students that was at Kent State. And when I was listing the names as I would do at the very end of the interview and I mentioned the name John Dean, some people just revile and maybe just a lot of negative stuff. But for this anti-war activist who was there the day the four students were shot, she looked upon him as a hero. And she went on and said, "I wish he had run for president because he was a Republican who has been very critical of Republicans and Democrats and his recent writings he is on the conservative movement, liberals. He is just fair in every way." It is interesting how...That is what the whole Free Speech Movement was all about at Berkeley. It was not about being a liberal or conservative, it was about that Dr. Kerr tried to shut down a booth on campus and the students that were against that group, they did not like him politically, did not like him personally, but when the president tried to shut them down to hand out literature, they all came together, Liberals, Conservatives, because it was students, It was students uniting on a cause, so you made a very important point here. One of the things too is just your thoughts on the movement. Before I get to that, what kind of parents have boomers been? When you define the boomer generation you also oftentimes think of the term activism, it was an activist generation, both Liberals and Conservatives. Young Americans for Freedom, which is a very conservative group, was very anti-war and were involved in the movement. And just like Harry talked about, let us get the military point of view on war, we need to get the conservative anti-war movement war, which has been excluded from the books. But just your thought on how they have raised their kids and their grandkids. Have they shared their ideas with them? Have they created another generation of activists? Because it does not seem like they are. How have they been as parents and grandparents? You're dealing with probably parents of these kids now who are in that generation and there seems to be a tremendous link. There does not seem to be a generation gap between the parents and their kids like there was between our generations. JC (00:39:29): I do not know. I put myself in this category, I think the parent... Probably my generation, boomer generation parents are much more tolerant. I would hope. Maybe because I did not have kids until I was a little older, a little bit more open to all the crazy stuff that goes on. I think there is another generation of parents who are the younger parents now who are very anxious. And I am not sure, I think parents are getting even more anxious as we go on. I am not sure what the reason for that is, but I think... And it is funny, I have met kids who parents have really grown up as loose as possible who were in the army. We have got a friend who is the head of the school in San Francisco and he called me and I could tell by his voice something was really bad and he is a dear friend and I said, "What is it?" He said, "My son wants to fly a helicopter and he's enlisting in the army." It was like the end of the world for him. I am exaggerating a bit, but you could tell he was concerned. And I calmed him down. I just said, "Well, he will do this and this and this." And he calls me and he said, "I was just out at the basic training," or whatever, maybe it was a helicopter school, and he said, "They are just like us, they are teachers," talking about the sergeants in the army. But it was such a foreign experience to him. And his son obviously had these desires to do that. And maybe he did it partly in rebellion, I do not know. But thank God his son is safe. And this guy who did not have any experience with the military has I think a very favorable experience. It is just difficult to generalize. SM (00:41:53): Do you sense that just from young people you deal with, not only here but the other schools that you are aware of, that there just does not seem to be activism anymore? There are activists, students are involved in a lot of different things that we may not be aware of just the media just is not covering them. JC (00:42:10): I think there is a real strong service ethic among our kids. Kids here, actually, because I belong to that social dorm and my friends had organized... I actually poled for McCarthy when I was ROTC. SM (00:42:32): Oh, wow. JC (00:42:33): But I went out and I did it because I was living with these guys. SM (00:42:37): Clean for Gene. JC (00:42:38): Neat and clean for Gene. SM (00:42:39): Yes. JC (00:42:44): You about the motivation, I was doing it just to help a friend, and my motivation was not that strong. I think kids today... I will tell you the kids I am around, they really want to make a difference. And I think they are much more generous and honest in their desire to help other people. At least the kids that I have seen in the past 10 years around here. SM (00:43:18): Do you think that, this is important, volunteerism is activism. On university campuses 95 percent of students are on volunteer duty. Some that is mandatory like in fraternities and sororities, so many hours, some groups are required to do it. The key question here is, I am not saying it is not activism is, when they leave school, is it more of, I am going to do this every two weeks for two hours- JC (00:43:45): No. SM (00:43:45): ... or is it a mentality of 24 to seven and it is part of who I am as a person? JC (00:43:49): I think it is part of who they are. We do not have mandatory community service and we do not even call it community service. We call it service learning, it is integrated into the curriculum. It is part of what you do as a frame of mind. It is a state of mind and it is a piece to the larger global state of mind that I think our kids have too. It is a sense of, we are all in this together. It is a real strong sense of what is right and wrong. Fairness issues. I think I could go out and grab a kid out in the hallway and we start asking him those questions. I think you would be very, very positively impressed with... It is part of their ethical makeup. I am very optimistic about that. And the kids will make fun of a lot of things, but they do not make fun of that. SM (00:44:50): Your views are very important because I had many that are very negative, not about young people because they all believe in young people. You would not be in higher ed if you did not believe in people. Some people may develop at a different time. You may not see them activists when they are a junior or senior in college, but you can darn tooting they will be doing something in their 20s or 30s. It is just they involve at different times and we have to have respect that amongst younger people. But some of the people I have interviewed have been very negative about today's generation with respect to the lack of activism but the sense of volunteerism is there, but whether it is really part of them as a human being. This gets right into the issue of movements. One of the things that defines often times the boomer generation are the movements. Obviously the Civil Rights Movement was already happening when boomers were in their teenage years. You have got the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicano, the Native American movement, the Environmental Movement, all these movements that came about, anti-war movement around the late (19)60s and they just abound through today. Your thoughts on how important they are in America, but if you really can link them to define part of what the boomer generation is? JC (00:46:07): Obviously, I think they are historical, really significant. I think they were focused on in ways that raised everybody's attention to certain issues. And they are unique for the boomer generation and obviously the boomer generation were people then and... I am not sure I am answering this question fully. I think, again, this is probably the post- Vietnam skepticism. I am a little skeptical of movements, whether they be the kind that were bigger and more boisterous in my younger days. But even in terms of I am a registered Independent and proud of it. I am just skeptical of things being... Just skeptical of movements in general and I think that is probably left over from my experience. I am not sure I was ever fully invested in a movement. SM (00:47:48): I am going to read this one because this is a very important part of the project. There is two big issues that I have shut in on. One of them is this issue of healing and the second one is an issue of trust. The question I am asking right now, and I want to read because I feel I have missed something. Do you feel that the boomer generation is still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in your youth? The division between black and white, the divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticized it, the division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. Of course, I will throw in here too. What role did the Vietnam Memorial play in healing divisions, not only within the Vietnam veteran community and their families, but also the nation as a whole, or do you feel that the boomer generation will go to their graves like the Civil War generation, not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this or has 40 years made the statement, time heals all wounds the truth? And I prefaced this question by something. I took a group of students from Westchester University to meet Senator Muskie before he passed away, he was not well. I got to know [inaudible] quite well and he set up some meetings with us on our Leadership on the Road program to talk about his leadership. And I asked the same question to him and I have it on tape. And he did not respond right away to this question. He gave a melodramatic pause and actually had to show tears coming up. The tears that we saw that when he was attacked because he'd showed he was more feminine because he cried. And his response was that, "I just got out of the hospital. I just had an opportunity to see the Ken Burns series that was on public television about the Civil War." He went on and talked about the 400,000 men who had died in the war. And then he said, "I am not going to answer your question because I know you're asking the question regarding 1968 and all the things that happened in that convention. And I am not going to answer it that way because I cannot. The way I am going to answer it is that we have not healed since the Civil War. I just ask you to go to Gettysburg and just drive on each side you will see." Your thoughts on whether this is really even an issue. Some people will say, "Steve, people do not walk around Washington with lack of healing on their sleeves." But then others have said, "This is a very serious question because if we have not healed as a nation is what we are seeing today, not what you just explained to us about people from different points of view coming together, but this constant, you are the problem, you are the enemy, you are the..." This division of not coming together and no healing and the effect that it might be having on the boomer generation, and then that is having on their kids and their grandkids by witnessing these feelings. Is healing an issue in your viewpoint? JC (00:50:59): Absolutely. I think the issues that were at the root of the Civil War were never fully resolved, that is why the Civil War looms so large in our imaginations. To a certain extent those issues were revisited in the Vietnam War and they are still unresolved so intellectually it is still part of our... SM (00:51:25): Please speak up too. JC (00:51:28): It is still part of what's going on. However, I do not know if Bill Ehrhart explained how we met. We met at Vietnam Reconciliation Conference in 1992 at Notre Dame and Father Hesburgh brought people together for this Vietnam Reconciliation Conference. I think it was one of the first times they included Vietnamese voices and the Vietnam War took place in Vietnam, but it was all about the American experience, but the (19)92 conference made us a little bit more honest about it. And I may be naive, but I think a lot of the sharp edges are smooth. Bill Ehrhart and I are best of friends. We still have our probably fundamental political differences and I think most people are like that. And I may be naive because the past couple of presidential elections, not the last one, but the ones before it were so evenly split down the middle. You worry about that and it seems like we could go back to that 49/51 split and everything that you see in politics, in the way people position politics, it does seem to be a zero-sum game and it does seem to be a 50/50 split down the middle. I may be completely, absolutely wrong in my gut feeling that time does heal wounds, but maybe I am being naive in that. But I honestly believe that. I would not blame the boomer generation for what we see today. I do not think the roots of that 50/50 split is in the boomer generation, I think it is in the issues that are around us today. I am not going to take the blame for that one. SM (00:53:52): To me, the wall moves an awful lot. It is just one person. I lived in California in 1980 through (19)83 in the Bay Area for a while. And first thing I had to get to the wall as soon as I moved to Philadelphia to work at Thomas Jefferson University. And within a week I was on the train and got done to DC because I had not gotten a car yet. It means an awful lot, and I am not a Vietnam veteran. How important has the wall been? I know already it has been important for vets and their families. As Jan Scruggs says in the title of his book, To Heal a Nation... JC (00:54:30): Saving electricity. SM (00:54:37): Okay. To Heal a Nation, "We really heal the nation from the wall beyond just the mess." JC (00:54:44): My personal experience with the wall is interesting. I was in the Army, I did not really get involved in it. I knew the controversy. There was a part of me that wanted some kind of recognition, there was a part of me that heard, obviously, an abstract representation of it. I did not have a problem with that as much as some other people did, wanting a more literal representation. I think for me it works the way it is supposed to work in an abstract sense. I had not visited the wall and I was at the Army War College in Carlisle and we were on a trip to Washington and I got up in the morning and I ran to the wall at Sunrise and I looked up the names of the four or five people I knew that were on the wall. And it was an incredibly moving experience, primarily because it was an individual experience. I do not think there was anybody else around... For me it was a very, very good experience. If I'd gone there when people were... JC (00:56:03): ... if I had gone there when people were walking around and it was a busy mall, I do not think it would have been the same. It worked for me. There is an interesting guy named John Wolf, who is an artist and he is a good artist. I hope he is still going strong. He actually got hit by two RPGs and it blew off one of his legs and he died on the operating time two or three times. He actually writes about dying on the operating table, and I was doing a Vietnam summer workshop at West Point, and I think we had Bill come up but we had lots of Vietnam veterans come, and John came down from New Rochelle ... I am sorry. Not New Rochelle. [inaudible]. He has a studio in [inaudible]. He is a successful artist but he is the kind of guy who would not park in a handicap spot. He is on crutches. He is an exclamation point and very interesting guy. One of the female cadets asked him what he thought of the wall, and he looked at her and he said it is a fucking abomination, and I am speaking both as an artist and a Vietnam veteran. It represents nothing of what my service in Vietnam or the army was, and then he went on to really get vulgar about the [inaudible] in the earth. It was interesting. When the younger officers met Bill Ehrhart and they met John Wolf, they said, "We got to bring them together" but they would have fought ... Back then, Bill ... They both would have fought like cats and dogs and it was really a surprise, to me, to somebody who is an artist, who was so badly wounded, had such strong feelings about the wall, and I tried to explain to him my experience and that I really felt like I was honoring the people that I knew, who were on that wall. He did not get that. He just thought it was a political statement, so to say that it ... Does it bring people together? It brings some people together I guess but ... SM (00:58:38): It is interesting. When I came to Jefferson, [inaudible] posttraumatic stress disorder with Dr. Schwartz up at Jefferson, I am not sure if he's still there, the [inaudible] going to be about PTSD and it ended up being [inaudible] all the Vietnam vets that I guess [inaudible] Dwight Edwards, the whole group that was involved with the wall in Philly, and they had this politician from Pittsburgh. He had a Purple Heart. I cannot remember his name. He was a Congressman, and he came, but he refused to shake the hands of any of the other vets, because they supported the wall in Washington and he did not. He would not even talk to them and they were all... I did not quite understand that. JC (00:59:27): I do not get that. SM (00:59:28): And they never did and then he kind of blasted Dr. Zuckerman, for being an anti-war person [inaudible] were still there but... JC (00:59:36): I do not know. SM (00:59:37): You know, Lewis Puller, who wrote Fortunate Son, which I think is the best book ever written, I just reread the book in the last month and hoping to interview his wife Toddy, if I can get her to be interviewed, that would be a coup, but he loved the wall, and they tried to make it as non-political as it is, a non-political statement but even I, as an observer, who sits there, has a sense that some of the comments being made, not by Jan Scruggs but by others, are very political and so he might ... Jan might have to rethink some of the things some of these people are saying and the wall. Some of the other questions here... The issue of trust is one I want to bring up. This is very important, because I can remember in the psychology 101 class when I was in college, I think, and a professor talking about do you trust your neighbor? Do you trust your friends? Do you trust your parents? He would go around the room. He also, the next class, [inaudible] and we were all stuck with this guy. We wanted to get him fired but he was [inaudible] distinguished professor of philosophy, his father was well-known at Johns Hopkins and all the other stuff. He was new then. He really struck something that was very important to me. He said that if you cannot trust someone in your life, then you will not be a success. You have to trust people. That has always stuck with me, not as a college student but as I have gone on into my life, because I am wondering... I have a sense that many of the boomers... I know boomers were distrustful of the leaders. It is very obvious. They did not trust presidents, they did not trust college presidents, they did not trust religious leaders. They did not really accept corporations. They did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility, including all the college administrators I was around, because they had been lied to. The lies came from Watergate, they came from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. They came from Eisenhower, who lied to the national public about U2. They lied on [inaudible] 1959. Then the continuation of here in the Reagan administration, of course, the... It is a long story here but boomers have seen it. But in their youth, they did not trust leaders and that is why they went out [inaudible] so many times. Do you think this quality of lack of trust in many a generation, and I preface this by stating that only 15 percent were truly active, so we are talking about 85 percent who were not, but subconsciously, that 85 percent had to be affected also by what was going on in their youth. Do you think they have passed this lack of trust onto their kids and their grandkids? Again, it's a long question but it has a lot of meaning. The fact is if you are a study of history and political science, which I am, a lack of trust in your government is healthy. It is the first thing you learn in political science. That is how you learn and then that makes government better. But just your thought on the issue of trust, whether we really have a problem here in the nation, not only today, but throughout the boomer’s lives, because of experiences they had when they were younger. JC (01:03:10): Well, it is interesting and I will bring it back to my experiences. I was a company grade officer in Vietnam and there was a sense and, of course, I was a military region too ... Actually my corps commander was John [inaudible]. SM (01:03:27): Oh, wow. JC (01:03:28): He was in charge while I was [inaudible] there. Yeah. You talk about trust and so on, but I, obviously, did not know him or work closely with him. However, there was this sense, at least ... I do not think I am speaking entirely for myself. Part of it is those bastards at platoon headquarters mentality that is in the army. You know, the higher the headquarters, the more screwed up, but there was another dimension to it and it was I had ... You will read in the piece I gave you, there is a perspective on somebody who is trying to get a star, and a distrust of that next level of leadership in the army, and as I stayed in the army, I worried about the generation of leaders, the next generation of leaders, and I was unbelievably pleasantly surprised with the Colin Powell or the commanders, the ... My direct boss in 101st, when I was a battalion commander, was a man named Herb Watson, who got killed with the president of Pakistan when the president of Pakistan's plane got blown out of the sky. The commanding general of the 101st and the 82nd airborne, two units, I would ... Just incredibly trustworthy, wonderful leaders. It was like they saw what was happening in Vietnam and they were not going to repeat it. Colin Powell, I think stands out, because [inaudible]. He stands out as that kind of exemplar. I ended up with the healthy skepticism and the natural, "Those bastards at platoon quarters" mentality that is always in organizations, I came out with a lot of confidence and trust in that next level of commanders. It really sustained me through 30 years in the army, because I would not want to be in an organization where I did not have that trust. That said, maybe one reason I stayed in the army, because I was working for people I trusted, and maybe I had a fear of going out into another world where you did not have that trust. The other side to that or the larger piece to that I guess is the whole notion of politicians and there is a deep distrust of politicizing things, drawing up lines, making arguments based on political motivation rather than what is the best decision, and, again, I agree, that is healthy skepticism. Maybe there is more of that when it comes to politics among boomers, and now are you infecting your kids or your grandkids? I do not know. I think there ... I just got an email from a friend and he could verify these numbers for me, like out of the two million whatever Vietnam veterans who served in Vietnam... SM (01:07:00): Three million. Three million served and I believe 450,000 and 500,000 were on the front lines. JC (01:07:08): Okay, but of the 380,000 or whatever it was, only 270,000 left. It was mind-boggling. I could pull up the email. I remember having a colleague, a guy I actually taught at West Point, his name is Elliott Gruner, who wrote a book about POWs, it is pretty controversial, and he would always... We had discussions, he was a colonel, and he was a major I guess at the time, but he would ... He would always just cut the conversation with, "You're still my favorite burnt out Vietnam vet." Actually the person who sent me those statistics I think is kind of a dig that you are a dinosaur, assigned it your favorite burned out Vietnam vet, so there is that I think stigma and there is probably some truth to it but I do not think... I think most of us look at it with some fabrication and some sense of humor. I do not think we're really trying to make everybody else that skeptical. SM (01:08:26): What do you feel is the number one reason the Vietnam War ended? How important were college students on the campuses in ending the war? JC (01:08:36): I think it is what is going to end Afghanistan and Iraq, just exhaustion, just our attention span is not that long. I do not think college students were a huge factor. Although, it was a strong voice that contributed to the overall exhaustion, but I do not think it was a primary cause. I think we are going to declare victory and get the hell out of Iraq, and we probably have a right to declare victory. SM (01:09:19): Do you worry that when you read articles, Afghanistan is another Vietnam? How do you feel when you hear that people get upset by every comparison of conflict around the world? Or they always bring up Vietnam. I sense in the university, they get very uptight. It's just a bunch of boomers, again, trying to be nostalgic or remember but that is not the purpose. Vietnam had so many meanings. Just to bring the word of Vietnam in a conversation with fellow boomers who may be in leadership roles in the universities, like, "There he goes again." JC (01:09:59): Well, it is a useful metaphor but it is ... I think it is an oversimplification. You worry about ... I worry about Pakistan. I mean, I worry ... That is the nexus of what you really have to worry about I think. I think we have probably exhausted ourselves in many ways in this. That is another story. SM (01:10:31): When did the (19)60s end? Just the (19)60s itself. Was there a period that you knew it was over? JC (01:10:36): Maybe Watergate. SM (01:10:36): Okay. JC (01:10:40): The Kennedy assassination, Watergate, that is a good 10 years... SM (01:10:44): How important was the music? Because when you think of the music, it had so many social messages in it. JC (01:10:48): It was great music. SM (01:10:49): It was great music and it is still being played today [inaudible 01:10:53] showed you the article he has on the wall in there, about one of the (19)60s ... A member of the Who refuses to sell his music for TV commercials. I think that is a lesson for students, he is not selling out. JC (01:11:10): Yeah. SM (01:11:12): He wrote the music for that generation to not be selling out. How important was music within this boomer generation in terms of not only their anti-war and their involvement but just your thoughts on the music? Who were your favorite musicians? JC (01:11:31): I remember my first wife, our first date, we went to a movie, the Cardinal, and then we went and saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show at my friend Jacques [inaudible]'s house. SM (01:11:45): Right. JC (01:11:47): There was a ... The Beatles were ... I remember waking up and hearing on the radio and just, "Wow. This is ..." But there is the ... You go from the Beatles to more of a Stones fan now, so that is the loss of innocence. I became a Stones fan pretty quickly. SM (01:12:15): I think I would ... Well, I like rock music but my mom used to watch As The World Turns, which is a TV show in the afternoon. I can remember coming home once and I had a day off or a two day break or whatever. She was watching it and on the background music on As The World Turns, they were playing I Cannot Get No Satisfaction. I said if it gets on TV like that, it is certainly getting into the mainstream and that was around 1967. Yeah. The folk music of that period, all the messages and, certainly, the Motown sound. JC (01:12:47): Yeah. Very-very important. SM (01:12:49): It was important. JC (01:12:50): You know, it brings you back in the best ways I guess but... SM (01:13:01): Before I get into the names here, just were there any books that were an influence to you that you read when you were young? Novelists or non-fiction books. JC (01:13:14): Yeah. SM (01:13:14): That you can think of in the (19)60s or (19)70s. JC (01:13:17): Well, they are not... I was a 19th century American guy, so I read a lot of Walden and Emerson, Moby Dick is my favorite... If I had a favorite book, Moby Dick and Absalom Absalom, but I remember I was reading Herman Hesse in Vietnam and I can actually remember sitting on an air strip reading... SM (01:13:48): Herman Hesse? JC (01:13:49): Yeah. SM (01:13:49): Wow. JC (01:13:51): You know, just... You got free books in Vietnam. I still have books probably on that shelf that I got from the Red Cross. SM (01:13:57): Hard backs? JC (01:13:58): No, paperbacks. SM (01:13:58): Oh, paperbacks. JC (01:14:00): Nobody in the unit was getting them, so I... English major. I brought lots of books back from the Red Cross book boxes. SM (01:14:11): They might be valuable if they are first editions. Even paperbacks. JC (01:14:15): I do not know. They were pretty beat up. I had them in a rucksack. There was a lot of time... A lot of time to read. I did have a reading experience, which isn't directly related to your question but when did Going After Cacciato get published? About (19)76 or so. (19)77. SM (01:14:38): I do not know. JC (01:14:39): I remember being in a bookstore and picking up Going After Cacciato and looking and reading, reading, reading and looking at my watch and it is about two hours, two and a half hours later. It was the first time anybody had written about and processed and written about, for me, the Vietnam War. SM (01:15:01): Wow. JC (01:15:04): In a way. I had become good friends with Tim O'Brien. SM (01:15:08): Oh, yeah. Book one [inaudible]. JC (01:15:10): Yeah. I remember the first time I met Tim O'Brien, I met him in a ... He was doing a reading at University of North Carolina Wilmington, and I was actually camping on the beach in Wilmington and was in the men's room and Tim came in and we were standing there. I explained how important his Going After Cacciato was for my processing. I said, "Did you ever read J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors?" Tim stopped and he goes, "Not too many people know about that book. You appreciate it because [inaudible]." J. Glenn Gray... SM (01:15:46): Is that G-L-E-N? JC (01:15:48): J G-L-E-N-N Gray. SM (01:15:54): J. Glenn... JC (01:15:56): J, just the letter J. SM (01:15:58): J. Glenn. JC (01:15:58): Gray, The Warriors. He got his draft notice for the Second World War the same day he got his PHD of philosophy from Columbia, and he went and was a military intelligence officer, and saw action all through Italy and all the way up. Then he had a Fulbright and went back to Germany, and then his Fulbright, he took topics in war and analyzed them as a philosopher would analyze them, so attitudes toward the enemy, all the different attitudes toward the enemy, love in war, he analyzed that like a philosopher would, [inaudible] experiences. It is a fascinating book and it is exactly I think what incredibly influenced Tim O'Brien, like you cannot believe and I think he... It is one of those books. SM (01:16:53): Yeah. Well, I am at the part of the interview now where I just mention some names or terms of the period and you just give short responses to them. Some may have a greater effect than others. We already talked about the wall. What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? JC (01:17:12): Again, I was out of the country, so the full impact did not affect me. I am sure if I were in college or in the States, it would have been a different impact. SM (01:17:24): What did you think when you heard that four college students were killed on a university campus? JC (01:17:32): Well, it was... This sounds small but it was an undisciplined National Guardsman versus a disciplined regular army. It said something about the National Guard was a way to avoid the draft, and like Lieutenant Calley, there were people in positions they should not have been in. It was an insult to the profession of arms, and to the profession period. I, obviously, have a regular army officer view of it. It was a breakdown. SM (01:18:07): Watergate. You already mentioned a little bit. What did Watergate mean to you? How do you think it affected the younger generation? JC (01:18:18): Well, I think it was something I did not want to believe and when all the facts came out, it was really disheartening. It reinforced skepticism and cynicism but it also, at the same time, gave me great confidence in the system, the justice system. SM (01:18:41): Woodstock? JC (01:18:43): Again, I missed it. It just was not part of my life, because I was in the army with my head shaved. SM (01:18:58): [inaudible] this year. It has had a lot of different meaning. Everybody seems to [inaudible]. JC (01:19:01): You know, if I could live my life over again, I might want to be there but I probably would not want to not do what I did in the army. SM (01:19:14): All the cars going down the 81 heading toward that area, and I can remember ... I never thought once about it. I was a student [inaudible] and I never thought about it. JC (01:19:24): I am surprised you were not there. SM (01:19:25): I did not have a car and that did not stop anybody, though. 1968? JC (01:19:34): Year I graduated. Some great movies, Cool Hand Luke, Bonnie and Clyde. Martin Luther King's assassination. SM (01:19:55): The conventions. JC (01:19:56): Yeah. The conventions... I was in ranger school during that stuff, so I was in a gulag. SM (01:20:07): How about counter-culture? Just the term counter-culture? JC (01:20:11): Useful term. Does not give me any feelings. SM (01:20:16): How about hippies and yippies? There was a difference. JC (01:20:21): I guess the yippies were more political. I do not know. The hippies were just laissez faire. I liked San Francisco. SM (01:20:30): Yeah. SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. JC (01:20:34): I think a bit of... I think I am not sure of the best motivated. SM (01:20:49): Of course, the Weatherman were [inaudible]. JC (01:20:49): A hard line. SM (01:20:49): The Vietnam Veterans Against the War, which was real big in (19)71. They kind of took over the anti-war movement through their throwing their awards away. Your thought on that? John Kerry has always identified he is the man who spoke but the biggest names in that group were not John Kerry. JC (01:21:09): Bill Ehrhart. SM (01:21:10): Yeah. He is very proud of it. [inaudible] was in the group. JC (01:21:15): You know, I was out of the country. I may have been in Vietnam during a lot of that. I do not have real strong feelings one way or another. I did not see it. I was not here to witness it. SM (01:21:31): What about... These are names now. Jane Fonda? JC (01:21:38): I watched Jane Fonda movies. Barbarella. I have got friends who... I mean, that is the trigger name. I just think somebody is not the brightest. SM (01:21:52): How about Tom Hayden? Her husband at that time. JC (01:22:03): Well, he was a politician, and became a politician. I do not have feelings one way or another. SM (01:22:03): How about Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin? They were the yippies. JC (01:22:09): Kind of comic characters. There is a certain very prankster part to that that I may not have the full story but that is my impression. SM (01:22:21): Timothy Leary? JC (01:22:23): Yeah. [inaudible] LSD. Seemed like an interesting guy. SM (01:22:29): Dr. Benjamin Spock? JC (01:22:31): Obviously, I am part of the boomer generation and he supposedly influenced... I think he probably gets more credit than he deserves. SM (01:22:41): How about Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew? JC (01:22:47): I think petty politicians. SM (01:22:52): Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. JC (01:22:55): I really respected Eugene McCarthy. I do not know why I liked him as much as I did, but I think it was partly because he was kind of above it all. George McGovern, consistent, basically very good man. I liked McCarthy better. I would have voted for McCarthy. I did not vote for McGovern. SM (01:23:29): The ultimate mystery that I asked him is why he did not... Why he just dropped out. He said, "Read my book." He is a nice guy. I am Irish, he is Irish. I had met him twice before I interviewed him, but he... The one question where he really got upset is when I mentioned the name Bobby Kennedy. He said, "Read my book." I mean, he was dead serious. He did not want to talk about it. I go right into it now, John... SM (01:24:03): That meeting was dead serious. You do not want to talk about it. And I go right into it. Now, John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. JC (01:24:13): Well, again, I shared some of that. I was very idealistic, and obviously Western Massachusetts and really worshiped Kennedy. Actually, here is a boomer echo. I honestly feel that Obama is the first president we have had since Kennedy, who has that kind of ability to synthesize things, makes sense, and talk public policy. I just live in fear that somebody is going to kill him. SM (01:24:47): I worry that, too, and I know the students at Westchester worry about that. The fact is he is a boomer, you know. He's a very late boom. He was born in (19)62 or something like that. (19)61. He is 48 now, but he is the real youngest boomer. But I had the same kind of fears and let us pray to God that does not happen. JC (01:25:07): But I have got the idealization of JFK. RFK I think was probably a shit, but he was a good shit. He was good at the- SM (01:25:16): The last two years of his life. JC (01:25:20): He was a pragmatist. I thought it was a real loss. I got a little bit of my father in me, I guess. My father used to scream and holler at Teddy on the TV and then go out and vote for him. It is that kind of whatever. Whatever gene it is that happens to Boston Irishmen. SM (01:25:50): How about Lyndon Johnson now? JC (01:25:51): Oh, I think he became such a cartoon of himself, and I think that was just sad. SM (01:26:05): Robert McNamara? JC (01:26:05): I am not a McNamara fan. I think he knew he was sending people to die. I blame him more than probably a lot of other people. SM (01:26:09): George Wallace? JC (01:26:28): I think he was kind of a caricature of a lot of different projected hoops. I was in Georgia when he was running. SM (01:26:30): Oh, when he was shot? JC (01:26:30): Well, no, when he was running. SM (01:26:30): Oh. JC (01:26:31): I was at Fort Benning, Georgia. I will tell you what, for a northern boy had never been south from the Mason-Dixon line to drive down there and to see that and to live that, where the majority of people really thought he was going to be president. Then I was an aid to a general from Mississippi. One time I said something about how stupid I thought all this was and he said, "Well, I completely disagree." SM (01:27:07): Yeah. I forget how he took a lot. Well, he got a lot of votes. JC (01:27:09): Yeah. Yeah. SM (01:27:10): Eight or 9 percent. It was a lot of votes. JC (01:27:13): And it was just such, for somebody like me, it was just... I cannot believe it. SM (01:27:20): How about Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford? JC (01:27:25): I think Gerald Ford was a good man and did the right things to heal the nation. I actually think, I know, I think I know because a friend of mine was a military aid to Reagan, that he was not the buffoon everybody portrayed him to be. He was a pretty sharp guy and he played that role pretty well. SM (01:27:46): I want to mention Jimmy Carter, too, because he is the guy that created the amnesty for those that went to Canada. JC (01:27:53): Even at the time, I think I was there at West Point at the time, that was fine. It was part of the healing process. Jimmy Carter, I think was just too smart for his own good. SM (01:28:09): Your thoughts, you always talk about the Vietnam syndrome. We got to get rid of it. Well, during the Reagan administration, we're back. It was basically a statement saying love America again. Love the American flag again. And certainly bringing the military back to stature. But also with George Bush Senior, you talked about the Vietnam syndrome is over, and he talked about it when he was president. Your thoughts on, looks like they were also making a criticism of that particular era, both Reagan and Bush. What are your thoughts on...? JC (01:28:45): Well, it is interesting because I was in the Command General Staff College. I think all of us felt that Carter was going to get us in a shooting war. I think the weaker your position, the more vulnerable you are. One reason I went to the 82nd was I wanted to be in the best unit I could be in, because I honestly thought I was going to war. Then when Reagan came in, it was all of a sudden it is an era of triple volunteers. Volunteer for the Army, volunteer for the Airborne, volunteer for the 82nd. All of a sudden you have got equipment that you can use, so it really was a turnaround. I put it in professional terms. I do not think I thought in terms of Vietnam or not Vietnam. I remember being in the, maybe it was, I think it was Battalion Commander on 101st when Platoon came out. I remember coming out of a theater and my younger soldiers were there, and it was an eye-opener for them. I remember saying to them, I said, "It is not pretty, is it?" And I had Oliver Stone come to West Point. SM (01:30:06): Oh, wow. JC (01:30:06): I taught his trilogy. It was in the sense of the use of Vietnam from a professional point of view was, I think Platoon was a very, very accurate movie. It is not pretty and there's a lot of... It is obviously a drama. All that did not happen, but all that did happen and Oliver Stone has put it together properly. But I think first President Bush is sitting on a hill, too. I actually have a theory about, we have been using the same myths to talk ourselves into war since the periods. There is the John Smith myth that one European can take on 200 Indians or any other non- Europeans. And we're using that I think in our thinking even today. And then there is the God [inaudible] city upon the hill and chosen people and war is a purifier. To a certain extent, we use that, too. SM (01:31:19): When we think of Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush, they are boomers. JC (01:31:27): Yeah. Interesting. SM (01:31:29): So, what is it about those two that really... They have the characteristics of boomers. A lot of people do not like to answer that. A lot of them say they are typical booms. JC (01:31:38): Yes. Yes. SM (01:31:43): How would you define them as typical boomers? JC (01:31:54): I do not know if I want put this on tape. So full of shit. No. SM (01:31:54): [inaudible]. Hey, I have only got to come up 10 more. Well, I might go- JC (01:31:54): I do not know if I want to be directed that way, but there was that element to both of them, I think, that more of a common denominator than a difference. We go back, you were talking about the characteristics, the sense of entitlement, the sense of uniqueness, self-serving part of it. I am not sure they are the best representatives