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Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John Filo
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"John Filo is a photographer who took the picture of the 1970 Kent State shootings, in which a 14 year old girl grieves over the body of a dead young man. This picture won him the Pulitzer prize. He is now a photography director for CBS in NY."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13057,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">John Filo is a photographer who took the picture of the 1970 Kent State shootings, in which a 14-year-old girl grieves over the body of a dead young man. This picture won him the Pulitzer Prize. He is now a photography director for CBS in NY.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Vietnam War; Vietnam memorial; Baby boom generation; Communism; Vietnam Veterans; Jane Fonda; Timothy Leary; Lyndon B. Johnson; Black Power; Tommie Smith; George Wallace; Benjamin Spock."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792}}">Vietnam War; Vietnam memorial; Baby boom generation; Communism; Vietnam Veterans; Jane Fonda; Timothy Leary; Lyndon B. Johnson; Black Power; Tommie Smith; George Wallace; Benjamin Spock.</span>
Duration
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27:48
Subject LCSH
Photographers; Kent State Shootings, Kent, Ohio, 1970; Awards—United States; Filo, John--Interviews
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Transcription
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McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: John Filo
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: Not Dated
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:03):
Okay, go right ahead.
JF (00:04):
But screen token, everyone was appalled. Everyone was appalled that young people get their news from the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, or listen to the late-night talk people, and they were joking sarcasm, with the powers that be. But, you go and watch it. And you go, they speak way more truth, than they speak comedy and that what maybe is why it is funny.
SM (00:33):
Right. A couple final quick questions here. Why in your opinion, did the Vietnam War end?
JF (00:41):
Why did it end?
SM (00:41):
Yes.
JF (00:45):
I think people were just tired of it. I mean, why it ended is, there was no good reason to continue it. I mean, it was a civil war going on in that country that we were trying to get involved with. At some point, they realized, communists were not going to get in votes and canoe on over.
SM (01:08):
Do you think-
JF (01:09):
See, I mean, I was brought up on that domino effect-
SM (01:11):
Right. Yep. Yep.
JF (01:12):
... in grade school. Well, if you let this country fall, then this country was going to fall, then this country was going to fall and this country was going to fall. But at the same time, communism was losing its influence too, in the world. I do not know. Why it ended? All I know is I was glad it ended. It took too long to end.
SM (01:35):
Do you feel college students played an important part? If you were to pick between one of these two, college students and protests on college campuses or Middle America, when they finally realized the war was not worth it because their sons and daughters were coming home in caskets.
JF (01:53):
Well, I do not know so much in caskets, but you had many, once again, I think it is many different levels. Six people, a long time to get a change going on. They do not want to hear it from just one voice. But I think, did you have that friendly fire book?
SM (02:14):
Yes.
JF (02:14):
Out about the same time.
SM (02:16):
Yes.
JF (02:18):
There were scandalous stories about the bodies that were coming back. Some of them were filled with, in the thoracic cavity, being filled with drugs. There was a drug ring. And there was all kind of nasty little, it was not a generational story anymore. It was just like, and so if we win, what happens? We have an air base closer to... And then again, it is like, you have these submarines patrolling the seas, communist and US. They could wipe out the earth how many times over. It gets to a point where it is just like, okay. And there were leaders long before Kennedy that said, could never get into ground war in Asia. It is an old military thing, we said that.
SM (03:18):
Has the wall itself in Washington D.C., which I know you visited. How important has that been toward healing the boomer generation? Or is it mostly just the vets and their families?
JF (03:32):
I think it affects all of us at certain times. But I never understood. But I know there were people that did it, but when I never understood this part, people I knew, I do not think anyone was ever upset at a soldier that they were seeing. You hear the stories. I came back and I was spit upon, as a killer of Vietnamese babies. Where I came from, I think everyone had compassion for the soldier. I think we were all realizing that the soldier was just part of the bigger problem. I mean, because under orders you were drafted, you had to go. And I think this war in Iraq, could have been over too, had there been a draft. But what they have done is send people back, three and four times.
SM (04:22):
How important has music been in the lives of Boomers and in your eyes, who are the artists you feel shaped the generation, including the songs that had the greatest impact?
JF (04:34):
Yeah, music was very important. Music was sort of like the thing you could interpret and listen to. And there were still obviously different styles, but I think it all started, for me, I think it started with the folk movement, bodied finally by Bob Dylan. And then you had your other songs, other rock bands that brew against war, killing. I mean, that was a big part of that music of that generation.
SM (05:11):
When you look at some of the musicians, whether it be Joan Baez or Bob Dylan, Phil Oaks, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, they were popular on college campuses and also because they were activists. So there was that mentality, and they lived their whole lives that way they can continue. Some have passed on and some continue. Richie Havens that whole group. A last question before the general things is, when the best history books are written, and what do you think the lasting legacy of the boomer generation will be?
JF (05:50):
Well, I do not know.
SM (05:50):
And that is probably 50 years, after the boomer generation is in their eighties.
JF (06:00):
I do not know. I honestly do not know. I cannot think of any other generation, other than the roaring (19)20s that you remember having an influence on culture so much. I honestly do not know. I have not really given that much thought. I would think that the fact that it did help America, I mean, it is a very historic time. From coming up through the Civil Rights Movement and wars will somehow always be with us, it seems like, in some small or large aspect. It will not be on that scale that Great Wars were, but it seems to me. But I think within the generation of seeing civil rights and ending with a black president and some shifts that are not yet determined.
SM (07:09):
And he is still considered a boomer. He is a young boomer. And then of course Bill Clinton was a boomer and so was George Bush.
JF (07:16):
I mean, I think, that is what it takes. There was a quote somewhere, when [inaudible] Kennedy, [inaudible] or was it Martin Luther. Someone says, how long do you think it would take for America to have a viable black candidate? And I think the quote was back in the six- 40 years.
SM (07:43):
I think it was Dr. King.
JF (07:43):
Dr. King.
SM (07:44):
I think it was Dr. King. So you might have said, in one of his speeches.
JF (07:47):
40 years.
SM (07:47):
Yeah, and it might have been-
JF (07:47):
It is almost pathetic, almost.
SM (07:57):
Yeah. I am going to mention just some names here and just get quick responses. Your thoughts on these people, these are personalities from the era. Tom Hayden?
JF (08:06):
All right. He was a West Coast leader and then became politician. I do not have any comments.
SM (08:09):
Jane Fonda?
JF (08:19):
Jane always liked acting and same things. I think she was misused too by the...
SM (08:27):
Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the hippies?
JF (08:30):
Yeah. Yeah. I think they sort of took it the other way. Took it to the other side.
SM (08:36):
Timothy Leary?
JF (08:39):
Yeah. No way. Yeah. These are people I did not... You would look at and you would go, wow.
SM (08:46):
Okay. How about Richard Nixon?
JF (08:48):
You would go wow there too. I mean, I remember him involved in, what was it? Was not there a big scandal in the (19)50s? They found the film in the pumpkin.
SM (08:57):
Yeah, Checkers.
JF (08:59):
Checkers.
SM (09:00):
He had to give his Checkers speech. I am not sure if Checkers is up there in heaven with him. How about Spiro Agnew?
JF (09:13):
Yeah, battering A bombs of, they get to visit. Yeah, there it is. You are a typical politician.
SM (09:16):
Yep.
JF (09:16):
Do not be looking at me, criticizing, even though I am doing something totally illegal.
SM (09:21):
Eugene McCarthy?
JF (09:24):
Another leader.
SM (09:28):
And George McGovern?
JF (09:30):
George McGovern, same way. World War II veteran. Who heard young voices. I mean, yeah, just could not get it together. He was a real generational candidate.
SM (09:53):
John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy?
JF (09:53):
Yeah. As I get older, my feelings are more with Bobby. John, I was too young with. Definitely Bobby, I think.
SM (10:02):
Lyndon Johnson?
JF (10:04):
I am sorry.
SM (10:04):
Lyndon Johnson?
JF (10:05):
I Know. I think that man, considering his background, I think he did a lot of great things for the country. I mean, that whole great society, is not so much that, but his homework and the civil rights. A surprising person, as far as I am concerned. I would have guessed him to be so mainline politically. So non-controversial.
SM (10:31):
How about Robert McNamara?
JF (10:43):
Well, there we go. Yeah. How many years later, apologized.
SM (10:44):
Mm-hmm. How about the black power, the term black power and the people like Kiwi Newton, Bobby Seal, Eldridge Cleaver, that group?
JF (10:52):
Well, I think, from being a white person, I think we needed these people to be like, they were pointers. Wow. These people have a lot of, [inaudible] hate. But then you had to, they used to made you find out the reason why. You had to look at the condition of [inaudible].
SM (11:17):
And as a fact, and as a photographer, you are the only person I am asking this to. What was your thought of that Tommy Smith picture with him fist raised and John Carlos?
JF (11:26):
I thought it was a great photo. I thought it was a great photo, it was a very rogue photo. That is the point. They knew the consequences. They knew that they were going to be severely criticized, not ostracized. I think they were.
SM (11:45):
Yeah. We had Tommy on the campus and I think he knew what was coming, by doing it. George Wallace?
JF (11:55):
Another drum beater. Oh, wow. I remember, I even met Orville Faubus.
SM (12:05):
You did?
JF (12:05):
One on one. He was one of the nice guys. And then you realize, I was not going to let them come into Little Rock.
SM (12:14):
How about Ronald Reagan?
JF (12:15):
I do not know. He was a great communicator.
SM (12:15):
Danielle Ellsberg?
JF (12:15):
There is another one standing up for [inaudible] rights, right?
SM (12:15):
Yep. Benjamin Spock?
JF (12:35):
I got to meet him too and spend some time with him.
SM (12:37):
Oh, you are lucky.
JF (12:38):
He is a guy that changed a lot of attitudes, changed a lot of thinking, and boy he got blanks against the war. Just destruction. Longshoreman held up his sailboat delivery and, oh my God.
SM (12:56):
How about the Berrigan-
JF (12:57):
Could meet a nicer man.
SM (12:59):
Phillip and Daniel Berrigan?
JF (13:10):
Same thing. Had to do what they had to do.
SM (13:10):
And then some of the women leaders, Gloria Steinem, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan?
JF (13:15):
Fantastic. What a great thing. What a great thing, pointing out sexism stuff. You just do not realize all this was going on, in the (19)50s.
SM (13:34):
Barry Goldwater?
JF (13:38):
Do not remember him. Just, little too conservative.
SM (13:45):
These are just some of the terms that boomers will remember as they grew up. Tet, T-E-T. You know what Tet was?
JF (13:51):
Yeah.
SM (13:53):
What is your thoughts on Tet?
JF (13:55):
Tet Offensive?
SM (13:55):
Yes.
JF (13:55):
Yeah.
SM (13:55):
That was (19)68.
JF (13:58):
Wow. Well, that is when a lot of the, are you thinking that is when a lot of the people that were for the war started thinking, "Oh, I do not know"?
SM (14:08):
It was around that timeframe.
JF (14:09):
Yeah.
SM (14:10):
Watergate?
JF (14:15):
Yeah. That is what you said. Boy, those guys are just power crazy. They probably have the election long ago, but they are going to make sure.
SM (14:23):
Hippies?
JF (14:23):
Yeah, hippies were, they are fun.
SM (14:30):
And how about the yippies?
JF (14:32):
Oh, the yippies were even stranger. The hippies, they actually believe what they did for a little while.
SM (14:39):
How about the counterculture? That term, the counterculture?
JF (14:44):
Yeah. That sort of, you realize you did not have to, I think at a time it had to be known as a counterculture, but then they realized, for you to change thing, you had to be sort of absorbed in the mainstream with countercultures dots. But by saying counterculture, it is sort of, it puts you in another uniform. Like being a hippie or being a yippie. You realize if you are going to make changes, you got sort of dress like them.
SM (15:15):
Students For Democratic?
JF (15:17):
I was more impressed with boomers that did go to bat, put on a three-piece suit, go and argue.
SM (15:24):
What were your favorite clothes of the counterculture?
JF (15:27):
Favorite clothes?
SM (15:28):
Yeah.
JF (15:29):
I do not-
SM (15:29):
Is there something that stuck out? Everybody heard about the [inaudible] jacket early on.
JF (15:33):
Well, my favorite or favorite to wear?
SM (15:36):
No, just the favorite clothes that you liked.
JF (15:38):
Oh, I think I was impressed with the, since I never had any hips, I was always impressed with hip-huggers and flair pants. And I said, "Man, I must look really cool if I put them on and look like some circus clown." Because I did not have thin legs, thin body to where fashion, the fashion hung. All I did was flare pants pointed to my flaws.
SM (16:11):
Woodstock?
JF (16:13):
Yeah. I never went, but it was the idea of it. I was like, wow, you are going to go, it sounds miserable.
SM (16:21):
Well, a lot of people cleanly were there, that probably were not.
JF (16:23):
I know. I know. It is like, what is his name, scored his hundred-point game. The NBA. It is like Kent State too. It is like how many people said they were there?
SM (16:44):
Oh, that is true. That is true. Vietnam veterans against the war?
JF (16:44):
All right. Yeah. I think they have probably achieved a lot more than anyone gives them credit for. Especially when, you actually had decorated heroes.
SM (16:56):
Were there any books of the era that stood out amongst any others? Any written books?
JF (17:03):
Wow. I am trying to think what was... You mean the sort of went pop or sort of-
SM (17:12):
It could be authors or people who wrote.
JF (17:17):
All I remember is the new, I mean, everyone read Tolkien, but then Castaneda came along on a separate reality and the native Mexican drug, American kind of drugs off the land kind of thing. Yeah.
SM (17:34):
How about the favorite movies of the era?
JF (17:44):
Oh, geez. There was a lot of movies I think it was, that made nothing, what was it? Living at the Ridge or Plaza or something.
SM (17:56):
There was The Graduate, which was a big one.
JF (17:57):
So The Graduate. Yeah, it was a...
SM (18:00):
Midnight Cowboy and that whole group.
JF (18:02):
Right.
SM (18:05):
See, anything else here? I have John Dean down here too, only because he was part of the Watergate group. He is the guy that spilled the beans, supposedly. I guess that is about it. I cannot... Oh, communes?
JF (18:19):
Communes. Yeah. That was just like, yeah, I knew people that went to a few and they go, "Man, it just turned into, it always turns into ugly human center." It seemed like. I mean, I am amazed that some people put out for years. And then someone told me, there are still a few in existence, I do not know if it is going on.
SM (18:46):
Yeah, I think George Bush is in charge of one. The only thing I am going to mention in terms of the books that were very popular, the two are, Greening of America, if you remember that book? Which was Charles Reich and then the Making of a Counterculture by Theodore Roszak. And then Tom Wolf was a big, popular guy during that period too. I guess he still is. Are there any questions that you thought I was going to ask and did not ask?
JF (19:22):
Not really. Not really.
SM (19:23):
Nope. And what do you think the lasting legacy at Kent State will be?
JF (19:30):
Why?
SM (19:32):
Okay.
JF (19:33):
I do not know. That sort of needs a guarded, it almost needs a guarded position. I guess, it is whatever groups want have define it as, but I think the legacy for me is that, is there a way to have free speech in this country and in a time of maybe disapproval, without it ever coming to violence?
SM (20:04):
Mm-hmm. As a person like myself who just worked almost 30 years in higher ed. By the way, I just retired.
JF (20:15):
Wow.
SM (20:15):
I had retired to write my book and then I am going back to work because I put this off. I took early retirement so that I could finish this book and then write it and then go back and do the things I want to do, beyond. I forget what I was going to ask here, the final question. Oh no, I lost my train of thought.
JF (20:35):
Keep going. That happens to me too.
SM (20:35):
Golly. It was a final-
JF (20:40):
I mean, you could call me in a couple days and I will say I should have never said that. I should have said that.
SM (20:43):
Yeah. Well, the question I was going to ask is this, because it goes back to the activism. I think universities, this is just Steve McKiernan I am thinking of writing about it because I have firsthand experiences, not only myself, but others that have worked at other universities. I think there is a fear of activism on university campuses and I am not meaning volunteerism because I think the administrators who are running universities today are mostly boomers. Or down the road will be the children of boomers. And there is a fear of, they will have the memories of what happened in the (19)60s and they will always be out there supporting it and saying they support it. But there is much more controls and fear. Your thoughts on that? Because today's parents, when they send their kids to college, do not want disruption of their sons or daughter's education because they are paying good money and they want their sons and daughters to get a degree. And so there is a fear of disruption and if disruption happens, I will take my son or daughter away. So I do not know.
JF (21:44):
Yeah, I mean it is, I remember going to all these universities with my daughter. She just finished her freshman year at UMass Amherst and it is like everyone talks about her class. In four years, these will be the people that help you get jobs. And in other words, there was a big strong commitment that you get on this conveyor belt and you are going to get off it in four years. And you are all going to get on it right now and you are all going to get off of it in four years. There is no, well, if it takes you five. The packages are all same. There is your junior year abroad, there is this and there is that, and there is there, go do this in Central America or something. Yeah. There was no room for question of self-discovery thing. Hit your wagon up and we will on hit you in four years.
SM (22:54):
Yeah. Because in the (19)60s, the boomers, there was a questioning about the IBM mentality of it. And now that does not seem to be, I do not know.
JF (23:01):
No, there does not seem to be any matter of fact. No one can promise them anything. That is the other thing. There is research grants for government work maybe. And that is about it. And I mean, I am talking to people that are graduating from Columbia, that pay big money to graduate, go to the journalism school. And I am saying, that is great. Now you are going to take a job that pays half that, it cost you to get the degree. Yeah. There is all sorts of free adjustment that have to be made. Now all of a sudden science and the engineering is back in good grace. But on the other hand, I am still, what do we do for a plumber and what are we doing? I mean, I am not saying whatever, but here is my daughter and I said, "What did you just signed up for?" Psychology, but I think I want to move into environmental science.
SM (24:10):
Yeah. One thing today's college students do not do is, they do not question the money that is coming in or going out from the university. They do not even know what is going in and coming out. So whereas a lot of the students in my era, you are era, questioned that.
JF (24:22):
Yeah. Absolutely.
SM (24:24):
I had spoken to Mary when she was at Kent State and last time, and I promised to send her pictures that I took, not as nice as yours, but I sent her the pictures and she was going to interview me, but she has not correspondence since she got my pictures. So maybe she does not want to be a part of the project after all. She is a very private person.