of the boomer generation, but they did seem to... I do not know; the mental laziness of Bush and the self-indulgence of Clinton are two things that... SM (01:32:38): Yeah, enough said. Your thoughts on Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X? Because they were the predominant figures there. JC (01:32:47): I have got a funny story. I also was a dorm counselor for my room. I was trying to make money any way I could. AI got a call right before my senior year and they said, "We got a guy," and he was the founder of the Black Student Organization at Lafayette. He was from New Rochelle. His name was Jerry Gill. He died a couple of years ago. Got a picture of him. We became very good friends because we ended up rooming together. They said, "Can we put him on his floor?" Because they were worried about him. They wanted somebody to watch him because he is this Black radical. SM (01:33:34): Want this on tape? JC (01:33:34): Sure. SM (01:33:34): Yeah? JC (01:33:37): I just hired a woman, English teacher, who graduated from Tufts. She's sitting here and I am interviewing and I said, "Do you remember Professor Gill?" She burst into tears. He had made that much of a difference in her life. SM (01:33:51): Wow. JC (01:33:52): But Jerry, then they called me and said, "Cannot find a roommate." I said, "I will room with him." So, we are in a room and it is not very big, and over Jerry's bed is big picture of Malcolm X. About a month after we have been rooming together, I walk in and Malcolm's gone and there's a big picture of The Supremes. He goes, "I did that for you." SM (01:34:17): Oh, wow. That is nice. JC (01:34:19): So, we became very-very-very good friends. Obviously, he got honored by Lafayette College and when he came back, I went up there and he gave the talk. He said the best thing about rooming with Joe Cox was I realized there were white people that were poorer than I was, which is- SM (01:34:41): Economics. Economics. Dr. King talked about that. JC (01:34:41): Which is on the record. I knew Dr. King from my lenses, and obviously he was such an elegant person and such an articulate person that even as a dumb kid, that made a big difference. Malcolm X, I probably did not know him through my own lenses. What I learned, I probably learned from a young Black radical. And I saw the movie, so I think I know Malcolm X. But I thoroughly understand it. I understand the Black Muslim movement and thoroughly understand, I think, where he was. SM (01:35:32): What is really interesting when you talk about Malcolm X, "By any means necessary," which is that there is an indication that use guns if you have to. Of course, he changed the last two years after he came back to Mecca. That is what is amazing when you compare, I worked at a piece once on Malcolm and Bobby Kennedy, because Bobby Kennedy was always known as a ruthless guy. But the last two to three years, he had done great things with his brother. All you have to do was read 13 Days to understand that. But something about his personality changed. He was more likable. He was more empathetic, more passionate and caring. So, I have always compared the two of them and the fact that people can change in their lives. But when you look at three quotes by any means necessary by Malcolm X, then the Peter Max, who I always thought had the best quotes on his paintings to define the generation, which is, "You do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, that will be beautiful." Of course, the third one was the quote that Bobby Kennedy used when he was in Indianapolis, and it was actually a quote from I think Henry David Thoreau. Is something about a time, "Some men see things they are and ask why I see things that never were and ask why not." When you look at those three statements, which one best defines the boomers? "By any means necessary," "You do your thing, I will do mine. By chance we should come together, it will be beautiful," and then Bobby Kennedy's, "Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were going to ask why not." Are they all part of the generation? JC (01:37:04): Well, I think they are all part of it. I think the cynic would say, you do yours and I will do mine. I think most would pop for the Bobby Kennedy. SM (01:37:14): Is that the quote? JC (01:37:16): No, it is the one from South Africa, but it is a good one. SM (01:37:23): I will read this to the tape here if you do not mind. "Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope in the crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current, which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance," Robert Kennedy. Wow. Very nice. Just a couple more names here and then we're done. The Black Panthers, which is Huey Newton and Bobby Seal and Eldridge Cleaver and Angela Davis and Kathleen Cleaver and that group. Just your thoughts on Black power. JC (01:38:08): Well, in Vietnam, one of the books I got out of the Red Cross was Eldridge Cleaver's book. SM (01:38:16): Soul On Ice? JC (01:38:17): Yeah, Soul On Ice. I think they were criminals, but they were fashionable criminals. They are accepted-accepted. SM (01:38:27): How about Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers? JC (01:38:32): Well, I think what he did ultimately was, I mean shedding light on things is good. I wonder about his motivation. I do not know him at all, but it is people with towering egos, boomer egos, who are going to shine a light on themselves no matter how they do it. So, there's a piece of that you kind of resent, but at the same time, the product is... I try to operate; do not do anything I would not want to see on the front page of the New York Times. You hope a lot of people work that way. SM (01:39:11): Yeah. How about the women, the Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan? They were three names that really come to the forefront. Shirley Chisholm's in that group. The Women's Movement. JC (01:39:23): They were pioneers and good spokesman. It is funny, though, I had a situation of someone I knew at North Carolina that was a student and worked with Bella Abzug, and Bella Abzug stood her up and kept the money. So, she did not come across as a nice person from that one experience. Of all of them, I have got this sense of Bella Abzug is not being a person of character. SM (01:39:55): How about the Daniel and Phillip Berrigan, because- JC (01:39:58): Yeah, good judges. Good judges. SM (01:40:03): Yeah. I actually had both of them on our campus, and we actually had Phillip on our campus. He gave his last public speech there at Westchester University before he died. A couple other quick things here. Barry Goldwater? JC (01:40:22): I understand why he lost, but there is almost a, I do not know, there is a nostalgia for... He seems from a different time, not even the (19)60s. He seems from even an earlier time. There is a certain elegance to what he said. I remember the campaign and I remember given my- I could not vote, but it was a bit shocking to me where he was coming from. But it did not... SM (01:41:00): I think there is a lot. Bill Buckley admired him, and Bill Buckley has been standing a lot of today's conservatives. He has passed away. But I can remember that when you think of the irony of a man who was destroyed by Lyndon Johnson, voting wise, numbers wise of the (19)64 election. And the fact that in 1974 it was himself and Hughes Scott, the senator from Tennessee, that were asked to go to the White House to ask Nixon to resign. His stature as a senator is very honest. JC (01:41:34): Well, there is an elegance and an integrity to him that at least looking back now, I appreciate much more. SM (01:41:41): He was a Korean War vet, too, I believe. A fighter pilot. JC (01:41:44): He was a general in the Air Force. My father looked a lot like him, too, so there is that part playing on it. SM (01:41:53): Two or three more here and then we are done. Tech. Tech was obviously very big in the military, big in Vietnam, big in the United States. There may have been lies on this in terms of the American public, too, about the impact. It really, really changed things. JC (01:42:09): Yeah-yeah. Walter Cronkite saying we have lost. Again, that is where Larry Summers, I think, gets it right. And that is why when I went to the Army War College, we were studying Clausewitz. There is a larger impact than just what happens on the battlefield or in one place. So, it was a victory because it impacted so many different areas. It was not a military victory, but it was a victory. It was a turning point. SM (01:42:43): The last person I was going to say was John Dean again, because he is the guy that went before the hearings there. Just your thoughts on John Dean. He was Nixon's lawyer. JC (01:42:54): Yeah. I think obviously there is a, in retrospect, you got to respect what he did. I probably should not end on this, but I remember thinking he had a very nice-looking wife. SM (01:43:08): And she came. They are still together. They live in California. Although, there are rumors that she had been a call-girl at one time. That really got him upset. Remember the bombshell that was... I forgot the congressman. Wanda. JC (01:43:20): Oh, yeah. Dancing in the fountain there. SM (01:43:23): Yes, there is that. The last question I want to ask you, because we have been talking about the time that boomers were basically teenagers and the rest of their lives. How important were the (19)50s? The (19)50s themselves in shaping the boomer generation. I am always fascinated because when I think of the (19)50s, I think of my parents giving me all they could give. Great Christmases, great Thanksgivings, great birthdays, just always being there kind of good times. But we knew there was racism, we knew what was going on in the South, but it was kind of hidden. It seemed like a time of peace, but the Cold War was on. We came so close to nuclear bomb. But as children, though, maybe they do not have a sense of understanding. We'd watch Mickey Mouse Club every week and we would watch the TV westerns. We did not really see the difference between good and bad. The bad was always the Native American Indian. Hop Along Cassidy, all the shows seem like a time of peace. And all of a sudden you start getting into the (19)60s and everything is kind of rebelling against the parents. What was it about the (19)50s that shaped the boomers? JC (01:44:41): You watch Mad Men? SM (01:44:42): Yes, I do. Yes, I did. JC (01:44:47): I think all those hidden tensions. I just think that is one of the best shows I think I have ever seen. There is so much of maybe what I want to remember, the tensions and the unspoken frustrations. In the (19)50s, I think that lack of confrontation led to more of an over confrontation. My parents were products of the depression and products of the Second World War. SM (01:45:34): So were mine. JC (01:45:34): My father never really got over at the Second World War. He was a pretty hard man until he moved back to the Catholic Church later in life. Claire used to say, "Your father is wonderful. Why cannot you talk to him?" I said, "Claire, that is not the man I grew up with. You have changed him." I grew up obviously wanting to please my father in so many ways, but not ever going to acknowledge him in an open way. I think that probably creates a certain schizophrenia that showed itself in the boomer generation. SM (01:46:17): Yeah, those times. I had nothing but good memories of those times, but then I am always deeply reflecting on things. I remember, my dad used to win trips. He worked for Prudential and he won trips to Florida for sales and (19)57, (19)58, (19)59. We took trips for two weeks, got out of school and we drove. You had to drive by the poor homes in the South. It was just eye-opening. One time we were at a restaurant and it was like Aunt Jemima was doing all the serving there. I started to, as a little boy, started to put things together. If you saw them, I met John Kennedy when I was... We were coming back from a vacation during the summer that he was campaigning, and he had been trying to get on a Roosevelt support. I have only read about this in later years. But my mom was tired. She said, "On the way back from vacation, let us stop at Hyde Park." So, we got there. My mom was tired, she crossed the street. They had a place where you could buy pictures back then, it's now gone. But my dad and my little sister and I, we walked in. We did not know what all the promotion was all about. Well, John Kennedy was in the library with Eleanor Roosevelt. So, we got in there and we were all waiting for him to come out the side door. I have been there many times since, and they got rid of the drive there where he was. But came out the side door, or someone was yelling, "He is coming out the side door," and so I ran over there and only one person shook his hand. Well, I got to be honest. I did not catch the grant, but I catched the top as a little boy. And he looked at me with his pin striped suit with that million dollar smile. My sister was on my dad's shoulder and she touched his suit and whatever. Little did I know that he would end up beating Nixon and then becoming president of the United States. When I went to college, that was my first one-minute speech, the most memorable moment in my life up until that point. So anyways, are there any, last question I always ask, is there a question that you thought I might ask that I did not ask that you'd like to make a final comment about the boomer generation and the generation that you grew up with? Or just some final thoughts on them as a whole? Because do not forget, they are approaching 62 now and they have still got their old age, the impact with their old age. So, any other final thoughts? JC (01:48:50): No, I think you covered an awful lot of ground. Pity you having to make sense out of it. SM (01:48:58): Well, I love doing it because... Thank you very much. Now, to turn this off. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Dr. Joseph Cox Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Cox, Joseph T., 1946- ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Soldiers; College teachers; Cox, Joseph T., 1946--Interviews Description An account of the resource Dr. Joseph T. Cox is a retired army officer, educator, author and the former headmaster of Haverford School. Cox was also an English professor at West Point. He earned a Bachelor’s degree from Lafayette College and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-11-09 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.65a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.65b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 109:05 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/69d6cb641196f02deb3452d3f57456d9.jpg 7cc41ed419b30db37fa445298f1be9f1 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/31dbe466ed189aaf264365ce4666040e.mp3 75404e8e4e6fa8b3d7569773616e5444 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview ND Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Art Carey Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Art Carey worked as a reporter, staff writer, editor and columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 34 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Carey has won several state- and national-level journalism awards for his newspaper and magazine articles.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Art Carey worked as a reporter, staff writer, editor and columnist at the <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em> for 34 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Carey has won several state- and national-level journalism awards for his newspaper and magazine articles.</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 2 Microcassettes Material Type Sound Interview Format Video or Audio Audio Keywords <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Radicals; Social activist; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam War; Liberation movements; Journalism; Tom Hanks; Voluntarism; Gordon Gekko; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Lunar landing; Watergate; Bill Clinton; Robert F. Kennedy; John F. Kennedy; Activism&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:3,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792}}">Radicals; Social activist; Students for a Democratic Society; Vietnam War; Liberation movements; Journalism; Tom Hanks; Voluntarism; Gordon Gekko; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Lunar landing; Watergate; Bill Clinton; Robert F. Kennedy; John F. Kennedy; Activism</span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 116:47 Subject LCSH Journalists; Editors; Philadelphia Inquirer; Carey, Art--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>. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Art Carey Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: REV Date of interview: Not dated --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) AC (00:00:08): Testing one, two. SM (00:00:09): That should be going. AC (00:00:12): Testing, testing, one, two, three. Are we recording? SM (00:00:15): Yes, you will see it right there if it is moving. AC (00:00:17): It is moving. SM (00:00:17): It is moving. AC (00:00:18): Mm-hmm. SM (00:00:18): We are okay now. AC (00:00:18): Okay. We are in. SM (00:00:26): Okay. Well, I am going to be reading some of these questions, and some of the questions may be repetitive. AC (00:00:29): Sure. SM (00:00:30): I am trying to get responses to each of our interviewees. First question is, the boomer generation in the (19)60s and early (19)70s is being attacked as one of the reasons for the breakdown of American society. Could you respond to this criticism and comment on the period and its impact on present day America? AC (00:00:49): Well, I am afraid I agree to some extent with that accusation. I feel that the boomer generation was very self-absorbed and self-centered, a very opportunistic generation in many ways. It had a knack or a penchant for self-mythologizing and for glorifying its baser hedonistic tendencies in the cloak of some kind of greater movement of progressiveness or enlightenment. And I do not think the baby boom generation deserves that. I think, for instance, all that counterculture stuff that happened in the (19)60s was basically just a huge generation-wide adolescent rebellion that was politicized and embellished with all these trappings of ideological transcendence, when, in fact, it was just a bunch of spoiled-brat kids acting out and rebelling against their parents. SM (00:02:32): This thought that a lot of the young people at that time had, the boomers, that we are a unique generation, we are going to change the world for the better, looking 25 years down the road and some of the way that the young people at that time prophesied those kinds of thoughts, is there any validity to that? Or is it too early to evaluate them? AC (00:02:54): Well, I agree with you that I think we had that conceit. We were arrogant. We were cocky. We did feel that we were a unique generation, and to some extent, certainly in terms of sheer numbers, we were. We were a demographic bulge. I guess there were people who enjoyed the illusion that we were going to change the world, that we were going to make the world a better place. But I do not think that we have. In fact, if anything, I think that the world is worse in many key respects because of the "contributions" of the baby boom generation. I think you could make a case that the breakdown of the family, the breakdown of morality, is attributable to some extent, to a lot of the libertine philosophies that were championed during that period. I think you could make a case that AIDS is a result of the sexual revolution that we championed; this whole idea of if it feels good, do it. The zipless fuck, copulation without responsibility, was an idea that my generation promoted under the guise of individual freedom and self-fulfillment and self-realization. And I think it has been disastrous. It is certainly contributed to the rise of divorce, which is a terribly destabilizing thing for the family. Not only divorce among our- ourselves, not only divorce among baby boom peers, but divorce in other generations. I think that a lot of our parents, people in our parents' generation, saw what we were doing and thought, "Well, if they can do it, why am I denying myself? Why am I missing out on the fun?" A lot of them were tempted, perhaps, to jettison marriages that otherwise they might have been inclined to stick with, just because of that whole spirit of self-indulgence and hedonism and sexual gratification at any cost. I think you could make that case. I think also that you could make the case that the crack epidemic and the drugs that have ripped apart our cities are a direct result of the glorification of drugs that occurred during the (19)60s. Again, another thing spearheaded by our generation, this idea that the drugs are not only harmless, but a way to enhance your appreciation of life, à la Timothy Leary, and a way to experience things more deeply and more profoundly. We, of course, the white, upper-middle class kids who were active in the SDS and who organized the student strikes, had this attitude that drugs are bad for certain people who cannot handle them. But we are intelligent. We are enlightened. We have the sophistication to handle drugs in a proper recreational manner. And for us, drugs will be an enhancement. For us, drugs are positive, and they are a badge of liberation and a badge of membership in the Age of Aquarius. Those are three things that I think have happened because of the generation that was going to save the world and instead ruined it. SM (00:06:55): You really believe that? AC (00:06:57): I do, in a lot of ways. I am very cynical about my generation. SM (00:07:00): Let us check, make sure that it is working. AC (00:07:02): Still turning. SM (00:07:06): Let me make sure of it. I double check on this, to make sure that this is right. We are okay. AC (00:07:08): Okay. SM (00:07:08): Let us work. AC (00:07:08): It is okay, bandit. It is all right, buddy. SM (00:07:10): It is okay. Bandit, it is all right. AC (00:07:13): He always gets nervous with a picture. I have always been very cynical about it and started when I was in college, because I was so aware of the hypocrisy and the phoniness, and the theater involved. I love that scene in Forrest Gump where he decks the SDS twit after he slaps around his girlfriend. To me, that really captured a lot of the duplicity and phoniness involved in the anti-war movement and all that radical politics. It was an affectation. It was so riddled with contradictions and spoiled-brat cynicism. But I remember at Princeton one time, the Black students took over an administration building called New South, and I was friendly with a lot of the students. The day of the demonstration, they were out there throwing Frisbees and cavorting in the sunshine and having a good time, and just acting like kids. As soon as the TV station showed up, they all put on their berets and their dashikis, linked arms and got real hard-looking in their faces. It was theater. It was just a game. Just a game. SM (00:08:40): How would you consider yourself when you were a college student? Were you a conservative or a liberal or moderate? Or you really did not have at that juncture- AC (00:08:41): I would say I was pretty much apolitical. I was very naive about politics. Even though I grew up on the Philadelphia Main Line and was influenced by a lot of conservative Republican type people, I was also aware of the shortcomings of conservatism and sufficiently alienated or repelled by the hypocrisy and phoniness of conservatives. Not to cast my lot with them. I went to college fairly uninformed about politics, uninformed about the Vietnam War, uninformed about social injustice and civil rights. And I learned a lot. I guess my philosophical sympathy tends to lean with Democrats and the left because I feel like the Democratic Party is the party of the disenfranchised and the disadvantaged. It is a party that tries to help the people at the bottom, whereas the Republicans try to preserve the power and money and privileges of the people at the top. I often say, I do not think you can be a true Christian and a Republican. They are innately a contradiction. I do not see how you can be both. I know that if Jesus Christ were to come back now, He would not be voting for Bob Dole. He would not be a Republican. He would be helping out other people, comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, which has always been the implicit mission of Democrats. One reason I am very hard on the radicals and the social activists is that I, in some ways, hold them to a higher standard. I expect more of them. I was very disillusioned and disappointed when I saw them being phonies and being hypocritical. SDS guys, talking about sexual liberation, and meanwhile calling their girlfriends chicks and expecting them to run the mimeograph machines. Or talking about power to the people and helping the disenfranchised and the disadvantaged, and talking a good game when it comes to abstractions in the Bantu, in South Africa, but being incredibly inconsiderate and supercilious and disdainful toward the Italian janitors who had to clean up the beer can and vomits and pizza boxes after their weekend binges on campus. SM (00:11:19): I want to ask, again, a question dealing with 1996. What has been the impact of boomers on America? And of course, you have gone into some of the positives and negatives. If you were to look at the ideology, in fact, there is no question that the young people of the (19)60s were one of the main reasons why the Vietnam War ended, and people will say it. Some people will say via Senator McCarthy, there has not been any other generation in American history that had such an impact on foreign policy. He knows history. He said there were some terrors, but nothing to the magnitude with what happened in the Vietnam War. Looking at that, that they did stop the Vietnam War, that many boomers were involved in the civil rights movement and went on down South and many continue today in the universities' fight for issues like affirmative action, our foreign policy has really never been the same since. The whole concept of the women's movement and feminism really came out of that era. The environmental movement in 1970 with Senator Nelson at the helm, that movement has continued. Looking at a lot of the things that have ... Again, I am a boomer. I am supposed to be unbiased in my interviews with each individual, but isn't there some validity to the fact that the boomers have created some positives in this society via the showmanship that you talk about? AC (00:12:44): Sure, I think they have. Right. Right. I was answering that question to respond to the way you framed it, which is that they are attacked, and I think that some of those attacks are justified. In other words, I do not have an unalloyed, rosy view of my generation. I tend to be somewhat cynical about the generation and its accomplishments. But there have been accomplishments. There is no question that the Vietnam War was a bad war, it was a wrong war, and that my generation was instrumental in stopping it. There is no question that they spearheaded a number of liberation movements, beginning with civil rights, that they certainly promoted their progress. The sexual liberation and the women's movement, and I guess to some extent, the liberation of homosexuals, which is still continuing today. I guess they can justly take credit for that, breaking down a lot of racial and class barriers in American society. And also, holding the government accountable, making sure that the government lives up to its promise, tells the truth, lives up to its high ideals and its lofty image of rectitude and righteousness. To me, I guess the biggest accomplishment of the generation is that it showed that the government can lie, and it showed that the institutions of America are wonderful and awe-inspiring, and deserving of honor and respect. The people, the human beings who hold those offices and who represent those institutions, are often very fallible and capable of mendacity and deceit and treachery. I guess that was one of the great lessons, the Vietnam War, is that people in power make mistakes and it is the habit of the powerful to try to cover up those mistakes. And that led to as a lot of disillusionment and a long period of self-examination, self-flagellation, to some extent, I guess. SM (00:16:02): Certain people in positions of power and responsibility were President Johnson, certainly Robert [inaudible] at that time. Certainly, the Nixon Administration and what happened with Watergate and so forth, left most of the boomers, I would say most of them, with a lack of trust about who to go to, whether they be leaders, and even leaders on the pulpit. Ministers, leaders in the corporate boardroom. Leaders, period. This leads into my next question. Has that continued today, and can today's generation of youth learn from the boomers? What can the boomers teach today's college students? This question is based on the fact that many of today's students often look to (19)60s and early (19)70s as a period of activism, drugs, and single-minded issues. Though many of the same issues remain, there are new ones, and the lessons of the past are either not taught in schools or never discussed between the parents, which is today's boomer in today's generation. Please give your thoughts on the issues in boomers' lives and how they can have an impact on students' lives today. For particular emphasis, has this concept of lack of trust in leadership directly gone now to their kids, and that is why we are seeing very few kids voting, and very few kids continue to have trust in leadership, even though there is a tremendous rise in volunteerism? 85 percent of today's young people are bound to some sort of volunteer activity, but they're really not showing true citizenship. They are really not voting, and they do not care about politics. Is this is a direct relation to their parents, the boomers? AC (00:17:44): Right. That is an interesting question. When I did my book on incompetence, one of the people I interviewed was Digby Baltzell, the University of Pennsylvania Sociologist. He feels that one of the reasons there has been a breakdown in the family and a breakdown of morality is that there has been a huge decline in respect for authority. And he blames my generation for that. Again, it was double-edged. In some ways, it was good. The authority figures of that era did not deserve to be respected, did not deserve to be obeyed. It was an accomplishment, a victory for my generation, that those people were exposed and defied. But the downside of that is that it led to a much more widespread and pervasive cynicism that had the effect of undermining all authority, and a society cannot function without institutions of authority and figures of authority. I would attend to agree with the premise of the question that that disrespect, that derogation of authority has continued, and it has had a very corrosive effect on the fabric of our society. It is really broken down its cohesiveness. It is very hard for government and corporate figures to command respect. And I think that is one reason why so many corporations are being run by groups now, are being run by a committee, being run by committees and boards and are less hierarchical. There is much more emphasis on decision-making by consensus, and there are advantages and disadvantages to that. One of the advantages of having a paternalistic authority figure is that a person often has a very powerful vision and is able to implement that vision quickly and efficiently. A corporation that has a person like that at the helm often gets a huge head start and is able to capitalize on things much more quickly and dynamically. The downside, of course, is that those people are often ... What is the word? Just bear with me for a second. I will get it. Well, they are authoritarian, that goes without saying, but the word I am thinking about is despotic. They are despots and dictators often, and that management stock can backfire. When they are gone, oftentimes the company flounders, is left at loose ends because there is a power vacuum or a leadership vacuum. But we are getting a little bit off the track there. But to go back to your question, I do think that it continues, and I do think it is a problem. Often, without trying to, I think that the baby boomers impart that attitude to their progeny, without doing so explicitly. I think just their general attitude about politicians and government figures. It is like a... SM (00:21:21): What you are saying is that the kids oftentimes just pick it up, not by sitting down at the supper table and saying, "This is the way it is," but it's just the way they live their lives? AC (00:21:36): Yeah. It is so saturated in our culture now. Every public figure ends up getting lampooned and parodied. It is almost like we have this Saturday Night Live ethos where anybody who comes to the fore ends up in an SNL skit, being mercilessly lampooned, à la Ross Perot. SM (00:22:04): I think that in many respects, what young people today see as an impact from the boomers is that "I do not want to become a leader. Because if I do become a leader, I will be critiqued and criticized." AC (00:22:08): Ridiculed. SM (00:22:08): "Ridiculed. They will try to find the weaknesses in me, as opposed to my strengths." AC (00:22:30): Yeah. Yeah. I am not sure you can pin that only on the baby boomer. There are so many factors that are involved there. The media have certainly changed the way they report and cover people and what they consider to be fair game. You really almost have to be insane, I think, to run for public office today, because the scrutiny is so intense. And there are no holds barred. You basically give up all vestiges of privacy. Your life is totally exposed and as you said, you are subject to that kind of criticism, constant criticism and ridicule. I would think that a lot of young people are discouraged by the price of public service. I would call it the price of public service in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era. Again, that is more fallout, I think, from my generation. There was a book written a couple of years ago called Scandal, by the wife of Nixon's ... Suzanne Garment, G-A-R-M-E-N-T. SM (00:23:40): Yeah, I read it. AC (00:23:40): That was supremacy. The nature of the press and the nature of political coverage changed as a result of an influx of baby boomers, as a result of an influx of people who grew up during Vietnam and Watergate and had a very cynical attitude toward authority figures and towards power in general, and powerful people and specific. This had led to this scandal mongering, this almost pathological obsession with finding the skeletons and the smoking guns and the dirty secrets that every politician, ipso facto, harbors or hides. The premise of her book was that this is basically resolved in the paralysis of government. Anytime we have a new political figure, somebody starts digging up all this dirt. And then we have this endless round of hearings and congressional investigations, à la Whitewater, which prevents people from governing and moving the ball ahead, just tackling the real problems of America. SM (00:24:56): It is almost like whenever a new president comes in, his theme song [inaudible]. The beat goes on, this humming tune. AC (00:25:03): Yeah, exactly. SM (00:25:03): Continue. AC (00:25:06): But I look at the newscast and I see all these people, these mobs of people at these congressional hearings on Whitewater. All these reporters, all these intelligent people using their brains for this, all these Congressmen digging up all this crap, and all these special grand juries and all these lawyers and lobbyists, and I think, what a waste of manpower. What a waste of brain power. Let us take these people and fix the healthcare system, figure out how to provide decent housing to people. Let us tackle some of our environmental problems. Do not waste your time on all this junk. SM (00:25:36): Well, I feel like asking a question here, and if you can, give me some brief responses, just some adjectives to describe it. AC (00:25:37): Sure. SM (00:25:43): If you were to describe the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, I think the early 70s, please describe the qualities you most admire. And please describe those adjectives, or the sentences, to describe five or six apiece, the good things, the bad things. AC (00:26:02): And the bad things. SM (00:26:02): Which I hate doing, by the way. Still running? AC (00:26:02): Still running. SM (00:26:02): Great. AC (00:26:03): Well, I guess the good things about the generation was that it was idealistic. It was energetic. It was passionate. It was committed. It was persevering. It was hopeful. It was positive in the sense of being able to envision. Visionary. Visionary and positive in the sense of being able to envision a better world, and entertaining the illusion that we could make a difference, that we could realize that better world, we could bring that better world into being. That is pretty much what I would say on the positive side. SM (00:26:43): How about the negative? AC (00:26:43): On the negative side, again, repeating what I said earlier, I think that it was hypocritical. It was phony. It was cynical. It was self-serving, self-absorbed, hedonistic, selfish, very short attention span, very little grasp of history, conceited, unrealistic, spoiled. Was that enough? SM (00:27:20): That is, it. AC (00:27:23): Okay. I could go on, but you get the picture. SM (00:27:26): Okay. I think you have already answered this. Could you comment on the importance of the boomers' perspective of the Vietnam War? Well, you discussed that. AC (00:27:35): I think so. Yeah. You see, I think a lot of the boomers really benefited from the fact that they had the material abundance and prosperity and affluence to afford to worry about self-fulfillment and self-realization and liberation. All these liberation movements can only take place in a society where people's basic needs are taken care of. It is really a symptom of abundance, a symptom of affluence and bountifulness. The baby boom generation is, I use the word spoiled because they really were spoiled. Many of them were the progeny of parents who worked their butts off during the depression and who were determined to give their children everything that they were denied and did not have. They really had the luxury. It was really a luxury to be able to worry about making a better world, and to protest efficiencies in American's design. SM (00:28:38): You make a good point, but there is a couple questions here that might challenge that. Number one is that in the civil rights movement, there were a lot of people that went down South. Freedom Summer of (19)64, they were predominant. Actually, most of them were actually Jewish that went down South to work with some of the young and upcoming African-Americans. Some of those young leaders like John Lewis, who is still a Congressman in Washington today, they came from different backgrounds. Many of the people involved in the civil rights movement especially were poor Blacks. Fannie Lou Hamer came out. She was not a young person. You say that there is no question that there was time for many people to be involved, like today's college students have no time because they got to work, they go to school. Whereas these students worked when I was in college. But you still had many poor people at that time getting involved in the civil rights movement. AC (00:29:31): Yeah. I think the civil rights movement is a little bit different from what I witnessed. I did not participate in the civil rights movement. It came a little bit before my time. I was only 12 or 13 years old in those years, so my perspective is skewed or warped, or whatever word you want to use by what I, in fact, witnessed, which was basically the anti-war movement on campus in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s. SM (00:30:00): Then you also had the fact that a lot of the people that went- AC (00:30:03): And I went to an Ivy League School. AC (00:30:03): ... (19)70s. SM (00:30:03): Then you also have the fact that a lot of the people went to- AC (00:30:03): And I went to an Ivy League school, so I was dealing with upper middle-class kids. That is what I saw. Princeton and Columbia. So again, that skews my perspective. It was not... I did not see... I think it was a real class thing. It was not a working-class thing; it was an upper middle-class college educated thing. The working-class kids were getting sent over to Vietnam, they were the ones who were coming back in caskets. They did not have the luxury of protesting the Vietnam War. They did not have the wherewithal; they did not have political connections. They did not have the student deferments. They just went. SM (00:30:41): And they did not have the knowledge of how to get out. AC (00:30:43): No, they did not. SM (00:30:43): But many of the middle-class kids did. AC (00:30:43): Exactly. SM (00:30:47): And probably many of them would have taken advantage of that if they knew how. AC (00:30:51): If they knew how, sure they would have. But they did not have the connections. They were not privileged. They did not have the privileges, that is really the word. SM (00:31:01): Number seven here. Have you changed your opinion of the youth of the (19)60s over the last 25 years? AC (00:31:12): The question was- have I changed my opinion of the youth of the (19)60s in the last 25 years? SM (00:31:16): And when you were a college student, you have already revealed some of the things you felt then, and you have already been very open about how you feel today. But have you been pretty steady in your feelings? Or has there been something that has changed it, or mellowed? AC (00:31:29): I think basically my feelings about the generation are the same. I mean, as I said, one of the things... (00:31:39): I have always been this way, maybe that is why I ended up being a journalist, is that I have always been something of an outsider. And I have always had the ability to see the discrepancy between image and reality, or appearance and reality. I have always been sensitive to that, the way things appear, and the way things are. I went to a private school called Episcopal Academy and the motto is Esse Quam Videri. V-I-D-E-R-I. Essa, E-S-S-E. Quam, Q-U-A-M. Videri, V-I-D-E-R-I. And that means to be rather than to seem to be. And so, I have always been attuned to that. So back in the (19)60s, I was very aware, as I said earlier, of the phoniness, and the hypocrisy, and the double standards, and the moral and ethical contradictions of the student protest movement and the anti-war movement. And a lot of these drug and sexual liberationists. And I have basically retained that attitude. I have retained the feeling that the generation did do some good things, but the generation also had lots of flaws and shortcomings. And I do not think it deserves to be deified, or canonized, or sanctified, or mythologized the way it has been in some quarters. And I always make that point. And I think a continuation of that is what you saw at the Academy of Awards when Tom Hanks got up there and accepted the award for Philadelphia and talked about gays being angels in our streets. Give me a break. I mean, this glorification of the latest sort of liberation movement of homosexuals being somehow saints. Not only are they martyrs, the victims of AIDS, they are martyrs, they are saints. It is the same kind of conceit of our generation that we are special, and that anything that we embrace or do is somehow holy. It is not holy. I mean, it is great to tolerate homosexuals. It is great to... But it is not necessary to glorify them. SM (00:34:04): How would you define this? And this is getting off this question for a bit. Strictly, Ray, what you are saying right now. And that is, one of the terms that really turns young people off today is the term do-gooder. And so even when the students that I work with get involved with Habitat for Humanity, they feel a little sensitive. That they are feeling good about something, they're helping others. And then when they feel good about helping others, they say, "Should I feel this way?" And this gets right back to the people from the (19)60s, because I thought... Again, this is only me. I went to a state university, SUNY Binghamton. Which is also a very good school, most of the kids are from Syracuse and New York City. And a lot of them could have gone to an Ivy League school but did not have money, so they went to SUNY Binghamton. But they were also middle class, they had all the time to protest, all had time to get involved in these activities. But I always, from afar, thought that a lot of these young people were doing it out of the goodness of their heart. They cared about the issues, they truly cared. And I guess what I am getting at is the sincerity. You said here that you felt that a lot of the boomers were not sincere, and certainly there were many cases of that. But I feel that a lot of boomers today are still living their lives like they lived at that time, but it is not kosher to be the way they were back in the (19)60s today. And that is to care about the minority, to care about the environment. And the fact is today that all the time, whether it be the Christian Coalition with Ralph Reed who has come to prominence representing Pat Robertson, or the Republicans in Congress who you hear all the time, even some of the Democrats, even moderate Democrats, the old Democrats from the South now really vote like Republicans. Is that the problems with society today is all going back to that time, they are pointing fingers. It is always someone else's causing the problem, they never look at themselves. So, the question I am really getting to you about is, is it really fair to look at the boomers in a way that all the problems in society today are related to them? AC (00:36:25): No, I do not think you can do that, I do not think you can blame everything on the boomers by any means. I just think that it is very problematic, whether we improve things or made things worse. I mean, to me, that question is still not answered. And I think that people who say that my generation screwed things up have a case to some extent. And you were talking about do good-ism being somewhat out of fashion. Well, my feeling is that to some extent that fashion has always been determined by my generation, just because it is so sizable and influential. And one of the things I wanted to point out about my generation is I feel it has been very morally plastic. And that is what I was trying to hint at when I talked about being opportunistic, because it was a generation that rejected the materialism and the status seeking of its parents. Back in the (19)60s, there was this nostalgie de la boue, that French term, that it is a nostalgia for the mud. And so, the whole Woodstock idea of becoming a peasant again, and frolicking in the mud, and skinny-dipping, and free love, and free sex, and all that junk, and communes. And there was this whole idea that this generation had renounced that materialism. But during the (19)80s, who were the people who spearheaded the age of greed? Who were the people? Who were the Gordon Gecko type people? Who were the people flocking to make a killing as investment bankers? They were baby boomers. Suddenly that became the chic thing to do, get ahead. It was no longer chic to sort of drop acid and tune in and drop out, or whatever they were doing. It was chic to make your killing, to become an arbitrager, and to arrange those leverage buyouts. And I remember bumping into kids who were big SDS long-haired radicals on the [inaudible] local, in their pin striped suits and they are suddenly clean cut, toting the Wall Street Journal. And I was astonished by the flip-flop. I mean, I feel like I was more true to the (19)60s since that, well, I did not embrace it wholeheartedly. I went into journalism, which is sort of a do-gooder profession mean. I mean, it is a profession where you feel like you can have a chance to make a difference and help and to teach. And I did not do this complete flip-flop sellout like a lot of these people did. So, it is unfashionable, because all those erstwhile do-gooder hippie liberal types are now driving Volvos and living on the main line. And they have shifted their energy into other channels which are more meaningful for them. And they have become more conservative, which is a natural thing that happens to people as they get older, because they suddenly realize that a lot of the stuff that they thought was restrictive and stupid and non-liberated and non-progressive makes sense. It holds society together. It is a good thing for parents, for couples to stay married. Divorce is not a good thing for kids, it wrecks up families. And families are good things. Not only for the individual kids involved, but also for society. I mean, of the basic unit of society we need to stabilize the society, you need to stabilize the family. Witness the complete social chaos in the ghettos in the city, where you have no fathers involved and you have single mothers trying to raise five or six kids. SM (00:40:01): And yet when you talk about this too, there are many boomers... I do not say now the boomers control higher education, because they are the liberals that control what is going on in schools. AC (00:40:15): Well, you have all that insanity of political correctness and diversity training and all that. That is a bad thing. SM (00:40:21): But the thing is that anyone who is teaching, anyone in social work, many lawyers did go into law not to make money but to help others. So, with every attack, there are other stories of people really that still are living community [inaudible], from my perspective. Because teachers, to me, are very underpaid. And they went in hopefully not to money, but to teach. AC (00:40:49): Do you think they are still underpaid? SM (00:40:50): A lot of people in higher education... You do not make money as a professor or an administrator [inaudible]. AC (00:40:57): Do you think teachers are underpaid? I mean, the Council Rock School District, they are making 70,000, 80,000 a year, which is more than I make for nine months of teaching. I do not know, it is hard for me to work up a lot of sympathy for teachers anymore. SM (00:41:07): Well, a lot of teachers in the US are getting paid $25,000. AC (00:41:07): Still? SM (00:41:08): Yeah. And then still [inaudible] a lot of the schools around here. But on average, I think they are probably about on average 35,000, I think. That is still good, I think, because a lot of them are underpaid. And then they reach a [inaudible] they cannot get paid any higher than that. And I know professors in the university are not paid much. 30,000 for assistant professors, and associate professors get around 45,000. And I am not quite sure what full professors get, but they reach a max and they cannot get any higher. AC (00:41:48): Is that right? SM (00:41:48): Because of tenure, and that is it. AC (00:41:48): Well, some of these fancy colleges, they are making big bucks, some of the professors. I mean, at Princeton, I mean, they are getting full professors make at least 90. But they are all doing outside consulting. And, I mean, some of those guys are hauling in 400,000 or 500,000 a year. And not doing any teaching, they have graduate teaching assistants. I mean, that is a scam, but that is a separate thing. SM (00:42:10): Yeah. Would you describe, and this is just yes or no answer, would you describe the boomers as the most unique generation in American history? AC (00:42:20): Well, I think I would have to defer to Senator McCarthy on that one, I do not think I have enough knowledge to say one way or the other. I think it was a unique generation, just because of its size and because of the social conditions at the time that it matured and came to the fore. I mean, again, some of the things I talked about, the affluence, the privilege of being able to worry about larger problems, not worrying about how they are going to feed themselves and house themselves. And the fact that so many of them were products of college. I mean, it was a huge one. Another thing that made it possible was that these kids had a lot of time on their hands. They were in college, and instead of drinking beer and I guess lighting bonfires and going to pep rallies, they were trying to shut down the Institute for Defense Analysis or whatever. But again, they had the privilege and luxury of time before they became adults. SM (00:43:28): As a boomer, if you were to list five events that had the greatest impact on you as a boomer? AC (00:43:31): As a boomer? Well, I think the assassination of President Kennedy certainly had a huge impact on my perspective. I guess the things that everybody says in terms of zeitgeist events, I guess Robert Kennedy, assassination of him, Martin Luther King, his assassination, only because they brought things into such sharp focus. And the lunar landing was an interesting thing. I mean, it had a kind of double-edged effect. In one way, it was both the beginning and the end of a sense of possibility. It showed us the miraculous and amazing things that we could accomplish by harnessing technology and by setting our will to something. But at the same time, it was sort of the symbolic end of the space program, to me. It was sort of like the end of that frontier. We had done about as much as we could feasibly do. I mean, that was such a single achievement and such a millennial kind of accomplishment. And I think there was a great sense of letdown after that, a kind of postpartum depression that we'd done it. And now what? And I really do not think the space programs recovered. The space shuttles just do not have the glamour. And sending probes to Mars, it is not the same as putting a man on the moon. So that was another thing, another event. And obviously the Vietnam War. Although I at the time, again, was not real passionate about that one way or the other. I mean, I was more curious and listening, trying to figure out who was right. And then Watergate, I think, was a very searing kind of experience, because it really cemented the idea that you cannot trust anyone over 30, or the idea that our parents are flawed. It was a very kind of edible sort of experience, that these people that you were brought up to respect and honor and believe can betray you, can tell lies. And it was also very influential in that, in a sense, we have pulled daddy off the pedestal. I mean when Nixon resigned, it was like the kids succeeded in punishing this great father figure, this parent figure, who had betrayed them or had deceived them. SM (00:46:58): Those are very good points. When I was a [inaudible] understand, one thing that struck me is we had Fred Thompson in our campus at Ohio University in 19... Did that thing click off? Is it still moving okay? AC (00:47:15): Yep, still moving. SM (00:47:16): We [inaudible] to our campus in (19)74 before the final decision was made on Watergate. And he was our Kennedy lecturer at Ohio University. And I had a chance to be with him for a solid day, stayed overnight, for a solid day. And we took him to Sherman's home in Lancaster, Ohio, this little branch campus of our university. But what I am getting at here is that I had very tremendous distrust of leaders. And he was on the committee and the minority council, the youngest member of the committee. And when I took him back to the airport, I was going to do my test with Fred Thompson. And I asked him, and I let him off at the airport, I said, "You send me a letterhead with all the signatures of the members of the Watergate Committee." And he said he would do it. Well, okay, this is my test, because I thought he would not do it. And [inaudible] and will not follow through. So, I waited a month, two months, got involved in orientation. It was very late summer as we were heading into the fall, I finally get this envelope in the mail. And when I saw and opened it, I flipped. And my attitude was, "I cannot believe it, here is a leader that followed through." With all the activities that he had. It was a signed letterhead and it was all the real signatures, with different color rings. And he said, "Please rest assured, Steve, that the workers of the government are always slow." And from that day forward I have always had tremendous respect for Fred Thompson. Now he is a senator from Tennessee. AC (00:48:43): What a great souvenir of that era. SM (00:48:45): Yeah. And I have it, it is in a safety deposit box. And I got a letter from him. And actually, I am going to interview him for this. He is up for reelection. And I am going to interview him next February, I think, after the election is over. AC (00:48:58): That is great. SM (00:49:00): Because he is a very important person. That is a story that there are good people there. And I am a democrat, but I have tremendous respect for Fred Thompson. AC (00:49:05): Is he a Republican? SM (00:49:06): He is a Republican. Watch out for him. People are talking about who is going to be the presidential candidate of the year 2000. My prediction is Fred Thompson will be the Republican at that time. He is only 53 now. He was only 33 when he was on the committee. So, he is 54, I think. And watch out for him. And he is very close to Senator Baker, he ran his campaign. He is a good guy. AC (00:49:29): Good. SM (00:49:30): It has often been quoted that only 15 percent of the boomers were truly activists or involved in some sort of activity linked to the civil rights, Vietnam War protest, women's movement, gay and lesbian movement, environmental movement, and active overall in politics and the issues of the day. Is this true? Or is this another way to lessen the impact this group has had on America since the (19)60s? AC (00:49:53): Well, I cannot say whether it is true, whether that number's exactly right. But I would tend to concur with the notion that the people who were really on the front lines were a rather small minority of the generation at large. And the rest were just sort of fellow travelers and what I used to call weekend radicals, who did it because it was sort of fun, and the mode, the thing to do, is fashionable. And you sort of had to do it if you wanted to score with chicks and be part of the scene, part of the action. You wore bell bottoms and... I mean, even I wore a running jersey. I was a big jock in college, but I wore a running jersey with a clenched student strike red fist on the back, just because it was kind of cool looking. And I went to one of the marches in Washington, not because of any great political fervor or resolve to change the world or stop the war, but because I knew that there was a pretty good chance that there would be some topless women there cavorting in the reflecting pool. And sure enough, there were. So that was the only reason I went. And I suspect there were a lot more like me. SM (00:51:11): Good analysis there. We took students over to High University back at the remembrance ceremonies at Kent State after the killings that [inaudible] there two years in a row. And it was basically to listen to some of the national leaders at that time, like Jane Fonda, Tom [inaudible], those remembrances. But it was very obvious that the majority of the people were just having a good time, were not really serious. There were some darn serious ones, well students I brought were dead serious. They would not have come with me if they were not. But you hit it right in the point, that I think that 50 percent is pretty accurate. AC (00:51:46): I think it is. I think it is. It is probably true of almost all movements. It was party time, that is all. SM (00:51:54): This is a very important one, because when you look at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, the reason why Jan Scruggs put that together is to create a non-political entity in remembrance of those who served and those who paid the ultimate price with their death. So, his goal was to try to heal the nation, and to try specifically with Vietnam veterans and their families. This question, do you feel that the boomers are a generation that is still having problems with the [inaudible]? The Vietnam Veterans Memorial did a great job with veterans, and in some respect the families of veterans. But do you feel that healing has really taken place in large numbers? And there is a follow-up to that, do you feel that some of the tremendous divisions, and the lack of dialogue between people, and the uncivil language that we see today is directly linked to that, the ability to heal? AC (00:52:51): Yeah, I think that is a factor to some extent. I mean, I think that there are certain things from which we have not recovered completely and that the scabs are still fresh. I guess Vietnam would be one of them, and Watergate might be another. In the sense that it led to this very cynical... Sense of cynical, pervasive sense of disillusionment. But I think another aspect of it too is that we not only mistrust others, we not only mistrust authority figures, we mistrust ourselves. Because a lot of us realize, again, how phony, and hypocritical and theatrical so much of it was. And there is a lot of class resentment involved too. And there is a sort of internal... And when you talk about the baby boomers, if you are talking about all the people born between 1946 and 1964, you are talking about a huge group of people. There is almost another generation in that span. And you are also talking about people of all different socioeconomic classes. And a lot of the things that are attributed to the baby boomers, again, are attributed to a very small group of privileged, white middle class kids who went to college. They are the kids who got all the ink, and got all the attention, and got mowed down at Kent State. You are not talking about the kids that went right from high school to factories, went to the [inaudible] works in Bucks County, or went to Vietnam and got maimed and then ended up in a veteran's hospital somewhere. And so, I think that there is still residual class antagonism. There is a disdain, a kind of supercilious disdain on the part of the middle-class kids who kind of conned the system, who got the student deferments, and got their graduate degrees, and did the yuppy thing in the (19)80s. And looked down on those other kids, their peers, the lumpen proletariat, the kids who went to Altamont not Woodstock. Looked down upon them as schmucks and suckers because they did not have the strings, they did not know how to pull. And then the kids at the bottom, the kids who actually came back in the body bags, who did not have the luxury, did not have the time to protest, and all that, I think resent the other ones, again, for their phoniness and hypocrisy and their moral plasticity. The fact that they were able to mold themselves to fit any kind of contingency and opportunity as the zeitgeist shifted. Does that sound cynical enough? SM (00:55:22): Yeah. And [inaudible] here all the time. I have been to several Vietnam [inaudible] on Memorial Day, and the dislike for Bill Clinton is real. The lack of forgiveness, they do not want to ever forgive him. And I find it ironic, and I have said this to everyone, that this law was supposed to heal. Yet we see veterans there who have not healed. And they will make commentary on Jane Fonda, "Bitch," still hate her. Bill Clinton, they will not forgive him. And certainly, even with Peter Arnett this past year, there is some of the media people they will not forgive, because they brought the stories home about Vietnam veterans, and maybe some of the bad things about Vietnam veterans in linkage with the good. So, there is something about the Halberstams, the Arnetts, the Sheehans, that there is dislike toward them. So, I am wondering about this for you. AC (00:56:13): Well, that is part of... Yeah, I do not think it is happening. And I think that in some ways... There is this expression that the Irish are good haters. And I think to some extent Americans are good haters. And in some ways the rancor continues to fester and to become more gangrenous as time goes on. It is not healing, it is getting worse. And it is becoming, in some ways, more irrational. I mean, blaming the David Halberstams and the Neil Sheehans for Vietnam, I think, is irrational. It's another case of blaming the messenger. SM (00:56:50): And I never thought of that until I heard these four veterans sitting in the front row who were thinking about [inaudible 00:56:58]. Well, Peter Arnett had done a favor, because I guess he was over in someplace in Europe, and he flew in just to give us less than five minutes speech for Jan Scruggs. And I said, "That is tremendous commitment to the Vietnam Memorial." "Now, who wants to listen to him? He is the guy that wrote about us." AC (00:57:09): Mm-hm. SM (00:57:14): And that was just a commentary from four veterans. But I just thought, "My god..." There is lack of healing in that, was very obvious." Only four, but I am wondering if that permeates throughout. AC (00:57:24): Well, you mentioned Bill Clinton being despised by these people. I think he is the perfect symbol of exactly what I was talking about. A guy who conned the system, who did what was necessary to save his own butt and to promote his own welfare and career. And who was in many ways a phony and a hypocrite. I mean, I will probably vote for him again, just because I think he is a lesser of two evils when posed against Bob Dole. But I think he is a sleaze ball, a total sleaze ball. And every time I see him, I think he is an actor. I mean, I think he is just a real consummate face man actor. And I think that a lot of people resent him for that. I mean, he really is a wonderful avatar or embodiment of what we have been talking about, the kind of schizophrenia of this generation. I mean, he is a very... Cosmically, ideologically, philosophically, he is very appealing. He stands for the right things; he fights for the right things. He has a heart, seemingly. But on an individual personal level, I think he is very cynical. I think he is very manipulative. I think he is very selfish. And I think he is very untrustworthy. SM (00:58:38): What are your thoughts on former left leaders who state that their past activities and those of their peers had more negative [inaudible], particularly to the people of the Horowitz and [inaudible], to the people that were pro the [inaudible]. But they are just the tip of the iceberg of former left leaders who now have [inaudible], and now are blasting their whole past. And what are your thoughts on them, both types of people? AC (00:59:04): Well, I guess my feelings are mixed on... I am not real familiar with what they say specifically. But just based on your report, I would probably be sympathetic to some of their critiques, some of their attacks in their broadsides, because it sounds like it would jibe with some of the stuff I have been saying. But I am always, I guess, amused and aggravated by people who renounce their past when it is convenient to do so. Fitzgerald said, "There are not any second acts in American life," but clearly there are people who feel... A lot of lefties. You know it is, again, another example of the moral plasticity of my generation, that they kind of reinvent themselves every decade, whatever seems to be fashionable. And when conservatism is [inaudible]- AC (01:00:03): ... whatever seems to be fashionable, and when conservatism is fashionable, suddenly, they are conservative and they are repudiating their past and everything that they stood for, because this is a way to get it on now. SM (01:00:14): How do you feel about those boomers, though, that were on the front lines, who have lived their whole lives like they were on the front lines, and have not deferred? AC (01:00:23): Have not changed? SM (01:00:27): Have not changed. In other words, they were not [inaudible]. AC (01:00:30): They have not compromised. SM (01:00:30): They have not compromised. They have lived their whole lives [inaudible]. AC (01:00:34): To some extent, even though, I may not agree with what they are doing or I think they are excessive or extreme or myopic or monomaniacal, I have more respect for those people, for their consistency and for their philosophical and ideological fidelity than I do the ones who have flipped flopped every decade to [inaudible]. We are shaded by this tree, thankfully. SM (01:01:02): It is a great tree. AC (01:01:03): Yeah. It is a wonderful old sycamore. Unfortunately, it just drops stuff all the time, twigs, the bark, leaves, and it is not a good tree to have over a swimming pool. SM (01:01:12): This is a question where I ask ... I just mention a name and I just want you to [inaudible]. AC (01:01:20): Okay. We are off the air here. Oh, no. It is still going. SM (01:01:21): It is still going. AC (01:01:23): Yeah. SM (01:01:23): Are you supposed to be on there? AC (01:01:25): I guess it must be. SM (01:01:26): Yeah. I got ... We have [inaudible]. AC (01:01:29): Okay. SM (01:01:29): If you were to try to place the following names in the minds of [inaudible], what overall reaction would you foresee for the following names? You are a boomer, so when you respond to this, your initial gut-level response to this as an individual and what you feel today [inaudible]. Number one, Tom Hayden. AC (01:01:48): You want me to give my personal reaction or the reaction of the ... My presumed reaction of the... SM (01:01:52): Your personal reaction, plus how you feel today's boomers look to these people. AC (01:02:03): My personal reaction is I dislike the guy. I suspect that a lot of my peers in the baby boomers are suspicious of him, because he seems like, again, one of these... SM (01:02:11): [inaudible]. AC (01:02:11): Yup. SM (01:02:26): Okay. We were talking about Tom Hayden. AC (01:02:28): Yeah. Tom Hayden, I think I finished up on him. SM (01:02:31): The next one is Lyndon Johnson. AC (01:02:36): Well, Lyndon Johnson is just a fascinating figure to me, because in some ways, he embodies so much of America, both its generosity and its good instincts and its tragic self-defeating flaws. Having read some of Robert Caro's work on Johnson, I just find him to be a fascinating American phenomenon. That is all I could say about him I think. SM (01:03:09): I want to mention that when I interviewed Senator McCarthy, he said that when you are in Washington, DC and you are going to the airport, there is a statue of Lyndon Johnson on the way to the airport and [inaudible] it is not done. It is an incomplete work. AC (01:03:24): Is that right? SM (01:03:30): He said ... That is what he said, Johnson was an incomplete work. AC (01:03:31): Right. SM (01:03:31): Because, in fact, he could have [inaudible] secretary. Bobby Kennedy. AC (01:03:33): Yeah. I think there was a lot of possibility for redemption there and, I mean, I think there was a man who was really growing and if he had had more time, I think he might have really ... He might have been great in the sense that he grew and overcame previous earlier limits and mistakes. Robert Kennedy? I guess I sort of regarded him as being inspiring and idealistic and scrappy, pugnacious. I think he would have been fun to watch. I am sorry that he got snuffed out so soon. I have very mixed feelings about the Kennedys, and I admired them, I almost worshiped them when I was younger. Now I have a much more realistic attitude toward them. But, again, I think that there was great possibility for growth with both of those guys, both John and Robert. SM (01:04:37): Yeah. I put John on there too, because he is on the list. AC (01:04:39): It would be interesting, and it is interesting to speculate how the course of American history would have differed if Kennedy had not been assassinated, if he had had a second term and, I mean, one of those people ... You ask me about seminal events or high impact events, baby boom generation, his assassination I think seared everybody and really ended that wonderful kind of buoyant American sense of hope and optimism. SM (01:05:15): The one question always comes up would the Vietnam War have ever happened if he had been president? [inaudible] you cannot judge what may have happened. AC (01:05:24): Right. SM (01:05:24): [inaudible]. AC (01:05:24): Right. SM (01:05:26): We do not know. Huey Newton? AC (01:05:29): He is a phony. I went to a ... He spoke at Princeton and Pat [inaudible] Cage, which is our big gymnasium, back in 1970 or (19)71 and I went to listen to him, because I wanted to find out what is this guy all about. It was just a lot of gobbledygook. It was garbage. It did not make sense. People finally ... People had the guts to stand up and walk out. I stuck it out, because I wanted to give this guy as much of a chance as possible, but it was just ... He was just a lot of hyped-up propaganda. SM (01:06:10): [inaudible] Bobby Seale category? Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, they were all in the Black Panthers. AC (01:06:12): Well, I do not know as much about Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. The only reason I react so strongly to Huey Newton is that I actually saw him and listened to him, his harangue for two hours, and it was incoherent gibberish. SM (01:06:29): Brings up two more, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. AC (01:06:34): I think of them as, basically, as flamers. You know what a flamer is? SM (01:06:42): A flamer? AC (01:06:44): A flamer is... SM (01:06:45): Create problems or trouble? AC (01:06:47): No. A flamer is sort of a hot dog. Sort of a ... They were just self-aggrandizing, very theatrical ... How shall I say? [inaudible] sort of like the court jesters or radical chic. SM (01:07:11): Yeah. As they aged, Jerry Rubin went off to ... He was kind of a hypocrite to the cause. AC (01:07:17): Oh, yeah. He sold out completely. SM (01:07:18): He sold out and Abbie Hoffman ... It is almost like the theatrics of his early years destroyed the validity of it, the activism in his later years. AC (01:07:26): Yes. SM (01:07:27): To save the Hudson River. AC (01:07:28): Right. SM (01:07:28): He was dead-serious about that. One of the tragedies too was that Abbie Hoffman, when he died, I remember the year when he died over in Bucks County. AC (01:07:35): Bucks County. SM (01:07:37): $2000 in the bank and that is all he had. AC (01:07:40): Right. SM (01:07:40): They said he was fighting depression at that time and that no one was listening to him anymore. AC (01:07:45): Right. He had become a caricature of himself. SM (01:07:49): Is that the legacy of the boomers? That no one is listening to them anymore. Is he a symbol of all boomers as they age with respect to the upcoming generation, the future generation? AC (01:08:01): I think in some ways, he is. He is a symbol to the extent that he did not seem capable of coping with real life. He never grew up in some respects. He was not able to translate apparently that sort of youthful, in-your-face, confrontational activism into a more mature effective activism, where you actually achieve results, you actually get things done, you actually persuade people, you actually ... I mean, to me, that is effective activism and it is one thing to carry signs and co-opt the media and make a big name for yourself. It is another to actually solve the problem, and I think that there are lots of people who are very activist, who you have never heard of, who worked behind the scenes and do the research and gather the facts and have meetings at which they are civil and polite and they learned how to accomplish things through the system, and I do not think he made that transition. Evidently, he did not make that transition. The other guys, Eldridge Cleaver and his cookbook and... SM (01:09:19): Bobby Seale's [inaudible]. AC (01:09:19): ... cookbook and I do not know what Eldridge Cleaver is doing, but all those guys seem to have sold out and they did the flip flops that were necessary to survive or to keep the con going, and I think they are symbols of the generation, very valid symbols of the generation and, again, its small plasticity, to get back to that again, the fact that we are able to mold ourselves to whatever situation or set of circumstances would work in our best self-interest. SM (01:09:51): Timothy Leary, I think I know your answer. AC (01:09:57): I think he was an evil person. I think he was an evil person, because he gave the drug culture kind of intellectual respectability. I do not think ... It would be a waste of my breath and your time for me to talk about all the evils and tragedy that has flowed from the drug culture. SM (01:10:23): How about Dr. Spock? AC (01:10:24): I really do not feel like I know enough about him and have sort of a full sense of him to comment. I know a lot of people blame him for the permissiveness of the baby boom generation, and perhaps he should be held accountable for some of that, but I think that is very simplistic. I think there is more to him and more to his influence than that, and I do not know enough about him to say. SM (01:10:46): How about the Berrigan Brothers? AC (01:10:47): I think that those guys were very passionate and committed about stopping the war. There is a sense of mild development and growth there. I think that those guys were the real thing. Again, I have not followed their histories real closely but I think they are true people. SM (01:11:20): Yeah. A good point is Dr. King, when he used to ... That is the next person I am going to [inaudible] prophesied that some people would be upset when they had to go to jail. He says, if you are not willing to go out and march and be arrested, then do not go out and march, if you are not willing to go to jail for your beliefs or pay the price for your beliefs, and the Berrigans did, whether you liked what they did or not, they knew that they would be penalized for it. Dr. King? AC (01:11:43): I just think he is a great hero, a great hero of our time. I mean, I am familiar with all of his human foibles and all of the revisionist stuff that is come out about him, about how he did some plagiarizing apparently, and had a weakness for white women and was not exactly the most faithful husband but he was a human being. I mean, in terms of what he did for the social justice and civil rights and African Americans, giving them a place, their rightful place in American society, I think he was wonderful. I think his message still resonates. [inaudible]. Yeah. SM (01:12:28): Okay. AC (01:12:29): I think, again, he was the real thing in terms of his passion and commitment to his cause. I am astonished to think that he made that ... I did a little magazine piece during the last presidential election and I was astonished that Martin Luther King was only 34 years old when he delivered the I Have A Dream speech. SM (01:12:52): Isn't that amazing? It was all off his head. Daniel Ellsberg? AC (01:13:02): I guess he is a hero of sorts, in that he acted on his convictions, and was instrumental in exposing the folly and duplicity of the Vietnam War through the Pentagon Papers, so I guess he deserves credit for that. He seems like the real thing. SM (01:13:22): George Wallace? AC (01:13:25): Another figure like Lyndon Johnson, to me. Another man who is very American, very American, embodied a lot of American traits and qualities and history and evolution and I think that he would have been interesting to watch, if he had continued to be active on the political stage, because I think there was a man who had great capacity for change and growth and, in some ways, was an emblem of America. Being a fierce segregationist, to becoming a much more ... Almost a statesman-like figure at the end, a person who evoked sympathy, even among Blacks, who detested him as a symbol of racism at one point. You know, he reminds me of ... He is like Lyndon Johnson. He is very tragic and flawed but there was a sort of like ... Like grass sprouting up in the cracks of a sidewalk. You saw glimmers of the possibility of redemption and regeneration. SM (01:14:45): George McGovern? AC (01:14:45): I think he is a very good man, a good man, a good human being, a very decent human being. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, wrote, that the sense of a fundamental decency is parceled out unequally at birth, and I think of George McGovern as somebody who is very fundamentally decent, a decent human being. I also think he was very naïve and somewhat quixotic. That is about it for him. SM (01:15:22): Hubert Humphrey? AC (01:15:35): I think of him as sort of about as decent as a professional politician can be. I think of him as a professional politician, more so than McGovern. I do not think McGovern was as practiced and cunning a politician but I think Hubert Humphrey was but I also think that he was a decent man who had good instincts and wanted to do the right thing. It's too bad he talked like Bugs Bunny, he sounded like Bugs Bunny. SM (01:16:01): Another one of those figures you never know what may have happened if he had gone against the war. AC (01:16:03): Indeed. SM (01:16:08): Some people believe he probably would have [inaudible]. Jane Fonda? AC (01:16:10): Phony. Another symbol of our generation. I mean, there she is with Ted Turner, a great capitalist buccaneer. Then she went through her aerobics phase, her intensely narcissistic Jane Fonda get a great butt workout phase. She is a phony. SM (01:16:33): How about Robert McNamara? AC (01:16:42): A tragic, morally corrupt, parental figure. Another one of these people like Nixon. SM (01:16:52): I think it is the symbol of today that he [inaudible], veterans, a lot of them will not even read it. It is a little bit too late. A lot of people feel that he wrote the book, because to set the record straight before he died and [inaudible] and others will say that he never should have written the book, and thought it was great not revealing what he did reveal was that in (19)67, [inaudible] against the war at that juncture in (19)67. Of course, Johnson was (19)68. But he did not have the courage to tell him and then went off to Aspen, some people say he went off to Aspen [inaudible]. You have Jan Scruggs, the Vietnam veteran’s memorial would invite him to the Vietnam veteran’s memorial, if he would come, and [inaudible] I believe and I got to know him briefly, before he killed himself, [inaudible]. AC (01:17:51): Right. SM (01:17:55): A firm believer that these are the type of [inaudible] he brought to the war to start the healing. AC (01:18:03): Yeah. It is an interesting question, an interesting debate. I guess I feel I am getting a little bit cynical and tired of people who made huge mistakes and committed gross breaches of decency and morality when they were in positions of power, and then suddenly, they have this kind of coup de foudre. You know, this road to Damascus, [Foreign language] later in life where they recognize their wrongdoing and write a confessional book and come to us begging for forgiveness. You know, the Charles Colson’s and the Robert McNamara’s and, in his case, his mistakes cost thousands of lives. I mean, I believe in forgiveness but some people are very hard to forgive and I think he's a person who is very hard to forgive. It is not that he made a ... It is one thing to make a mistake, because of a misjudgment. It is another thing, though, to cover up that misjudgment by repeatedly lying and refusing to admit it, and that is what I hold against him, not so much that he made a foolish decision or made an unwise decision but that he ... But refused to admit that he made a mistake initially and continued to pursue that course of action, and lied about it and covered it up, and was not forthcoming with the truth. SM (01:20:01): If he had revealed to President Johnson that he was against the war and resigned and left, certainly, many of the lives would not be lost but then Johnson still may have continued his policies but, at least, then they would look at McNamara as a person who [inaudible] conviction and gave up power and responsibility, knowing it would change. AC (01:20:23): Yes. SM (01:20:24): You know, that truly upsets me [inaudible]. AC (01:20:26): That would have been an act of heroism. That would have been a very admirable, moral act. SM (01:20:32): [inaudible] in the book, if he had left but then he never revealed it for protection of the president but as he got older, he wanted to reveal this before he died. Then maybe the respect would be there. But he is another interesting figure. Richard Nixon? AC (01:20:51): Well, again, you have another figure who sort of fits in with George Wallace and Lyndon Johnson in my book, a guy who embodies many characteristics and traits that are uniquely American. I mean, his ambitiousness, his lust for power, his desire to be a national and global player, and his spunk and his almost preternatural capacity to reinvent himself, to come back from all these crises and all these crushing, in some case, crushing failures to come back, to get up off the mat again, and trust his way into the political scene. I mean, all those things are so uniquely American and, in some ways, admirable but he also ... You know, he was clearly a very tragic figure and, clearly, he made some awful mistakes but, again, at the end of his life, he had the sense that he was a guy who had some capacity to redeem himself and to regenerate himself and, in ways, he was extremely practical and ... What is the word I am looking for? Not expeditious but his normalizing relationships with China, his opening up that whole thing I think was brilliant and represented an example of his practicality and his... SM (01:22:54): Here was a man that obviously did not trust others. AC (01:22:57): No. SM (01:22:57): Of course, his enemies list came forward. Of course, that is probably why he was in the... Gerald Ford? AC (01:23:15): I think Gerald Ford is basically dumb, and pretty vain. I actually met him, had an encounter with him and it was very disillusioning, because, for a while, I just thought he was sort of a good guy, kind of a get-along good guy who was not really blessed with terrific instincts or shrewdness or smarts but when I met him, I realized that on top of that, to make matters worse, he was also very vain. We had to film an interview with him for a joke tape and he agreed to participate but when we met him, we met him in this little chamber in the Capitol Building and he shook our hands in a very insincere way and then went over to the mirror and was spending a whole bunch of time primping himself and combing his hair. I was just shocked. I was shocked. I did not think he was that kind of guy. I did not think ... I guess all those guys are that way but it was disillusioning. SM (01:24:12): Spiro Agnew? I got one more. AC (01:24:15): He was just a sleaze ball. Just a cynical, conniving, out for himself sleaze ball. SM (01:24:28): And he hated the boomers. AC (01:24:28): He hated the boomers. SM (01:24:29): He did. AC (01:24:30): Well, they brought him down. I can see why he would be furious at them. SM (01:24:36): John Dean? AC (01:24:43): I view him as sort of another morally plastic yuppie squirt. He was a yuppie before it became popular, before it became an acronym. All those guys, you know the John Deans and the ... Who is the other guy? SM (01:25:01): Ehrlichman and all those [inaudible] and all that? AC (01:25:04): Yeah. There was another guy that was more like John Dean, though, a guy who went to Williams [inaudible]? Yeah. Went to Williams College and... SM (01:25:11): Right. AC (01:25:11): Silver spoon kids. SM (01:25:12): He is a minister now. AC (01:25:13): Yeah. SM (01:25:17): Sam Ervin? AC (01:25:21): He was a lovable, folksy embodiment of American rectitude and perfect for the part, at the time. SM (01:25:34): I did not realize that ... I thought he was fantastic on the Watergate committee but [inaudible]. AC (01:25:47): Is that right? SM (01:25:47): Yeah. He came south [inaudible]. AC (01:25:49): Right. SM (01:25:51): John Mitchell? AC (01:25:53): John Mitchell? I thought he was a very sinister, corrupt establishment figure who sort of confirmed all of our worst suspicions about Republicans in power, and lawyers. He really seemed evil to me, Machiavellian, but I did not ... I almost could say I hated him. For an extremely conservative guy, he was appealing in that I thought he was very principled and I thought he really believed in his conservatism and I guess I have some respect for him. I think that ideologically I would disagree with just about everything he espoused but he did seem like a principled person to me. SM (01:27:08): Gloria Steinem? AC (01:27:10): Phony. SM (01:27:13): How would you put Bella Abzug and those ... These are the people [inaudible], Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and the women's movement. AC (01:27:21): I think Gloria Steinem is a phony. I think Bella Abzug seems more ... She seems more sincere and real to me, and especially Betty Friedan. I have more respect for Betty Friedan, mainly because I do not think she is as blindly ideological as Gloria Steinem. I object to feminists who are ... First of all, who lack a sense of humor and who hate men, but also feminists who are blindly ideological and put ideology above common sense and who seem to be dedicated to sexual or gender divisiveness above any kind of understanding of human and sexual relations. SM (01:28:12): How are we doing there on that... AC (01:28:13): Still running. SM (01:28:18): Okay. We are getting towards the end here. We have about three more, and then the last one regarding individuals, it is just the music people, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, the Bob Dylan, the people who did the music of the era. AC (01:28:27): I did not like the music of my era at all. I was turned off by it. I really have nothing to say except that I think Bob Dylan is immensely untalented. I just never have been able to understand this appeal, the hoopla about him. He is an annoying, irritating voice and I do not think his lyrics are particularly profound. I just do not get it. Janis Joplin, at least, had some kind of raw, animal vigor. I could see... I mean, she just wailed and I could see the appeal in that. Jimi Hendrix seemed to be a talented guitarist but, in general, I feel those people are all overrated, especially Bob Dylan. I mean, he had this aura of profundity, like some oracle, and I just never got it. SM (01:29:15): Number 15, do you feel that you have made an impact on American society? Again, let me follow this up by this question will be asked to all participants in the interview process and as a follow-up, do you feel you have made a positive impact on the lives of boomers and members of the current generation called generation X? As a boomer, do you feel that you have made an impact on American society? AC (01:29:36): Well, that is a pretty... That invites... SM (01:29:39): Do not talk about vanity. AC (01:29:40): It invites some immodesty and it is a pretty vaulting concept, to think that you, individually, have had an impact on society. I think that I guess I feel comfortable with myself in that I feel I have chosen a profession where there is a possibility to do good, and I feel that I have been true to the best of the... AC (01:30:03): Best of the spirit or the ideals of my generation and that I chose a profession where I knew I would not make a lot of money, but where I knew that I might have a chance to have an impact on the course of public affairs and it's a teaching. I regard journalism, especially what I do now, as- SM (01:30:21): Are you teaching full-time now? AC (01:30:24): No, I am not teaching formally in a classroom, but it is a teaching profession, I think. I mean, I regard myself as a teacher, an educator, except instead of having a class of 30, I have a class of potentially numbers in the tens of thousands. I mean, that is what I try to do. Horace said that great poetry should dulce et utile, which in Latin means to be sweet and to be useful, and I feel that that is what I try to do. I try to teach and delight, to inform and to entertain, and I do that now through these comms I write about physical fitness. That is the satisfaction I get, is that I am helping people. It is not really about physical fitness, it is really about happiness. It is how to lead a successful, full life by respecting both your body and your mind. I have also written all sorts of other stories. I wrote that book on incompetence, and I have written magazine articles on lots of subjects. important issues like euthanasia. I wrote a letter to the president the last election asking whoever the president might be. It is an open letter to the president, asking that person to be true to the idea of faith, hope, and charity. I mean, those are the rubrics for the story. Have I had an impact on American society? I would not go that far, but I think I have had a small impact in my little sphere of influence, in my little realm. The people who read the Inquirer, the people who read my book, the people who perhaps read my comm. I think I have gotten them to think I have provoke them. I have tried to be true to certain principles that I feel are important. The idea of fundamental decency, the idea of being what you pretend to be, of what we were talking about earlier, the Episcopal motto. To be rather than to seem to be. That is what I try to do. SM (01:32:16): How about influence you made on the people in the generation following you? AC (01:32:24): Well, I think I have had an influence indirectly in that. I mean, I have really tried to be honest. I mean, I have been a real big opponent of political correctness and I have had the guts to speak out about it. It has not been a good thing for my career at the Inquirer, to object to diversity training, to object to a lot of that phoniness and hypocrisy. A lot of people think I am a racist because of some of the things I have done. There's been a lot of name calling, and so been a price to pay for that, but I feel that I have been set an example for others, and maybe even some generation Xers, of the importance of adhering to your principles and speaking up when you feel that something is phony or hypocritical or a violation or an abridgement of the spirit of liberalism. I believe that I am a true liberal and that I am for maximum freedom. I am for maximum freedom. What I was saying earlier is that I feel that I am a true liberal and that I feel that I am a believer in maximum freedom. That is what liberal to me means, means free. Maximum freedom. Maximum freedom of expression. I do not want anybody telling me how to think and what to say. I do not want anybody telling me the politically correct [inaudible]. I do not want any institution forcing me to get a diversity training where I am going to be told, I am going to be forced fed propaganda about how to think about certain groups in our society, how to treat people. I do not think that has any place in an academic institution or a newspaper. I am for maximum freedom of expression. I am for maximum diversity, political diversity in the true sense of that. Not this cosmetic Benetton ad diversity of skin color and sexual organs, but real diversity of ideas. I mean, I would love the Inquirer to have some more, and I think David Boldt is a [inaudible] conservative. We need some raving conservatives on that paper and we need some raving radical lefties. I want to see a free for all of ideas and not this phony diversity that we have now, of if you have a Hispanic surname, then you are diverse. Even if you buy into the left liberal orthodoxy and group think of the newspaper. That is where we need the diversity, in terms of ideas and political outlook. I have battled that stuff and I think that, I hope that that is been an inspiration or an example to other people. SM (01:35:01): I am coming down to the end. AC (01:35:02): Okay. SM (01:35:02): I got three more here and make sure that is working. AC (01:35:06): It is turning. SM (01:35:07): Could you comment on the generation gap in the (19)60s and early (19)70s and the generation gap you sense between boomers and Generation X? AC (01:35:15): Well, there was certainly a generation gap during the (19)60s, between us and them, and them I guess was anybody over 30. It was our parents' generation and people who we deemed insufficiently progressive and hopelessly benighted. As I said earlier, I think there was actually the baby boomers, if you used the definition that people like, went... Oh, what was his name? Brandon Jones uses in his book Great Expectations for people from between (19)46 and (19)64. I mean, that almost to me encompasses a couple generations. I feel like there is a big difference in outlook between people born in 1950 and people born in 1960. As far as generation X people go. I mean, there is clearly a difference in spirit and a difference in expectation and the difference in outlook. In some ways, the young kids, the generation Xers, are very cynical. Much more cynical than even baby boomers, like myself, who were skeptical about the generation from the get go. I guess they expressed their cynicism in a kind of apathy, in a slacker. Backward baseball cap. Unwillingness to participate or aspire to anything. I mean, Digby Baltzell talks about how this generation seems to be aspiring downward. The whole notion of white middle class kids embracing ghetto rap, and to me it is symptomatic of that. It is sort of like we are going to admire and emulate to the lower or lowest elements in society as a way of basically shooting a finger at the establishment. SM (01:37:36): What, in your opinion, is the lasting legacy of the boomer generation? AC (01:37:47): The lasting legacy. SM (01:37:52): Is it too early? AC (01:37:54): It may be too early. Maybe our lasting legacy is that we will not leave a legacy that lasts. It is just quite possible that we were so morally plastic, that we were so spread all over the landscape, and that we were so bent on our own self-gratification that we kind of nullified social good that we purported to do in our more youthful, idealistic stage. I guess that is my feeling, is that we sort of canceled it. We canceled it all out, and that a lot of the things that we thought were so nifty and great and liberating and beneficial, that were going to advance the human race, that were going to represent an evolutionary step forward, tended to have tragic and awful unforeseen consequences. As I said earlier, I think that AIDS could be viewed as a direct result of the sexual revolution. I think that the crack cocaine culture that has destroyed American cities can be traced to Timothy Leary and the glorification of drugs, I think that we are responsible. I think that the fact that the American economy to such an extent is a house of cards and that we do not make things, we make deals today. All that is a result of the greed of the (19)80s, which flowed out of the me decade of the (19)70s, the self-absorption of the (19)70s and all that la-la land stuff that happened then. Which again, which flowed out of the age of Aquarius. If it feels good, do it. You only go around once in life, so grab for all the gusty you can get. That stupid poem that used to be on everybody's poster, that kind of declaration of that creed. SM (01:40:24): Do your thing. AC (01:40:25): Yeah, I will do your- SM (01:40:26): If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful. Peter Max. AC (01:40:29): Exactly, that creed, which you saw it every single black lit room in hippiedom which was- SM (01:40:36): Peter Max. AC (01:40:37): Yeah. SM (01:40:41): Put that piece in back. What role, if any, does activism in the boomer generation penetrate the lives of their children's generation? Do you think there is any of that going into the children at all? AC (01:40:53): I do not see it. I do not see it, but I guess I have not really been studying it. SM (01:41:03): We did this, but I just want to read it. Do you think it is possible to heal within a generation where differences in positions taken were so extreme? Is it important to try to assist in this healing process? Should we care? Is it feasible? For example, during my many trips to the wall, I have been at several ceremonies of veterans in the audience. They hate Bill Clinton. They hate Jane Fonda, hate those who protested the war and never gave veterans a royal welcome on the return to the mainland. The wall has helped in a magnificent way, but the hate remains for those on the other side. Should an effort be made to assist in this healing beyond the wall? Your thoughts? Are you optimistic? Other words, what I am truly trying to say is, what I am trying to do with this project is to, in some small way, interview people who I think have some important things to say from all sides without being prejudiced or biased toward anything. I may have my own personal views, but my ultimate goal in this project is to do something to maybe, in my own small way, heal the boomers and heal American society in some small way. Some will say, I have already had some people say, "You have got to heal the generation? Impossible." I still want to try, based on the meeting that I had with Senator Muskie, that we had with our students who I may have reviewed to you over the phone, and certainly my Lewis Puller sending me a note saying, "Go for it." Things like this. I want to do it. It is something that has been driving within me. AC (01:42:30): Well, that is good. I mean, you're an example of the best that you have that passion you think and you think you can make a difference. That belief that you can make a difference. Other people may say, "You're an impossible idealist. You are just a Don Quixote and you're not going to do that. You cannot heal a generation." I think one person can make a difference. In my incompetence book, I told people that, and that was my message, is you are not going to change everything, but you can change things. You can have an impact in your own sphere of influence and that stuff ripples out and you do not know how it is going to affect. SM (01:43:06): Two years ago, I never thought I would be doing this, so I am doing it. AC (01:43:06): That is great. SM (01:43:12): I even thought of possibly developing this into a trilogy. The first one being the reality, which is the voices of boomers and veterans and the boomers, the book being the young people, the next generation, which is Generation X. The third one being a symposium on nine university campuses in the next, somehow three years. I do not know how to get the funding, but possibly the first two efforts would help with the funding, and that is on nine university campuses starting with September, October, November, December, whatever, bringing different panels together to try to bring the healing. That means to bring a Jane Fonda, if she'd be willing to do it, even though how you might feel, to bring her on the same stage with Don Bailey, our former auditor general who when he came to Jefferson, would not even sit down with us, who put the memorial together because he thought it was a political entity in Philadelphia and he was our auditor general. I think he had won a Purple Heart. That was another one of those magic moments where the divisions, my God, he would not even talk with Harry Gafney and Dan Fraley and the people involved in the memorial in Philly because he felt that this is just a political move. I am going to just ask these final two questions. Do you think that we will ever have trust for elected leaders again after the debacle of Vietnam and Watergate? If boomers’ distrust, what effect is this having on the current generation of youth? I think I asked that earlier, so I do not know if you have anything else to say. AC (01:44:37): I do not know. I get discouraged because I think that the system as it is presently constituted is so inherently corrupt that it is impossible for an honest, truly honest, decent man to let us say become president. I think you almost have to be insane and also somewhat pathological to succeed. I mean, to some extent, I think the people who run for that office are probably, if you evaluated them clinically, are pathological narcissists and megalomaniacs. As long as you have politicians who are willing to do anything or say anything to please lobbyist, to get campaign contributions and to get votes, you are going to have cynicism and distrust of certainly a political authority. People are just resigned to it. They are just resigned to the fact that politicians are cheaters and liars. Unfortunately, the ones we have at the moment have done nothing to disabuse us of that notion. I mean, Clinton and Dole, I think are what we have come to expect. I do not see, I mean, I cannot see that changing unless, well, I think a key step would be political finance reform. If these guys, and what Paul Taylor's trying to do, and there is another example of a single individual having impact trying to change things. Paul Taylor, the former Washington Post reporter who is trying to get the TV networks to give free time to political candidates, he used to work at the Inquirer. I know him a little bit. There is a guy, I mean, I do not know what he did during the, he is a baby boomer. I do not know what he did during the war. He went to Yale. I do not know. He is like a year or two older than I am. I do not know what he did, whether he was active in the anti-war movement. I do not think he was. He was a jock, but there is a guy who's continuing to act on his, he is still an activist. SM (01:46:46): Station one? AC (01:46:47): Yeah, I think he is. He got together with Walter Cronkite. You have not read about that? SM (01:46:53): No. AC (01:46:54): He got a lot of press and he has been on TV, public television a lot. They got a couple of the networks to agree to it to some extent. Remember I talked about effective activism, mature activism. There is a guy who is an effective activist, who is getting things done, changing things. Not by using four letterer words and placards and stuff like that, but by working within the system. He was a chief political writer of the Washington Post, and he quit because he just felt the whole system was diseased. How did I get off on that tangent? Oh, well, that is a step to this finance reform, relieving politicians of the burden of having to raise all this money for media time, TV time. If you do that, then the chances of getting some truly honest people, people who are able to maintain some semblance of integrity and run for higher office, is enhanced. I think once that happens, once you get people in office who act on their convictions and say what they mean and take on popular stands and defend those stands and explain why they took them, then I think you are going to see a regeneration of trust for political authority. SM (01:48:08): I am almost done. Make sure that is still running. AC (01:48:11): Still running. SM (01:48:13): When the best history books are written on the growing up years for the boomers, say 25, 50 years from now, what will be the overall evaluation of boomers? [inaudible 01:48:23]. Then how did the youth of the (19)60s and early (19)70s change your life and attitudes toward that and future generations? AC (01:48:36): Well, again, I guess it is hard to say whether I brought this with me or whether it was inspired by the (19)60s, but I am very skeptical generally, and again, I am very attuned to this discrepancy between appearance and reality. I am very, I guess Hemingway once used the phrase in describing someone as having a built-in shit detector. I have a very good built in shit detector. Having seen the theater and the moral and ethical transparency of my generation firsthand, I am very loathe to canonize or deify or hero worship anybody, but particularly my peers. I guess the bottom line is that I regard them as human beings, and therefore I know that they are probably as bad as they are good or as good as they are bad. That you get both. Both come with the package when you are dealing with human beings. While I think the baby, boomers are special in terms of their numerical preponderance, I do not think that they have any special claim to moral superiority or enlightenment or social beneficence. SM (01:50:28): Last question. Here it is. AC (01:50:29): Okay. SM (01:50:33): You believe they could have impact on society and government policy in the (19)50s, (19)60s and (19)70s vis a vis Vietnam policy, the draft, civil rights legislation, non-violent protests, multiple movements. In other words, a sense of... How is society resisting this today and why, in your own words, do the sons and daughters of boomers feel less confident about their ability to have an impact on society and sometimes a less desire and seemingly less opportunity? Am I wrong in assuming this in the question? Let me just mention that I work with a lot of college students and I have been in higher education for 17 years at four different universities. I left for a while, but my love for higher education was such that I came back. One of the things that I see overall since that a lot of today's college students that I come in contact with are either wish they lived in that era so they could have meaning to their lives, or they look upon it as a nostalgic period. Oftentimes we will criticize boomers when they talk about civil rights and issues that were important in their day but are still important today. When we try to say that the impact on race relations in society is still we have a long way to go, they will say, "Oh, the civil rights, I mean, you are just bringing up something that was very important to you, but it is not as important to us." That concerns me. If we could get beyond this image of what the boomers were all supposedly about, what the media has portrayed them as, and look at some of the substance of the issues that were involved in that time, that some of that still carries over. I think we are failing to do that today with a lot of the young people. You ask a lot of young people, what is the most important thing? The most important thing is getting a job, making money. That was certainly a takeover from the (19)80s, but making money is very important for them and volunteer. A lot of want to volunteer in their community. We are not saying that students do not care about others, but I get a sense that they are looking out for number one. In the long run, number one is all that really counts, and that concerns me. AC (01:52:45): Well, I think you are right. I mean, I am not as close to the kids as you are clearly. I mean, you I am sure have a very educated sense of who they are and what they feel and what they stand for. That is my sense. That is my long-distance sense of the kids today. I think that they have a feeling that they missed out on the big battles and they missed out on the fun. When they look back at the (19)60s, they feel like they missed the boat, that sort of all the major challenges have already been addressed and to some extent conquered. That all that rebellious adolescent fun is over as well. We had the luxury of kicking up our heels and doing it with high moral dudgeon, having a blast while at the same time fostering the illusion that we were doing some good. Clearly the times have changed and the kids today do not have the luxury, I do not think, to do what we did. As I said earlier, we had the privilege and luxury of dealing with these big issues and these big problems. We did not have to worry about getting jobs right away. We were not living in an era of shrinking resources and diminished horizons as these kids are. I mean, we were living in a time when we expected to do better than our parents and to enjoy a better standard of living than our parents. We expected the American engine of plenty and affluence and cornucopia to continue and that this tide would continue to rise and that we would be buoyed with it. I do not think the kids feel that way today. They know that the American century is over, even before the century has closed. They know that they are likely not to enjoy the same standard of living as their parents, and to live in a much more Darwinian, dog eat dog kind of world, a global multinational kind of world, which is much more unpredictable and scary. These are the kids who come out of college with $100,000 worth of debt and have to go back home and live with mom and dad sometimes till they are 30 years old. It is not the same time. It is not the same time and not the same world. I can see why they feel resentment and a sense of wistfulness and nostalgia, and I can see why they are contemptuous of us as a bunch of spoiled brats who kind of got it all, who were hogging all the good jobs and who were irresponsible and want to prolong it. I mean, I can see why it maddens them to see us try to prolong our youth. These 45-year-olds cavorting around being obsessed with fitness and getting plastic surgery and acting like they're still in college. SM (01:56:24): I guess I am done, but do you have any final comments you wanted to say at all? Any general concluding remarks? AC (01:56:30): My only concluding remark is to carry on. You are doing the Lord's work. It is a good idea. Good luck with your endeavor. SM (01:56:38): Well, thank you very much for being involved. Thank you very much. AC (01:56:43): You are very welcome. It is my pleasure. Snap. You are very welcome. (End of Interview) Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Art Carey Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Carey, Art ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Journalists; Editors; Philadelphia Inquirer; Carey, Art--Interviews Description An account of the resource <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Art Carey worked as a reporter, staff writer, editor and columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 34 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Carey has won several state- and national-level journalism awards for his newspaper and magazine articles.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:515,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;4&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:13228792},&quot;12&quot;:0}">Art Carey worked as a reporter, staff writer, editor and columnist at the <em>Philadelphia Inquirer</em> for 34 years. He has a Bachelor's degree in English from Princeton University and a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University. Carey has won several state- and national-level journalism awards for his newspaper and magazine articles.</span> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource ND Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.64a; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.64b Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 116:47 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/a73477c7381dda5dfbb74d27b5374aa2.jpg 5b519108f549cf81b1bcf629e2327546 https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/4f23f9ef29681b252439fb2059692ef0.mp3 3389dbc1b78fd7e2a2db0fd57b21b7b3 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 This template displays an audio player by Amplitude.js with a scrollable transcription which is loaded from the "Transcription" metadata field. This template displays an audio player with the first attached image file as the 'cover image'. For its audio source, the template looks for the first attached audio file. If additional audio files exist, they should be combined using audio editing software, or a separate Omeka item should be made for each part. Date of Interview 2009-11-22 Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Stephen McKiernan Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Alan Canfora ; Roseann Chic Canfora Language English Biographical Text <span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Alan Canfora is a survivor of the Kent State massacre who was shot in the wrist by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Canfora is an activist, student organizer and political activist who earned a bachelor's degree in General Studies and master's degree in Library Science. Currently, he is the Library Director at Akron Law Library in Akron, Ohio.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:8403713,&quot;3&quot;:[null,0],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,4995385],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10,&quot;26&quot;:400}">Dr. Roseann "Chic" Canfora is an educator. She received her Master's degree in Journalism and Public Relations at Kent State University, where she also earned a Ph.D. in Educational Administration. Currently, she is a Chief Communications Officer at Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Dr. Canfora is the sister of Alan Canfora and an eyewitness to the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970. <br /><br />Alan Canfora (1949-2020) was a survivor of the Kent State massacre who was shot in the wrist by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Canfora was an activist, student organizer and political activist who earned a Bachelor's degree in General Studies and a Master's degree in Library Science. He was the Library Director at Akron Law Library in Akron, Ohio.<br /></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="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Vietnam War; Kent State; 1960s; Baby Boomers; SDS; Political activism; Protests; College students; Counterculture; Democratic Party; Republican Party; Watergate; Black Panthers; Richard Nixon; Ronald Reagan; Lyndon Johnson&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:4993,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;10&quot;:0,&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;}">Vietnam War; Feminism; Civil rights movement; Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy; Cuban missile crisis; Kent State; Black Panthers; Pacifism; Timothy Leary; Drug culture; Exclusion of women; Joan Baez; Cesar Chavez; March on Washington; Harvey Milk; Vietnam Veterans Memorial; Baby boom generation ; Students for a Democratic Society; Political activism; Protests; College students; Counterculture; Black Panthers; Richard Nixon; Ronald Reagan; Lyndon Johnson<br /></span> Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 201:57 Subject LCSH Educators; Kent State Shootings, Kent, Ohio, 1970; Canfora, Roseann Chic--Interviews; Political activists--United States; Library directors; University of Akron. School of Law. Library; Canfora, Alan Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium McKiernan Interviews Interview with: Alan Canfora and Roseann Chic Canfora Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan Transcriber: Benjamin Mehdi So Date of interview: 22 November 2009 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Start of Interview) 00:02 SM: Is- It is basically a question I am only asking the people that were activists during the (19)60s. And that is: what made you become an activist? Was there something in your life in your growing up years, whether it be in high school or even before what happened on May 4, 1970? What was it within you in your background that made you become an activist in your life? 00:33 RC: Well, I grew up in a house with a father, who was always politically involved as a city councilman. But also, as a labor activist, I lived in a, in Barberton, Ohio, which was at the time a factory town. And so, every little league team has URW or UAEW, you know, the United Rubber Workers or Auto Workers Union, were the sponsors of just about all the teams and most of my friend's fathers work in factories [agreement]. From my earliest recollections, as a child were always hearing my father on the phone, talking about, you know, basically the fights that they were engaging on, on the labor front through the UAW and being a union leader that was a very natural thing in my household that we respected unions, we avoided, we did not cross picket lines, we understood the value of people fighting for their rights and standing up for what they believed in [agreement]. I have to say that-that had a long-term influence on my own political value of people fighting for their rights and standing for what they believe in. I did not come to Kent State as a political activist, however, I was a very strait-laced, honors students in high school, a cheerleader, very socially involved and very politically unaware, because I do not remember my teachers talking about things like the Vietnam War, even though many of my friends were in the same war, had brothers that were coming home injured or, or in body bags. And I think I might have remained relatively uninvolved, politically at Kent State were it not for the draft, which personally affected me, because so many of my friends and my brothers in particular, were eligible for the draft and were dreading going, and it was that alone, that made me begin to question what is this war? And where will they go? And why do they have to fight? And what can I do to stop them from going? 03:29 SM: We get, before I get into my other set of questions here, when you think going back to that period now when you heard, when you experienced the tragedies on May 4, and that whole weekend, 1970. When you saw the news media afterwards, constantly say that of all places, it happened to Kent State, you remember this in the media? You know, there was a lot more activist campus like Ohio State or particularly Ohio University that had been through some major protests. And then they said, believe it or not, it happened to Kent State. How do you, how did you react to that just what the media was doing, and portraying the, your university and the students there? 04:11 RC: Well, I never bought that because I was there in 1968, a college freshman, and from my very first day on campus, SDS had a very visible and viable presence on that campus. I could remember being handed an anti-war leaflet my first week of school, even though I was inclined to throw it away, and not pay attention. You know, I was still of the mindset that, you know, like the Tennyson, “Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.” I grew up in a very military family. My mother was an Army nurse. My father had served in World War II. They met in a hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, where my father who was recuperating from an injury and I remember you know, as a child always going through their scrapbook and always envisioning my brother's someday going off and joining the army too. In fact, I even looked forwards to joining the ROTC, as you know, kind of been following in my mother's footsteps at one point. But even though I was largely expectant of, of young men going off to service, I was aware that there was growing opposition on the campus at Kent. And it was a very constant level of political activity with SDS. I marveled at that I was very impressed with that even though I did not pay much attention to what they were saying, I was paying attention to their determination. And it always, it always fascinated me that whether it was raining or freezing cold outside, or whether it was fall, winter, or spring, they were there. They were in the Student Center, and they were always working, they were always organizing, they were always engaging with theater, they were always passing out leaflets, always walking with bullhorns and marching on that campus. And I watched it grow. And with that growing, not with those growing numbers, my growing interest in them. So no, I was, I was never of the mindset that Kent was not what the people placed it was sort of a surprise that a major anti-war protest happened there, whoever said that was clueless about what was going on there and never paid attention. 06:41 SM: Yeah, that was a lot of what the media was doing right around that time. One of the questions I wanted to ask, too, is, you know, about the generation gap between parents and students and between parents and boomers. And most of the World War II generation, obviously, you had some very quality parents who were inspirational role models to you, was there any kind of a generation gap between you and Alan and the rest of your, your family and your parents? And secondly, when you used to eat at the dinner table in high school did you ever had, did they listened to you to where their conversations at the table were not only, they were giving information to you about the experiences, but they respected your point of view too. 07:26 RC: So, we always talk politics, but disagreements in our family were very, very common things I can still remember Alan, supporting Robert Kennedy and my dad supporting Hubert Humphrey and, and you know, them debating about which one was the better candidate. And, you know, I do remember when Alan was beginning to question the war and be critical of the war. My mom and dad disagreed with them. But I also remember when I watched Johnson, on television announcing the invasion of Southeast Asia. And I remember looking at my mother's face, and I saw a worry on her face, I did not see what a very pro-military woman to look, the look I thought would be different. But I saw the worry on her face, I knew that going into Southeast Asia was probably not right, and even though my dad disagreed with a lot of the tactics that were being used I think by activists, it was-was more so because he was worried, we would get in trouble, we would go to jail, to see if we participated and get hurt. He never really stifled our opinions or told us we were full of it, he always listened, my parents always listened and even debated with us over the dinner table. We were Italian family, so we argued a lot. And we never made it feel we could not vent our opinion 09:01 SM: Did any of your brothers go off to war? 09:04 RC: No. 09:06 SM: Okay, when you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, of course, why I had an interview yesterday with Rennie Davis. He was the guy I ended up interviewing in Washington because he was there for speaking event. And he looked at the (19)60s as from 1960 to 1973, which I kind of believe as well, when but when you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? 09:33 RC: So, when I think of the (19)60s and (19)70s I, the first thing comes to my mind is the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement that those, those are the two I think most polarizing and inspiring episode of the (19)60s and the (19)70s. 09:55 SM: Obviously, I think I know your answer to this, is, is there one specific event that shaped your life when you were young? I would assume it was what happened on May 4? 10:05 RC: Well, certainly that stands up there at number one, also affected deeply by the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and particularly by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. I mean, I was just graduated from high school when, when Bobby Kennedy gave us so much hope for ending the war, and so much focus on bringing a real president to the White House. And, you know, seeing those dreams dashed and seeing those heroes extinguished, so, you know, suddenly and tragically was devastating to me. And, and it was very confusing. I never knew how to put that into perspective until I was much older. 10:55 SM: Where were you when you heard John Kennedy died? You remember the moment? 11:00 RC: Yes, I was in a social studies class at Highland junior high school. I was 13 in the seventh grade. And I remember the public address system came on, there was no announcement by the principal, they just literally turned on the public address system and allowed the radio report to come through. I remember watching my social studies teacher grab his stomach, almost as if he has been shot himself in a gut reaction. And then I remember everyone kind of pouring into the hallways, and teachers were crying and crying. And that just began that horribly, long week there, I will never, ever forget the drumbeat of that funeral processional and all the stores closing and all of the grief on the faces of so many people. I grew up in a very democratic town. And so, it was an entire town in absolute grief. 12:03 SM: It is like watching television from Friday through Monday, without ever turning the TV off. 12:09 RC: Right, And I remember we were at church. And walk in the door, just as my father was reacting to the assassination or the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. And it was just like, wow, to be that young, and see so much tragedy back, back-to-back has to have played a significant role in my own political activism later. I was stunned by all that tragedy and outrage, you know, in ways that I was too young to be able to express then. But I am sure it manifested itself in my activism later. 12:49 SM: Right then getting into 1968, which had seemed to be one event after another that traumatized people. And certainly, you would have been five years older in 1968. So, you, what as a young person, what were your feelings? You, after King died, and then finding out that Bobby Kennedy died two months later. I mean, what did you think about America? 