JF (24:48):
[inaudible] but she always sort of works through. Have you talked to Gregory Payne?
SM (24:54):
Who?
JF (24:55):
In Emerson University. He is the one that sort of got it together the first time and she sort of uses him as a sounding board.
SM (25:03):
What is his name?
JF (25:04):
Dr. Gregory Payne. P-A-Y-N-E.
SM (25:09):
Okay.
JF (25:09):
And he showed up at Kenny. He looked like-
SM (25:12):
Oh, he said the fitting blonde hair.
JF (25:12):
Yeah.
SM (25:17):
Yeah. Well see, when I saw her, she gave me her email and I emailed her. She wanted my pictures and then she said, "I will probably do the interview." And then I sent the pictures and she would not even respond if she got the pictures. So I do not know.
JF (25:29):
I do not know what is going on.
SM (25:33):
Yeah, but anyways. Well that is it.
JF (25:34):
Okay.
SM (25:35):
Thank you.
JF (25:37):
So if there is any more questions, just call me back or let me know.
SM (25:39):
Will do. Well, I interviewed Alan, when he was on our campus many years ago, but I got to, I have never really finished my interview with him. So I might interview him. I would like to interview his sister, Chick.
JF (25:50):
Yeah. Oh, Chick is great too.
SM (25:50):
Yeah. But Mr. [inaudible], I am going to call you John.
JF (25:55):
Yeah.
SM (25:55):
Thank you very much. That picture was a very important part of my life. And I know you have probably heard that from a lot of people, but that picture touched the lives of college students that you do not even know and you will never know. So you need to know how important that picture was in my life because I went into higher education as a career because of what was happening at Kent State and other universities. So thank you for being the great photographer that you are. And I want to thank you again for the time you spent today answering my questions. I am meeting with a professor, up in [inaudible] college, to be able to help me with the transcribing of all these. So you will sort see the transcription before it is ever going to print.
JF (26:39):
Okay. But you saying on a different day I might have different answers too. It just seems like, as I get older, I am affected by what is going on around you now. You know what I mean?
SM (26:48):
Yeah. Well that whole thing of the (19)60s and (19)70s always affected my life.
JF (26:53):
Oh, yeah.
SM (26:54):
Well to the day I go to my grave.
JF (26:58):
Throw up. I mean, you actually questioned us already. I can imagine growing up in the (19)50s and...
SM (27:00):
Oh, yes.
JF (27:03):
I am sorry. I am not saying that was a bad time to grow up, but it was just, there was so much that was just accepted.
SM (27:08):
Yep. Yet during that very same period, our parents loved us so much.
JF (27:14):
Great.
SM (27:14):
And they wanted to give us so much. And sometimes I go back and say, "Geez, those were, not knowing what was going on in the world and being innocent as an elementary school kid." Probably like you were.
JF (27:27):
Yeah.
SM (27:27):
You had great memories being with your parents. So anyways. Well you have a great day.
JF (27:34):
All right Scott. And call back me anytime you got any other-
SM (27:36):
Steve.
JF (27:37):
If I failed to answer them.
SM (27:38):
Yep.
JF (27:39):
Okay.
SM (27:40):
Thanks a lot. Bye.
JF (27:42):
Take care. Bye. Good luck.
SM (27:42):
Yep, thanks.
(End of Interview)
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with John Filo
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Filo, John ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Photographers; Kent State Shootings, Kent, Ohio, 1970; Awards—United States; Filo, John--Interviews
Description
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John Filo is a photographer who took the picture of the 1970 Kent State shootings, in which a 14 year old girl grieves over the body of a dead young man. This picture won him the Pulitzer prize. He is now a photography director for CBS in NY.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.51
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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27:48
-
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7cc41ed419b30db37fa445298f1be9f1
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/31dbe466ed189aaf264365ce4666040e.mp3
75404e8e4e6fa8b3d7569773616e5444
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Format
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
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="{"1":2,"2":"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."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792},"12":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
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2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"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"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":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>
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116:47
Subject LCSH
Journalists; Editors; Philadelphia Inquirer; Carey, Art--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
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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)
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Interview with Art Carey
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Carey, Art ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Journalists; Editors; Philadelphia Inquirer; Carey, Art--Interviews
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<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"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."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":13228792},"12":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>
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2017-03-14
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McKiernan Interviews
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116:47
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McKiernan Interviews
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
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Stephen McKiernan
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
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Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
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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 </span><em>Islamic Fundamentalism</em><span> and </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 </span><em>Washington Post</em><span> 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>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Baby boom generation; Vietnam War; War protests; Anti-war movement; Civil Rights Movement; Daniel Ellsberg; John Dean; John Mitchell; Women's Rights Movement."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":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>
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96:06
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College teachers; West Chester University of Pennsylvania; Political activists--United States; Davidson, Lawrence, 1945--Interviews
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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
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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Dr. Larry Davidson
Contributor
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Davidson, Lawrence, 1945- ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
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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 <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
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
ND
Rights
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In copyright
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.67a ; 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
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
John Lewis, 1940 February 21 - 2020 July 17
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"John Lewis is a politician and was a civil rights leader. He is the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, serving since 1987. Lewis has a Bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, and he is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He was the keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">John Lewis was a politician and a civil rights leader. He was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, serving from 1987 until his death in 2020. Lewis had a Bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, and he was a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He was the keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
41:28
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"The nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Questioning authority; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Vietnam War; Environmental issues; the Environmental Movement; Dr. Benjamin Spock; Berrigan Brothers; Timothy Leary."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":3,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":14275305}}">The nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Questioning authority; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Vietnam War; Environmental issues; the Environmental Movement; Dr. Benjamin Spock; Berrigan Brothers; Timothy Leary.</span>
Subject LCSH
Legislators—United States; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Lewis, John, 1940 February 21--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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 John Lewis
Description
An account of the resource
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"John Lewis is a politician and was a civil rights leader. He is the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, serving since 1987. Lewis has a Bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, and he is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He was the keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">John Lewis was a politician and a civil rights leader. He was the U.S. Representative for Georgia's 5th congressional district, serving from 1987 until his death in 2020. Lewis had a Bachelor's degree in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, and he was a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary. He was the keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in August 1963.</span>
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Lewis, John, 1940 February 21 - 2020 July 17 ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Legislators—United States; Civil rights movements—United States--20th century; Lewis, John, 1940 February 21--Interviews
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.10.2016.80
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.
41:28
-
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961e592c3e3f6dc018ab2ac2de333a70
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (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
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Rachel Robinson, 1922-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Rachel Robinson is a former professor, nurse, philanthropist, civil rights activist, and the wife of Jackie Robinson. Robinson attended the University of California and she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Nursing. Additionally, she received several awards for her hard work among the population of black people in the world."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":15105,"3":{"1":0},"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial","16":10}">Rachel Robinson is a former professor, nurse, philanthropist, civil rights activist, and the wife of Jackie Robinson. Robinson attended the University of California and she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Nursing. Additionally, she received several awards for her hard work among the population of Black people 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
MicroCassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
62:23
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"African American; Student-athletes; Segregation; Jackie Robinson; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; NAACP; Birmingham Church Bombing; Baseball; The Dodgers; Black Student Union(BSU)."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":515,"3":{"1":0},"4":{"1":2,"2":16370588},"12":0}">African American; Student-athletes; Segregation; Jackie Robinson; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; NAACP; Birmingham Church Bombing; Baseball; The Dodgers; Black Student Union(BSU).</span>
Subject LCSH
College teachers; Nurses; Philanthropists—United States; Civil rights workers; Athletes' spouses; Robinson, Jackie, 1919-1972; Robinson, Rachel, 1922--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 Rachel Robinson
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Robinson, Rachel, 1922- ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
College teachers; Nurses; Philanthropists—United States; Civil rights workers; Athletes' spouses; Robinson, Jackie, 1919-1972; Robinson, Rachel, 1922--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Rachel Robinson is a former professor, nurse, philanthropist, civil rights activist, and the wife of Jackie Robinson. Robinson attended the University of California and she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Nursing. Additionally, she received several awards for her hard work among the population of Black people 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
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.10.2016.99
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2018-03-29
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.
62:23
-
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84fa2b5f9a06fdde624944cf6d58dadd
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
2010-09-23
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Minnie Pratt Bruce, born in Selma, Alabama, is an American educator, activist and essayist. She is also a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University, where she was invited to help develop the university’s first LGBT Study Program. Dr. Bruce has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,16777215],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}"><span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Minnie Pratt Bruce, born in Selma, Alabama, is an American educator, activist and essayist. She is also a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University, where she was invited to help develop the university’s first LGBT Study Program. Dr. Bruce has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,16777215],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">Dr. Minnie Bruce Pratt</span></span><span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Minnie Pratt Bruce, born in Selma, Alabama, is an American educator, activist and essayist. She is also a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University, where she was invited to help develop the university’s first LGBT Study Program. Dr. Bruce has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":13311,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,16777215],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"9":0,"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial","16":10}">, born in Selma, Alabama, is an American educator, activist, and essayist. She is also a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University, where she was invited to help develop the university’s first LGBT Studies Program. Dr. Pratt has a Bachelor's degree from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina.</span>
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Binghamton University Libraries
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audio/mp4
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1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
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Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Southern segregation; White supremacy; Black Panthers; SNCC; Women's liberation; LGBT; Oppression struggles; Response to violent protests; Baby boom generation."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">Southern segregation; White supremacy; Black Panthers; SNCC; Women's liberation; LGBT; Oppression struggles; Response to violent protests; Baby boom generation.</span>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
93:56
Subject LCSH
College teachers; Political activists--United States; Syracuse University; Pratt, Minnie Bruce--Interviews
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Minnie Bruce Pratt
Contributor
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Pratt, Minnie Bruce ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
Subject
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College teachers; Political activists--United States; Syracuse University; Pratt, Minnie Bruce--Interviews
Description
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Minnie Bruce Pratt, born in Selma, Alabama, is an American educator, activist and essayist. She is also a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, where she was invited to help develop the university’s first LGBT Studies Program. Dr. Pratt has a B.A. from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.182
Date Modified
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
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93:56
-
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/de8f3becaa0742ac004963425c1ae962.mp3
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Ed Sanders
Language
English
Biographical Text
Ed Sanders is a poet, author, musician, and activist who grew up in the state of Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri and New York University where he earned his Bachelor's degree in Ancient Greek. After college, he opened the Peace Eye Bookstore in New York City and started <em>Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts</em>. Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas were all early influences as Sanders tried to bridge the concerns of Beat Poetry and the counterculture of the 1960s. He is the author of many collections of poetry where he received several honors including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Sanders has written many books of prose, a non-fiction book, <em>The Family</em>, and published a bi-weekly newspaper, the <em>Woodstock Journal</em>. He is the founding member of the satirical and subversive folk-rock music group, The Fugs.
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
77:17
Keywords
<span>Cuban Missile Crisis; WWII; Beatnik fashion; Beatnik; Beats; Allen Ginsberg; Jack Kerouac; Gregory Corso; William Burrough; Herbert Huncke; Ferlinghetti; Gary Snyder; Irving Howe; Watergate ; Curtis LeMay; Lyndon Johnson; Gulf of Tonkin; Eisenhower; U2 incident; President Kennedy; Robert Kennedy; Coup of Diem; Tom Hayden; Jimi Hendrix; Ann Waldman; Amiri Baraka; Ken Kesey; John D. Rockefeller; Vietnam Draft; Manhattan Project; Activism; 1960s music; Howl; Naked Lunch; William Buckley; The Fugs; freakout tent; Woodstock; Wavy Gravy; Medicare; Boomer Generation; Peter Max; Samuel Beckett.</span>
Roosevelt Era; Baby boom generation; Red Scare; Activism; Vietnam War; Universal Health Care; Senator Edmund Muskie; Slavery; Beat generation; John Coltrane; Lester Young; Jazz; Neal Cassady; Silent Generation.
Subject LCSH
Poets, American, Singers--United States; Human rights workers; Environmentalists—United States; Authors; Publishers; Sanders, Ed--Interviews
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound, or alternative text from a visual medium
McKiernan Interviews
Interview with: Ed Sanders
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: Carrie Blabac-Myers
Date of interview: ND
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
0:04
ED: Get ready to go.
0:07
SM: Still there? Okay. When you think of the (19)60s and early (19)70s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
0:15
ED: Liberation and the utilization of the Bill of Rights.
0:24
SM: Is there one specific event in your life that shaped you when you were much younger? One specific happening in our world or society?
0:33
ED: Um, I do not think so. I suppose, you know, the death of loved ones is always a pounding from the universe. My mother died when I was in high school in 1957. Others are, the most formative one in the (19)60s for me, was the Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people really did think that our eyeballs might melt in a nuclear confrontation.
1:11
SM: Um hmm
1:12
ED: I went to bed that night in October thinking that might be curtains for ̶
1:22
SM: So you were probably watching that black and white TV set too when Kennedy came on?
1:27
ED: I did not have one but nobody in my nascent beatnik crowd had a telephone much less a television. No, we watched it at Stanley's Bar. It is depicted in my short story [inaudible] from Volume One of Tales of Beatnik Glory.
1:49
SM: Mm hmm.
1:49
ED: It tells it like it is, like it really happened. So I would say that the Cuban Missile Crisis and then to get out of class at NYU and all of the phones were dead because Kennedy had just been shot. I mean, we tend to be [inaudible] as we measure out our lives in [inaudible] in the (19)60's we measured on our life in assassinations and government ̶
2:23
SM: One of the things in recent years, particularly in the 1990s, and into the first couple of years of this century, there was a lot of criticism of the boomer generation as to the reason to why we have a breakdown in American society. The breakdown of the family, the drug culture, lack of respect for authority; really attaching most of the negatives we have in our society on that particular group of young people, which was about seventy million. Do you think that's fair? Or is it just blowing air?
3:03
ED: I think it is bullshit. The boomers are not to be marked out as betraying their nation any more than any other generation: the lost generation of twenties, the Dadaists of Zurich any art generation the [inaudible], the beatniks, the hippies, the neo-realists. I mean, in all these movements, in other words, that what it is life is it really truly a fabric in a very complicated, weave. The boomers are just part of the overall weave. You know, some of the great things are still being done in the society by the remnants of the Roosevelt era in the (19)30s. The boomers began in this horrible scams, that used Red Scares (that started in 1948) just to prop up the defense contractors. And through Truman and McCarthy and the Korean War, which really did not have to happen, so boomers were given a loaded deck from the civilization and I thought they did pretty well. Especially beginning in the late Eisenhower era, around (19)58 (19)59 when they began to sniff that there was a lot of freedom guaranteed by the constitution that was not used.
4:32
SM: Mm Hmm.
4:32
ED: The generation of the late fifties and the early sixties started using that freedom and as a result, the content of television programs is much more freedom based than it was in say 1939 when the producers of Gone with the Wind had to pay a $5,000.00 fine because Clark Gable uttered the word "damn."
5:03
SM: I did not know that. Oh, wow.
5:05
ED: So flash forward to the early (19)60s when say Lenny Bruce was persecuted in the city. And they tried to ban Howl, Allen Ginsberg's poem in 1958 and there were others, there was William Burroughs Junky hug, William Burroughs Naked Lunch, they tried to ban. But anyway, one after another, these are artificial bans on artistic freedoms were translated to the society as a whole. I do not think there is a breakdown of the family at all, I think there is a definition of family has expanded vastly in our era, so that there are different modes of raising children. The issue is raising sane and honest and ethical and energetic and useful children who grow up to fill the various niches that society needs, from digging ditches, to flying airplanes, to being scientists, inventors, being singers and musicians. All the different spots to get people to fill those then. So there are different combinations of human beings that are raising children now. I think there is not a background, there is not a ̶ the code of Hammurabi type of ethics and the strict reading of the ten commandments is, except for things like: Thou shall not kill, which is of course, never followed by the government, especially one that has force. But anyways, I think all those rules from ancient civilization have been reassessed in a very widespread way. Now the boomer generation that you are writing about, I guess they are getting, they are not quite geezers yet. What are they forty-eight? They are about sixty-one now?
7:08
SM: Sixty-two.
7:08
ED: Yeah, so they are getting ready. They can have early Social Security, some of them if they need it. And in another three years they will be getting Medicare, hopefully, Obama will have adjusted Medicare so it actually pays for things like dentistry, eye glasses and long term health care, long term nursing care. If that happens they will have a good road to the Happy Hunting Ground. Of course, longevity is going to increase the First World War vet just passed away. I mean, the remaining the First World War vet there are very few if any, and others not in England, but maybe there is a few in the United States. So the boomer vet, the boomer gen, veterans of the boomer generation will live on and on and on, thanks to modern healthcare.
7:49
SM: Right.
7:58
ED: The revolution, they may last to, maybe 120 or 130 years old. I think certainly their great grandchildren will have long, long lives.
8:19
SM: If you were to put some just real quick adjectives, some strengths and weaknesses of that generation, what would you put down?
8:33
ED: Um? Strengths and weaknesses?
8:40
SM: Yeah.
8:41
ED: I do not really think like that.
8:43
SM: But it is okay.
8:44
ED: Because it is not really one homogenous generation, many, many different types of people. You can lump them all together because they grew out of the victory over Hitler and Mussolini in the energy of the post-atomic era, they exploded out. You know, they were not making cars in the years before that generation so there was this huge need for automobiles and baby clothes and new houses and jobs. An explosion in the economy in the (19)40s and (19)50s based on all this kind of energy and hunger from the generation that defeated Hitler and the others.
9:38
SM: I asked you earlier about, youth.
9:40
ED: No, no. It is like. The answer to your question is that, it is like, you cannot really say there are blue states and red states because within each state like very right wing states, I have very, very good liberal progressive friends in Texas.
9:59
SM: Mm Hmm.
9:59
ED: Or Arkansas and in Georgia for instance, they are more center left more center left than I am! But they are in these states that are judged to be red states. So it is the same way with the boomer generation it is a wide and diverse tapestry of people that have, through no fault of their own, been brought together as this entity, as they approach old age. So they are like a huge scientific experiment, I guess. And guys like you or, or the scientists that are analyzing them. Anyway, do you have another question?