13:16 RC: Well, I remember feeling so hopeless, because being in a family where so, so much was put on election with, you know, I mean, as little kids, as very, very young kids, I could still remember my, my brother Alan and my brother Sonny and I, running from precinct to precinct with a little notepad and a pencil. So, we can write down to the vote tallies, as they were posted outside the door. And that was the way they used to do it for my father's election. It was always a very exciting thing for us to run from precinct to precinct on election night, and then run back into the house to tell my father he won his election. So, we always valued democracy and always actively participated in democracy, and then to see people rising to positions of power, rightfully so, to be gunned down. People do not even have the opportunity to elect them was probably the most closest feeling I had as a child that, you know, anybody who tries to do it the right way that tries to go through the system to effect change, that there is no hope for them to do that meaningfully. I became very disillusioned with my, with America, the American that I was coming to know. 14:40 SM: The, one of the- Newt Gingrich when he came to power in 1994, and the writer George Will in US News and World Report always have, always, whenever they get a chance, they like to downplay and actually criticize the boomer generation as a whole for all the reasons why we have problems in America today. They will generalize the breakup of the American family, the tensions between black and white, those who support the troops, those who are against the troops. The whole issue of, you know, lack of respect for authority, when you, they basically condemned the generation, what are your thoughts when you hear the Newt Gingrich’s and the George Wills of the world, make those kinds of comments. 15:28 RC: So, they are ignorant, they are absolutely ignorant, because when I looked back at the generation that I was a part of, I mean, certainly a difficult time in which to live, but it was a time that I would not for the world have missed living. It was a generation of youth that was not afraid to disagree with their parents. And so while some may call that rebelliousness, I really see it as an age of enlightenment. There was an overall rejection of the value of the generation before us, a generation that, like, you know, that worships, worships war, you know, was, was, you know, and instead of, I mean, then they polluted our air with, you know, their industries, and their-their focus on capitalism and focus on, you know, just getting ahead and, you know, being, you know, that whole dog-eat-dog world that they lived in, it was inspiring for me to be part of a new generation, that value peace over war that values the earth over the capitalism and pollution and, and, and we were a generation that fell in love with music, and fell in love with the earth and fell in love with peace. And, you know, the Woodstock generation was, to me, probably the greatest thing I have ever been part of, because it was that rejection of the value for us, and this collective statement that we are different. We are different, we lived differently. And you know, some, some rejected the whole era of free love and off of that, well, you know, that whole puritanical kind of stuff-shirted attitude of our, of our parents was rejected. So, I think people like Newt Gingrich are yucky, and Jerry Rubin who, you know, whose slogan, “kill your parents” made us seem violent and rebellious. When really it was a value system that said, we are different. And we reject the values of our parents, we are not afraid to form a new society, with values that put people first rather than profit, that put peace first, rather than war, something above something vaccines? I do not know. I am proud to have been part of that. 18:18 SM: What, what do you think, if you were to put down some characteristics and qualities that you feel the strengths and weaknesses of the boomers were, and again, we are talking about, some people have a hard time talking about 75 million people when maybe only 15 percent were activists. But, but, but I have also talked to people that if you were in the non-activist group, the subconscious, obviously is part of who you are as a human being. So really does in a way affect the entire boomer generation. What do you consider some of the strengths and weaknesses of the boomers and boomers are those born between (19)46 and (19)64? 19:00 RC: To me, we were really very much a product of our upbringing, because when I remember mostly the division on the Kent State campus, that kind of I saw, my first glimpse of it was at the music and speech building. When the Kent Four were about to be expelled. It is my first political action. And I was just, I was outraged that the four leaders that I had seen for two years walking with bull horns and leading so many people against the war on campus, were about to be expelled and I thought that was wrong. And so when I followed them to the music and speech building, the, the protest, people were protesting the expulsion, waiting at the music and speech building was another set of boomers, a different set of boomers but fraternity guys who then were pissed started, you know, fighting with the SDS followers, and that to me, was a very visual reminder of the polarization in this country, that pitted not just the Woodstock generation against parents. But pit for war against anti-war boomers. You know, pro-materialism, pro-materialist against anti-materialist. And, and I really do think it had a lot to do with who we were when we were growing up during those years, if we were kids who really were affected by the assassination that we talked about a moment ago. Because I mean, when I was at Highland junior high school, and I was sobbing at the death of President Kennedy, I still remember a girl who was on my cheerleading squad saying, “Thank God,” because she hated Kennedy. So, you know, we were, we were divided against each other as we were divided against those that have come before us. And I think it has a lot to do with those in our generation that bought into the materialistic values of our parents. And they were usually the ones that were a little more well off. And I think that the working-class kids were far more influenced by the labor movement, and the civil, and the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement, combined. So, to me, that is our strength and our weakness. Our strength is being reared in, in the, you know, the working class town, that was the strength for us, being reared by, by parents who served this country and expected to get something in return versus those in our generation who never knew the value of labor in making, you know, improving the quality of life for everyone with health benefits and vacation benefits and safer factories and safer food products and all the things to me that are the strength of that whole era of the (19)60s and (19)70s. Labor is at the heart of that. And I think labor, and the value of that is what really divided our own generation. 22:13 SM: There have been a lot of setbacks in labor because of Ronald Reagan, it all started with Ronald Reagan and remember the airline strike, I remember the airline situation. And from that day forward, labor unions have gone down in terms of the number of people participating in them. And leads, leads me into my next question, which is, what has been the overall impact of the boomer generation on America as a whole? Now we are talking 70 million, we have had two presidents, totally different presidents in Bill Clinton and George Bush, who are boomers. And actually, President Obama is a very late boomer. I mean with him being very young. But what has been the overall impact on America forget what George Will and Newt Gingrich say, but you are just your thoughts as a proud, a proud boomer. 23:01 RC: Well, actually, I, I think that it would, I am not really sure I know what you are asking me. When you say Newt Gingrich, he is blaming us for the current problems of today? 23:14 SM: Well, he, he goes back to the era of that generation, he did this in 1994. And occasionally he has opportunities to say it. George Will writes it all the time, that the drug culture, they look at the negatives, they look at all the negative things and, and they-they say, that is the influence we have on our society. They have very permissive society, no one talks to each other people do not listen, people are getting divorced. There is still the tensions between black and white, and in all the “-isms.” They go back to that era. So basically, what my question is just, forgetting what they said, what you believe, has been the impact of this boomer generation on America and the world? 24:01 RC: Well, I think that that image, the positive image, throughout the world, of what America represents, is embodied in the boomer generation. Because if there was ever a generation in the history of this country, since the revolution, that truly exemplified and put through their greatest test those constitutional guarantees of freedom, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, it was the boomer generation. There was no other time since the revolution that anyone can point to where the people put those rights to the test. And not only were gun down for it but got back up and continued to point out the wrongs of this government. And I think that in the same way that the corrupt Gingrich’s and others in Congress who see that, I mean, they saw what we were capable of doing with free, with a free press in the (19)60s with the Walter Cronkite types of reporters, but as long as people know the truth, they can act on this truth. And they can effect meaningful change with the truth. Everything that we have seen in those volatile years of the (19)60s and (19)70s, we have seen a reaction to that. That was why we could not see flag faced coffins anymore. That is why we no longer have a media that is not controlled by profit, and governments. Because when the people are as aware as the boomers were, and act on that awareness, then then government is not safe. So, I think that is the greatest contribution of our generation is we put those-those rights to their greatest test. And we are still here advocating for a return to the freedoms that that we enjoyed then that are, you know, frozen and eroded, time and time again today, by a government afraid of that kind of people power returning, 26:17 SM: Obviously, you are living those feelings and expressing them even I am seeing you at some of the events at Kent State. And democracy is very important to you. But when you look at as boomers have aged, and now the early boomers or the late, they are now on social security for the first time this year for the, for the, for the boomer generation, how many of them really have lived up to what they did when they were young? It can you, can you put, can you put you have seen over the years, even some of your friends who were activists, like you were back in the (19)70s, early (19)70s. And have seen what that, how they lived their lives. I guess, what I am really asking is, have they lived up to their, their beliefs of that particular era? Or did they fall into the same trap of many previous generations of, you know, just going back and making money raising families not really caring about your fellow human beings because they got to put bread on the table, or- 27:22 RC: I think there is a lot of people, and I am included, in part because I remember, my parents never had, we never had money, we never, my mother was a stay-at-home mom, my dad worked in a factory, money was always an issue when I grew up. And I remember my dad telling me that he could not afford to send me to college, because he had three boys to put through school, and I was just going to get married and have kids anyway, and so on and so forth. So, I know that as a parent, today, I gave my kids far more than I otherwise might have. I expected them to work less than my parents expected me to work because I never wanted them to work and to go through what I went through. I mean, I it took me eight years to do my undergraduate work, because I always had to work to pay for it myself. And I had to work, sometimes go to school, sometimes, work while going to school, sometimes drop out and work for a year and then go back. And so, I find myself as a parent, saying to my kids, as long as you are in school, I will pay for it. You know, I want you to get through in four years. And I think that there is a lot of boomers like me who overindulge their children to begin with. And then some of them got, I think, trapped in that whole materialistic, you know, giving, give our kids what we did not have. And therefore, the material possessions became as important as they were to our parents, you know, so what they rejected in the (19)60s, they embrace in the (19)80s. And so, I remember being part of that myself, until I really got a good look at you know an America that does not, you know, it does not have its priorities straight. You know, it is more and more people are going homeless and hungry, as more and more people are losing their jobs. I cannot imagine where all the boomers are now fighting for healthcare now. They were, they have just, they have not only lost their way they have lost their mind. How can they not see that the issues we face today are even more critical than before, you know, to have a record, you know, to have, you know, such a huge number of people in my generation, support George Bush for eight years. It is mind boggling. People who said that they marched in the (19)60s, but now you know, they you know, this is the, this is the new way that they support America. I do not I do not know that any one part would do so, I would not, and I would like to believe I know when America has gone wrong, and I am willing to still stand up to it against the powers that be if they are taking us in the wrong direction. I do not know where the half a million strong Woodstock generation is. They rejected those values back then they moved on and adapted their values and their hearts are not there- 30:19 SM: There were so many activists in the late (19)60s and (19)70s. And I, I have often wondered whatever happened to their parenting in respect to raising activist mentalities and, and their sons and daughters. Now, and of course, when we talk sons and daughters now, we are talking about two generations here because the generation that followed the boomers are the Generation Xers that seem to always have problems with boomers, and now Millennials are the current college group. There is some activism lots of volunteerism. But do you see where, you see much activism on college campuses now yourself? 30:58 RC: Well, yes, there is pockets of activism. But so much of campus activism has to do with, with causes, you know, I suppose, if there were a draft, and most of the kids that age were being sent off to war as it was for us you would see far more activism than you see now. But I also see a decrease in activism by design. If college education was affordable to me, my parents could not pay for my college. But I could work all summer long and pay for my tuition for an entire year. My tuition at Kent was $197 a quarter in 1968, it cost $400 a year to live full time in a dorm with a meal ticket for three meals a day. Today’s college student does not have that affordable, affordability. And I think that is by government design. So that never again we will witness what we witnessed in the (19)60s, today's college students are burdened with debt, they are burdened not only with tuition debt, they are burdened with credit card debt all by design. Because if you can keep them working jobs while they are in school, if you can keep them so fretted over the, you know, the, without the fear of being expelled or the fear of having, of not being able to graduate, so on and so forth. Then they are going to be less inclined to take up causes, causes beyond themselves. And I think that, that- that was- that was what has happened. That they knew that the Woodstock generation’s children were coming to college. And they did not want a repeat of what they had in the (19)60s. So, they made college unaffordable, they made both parents have to work they made college students have to work. I truly I mean, I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist. But I think unaffordable colleges, this was by design. 33:04 SM: Well, you, you said something very important. I have always mentioned I may have mentioned to you the title of my book is “Magic Moments.” And-and that was because in each interview, there has been a magic moment, you just created a magic moment. Because I did not expect that. But it is very well put, because I felt for a long time. And this is not my interview, it is yours. But that activism is a term that scares college administrations to death. And it is like they do not want a repeat of what happened back in the (19)60s and early (19)70s. And because of the fact that they know that this generation of students or parents are very close to their kids, and anything that upsets the apple cart, they will take their kid out of college, and it is all about the bottom line. So, you raise some really good points there. 33:55 RC: Look at some of the laws that are being passed. I was a teacher for 31 years in high school classrooms. High school teachers today are well I mean, and my, my son, my son, Ian is going to be a math professor, and now well, they have laws on the books right now where you can have a teacher removed from the classroom, but something as simple and vague as conduct unbecoming of a teacher. We have to worry that any teacher who speaks his mind, or you know, a few years back, I stood in front of the White House with a sign saying, “Impeach Bush”. And on the other side it said, “The Bush-Cheney Occupation, who will reconstruct America?” This is right after we went into Iraq. I was out there for six hours. And I remember these policemen coming over to me, they knew I was a teacher. And they said, “How long are you here for? Aren’t you teaching a summer school,” I mean, like they had they knew who I was, and where I taught? And that was, that was chilling. 34:54 SM: Wow. 34:56 RC: And I remember as our union kind of briefed us, our Teachers Union briefed us two years ago on how all the laws were changing. So that we had to be more careful about our political affiliations and our political activism. Because if a school board saw us as looking rebellious for participating in conduct unbecoming a teacher, then you know, we could lose our jobs even, even if we had tenure. That is a small example of what I think is occurring on a larger scale. Our government learned a great deal from us in the (19)60s, they learned a great deal of about what can happen when people mobilized and when, when, when the opposition grows, and so on and so forth. And how does it grow? You know, Walter Cronkite showed us live feed pictures of the Mai Lai Massacre. You know, we saw more and more coffins coming home. That is why we do not have access to that kind of information anymore, that that makes Americans turn, you know, that is why we have the radio waves and the television stations flooded with government propaganda, because they would have to counter any anything that might have done what happened in the (19)60s, encouraged people to, to know the truth about what was happening in Iraq. I mean, we had so few people questioning the weapons of mass destruction. And the New York Times had to take out a full-page ad and apologize to its readers around the world, that they did not do their jobs, the apologies of the Judith Miller's and all the people who were taking their talking points and Karl Rove, it is a whole different ballgame now, and it is all because they learned what can happen when there is a press. They learned what can happen, when there are not-not enough laws on the books to stop us from, from protesting. And then when they shot us down in 1970, they did so with impunity, no one has paid a price for that. They were emboldened in; they have been emboldened by their ability to shoot down college students during the protests and get away with it. Do not think for one minute that did not have a chilling effect on a lot of boomers, who did not see that we got anything accomplished, beyond getting shot down, when we stood up. 37:25 SM: Very well put, well, I am actually, I am one of those because Kent State affected me my entire life and I and I was not there. The, how important, and, were the college students in ending the Vietnam War in the end, and-and how important were the boomer generation and all the other movements, because when you think of the antiwar movement, the civil rights movement, we also had to think of obviously, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, the Chicano movement, the Native American movement, the environmental movement, and all the all the movements that all kind of looked at the civil rights movement, as an example, on how to do a movement, how important were boomers and those movements. 38:10 RC: Well, They, they all emanated from our generation, and in the (19)60s and (19)70s, were all of the above, all the things that you mentioned, were, you know, pretty much defining who we were, as a generation of youth. And, you know, you have to, you have to take a look at what the (19)60s really were, you know, after World War II mothers were sent home, because they had, they were all in the factory supporting the war effort. But they were sent, they were sent home to just support their husbands and have, have babies and whatever and it was, so idyllic, you know, the music of the time, sort of, you know, represented that complacency, that feeling that the only thing that matters was getting a color TV, having a nice car, having a home which you own, and those became the values and all of the things that you mentioned, the values that involve not material possessions, but involve human rights. Were those that became the causal laws of the (19)60s and (19)70s. Because it became apparent that while America while the American middle class was, was growing, and while opportunities, seem to be abounding for a majority of Americans. There was still this painful minority that was being shunned, that was being discriminated against, who did not have those opportunities, who were not given those jobs, who were not getting elected to positions whose voices were not heard. And thank God that among us, in that middle class, who is still enough people to say this is not right. This is a government of the people, by the people for all of the people you know. This is you know; we have first amendment rights that all voices will be heard, yes, the majority will rule but the minority is heard. And so, if, if their voices were not being heard, we had, thank goodness, a sufficient enough number among the boomers that took up their voices for them. And, you know, we had a very, you know, lots of, we had a good number of white people that were killed, along with black people fighting for civil rights in the south, and the sufficient number of men that fought for women's rights and a sufficient enough number of whites that continue to fight alongside their Latino brothers and sisters, and their Native American brothers and sisters, and their black brothers and sisters to achieve the equality that is the true promise of America. That, to me, is not the entire boomer generation, but it was a very significant part of the boomer generation and I always called it the Woodstock generation is part and parcel of the boomer generation. But it was the enlightened segment of the boomer generation, and I think there is still a significant number of those who raise their children, right. And their children were out there pounding the pavement for Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton, strong people who represent that famous line that is about the true values of what it means to be an American. 41:38 SM: I am going to turn my tape here, hold on a second. Because I always looked at, I got the tape back on now, I always look at the boomers as a very passionate group to begin with. So, in life, if you do not have passion for what you believe in, that is- that is that. this this next question I am going to ask you is, I am going to read it to you this on all the other stuff going on in my head, because I have done it quite often. But I have to read this to make sure everything stated, do you feel that boomers are still having a problem with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, and division between black and white, divisions between those who supported authority and those who criticized, criticized it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. And I know that is very still big in the veteran community. And, and, of course, what did the Vietnam Memorial do in Washington in terms of healing these divisions within the Vietnam generation, but Americans as a whole, and do you feel the boomer generation will go to its grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking this? Or has 35 to 40 years, made the statement “Time heals all wounds” the truth? In other words, this this comes up because I want to do a little anecdote here. We took a group of students to see Edmund Muskie before he passed away, mid (19)90s. And in that meeting, we asked this very same question, we thought he was going to come back to the 1968 convention and all the protests and the divisions in the country. And he had a one-minute melodramatic pause, and he had just come out of the hospital. And he said, “I just watched the Ken Burn series when I was in the hospital. And my only answer to you is that we have not healed since the Civil War.” And-and then we went on into a 20-minute discussion with the students. Your thoughts on whether within our generation, the boomer generation, the 70 million, are having a problem with healing? Or am I just or am I just thinking something that is not really there? 44:04 RC: Well first of all, I am not sure what you mean, when you say healing. If you think that we were a generation that is looking to heal. It is unrealistic to me, as long as there is racism and discrimination, and, and inequality in this country, it is a gaping room with no hope of healing. It is not like there is a band aid on it. And you are hoping that it pulls together and starts to heal. It is a gaping wound to me every bit as evident as it was in the (19)60s. When, when we have a situation in this country, where a significant number of boomers are fighting to keep their children protected from the message of the President of the United States two weeks ago. That is racism, every bit as racist, as we saw, in the (19)60s, when we look on television, at people carrying signs in front of the White House, labeling the first African American president, a socialist, a terrorist and an illegal alien, then we have racism every bit as prevalent as we did in the (19)60s. You have, for the first time in recent history, I have never seen it, a congressman, who screamed out “You lie,” to the President of the United States during a joint session of Congress during a televised address to the nation in need, desperate for health care. That is blatant racism, like I have not seen, since the (19)60s when they were still using the “N” word you have got even today, for the first time in, in my lifetime ever, seeing people dressed in camouflage, with guns on their shoulders, at political healthcare rallies with the President of the United States there proclaiming their second amendment rights and, and being protected by their first amendment right, to be able to express their opposition with a gun in their hand. You know, there are people that are on talk radio applauding them even. I do not know if you saw that television, on television, the Baptist minister, a white minister using biblical scripture, the day before Barack Obama was coming to speak on health care in his town, citing biblical scriptures as justified praying for the death of the African American president. We have seen a significant rise in hate groups since 2000. And that has a lot to do with fears of immigration that are promulgated by a biased media, the failing economy and the election of a black president. We have people that are still saying when the African American president wins the Nobel Peace Prize, instead of celebrating as a nation, that our president is so honored, they were saying, “It is not time, it is too soon.” Now you tell me, we do not have a gaping wound when it comes to racism in this country. We have not come far enough to say any healing has begun. Because I fear every single day that will not happen. 47:46 SM: This is kind of an offshoot, does this say something about the boomer generation, their failure to live up to some of the things they were fighting for in their youth? 47:54 RC: I am sorry, but I cannot blame a generation. Because it was, I say, I mean, I believe that. In large part, the, the liberals and the African Americans, and the minorities, who were a big part of the anti-war movement, and the civil rights movement of the (19)60s, are the ones who played a significant role in getting Barack Obama elected. So, we are here. We are here and we were heard. And to be honest with you, I think we were not so muffled during the Bush years, because I still believe in my heart, he did not win either of those elections. They have the power and the connection to rig both of those elections. And I do think that the anger that was built within our rank in those eight volatile years. It played a significant role in our numbers doubling. And I think we reared our ugly face again, for the first time, since the (19)60s, in this last election. 49:03 SM: Good point. What, if you were to be in a room at Kent State University with students that you went to school with in the in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s, say a room of 500. And, and you were to ask them, of all the events that took place in their lives. And again, the people at Kent State might say what happened on May 4, 1970. But if this was a, from all over the country, from all universities, what was the one event that had the greatest effect on them in their lives? What event would that be? 49:43 RC: Oh, so the Vietnam War. I would say the Kent state killings and the shootings at Jackson State are a part of that answer. I mean, you cannot separate the Vietnam War from the shootings at Kent State. Because it was the most polarizing war, it was one of the most unjust wars, one of the most protracted, it has taken 58,000 from our generation, it was a huge blight on our generation. And it was our generation that fought that war and that brought that word to its knees So that is the single defining moment of our generation, number one that, I mean not being affected, those of us who survived the shootings there, most profoundly. But all of us were profoundly affected by the Vietnam War. Everyone, whether they were there or not, they know somebody who died there or whose life was greatly affected by that war. 50:44 SM: When. when did the (19)60s begin? And when did it end? 50:50 RC: I would say it began with the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960. Was it 1960? Yeah, because he died in (19)63. Because that has when labor prevailed. He was seen as a president that that was accepted and supported by labor. That election was dominated by labor. And he was seen as a proponent of civil rights. And he was a- he was a Democrat. That, that the working class looked at it. 51:39 SM: And when did the (19)60s end? 51:43 RC: The (19)60s ended in 1970 [inaudible] was probably the most chilling and polarizing reaction to the strength of the voices that emanated from the women's movement, the civil rights movement, and the anti-war movement. 52:05 SM: What do you think was the main reason the Vietnam War ended? 52:10 RC: Because of Kent State, no question. Within six weeks of the shooting at Kent State, Nixon began withdrawing troops from Southeast Asia. If you look at any of his memoirs, or those written by his closest advisors, Ehrlichman and Haldeman they all say that the days after Kent State were the most dark of his presidency, it was after Kent State that he was most fearful. I mean, they had buses lined up around the White House. There were people in the streets in every, every, 750 college campuses shut down in protest. I believe it was that year that Harvard did not even have their, their graduation on time. Campuses were shut down. And when you tell the businesses out there that their Ivy League schools, and their colleges are not sending their graduates out to build their companies. That is a, that is a damning moment in this country. They never anticipated I think, when they conspired to-to hear era and stifle our voices, the students of Kent State. And I do believe it was planned everything ahead and-and funnel down through Governor Rhodes in the, Ohio. I do, I do believe that they did not anticipate the reaction it would bring when you when you shoot down four middle class, white students on the Kent State campus. Then all their efforts to brand them as outside agitators failed. Cause you know, they, they, every student hit with a bullet was a Kent State student. 24, or 25, 24 students and a faculty member indicted by the Ohio grand jury as part of the Kent 25, these were student and faculty, these were not outside agitators. 54:08 SM: One of the other issues besides the healing that I tried to get to in this interview is the issue of trust. There are a lot of examples that the boomers saw when they were young of leaders failing them in many ways. Some are very obvious, and some we found out in later years. Obviously, we knew about Watergate and Richard Nixon, and certainly Lyndon Johnson in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and then Dwight Eisenhower on the U-2 incident when he lied to the nation on national television. And then in recent years, obviously, even President Bush and weapons of mass destruction there was also the issue John Kennedy, being involved with the coup in Vietnam and a lot of other things. What, why, I preface this question by something that a professor said to me in class, in psych 101. And it had nothing to do with what was going on the world it had to do with how people deal with each other. And that is that he, this professor said that trust is a very important quality, we must have in ourselves toward others. Because if there is, if we cannot trust anybody, we probably most likely will not be a success in life. And that always stuck with me in a 101 class. And then that was in the mid to late (19)60s when I was in college, and then all this stuff is happening. And the boomer generation has always been looked at many times as a generation that is distrustful of all leaders, no matter what position they were in, whether it be a university president, a rabbi, a priest, a head of a corporation or a politician. And certainly, college administrators, your thoughts on how important this issue of trust is, within the generation? Is this a negative that this generation did not trust? I guess what I am getting at how important the lack of trust within the boomer generation has played in their lives and passing this on to their kids and their grandkids. 56:13 RC: First of all, the lack of trust does not emanate from the boomer generation. This is something that occurred over time. And I would say that that stands with the Watergate era, where, for the first time we were confronted in our democracy, with the reality that even the people we entrust in our fair elections, to be in government, and even with all of the laws and with a rock-solid Constitution, which by the way, is I understand, the oldest constitution in the world that has survived. With that in place, if we could have such government corruption, as we witnessed in the Watergate era, where every branch of government was involved in that cover up: the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branches of government were all, and the CIA and the FBI, intelligence, were all involved in criminal conduct and in cover up of that criminal conduct. That was the first time in our nation's history where we were confronted with how far reaching that deception can be. And we have spent a great deal of time since then, devising laws that would make it more difficult for that to happen again. And yeah. In the last eight years, we saw where many of those protections that came in the wake of Watergate, were undermined and ignored and overturned by the Bush administration. And we saw more illegal wiretapping. We saw more corruption; we saw rigged election. We saw unprecedented corruption and greed. And we had none of the safeguards that it seemed we had that brought down the Nixon administration, we still have not brought down the Bush administration. Because that deception remains, as long as money controls our government to such an extent, we cannot trust anybody that we elect, because the majority of them who are in those offices are beholden to their lobbyists, and their corporations that are promising them huge golden parachutes, when they come out of Congress, and it is a one man show, every man for himself in government, and I do not view any of that trust in other people being restored. And it is not just trust in other people. But if this is a government of the people, by the people, for the people, if we have no trust in government, then we cannot trust that we the people can effect change, even in the ballot box, and so on. So, we go to public financed elections and take the money out of the realm of corporate corporations that can buy those votes, then trust will never have any hope of being restored. 59:37 SM: Music played a very important part in the lives of boomers, and you have made reference to Woodstock generation, of course Woodstock anniversary was this year, 40th anniversary and all the great musicians that were around in the (19)60s and in the early (19)70s. Your comments on how important music was in not only aiding but assisting a lot of the causes that were that the boomer generation was linked to. And of course, when we talk about this tour, we are not only talking about rock music, we are talking about Motown, which was a very popular music of this of the year, your thoughts on the musicians and music and people who were musicians, and may have had the greatest influence on the boomer generation. 1:00:26 RC: Well, you know, prior to the music that you are referring to, you know, we were listening on AM radio in the early (19)60s, to Johnny Angel, you know, and Leader of the Pact, and all these, you know, love songs and songs about rock and roll and the bandstand, you know, kind of dance music. And then suddenly, I can still remember the first time I heard Bob Dylan singing “The Times They Are A-Changin.” And it was poetry, you know, it was a method. I have never heard music like that. I have never heard a voice like that. I have never heard people just sitting down and listening to lyrics, until I got to Kent State and saw people not dancing, [inaudible], but sitting on the floor, listening to the words, the song, like, like, go, and like, you know, the folk songs would be Joni Mitchell “paving paradise and putting up a parking lot” and all of these voices telling us that things are not what they should be, and that there is a better way, and that we have a responsibility to change it. The antiwar song that came, you know just, “something happened in here, you know, there is a man with the gun over there.” You know, just the song itself “War, what is it good for?”. I mean, they, every single day, we were being challenged to think. And before that we were not, we were just, you know, kind of dumbed down to, to just feel. Feel good about what we had, feel good about our dreams and out plans but not think about anybody else in the picture. And suddenly there were these musicians that were making an entire generation aware of the ugliness of war of the unfairness of things and of the responsibilities we had to be part of what was happening, “the times they were a-changing” And it was inspirational. To watch that music not only grow in popularity, but draw half a million people to upstate New York, to celebrate the fact that, you know, we were born again, as-as, as Americans, we rejected the values of the generation before and we were going to look different. We were going to sound different. You know, we were going to wear different clothing, different hairstyles, and we were falling in love, not just with peace and music and [inaudible] but with the belief that we have in the power of people to change the world. 1:03:14 SM: That leads right into what do you think the lasting legacy will be of the boomer generation, best, the best history books, there has been a lot, a lot of great books in the (19)60s coming out right now and over the years. But historians often say that it is 50 years before the best history books start arriving on a period. So, when the boomer generation is in very old age, or is passed on, and then the best books are being written about that 1946 anon period for boomers, what do you think they are going to? What do you think the sociologists and historians might say about this generation? 1:03:52 RC: I think more than any other generation in our nation's history, we had an entire generation that was, that became what I think all college students have historically been. Because we were the generation that our relatively non-college going parents made sure would all go to college. We were like the generation that arrived on college campuses when it was affordable and when it was part of the American dream. And college campuses have traditionally been a haven for protest, a place where ideas are debated the ideas of the day are debated and where people prepare and plan to become effective participants in American society. And as part of that dream of our parents, we became more than any other generation, the conscience of America and on college campuses. When we look war in the face and said: We do not like the war, you wage in our name and we are not going, we do not care that you are drafting us, we are not going. We will go to Canada before we fight. We are not going. We will stand in the streets and lock arms in Washington and keep you from going to your businesses and keep governments from going to their offices, no business as usual. As long as this for as long as long as this war is taking our generation, and fighting something that is just unjust, we were the conscience of America. And I think that is why as I said before, it is by design since then, that they have made sure that college students today do not have the time to do the thinking and the dreaming that we had. They do not have time today, [inaudible] because we are a nation right now. Without a Conscience. 1:05:49 SM: Before I go into the last part of the interview, which is basically some of the personalities and terms of period, where we just make a few comments. This this one I would like you just do, like John Filo did when I interviewed him early summer, what was it like to be? I was not there. But in your own words, what was it like to be there on May 4, 1970, maybe just to give a little description of the day. And I remember John told me that, you know that he never planned to be there that day, he was an off-campus reporter was called to the event, was studying for working on a paper, and then he was thrust right into it. Just your thoughts of what transpired on that day, May 4, 1970. 1:06:41 RC: Well, I planned to be there. The shooting occurred in the backyard of my dormitory. But when that day started, I remember most even as we walked through the campus, looking at other cadres, as we call them, the Kent SDS was no longer but I was part of a cadre of activists that for that entire year had gone to demonstrations in Washington and Chicago and Cleveland and, and we had just gone to Ohio State to support them the Friday before when they were getting shot at with buckshot and, and tear gas. And I remember as I was walking up to the campus, and I saw another group called the Elm Street gang, and it was like, I felt as part of something significant, I felt a part of something important. We were committed to putting that war to an end, Nixon had announced the invasion of Cambodia only days before. And the campuses across this country were up in arms. students across this country were saying no to war in record breaking numbers. And it is mind boggling to me that we had such a connection to one another, from campus to campus across this country. And we did not have what kids have today, internet. We did this all with telephone long distance calls and leaflets on our own campuses. And with a media that covers what we did. We were as united on that morning, as I had ever seen anyone, I felt a part of something so much bigger than myself. It was not about an action that the crazies were going to do. It was not about an action happening on the Penn State campus. It was about a call made at Rutgers University for a National Student strike. And we were part of that we were part of something that was happening across this nation. And so, I entered the campus feeling inspired, feeling, feeling energized, feeling empowered. And even as the National Guardsmen advanced on us with tear gas again, and with the bayonets that proved, you know, so devastating to the kids who had been stabbed the night before. I never felt the sense of fear, even in the midst of all of that opposition, all of that military might, I still had trust in our lie, in America, and in our Constitution and its guarantees of the right to free speech. I still had trust that as long as we protested peacefully, they would never open fire on us. And that was a rude awakening. Which is quite an understatement, to, to see them lift their weapons in aim at us on the practice football field was shocking enough, shocking enough that as my brother walked toward them with his black flag, I walked up to Alan and said, “Alan, they are aiming right at you. Let us get out of here.” I actually said to him because it was the first time ever it had crossed my mind. Do they hate us so much that they could open fire on and even as they left the practice field and made their accent up the hill? I still watch and even as I turn them turn, even as I watched them turn in unison and lift their weapons and even as I saw the puffs of smoke. My first instinct was to run far because students at Ohio State had been shot at with buckshot. It never occurred to me; they would have lived military ammunition. And if it were not for Alan's roommate, Jimmy, who pulled me behind a parked car, I might also have been hit because as soon as we got behind the car, it was obvious that this was live ammunition was zipping by our heads and piercing the steel bodies of the cars and something into the grass to our left and the pavement to our right. It was the most horrifying 13 seconds of realization that, you know, when the gunfire ended, my first thought was, “oh my god, they shot they shot us” and then to come out from behind that car and see Bill Schroeder lying on his back with blood on his shoulder, three feet behind me and I can see over in the premise yard. My friend Sandy Scheuer, being carried with a shot a bullet through her juggler vein and then remembering where I had last seen Alan would have put him directly in the line of fire. I went running across the pavement to the foot of Blanket Hill seeing, someone lying in a pool of blood and dreading that it was Alan only to find Jeff lying in a pool of blood and then my friend Eddie running up behind me and yelling into my ear, Alan and Tom both got hit. You know that is-that is a, that is a moment that has never left me, the shock of it. The fear, the, the sound, the colors, everything is as, as vivid in my mind as it was on that day. To see American soldiers turning their guns on American people is something that I hope nobody in America will ever witness again. 1:12:12 SM: Did you go to the funerals of any of the students? 1:12:16 RC: No, I did not. We, Sandy's funeral was in Youngstown. And Allison's was in Vicksburg. They were huge media events at the time. And it was, I do not know how to explain. We were getting a lot of phone calls from press, we were getting a lot of hate mail, and death threats. Because Alan was one of the wounded. He was seen as one of the instigators and FBI was calling and whatever. It is not surprising that we all went home and stayed there for a while. We did not seek out anything, any, any of the places where the media was, I almost regret that because I think we should have been telling the truth that we knew immediately. But any of us who were really actively involved when we had our own family members, like my aunt who barged into my mother's kitchen that night, looking at Alan with his arm bandage still, from his wound, yelling, “you know, there was a sniper, you know, there was a sniper.” I mean, like to have your own family members believe that American soldiers would not turn their guns on American people without provocation and without a reason to do so. You know, you are living in a country that sees you not as a victim. But as an enemy. You do not want to- you do not want to leave the house. 1:13:50 SM: Even leading up to that weekend or over the last the two years when you were an activist at the university and going to other schools. Did you feel that you were being watched at all by, like the student leaders of Kent State were being watched by the FBI or the CIA or did you have any sense of that or was all this realization came, not trusting the government right on that day? 1:14:14 RC: I never experienced any of that paranoia until 1977. When we moved on to the campus intent to protect the May 4 site from destruction. It was during that time that it was very obvious we were being followed. I mean, there was a cop car following my-my Ford Pinto everywhere I went on that campus. We were being, we had charges dredged up against us, I was charged with criminal trespass at an action when I was on when my lawyer actually me on the good time had to-to keep me far away from Kent because they kept jailing the leaders of the May 4th coalition. There were so many trumped up charges on us in 1977 that our attorneys were successful in bringing in members of the US Justice Department to follow us around so that we had proof that we were not breaking the law. So, we could avoid having more of the trumped-up charges against us. 1:15:14 SM: When you heard about- 1:15:16 RC: That was the only time I have been paranoid about being followed. 1:15:19 SM: When you heard about Jackson State. How did you react to that? The Jackson State killings? 1:15:24 RC: Oh, well, we were not, that that was our, that is our sister in tragedy. I mean, we were still reeling from what happened to us only days later to hear that it was still happening on this campus. But what bothered me most was the outrage was, was so minimal, compared and I was not sure if it was strictly racism, or just an America too numb to care anymore. You know, because had had they had succeeded in having the chilling effect that they desired, that they could continue to shoot students, and not have any action, any reaction would be, you know, decreased rather than in-, would there be an increase? I think, I do not know if it was a test, test run, or what. But it was always, to me very tragic that the students at Jackson State, the deaths of their students at Jackson State, did not meet with the widespread protests of four white kids at Kent State. 1:16:22 SM: Thanks for sharing the experience. My note still, I can tell in your voice, when we were talking here that even brings a lot of emotion to you even now, and probably will forever. 1:16:40 RC: How Could it not, How Could it not, [Pardon] How could it not? 1:16:41 SM: Oh, yes, that is right. And again, I think I have mentioned to you and Alan, the effect that this has had all over the country that I often wonder how many people there are in the United States, who are our age who that that event on that day has shaped their lives. I wish someday- 1:17:01 RC: I would like to believe that it did not make them more reluctant to stand up for what they believe in. I would like I would like to believe that they have not taught their children more about the risks of campus activism than, you know, the historical significance and the gains of that of that activism. I think that student activism is still alive on our college campuses. I just think that, like I said before, we have made it more and more difficult for students to be there more and more students live, you know, off campus, or for have to commute or have to go to jobs, after they are, when they are not in classes that they do not congregate the way, we did. We used to hang out in the hub by hundreds every day, and play music and talk we talked about the shooting. I do not see that- 1:17:56 SM: There used to be guerrilla theater tours. But I have not seen that since I was a college student. 1:18:05 RC: I loved it, SDS always had a guerilla theater committee. 1:18:07 SM: The, the end of the interview, we are just going to be just real quick responses to, to words or terms or our names of people. Woodstock. 1:18:17 RC what do you want me to do? Come up with a word or a phrase? 1:18:21 SM: A word or just-just a couple of words and just your thoughts when you hear the, these names or terms of the (19)60s, Woodstock? 1:18:30 RC: The birth of a new era- 1:18:35 SM: 1968 1:18:39 RC: Robert Kennedy's assassination- 1:18:42 SM: Counterculture. [Woodstock] What I did not hear? 1:18:48 RC: Woodstock. [laughter] Or more the Yippies, I kind of thought of them both at the same time, the, the hippies and the Yippies- 1:18:58 SM: Yeah, that was my next, how did you know that? ESP here, that was my next one. The hippies and the Yippies. 1:19:06 RC: Counterculture. 1:18:58 SM: Students for democratic society. 1:18:58 RC: [undecipherable]: 1:18:58 SM: Weathermen? 1:19:13 RC: Absolutely, the best idea, the most organized, the most inspirational and the start of it all. If it were not for SDS at Kent the impact, May 4th would not have happened, and I do not blame them for the shooting. I blame them for the movement that brought the attention to Kent State. So, that Nixon hated Kent SDS. I think he chose Kent to be the, the martyr, the victim rather, Kent to be the, I take that back. He chose Kent to send, as the place to send his message that student protests will not be tolerated because of SDS. They were, they were the most significant, organized catalyst for the student anti-war movement in this country- 1:20:12 SM: The Weathermen? 1:20:15 RC: Well, I would just say, not misinformed, what was I, there is a word I am thinking of misguided. [chuckles] 1:20:25 SM: The Vietnam Veterans Against the War. 1:20:29 RC: Powerful. Powerful. They were among us. We had friends who came home from Vietnam and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War and VVAW. And they walked alongside us, they were with us, they were shot at with us. I had one friend with his dog tags still around his neck, who survived the shooting at Kent said he was more afraid on May 4th than he ever was in Vietnam. So, they played a very significant role joining our protests and-and I think giving-giving credibility to the anti-war movement. 1:21:04 SM: How about the Young Americans for Freedom? I am not sure if you are aware of that group. 1:21:08 RC: I do not remember who they were. 1:21:10 SM: They were the conservative group that was against the war. 1:21:13 RC: I did not, I obviously, I think that now that you say that I do have a vague recollection of them. I did not pay much attention to them. I do not I do not remember having any experience with them. I do not remember them having a viable presence on the campus. I only remember hearing about them. And so, I felt detached from them. 1:21:33 SM: The enemies list? 1:21:36 RC: Oh, well, I would say we probably have a bigger one now. 1:21:43 SM: Abbie Hoffman- 1:21:46 RC: You know what? I have, I have a very positive reaction when I hear the name of Abbie Hoffman, because he and Jerry Rubin and the Yippies, and the Chicago Eight, I think did more to, for publicity. Did more to give a face and establish the humaneness to the anti-war movement. We were not just, you know, a bunch of radical, you know, to the cause. I mean, I think people always had a tendency to believe that anybody that protested was like the labor movement, the civil rights movement, just this group of people that had that had like, a single agenda, sort of thing. When, when the Yippies came on the scene and Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago A they brought humor to it, and they made people relate to it. You know, everybody knows what it means to be to be treated unfair, and to have things not make sense when someone tries to justify that unfairness. And I think nobody brought that to light more than Abbie Hoffman during the Chicago Eight trials. I mean, people who would never pay attention to anything involving both sides, reading and laughing and following what was going on there. And I think they are by learning things they otherwise might not have learned about. American injustice. 1:23:15 SM: That is amazing. Because just today when I interviewed Rennie, he talked about Abbie and in one of the MOBE events where they were facing 20- (audio cuts out). 1:23:28 RC: I mean it is like the whole Doonesbury, you know, that they play, you know, cartoonists, and then there are people will never read the front page about war, but they will read the cartoons and they will learn about the war. You know, Abbie, Abbie, played that role. [How Bout…] I think, I think brought a lot more people to the movement because of his humor and how he, you know, made it a human experience. And, you know, like, that, people were just so ruled by that with television sitcoms were so big at the time, whatever it became like watching a television sitcom every day. 1:24:02 SM: Right. Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda? 1:24:07 RC: A perfect match for a perfect time. [chuckles] I, I admire both of them. I never understood Jane Fonda going the Christian route when she did, but you know, I remember the wonderful work she did with the winter soldiers. And I always admired Tom Hayden and I always saw him and Rennie as the intellectuals in the Chicago Eight. And I, I always I have, I have long admired Tom Hayden and his continued activism. And I just think that the time when he and Jane Fonda were working together was, was a very important time for two brilliant minds to work in concert. 1:24:50 SM: Yeah, I came to Kent State with those students from OU (Ohio University) the year that they came to Kent State, it goes the fourth anniversary [yeah], and I was in a room with them. They were walking around the campus, and we were in this small room, and I do not remember what building, but we were in there for an hour talk and they were great. The Black Panthers, which was Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, the Cleavers, Kathleen and Eldridge. Just your thoughts on black power and the black power movement. 1:25:18 RC: I will tell you I admired the Black Power movement when I moved to Boston right after May 4, the one because I stayed involved with, I left after Kent State and moved to Boston, with the intent to get away from politics. I was so disillusioned with what I just witnessed that I did not want to be part of anything political for a while. But the one organization that I visited, when I was sitting in Cambridge, I was walking down by the Charles River, and I saw the storefront for the Black Panther Party, and I went over there, because they had a profound impact on me in in understanding the plight of black Americans that that was much more serious than anything I have seen through the eyes of Martin Luther King. You know, I mean, I, I was always aware of the civil rights movement, and always impressed and inspired by those that follow Dr. King, but it was the Black Panther Party that showed us a darker side of racism in this country, and really illustrated, you know, how many blacks were being gunned down in their communities and the atrocities, you know, committed by the Oakland Police and it was a I was kind of educated when the Oakland Police came to recruit at Kent State. And SDS protested vehemently. That was my first exposure to the Black Panther Party and everything that they did in their neighborhoods, with their breakfast programs and their protection programs and whatever, to me, was every bit as impressive as everything I have seen in SDS 1:26:55 SM: Let us get straight into Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. 1:27:01 RC: Oh, well, you know, they both played a very, very important role in the lives of African Americans because even though you know, there were most of the people followed Dr. Martin Luther King's advice about keeping protest peaceful and whatever, Malcolm X also legitimized, you know, protecting yourself and doing what, what is absolutely necessary to protect your family. And, you know, he, he put a face on government as a violent government in a way that Martin Luther King did not in his rhetoric. And, you know, I think that that was an important, that was important awareness to the edibility went one step further than Martin Luther King, because there were some that knew that they had grown more weary of, of just marching and petitioning. There were others that realize we have got to be a lot more proactive in meeting the man face to face. Malcolm X played that role. 1:28:03 SM: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. 1:28:09 RC: Oh god, criminal-criminal, Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew laid the groundwork for the bloodshed at Kent and Jackson State, Nixon called campus protesters, Agnew called, likened us to Nazis and Klansmen. Okay, they inspired those to, inspired the rhetoric of Governor Reagan who said if these students want a bloodbath, let us get it over with then Governor Rhodes at, in Ohio. He said these are worse than the night riders and vigilantes. He is the worst type of people we harbor in America. It is over within Ohio. We are not going to treat the symptoms we are going to eradicate the problem. It began with Nixon and Agnew's dehumanizing us and treating us as, as what we would be seen as today as terrorists. And then with Reagan and Rhodes following suit, it was easy for armed gunman to come on our campus and not see us as idealistic youth, but to see us instead, as target and as an enemy in a combat situation. I blame them for the deaths at Kent state and Jackson State. 1:29:19 SM: Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara. 1:29:22 RC: Well, I had some very negative feelings, well negative feelings about both good feelings about Johnson when it came to civil rights, negative feelings about Johnson when it came to the Vietnam War. Negative feelings about Robert McNamara for living a lie as long as he did about the Vietnam War when he knew the truth that it was unwinnable. But when everyone was chastising him for coming out with the truth with his book later, when he admitted that, that people died for nothing in Vietnam, while other people were, were shunning him. I said, You know what, how many people have gone to their grave like Nixon and Agnew with the truth that they knew and never told that before, before they died, Robert McNamara could you know, truth at any time is valuable to me, truth at any time means something to me. And so, it was easier to forgive McNamara, because he owned up to his mind while he was still alive, so I have some respect for a man that I thought only was the same for many decades. 1:30:23 SM: The two Kennedy’s, John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. 1:30:25 RC: I love the Kennedy’s. I mean, for all the faults of John F. Kennedy that have come out in the history books since then. I do not ever remember being more inspired. And, you know, seeing I mean, I never saw the White House through those kinds of eyes until they were in there. They, it was a focus on family and focus on civil rights, a focus on America, the values of America that were always in our history books, and that seemed to disappear with his assassination. And then more so, even more so in the assassination of his brother, who I think was the better of the two. I still cannot watch films of Bobby Kennedy and seeing him riding on the train. I sobbed for days afterwards. Whenever I watch any live footage of Bobby speaking and campaigning, before he died. I was so I am so affected by it, it is too painful for me. 1:31:28 SM: Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. 1:31:32 RC: Oh, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Well, you know, they were there, it is hard to even say anything definitive about them. They were, I would say they were important candidates to the anti-war movement, because they were politicians who campaigned on anti, anti-war agendas. But I never felt that they were strong enough candidates, they all paled in comparison to the Kennedys. So that is all I remember, was never really feeling like we had to return to the strength of the candidates that we had before them. 1:32:10 SM: Timothy Leary. 1:32:13 RC: Oh, Timothy Leary. I worked at Harvard while he was still there. Now there was some- this guy's had a lot to do with painting the image of the Woodstock generation as just a bunch of drug crazed hippies. So, I do not know, to me he was just a Harvard professor who, who was played a significant role in branding the Woodstock generation as a generation where drug use was rampant, kind of delegitimize and seem to glorify that whole as the generation, psychedelic generation, so I, I do not see him as being political, even though he was part of the anti-war movement. I more associate him with drugs that would change. 1:33:10 SM: How about George Wallace and Ronald Reagan? 1:33:16 RC: George Wallace I think I think of him as a racist, still. Ronald Reagan, I see him as a joke. I never I do not know how people can continue to praise a presidency where maybe he as an individual did so little. Ronald Reagan was made out to be a great president, after his death by a right-wing media that decided to create an icon. So I see them both as. I think George Wallace was significant in in polarizing the south, and I see Reagan was significant, showing that we are our values. Our, our selectivity for president's presidential candidate was continuing to decline significantly 1:34:09 SM: Which leads into just Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter. 1:34:13 RC: Jerry Ford, I just thing of Chevy Chase, when I think of Jerry Ford, my strongest recollections of Jerry Ford are tripping and falling and standing up at state dinners and on his own two feet still falling over. Jerry Ford was a pasty. Jerry Ford was president only because he agreed to pardon Nixon. He was a sellout and a cop out. And probably one of the worst presidents we have ever had. Who was the other one you just asked? Jimmy Carter. You know, he had the presidency at an awful time. I think he took the reins at a time when we were on the verge of a terrible recession. And I was living in New York at the time we were waiting in gas lines, and I think he is probably one of the most misunderstood presidents. And he was just like Reagan being defined after his presidency. Jimmy Carter really became the president that I think people hoped they were electing. Afterwards, I admire him tremendously for the work that he has done with Habitat for Humanity and world peace, promoting world peace, he is certainly deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. And I was never more proud of him than when he was the first what was happening in Congress with calling Obama a liar, racism or the racism that was, I have, I have as much respect for him as one of the few- 1:35:40 SM: Daniel Ellsberg and Benjamin Spock. 1:35:45 RC: You know, I think of them as being again icons in the anti-war movement. Daniel Ellsberg. And he is when you think about the Pentagon Papers, and the role that they played, that was huge in bringing Middle America to understand what took Robert McNamara how long to tell the truth about that we were lying. We had done what we have come to do so well, today, lied America into an unjust war and sacrifice an entire generation of youth for that lie. Ellsberg Put his, his life and freedom on the line to get that truth, tremendous respect for him. And Benjamin Spock was, again, you know, when you have professional people like that, who have a good life and a good reputation, and then they create a whole new image of themselves as part of an anti-war movement. I think that was a bold response and he suffered a lot of criticism and was misunderstood a great deal. But again, like Abbie Hoffman, these are people that all were responsible for bringing a certain awareness from a certain segment of the population to the anti-war movement, they all played a part. 1:36:58 SM: That brings right into Daniel and Philip Berrigan, the Berrigan brothers and Barry Goldwater. 1:37:05 RC: I would say, Berrigans’, same as above, they played a significant role, and everybody has their part to play in the anti-war movement, but Barry Goldwater was probably one of the only republicans that that understood the danger of the kind of partisan politics that we see today. Because it was probably the last of the great Republicans who could work in a bipartisan way in Congress and who truly did see the danger of the military industrial complex, like Eisenhower was not as good a Republican, I do not think. But Barry Goldwater was a brilliant man and a humanitarian. And even though I have never ever in my life supported a Republican, I think he was one of the last ones that truly stood up to traditional republican values. 1:38:09 SM: How about John Dean? I am almost done. John Dean. 1:38:12 RC: John Dean, one of the greatest contributors, were it not for John Dean, I do not think we would know as much as the truth of Watergate that we do. And more importantly, is being at the heart of the Watergate scandal has done, has given him a perspective unlike any other Americans in how much more corrupt the Bush administration was, how much more they were able to get to get away with because they, they, you know, they could act, they did not have to worry about the tape that exposed Nixon, they made sure they went through the Republican National Committee with their secret email system that probably cost the life of what was his name, Mike McConnell, who died mysteriously in a plane crash in December, because he knew the extent of that it was called [inaudible]. Libyan underground communication system, but we know about-about Watergate, mostly because of John Dean's brilliant I mean, he is-he is a brilliant writer. He is a brilliant and-and probably one, what it is said that book that he just wrote, oh, “Conservatives without Conscience.” 1:39:04 SM: He wrote “Worse than Watergate too- 1:38:12 RC: He Wrote “Worse than Watergate,” which is very good, but his book “conservatives without conscience” more than any book I have ever read about republicans helped me to understand the difference between a Goldwater Republican Reagan Republican, Cheney Republican, and Bush Republicans. He knows theory and he know research on authoritarian personalities and the danger of having authoritarian personalities in positions of high office-office, where if you do not have a conscience, people will suffer and die and pay a huge price for your greed and corruption. And it made my blood went cold when I read his book because I realized the extent to which we had authoritarian personalities in high positions of office in the Bush administration. John Dean is, I was, I would campaign for him for President if he were ever to run. 1:40:31 SM: He lives in California. I think right now, but he comes to DC a lot. 1:40:36 RC: I think he may, he may be one of the most brilliant critical writers of our time. 1:40:40 SM: You know, he is from Binghamton, New York. 1:40:42 RC: One with-with more insight into the inner workings of government than anybody. He should be on. It should be on any advisory staff in the White House. 1:40:52 SM: But he is good. I have seen him on TV. The women, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan. 1:41:00 RC: You know what, all these women played a role in legitimizing women in positions of power, women in positions of influence. You know, I mean when I think of Bella Abzug, I think of her hat. But I also really think of just, I mean, I have never seen a woman with-with so much strength and-and could just to speak off the cuff like that, you know, I mean, she was just, it was a mover and a shaker. You know, Gloria Steinem did a lot for the women's movement and continues to write, I think, some pretty brilliant treatises on, on the role of women, I was so glad to see her coming out. With I think Gloria Steinem take on women, and the role of women in politics in particular, is exactly what we have seen the opposite of what Sarah Palin. 1:41:53 SM: Oh, yes, 1:41:54 RC: we need we need more analysis so that women understand when they are being misled by men to use token women to convey a man's message. There is no question in my mind. For example, the Sarah Palin is today the Stepford wife of Dick Cheney. 1:42:13 SM: [laughter] Now that is another magic moment. 1:42:16 RC: There is no question about it. Because, Cheney, if you notice, as soon as Obama was elected, he came out, and he kept talking, he went, he made his rounds on all the talk shows, and then everybody was kind of laughing at him, like, “go away Dick, your policies were voted out.” So then, mysteriously, he started using his daughter, his gay daughter, and who's the other one, Liz? Liz Cheney. 1:42:40 SM: Yes-yes. She is on TV a lot. Yeah. 1:42:44 RC: It is like, where do these women come from, they were never spokesperson for the Republican Party or for any political agenda. They were never political. But suddenly, they had all of these talking points. And it was like, I truly believe in, and logic tells me this and everything I am seeing tells this, Dick Cheney spent eight years using George Bush for his talking points. So, all he had left was two girls in his family that he could put out there. And then, they say right before the right before and right after Sarah Palin gave up her governorship, she was on the phone with Cheney. I think it was orchestrated by Cheney; I think he was educating her. I think he was handing her, her talking points. I think he was- he was behind everything. Every single- everything she was doing all these things, and still trying to run the country [indecipherable] still be a significant following of women [indecipherable]- 1:43:49 SM: What, what do you see in the two Boomer presidents that are that are linked to the qualities of boomers and that is Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. 1:43:59 RC: Oh, I have never thought of George W. Bush as a boomer is that terrible. I have always seen him as this. Otherworldly. Bill Clinton is brilliant. I always say his wife, is the more brilliant of the two. When I read her book, “Living History.” I imagine what it must have been like for her the second time he sat down on her bed and said we have to talk about his ridiculous, you know, discretion with you know, women are not weak in that way. I am sorry. I have to say it, a spade a spade here. You do not see women leaders experiencing the shortcomings when it comes to setting, you know, women discretions, as we have seen with governors and-and people like Bill Clinton, you know, who risk so much in there, he was doing such important work. And he was effecting such important change, that he did not know how easy it would be to fall. If it were known those kinds of indiscretions in the White House and such, you know, in a public place like that, that I think somebody like a Hillary knows that and understands that, and I am not I do not need to minimize it to it just being a point of who is stronger. That is not succumbing to sexual pressure and advances in temptation. But in reading about their political walk together, she always struck me as the more knowledgeable, the more decisive, the more inquisitive, and the more strong, person between the two, but you know, things being a as they may, women were not seen in the same light as men. And so, he was the one elected unfortunately, rather than her, I think it would have been a different America, had she got into the White House before him. And I will support her when she runs next. So, I have a lot of respect for Bill Clinton, I lost a lot of respect for him because he just was so stupid about little things that overshadowed his brilliance on such big things. But George W. Bush is not a self-made man. He is a father, you know, he is a Bush family made. man. He is an idiot. He cannot string two sentences together. I do not think he had an original idea when he was in the White House. And I think that he did not win either election. I think both of them were stolen and he was a pasty of Dick Cheney the whole time. This was all the neoconservative dogfight, Dick Cheney, all of those people from the original PNAC, you know, Progress for New American Century, ran our government for eight years. And George Bush was their patsy. 1:46:44 SM: Down to my last two questions. One is the books of the year, when you were in college, were you or were any of your peers’ reading books that had an influence on you? Were there authors or- 1:46:57 RC: You know, authors that had a tremendous influence on me were Bernard Shaw, I remember when my brothers got their draft notices, as I was reading a lot of what Bernard Shaw was saying, just to understand the historical context for the war in Vietnam, when I actually started to imagine my brothers being sent off to Southeast Asia to fight, I kind of wanted to know where it all began, I knew that I wanted to do the play a part in keeping them from going, but I also knew the importance of knowing what I was talking about. Because even as I said, I was against the war, I was really only saying I was against my brother's going, and I was not able to articulate a reason why. And so, I remember reading a lot of things by Bernard Shaw, but I would say, without question, it was a lot of what was happening in the papers, the newspapers were a critical part of my, of my newspapers and television were a critical part of my growing sense of dissatisfaction with the war with my growing awareness of the wrongness of it. And I really do believe that the Chicago Seven Trials, eventually the Chicago Eight Trials were instrumental, those books, like “do it” and feel this book. Again, were very, very, they were fun to read. And they were inspirational. They made it seem not just important to be part of the movement, but fun and cool. To be part of the movement- 1:48:26 SM: Particularly when, when remember when Jerry Rubin went in, into the bank. 1:48:31 RC: Yeah. 1:48:32 SM: Yeah, he wanted to go to the bathroom. And they said, you get out of here, and he went right in the middle of the bank. [laughter] 1:48:38 RC: I know, and people laugh at that, and they become heroes for dropping out and, you know, turning on as they said, and so I would say that those were very important influence. 1:48:53 SM: The last question I have because we have been talking about the (19)60s and the (19)70s and everything afterwards but the (19)50s and you mentioned about you know, being around your parents and the labor union talking at the dinner table and everything but what kind of an influence did the (19)50s have on you it was portrayed as the era where the World War II generation want give everything to their kids because they grew up in the depression and then they went through war and they wanted the kids to have everything many of them are boomers were the first ones to ever go to college. People, we watched television, the black and white TV, we watched Howdy Doody, Rootie Kazootie and all the kids, the TV shows and everything about family and seemed like everybody was happy and-and then of course, the Mickey Mouse Club and TV westerns and of course we have read about those in recent years how been the good guys and the bad guys and we have portrayed to a lot of the boomers and the Indians being the bad guys, but just your overall. Well, how did the (19)50s shape you, you know, and I have always wondered that because you got to talk about the (19)50s when you were talking about boomers. 1:50:07 RC: Well, I had to stay at home mom, like most of the kids. You know, I, I went to school in Barberton, a working-class town where it was, it was an anomaly if anybody's mother work. I used to- I remember saying to my mother, what, you know, I am so proud that you were a nurse, why do not you go back into nursing, I would have been very, very proud to have a working mother, but she said, no, your father wants me to stay home with the kids. My mother never drove a car, I had to sneak to take drivers training, so that I could drive a car, because my father believed that women shouldn't drive cars and his answer was always your mother does not drive, you do not need to drive. So, you know, I not only had that very personal influence that women's places in the home and women do not have mobility upward or even outward, they have to rely on a man to get around they have to rely on a man for everything. But I also had, you know, the influence of television which you know, had the- you know, Ward Cleaver and-and June you know, where even when it came to making important decisions about the children or the home, it was always “wait till your father gets home,” she could never decide anything for herself Ward had to always kind of put everything into perspective. And he was the intelligent one. And even the few role models that I had, like on Sky King, you know, you had Penny, who also could fly but of course, she had to, you know, rely on-on, you know, her uncle for whenever things got tough. So, women could, women could be involved in things, but they could not run things. And for the most part, I grew up in, I, we lived right next door to the high school. And so, my greatest aspirations were not to be the valedictorian of my school, even though I was in gifted classes from the time I was in fourth grade, but to be what look like television wanted us to be, you know, with the Miss America pageant, showing that we are supposed to be pretty and complacent. And so American and I would always sit on my porch and watch the girls arriving for prom and homecoming with their gowns and watch the cheerleaders practicing and the major at marching. You know, with that sizing, when I first went off that can say that I wanted to just be an extension of what I was in high school, I tried out for cheerleader Kent State. I tried out for the [inaudible], I instantly got involved in social activities. And I was the social chairman for my dorm, planning the rowboat regatta and passing out lollipops and roses to the tune of Burt Bacharach with my brother and his friends came marching through Lake Hall, honest to God, “champion 1234 we do not want your fucking war.” And I called my brother just devastated: How could you do that? You ruined my moment. You know, we are playing Burt Bacharach and passing lollipops and roses, talking to little sisters and they are talking, you know, throwing the F bomb and talking about war. And, you know, I desperately in the first year at Kent State hung on to that upbringing and that stereotype that I was conditioned to become a mindless, you know, complacent girl who, you know, even if I had the presence of mind to get myself to college, I was only going to be a teacher or a secretary or a librarian, you know, and I certainly was not going to be an anti-war activist or have thought of my own. 1:53:33 SM: Very well said, I had no more questions. Is there a question that I did not ask that you thought I might ask? 1:53:43 RC: I had no idea that I had no idea what you are writing or what you are looking for. I just responded saying that I can, with far, far more words than I prefer. But so, I hope you'll choose the best. And not make me look like a long-winded attorney- 1:53:58 SM: No, it is all every see, every interview has been different. And sometimes I do not even ask all the same questions in each of the interviews. So, you are the 85th person and then Alan. Alan, I actually interviewed him a little bit when he was at Westchester University, but he was, it was 30 minutes and then he had to go to dinner with us. And so, then that so- (End of Roseann Chic Canfora’s Interview) (Start of Alan Canfora’s Interview) 1:53:58 SM: The first question I want to ask and first off, thanks again for agreeing to be interviewed. What was it in your personal background? You are growing up years in the (19)50s. Was there something that happened in your life that made you become an activist? Was there something even before what happened at Kent State? 1:54:51 AC: I think I became a compassionate person because of my father and my mother. They were both World War II veteran my father lost his right eye in an accident in the Philippine Islands at age 19 when he was in the army, and he then went into a hospital, ultimately Battle Creek, Michigan, where he met my mother, she was an Army nurse. My father became a union organizer and leader starting in the 1950s, that your aerospace in Akron where he was a union worker at Goodyear. He became active in the liberal movement as a union organizer and activist. But then he went on to the Barberton city council as a democratic City Councilman in 1964. I think I gained some compassion from my mother, who was a nurse, and political activism from my father, who was a union organizer and a liberal democratic politician. 