10:42
SM: Yeah, it was a question about when do you think the (19)60s began? What do you think was the watershed moment? Now, you mentioned your watershed moment in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis, but for the generation, what do you think?
10:57
ED: That was personal but generational? Well, there were many good things, I would think the invention of the wah, wah pedal in 1966, which gave Jimi Hendrix some of his most beautiful songs. In general the rise of technology to support the arts in the (19)60s. New types of paints and acrylics and techniques, such as the [inaudible] painting hybrid that was used by Andy Warhol or the montage collage carpentry of Robert Rauschenberg. And then in music, the rise of technology. The Beatles recorded many of their early tunes on four tracks, and then all of a sudden they had eight track and then finally twelve and sixteen tracks, and the same and so the recording technology, the ability to do overdub, to perform in public, they had to build new sound systems so that Crosby, Stills Nash and Young and the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones could play baseball stadiums and not blow out speakers. And there was a huge rise in an artistic technology in the movies. The invention of the video camera around 1967, which allowed Roman Polanski and others to film, their daily rushes in video and then run them right away and see how it was going. So there was all of this technology I think, starred in the mix of the best part of the early years of the boomers.
12:52
SM: When boomers used to say and many still do think that they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to be the change agents for the betterment of society in so many ways. How do you respond to boomers who think that way? Not only then but now?
13:11
ED: Put up or shut up.
13:13
SM: Good point. That, that was all I needed to hear. That was excellent. Because one of the concerns I have had and we've talked about this at our university in certain programs, even Jennie Skerl has been bothering him before she retired is you know, some people copped out and some people continued to go on and on fight for issues. So how important were college students in ending the Vietnam War?
13:48
ED: Well, because they are part of that species known as young people, and young people they can extend, they often have others who are supporting them or helping support them so they could take time out they could go to freedom summers, they could go down to Selma to march. They could go sit-in against nuclear testing in Nevada. They could go to a commune learn how you know, life is. They could take time off to write a book that might not make them a lot of money, so they have time. You know, and they have, the college kids are part of that. Certainly one of the key things that these college kids did was to end the draft which finally ended in 1971. So, it was a huge effort to end that draft. I think ending the draft has prevented a whole bunch of wars that could have happened that now cannot happen because they never have enough troops. Really the Vietnam War had to start winding down because in like 1968, the military realized they did not have enough soldiers to fight in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Thailand, all the other bigger wars. As well as to protect the homeland. The military has a default charge, and that is one which is foreign protection, foreign interest foreign wars, and then to protect the homeland. And after the riots in (19)67, and after the riots that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April of (19)68. The military had to start pulling back because they did not have enough soldiers to deal with all that. Ending the draft really prevented the military from expanding wars excessively throughout the world. So I think that the long answer to a short question is that it was a great gift of the young people and college kids, to end the draft.
16:17
SM: Do you think they have done a good job? Some are grandparents now the boomers and some are still having, are still parents, and grandparents. Do you think that they have been passing on some of their activism down to their kids and grandkids? Or?
16:33
ED: Well, you do that by two ways. One is by example that your children can easily observe and understand and appreciate. Or two, by teaching, reading and making sure your kids are exposed to the right music, the right songs, the right books, the right and take them out to protest demonstrations and show them what it is it to be against the war. Take them to meetings so that they can understand how grassroots activism is conducted. That is another method too. Many parents do not pass on the torch which is one of the tragedies of that era is that the torch was extinguished. And then now grandchildren. I do not know, it is a difficult thing because you never, suddenly a grandchild can take an issue, take an interest in issue and become very involved, it is really hard to predict. The fact that we do not have universal health care. The fact that we are in two or three or four maybe more wars right now, that you have things like Somalia, in the jungles of the Philippines, as well as Iran and Iraq. We, the boomer generation, the (19)60s generation, the (19)50s generation, the last three or four generations have failed to turn the United States civilization into a more humane, caring society in general, although we have a lot of freedom. We are really like the civilization depicted in Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogany. Everything is possible, everything is allowed, as long as you have money.
18:28
SM: This is a question and I want to read this because this has to do with the issue of healing. We had a chance I took a group of students down to see Ed Muskie, former senator before he passed away. He had just gotten out of the hospital and we took our students there. And I read him this question.
18:43
ED: Oh did he have cancer?
18:44
SM: Yeah, yeah, he died. I think he died of cancer. But he was in remission for a short time before he came back and it did him in. Do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore the nation apart in their youth? Division between black and white, divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not? What role has the wall played in healing these divisions or was this primarily a healing for veterans? Do you feel that the boomer generation will go to its grave 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," a truth? And I want to just finish by saying that when I asked Ed Muskie, that question, he had just gotten out of the hospital and he had been watching Ken Burns' Civil War series when he was in the hospital. And so he and he did not answer the question right away. He waited about a minute. And then he had tears in his eyes. And then he we had fourteen students there and they were all kind of looking at each other what is going on here. And he basically said, we have not healed since the Civil War, and then he went on to be talking about you know, the all the loss of life from that particular war and the loss of generations of kids that would have been born because the population during that war was a lot smaller than it is here so the proportion of men in America and the number of kids they could have had was astounding. But just your thoughts on, you know, whether healing should be an issue here within the generation. Ed, could you speak up just a little bit too?
20:31
ED: It used to be that the Swedes, rode out and sailed out of Sweden for instance or from Denmark, the Danes, toward England and landed and then slaughtered everybody they could find. Steal the women and the food and the jewelry and the people [inaudible] Fast forward four or five centuries and you know, Denmark and Sweden are [inaudible] pretty advanced [inaudible] marvelous health system and pretty advanced systems besides those, Denmark but it takes four or five hundred years often for a society to reveal its moral identity [inaudible]. However, with respect to the Civil War, I agree with Ulysses Grant, who said that the civil war could have been God's punishment for America undertaking the Mexican War, evil and the injustices, and slaughter, in the Mexican War and the karma of that, oozed forward into the karma of the Civil War. I think the Civil War leads directly back to greedy English planters in Jamestown, and from say, after the founding, in 1607 up to say, 1690 those first eighty years, deliberately bringing in more and more and more and more and more slaves from the dungeons of no return in Africa to do long term damage to the soil through first growing tobacco, this nasty tobacco from the Indies and then cotton. Those lines of slavery and the terrible exploitation of blacks [inaudible] Virginia in South Carolina down in the south, the karma of that leap forward to the Civil War and beyond. And then, you know there was plenty of people that were raised as racists even, especially among the boomer generation, and anti-Semites, there is plenty of anti-Semites, anti-black, and there is plenty of anti-Portuguese. The Italians put down the Irish and Irish sometimes sneer at the Italians. The Germans called Swedes stupid and the Swedes called the Germans cruel and barbaric and the Norwegians could not stand above them all the Scotch-Irish have carried their mean streak forward in America ever since they were shoved out of Ireland and Scotland you know, after the triumph of 1649 to 1660, after the Protestants took over. Who is that guy?
23:47
SM: Martin Luther?
23:48
ED: No, no, no. This is 1649.
23:50
SM: Oh 1649.
23:51
ED: 1660, he was the Protestant head of England and then after he died, his son tried to rule and then they brought back Charles the second.
24:02
SM: Cromwell?
24:03
ED: Cromwell. Ollie baby! So, you know, the, Cromwell was so mean to the Irish and then there was all this division of land and pushing out and they, they stole all the, all the common lands. There were these ancient common lands in England and all through the seventeenth century they closed off the commons and drove everybody out and some of them came to America and they were you know, bitter and angry kept those mean streaks going right up to now, some of these. I mean, I am Scotch-Irish. I am part Scotch-Irish anyway.
24:44
SM: That is what I am.
25:00
ED: Well, anyway, everybody brought their, their racial characteristics and their karmic characteristics into the boomer genesis, post-Second World War boomer generation. And they, people submerge their personal problems, they submerge their idiosyncrasies, and they submerge their mean streaks at least for a while into the general flow of getting up, getting to a job, having children, getting married, you know, eek out a living, set a little aside for when they are old, and just to get by as Americans. So but they cannot escape those plantations of a Jamestown and they cannot escape the evil of the Mexican War that [inaudible] protests against and what Ulysses S. Grant wrote about, and then the horrible slaughter of Antietam.
26:01
SM: Oh yeah.
26:02
ED: And all throughout Gettysburg and oy Shiloh. Oy! Oy! Oy!
26:09
SM: Mm Hmm.
26:10
ED: But then it goes back also to George Washington's surge in the late eighteenth century against the natives, the Indians of Western New York, just to clear land really and for further development by the Europeans who were surging to the west. Now that the English were defeated more or less in the Revolutionary War. So all this karmic gnarl cannot be separated if you know anything about history from this generation. This generation the boomer generation did not spring like dragon's teeth from the soil of America. They have karmic knots that go way back but they did good, it was an inventive era you know, the transistor and I do not know, they did interesting things and also the American culture. Jazz! Jazz poetry. Modern painting. Inventions and movies. There is science discoveries, longevity, cancer cures you know, we do not all eventually die of breast cancer thank god anymore, or some people are even starting to survive with pancreatic cancer for much longer. And so there is a, it is all a big fight against the Grim Reaper.
27:30
SM: Right.
27:31
ED: And also a fight for human dignity and freedom. And sharing really, people do not like to use the word sharing but it is to spread the wealth around to everybody. There is a decent drive, the baby boomers, a good portion of them to do just that.
27:49
SM: Um hmm. And I wanted to ask this, do you feel the Beats had a direct influence on the (19)60s and (19)70s, even though they were often identified with the (19)50s?
28:00
ED: Sure, because a lot of them live on and on and on. Kerouac died in 1969. Gregory Corso lived until (19)91. Ginsberg died in (19)90, no excuse me, Corso lasted until 2001, Ginsberg died in (19)97, and Burroughs also (19)97 but they were very active culturally. And this Beat generation was like a deliberate plan, they got together you know, they were going to call themselves a generation and they knew they had really smart men and women aboard that generation so they floated it and it worked.
28:38
SM: How did you become a Beat?
28:41
ED: Well, when I was when I was in high school, it is in my short stories, my book: Tales of Beatnik Glory. The story, one of, where I describe reading Howl when I was in high school.
28:59
SM: Okay.
29:00
ED: And I memorized it. I used to recite when me and my friends drove around drinking beer around the county courthouse, I would scream out Howl and I memorized it. It sort of saved my life. I always tell audiences I might have been an Eskimo Pie driver if it had not been for Howl.
29:21
SM: [laughs]
29:23
ED: So Howl. And then Allen became one of my best friends. And I knew all of them. Corso, Gary, Allen Ginsberg, Burroughs was a friend, Corso was a friend, Gary Snyder's a good friend. I wrote a book about Allen Ginsberg: Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg, so I was very tuned in to him.
29:44
SM: You know, the beats are often defined as rebels and do you think this mentality through their writings and lifestyle subconsciously filter into the boomer generation in the late (19)60s and early (19)70s? Were the feelings like it is okay to be different? And not be silent.
30:01
ED: That is true. It is okay to be different than they were perceived as being different. The girls wore a lot of Egyptian eye makeup modeled on Jean Paul Sartre's girlfriend Juliette Greco and they would wear sheer-toed high heels and mesh stockings, maybe a leather vest and very daring not to wear a brassiere back in (19)58 or (19)59 or they would wear these [inaudible] beatnik sandals. The guys for their part might sport a Florida maritime turtleneck sweater and a black jacket and sandals themselves. So it was a visual thing in part. And berets. Men wearing berets. Then of course when the hip you know they would never beatniks would have never have worn necklaces, it was not a few years later when the sixties hit that men started wearing necklaces, wore their hair long, and they wore robes and silk gowns and that was different. But the Beats were, came out of Second World War so they were, their dress was pretty dark and somber. Very existential. And they were, I guess you could call them rebels. You know, they smoked pot. They, they all of them knew John Coltrane riffs or knew Charlie Parker riffs. There was Lester Young. Went to Lester Young performances and knew a lot about jazz and picked up from the jazz singers use of marijuana and of course people like Neal Cassidy were; took a lot of uppers. But when I was in school in the (19)50s everybody took Benzedrine. The whole boomer generation. You know, in my opinion, the whole boomer generation got through college on coca cola and a few uppers to help them pass the test. They would never admit it but, uh.
32:27
SM: It is interesting that when I interviewed Hettie, I asked her this question, and she really well, she had some interesting comments, and that is why did the Beats want to be different in the first place? And secondly, obviously they challenged the norm during a time few people spoke up. This is kind of what the boomers did during their college age, some of them, maybe 15 percent of them because we were only talking about a percentage of the boomers, and describe you there is a link here to me between the silent generation and the boomer generation.
33:02
ED: Maybe there is always they always say that young people are more willing to shake the wall and make some changes. The older people who have been through a lot been through scrapes and through illnesses, and one or two marriages and worried about paying their bills that they have a different attitude. Many people tend to lose their youthful arrogance or their youthful; some young people can be a real pain, you know, they, they have this attitude of a, you know, I have, we have received the knowledge and 'go fuck yourself' so you know, I do not know, that's not a lot of kids but there are. I remember the socialist Irving Howe he was at a meeting and being harangued by studying was not sufficiently of the left was not enough for the people. Howe said something like this you know where you are going to be doing in a few years young man? You are going to be a dentist, so I always think of that. Sometimes I get a little static. I do a lot of college gigs and I answer their questions all of the time after my readings or lectures, there is a faction out there, very rarely, but they think they know it all without having read too many books.
34:52
SM: Yeah, that is what we try to always tell students, you know. Emotion is important. You got to have emotion when you believe in something, a passion but you also got to have knowledge. And when you have the combination of knowledge and emotion, it is hard to beat. Just all these movements took place during that period, too, because I have interviewed a lot of people and they know that the civil rights movement was kind of a model for the, the women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement, Native American, Chicano, environmental movement, a lot of different movements of that particular time that continued through today and have evolved. Were those Boomer, do you give that all credit to the boomer generation for those movements after the civil rights movement?
35:38
ED: I do not know. I think what the civil rights movement was, was a double empowerment, it was an empowerment of young blacks and also religious blacks. And also young whites, and then of course more established whites who formed bonds to decide that their goals on the surface of it were not that bad. They wanted the right to vote. They wanted an end to poll taxes and they wanted to drink water at fountains and ride buses, wherever they wanted and to use public bathrooms and restaurants. You know, and then, of course, Martin Luther King and [inaudible] brought the additional factor of, they want jobs. Jobs and economic interest between blacks and whites. So demand for economic equity, and these other, other civil rights things were I guess you can say that some of them, many of the participants were of the boomer generation. But I do not think, I do not know who invented the word Boomer, but I do not I do not think it was invented by the time of the great, by the lunch counter sit-ins or the freedom riots in (19)61.
36:17
SM: Right.
37:10
ED: The pool integration in (19)62. The commercial worship in (19)53. Selma in (19)65, voter registration and John Lewis; (19)56, (19)57, leading to the portion of (19)64 and Voting Rights Act in (19)68, the Great Society Acts. The real big cram with the boomer generation, was the Great Society legislation where basically a white congress voted in place beginning in the four ̶
38:03
SM: Uh huh.
38:03
ED: A law, the Medicare, all the other karmic acts, all the great, great society cats ̶
38:16
SM: Did you come in this is an area that, you know, you end the year with the Fugs and all the music? How important? Obviously we know it is but I like your thoughts on the music of that of the boomer generation, the music of the (19)60s in the (19)70s. And I talk about the music, it is not it is not just all the great bands and performers, the folk musicians, Motown. Just your comment and how important that was for this seventy million people. And second part of this question is, when I talked to Pete Seeger this past weekend, he talked about that, you know, he was always raised with the belief based on how his father raised him that that music was it's the words is what's important. It is not so much the musicians as it is the words of the young people will take the social messages and people take the social messages, and they will always remember them and pass them on. And there seem to be a lot of messages in the music of this particular time, just your thoughts and how important music was to the 70 million boomer generation. And I am going to change my tape here one second. Certainly you are involved in this. If you could speak up just a little louder too, thanks.
39:48
ED: Well of course, music is always important to every nation in every civilization. What was different about the music of the (19)60s into the (19)70s was that as I mentioned, there was a huge rise of recording technology so that you could do multitrack recording and then overdub and add vocals. Up till the early (19)60s the recording was done of like ten generation mono to mono. In other words, the orchestra would play on a mono between two fancy tape recorders then Frank Sinatra would lay down his vocals. And then they would run the same tape over, and then they would add the harmony singers and maybe some strings and other instruments. So it was very labor intensive. The beginning was the Beatles in (19)64 or (19)65, with the Fugs and other bands this new technology was suddenly there. And there were all these marvelous amplifiers. And more importantly, the music could be heard because they were out there, the sound systems that evolved even in little clubs but also in big places such as baseball stadiums, bigger venues so that the word could star in the mix. And that words, assumed great importance, because of the impact of people like Woody Guthrie and Harry Smith's anthology of American folk music, and the other Folkways albums.
41:38
SM: Mmm hmm.
41:38
ED: They would listen to it and then things like Pete Seeger who adopted a song he learned from a woman I think in North Carolina, and it became We Shall Overcome.
41:49
SM: Right.
41:50
ED: And then all the religious songs came about: Ain't Going to Study War No More and everybody was adopting these religious tunes Down by the River Side and We Shall Overcome. I have Been Buked and I have Been Scorned from the great March on Washington: Mahalia Jackson and Peter, Paul and Mary adopting folk music, folk songs, simple American folk songs, or European folk songs, adopting them. Putting secret messages in them, you know. Folk music, it often exists, like the Bible and has layers of meanings We Shall Overcome can be just as much of "we'll have a good life" but it also can mean we'll end slavery or we'll end racism or we'll win social equity. All these great songs evolved and they were singable, and of course music is more memorable. All ̶ We are Saying is Give Peace a Chance, that John Lennon wrote in 1969. You know, that, that did more to in the war in Vietnam, than any street demonstration.
43:15
SM: If you were to pinpoint, I know, there is so many of them, and it's not fair to others to exclude them but if you were to pick three, four or five of the top entertainers from that era, that really were the top echelon of that kind of music, who would they be?
43:34
ED: What were you talking about?
43:35
The musicians that influenced the boomers, whether they be folk musicians, rock bands, or Motown singers.