1:55:47 SM: How did you pick Kent State? Did you were you thinking of other colleges or knew was that the one was always on your mind? 1:55:54 AC: Well, I went to Kent State because it is nearby in my hometown of Barberton and where I still live. It is about 13 miles to the east. And most of my high school friends were all going to Akron University, which is about maybe five miles away. So, I wanted to get away from my high school friends, and they wanted to go someplace new. So, I really chose Kent State also, because I had attended some basketball games there. While I was in high school on some high school, regional and district championship basketball games. I thought it was a beautiful campus and a lovely little city. And that was another reason I chose again- 1:56:35 SM: What was your major there? 1:56:37 AC: Well, I started out as a prelaw major, and then I transferred into education and business. I made a few changes concerning my major and then I finally ended up with a bachelor's degree of general studies. No major. 1:56:56 SM: Besides your parents, who were obviously role models, did you have any political figures or historical figures from your readings in high school or that you really looked up to? Like that may have been mentors as well? 1:57:11 AC: Can you repeat the question please? 1:57:13 SM: Were there, when you were in high school or when you were young, were there any other mentors like either historical figures or political leaders or people you read about when you were young that inspired you? 1:57:24 AC: Well, no doubt John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy inspired me. My family visited Washington. Soon after he was elected. Around 1961, we went on a vacation to Washington, and we stood outside the White House, and we idolized President Kennedy, before and after he was assassinated. But I think his assassination in particular, had an impact on me to follow in my father's footsteps. Later on, that my dad became a city councilor in 1964, shortly after President Kennedy was killed, and I always paid attention to politics. For example, in 1957, my earliest political memory is kneeling at the side of my bed praying, that Adlai Stevenson would defeat Dwight Eisenhower for president in 1956. [oh my gosh] Actually, yeah, and because my dad was always a Democrat, and I can remember he was watching the presidential conventions in 56 and 60 and 64. So I was always very political minded. And I really prefer the democrats greatly over the Republicans, always My father always said to me that the worst democrat is better than the best Republicans. And I took that to heart. I just kind of idolized the Democratic politicians. But on the on the literary side, I also started reading a lot of Edgar Allan Poe, when I was around in the seventh grade. And so, I read a lot about Edgar Allan Poe, and I read a lot about his life. And I always thought that I would like to be a writer. Try to write in the style of Edgar Allan Poe. And so, I was fascinated by his style of writing. 1:59:08 SM: When you think you know, this is mostly a lot about the boomers and the (19)60s and (19)70s. But, you know, the boomers when they were in their elementary school years, it was the (19)50s. And was there something during the (19)50s besides your parents now, how important was television in your life? in those early years when you were in elementary school, particularly with the television shows there were so many westerns on television at that time? Well with the good guy and the bad guy and the bad guy was always being the Native American or the Indian. But then we had Howdy Doody and the-the Mouseketeers. Was there anything- it almost seems like, and I liked your perception on this, that it was children were so protected by their parents during the (19)50s. Even though we were going through the Cold War, it seemed like such a happy time. Your thoughts on that? 2:00:03 AC: Yes, I think the (19)50s were very enjoyable years for my family. My father had a very good job as a union worker at goodyear, he had a good paycheck and good health benefits. We were living in a house that my parents were buying downtown Barberton, the backyard was a double size compared to all the other lots in downtown Barberton. And so, we had a huge backyard, where we were constantly playing baseball, and football and then we would go down to the playground to play basketball during the fall months. So constantly, we were playing sports. Now at the same time. We did spend a lot of time indoors watching television, and also going to the movies, the movie theater was only about three or four blocks away, it cost a nickel or a dime to get in. And we had walked down there, the streets in Barberton and were very safe to just walk around everywhere. It was a town of about 33,000. It was most industrialized city in Ohio per capita, a lot of factories, and most of my friends or parents or fathers worked in factories as mine did. So, it was an idyllic childhood. Really, I have no complaints whatsoever. But we go to the movies all the time. And I can remember seeing the movie High Noon and a lot of monster movies and a lot of cartoons, very enjoyable weekends going to the movie theaters, but during the week we watch a lot of television. Yes, we watched the Mickey Mouse Club. I remember in the (19)50s and (19)60s also watching a lot of Band Stand, American Band Stand, which stimulated by music, my interest in music and my parents always had on the radio WHAR radio in Akron, which is where Alan Freed had his radio show broadcast his first rock and roll program on the radio. In fact, he coined the term rock and roll. And my parents were very much into rock and roll they loved it. They would often jitterbug around in the living room. My parents were good dancers. And so, we just had constantly had music playing we had the TV on but in particular, I think the Mickey Mouse Club stands out a lot of cowboy TV shows but also, American Bandstand. We love to watch the young people of Philadelphia dancing on TV. And that was a lot of fun. 2:02:15 SM: When you think of the (19)60s and the early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? 2:02:20 AC: Well, in the early (19)60s, I remember before the Beatles we had a lot of the American bands, would refer to the girl groups, the Shirelles, the Shangri La's, bands like that. We used to sit there in my junior high school classes. We would go to lunch, and they would play music at noon, and the girls would go on the gym floor dancing around to this music. And I just remember, you know, starting to take an interest in girls, I was very popular in school I along with my sister, we were both in the major Work Program, which was for the intellectually advanced classes, the gifted program they call it, so we went to the same schools with the, you know, the regular students who were all our friends and my sister was very popular. And so, as I and we have, you know, we have participated in school functions, I was always on different sports teams and, but I played baseball professionally, I was the captain of the Little League All Star team. One of the best players in the league, I was not only on the all-star team, but I was the captain of the all-star game when I was 12. And then I, I played Little League Baseball when I was 10, 11 and 12. And then when I was 13, 14 and 15, I play what they call senior Little League Baseball. I was by the time I was 15 for that league, I was also the captain of the all-star team there. So, I had leadership skills. I look back on it. Now of course, I am a political leader in my hometown. I am the chairman of the Democratic Party for the last 17 years. But I think I really did learn my leadership skills as a baseball player on the baseball diamonds. I remember I remember a lot of playing baseball, attending elementary school, junior high school, the I remember the launch in elementary school, the launch of the satellites and the Sputniks and all that that really created a big interest in my mind concerning science. And I had a great interest in that all through my school year, as well as both during-during junior high, then the Beatles, of course came when I was in ninth grade the British Invasion of music and that had a big impact on the instead of letting my hair grow a little bit long I think 1964, (19)65 trying to copy the Beatles and of course, we listened to all the Beatle albums, we knew all the words and everybody was just fascinated by the British music but also when the Rolling Stones started playing I started gravitating more liking the Rolling Stones more than the Beatles and that was kind of unusual in my hometown. Everybody else heard the Beatles. I kind of like the bad boys and the Rolling Stones. 2:04:46 SM: Is there is there one specific event and I remember I said ask this to your sister yesterday and-and I know that what happened on May 4th is probably the most, the biggest event in your life but when you think of, is there one specific event in your life that had the greatest influence on you before what happened at Kent State? 2:05:10 AC: I cannot think of one, Steve No, quite honestly, I think it was just kind of, I am trying to think of the proper word here. I mean, I had a very colorful and eventful life, a very enjoyable life. I Just cannot think of one, no. 2:05:29 SM: One of the things over the years and you have watched television, you are up to date on politics. In 1994, when Newt Gingrich came into power, and republicans came into power, I can remember him commenting on the (19)60s in the (19)70s, and really attacking the entire boomer generation, he loved, he loved to do that. George Will done quite often in his written articles, anytime he can get a shot back at the boomer generation. And basically, what they are saying is that the breakdown of American society all happened because of what happened in the (19)60s and (19)70s. Regarding the drug culture, problems between blacks, blacks and whites in America, the lack of respect for authority, all the break or divorce rate, permissive society, not trusting anybody in positions of responsibility. So, your comments on the Gingrich’s and the George Wills who, anytime they have a chance they are going to shoot back to that period and really condemn the boomers. 2:06:33 AC: Well Steve, I understand perfectly what you are saying, of course, you are referring to the culture wars, 2:06:36 SM: Right? 2:06:38 AC: People, these conservatives, these republicans, they love to rewrite history, in a distorted way, they are revisionist, in the worst sense of the word. They can focus on the negative aspects of the (19)60s. And I know David Horowitz is the lead cheerleader in that regard. But I would like to point out that we also had in the (19)50s, in the (19)60s, gross racism, sexism was rampant, homophobia reigned supreme, those were primitive years in our culture. And for some people in the 1950s and (19)60s, it was starting, I think, with Elvis, and starting with rock and roll in the (19)50s, that young people started to take a stand and blaze their own trail. And this really perturbed conservatives and people like Newt Gingrich and people like George, well, it wish- it was still Ozzie and Harriet in America forever, but those days are gone. People stood up, people blaze their own trail, they started listening to their own music, wearing their own clothing. And the young people in particular, led the way in forging the new cultural traditions in America. And the people that prefer the old 1930s, (19)40s, and (19)50s, the primitive conservative religious culture, those years are gone. And they are upset about that. And they always complain. And it is too bad for them, because those years are gone forever. Now, you did ask me about one event that did change my opinion in the 1960s. And I do remember, you kind of caught me off guard there for a moment, but I would like to say what I think entirely changed my path was, as I mentioned, I always watched the convention, the political convention. Not much the republicans but the democrats starting in 1956, (19)60s, (19)64. Well, let me say, Steve, in 1968, when I was sitting in my parents living room on Newell Street in downtown Barberton, and I was 19 years old. I was I had just finished my first year of college, and I was watching the Democratic Convention. And I saw 1000s of students beaten in the streets of Chicago. Live on television, I was shocked. I was appalled. I knew there was going to be a demonstration there I read about in the newspapers. But I was completely overwhelmed with anger. When I saw those Chicago policemen crushing the skulls of the young boys and girls in Chicago, I will never forget the feeling that I had that. I knew at that moment, I was going to join those protests, I was turning against the war in Vietnam, in a very slow way, in an evolutionary sort of way. During my first year in college, another significant event, yes, I do remember this one. I was sitting in one of my first political science classes as a freshman. And the professor was talking about the war in Vietnam almost every day and in a negative way he was he was against the war in Vietnam. And so were several of the students in the class. Most of the students in the class were like me just sitting there listening, trying to absorb this new information, which we never considered before, antiwar opinions and believe me when I was in Barberton, until I graduated from high school, I never heard a single person object to the war in Vietnam, not one. And I was for the war in Vietnam. I totally supported our troops and the government. I never thought for a minute the government would do anything against the interests of our people. That was how naive and trusting that I was because of my upbringing. With my mother and father both being World War II veterans, loving our country and loving the military, I was not against the military or government at all. Until my freshman year when I started hearing, my political science professor and some, a few of my fellow students are passionately arguing against the war. And one day this this one young kid in the class said, during his opinion statements he was making that day, he looked around the classroom and he goes, for example- [audio cuts] I will never forget that moment. And I was, I felt days, because I had never considered whether or not I was going to make up my own mind about Vietnam. I love my government, the newspapers, my teachers, my parents, I let others think for me until that day, and I really was done. I remember, I walked out of that classroom after the class was over, I walked out to my car, which was a 1957 Chevy. And I sat in my car for about 15 minutes. in kind of a dazed state, thinking, oh, my God, I have to think for myself, I have to make up my mind about this important issue of war in Vietnam. I was thinking about my friends who were over there at the time, my schoolmates, my baseball, fellow baseball players and others who were in Vietnam at that time. And that was 1967 in October, I believe. I was greatly changed by that one particular day in my political science class, where I realized I had to start thinking for myself. And then from there on out after that, after, during the fall of (19)67, the winter of (19)68, going into the spring of (19)68, I was evolving, slowly, letting my hair grow longer, still listening to a lot of rock and roll music, and starting to change my opinions about the war in Vietnam. In 1968, in August, when I saw the Democratic Convention, that was it, that was the that was the determining factor, which really compelled me then to decide to join the antiwar movement. And as fate would have it, the next month after the Democratic Convention was when I moved into the dormitory on the Kent State campus, a campus address in Johnson Hall. And two weeks later, I did join the campus SDS. 2:12:21 SM: Very well put, it leads right into my next question. And if you were, I asked this to your sister yesterday too. If you were in an auditorium at Kent State University, and with a with a group of boomer generation, student people who had gone to college at that particular time from all over the country. So, it is not just Kent State, it is that students from other parts of the country. And do you, they were asked what is the one event that may have shaped their lives more than any other? And this is thinking outside the box even beyond you, what would you think most boomers would say? 2:12:59 AC: I say they probably say the war in Vietnam. I think they might, they might say the assassination of President Kennedy. Well, and I really do believe my own heart. I think it was the assassination of President Kennedy. That event does stand out. Also, as far as your earlier question. I remember, I was in ninth grade, I was sitting in my Latin class at Highland junior high school, November 22, 1963, when suddenly the loudspeaker came on. Without any introductory comment by the school officials. It just went right to a radio broadcast from Dallas, Texas, announcing the President Kennedy had been shot. And then a few minutes later, then President Kennedy was dead. My Latin teacher, Mrs. Barker, burst into tears in front of our class, she was sitting at her desk. And she said to our class, you young people, remember this day, she says, I have seen things like this before in the past, she goes, suddenly history changes, events change, politics changes. She says you do not know what is coming. She goes, I do not know what is coming. But she said, I think this is going to mark a great change for the worst for our country. And she was sobbing. [wow] So that had a big effect on me when I was sitting there at age 15. 2:14:22 SM: When did the (19)60s begin in your eyes? And what would you believe was the watershed moment? 2:14:29 AC: The 1960s? I would say two things. The assassination of President Kennedy and the Chicago convention of 1968. [agreement] 2:14:38 SM: Describe the qualities that you, you are a boomer but obviously you-you have seen your generation as they have grown older, because now the oldest boomers are 62 years old, hard to believe first year that some of them are getting Social Security. What do you think are the some of the greatest strengths of the boomers and what are their weaknesses? If you were to look at the generation? 2:15:02 AC: I think some of the strengths of the baby boomer generation include the courage that our generation showed to take the stand against the primitive conservative morality of our parent’s generation. You know, we respect our parents, we respect their generation, because they survived the war. They survived the Great Depression. They triumphed in World War Two, but at the same time, they clung to a conservative, religious, primitive, backward morality. And I think we resented that. So, we had to show courage and blaze our own trail, with new music, new culture, new clothing styles. And so that required a great deal of courage. And we paid a price for that, especially those of us who grew our hair longer and took a stand against the government about racism or the war in Vietnam. Very often, we suffered government or police repression. And still, we persevered. And so, I think that is another good trait of our generation, we have great perseverance in the face, in the face of great opposition from the government, from the church, and from the police, and the military. We persevered, and we stood strong against racism, against poverty, against the war in Vietnam. And I really think that the achievement of our generation stopping the war in Vietnam, I do not think I exaggerate. And I do not know how many people agree with me, but I think it was probably one of the greatest achievements in the history of the twentieth century, when you think about it, the power and the might of the greatest military operation in the world, the United States government military, that the citizens of our country brought that to a stop, we stopped the military draft, we stopped the criminal war in Vietnam. I think that is a tremendous achievement of the 1960s generation, but often overlooked in history books. But, of course, because the history books are generally written by conservative individuals trying to preserve the old order. But I think that stopping the, I think, also the civil rights movement of our generation, in particular, our African American brothers and sisters, they deserve a great deal of credit for taking a stand in the streets of the South, especially where there was such fierce and violent opposition people like Martin Luther King, people who were from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the white students who supported them and the Students for a Democratic Society. That is the group that I joined, at Kent State, I think so these organizations and these leaders and these individuals stood strong. And it made a huge difference in the history of our country. Can you hang on a second Steve? I have got a call; let me call you back after I get off. 2:17:49 SM: Do you have my phone number? 2:17:50 AC: Yes, I do. 2:17:52 SM: When we were talking last time, you were answering halfway through a question on the strengths and weaknesses of the boomer generation. You had just talked about their strengths in pretty much detail. What are some of the weaknesses within the boomer generation in your eyes? 2:18:08 AC: You mean nowadays or back then? 2:18:10 SM: Back then and if you are disappointed in, let me get into the next question after that, which is, have you been disappointed in, in the boomer generation as they approached now senior citizen status? 2:18:25 AC: Well, I think one of the weaknesses of our generation back in the day was we had youthful excesses, both politically and socially. And culturally, basically, because we were blazing a new trail of our own, without any kind of a serious precedent within memory. We made a great break from our parent’s generation, even though we were anti fascists, as they were like, for example, during World War Two, our parents’ generation took a very principled and proud stand against fascism. Unfortunately, some of us well, we had to do the same thing during the Vietnam War. And when our government was going in a criminal wrongful direction, and we had to take a stand against our own government, we thought our government was becoming fascistic. So, we took a stand against them. And I think we did that very well. We helped stop the war in Vietnam. And we helped to bring great changes socially and culturally in our country, and politically. But I think, among those weaknesses, because we were blazing a new trail, and we did not have any kind of a previous example to build upon. I think there were some excesses with drug abuse, which is regrettable. We had learned the hard way we were, one friend of mine said we were kind of like a bunch of guinea pigs back at that time. And we had to learn the hard way sometimes about that stuff. And I think there was some excesses in that regard. And also, I think, politically, for example, some of the tendencies were a bit extreme in the political movement, the anti-war movement because we were too idealistic, which is natural for younger people to be excessively idealistic, but it was, had some bad effects. For example, the Weatherman and the some of the other political tendencies were a bit extreme and out of the mainstream and did not build a mass movement, did not unite broadly with the masses of the people and I think it is regrettable. And other examples of that, but I think for the most part, our generation, I think the plus, the minus the, far outweigh the minuses. moment, hang on, I have another call. 2:21:04 SM: Okay. We finished with that particular question, or that- 2:21:09 AC: was finished with that part. But I was going to talk about the current feelings about our generation nowadays. 2:21:15 SM: Yes, definitely. 2:21:17 AC: I think that, as our generation matured, unfortunately, many of us forgot the lessons of Vietnam, and left behind our activism that we felt so passionately during the Vietnam War, once the war was over too many from our generation, regressed politically and socially, socially. And seems that too many of us just took a stand once against the war in Vietnam and did not remain politically aware and active. That is one big regret that I feel. But at the same time, even though we did elect a progressive president, like Barack Obama in 2008, I think it was very shameful that our generation chose George W. Bush, as a president to represent the baby boomer generation for the first time. That was a very regrettable choice. Too many people from our generation were deceived by the republican lies and propaganda. And they fell into a big trap by George W. Bush and our country paid a very fair price. But that was one great regret that I feel about our generation. 2:22:15 SM: How do you respond to people who say when well, the reason why the Vietnam War really ended was because mothers and fathers in the Midwest realize that their sons, sons, and few daughters are coming home from war in caskets, as opposed to and lessening the role that college students played in ending the war. And your comment on the role that college students actually played in this. You know, against the war itself. And if they played, what was the major reason why we the war ended? 2:22:52 AC: [Cough] well sure I think that college students played a huge role. But not the only role. It was true that there were businesspeople against the war, mothers against the war, grandmothers. a broad range of people oppose that war. And that really, that is a broad movement did help to end the war. But I do not think you should emphasize one segment of the antiwar movement over the other, except to say that among the students, it was our generation during the war in Vietnam that protested more vigorously than any other generation in American history, there is no doubt about it, that the-the peak the pinnacle, the high point of student activism occurred in May of 1970, for example, when the national students break occurred, after the Kent State massacre and Richard Nixon's invasion of Cambodia, almost 5 million students protested, over 800 colleges and universities shut down. And it was a tremendous tidal wave of protests that swept across the country, forcing Nixon not only to pull the troops out of Cambodia within six weeks, but also to help to bring the war in Vietnam to a more hasty conclusion. So, I think it is wrong to minimize the role of students, but it is also wrong to exaggerate that role and say that it was the only segment of the antiwar movement. 2:24:08 SM: I do not think I asked before but I, I, I talked to something like Boomer friends, even in the past year, and they still feel that the most unique generation in American history, they have not changed, even up to age 61, 62. And, of course, when I was on the college campus, I was on a different campus then you were. there was this feeling of the unity of togetherness that we are one that we can change the world. And there was a feeling that there was a uniqueness within this generation, your feelings on the attitudes that boomers had about being unique number one than and whether they were unique. Number two. 2:24:46 AC: I think that is true. For example, among the counterculture movement, the hippies, the longhairs. These were young people that were really trying to rebel against the old order, against the government against the war. Against conservative morality. And I think as a result, we were under attack by the government, and by the conservatives and older people who misunderstood there was a serious generation gap. We were under attack by the police and the government. So, it is kind of forced us to circle our wagons and feel a great sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. And I think that was one of the most beautiful aspects of our earlier time together as a generation. So, I think that that is definitely true. 2:25:31 SM: You mentioned already about that one of your disappointments in the boomer generation was their inability to carry on their idealism into as they got older. And, of course, a lot of it. You know, some people always say that that is always takes place in any generation, because of the fact that, you know, as you get older, you do not have as much energy or time. But barring that, what-what are your thoughts on the impact that boomers have had on their kids, and now grandchildren, because now 85 percent of all the college students are actually the sons and daughters of generation Xers, which are those born after (19)64. And it is the next generation sending their kids to college. But there is still about 15 percent, who are boomers who hit children late. So, there is still a lot of Boomer parents, but mostly they are heading into grandparent hood, just your thoughts on the impact they have had on them with respect to activism and sharing the experiences they went through and seeming caring, caring like they had when they were young? Just your thoughts? 2:26:38 AC: Well, I think first of all, it should be pointed out that many people from our generation continues to be progressive, not everybody abandoned their youthful idealism. For example, quite a few people from our generation became union leaders, Democratic Party officials and activists, leaders in the fields of journalism and computer science. And so, in the news media, so I think our generation continued to have a very broad impact, not everybody abandoned their political ideals. And I think in a positive sort of a way, we have changed the world. Now as for the younger generations of children and grandchildren, I think that does. For example, we are not nearly so conservative politically or morally. Religion, for example, does not dominate our culture, as it did back in the 1950s. And (19)60s, many people are rejecting the conservative force, morality, their religion tried to foist upon people wrongfully. And so, I think you can see that now, throughout our culture. For example, in Ohio, one out of every six citizens now say that they are not religious at all. And so, I think you can see that the-the legacy of the 1960s is a very profound and very positive, I think, in our society. And that has got to have had an effect, there must have been an effect on the children and the grandchildren. 2:27:57 SM: So, a lot, you know, depending on who you talk to a lot of colleges are very proud of today's college students, millennials, because they are somewhat, sometimes they compare them to the World War II generation, which was they kind of shun over the boomers and the silent generation. And that is because the current college students have already been interviewed by whatever, high school or whatever, and they want to leave a legacy. But they, the one question that comes up is that they want to leave the legacy when they are 40. Not when they are 21. They want to raise kids get a job. But they do care about other things. And of course, the boomers at that when they were young, they wanted to do it immediately. I do not know if you have any thoughts on that. 2:28:41 AC: I was like Jim Morrison used to saying we want the world we want to know that is how we felt back at that time. We were impatient because it was our generation that was under attack and Vietnam and by the military draft and by the police, and the government. But we did want to change we wanted it quickly because we were literally under attack. Now as time passed by the Vietnam War ended, and the government mellowed, and the people of America became more accepting of the counterculture and people that maybe looked or acted a little bit differently. So, I think that times have changed, and I think they have changed for the better. 2:29:16 SM: This is some question I want to read to you because it has to deal with the issue of healing. Do you feel boomers are still having problems with healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth, divisions between black and white divisions between those who support authority and those who criticized it, divisions between those who supported the troops and those who did not? We know the wall in Washington DC for the Vietnam Memorial has helped the divisions within the Vietnam veteran generation. But there is still a question about whether it has done much for the nation itself. Do you feel that the boomer generation will go to their grave like the Civil War generation not truly healing? Am I wrong in thinking After 40 years, or is the statement Time heals all wounds the truth? I say this Alan because we took students to see senator muskie before he passed away about a year and a half, when I was working at Westchester University, and we asked this very same question to him thinking that he will talk about 1968, the Democratic Convention and the tremendous divisions and he paused for about a minute. And then he responded by saying, it is we have not healed since the Civil War. And he went on to explain the divisions between North and South and the-the coming together and Gettysburg and how they never really truly healed. Do you think there is a problem with healing within the boomer generation? Or am I just imagining this? 2:30:47 AC: Well, I think it depends on how you look at it. My perspective is there has been a great deal of healing. For example, nowadays, you see very few people who are still hardcore, pro Vietnam War, who think that we could have won that war, we should have won that war, although there are a few of those people. Based on my experience, after over 10 years now of having my own internet websites, and having quite a few people contact me by email, I think I have my hand on the pulse pretty good here. Very well, here. Rather, there are still a few conservative Vietnam veterans who remain very angry. And I think those people probably never will become deals. On the other hand, I think the vast majority of Vietnam veterans, in the vast majority of people who mistakenly supported that war in Vietnam, I think very few of those people still hold to their wrong ideas. Most people now understand the war in Vietnam was a terrible, tragic error, that are 58,000 of our young people died for no good reason, and that it was avoidable, it should not have happened. So, I think there has been a great deal of healing and many people who support the war in Vietnam. In fact, I think most people who supported the war, and who supported President Nixon now see those events and those conservative people who were pro war as wrong. So, I think there has been a great deal of healing. But on the other hand, amongst some hardcore conservatives, and you do find some people in the modern Republican Party, and the conservative movement who are revisionist in their thinking, they always try to rewrite history in a wrongful way they tried to exacerbate or exaggerate the divisions and keep those divisions alive. But I think most people are doomed to failure. 2:32:27 SM: It is interesting, because Barney Frank, you know, the congressman from Massachusetts, wrote a book, maybe about in the mid (19)90s, called “speaking, frankly”. And in that book, he said, the Democratic Party was basically destroyed back in 1972. When McGovern ran for president, so many people split, and they have gone a different direction. So, when we talk about the boomer generation, and the and the issues there, we can also talk about the Democratic Party and what happened to them, because most of them- 2:32:57 AC: Well, I think that is a good example. But again, I am more optimistic. I think if you look at 1972, which was a fiasco, because George McGovern was not part of the mainstream. And his ideas were a bit to do now. And he obviously did not appeal to very many people in America, and he was suffered a serious landslide. At the same time, he was the victim of the Watergate crimes of that era. And if those crimes have been exposed more thoroughly, earlier by the news media, and the government and others, immediately, McGovern would have won. But at the same time, I would like to point out that many people from our generation did get active in the Democratic Party, even though some of us including me, were alienated from the democratic party after 1968 because of the serious tragedy that occurred at the Democratic Convention there in Chicago. But some of us eventually evolved back into the Democratic Party. And I think we have resuscitated that party to the point now that we have a- an African American president who is very openly progressive. And we are now having a great impact on the world. I think it is very clearly because the baby boomer generation took charges from the Democratic Party, 2:34:06 SM: Good points. 2:34:08 AC: I know I have in my own hometown; I am the chairman since 1992. 2:34:12 SM: That is very commendable, because you have continued to be you be an activist and also to be involved in politics and voting. And then and that is obviously a very big plus. You are an example to many young people. Two of the qualities I would like you to respond to is that the quality of movements which is part of the boomer generation, all those movements that took about kind of use the civil rights movement as a as a role model, because you have the antiwar the Native American Chicano gay and lesbian movements, the women's movement and the secondly the issue this is a very important thing is the effect of trust. The seams it is my feeling that the-the boomer generation was a very distressful generation because of the way the leaders had lied to them. Not only During the time they were of college age, but even before with President Eisenhower lying on national television to 59, about the U2 incident, which was really a big news item, no one could believe that he lied. Then, of course, we all know about the Gulf of Tonkin with LBJ Watergate with Nixon, some of the revolution revelations even about Kennedy in later years about the overthrow of regimes around the world. And then we get into Reagan and Iran Contra and all. And now even recently with George Bush and weapons of mass destruction. So, these are examples throughout the boomers live from the time they were basically in elementary school. And the reason, I am asking this question, Allen is the fact that oftentimes psychologists will say that the ability to trust is a very important quality that we must have in a person to be a success in life and to be a successful society. Your thoughts on whether the boomer generation is a very distrustful generation? And have they passed this distrust onto the children and grandchildren? 2:36:06 AC: Whether the boomer generation is a distressed generation- 2:36:10 SM: No, a lack of trust generation- 2:36:16 AC: lack of trust generation- 2:36:17 SM: Yes. 2:36:17 AC: It means that our generation does not deserve to be trusted- 2:36:19 SM: No-no-no that they are not trusting anybody else. And they think it is true. 2:36:23 AC: I think that is true. You know, we were we were raised up, for example, I was born in 1949. And I was raised up in the 1950s, which was a very idealistic time, of high employment, low poverty, there were plenty of jobs and healthcare for most people. And it was a time of rock and roll and Elvis Presley, and there was no war going on. So, it was a very idealistic, hopeful, positive time to be raised. But then in the 1960s, we saw the ugly side of American modern history, the ugliness of racism, sexism, homophobia, police brutality, war in Vietnam. And our government was turning in a criminal way toward being involved with excessive repression against minorities and others. So, we felt that we were betrayed, we have because we were raised up to have great hope in America, we felt that we found what we became of age in the 1960s, what are their hopes were betrayed? So that was why we took a stand. And I think Ever since then, you look around now you see very few people who have blind faith in their government, you know, was our generation that started that trend, I think nowadays is a very healthy thing, not only in America, but in any country, for people to look at the government skeptically and to question the government, especially their policies, because we have learned the hard way that they are mistaken policies have a drastic effect upon the common people. And whether it is the war in Vietnam, or recently, the abuses of Wall Street, which are now causing widespread suffering and unemployment and poverty, I think that our skepticism has been warranted. 2:38:06 SM: Truly interesting, if you look at some of the journals, a lot of people are fearful that Obama is going to become the next LBJ in Afghanistan, he is going to continue to bring troops in and he is never going to admit he is wrong. [right] You think there is a possibility that he could be, you know, another LBJ even though we lost love them in terms of, you know, there is-there is that possibility there. 2:38:34 AC: Yes, it is, But I think Obama is smarter than that. And I think people are going to be generally surprised when he brings peace to Afghanistan and Iraq soon and brings our economy back to life and we have national health care. I think Obama is going to be seen as a new Franklin Delano Roosevelt. 2:38:49 SM: How do you look at the music of the era because the musical obviously was very important. You hear it on the radio today, and you hear constantly on TV advertisements. I, I interviewed William Earhart a couple weeks back, you know, the great Vietnam poet, Vietnam veterans against the war leader and everything. And he took me to the back of the room. And he wanted me to read this small article. He is a teacher, at a school outside Philadelphia, and the article was a member of the birds who said, I will refer two of the members of the birds wanted to sell their music for car advertisements. He refused, he refused. And he said, even the musicians are betraying us now because of the fact that they are selling all their music to corporations. And they were the musicians that were the role models for the generation of the boomers. Just, your thoughts on the music of the (19)60s and the music of the boomers, whether it be the (19)50s, (19)60s or (19)70s and how important it was in their development as individuals and human beings. And you might want to talk about even the art that was going on in that era too. 2:40:02 AC: Well, the art, the especially the rock and roll had a tremendous impact politically and socially on our generation. In fact, I have always said that it was the rock and roll and some of those songs that inspired our political activism and even our militants, which helped to end the war in Vietnam. So, I do not think that is regrettable, and I think the fact that we mixed culture with politics is was one of the finest factors about our generation. As for some of the people selling out or selling their songs to make money, you know, some of these people have bills to pay and kids in college and health expenses. And I have never really thought it was a problem when they sold their music for TV commercials and cash down a little bit. Because I think that their intellectual property does have value and they need to have that value recognized. So, I do not really have a problem with them being compensated for their labor that way. 2:40:54 SM: When you listen to these three quotes, which do you think better defines the boomers or do you think they are they all in their own lane define them? Peter, Max used to have a poster out all the time that was on I know, it was all over Ohio State when I was there in graduate school in the early (19)70s. And the words where you do your thing, I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful. The second? [I remember that] Yeah, the second quote, obviously, is Malcolm X by any means necessary. And that was out there long after he passed in 1965. And the third one we all know after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. He had said it in Indianapolis, but he had also said in many other places, it was a Henry David Thoreau quote. And that is, some men see things as they are and ask why I see things that never were and ask why not? What I listened all three of those I, I see individuals that I knew back in the (19)60s and (19)70s, your thoughts on those three quotes, and if any one of them better defines the boomer generation? 