43:45
ED: Well who knows you know, you could start out with popular singers, some more scholarly and get into other things you could hear. You could hear Elvis Presley and then say, well what is this rockabilly stuff maybe I should look more into it ̶
44:11
SM: Mm Hmm.
44:11
ED: You know, you start with Elvis or you might start with Mac the Knife by Bobby Darin and then go discover Bertolt Brecht that way. So you know, there are the obvious great musicians, Elvis, the Beatles, of course Bob Dylan, Joan Baez who had this huge impact on the generation with Hush Little Children Do not You Cry all that first album All My Trials. But somehow (Bob) Stravinski had a big influence on the avant-garde and people who wanted to change the world.
44:58
SM: Mm Hmm.
45:02
ED: I knew [inaudible] Stravinski and Joan Baez personally [inaudible] but then you go back into Bill Haley and the Fleshtones and Mickey and Sylvia: Love is Strange. Mr. Earl, that song. I do not know there was a lot of rock and roll that people were exposed to that, it truly was the harbinger of racial mingling.
45:31
SM: Mm Hmm.
45:31
ED: It was obviously a black phenomenon as was jazz. I grew up in Kansas City, I was exposed to a lot of jazz when I was a kid, but just I thought it was just regular music. I did not realize that when I was very young [inaudible] it was just good dance music.
46:03
SM: You mentioned that you thought John Lennon's music or song had a lot to do with ending the war as anything. What, why? Why did the war in Vietnam end in your opinion?
46:19
ED: Well, yes. Well, you know, it takes a long time, they started it basically, they started doing the defoliation in 1962 [inaudible] in (19)63, the supposition of the end and then, it did not really begin until (19)65 and then (19)66 through [inaudible] (19)68 I think because of all the scholar activists, all the people that were studying what was going on while raising their voices against it. And then the huge anti-draft movement.
47:09
SM: Uh huh.
47:10
ED: It took, people had to spend their whole lives every day protesting and raising money to stop this war. And the whole; it was: you know, they wanted to just like MacArthur wanted to drop H-bombs on North Vietnam, North Korea, or China on the border between North Korea and China. So too did people like General LeMay wanted to drop nuclear weapons on China.
47:41
SM: Yes. Yup.
47:39
ED: So it was what we prevented, more than anything. It was written that Nixon was thinking of using nuclear weapons in 1969. And so they sang John Lennon's Give Peace a Chance at the mobilization rally in DC in the fall of 1969 and Nixon was aware of that demonstration and said he realized [inaudible] and demonstrations all over America that they could not increase the war in Vietnam and they had to start pulling it back. A long, long I mean it was (19)75, six years and then hounded him out of office. I mean you know, it was so evil and such an injustice. However, they can build walls, honoring the dead, and I am sorry, there were any dead there and veterans, you can build a wall between here and the moon, but you are not going to do away with the evil of the Vietnam War. Never.
48:49
SM: What, in your opinion, were the best books that were that the boomers read in their growing up years that may have had an influence on them?
48:58
ED: I have no idea. I had my own life by then. I was reading my own classics. I have a question here and then; I just cannot figure out figure out what; you know, they start out reading books you know, Catcher in the Rye and branch out into you know different uh; they might have read, read Che Guevara's diary as part of a college class. They might have; who knows what avenues to read lead.
49:33
SM: I know that a lot of people with Mao's book. Chairman Mao's book.
49:39
ED: Yeah, because the, I forget what group was Maoist but they printed a lot of those. I had a bookstore. I had a bookstore for a number of years on the lower east side and somehow I would get these little red books and they were like free, they would get dropped off.
49:58
SM: [laughs]
49:58
ED: And they would urge me to sell them.
50:01
SM: Right. I have a question here on trust. Um, one of the things that this is this is definitely part of the boomer generation is a lot of the leaders lying to, lying to them and lying to the American public. Because you saw that was what Watergate was all about and certainly, Lyndon Johnson, the Gulf of Tonkin, Eisenhower in the U2 incident, even in recent years, President Kennedy and his linkage to the Coup of Diem and knew and of course, Ronald Reagan. It seems like at that particular period, I can remember when I was in college, and I went to SUNY Binghamton, a lot of students did not trust anybody. They did not trust the president, they did not trust anybody in any leadership role, whether it be vice president of Student Affairs, they did not trust the minister in the church, the rabbi, the head of a corporation, they did not trust anybody in a position of responsibility. And, and I have seen, I do not know if that has been passed down to their kids. But my question is basically this, I was in a Psychology 101 class in my first year of college and I remember the psychology professors telling the students that if you cannot trust in your life, then you will not be a success in life. That trust is a very important quality and I am just want your ̶
51:24
ED: Tell that to John D. Rockefeller who you know, used distrust to take over all of the oil in America. I do not know it is a terrible thing to have. On one level, it's the Beavis and Butthead isolation of American civilization where there is a culture of impoliteness that spreads which is not that good ̶ you see it at events and public all over the place, sort of against general rudeness that's one thing. Another thing is, you grow up and every ̶ everything is a lie so you can either isolate yourself from everything and we were told basically to be existentialists, to be alien; and be alienated by the fifties. Being alienated [inaudible] say James Dean or Marlon Brando that was a public icon to be alienated. So, but if you take it to the extreme and feel alienated from all this, then you can become isolated or you become a pawn of the military industrial complex or a right wing capitalist who will take advantage of that alienation. You have great authoritarian control, and you have you know, the situation of 1984, where everybody is suspicious and there is rule and neo-fascism. So it is a difficult situation because especially when the government has shown for so many decades to have lied so much about many things. Even some of our elections like the 2000 election. So, the idea of having stolen elections [inaudible] computer voting, wars you do not know what they really mean. Can you really count on the government? And so you say fuck it I am just going to drink beer, play a little golf and head off into the sunset.
53:46
SM: What does that mean to activism though?
53:49
ED: Well, some people have it in their blood, you know, they vow to go out in a blaze of leaflets. My vow was to always stay very active in local politics. I stay active and I think a lot of people in our generation too, I mean, I admired people like Tom Hayden for instance.
54:07
SM: I interviewed him for this project.
54:10
ED: I stayed pretty active.
54:15
SM: When the best history books are written, you know they are usually written fifty years after a period. What do you think they will be saying about the boomer generation?
54:27
ED: I do not know. They may not even use the word boomer generation.
54:31
SM: Hmm.
54:31
ED: They may put, they may decide that the generation began with the first experiment in the Manhattan Project in 1939 or (19)40. They may begin it with Einstein's letter to Roosevelt to build the bomb. They may begin it at some date that Marian Anderson's concert at the ̶
54:58
SM: Sure.
55:01
ED: I do not know. Or they may be accepted as the bona fide movement that lead to maybe something wonderful happening in the next twenty or thirty years, I do not know [inaudible] the spirit to America that will transform.
55:20
SM: The last part of the interview is just quick responses to just some terms or names.
55:25
ED: I am not going to be able to talk anymore. I got to get to a meeting. You should take your email you were supposed to call me at one. You are welcome to call another day. And I can conclude.
55:36
SM: Okay.
55:37
ED: I got to run and get to a meeting.
55:40
SM: All right.
55:40
ED: But you can call, you know what day you want to call?
55:44
SM: Well. I am going back and forth between New York, somebody just had open heart surgery up there.
55:51
ED: Who did?
55:52
SM: One of my relatives.
55:53
ED: Oh well, sometime within the next few days, I do not care. Call any time after noon, after like one and I am available. I just got to run to a meeting that I forgot about.
56:05
SM: All right, well, I only have about fifteen more. I think this, when we left the last time, I think I only have about twenty – twenty-five minutes and that will be it.
56:15
ED: Ok.
56:16
SM: Because it is basically there is just one little section left. But I want to ask a couple questions before I get into you responding to some of the personalities and the terms from that era. Could you go a little bit more into how the Beats, how important the Beats were in shaping the boomer generation, just for their attitudes and the way they lived.
56:46
ED: Um, well, define these people: Corso, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Huncke. In certain ways Charlie Parker and Diane Di Prima, in other ways Gary Snyder. They came out of the World War II generation out of the (19)40s and out of the post war boom, the thought boom of the release in the United States after World War II the created abstract expressionism, detective novels. And both from the synthesis of the east and west coast. The Beat generation who flourished with the beginning with the publication of Howl and they flourished as a kind of statement against the McCarthy era and against the squareness and the constrained culture of the 1950s and caused the generation of the boomers, so-called boomers to relax a little bit and not to be afraid to be more individualistic and follow their own life. America always has had a streak of individualism and people who do not motivate it but the Beats helped push the generation along the so-called boomer generation and also by demanding more freedom under the Bill of Rights. The battle of William Burroughs over publication of Naked Lunch and the battle around his thirst for sexual freedom and for acceptance of overt homosexuality and for the fight, the struggles, you know, the Feds tried to stomp down Howl when it came out and so he helped prevail on that and Allen also helped a lot in the trial, the court case where they tried to squash Naked Lunch. So they helped create a greater sense of freedom so that in our own time shows like The Sopranos even or some of these shows that use language and overt gayness on television and movies. The Beats helped liberate the personal freedom areas and art forms. They had a big hand in helping to set the new freedoms.
59:45
SM: Hmm. Through the years as some of the Beats are getting older, whether it be Burrows, Ginsberg or Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, Ann Waldman, who was one of the younger ones, Snyder, Amiri Baraka and Ken Kesey, yourself. What did you think of this boomer generation? They were, you were a little older. And what was the feeling when some of these things were happening? Because obviously, the Beats in the (19)50s were pretty tight knit group. And, and there is a lot of camaraderie there. And then this new generation is happening with all these issues and whether it be drugs, the music, the dress codes, and everything, just your thoughts on how, what they thought of this generation when you were around them.
1:00:45
ED: I did not even realize anything about this thing called boomer generation until a few years ago, I mean, it did not occur to me. I mean it is obvious that when you have a literary generation, or a musical generation or a painting generation that there will come along, another generation nipping at the heels. And as you walk off the plank of life, they will emerge on the deck of the ship and say, it's all ours! So I do not know, I did not really think about them. I knew that there were always going to be younger, emerging art forms and artists but I did not think of it in terms of a general huge mass of people called the boomer generation. Again, what is the designation? They were born after the atomic bomb was dropped?
1:01:36
SM: Yeah, in 1946 to (19)64 that was the years they put down for them.
1:01:43
ED: They are all spoiled brats!
1:01:46
SM: [laughs]
1:01:46
ED: They swelled in on an empire that was not yet beginning to fade. So they, they were kind of spoiled little [inaudible] thinking everybody would cow tow to the United States. The battles seemed to be over.
1:02:08
SM: What is really interesting is that of all the Beats that I remember, and it is the Allen Ginsberg seemed to be around everywhere. Uh, and uh
1:02:20
ED: He had the metabolism of a chipmunk. He had a high metabolism. And if you look at history, I mean look, I wrote a book on Allen Ginsberg's life called The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg. And in research and I knew him intimately for, oh from 1964 till he died in the spring of (19)97, so thirty-three years.
1:02:42
SM: Mm hmm.
1:02:43
ED: We were in almost daily contact so I realized what fanatic, fantastic energy, the guy had, he never really had to sleep. Sometimes I stayed at his house when I was in New York on business and he would be up in the middle of night doing work. I do not know if he ever really slept. He had a high metabolism and he was always in motion, he did more benefits than anybody in world culture. He must have done thousands of benefits for a wide variety of causes. But also, personal appearances at colleges here, in China, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Europe, all over Europe and India. He was always giving readings. And so I was always amazed at the huge numbers wide the wide cultural swath he made. People were coming from India from China from Japan. I mean, he was famous in Japan from Italy from Germany from France from England, from Scotland, from Wales. The guy at cultural connections to a huge plethora of countries. Pretty amazing.
1:03:58
SM: I just remember that time that he was on TV with William Buckley. Do you remember that?
1:04:02
ED: I did not see that show but I heard about it.
1:04:07
SM: Yeah, it was amazing because Buckley of course, being the conservative that he was, was fascinated by him. Literally fascinated.
1:04:15
ED: Well, they were friends. One good thing about Buckley, of course, not my cup of tea, but nevertheless, you know, took the stance against the far right. The anti-Semitic right and also was capable of having friends among liberals. He was a friend of Howard Lowenstein and in a way was a friend of Allen Ginsberg.
1:04:42
SM: You were in a band called the Fugs. How did the boomers look to that group?
1:04:51
ED: Oh, I do not know. We still get fan mail some younger people. I do not know. I am not sure how they? (19)46? Well, there was one born in the late (19)40s and early (19)50s would have been, could have been Fugs fans, [inaudible] around (19)67 or (19)68.
1:05:13
SM: Right.
1:05:13
ED: I remember they were always hiding Fugs records from their parents.
1:05:01
SM: [laughs]
1:05:10
ED: They would write in and complain that their Fugs records, that their parents had broken a Fugs record across their father's knee or something. They were indignant. If the definition is (19)46 and onwards then many of them, heck, probably our whole fan base was boomers.
1:05:38
SM: If you were described the Fugs' music, how would you put it in a few words or a few sentences?
1:05:50
ED: Well, it grew. It started out as a kind of primitive, acoustical folk music. We did not go to Juilliard School, so we taught ourselves. We grew up in the great school of American Jazz, American folk music and American civil rights songs and American rock and roll. Everything from, and also Country and Western and Hasidic. You know, we brought a lot of Jewish melodies to our music. I grew up in the happening, movement. So we were a happening. We were spontaneous. We were like action painting but for music. But over the years, our music, and a mixture through what was artful and experimentations that our music grew and grew in skill and quality. So by the time we did our final records for Warner Brothers, it evolved into [inaudible]. We rose up and did a major album. So our music always grew. We started out primitive. Got less primitive. Got into different types of music. So now like forty-five years after our founding, I have had a band together for twenty-five years and they are very, very, very accomplished. So, how to describe it? They have to listen to us. The Fugs are not a visual thing. We are all we are our songs. All The Fugs ever will be even apart from the stage remains the recording studio and live. We are the ̶ our stage.
1:07:32
SM: When we just had the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, in fact, I think the last when I spoke to you the first time it was a couple of weeks before the big happening was going to take place and Richie was going to open, Richie Havens. I think you had a concert there in fact. What when you look at that Woodstock, do you think that that was more about fun, more about culture? More about issues? What, how would you describe it?
1:08:06
ED: Well, it was an act, part activism and part planning. I mean I guess 300,000 young people pushed out to Sullivan County you know and many of them were against the war in Vietnam, many of them wanting a new, a new living arrangement. Living outdoors so it was kind of a good commune. The food was free cooked by Wavy Gravy and the hog farm. Wavy Gravy you know, into the microphone, at I think it was on the first night, or? First morning or second morning of Woodstock? Said, "What I have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000 people." And then it also had the kind of medical system that we need in the United States, free medical care. I have a good I have a doctor friend who's now an eminent neurologist, who was a volunteer at the freak-out tent at Woodstock, so people who were having medical problems that got free medical attention from volunteer doctors/ Plus free food. The ticket system broke down so there was free music. There was a celebration of beautiful farmland it was on a huge I think 50 or 60 acre farm; a dairy farm. Celebrate the beautiful American out of doors. Then celebrate also the kind of music that was rising up at that time with Jimi Hendrix and his great National Anthem which was performed at dawn on the final day with this new miraculous instrument in the United States called the wah, wah pedal and his active patriotism. In its own way. It was very patriotic. He set the tone for the (19)60s with that one National Anthem. All the other singing? I do not know, it was also a triumph of technology because it was not until a year or so before that you could play the music through speakers that can be heard by 400,000 people so the technology rose very quickly. With Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and the others. So it was good. Technology, sharing, free medical care, all the outdoors. And then of course, a lot of pot and I guess there was acid there. Mainly pot I think. And beer. Pot, beer, acid, rock and roll, technology, love of the out of doors and having a good time.
1:10:59
SM: Who did you personally look up to? Who were your ̶ Well, I am not going to overstate this thing. Who are your heroes? Or who were the role models that inspired you?
1:11:12
ED: From those days?
1:11:13
SM: From those days or anytime? How did you become who you became?
1:11:21
ED: I do not know. I had heroes. It's like when they asked Michael Dukakis who were his heroes from the (19)88 election. You find heroes in your life from you know, Sunday school all the way up to performers and writers of course, teachers, I had a bunch of teachers [inaudible] like Sappho [inaudible] here other musicians that I admired [inaudible] when I was a kid. And also, rock and roll stars you know that rose later. I do not know. When I became an adult, Allen Ginsberg became my mentor. Carl Wilson before he was my mentor. [inaudible] friend, early on was one of my mentors. I looked to people for advice. You know, I am reading [inaudible] normally every week I read his stories for a while. I do not know, Norman Thomas was a mentor. Ghandi was a mentor. John Paul Sarte was big in my mind, and Samuel Beckett was an early hero as a writer and then somebody to emulate, at least in his persistence and overcoming his really [inaudible] world worldview with great art.
1:13:03
SM: How would you like to be remembered? What would? When you are gone what do you would, would you would like people to say about you? Or hope that people would say about you and secondly your writing. Your gift to people?
1:13:23
ED: Well, I hope with respect to my writings that they will, find, poems inside the body of my writing or short stories or other kinds of [inaudible] for 300 years from now.
1:13:43
SM: It in that this is very general and, and maybe impossible to answer but if you were to, if we were to ever bury seventy million people in one grave, which is the boomer generation and we put a tombstone on there, what do you think the, the epithet was say? The epitaph?
1:14:16
ED: [singing voice] Things go better with Coca Cola.
1:14:24
SM: Laughs.
1:14:25
ED: [singing voice] Better with Coke. Or we came, we saw. The word is not conquered. We came, we saw, we completed, man. I mean, you know, it is a generation. They come, they go. They are doomed. We used a plank image before. I mean, you know, you get born. What is it that Samuel Beckett said? You part with your? [inaudible] other ways to stride the grave really, it is not sing-song all the way but the idea is to have fun. One thing about the boomer generation is that their parents, having lived through World War II and all the, which really was a great triumph of American civilization. You know America defeated the militaristic Japanese which really is a wonderful thing. And so that generation told their kids, you know, have a little fun. You know? So I think the boomer generation was not afraid to have fun. [inaudible] now they are getting old.
1:15:50
SM: Let us hope that they are still having fun.
1:15:51
ED: Oh, well their arthritis causes them to not have as much fun.
1:15:55
SM: Yeah. Two quotes that come out of this era. One was one that Bobby Kennedy used a lot and another one was a Peter Max one. And, and the question is, which one better defined the boomer generation. And of course, the Bobby Kennedy one is, some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not? And the other one is Peter Max, You do your thing, and I will do mine. If by chance we should come together, it will be beautiful. Those are two extremes.
1:16:32
ED: The quotes a little hippie dippy. I mean, you know [inaudible] that is the whole problem with 'do your own thing'. You know, I mean, that is what Hitler would say. Doing your thing is always um, problematic. But Robert Kennedy, Robert's, really, now that I am getting on in years, Robert Kennedy is emerging as a personal hero. I writing a book about him but it I do not know if it will take long enough to; if I figure out how many books to write, maybe I'll finally write my book about Robert Kennedy.
1:16:32
SM: Let me switch deep here and then we will get into these questions on the people hold on a second.
(Only tape one of the interview is available)
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Interview with Ed Sanders
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Sanders, Ed ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Poets, American, Singers--United States; Human rights workers; Environmentalists—United States; Authors; Publishers; Sanders, Ed--Interviews
Description
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Ed Sanders is a poet, author, musician, and activist who grew up in the state of Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri and New York University where he earned his Bachelor's degree in Ancient Greek. After college, he opened the Peace Eye Bookstore in New York City and started <em>Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts</em>. Allen Ginsberg, Ezra Pound, and Dylan Thomas were all early influences as Sanders tried to bridge the concerns of Beat Poetry and the counterculture of the 1960s. He is the author of many collections of poetry where he received several honors including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. Sanders has written many books of prose, a non-fiction book, <em>The Family</em>, and published a bi-weekly newspaper, the <em>Woodstock Journal</em>. He is the founding member of the satirical and subversive folk-rock music group, The Fugs.
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Binghamton University Libraries
Date
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ND
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.107
Date Modified
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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77:17
-
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b6b9a04e9ede7b5b9f66bc6e11a78efc
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/fa3f8e9cce21515954c8ba249d4ac772.mp3
ccd05cd64cb90bcf4c65173fa74c9781
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
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Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Language
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English
Rights
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In copyright.
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
2010-06-11
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Hue-Tam Ho Tai, 1948-
Language
English
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Hue-Tam Ho Tai is a professor of Sino-Vietnamese History at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of modern Vietnam. Dr. Tai is the author of Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong, Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution, and Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam."}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":6915,"3":{"1":0},"4":[null,2,16777215],"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,3355443],"15":"\"Arial\",sans-serif"}">Dr. Hue Tam Ho Tai is a professor of Sino-Vietnamese History at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of modern Vietnam. Dr. Tai is the author of <em>Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong</em>, <em>Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution</em>, and <em>Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam</em>.</span>
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
1 Microcassette
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"College campuses; Brandeis University; 1968 Olympics; Vietnam War; Harvard University;Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Social Revolution; North Vietnamese;"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":513,"3":{"1":0},"12":0}">College campuses; Brandeis University; 1968 Olympics; Vietnam War; Harvard University; Nineteen sixties; Baby boom generation; Civil Rights Movement; Social Revolution; North Vietnamese.</span>
Duration
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92:07
Subject LCSH
Vietnam—History—20th century; College teachers; Harvard University; Tai, Hue-Tam Ho, 1948--Interviews
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
Rights Statement
Many items in our digital collections are copyrighted. If you want to reuse any material in our collection you must seek permission, or decide if your purpose can qualify as fair use under the U.S. Copyright Law Section 107. If you think copyright or privacy has been violated, the University Libraries will investigate the issue. Please see our take down policy. If using any materials in this online digital collection for educational or research purposes, please cite accordingly.
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. Hue Tam Ho Tai
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tai, Hue-Tam Ho, 1948- ; McKiernan, Stephen
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/wav
Subject
The topic of the resource
Vietnam—History—20th century; College teachers; Harvard University; Tai, Hue-Tam Ho, 1948--Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Dr. Hue-Tam Ho Tai is a professor of Sino-Vietnamese History at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the social and cultural history of modern Vietnam. Dr. Tai is the author of <em>Passion, Betrayal, and Revolution in Colonial Saigon: The Memoirs of Bao Luong</em>, <em>Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution</em>, and <em>Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam</em>.
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
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.116
Date Modified
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2018-03-29
Is Part Of
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McKiernan Interviews
Extent
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92:07
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Audio interviews
Title
A name given to the resource
McKiernan Interviews
Description
An account of the resource
Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Binghamton University Libraries
Language
A language of the resource
English
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
In copyright.
Template: Simple Audio Player (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
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Torie Osborn
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Torie Osborn is a community organizer, activist, and author. She received her Bachelor's in English from Middlebury College and her Master's degree in Business Administration from UCLA. Osborn was the first woman Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was also an executive board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Liberty Hill Foundation. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Torie Osborn is a community organizer, activist, and author. She received her Bachelor's in English from Middlebury College and her Master's degree in Business Administration from UCLA. Osborn was the first woman Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was also an executive board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Liberty Hill Foundation. </span>
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="{"1":2,"2":"Counterculture; Watergate; Black Panthers; Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; Civil rights movement; Women's movement; Vietnam memorial; Tom Hayden; Lyndon B. Johnson; Eugene McCarthy; Angela Davis; George McGovern; Daniel Ellsberg; Spiro Agnew; Richard Nixon; LGBT, Gay and Lesbian Movement"}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5041,"3":{"1":0},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Counterculture; Watergate; Black Panthers; Anti-war movement; Baby boom generation; Civil rights movement; Women's movement; Vietnam memorial; Tom Hayden; Lyndon B. Johnson; Eugene McCarthy; Angela Davis; George McGovern; Daniel Ellsberg; Spiro Agnew; Richard Nixon; LGBT; Gay and Lesbian Movement.</span>
Duration
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96:12
Subject LCSH
Authors; Civil rights workers; Osborn, Torie--Interviews
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Title
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Interview with Torrie Osborn
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Osborn, Torie ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Authors; Civil rights workers; Osborn, Torie--Interviews
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Torie Osborn is a community organizer, activist, and author. She got her Bachelor's in English from Middlebury College and her Master of Business Administration from UCLA. Osborn was the first woman Executive Director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. She was also an executive board member for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Liberty Hill Foundation.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.138a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.138b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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96:12
-
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https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/345c91f792401939442e6340f42a4a0e.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Format
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Audio interviews
Title
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McKiernan Interviews
Description
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Stephen McKiernan's collection of interviews includes more than two hundred interviews with prominent figures of the 1960s, which were collected between the mid-1990s to 2023 The collection provides narratives of people who were actively involved in or witnessed events in the 1960s, an era which spurred profound cultural and political transformation in the twentieth century. Interviewees include politicians, artists, scholars, musicians, authors, and veterans who delve into the decade’s most prominent issues and events, including the civil rights movement, the free speech movement, the anti-war movement, women’s rights, gay rights, segregation, the Vietnam War, Woodstock, Hippies, Yippies, and individualism.<br /><br />
<h3>The McKiernan 22</h3>
<div>Stephen McKiernan interviewed legends of the 1960s. When asked in 2021 where one should start when sifting through his vast collection, he provided the following list:</div>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/854">Julian Bond</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1866">Bobby Muller</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1175">Craig McNamara</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/910">Dr. Arthur Levine</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/837">Diane Carlson Evans</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/942">Dr. Ellen Schrecker</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/876">Dr. Lee Edwards</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/841">Peter Coyote</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1233">Dr. Roosevelt Johnson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/899">Rennie Davis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1222">Kim Phuc</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/917">George McGovern</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/833">Frank Schaeffer</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/840">Rev. Dr. Frank Forrester Church </a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1240">Dr. Marilyn Young</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/842">James Fallows</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/835">Joseph Lee Galloway</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/911">John Lewis</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/839">Paul Critchlow</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/888">Steve Gunderson</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/1159">Charles Kaiser</a></li>
<li><a href="https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/items/show/2407">Joseph Lewis</a></li>
</ul>
Creator
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Stephen McKiernan
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
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English
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In copyright.
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Date of Interview
ND
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Stephen McKiernan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Sally Roesch Wagner
Biographical Text
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":5039,"3":{"1":1},"4":[null,2,5099745],"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"15":"Arial"}">Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz. </span>
Duration
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158:01
Language
English
Digital Publisher
Binghamton University Libraries
Digital Format
audio/mp4
Original Format
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2 Microcassettes
Material Type
Sound
Interview Format
Video or Audio
Audio
Keywords
<span data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Women's Rights Movement; Drug Revolution; Baby boom generation; Racism; Beat \nGeneration; Activism; Kent State; Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Feminism "}" data-sheets-userformat="{"2":7101,"3":{"1":1},"5":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"6":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"7":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"8":{"1":[{"1":2,"2":0,"5":[null,2,0]},{"1":0,"2":0,"3":3},{"1":1,"2":0,"4":1}]},"10":2,"11":4,"12":0,"14":[null,2,0],"15":"Arial"}">Women's Rights Movement; Drug Revolution; Baby boom generation; Racism; Beat Generation; Activism; Kent State; Vietnam War; Anti-war Movement; Feminism. </span>
Subject LCSH
Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews
Accessibility
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
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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: Sally Roesch Wagner
Interviewed by: Stephen McKiernan
Transcriber: REV
Date of interview: Not Dated
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Start of Interview)
SM (00:00:03):
Testing one, two. Sure. That is very good. All right.
SW (00:00:04):
Okay.
SM (00:00:04):
And when you think of the (19)60s, what is the first thing that comes to your mind?
SW (00:00:28):
A door opening into the future.
SM (00:00:34):
Explain.
SW (00:00:35):
And then closing. But the door stayed open long enough that we learned how to get inside. We saw a vision of what the world could be. We saw the way that people could be with each other personally, and also a vision of how the social structure could be transformed to create new human beings.
SM (00:01:10):
When you hear, and this has always struck me, as a person who is a boomer, when you hear people like Newt Gingrich in 1994, when the Republicans came to power, and George Will, I am just using them as examples, who oftentimes in his writings, anytime he can take a shot at the boomer generation, he will do it, is oftentimes is the breakdown of American society that a lot of the problems that we have today, they blame on that time, that era, the (19)60s, the (19)70s, the young people, the drug culture, the sexual revolution, lack of respect for authority, the antagonisms and the deep divisions. How do you respond when you hear people like that?
SW (00:02:04):
They are absolutely right. They are absolutely correct. And it is sort of like, yes, we did that. One person's breakdown is another person's breakthrough. And I think that the analysis that that sort of the facade of a happy family, the facade of a generous and just country, the facade of all of us being the same cracked in the (19)60s. We smashed that facade. And breaking through that then opened the door, we were in the center I think in the midst of a cultural revolution. But I think that it is a cultural, political, spiritual, personal. It is a revolution that I am not sure there has ever been one like this in the world. I know my background really is studying the 19th century, and it is very reminiscent of the mid-19th century in terms of radical reform movements all springing up simultaneously and feeding each other. And I think that in some ways they opened a door and saw a vision into the future, and they set the blueprint for the 20th century, and we know are setting the blueprint, or the 20th century, the (19)60s set the blueprint for all the work that we are doing now. And what is interesting to me is that the people that opened that door and saw the vision now are institutionalized and making institutional changes. Because at some point we realized, and I think this was the strength of the woman's movement, we realized that there were no personal solutions. And if one's to point, I do not know if we ... Point to the one major brilliance of the woman's movement, I do not know if there was one major and is such a powerful transformative engine, but one brilliance of it was women are not messed up, we are messed over. And we actually used the F word, but it was the idea that we were tranquilized. Then it was a more primitive tranquilizer, if you will. What was it then? That women were constantly, if they were unhappy with their situation, they were put on tranquilizers, on meds, and they still are today, but probably in greater numbers. But what we realized was as we began to share our personal stories and break down the personal isolation that we felt, we began to understand that it was not our personal problems, but that it was institutional. And I think that was the moment of understanding that there had to be systematic, systemic, institutional changes before we could create a just world, before we could create an equal.
SM (00:05:42):
One of the questions that I always ask, and just general questions about the boomers, is when boomers, boomers are defined as those individuals born between 1946 and (19)64. But I have also noticed if you know anything about the (19)60s that a lot of the leaders were born in (19)42, (19)43, (19)44, 45. So a lot of people do not like these, got to define a generation and limit it to these particular years. But the question that comes up often is longevity. And this is oftentimes a criticism we hear today toward boomers who are now reaching 62 years of age, first year of social security [inaudible] this year. The front liners. Is did they carry their ideals and beliefs beyond that period when all these movements and these feelings that change can happen, that we can be make a difference in this world? And which was really part of the (19)60s and even in the (19)60s is really up to (19)73, (19)74, and then so much happened after that. But can you separate female boomers from male boomers and just the experiences you have seen of female boomers, have they carried their ideals into middle age and older age, or had they fallen by the wayside as many men had done in careers and making money and raising families?
SW (00:07:10):
I belong to an organization called Veteran Feminists of America, women who were active between (19)60 and (19)73. And what happens in the meetings of that, some of the gatherings that I have attended in this group is that women sit around and [inaudible] about are we the only feminists left? These young women, they do not have any idea of feminism. They are not part of the movement. And then I talked to my students at Zurich University, 18 and 19-year-old women who are reinventing feminism and they wonder if they are the only ones or what happened to all the feminists from before. One of the things we hope to do at the Gage House is to do more intergenerational things. The things we have done have been really effective. And what is interesting is that I teach 19th century at Syracuse University, 19th century women's rights history. What my students really want to hear about is my experience in the (19)60s. So I do back and forth. I talk about what the first wave women did, how far they brought it, and then where we took it, and then here is where you need to take it and make those connections. But we still alive and kicking, are we still? See, I think part of it is a masking. Elizabeth Katie Stanton understood that if she started out her lectures with a story about her grandchildren and her fat, little sausage curls, white hair, she could do the most radical thinking and say the most radical things. On her 80th birthday they had this huge celebration and it was, what was it? It was some big gathering place in New York City and there were thousands of people there. Now this is the moment when she could have said, "Thank you all so much. I am so honored that you are here." You know what she said? Yeah, we were going to get our right to vote pretty soon and we have made some inroads on some of the things that we need. All we need to really do now is look at going after the real enemy, and that is the church. What we need to do is the Bible was not written by God, it was written by man out of his love of domination. She wrote in her women's Bible that year, and she said, "What we need to do, because it is a manmade document like the Constitution or other men made documents, we need to change it to meet the times. So we need to rewrite the Bible." This is on her 80th birthday, and one of her mottoes became, I shall not grow conservative with age. But taking my direction from her, the ideas that come out of my mouth have not changed. If anything, they were more transformational than they have ever been, but I have lost the language. I have dropped the language of division in some cases. I mean, feminism is a word obviously that needs to be held onto, but there was a lot of jargon that we developed that is as unappealing to me as academic jargon. What you essentially are doing is creating a separate isolated group that does not know how to communicate with the masses. So my process personally has been to unlearn academic speak and to write in the language as accessible as possible. My audience has been my grandson for years. He is now 25, but he was my audience when he was 10. If I could not say it in a way that was understandable to him, I needed to go back to the drawing board and make it accessible. So someone listening is going to go, she do not talk like the (19)60s, she do not look like the (19)60s. I know. Adopt protective coloration. And what that means is exactly like Elizabeth Katie said, this gray hair is my passage into passing. It is like I belong to the Rotary Club, and as a Rotarian, there is all kinds of possibilities of making connections with people. And what I find is that the ideas of the (19)60s just simply makes sense. And if they are presented in a way that does not frighten people or that does not create separateness, join my club and you have to accept all this. And I have learned a lot of this from my grandchildren and from younger people to speak in a language that really... I mean, I seriously go through this process with my grandkids every time I am with them. I listen to their music, I watch their movies, I go shopping with them to see what page they are on with that. I ask them to bring me up to speed technologically. And in the process of that, I learn what they care about, what their issues are, what their vision is, what they want to see happen in the world. And I take direction from that.
SM (00:12:42):
When you look at the boomers, again, one of the things that was awful often another criticism of the boomers is that even though they were a generation of 70 to 74 million depending on what book you read, is that only really only 15 percent really participated. So you are talking about 85 percent that were not involved in any capacity and in the anti-war movement, the women's movement, the civil rights, the environmental, gay and lesbian, all the movements, and people like to use that as a criticism. But I have always looked upon it as a positive because when you consider 15 percent of 70 million, that is a heck of a lot of people. But have you heard that criticism?
SW (00:13:32):
Yeah.
SM (00:13:33):
And often-
SW (00:13:33):
And it is silly.
SM (00:13:33):
And actually they may even be doing it today's generation, they always try to put percentages under.
SW (00:13:38):
And it is percentages and invisibility. How do you stop a revolution that is already in progress? Well, you deny it is happening. And today it is going on, bingo in front of our eyes. And what is wonderful is that I think because it is under the radar screen, the advantage of it is that there is this whole infrastructure that is being created, that once the old tumbles, the infrastructure will be in place. Everything from what we eat to how we interact with each other, to how we live in our houses, to how we... I mean, the infrastructure of the important stuff, how we educate, that is in place. And when the trappings fall off, if we survive, I think the infrastructure is tight. But there is a couple of things about that. The silliness of, come on, how many people made the American Revolution? That was a disgustingly small-
SM (00:14:41):
Very small.
SW (00:14:43):
...Of leadership, and it was not diverse. Now the (19)60s was more diverse, but what is wonderful about the movement today is it is so diverse and it is so multidimensional that nobody can get a handle on it. It cannot be destroyed. It cannot be sought out and systematically deconstructed or attacked the way that the government attacked the (19)60s. You identify the leaders. You place drugs in there, you send out bogus information about them, all the stuff we know the government was doing now through COINTELPRO. We know that the government systematically, and we know that they systematically murdered the Black Panthers at the same time that they are destabilizing governments all over Central America. I mean, now that was in the (19)60s. Shocking news that was like, could it really be true? Could it really be true? And we had to have it proven to ourselves every way until Sunday before we believe it, I think. But we were the canaries in the mines. We were the ones who were saying first, it is going on, it is going down. And I think now that is general knowledge. But I think the other thing about the (19)60s and about it being a small percentage, Samuel J. May, who is one of my favorite dead guys, I love this guy. Somebody, I think it was Garrett Smith, said, "Heaven is sweeter with May's presence." After he died. Samuel J. May was one of the most principled, thoughtful, progressive men that I have ever known.