2:42:00 AC: Well, it depends on which aspect of our generation you are talking about Malcolm X, I think spoke very eloquently for those of us who felt that we had to take a stand against our government, by any means necessary. And sometimes we were even compelled to pursue militant protest actions, because the government was not listening to peaceful protests. I think Malcolm X was the flip side of the coin. And on the other side was Dr. King who offered the peaceful solution. Our generation tried to pursue many different paths, but all trying to reach the same goal, which was peace and love. Peter, Max spoke for the-the love the hippie generation, the hippie side of our movement, the counterculture of people just trying to be groovy trying to be peaceful trying to come together. But sometimes people feel differently that gets people to get frustrated people who knew that just by waving the two fingers in the air, giving the peace sign and hoping for peace and love that that was not going to work without some kind of a militant stand, because the government itself was militant, pursuing a genocidal war in Vietnam, which killed 2 million Asian people. Those people became the victims of our military machine. Some of us could not stand idly by and just wave the peace sign, and hope and pray that the government would stop the war because that did not work. So, we had to turn to a slogan like Malcolm X's slogan, which really many of us took to our hearts. I know I did. And so, I think all of those statements spoke to the dichotomy as we saw it. We were torn, you know, we wanted peace and love. But we were again, like we said earlier, we were impatient. And so, we tried to do all those things. And even Bobby Kennedy, I s think spoke for the-the idealism of our generation, which even goes back to the earliest centuries of America. People always have high ideals and high hopes and dreams. But sometimes you have to take a stand and pay a price. Bobby Kennedy paid a price. Malcom X paid a price. And we did at Kent State but still we had those ideals. And those dreams, which were sometimes very costly, and we had to pay with the price of blood. 2:44:03 SM: Very well said, what do you think the lasting legacy of the boomers will be after the last Boomer has passed away? I remember in reading about when the last civil war veteran died, they have a statue in Gettysburg. And I thought when I first went there years ago, I said what are the statue here? This he was a last person who fought to get us. Well, they actually had a program about it around the time after he died, talking about the lack of healing, but so what are your thoughts on what do you think the legacy of the boomer generation will be as time passed- 2:44:38 AC: I think will be seen as the greatest generation in American history. I disagree with Tom Brokaw and other conservatives who try to say that the World War II generation was the greatest generation. I think, you know, it is true, they did survive the depression and they did help stop fascism and Japanese imperialism. But on the other hand, look at the look at their legacy after that. They were the generation in the greatest the war in Vietnam, they were the generation that tried to prop up racism in the 1960s. And, and other backwards traditions in America, racism, homophobia, damage to the environment and other negative aspects. So, I think that it was our generation, that made a serious break with those wrongful traditions and-and we had to take a stand against that so called Greatest Generation. And we helped stop the war in Vietnam. And we brought down Richard Nixon. And we helped to bring an end to some of these backwards tendencies in our politics in our culture. So, I think in that regard, I am very confident. And I am contented to say that ours was his greatest generation. 2:45:41 SM: Getting back to you know, President Kennedy, because we I was just listening to the inaugural speech. And of course, Today is November 22, which is 46 years ago, he passed away. And you gave very eloquent comments, the last time I spoke to you on the phone about the impact this had on you and your teacher when you were in ninth grade. But when you look at that inaugural speech, I encourage you to look at it again Allan, and some of the comments that were made, and ask not what your country can do for you, and what you can do for your country. And then all the comments about that. We will-we will go anywhere; we will help anyone. You know, there is some mixed messages even in his inaugural and now that you can reflect on it. So just your thoughts on President Kennedy and what his-his role here and obviously, the Peace Corps was very important. But you know, how did he shape the boomers just his presence? 2:46:43 AC: I think he inspired our generation, and no doubt about that. And his assassination left us with a great feeling of anguish, which caused us then to begin to awaken about the situation with our government and the situation with politics. Because many of us to snap out of the stupor, that was the inevitable result of being raised in this country and the soporific 1950s. So, he paid a very dear price. And our generation as a result, I think, began to wake up and snap out of it and pay attention. And his words, were always foremost in our minds, when he said, ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country, we started to-started to get a sense of obligation, that we had to take a stand that our generation had a role to play. And so, I think that we always revere his memory in our hearts. I know I do, especially on this day, November 22, when I always pause and remember that tragedy, which I will never forget, in 1963, when I was only 14 years old. So, we revere his memory. And I think his-his tragic death, and also the example set by his brother, Bobby Kennedy in 1968. I think that whole identity impact is a very large part of the inspiration of our movements for peace and justice. And in the 1960s- 2:48:12 SM: Yeah, 46 years ago, and this happened on a Friday, and it was around 1:30, then East Coast time that we found out about it. And of course, it was beautiful skies, just like today. The weather. That is the irony. It is not always that way. What were some of the books that that you read in some of your peers read in the late (19)60s, early (19)70s books that may have influenced you writers, whether it be fiction or nonfiction? 2:48:37 AC: Well, I think the one writer that influenced me, the most that inspired me the most was Albert Camus. In particular, his book called The Rebel, I read that book, and it really caused me to see the world differently, and to see my role in a more clear manner, I knew that I had to take a stand and I think above all the philosophers that did impact me at that time, it was Albert Camus. Also, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche talked about the great noon and the need to destroy the old morality and the old order that had a big impact on me. And I know my roommates, some of them were reading jack Kerouac, and some of the beat poets and people like that. But also, I think the philosophers from our generation Tom Hayden had a big impact on us. So, we read the [inaudible] report, we knew about the call to action from Mr. Hayden and the SBS, student activists, leaders, and also people like Martin Luther King, we were very aware of his writings and his philosophy, but also Malcolm X on the other side of that same coin. So, I think we had a broad range of people that did impact us at the time- 2:49:49 SM: any of your friends read the greening of America by Charles Wright. 2:49:53 AC: And he wrote after it came out after the 1970 shootings right after right, we all read that of course, I think it did. have an impact that helped us summarize the positive aspects of our generation and the impact that we were having on the society. 2:50:07 SM: And another book was Theodore Roszak the making of a counterculture, which was another eye opener in the late (19)60s. 2:50:15 AC: I have that book now. But I did not read it at that time, but I read it afterwards. 2:50:19 SM: I am for the section of the interview now where I just want you to respond to various personalities of the period and or terms. And of course, you know, I asked this to everybody but and I know I have already said this, but what does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you? 2:50:39 AC: Well, I have studied the history of American student activism. So, I am aware that it was the Kent State and Jackson State tragedies, following the invasion of Cambodia that sparked the only national student strike in US history. So, on the one hand, I feel a great sense of anguish about the tragic loss of life. Alison Krauss, Jeffrey Miller, Sandy Scheuer, Bill Schroeder, also games all green and thought is killed down there at Jackson State, but I cherish those memories. But at the same time, I looked at May of 1978, in Jackson State as a reason to be proud it was the time when our generation by the millions, almost 5 million young people on our campuses across the country took a serious stand against our government, some of us paid a very big surprise with life and was blood. But I think it was a shining example of how our generation was willing to take a stand. 2:51:36 SM: Well, my famous picture that [inaudible] family took of you with the flag, which everybody in the world has seen. If you could just describe I know you have done in your books, and you have done it in your speeches, and you do a great job of that. But that that time frame, that very short timeframe, and when you walk up that hill, to Taylor Hall, and then walk past the, the metal structure on the left and down the hill, and, and then all of a sudden, the cracks of the guns. How often does that come back to you? And you know, just just-just your thoughts. 2:52:19 AC: Oh, it comes back to me all the time. I cannot avoid that issue. I have two websites where I am constantly getting email messages from students, scholars, researchers, and others from across America and around the world. I am not trying to escape my obligation to history, I have always felt that I have, I have a duty to speak for my friend Jeffrey Miller, who was shot through the head and killed that day and cannot speak for the others. They were silenced forever. And I feel that some of us have to take a stand nowadays for truth and for justice as a way to speak for them. They cannot fly out from the grave; we have to speak for them. So, I have never really tried to walk away from this issue. I have tried to embrace it and address my duty that I feel and to work with many other people to try to bring a semblance of truth and justice. I deal with this every day. But I do not let it consume my life. I am not, as some conservatives have tried to say, stuck in a time or nothing about this tragedy. I have a life way beyond May 4. I am the chairperson of the Democratic Party. I work for the government; I have a 40 hour a week job. I spent a lot of time helping democrats defeat the dastardly Republicans. So, I have a full life. I am not one dimensional by any means. But at the same time, I refuse to just walk away from my obligations that can say- 2:53:40 SM: very good, Alan. What is the wall mean to you? The Vietnam Memorial. 2:53:46 AC: I think it is the most beautiful, powerful Memorial in Washington, I have been there several times. It has a great emotional impact on anybody who has a heart. If you go there, and you walk down towards the center of that gash in the earth, and you see the 58,000 names, I think inevitably has to have a powerful effect on you. You see the reflection, you see your own face, though you realize you are still on this earth. While those 58,000 are gone. They have paid a very dear price, and that is a beautiful memorial and attribute to their memories. 2:54:19 SM: What does Watergate mean to you? 2:54:23 AC: Watergate was the exposure of the criminality of the Nixon administration and the I think it is a reminder of the general tendency of the republican party ever since. You know, it was Richard Nixon, who initiated the concept of dirty tricks in politics. I know politics has always been dirty down through the years, but it seems to be having become institutionalized in the republican party ever since. 2:54:47 SM: James Rhodes. 2:54:49 AC: James Rhodes was the criminal governor of the state of Ohio back in 1970. It was his rhetoric. The words that he used that inspired the Kent State tragedy, blood remained on his hands until he died and now, he is, as a result burning in hell forever. 2:55:04 SM: No, it is interesting Alan. Now I lived in Ohio and Gilligan was governor and I am shocked that state voted him back in. 2:55:13 SM: Rhodes was the master of manipulating the people of Ohio. He had his hand on the pulse very well, I will say this. He was a master politician. But at the same time, he was only a high school graduate, he did not really have done college. He was basically a country bumpkin who had the great gift of speaking and talking to common folks’ language. I do not think he would ever have a chance of getting elected now in the modern age. But back at that time, he was a really a reflection of it backwards. Thinking of too many Ohioans 2:55:45 SM: How about the counterculture, hippies and hippies. 2:55:50 AC: I have mixed memories about the counterculture, the hippies and the hippies. I think that there were excesses. And there were there was too much idealism, and too much wasted energy. I wish that we had been more enlightened, and more focused and more effective 2:56:06 SM: Students for democratic society and the weathermen. 2:56:10 AC: I think the students for a democratic society is one of the greatest organizations that ever existed in America. It was a broad ranging group, which encompassed everyone among the student generation, which included pacifist, anarchists and everybody in between. They pursued a wide range of tactics from peaceful tactics to militant, I think basically, they responded to the tragedy of Vietnam. They also opposed racism and, and damage to the environment, and the oppression of women and other minorities. So, I think I am very proud that I was a member of SDS. And I think I SDS remains a very misunderstood organization. 2:56:49 SM: How about the Vietnam Veterans against the war? And then the Americans for freedom, which was the conservative group against the war? 2:56:57 AC: What is the second group? You mentioned? 2:56:58 SM: The Americans for freedom? 2:57:00 AC: You mean the young Americans for freedom? 2:57:03 SM: Yeah, young Americans for freedom? Yeah, yeah. 2:57:05 AC: The Young Americans for freedom was a basically an outgrowth of William F. Buckley in the conservative movement in the 1960s. And they were very backwards and primitive in their ideology trying to defend the old order. And I think they were widely discredited. And that is why they do not really exist anymore. On the other hand, what was the other group you mentioned? I am sorry, I got distracted YAF- 2:57:28 SM: The Vietnam veterans against Vietnam veterans against the war. 2:57:30 AC: Yeah. That was a very principled and proud organization, which still exists. Those were veterans of the War [audio cuts]- 2:57:42 SM: Testing one two [audio cuts] 2:57:50 AC: Ring home that inspired the students and the others in America to take a stand against the war. Those veterans saw the war, they knew how long and how horrible and awful the world was in Vietnam. And they compelled us to take action. And they joined us in the frontlines of the movement. So, I have nothing but the greatest respect and admiration. Still, for the Vietnam Veterans against the War- 2:58:13 SM: I think I lost the first two lines because they had to change my tape. But I think, I do not know if you remember what you said. Anyway, yeah, you got it. Okay. I am going to get into some personalities here. And you know, Jane Fonda- 2:58:29 AC: Jane Fonda is a misunderstood individual. I think she had good intentions, but she did some things that she regretted. She went to Vietnam and posed on that anti-aircraft battery. And she was, I think, typical of many people from our generation two excessively idealistic, because she did make some mistakes. But basically, I think her heart was in the right place. And I wish them more Hollywood stars and other famous people have taken a stand like hers. 2:58:57 SM: Well, if you go to the Vietnam Memorial, she is the one person that seems, and no one ever forgives most of Vietnam- 2:59:04 AC: I was there-there and I saw that they had a bunch of those stickers there. Those bumper stickers, Hanoi, Jane and all that. And I had a big discussion with some of those Vietnam veterans, about her and about Vietnam. And when I was discussing Vietnam and Jane Fonda with a bunch of those pro-war, Vietnam veterans, those conservative Vietnam veterans there in Washington, crowd gathered about 100 people gathered around as we had about a 60 minute discussion, really, and by the end of it, I had those conservative Vietnam veterans shaking my hand because I explained to them about Kent State and why some of us had to take a stand and ended up shaking my hand. I think maybe they might have seen Jane Fonda in a different light after that day. 2:59:45 SM: [Agreement] How about Tom Hayden? 2:59:48 AC: Tom Hayden was one of the greatest heroes of the 1960s he wrote for here on stage and he helped to found SBS. And he helped them lead the movement against the war in Vietnam but also against racism against blacks. Ain New York and elsewhere, and I think Tom Hayden is one of the great, great heroes of the 1960s- 3:00:08 SM: had a brand-new book out again too Amie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. 3:00:15 AC: I think there was a Crown Princes of the 1960s antiwar movements. They were basically I think, anarchistic comedians, I do not think that they were so effective politically as they could have been if they, if they have been less idealistic, and more realistic. I think the Yippies were correct in their enthusiasm against the war, but wrong in many of the tactics that they use, which were counterproductive. 3:00:43 SM: Timothy Leary. 3:00:46 AC: Another example of the idealism of the 1960s I think his heart was in the right place. But encouraging people to experiment with LSD i think is regrettable. I think that he did inspire our generation, though, to question the government and to question our reality as it existed, but encouraging the use of LSD I think is wrong 3:01:09 SM: the Black Panthers and I say, again, I mentioned about six people here, which is Eldridge Cleaver, cannot link cleaver, Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Angela Davis, that group. 3:01:22 AC: I think they are very inspirational for the African American population in our country. They started things like the free breakfast program, which is now instituted by our government across the country. They encouraged African Americans to take a stand of defending their neighborhoods, I think that was a good thing because the neighborhoods were under attack. If the Black Panthers were not effective, they would not have been subjected to the cruel repression, the deadly repression by the government. The government saw them as a legitimate threat. And they were, they were revolutionary. They wanted to change America drastically. And they succeeded. Rather than have the data very depressed, including all the people that you mentioned, they all spent time in jail. Some of those people then went bad let people like Eldridge Cleaver ended up becoming a conservative pro government person. I think that was regrettable. But-but the rest of the activists have all remained very principled and proud and stayed active in the movement. 3:02:17 SM: About Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. 3:02:21 AC: I supported McCarthy for a while 1968. But I think then later, he played a bad role when he continued to oppose Bobby Kennedy, he should have stood aside gracefully and allowed Bobby Kennedy to easily have access to the Democratic nomination. So, I think that was wrong of McCarthy. He stayed in the race too long then. And afterwards, he just seemed to be a frustrated man. But I think Eugene McCarthy should be recognized for his great courage and taking a stand against Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. During that time period- 3:02:53 SM: And George McGovern- 3:02:55 AC: George McGovern, I have mixed feelings about George McGovern, on the one hand, he was victimized by the crimes of the Nixon administration in the Watergate scandal, think he could have been a good president. But afterwards, I think McGovern to me, I do not think has played such a good wall through the years. I know at Kent state he came and spoke in 1990. While we had 40,000 people protesting in the rain, nothing against the reduced Memorial at Kent State which was reduced by 93 percent. It was a national controversy. And McGovern came in and just acted like it was business as usual. And he regretted the protesters. I do not have very good feelings about George McGovern right now. 3:03:33 SM: The nonviolent protest movement and I give you two examples. The scene of Stokely Carmichael standing next to Martin Luther King, basically telling them Your time has passed. That is a historic picture and Martin Luther King has his arms folded, you can sign attention and the other one was the debate that Malcolm X had been about three months before he was assassinated with Byard Rustin, who was of you know, worked with Martin Luther King basically telling him that Your time has passed, challenging me, you know, the civil rights leaders of the era, which were Whitney Young, James farmer, Ray Wilkins, Byard, Rustin and Martin Luther King, you know, your time has passed your thoughts on Moses. 3:04:16 AC: I think people like Stokely Carmichael, and Malcolm X had a tremendous impact on the nonviolent civil rights movement. For example, I think it was the pressure from people like Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X that caused Martin Luther King eventually to take a real strong stand against the war in Vietnam. Personally, I think that was why Martin Luther King was assassinated, because he was becoming very powerful and it was broadening out his impact beyond the civil rights movement, and the government had to kill them. 3:04:45 SM: Yeah, Yeah, Martin Luther King and Malcolm were my next to people here. You are just your-your thoughts on them. 3:04:53 AC: Martin Luther King and Malcom X? [yeah]. I think there was a great American patriot way. They loved America enough to take a stand to try to change it. they pursue different tactics and different strategies. But I think together they made a powerful team and had a tremendous lasting impact. And that is why they were killed. Sometimes in America, if you take too strong of a stand if you become too much of a threat to the government, they feel they have to kill you. And I really do believe that government killed both of those individuals. 3:05:23 SM: Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. 3:05:26 AC: That is quite a dynamic duo. Both criminals. Both admittedly, criminals. One of them went to jail. The other did not. I think it was unfortunate that Nixon escaped prison time. If President Nixon was jailed for his crimes in office, I think then we might have not had Ronald Reagan committing his crimes with the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan should have been jailed. George Herbert Walker Bush his illegal actions. And also, George W. Bush. These were all criminal republican presidents that all escaped prosecution, and they all should have been sent to prison, in my opinion, and I do not say that lightly. I know that is a serious charge. But at the same time, unless we have these people paying a price like Nixon should have better price than other presidents will be a bit Cavalier with their own criminal activities, thinking they also will escape punishment. For example, in recent years, George W. Bush is clearly an international war criminal. He has killed hundreds of 1000s of people with his wrongful policies in Iraq, Alone women and children, old people, and others. And he has escaped prosecution as well. This is wrong this has to stop. 3:06:41 SM: This gets right in then to Gerald Ford comments on Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. 3:06:52 AC: Gerald Ford, had to pick up the pieces from the damage of the Nixon administration, I think Gerald Ford was put into a tough situation. Although he was not exactly the brightest intellect in the history of our presidents, he surely was not very bright. But then unfortunately, Jimmy Carter followed and was relatively ineffectual he had economic problems he had to scandal, the hostages in Iran and followed by Ronald Reagan. So that was a really difficult period of our country where we went from bad to worse went from Nixon to Reagan. And I think our country suffered as a result. 3:07:32 SM: One thing, your thoughts that Ronald Reagan used to always say, well, we are back it was really a slap at the (19)60s in the (19)70s. Because he could, we are bringing him we are bringing America back, we are bringing, we are going to the military is going to be stronger, and that that may have been okay, because even the people in the military realize there was something wrong. And then when George, George Bush Senior came in, he said, The Vietnam syndrome is over. So, both Reagan and Bush Senior, you know, had very strong comments, really on an era. 3:08:06 AC: Well, that is traditional for conservatives to try to rewrite history. For example, it was Richard Nixon, who first talked about the ending the Vietnam syndrome, Ronald Reagan declared it to be dead. But still, if you look at Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, this is a time period during the late (19)70s, early (19)80s, where there was serious talk of bringing back the draft. Well, they could not do that, because the American people would not stand for that. So that is the positive legacy of our generation. We stopped the military draft, and it has not been resumed ever since. So, they cannot destroy the Vietnam syndrome. The fact that there is no draft proves that the Vietnam syndrome is alive and well. Also, we have not had another war like Vietnam ever since Vietnam. During Vietnam, we would lose 6000 gives me, sorry 4000 of our soldiers in a six-month period, we would lose over 400 soldiers in a week, sometimes, we have not had a war like that ever since Vietnam because the American people remember Vietnam, Vietnam syndrome is still alive. We remember the legacy of the war in Vietnam and our antiwar movement. So, we do not have a draft and we do not have another war like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan are nothing compared to Vietnam. We started to see the level of casualties as we saw during Vietnam. Again, we would have another antiwar movement just as strong. So, when Nixon, Reagan and George HW Bush or George bush tried to announce that they are back and the conservatism is a reigning Supreme, while there is only so much that they can do because the legacy of Vietnam remains alive and well- 3:09:36 SM: Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. 3:09:41 AC: I think they were both decent men, a good Liberal Democrats who tried to do the right thing in certain regards with social policies, but their tremendous failing their Achilles heel was Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson suffered to the point where he had to withdraw from the 1968 presidential race and the remains a very haunted man until his death, haunted by Vietnam and Hubert Humphrey similarly suffered because he was so closely linked to LBJ, even though they did try to bring some racial harmony in our country and provide a transition as President Kennedy promised to do. I think they tried to be good liberals that way. But Vietnam proved to be their albatross- 3:10:24 SM: Barry Goldwater and Robert McNamara. 3:10:30 AC: Well, there is two different guys there. Barry Goldwater, of course is the father of the modern conservative movement. And he but even Barry Goldwater moderated in his later years, and he was not as frightened as some of these very errant conservatives that we have now. Like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the Fox TV network. So, I think Barry Goldwater was a very principled individual, and he was proud to be a conservative, and I think he was an honest man. Later on, he saw the dangers of modern conservatism, and he condemned that he made a break from that. So, who was the second person you said against- 3:11:09 SM: McNamara, Robert, who just died- 3:11:12 AC: Another tortured individual who was haunted by Vietnam to his grave. And McNamara to his credit, did tried to distance himself from the war in Vietnam and from those policies, and he admitted that they were wrong. I think that was had a tremendous impact on the healing that our nation needs. 3:11:30 SM: Daniel and Philip Berrigan. 3:11:33 AC: Great heroes of the movement, religious men who proved that they tried to be like Jesus and trying to bring peace and understanding and healing to the world. And they paid a price for that, just like Jesus said- 3:11:49 SM: George Wallace. 3:11:50 AC: George Wallace was a strident conservative, a racist, openly, 1968 he helped to draw attention to the conservative right wing racist movement. But he failed and inevitably proved to be a failure in- 3:12:08 SM: The Free Speech Movement at Berkeley in (19)64, (19)65. 3:12:12 AC: Mario Savio and those guys out there in Berkeley were great heroes. They inspire the 1960s student movement greatly. They had a great impact on future generations of students, I think, even to the present day today, defending the First Amendment and helping to spark the antiwar movement later. The students of Berkeley were great heroes even though they paid a dear price. 3:12:33 SM: The beats like Galen Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Ken Kenzie, Ed Sanders are happening in that group. 3:12:43 AC: The beats inspire the Ken Ekezie 60s movement. Of course, they blaze their own trail, they were younger, before we were, and so they took a stand against conservatism and apathy. And they helped to awaken the 60s generation. Those guys were very cool 3:12:58 SM: And then in the women's movement, which is Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty, for Dan, the list goes on and on. Some of the female leaders- 3:13:11 AC: Very courageous women are sisters, and they help to blaze a trail, which provides many benefits now for women all across America. The women's movement remains alive and well, of course, and that is how it should be. I am a great supporter of women's rights and freedoms. I was always inspired by those women, although I will admit and my own opinion, and not just in the women's movement, but I think in various movements from our generation, there were excesses and they were, there was extreme idealism and political correctness. And I think sometimes that is regrettable. 3:13:45 SM: Dr. Benjamin Spock. 3:13:48 AC: Dr. Benjamin Spock, a great hero, took a stand against the war in Vietnam, even though he could have just continued to be popular, maybe book doctor and lived a nice, comfortable life. He paid a price for his activism, and he was correct to take such a principled stand against the war in Vietnam. 3:14:08 SM: John Dean. 3:14:09 AC: John Dean’s another courageous man who stand to bring truth and feeling to our country at the time of Watergate. 3:14:24 SM: TET [referring to Tet Offensive]. 3:14:25 AC: TET, 1968 especially as remembered, although it is an annual holiday in Vietnam, 1968 was the period where the Vietnamese Vietcong basically took a stand all across South Vietnam and helped to awaken the American people that we were not winning the war that the light was not at the end of the tunnel that there was no real end in sight, and that it really did help to inspire the antiwar movement here as well- 3:14:50 SM: How about the ERA that did not quite succeed, but women were trying in the (19)70s. Their early (19)70s. 3:14:56 AC: Regrettable, that it did not become a constitutional amendment. I supported the era Just as I always support women's rights and freedom. I think However, even though that amendment was not passed, still the-the impact of that attempt, and the women's movement is still very strong today and women are enjoying great rights and freedoms. Of Course, they always have to be defended, because those are always under attack by the conservative movement. 3:15:21 SM: The individual or groups that you felt were the greatest musicians that had the greatest impact on the boomer generation- 3:15:27 AC: I think that clearly it was the Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead. John Fogarty and cleared Creedence Clearwater Revival bands like that. I think they had a tremendous impact on our generation. They helped me to stop the war in Vietnam- 3:15:44 SM: April 30, 1970, the Nixon speech about the invasion of Cambodia. 3:15:54 AC: Very provocative and controversial, basically an invasion of Cambodia. Although Nixon denied it was an invasion. That was the event that triggered the four days of protests at Kent State which culminated in the massacre. But it provoked a revolt all across our country. Richard Nixon grossly miscalculated the impact. He-he knew there would be an impact he knew there would be a price to pay. But he totally miscalculated and misunderstood the fact that he would trigger the only national student strike and US history. 3:16:27 SM: Down to pretty much toward the end here. Allan what do you feel are the best books on can stay. I know that we have talked about this before that some you really do not like, I know that Michener wrote a book right away. That was well known. I.F stone had a paperback that came out. There is the one I just mentioned that I just found out about. There is the breath. And Peter Davies wrote one on Kent state, but in your opinion, and in the opinion of your peers, you know, the students that were there, what are the ones that they feel is the best book on Kent state. 3:17:02 AC: Peter Davies wrote a very good book in the early 1970s. I think it is failing- is that it was early and there has been a lot of evidence has come out ever since. But Peter Davies very courageously attacked the cover up of murder at Kent State, he joined with Reverend John Adams of the United Methodist Church. And he put out that book the truth about Kansas State, which was very helpful and pressuring the government to create a federal grand jury, for example, which did occur in 1974. Another good book was Joe Keller, our attorney, he wrote a book called the Kent State cover up, which was published around 1989 or (19)90 or so. And it was a very good book, dealing with the file and the evidence that occurred from the court case. So that was an excellent book did deal with a lot more of the evidence that Peter Davies did not have access to a lot of the testimony that came out on the court and the investigations. But even these books did not focus on the order to fire enough, which I focused on in my own research. And which causes me to think that the books that I am going to be coming out with will be the best books about Kent State that have ever been written. My roommate from 1970, Tom grace, was a PhD in history also is coming out with a new book about the history of the Kent State student movements in the 1950s through the 70s. [Excellent] He is going to focus a lot on 1970 something his book will be very credible. Also. I.F stones book was very good. It was basically his rant against the cover up of murder, very good. And there has been a few good books, some mediocre books and some terrible books. 3:18:41 SM: Where do you put Michener’s book? 3:18:43 AC: Michener’s book I would say is either mediocre or poor. He has been exposed as fabricating many of his quotes or misquoting many of his sources. His book was very early. In fact, it was the earliest book of all, so it suffers from that flaw. There has been a great deal of evidence that is come out ever since, but Michener did a good job of talking about the four victims or martyrs, talking about the kinds of people that they were and about their last days. They did a good job that way. But when it came down to his final conclusion that there was no order to fire and that was just an inevitable tragedy, and he did not focus enough on the National Guard and their criminal shooting of the students. I do not put the blame myself on the triggerman so much now as they do on the officers and Michener, basically let the officers off the hook- 3:19:30 SM: Your thoughts on john filo? Oh, that courageous student photographer I interviewed him for the book and being called into that. And he his story is unbelievable. And Marian [inaudible] the 14-year-old who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Your thoughts on both of them not only about the experiences that they both gone through, but you have known them your whole life. Just your thoughts on them. 3:19:57 AC: Well, I love both of them dearly. John, Marian My dear friends, hang on a moment, I have another call. 3:20:05 SM: Okay. What was the question about john Filo and Marian Becky? 3:20:13 AC: So, I think they both played a great role in history. That photograph is one of the most famous photographs ever. And on the one hand, it has helped John Filo’s career but on the other hand, it has a Mary Vecchio and unforgettable icon, and she has had to pay a price for that. With social ostracism, sometimes and unwarranted criticism. She has healed very nicely from that, and they have become good friends. And they both come back to Kent State on a regular basis to help raise awareness about the 1970 tragedy. So, I admire their courage and not only refusing to turn their back on the situation, but also trying to help other people understand. 3:20:58 SM: I know I have been trying to interview Marian Becky, and she hasn't responded to me, but I hope I eventually will be able to get her interview a phone number. Yeah. Oh, no, I do not have her phone number. But I have emailed her so many times. And so, I do not have a phone number though. 3:21:19 AC: I will email you her phone number, if you remind me- 3:21:20 SM: Okay, great. And one final thing, and I know you are going, is there a question that I did not ask that you thought I would have asked in this email? 3:21:28 AC: Or you were very thorough, Steve, I have no. I cannot think of another question. 3:21:34 SM: Okay. Could you email me also, Dean Taylor's email address and Joe Lewis, I would like to interview them? 3:21:43 AC: Email me to remind me, Stephen. I will do that- 3:21:46 SM: Have a great day Allan and continue doing what you always do. Yep. Take care. Bye now. (End of Interview) 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>. Description 3 microcassettes Rights Statement Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Alan Canfora and Dr. Roseann Chic Canfora Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Canfora, Alan ; Canfora, Roseann Chic ; McKiernan, Stephen Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/wav Subject The topic of the resource Educators; Kent State Shootings, Kent, Ohio, 1970; Canfora, Roseann Chic--Interviews; Political activists--United States; Library directors; University of Akron. School of Law. Library; Canfora, Alan Description An account of the resource Dr. Roseann "Chic" Canfora is an educator. She received her Master's degree in Journalism and Public Relations at Kent State University, where she also earned a Ph.D. in Educational Administration. Currently, she is a Chief Communications Officer at Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Dr. Canfora is the sister of Alan Canfora and an eyewitness to the Kent State massacre on May 4, 1970. <br /><br /><span data-sheets-value="{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Alan Canfora is a survivor of the Kent State massacre who was shot in the wrist by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Canfora is an activist, student organizer and political activist who earned a bachelor's degree in General Studies and master's degree in Library Science. Currently, he is the Library Director at Akron Law Library in Akron, Ohio.&quot;}" data-sheets-userformat="{&quot;2&quot;:8403713,&quot;3&quot;:[null,0],&quot;11&quot;:4,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:[null,2,4995385],&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Arial&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:10,&quot;26&quot;:400}">Alan Canfora (1949-2020) was a survivor of the Kent State massacre who was shot in the wrist by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970. Canfora was an activist, student organizer and political activist who earned a Bachelor's degree in General Studies and a Master's degree in Library Science. He was the Library Director at Akron Law Library in Akron, Ohio.</span> Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Binghamton University Libraries Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-11-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright Language A language of the resource eng Type The nature or genre of the resource Sound Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.63a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.63b ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.63c Date Modified Date on which the resource was changed. 2017-03-14 Is Part Of A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included. McKiernan Interviews Extent The size or duration of the resource. 201:57