SM (00:16:41):
When did he live?
SW (00:16:42):
19th century. But he wrote a book after, he was the Unitarian minister here in Syracuse, and a good friend of Matilda Jocelyn Gages. He wrote after the Civil War, a book called Recollections of our Late Great Anti-Slavery Conflict. And he is furious because people did not step forward when they should have, including the Unitarians. And he names-names of people who voted the wrong way on the issue regularly. And his contention is there never would have been a civil war if enough people would have stood up, and especially if the churches would have opposed slavery. And so he is holding the, as a minister, he is holding the church's feet to the fire. But the standard thing he talks about and that everybody that does 19th century anti-slavery history talks about, is that after the Civil War, everybody's home was a station on the Underground Railroad. And similarly today, everybody was involved in the (19)60s. And my question to people who say, "Yeah, I was there." Is can I see your FBI file? I should have brought mine.
SM (00:18:03):
I have never gone down to look at mine. I know one of my friends did and he was very disappointed because he said it was all marked up and he could not read anything.
SW (00:18:14):
Yeah.
SM (00:18:14):
He could not read anything.
SW (00:18:15):
No, mine is about this thick. And I take it in and show my students. I did the FBI and CIA both, and I really encourage you to do it. You need to do it for this book. You need to ask for your FBI file to see if you have a record. And it is really important. And my kids looking at it, it really helped them to frame what was going on during that time. And I take it in to show my students. They are so afraid, they are indentured servants today because they are indentured to their parents. If they are at a private college like SU, and their parents are investing that much money in their education, they have to perform and they feel like they are very constrained to do anything. And I say, "Look it, there is life after, and you keep doing it. You keep doing it." But I think it is this idea that everyone after the fact wants to jump on the bandwagon, but what it felt like to be in that moment and the fear of it, my kids will testify to that. We had to leave our house two weeks before Christmas because the local newspaper in Sacramento, the Sacramento Union, which no longer exists, it was a very conservative paper. They did a front-page story on an underground newspaper that we were doing, and they got it confused with, we had gone through a split and then there was Weatherman, and they said that the Weatherman paper was being published at the house where we were.
SM (00:19:55):
Oh my gosh.
SW (00:19:56):
So at the end, they basically say the cops cannot do anything. The judges are too liberal, their hands are tied, the newspaper is preaching drugs and murder, and it is published in a gray frame house on the corner of 23rd and L Street. Was like-
SM (00:20:15):
Wait-
SW (00:20:15):
...When it was a call for vigilante action. So no, going through that kind of a fear thing with two little kids and then having the FBI come to visit, and having the FBI try to talk... The FBI went to the landlord and tried to scare him about who I was. I had never broken a law. I opposed the war, and was part of an underground paper, but the kind of political... To live through that kind of... I developed asthma at the age of 26, and it was purely from the pressure, the fear of that time. Now I am white. Imagine what the Panthers were going through at that time. And so for someone to come along now who did not put themselves on the line and say, "I was there in the (19)60s." Really offends me. I think it is a deep offense to claim a part of something that you never really put yourself through.
SM (00:21:21):
That is the same thing about veterans who are lying that they served in Vietnam, because that has been a big issue. Stolen Valor, which was the book that came out that Vietnam vets, they kind of hid themselves when they first came home. And now it is very popular to be a Vietnam vet. And well, we have even seen Joe Ellis, the great historian, why? Why would he lie to his students at Harvard about him? And he has got a Pulitzer Prize. People were shocked, of course, he is such a great historian. He admitted his wrong and he is back. But it is interesting, you raised some really good points there. Talk the talk and walk the walk. And that is the most important thing.
SW (00:22:01):
And that is a real important connection that it is like I feel like I am part of... I am a veteran. I belong to the Veteran Feminists of America. And I think it is important we call ourselves that because we have battle scars from being in the front lines of the feminist revolution and the anti-war activist's the same thing. We carry, and I do not mean to put my work as extremely important. I was not arrested. I was in a number of demonstrations, but I did not do CD. I had little kids. But I think to put a perspective on it, is to look at people claiming once something becomes sort of in that they were part of it, whether it is the innless of having fought in Vietnam or the innless of having fought against the Vietnam War, it diminishes the work of those who actually were there and doing that.
SM (00:23:13):
Those are very important points. And when you look at the boomer generation itself, what would you list as some characteristics, some of the strengths, qualities that both male and female and all ethnic groups had at that particular time? Just their strengths and maybe some of their weaknesses.
SW (00:23:33):
I think an openness to new experience. I left the conventional marriage. I was raised in a Republican household in a small Midwest town. My parents were high in the church, my dad was a banker. And the openness to change, the recreating ourselves, could not have done it without the support of each other. There is nothing individual about the revolutionary. And it was a leaderless movement in many significant ways. The women's movement really just emerged spontaneously, through spontaneous generation. We were all doing the same stuff all over and sometimes did not even know it until later. But I think that openness, a willingness to really go through major changes. A connectedness, a sharing, a creation of community, understanding ourselves out of the individualism of the (19)50s as community creatures, as creatures of community. And then as in the 19th century, the influence of Native Americans is extraordinary. Extraordinary. My work is on the influence of the Haudenosaunee women on the women's rights movement. And I am doing a longer book now on the influence generally on the basics of life on Native Americans. I mean, other people have done a lot of this work. I am focusing it specifically on women and looking at it through that dimension. But I think in the (19)60s there were ways that, as the movements sprang up and the connection between them, the learning from each other and the outsider voices coming together and sharing experience, I think there was a significant Native American influence on our sense of who we are, creatures of community rather than individuals. And I think that some of the weaknesses were a joy, another strength, joy. The marijuana for me was an opening into a world of spiritual that I did not get in the congregational church in Aberdeen, South Dakota. It was that passing of the roach in community that you took one puff, you did not Bogart, you shared with your neighbors and you experienced. It took us out of the framework that we were in as drugs have always done, psychedelics in a spiritual way. Once the mafia took over and once the neighborhood drug dealers were driven out by the big drug dealers, and once the paraquat was sprayed on the marijuana in Mexico, and once people started, and most significantly for me, once people started smoking marijuana by themselves, that was the end of the drug revolution. A lot of people that I knew got really injured by drugs and got strung out and it was not all good, but there was a moment of spirituality with it, a moment that opened us to another dimension that we sure as hell did not have growing up in the (19)50s.
SM (00:27:51):
Do you feel, I am going to get into the question on the (19)50s in a minute. Do you feel the feelings that a lot of boomers had, including [inaudible] and others, even when I was at Binghamton, that we were unique? We were different than any other generation in history, but I kind of already knew a little bit of history because I knew what went on in the (19)30s and there were a lot of student protest movements at that time too. And so I knew we were not unique in every way because there was an anti-war at that particular time. But that, do you think that is a weakness or a strength? The uniqueness. I have gotten unbelievable responses to this question when I asked. The boomers thought they were the most unique generation in American history because they were going to change everything. They were going to end... They were going to bring equality, they were going to end injustice. They were going to be the cure-all to all the ills of the world. They are going to bring peace to the world, love, brotherhood and all the other things. But in reality, that has not happened, so.
SW (00:28:55):
Well, it has not happened yet. It is still in process. Revolution, I think we were essentially right, but I think our timetable was off. We believed in instant revolution and they do not happen that way.
SM (00:29:14):
That could be a weakness, the concept of instant revolution.
SW (00:29:17):
Yeah. And I think that was, we were wrong about the timing. The thing about seeing ourselves as unique, I think was both a strength and a weakness. And as a strength, I think it allowed us to break from tradition and create our own path. And that is what I think is young people are doing that and continuing to do it and have continued to do it from the (19)60s. I mean, the punk movement in the (19)80s, that was another wave, another reinventing. And now into the fourth wave of feminism and feminisms, each group of women coming from a different culture, finding their own description of and their own way of feminism. And that uniqueness, that sense of we are doing something different, we are, was part of the energy that drove us. But I think there is a pain that comes in when you ask that question, because I go immediately to some of the meetings when some of the old lefties who had been hanging in there from the (19)30s and (19)40s when we would be in a meeting with them. And the arrogance of youth, the arrogance of what do these people have to teach us anyway? I mean, now I hang out with dead people all the time. Because I learned so much from them and learn constantly about vision and endurance and focus and the perspective I need. When I was arrested for my grandson, when he was born at the Seneca Army Depot, I did CD by myself as Matilda Jocelyn Gage because I had to do it quickly. I had to get back to teach two days later. So I had to do it right then and there was not anybody else quite ready. There was one woman that thought she might, so they arrested me and I was dressed as Matilda Johnson Gage and gave her name, but I had a picture of Michael in my clothing and they strip searched me and all that stuff. But Michael was right there by my heart. And when I was in the detention area, they kept me for about several hours and I was handcuffed and it gets uncomfortable after a few hours and was not the ones that I could... When I did CD at the Nevada test site, I could slip my hands out, because I-
SW (00:32:03):
...slip my hands out because they handcuffed me and I had on a thick, you know the trick, you have on a thick sweater and so you pull the sweater up and you are out of the handcuffs. I went back and got arrested a second time, but once was his gauge and once was his [inaudible]. But anyway, so when I was arrested and I am by myself in this holding tank and this is in the (19)80s, (19)84, and I cannot sit down because there is no chairs or anything. And I am standing and it is hot and I have got this 19th century costume on and my hands are behind me and I do not know what the hell's going on in the other room. And I am getting a little nervous. I am really isolated. There is nobody with me, nobody is singing strong songs with me, like you need to when you are doing CD. And then there was a moment when one of my hands I realized was reaching back to Matilda Joslyn Gage and one of my hands was reaching forward to my grandson who had just been born. And I thought, I am just a conduit. That is all. I am just the conduit between the past and the future. I am just passing through. And in that moment, I knew who I was and what my place was. [inaudible] ever known, ever known in life. And that was one of those transforming moments. My grandson now has become the person that I am passing everything on to. He is my favorite person in the world. He is a writer and we write together, we are doing some projects together, but he has grown up with the idea that his grandma loved him so much that she was willing to be arrested to make the world safer for him. And the only problem with it is that I have two other grandkids that have been born since, and I have not been arrested for them yet. And so at one point my daughter said, Alex thinks that you love Michael more than you love her because you have been arrested twice for him and you have never been arrested for. So what I am doing with them now, they are teenagers, is asking them to think about what issues they care most about. And I am not going to do it while I am the CD or the ED of the Gage Foundation, but when I finish this work, then I want them to have something that they want me to make a stand for in their name, in their honor.
SM (00:34:46):
That is beautiful.
SW (00:34:47):
And Michael actually wants to do CD of the Nevada test site again, since they have started underground nuclear testing.
SM (00:34:53):
You remind me so much of just in the conversations I had with Daniel Barry and Philip [inaudible] and Elizabeth McAllister from Jonah House down in Baltimore. We never saw Phillip very much because he was in jail most of the time. I took students down to Jonah to meet Elizabeth, but I can remember at school some of the Catholic workers that were just secretaries in the department could not understand why I was taking students to go meet these terrible people who would go to jail knowing that [inaudible] had, not Daniel, he never married, but Philip and Elizabeth had three kids at home. Well, and they got mad at me just because I was introducing them to them and they did not like their lifestyle and they were not being good parents. But when the students met them, it was an experience they will never, ever forget. It was about commitment, it was about risk taking. And it was also what Dr. King used to always profess for those in the nonviolent movement is you oftentimes have to pay a price for your beliefs. And those prices are you must be willing to go to jail.
SW (00:36:09):
And Matilda Joslyn Gage said, you must be willing to give up parents, family reputation, and you will not see the end. You are planting the seed and those who come after you will enter into the harvest.
SM (00:36:25):
Wow. That is her right there, is not it?
SW (00:36:29):
That is her. Yeah. And this is her granddaughter, Matilda Jewel Gage. This is a woman that I worked with for 17 years, organizing her grandma's papers, taking her, recording her stories. She remembered her grandmother. And this is me as a graduate student at the University of California.
SM (00:36:54):
Oh yeah, I saw that. Yeah. I have been out there.
SW (00:36:57):
Writing my dissertation on Gage, and I was standing on the front porch of the Gage home the first time I had ever been there. Came on a research trip. And I keep this here because I remember that young woman standing on those steps being photographed by the Fayetteville historian, local historian, and thinking this house should not be privately owned. It was privately owned, and this needs to be, there is so much history here and this woman is so important. This house needs to be open to the public. Never in my life thought that I would be the one to do it, but when the house started becoming rental property, I came back every year to kind of check on it and do lectures here and keep in touch with Gage and the upstate radical reform. Dead people that I love and hang out with. And as the house was starting to go downhill as rental property, something had to be done about it. And so I moved back here and started the Gage Foundation to raise the money to save the house. And as we sit here, the house is owned by the Gage Foundation and the restoration will be completed by the end of next month, by the end of December. And then we start doing the interpretation. And this is a center where the ideas of Gage will... The (19)60s, the reincarnation of the 1850s and (19)60s and (19)70s and (19)80s. The ongoing struggle for justice is the story of that house. And that is my life's work. My legacy. Gage has been my life's work.
SM (00:38:50):
Is there a biography? Has there been an in-depth, like there is a brand new one out on Elizabeth Katie Stanton.
SW (00:38:56):
Not the long one. I have not written it yet. There is one out that is not very good. Gage and I wrote a short piece. What I will do when I finish up this work, you know how hard it is to be doing and raising the money to do this house and also doing the restoration and keeping everything going with programming and everything. I do not have much time to write, but I have started at the suggestion of Ken Burns, script writer, Jeff. Cannot think of his last name.
SM (00:39:35):
He was in Philadelphia last week, Ken Burns.
SW (00:39:39):
And his script writer. I wrote the faculty guide, Not for Ourselves Alone, you know the story of Stanton and Anthony and I was in that film and... Is it Jeff Warren, who writes all Ken's scripts, he suggested, well, at the opening, at the grand opening of the house of the film at the Waldorf Historia, I sat with the folks from Florentine Films because I had gotten to know him when I did the faculty guide. And Jeff said, I sat by him and he was kind of a quiet guy, and he said, I am sorry we did not include more about Gage in the film. And I said, yeah, I wish you would have. And he said, well, not having a biography was the problem. And I said, well, now the problem is that with Stanton and Anthony becoming one word with this film and becoming perceived as the leaders of the movement and you do not bring a third one in. If I write the biography, she is going to be this non-sequitur out here and it is going to be, oh, that is really interesting. Now let us get back to the real story. He said, do a triple biography. So I have got about a half a book written just from their childhood, looking at the differences between these three women.
SM (00:41:11):
This leads into a question on the tape. I will turn it over here in a second. But the question of movements that that is another quality, but what I consider to be a strength of the (19)60s generation is the involvement in many movements and the creation of some of the movements. Of course, the Civil Rights Movement was already ongoing. And then of course the Women's Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, the Chicana Movement, Native American Movement, the Environmental Movement, they all kind of looked, and the Women's Movement. They all kind of looked to the Civil Rights Movement as an example and a role model.
SW (00:41:48):
That was the only one I really wanted to get because...
SM (00:41:51):
On the movements, a lot of these movements came about women, one of the big sensitive issues in the civil rights movement, and I know this from reading a lot about Dr. King, was the sexism within the movements and African-American leaders at that time. But even scholars have come to our campus have talked about it. It is a very sensitive issue. And obviously in the anti-war movement is the same way that women were oftentimes treated as second class citizens. There were the Dorothy Heights of the world. There were people like that that were a little different than a lot of them. But so those two particular movements kind of looked at women's secondary roles and I think away a lot of students of the (19)60s or people that studied it, looked at, well, the women's movement came about as a result of the bad treatment they received in the anti-war movement. So they went off and created the women's movement on their own. Could you correct that myth? Because there is a lot of perceptions out there that since women were not treated equally in those two movements, they had to create their own movement. And then looking at all these movements, because Native American Movement was very important, [inaudible], we have had several scholars on our campus talking about that particular movement. Certainly Ward Churchill's been a controversial figure with things he has written. But even the Native American, the Chicano movement and the Gay and Lesbian movement, and of course the Environmental Movement and Earth Day, he said, what is the truth in terms of what I just mentioned about the break and the creation, that was the greatest impetus for the movement was the way they were treated in civil rights and the anti-war movement. And where is the link between women and boomer women in particular, in all these other movements? Were they male dominant in the Native American movement, in the environmental movement? I know you think of Gaylord Nelson, who I interviewed for this project and Dennis Hayes, but I do not see any women that were in the organizing group. And I see Russell Means I see these male names coming out in just about all the movements. And just your thoughts on...
SW (00:44:06):
I think there is so many different paths to so many different directions to come at to begin to look at what is going on in the center of that question. So let me just come at it from a couple different ways. One, the 19th century movement came about because women were excluded from the world Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 in London. That is the simple answer. And the simple answer is that the same thing happened in the 19th, in the 20th century. Women were, as you said, second class citizens in the civil rights movement. And there is some truth in that. That is the simplest level of explanation. But I think beyond that, that once you get a sense of liberation, once you get out of the box and you start seeing this is what it would feel like to be free, you realize that you are not free. And so I think it was not just male, female, the race dynamic entered in each of those movements in the Women's Rights Movement, the Gay and Lesbian movement, while gender entered into all the ethnic movements. The contradictions begin to become apparent once you are in motion. If you are in stasis, if you are just sitting tight, if nothing is going on like the (19)50s when there was essentially not a strong movement of change, those contradictions are not as apparent. But once you are in motion, and the truth for me personally, from that comes when my daughter that I just got off the phone with Beth, was at a women's rights meeting with me, women's liberation meeting in (19)69 probably. And we were talking about what do we need on campus? What do we want on campus? Well, we should get a childcare center. Well, how are we going to do that? Well, let us get kids to come in and take them into the administration building and the administrators will then see the need for it. And well, not too many of us have kids. How are we going to get kids? Well, let us rent them, let us see if we would rent kids. And everybody is laughing. Beth comes up to me and says, I want to talk to you.
SM (00:46:40):
Okay, there you go.
SW (00:46:47):
So Beth comes up to, and there is like tears in her eyes and she says, I want to talk to you. And I said, sure, honey, what do you want? She said, no, and this was a child that I did not know, and there was a change in her. We went outside and she said, you are talking all the time about women being liberated from men. You are talking about women being, I cannot remember her exact language, respect and being their own people. And now you are talking about renting kids. If you are going to talk about renting kids, I am no longer part of women's liberation. And I tried to comfort her. She said, no, it is like you got to listen to me. And that was the start of my kids forming a children's liberation group in Sacramento. And they lectured, they came up with a bill of rights of children. We formed an alternative school, the Sunshine Children's Collective, and the children were involved in the decision-making process. We would be in a meeting altogether and the kids would say, kids caucus. And they would go outside and go gather themselves and come back in and say, the children demand that. And they would say, you are treating us in this way and we do not like this. This is what we want to have happen. And that changed the way that I did, how I raised them, everything that happened with them, we ended up dividing our money each month after the bills were made and they made their own decisions about their own money. And then it is like once you get the concept of liberation, you immediately apply it to your own life. And I think that is the deeper truth that happened with each of these. And the wonder, and I think the strength of it was that I do not think that was an uncomfortable or an unfortunate or a problematic part of the movement at all. I think that was the richest part of the movement and continues to be. Where we in the woman's movement are constantly looking at our racism. And it becomes a working principle. Is racism at the heart of the woman's movement in the 19th century? By 1890, it was, and that is a story we tell at the Gage house that is not told elsewhere. The racism of the conservative women was allowed into the movement, and it was allowed to reign. And so in those parades in the teens, 1912, 1913, the Negro women are marching at the back of the parade if they are allowed in at all. And the white women are in front wearing white. I will never appear in white in any sort of reenactment or anything because it is an absolute call to white supremacy. And the movement was making the argument give women the right to vote because white women outnumbered Negroes and immigrants and women's suffrage is a way to maintain white, native foreign supremacy. Now, that is a truth that has to be faced head on. The racism and movement in the (19)60s needs to be faced head on and acknowledged and that is how you work through it. And my work became, in the (19)80s and especially in the (19)90s, I started doing a lot of work with Native American folks, just being friends and figuring out, ended up moving back to South Dakota for a time, take care of my dad after my mom died and did workshops on racism and cultural awareness with Lakota friends. And that has been a real training ground for me, recognizing the depth of my own racism. And for me now, it is like become a recovering alcoholic. I negotiate my racism day to day, but I wear it out there. It is not like I am not racist. Yeah, I am racist. I live in a racist culture. So denial is a way of avoiding it. And I think we did a lot of denying in the movement. The men did a lot of denying of sexism. White women did a lot of denying of racism. White men did a lot of denying of everything. And I think that the power structures, once we began to understand this is all about who has the power, and of course men are going to be sexist unless they are fighting it. And of course white women are going to be racist unless we own it, acknowledge it, and deliberately work against it. And I think that was the strength, was the confronting of all of our prejudices that were built on systems of power. And not just prejudice, but the power to maintain those. That is what racism is. It is not just prejudice, it is the power system. And so examining those power dynamics and I think realizing they have to be destroyed. And ultimately you have to remove power as a concept.
SM (00:52:16):
I think what you are saying, you remember Dr. King gave that speech on Vietnam. He was criticized in the African American community, but he saw the whiter picture. He saw all colors yellow over in Vietnam and black here in the United States. And so that I can remember the movement, the anti-war movement in the late (19)60s. And I think Kent State is the epitome of it in terms of that African-American students did not want to be seen or had their picture taken at that particular protest. And I think it was mostly it was all white students. And there were very few African-Americans at that particular time. They were separating from the anti-war movement and they were going strictly toward the civil rights movement and toward issues of racism whereas the white steels were continuing to be involved in the anti-war movement. So there was a big break at that time too. And the historic moments like Stokely Carmichael standing next to Martin Luther King, your time has passed. And the debate between Byard Rustin and Malcolm X, which was another one, your time has passed by Rustin, who was from Westchester, we had a national conference with him. He was one of those rare individuals that put white women in positions of responsibility in the march on Washington. Because Rochelle Horowitz, another great female leader, was a young, early twenties person who was in charge of all the buses coming in. And he was not very good at giving direction, but he had inherent faith in young people. And he went to President Kennedy, and I think it was President Kennedy asked Byard Rustin, who was in charge of all of the buses and everything? Oh, Rochelle Horowitz. He had never heard of her, but he was proud of her because she was given a heavy responsibility. So you can make a very relevant point here. What question that comes up that is a very important part of the interview process and that is this healing. Now, I want to read this to you. I have to read this to make sure I do not miss any point here. I want to preface this by saying several years back I took a group of students to visit Senator Edmond Muskey down in Washington. This is about a year and a half before he passed away. And he had just gotten out of the hospital. He was not feeling well. He had seen the Ken Burns series and he talked about it during that meeting. And we were able to get these meetings with the former senator because I knew Gaylord Nelson and Gaylord helped us meet nine senators. I am a big fan of Gaylord Nelson, former senator from Wisconsin. But here is the question, do you feel boomers are still having problems from healing from the divisions that tore this nation apart in their youth. Divisions between black and white. Divisions between those who support authority and those who criticize it, division between those who supported the troops and those who did not. What role has the wall played in healing the divisions, not only within the veteran population, but in the nation as a whole? Do you feel that the bloomer 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 this statement "time heals all wounds" the truth. And I just want to say that I have asked this to everybody, and I have had unbelievable responses to this, but I will mention what Gaylord Nelson said to me. He said, people do not walk around Washington DC on their sleeve that they have not healed. But in terms of the body politic, it changed Washington and the United States forever. That is the way he responded to it. But just your thoughts on the healing. Is there an issue still in this country on this issue? And should we care about people going to their graves with still issues?
SW (00:56:18):
I think that I cannot speak for what everybody is experiencing. I can speak for what I am experiencing and what I have experienced. The healing for me has been going through those contradictions. That has been the healing process. The healing process is the process of negotiating, how do I continue to fight sexism without always taking a confrontational stand as the only mechanism? And I employ a whole arsenal now, humor from native women. I have really learned to, it is like, you just got to tease these guys. It is like if you come from a position of power as native women do a position of real authority, you just kind of tease them a little bit. And I have watched native women bring down, I will not even name names of men, but just they know these women are in charge and all it takes a little bit of teasing and boom. There. So that is one tactic that I have learned. But I think that the healing of, it is to assume that it was healthy before. It is to assume that it was and something happened that now has to be healed. Well, it was really unhealthy. The healing needed to happen out of the (19)50s. It needed to happen out of that false unity and the breaking of that. And did we do it perfectly? God no, we broke each other's hearts. We hurt each other terribly. Those are some of the scars that we all carry. But what did you do past that point? We did not know because we did not know better. We have better skills now. People have better skills. They work with things better. Native Americans have always been able to really deal with contradictions in very respectful ways, in my experience. Just the people that I have known, the communities that I have been part of or been allowed to participate in, I should say. I have really learned other ways of dealing with difference that are not [inaudible], are not like the confrontational politics. That was what we were fed. That is what we learned. That is the only way we knew to deal with difference. That is not the only way to deal with difference. And that is really a very patriarchal way to deal with difference. There are a lot more effective ways and hearing each other, we are doing dialogue in the Gage home. And that is where you sit down with people you really disagree with and you hear what is going on with them. And you make a commitment that you are going to listen and that person makes a commitment. They are going to listen to you and you are going to hear each other. That is where healing happens. You do not necessarily come out agreeing, but you come out understanding and remembering the humanity of each other. And so I think that the healing is the process. The healing is the, we are healing not from the (19)60s. We are healing from the (19)50s. We are healing from the healthy breaking of the idea that we are all one and that everybody is equal and everybody is not equal. There is no level playing field. We have got to create a level playing field. And that means going through culturally and personally our own prejudices and the desire to hold onto the power that we have that those prejudices support.
SM (01:00:22):
We all know about the generation gap between the (19)60s and the World War II generation because lot has been written on it. I would like your thoughts on it, but the key thing I want to ask is, and I have asked this too, is what was it about the (19)50s, say you are a white... I grew up in Cortland, New York as a little boy. I grew up in Cortland through sixth grade and moved down toward Binghamton. And I did not see an African-American in any of the Parker schools where I went to school. And so when I think of the (19)50s though, I still think of very good times. My parents were always there. We had great Christmases, Thanksgiving, birthdays, PTA, everybody, even though we had the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation that did not seem to affect any of the kids that I remember. We played baseball. Everything was hunky dory, everything felt great. We had black and white TV, we had the Mickey Mouse Club. We grew up with Howdy Doody. We saw the first Cowboys and Indians or everything we were raised on. Of course, the Indians from Penn, you know, read later on. They were always the bad guy. And I saw Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, oh, Hop Along Cassidy, all the things that the kids in the (19)50s grew up with. And the question I have always asked myself is if it was such a great, when parents tried to give everything to their kids, and we were not talking about every ethnic group here now, because in the African American community, obviously it was different in some communities, but it seemed to be in all these issues of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation, you were cognizant of McCarthy. Some of the bad things even happened in Washington as a little kid. Why did this young people rebel in the (19)60s? Because in their elementary school years, right up to about 1960 is when they were first going to seventh grade, the front edge boomers, why did they, all of a sudden, why did these things rebel? Why are they rebelling against their parents who tried to give them so much? And I only reflect upon it because I was pretty, must be pretty naive and pretty ignorant. And I think a lot of people were, because I never put two and two together as a little boy until I started getting seventh, eighth and ninth grade. And I started putting two and two and together on a lot of issues that were happening in the world. But what was it about those (19)50s that was showed really no sign that these kids were going to be rebellious?
SW (01:03:07):
I think you experienced it from the privileged position of a white male in a racially segregated community where you did not hear your mother's frustration, maybe, at not being able to fulfill herself. My mother was a very frustrated woman. My father was the patriarch of the family, and that was the way it was supposed to be. My mother should have been out there doing all kinds of things in the world, and instead she was on Valium. How many women during the (19)50s were on Valium? The privilege that we experienced, I grew up in a middle class family, had everything I wanted. Totally dysfunctional family, but everything was provided for, and my brother grew up in the sort of family that you grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky dory, it was...
SW (01:04:03):
...You grew up in. My brother grew up, it was hunky-dory. It was joyful. It was fun. It was playing out here, doing all this. That is the white male experience of the (19)50s. My sister and I experienced a totally different childhood in the (19)50s. And I think that the discontent that grew, what you are describing was not a universal experience. That was a white male middle class experience. And you were kept in a privileged position where you did not have to hear other voices. My brother had no idea my mother was a despondent, frustrated, desperate woman. He did not know that. He totally did not. He was totally protected from that knowledge. My sister and I experienced it daily. I think that the 50s, for a certain group... And it was not that it was either great or it was awful, but I think that the contradictions were there of the unhappiness, the injustice, the things that were not right. I was watching for communist airplanes flying over Aberdeen, South Dakota. The Girl Scouts had duty up on the top of the Sherman Hotel, which was the tallest building in town, which was five stories. And when I screwed around and was not watching this skies carefully at night was certain that I was going to be responsible for the destruction of the United States because I failed to see that communist aircraft coming through. We did the duck and cover. We did the... And all that is funny now, but there was an earnestness about it. It was like we were the greatest country in the world. I did not know until I was in high school that there were concentration camps for Japanese in this country. Once you start getting the information, once you start knowing about the McCarthy era... I had nightmares in my childhood, and the nightmare was that my father was being chased by communists. And then it was a recurring nightmare and there was one that was even worse. It was the same nightmare, but at the end, my father turned around smiling and joined the communists/ and years of therapy, I could never figure out what was going on with this. But you know what it was? Once I figured out, my parents were friends with Karl Mundt, who was Senator McCarthy's right hand man. And my dad, as a Republican banker was saying, "Well, communism is just another economic system and it is one that makes most sense in developing countries". And my mother would weep in whale and say, "Fred, do not let anybody hear you say that. You are going to go to prison." There was a hell of a lot of shit going on in the (19)50s. And my brother was oblivious to it. My brother continues to. And my brother never became part of any movement. He went on to become a Republican banker himself. And I love him, I adore him, and he is very generous spirited, but he took a different path because he had a different childhood. My sister and I, in varying degrees have, become involved in social justice movements. And I was the one in the family who went the furthest out, and I think it was because I was the most discontent. And then tried to do a marriage in a traditional way, and that did not work.
SM (01:08:12):
Well as a kid, my dad used to win trips to Florida because he worked for Prudential. And I can remember something was not right, because all of a sudden as we drove to Florida, I saw all this poverty in the south. Well, that was a shocker to me. And since I was a history kid from the beginning, I started putting two and two together and I did it for the rest of my life.
SW (01:08:34):
So you can [inaudible] those kind of... For me, being in the fifth grade and traveling south, and there were drinking fountains with colored water in them. I go, "Whoa, that is so cool. I am want to drink colored water." So I went up to the drinking fountain and the water was not colored. And that was when I learned that there were different drinking fountains for... I was like, "Come on, what is this?" So yeah, those kind of experiences of seeing...
SM (01:09:09):
Do you think the beats had anything to do, in terms of a lot of the boomers, were they cognizant of this-
SW (01:09:17):
I sure was.
SM (01:09:18):
...Beats and [inaudible]
SW (01:09:19):
I mean, I cannot talk about Boomers in that respect, but I can talk about beats.
SM (01:09:23):
How important were the beats in the (19)50s?
SW (01:09:25):
Here I am in Aberdeen, South Dakota in high school reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the school grounds to my friends dressed in... I had blonde black stockings and I got a false long braid to put on my blonde hair. And I got kicked out of school. I am reading... You know Ferlinghetti.
SM (01:09:53):
Oh, yeah. He still runs the bookstore out there.
SW (01:09:53):
Yeah, City Lights. And I am reading this really, really wonderful poetry about "To taste still warm upon the ground, the spilled sperm seed". And what are they going to do with me? I am the daughter of the banker in town. So they sent me home because of the false ponytail, because of the false braid. What could they bust me on? But my brother introduced me to the Beat Poets, and I am reading Ginsburg, I am reading Ferlinghetti. I was really influenced by the Beats, by the Beat Generation and by their writing. I longed to go to San Francisco.
SM (01:10:40):
Yeah, he is still out there. I think he is 92 years old now.
SW (01:10:43):
Is he really?
SM (01:10:44):
He still runs the bookstore. It is amazing.
SW (01:10:47):
Is that true?
SM (01:10:48):
Yeah, he is-
SW (01:10:48):
I have got to take my grandson there, my younger grandson, because he is doing a report right now on beat.
SM (01:10:54):
Well go into the computer and hit City Lights Bookstore and you will see it. I knew Ferlinghetti was still alive, but I did not know he was still connected to the store. He is.
SW (01:11:07):
I am taking my grandson.
SM (01:11:09):
And Pete Seeger is 91, and they see these great people that are...
SW (01:11:15):
And still going.
SM (01:11:16):
Oh yeah, Pete's-
SW (01:11:17):
The Ruth Putter Welcome Center here has named for a woman, who I am not going to tell you her exact age because she does not come out with it, but she is in Pete Seeger's sort of generation. She is a social justice activist and she funded the building of that, and she has been a social justice activist her whole life. And she is now photographing it because she is a photographer. And so when the house opens, there will be a Ruth Putter exhibit of the creation of the Ruth Putter Welcome Center. Of course you know what she is photographing: the workers. The workers in that house, I have been meeting with them, take stuff for them to eat and drink since they started the work. And do you know about Gage and do you know about this? They are now Gage scholars.
SM (01:12:06):
Are you going to have a big opening here?
SW (01:12:08):
Yeah. October 8th through 10th, the weekend.
SM (01:12:11):
Ah, I will come.
SW (01:12:11):
Oh, wonderful.
SM (01:12:12):
I will come.
SW (01:12:12):
That will be wonderful.
SM (01:12:13):
And I will ask my niece and her husband to come, and I will say hi to you and I will be here.
SW (01:12:18):
And you know who the featured guests are going to be?
SM (01:12:20):
Who?
SW (01:12:20):
The workers.
SM (01:12:22):
They should be.
SW (01:12:22):
So that is where... So is the (19)60s dead? Do people from the 60s still carry a consciousness? In everything we do.
SM (01:12:32):
Have they done a good job with their kids and grandkids in terms of sharing? Obviously you have, so you-
SW (01:12:40):
You know what-
SM (01:12:41):
But do you think that as a generation, they have done a good job of educating their kids and now their grandchildren?
SW (01:12:47):
You are going to be the answer to that. When you interview 120 people, you are going to have a better sense of it. Because who knows this? You will find this out through asking us, and I will tell you my story, which is all I can tell you. My Christmas present I already got for... One of the Christmas presents for my 16-year-old grandson, the one I am going to take to City Lights, is a subscription to Z Magazine. That is what he wanted.
SM (01:13:14):
Howard Zen is in there a lot.
SW (01:13:18):
Yeah. And I am going [inaudible] he has got a teacher that is turning him onto this. I rented through Netflix, the last film I saw was Flow about the destruction of water and the commercialization of water because my grandson told me to watch that film. So now he and I will have a conversation about that. It is my grandson, Michael, is the one who I pass all this on to. My granddaughter, Alex, fiercely independent young woman. My daughter Beth has established her own nonprofit, does animal rescue in California and large animal rescue, horses, saves the lives of horses. And then does programs with kids at risk, autistic kids, brings them together. Also, the sheriff's department keeps their horses there. So she does these programs that bring together the kids that are getting arrested with the cops, working together with the horses and brings together all kinds of class, race, gender, diversity, differently abled. It is like, here is the vision of the world. And this is the girl who said, "I am never going to be like my mother."
SM (01:14:57):
I will let you get your [inaudible] or something.
SW (01:15:01):
So my daughter, she went through this whole period where she said, "I am never going to be like my mother". The (19)60s were really hard on her. She was scared through a lot of it with the kind of pressure we were under. My son... And that way the kids would have totally different experiences, the (19)60s were the best time in my son's life. So what traumatized my daughter empowered my son, and he went on to, for a number of years, had a coffee house because he loved going to the coffee house in the (19)60s. So in the (19)80s he has a coffee house where he created community in the way that the coffee houses in the (19)60s did.
SM (01:16:00):
Now I am going to cough. I got a cough too.
SW (01:16:02):
The cough is catching.
SM (01:16:04):
Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you in talking about in influence and qualities that parents pass on to kids is the issue of looking back at the Boomer generation again, I can remember when I was in college in the Psych 101 class and the psychology professor saying to our class, "Let us talk about the issue of trust today". And he would ask the question how important we felt trust was in our lives. Then he said basically, if you cannot trust others, then you will not be a success in life. Trust is an important quality. But then you look at the Boomers because a lot of the Boomers might be defined as a very distrustful generation because of the lies that were told to them by leaders over time. And the lies being obviously Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which was a lie. The lies of the amount of people that were dying over there. McNamara and the lies that he told. Obviously Watergate and the experiences of Richard Nixon. And then even... And boomers were aware of this too, even though it might have been in the back of their minds, in the late (19)50s, they knew President Eisenhower lied to them because of the U2 incident. It was an on TV... I remember seeing it coming home from school, saying that Gary Powers said... No-no-no-no-no, he was not spying, so Ike lied. And I know Ike wrote later on that he regretted doing that, but still he lied. And then you get a whole lot of others. So one of the qualities is that that boomers did not trust anybody in positions of leadership, that is whether they be a minister, a rabbi, a president of a university, a corporate leader, a politician or anybody in their... They did not trust any of them. And I knew a lot of the college administrators were not trusted. [inaudible] whether this lack of trust is a real negative on a generation. And whether you even say, as some people say, "Well only 15 percent of the activists were activists," but that was a pretty much of a quality that maybe even a 100 percent had toward people and responsibility. Do you think this quality can be defined as part of the generation and is not really as negative as that psych professor said?
SW (01:18:27):
I think it goes both ways. I think that the healthy distrust of authority really democratized the country tremendously, because what it ended was, "Trust me, I know more than you do," from father to priest to minister to president to whatever. No, I am not going to trust you. You give me the information that I am going to make the decision. Matilda Johnson said the greatest lesson of her life was her father's teaching her to think for herself. And then what he did was he empowered her to be able to act on that. She confronted authority. She spoke truth to authority from the time she was a child. And I think that what we [inaudible] later in the (19)80s or (19)90s is speaking truth to authority, that was the democratizing of America for the first time, beginning to happen in the (19)60s. And it was because of that failure to accept on face value, "Just trust me". No, I will not trust you. And that was the healthiest thing that ever happened, that distrust. But it was accompanied by the creation of trust among each other. We could not have done what we did. You cannot be in a demonstration where... I remember the... What did they call it? The squad, it was in San Francisco. And they would bring in the attack squad from Alameda County, and these were mean son of a guns. And they were in full riot gear. You are not going to be walking up to those folks or you are not going to be walking and challenging that authority unless you can trust every single person that you are in that demonstration with.
SM (01:20:35):
You are right.
SW (01:20:36):
So the creation of trust, you cannot put yourself on the line doing acts that the government is going to be coming after you for doing unless you have some level of trust. And that is why the government came in and created the distrust among ourselves, sent out those lying letters about this person doing this and this person doing this. My FBI file, there is tons of it that I cannot read. It is just page after page blacked out. Why did they do that? Because there was a police informer working with us. They tried to destabilize what we were doing. They were pretty successful in it in a lot of ways. But trust was created in a new way in community at the same time that trust in authority was being destroyed, and I think the combination of that was incredibly healthy.
SM (01:21:28):
What do you think was the watershed moment when the (19)60s began and what was the watershed moment when it ended?
SW (01:21:38):
I do not have an idea about that. And I wonder if it is not individual for different people and entering at different moments. For me, the moment was when my kids were sick, and there had been a number of things leading up to this, a number of experiences. But I was divorced, I was a single mom raising these two little kids and they got sick. I went, took them to the doctor. I had been up a couple nights, not sleeping much, going to school and working, and I was really tired. Took the kids to the doctor, got antibiotics, and they were finally sleeping. And I turned on the news and here was that mother in North Vietnam with her napalm baby. And it was-
SM (01:22:33):
Kim Phúc.
SW (01:22:34):
...The floodgate just opened. And it was like, I can take care of my children and they are going to be well, her child is going to die and I am the reason. My government is doing that. And I joined Another Mother for Peace, and that was my first movement into movement. I think each one of us may have our own personal moments. Was there a catalyzing event for everybody? That I do not know. I think it was more people entering at different moments. And once you entered, do you go to the point of origin? Do you go to the headwaters of it? I do not know. But once I entered, I was in flow. There was a movement, there was a river that I joined. And I think the movement quality of it, it was not individual, even though each of us joined at individual moments and came in.
SM (01:23:39):
You may have the same response to this question, but if I were to have in an auditorium 500 people from all over the country, male, female, all backgrounds, you name it, who were boomers, particularly those first 10 years of the boomer generation, and I were to ask them, what was the event that had the greatest impact on your life, what do you think the majority of them would say?
SW (01:24:06):
Cambodia, Kent State. The burning of the Bank of America in Santa Barbara. The Civil Rights arrests. The dogs going after the civil rights demonstrators. The murder of the three. I do not know. A lot of different catalyzing events. Cambodia, Kent State was a watershed. I do not know that it was "the" watershed, and I do not know if there was a watershed, but I would guess that you would get different answers like that.
SM (01:24:48):
Yeah, some people have said, well, the (19)60s began when John Kennedy was assassinated and it ended when Kent State happened because we knew it was ending. I had all kinds of responses to it. To me... And this is not about me, so this is the only time you are going to hear me. For me, the (19)60s ended in 1973 when the streaking happened on college campuses and I knew that something was totally different. Streaking was now the activity of college students.
SW (01:25:22):
There were things like when fashion designers started creating jeans and what had been secondhand store clothing became the designer label. When the tour buses started going through the Haight-Ashbury and hippie became a term. When the woman's movement, a lot of work has been done on when did radical feminism sort of end as a dynamic process or transform itself? And (19)73 is the date that is often used. That is why the Veteran Feminists of American voted that date.
SM (01:26:06):
That is interesting.
SW (01:26:07):
But see, for me, the (19)60s never ended. The (19)60s continue. The (19)60s are the center of my life. The (19)60s are... I saw that door open. I saw that open a crack. I looked inside, I lived in it temporarily, and I would never be satisfied until I could live in that world full time, and I will go to my grave working to create that world that we saw was possible in the (19)60s. And I still believe it is possible. If we can save the planet, if we can turn things around, that is the world we are going to create.
SM (01:26:50):
One other question following up, why did the Vietnam War end?
SW (01:26:54):
We won it. We won the Vietnam War. The people of the United States and the people of Vietnam came together and forced the United States government to its knees and we had the victory.
SM (01:27:12):
How important were college students in that? We saw protests really strong, (19)67, (19)68, (19)69.
SW (01:27:18):
Critically important. The transforming moment, the moment when I think the change happened was when we started, instead " Bring the troops home now," which is stupid. It just "Turn it into an air war". That was a dumb, dead end strategy. But when we started support the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Vietnam, that was when we began to win the war, the anti-war movement. And we won that war. And I hate the history that says anything different. The people of the United States won the war against the United States government and we stopped that war. Our war was never against the Vietnamese. Joining together with the people of Vietnam, we got the United States government to agree to the Seven Point Peace Plan of the Provisional Revolutionary Government, and that was an extraordinary win. And if we taught history with that, what do you think could be happening with Afghanistan right now? If all those students that you have taught, that I have taught, if every student that was taught understood that the United States government was defeated by its own people and brought to its knees, we claimed our government, that was the victory in Vietnam.
SM (01:28:54):
How do you think Vietnam vets would feel about that though? Because a lot of Vietnam vets came back from Vietnam feeling that they were not treated right and they were not welcomed home. And this big controversy within the community, the anti-war movement in fact, that some people say it was never about the troops, it was always about the politicians. But then some vets feel that we should have gone all out and won that war, and the people back home were one of the reasons why we gave ammunition to the enemy, so to speak, to continue the war.
SW (01:29:30):
I distributed up against the Bulkhead, which was an anti-war paper that was done for soldiers. That stupid moment of believing that we were fighting the soldiers and that they were the enemy disappeared really quickly and was replaced by anti-war coffee houses for so soldiers. How come so many refused to? Why were there so many [inaudible] in Vietnam? Why were there... I worked with Vietnam Veterans Against The War. My idea was that if Vietnam Veterans Against The War and the women's movement came together in a coalition, we were an incredibly powerful group. And we were in Sacramento, and we did come together, and we sponsored a piece together and we worked together and we were allies, and we supported them and they supported us and worked with their sexism, dealt with their sexism. It was not perfect, but it was powerful. And the Winter Soldier investigation and those guys throwing their medals over the... This is a bronze, this is a gold star, and you can take them back because I never should have done what I did. That anti-war movement, the Vietnam Veterans Against The War still exist.
SM (01:30:51):
Yeah, that was Bobby Mueller. Do you know Bobby? Have you met him?
SW (01:30:55):
No.
SM (01:30:56):
And Ron Kovic. They were two of the three leaders of the movement.
SW (01:31:00):
They were. But it was a decentralized movement, too. And it was really strong in different parts of the country. It was very strong in Sacramento.
SM (01:31:09):
Just your thoughts on the music of the era, how important was music in the anti-war, and what were students and what were young people reading in the (19)60s, in the (19)70s? What were the books? What were the people reading? So it is a two-part question: the music and its importance within the movements, all the movements, and what were people reading, the books?
SW (01:31:33):
Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone got me out of my marriage. That was my support system. "Once upon a time, you dress so fine. Threw the bums a dime in your prime, did not you?" That was my song. This is the song about white, middle class married woman leaving her life behind in a moment when getting a divorce was a travesty in my family and among everybody I knew. Dylan was my support system. Well, how many other people was he... If he could reach me, good Jesus, who did he not reach? I took my grandson to a Dylan concert when he was five, and I had him on my shoulders and I said, "You will grow up knowing that you saw Bob Dylan when you were small enough to be on your grandma's shoulders". For his birthday last year, I gave him a framed flyer that I had saved from the first anti-war demonstration that I took him to, and I had written on it "Michael's first". He was in a stroller. But the music was an absolutely critical part and it is a critical part of what we share. I share the music of the (19)60s with my grandkids. They play me their music, but we are listening to Dylan, we are listening to Leonard Cohen, we are listening to The Doors, we are listening to... That music was absolutely essential. It was an absolutely essential part. And then when the Woman's Movement created its own music, Holly Near, she is the-
SM (01:33:23):
Yeah, she is great.
SW (01:33:24):
...Major, major figure in the creation of that.
SM (01:33:32):
Testing, one, two, testing. The first question on the second part of the interview here is about the issue of trust. A lot of the boomers did not trust anybody in positions of responsibility when they were young. And I think a lot of that is carried into their adulthood. A lot of them saw presidents and other people who they felt lied to them. And of course they were part of a generation that did not seem to trust anybody of positions of responsibility, whether it is a college administrator, a politician, a corporate leader, even priest, rabbis and ministers. Your thoughts on this issue of trust and whether this is a concern within the generation, that they were a very non-trusting generation and this carried on into their adulthood and how they raised their kids.
SW (01:34:35):
I think trust is earned. And I think I grew up in a generation in which there were very few people in positions of power who earned any trust or who earned a great deal of trust. And I think that the absence of trust was, there was a manifestation of the hell of the generation that we were just simply not taking the crap anymore. And when things happened like the Pentagon Papers, that became an official then who we trusted because this was somebody who was telling the truth. And I think the trust that was lost was because we were not being told the truth. And because there was an authoritarian, leave it to father, father knows best mold that we were breaking out of. And father does not always know best, and what we said was, "Father president, you do not know best about Vietnam". And I think that distrust continues. I will give you a manifestation for me of the continuation of the distrust. Medical profession-
SW (01:36:02):
...trust. Medical profession, 100 years ago, their best treatment was giving people mercury, and bleeding them, and giving them purgatives, laxatives, which killed people. And in my time, when I gave birth to my children in the (19)60s, the medical profession's best judgment was, "We will give you x-rays to see how your baby is situated if everything is okay. And we will put you on diet pills because we do not want you to gain more than 20 pounds." Well, they gave kids leukemia with the x-rays in utero. And babies, we were told by old wives tales, "Should be fat, they will be healthier. Well guess what? Old wives tales, "Should be fat. They will be healthier." Well, guess what? Old wives tales, were better knowledge than the medical profession at the time. So for me, do I trust sonograms now? Hell, no. I am not going to trust those people that have a long history of being wrong. And so my relationship with Western medicine is a very touch and go one. There is times when I will step into it and times I will step out of it. And that is just one example of the president who, when George Bush takes us to war in Iraq, I think that the Boomers had enough knowledge of the untruth of the Gulf of Tonkin to know not to trust implicitly that there really was a reason to go to war. And we were right. There was not. It was based on a lie like the Gulf of Tonkin was. So I think that we are holding out for truth. And when truth emerges, we trust it. And I think that is the hope with Obama is that this is a man who may speak truth. We will withhold judgment a little bit. We will watch, we will make sure, we will see. But there is a sense that I have that this is a man who largely is a truth teller, and that is probably the first truth telling president that I have experienced.
SM (01:39:06):
Why do you think the Vietnam War ended?
SW (01:39:10):
We ended it. I think I told you in the last interview.
SM (01:39:12):
Okay.
SW (01:39:18):
We won. When the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, the NFL ... LF. God, do I still remember? I think so. Of Vietnam and the anti-war movement in the United States joined forces, we brought down the government of the United States. We stopped the war.
SM (01:39:44):
Is there any-
SW (01:39:45):
And we got the government of the United States to agree to, the sixth point, I think was first and then nine points peace plan of the PRG.
SM (01:39:59):
Is there, in your lifetime, particularly when you were young, in the (19)60s and the (19)70s, was there a speaker you saw at a college campus or an entertainment event that had really great impact on you?
SW (01:40:14):
Tons of them.
SM (01:40:16):
Could you describe some of them or list them?
SW (01:40:20):
Going to the Fillmore in San Francisco, and watching Grace Slick spell out, "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies, do not you want somebody to love?" Watching the last performance of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ... Buffalo Springfield, not Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, when they were Buffalo Springfield. Their last performance as that group. Listening to Dylan transformed my life, Like a Rolling Stone. When I left the middle-class marriage, it was with the support of Bob Dylan singing Like a Rolling Stone.
SM (01:41:08):
Right.
SW (01:41:09):
Became my anthem, like it was for millions of my generation and political people. I was at California State University, Sacramento, and I was on the program committee, and also employed in that office, and I arranged for Tom Hayden to come and speak when he was part of the Chicago 8. And the president of the college canceled the speech because he said to me, when he called me privately into his office, "Free speech is too important to allow it to be used." Or, "Sometimes you have to cancel it to protect it." I think was his line, Otto Butz, President Otto Butz.
SM (01:42:04):
Oh my God.
SW (01:42:05):
"So I am going to have to cancel this, speech, Sally, and I am sure you will understand." Well, it was right after Cambodia and Kent State and we were living on campus. We would set up a Strike City on the campus. And I went back to Strike City and said, "What are we going to do?" Within an hour, we had plastered all over campus that Tom Hayden was scheduled to speak, the time, and we just went ahead. And within two hours we had silk screen posters all over the city of Sacramento, which forced the president to publicly cancel the speech, which then brought in the ACLU, which filed a restraining order against the president of the campus or the chancellor of the state college system, and went into court that morning, and we won-
SM (01:43:00):
Wow.
SW (01:43:01):
...inside, on campus.
SM (01:43:03):
Wow. That is activism.
SW (01:43:07):
Was for a few, but I could go on and on, and Malcolm X.
SM (01:43:13):
Yeah. Since you had that experience, did you have some experience with some other speakers when you were a student?
SW (01:43:21):
Oh, yeah. We brought Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, Malcolm X, I never heard speak in person. Ti-Grace Atkinson, who was one of the most brilliant of the feminist theoretician, Robin Morgan, I could go on and on.
SM (01:43:41):
Okay.
SW (01:43:44):
And it was also reading things, that it was an electric time when there was a paradigm shift going on that was just unparalleled, at least in my lifetime.
SM (01:44:05):
In your very unbelievable credentials, you started the first women's studies program, according to what I have read, and of course you had the first PhD in women's studies. First off, could you describe starting that first women's studies program, where, when, and the reaction, both positive and negative, toward that experience?
SW (01:44:31):
Well, let me clarify. It was, as far as we know, the third, when the studies program in the country, I was one of the founders. None of those things were done by individuals, you know, the creation of programs, it was a movement.
SM (01:44:52):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:44:53):
And I was a part of that. And I was, I think a very strong, I do not mean to underplay my part in it, I taught the first women's studies class at California State [inaudible]. And I held the meetings that led to the creation of the women's studies program. In my role as an employee in the Honor Center, we had the very first discussion in 1969 on campus that led to the creation of the program. I taught my first class in 1970. I have been teaching women's studies for 39 years. That may be a record, but God, that said, I did play an important role. But that women's studies program grew out of these meetings that I put together on campus in the honors program. They were sponsored by the honors program. I was a work study student employed by honors. I could basically set up whatever kind of discussion events I wanted. So I did series on women's studies, or was not even women's studies. There was not such studies then, it was on women's rights, you know, on feminism.
SM (01:46:14):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:46:15):
Called it at that time, women's liberation. And so we had a series of talks about it. And whoa, oh, it was amazing. And the faculty that came and just tore us up one side and down another in terms of, "Women are not in an unequal position. Women really hold power and authority. And men are the ones who are really put upon by women." And I do not know, it was a class warfare. And so right from the beginning, you know, the opposition, just dreadful.
SM (01:47:03):
Yeah. That leads right into my, what year was that too, by the way?
SW (01:47:08):
1969 was when we held the meeting. I think (19)70 was when I taught my first women's studies class. And I think, I am pretty sure that was the first one on our campus. And that was early for women's studies classes in the country. And then I think we got the program together in about (19)71.
SM (01:47:36):
If there has been anything that has hurt the movement since the early (19)70s, what would it be?
SW (01:47:44):
There has been all kinds of things that have hurt the movement. I think the backlash was inevitable. And the backlash was predictable, although we did not know it at the time. But that was very painful. I think another very difficult thing was that we want to create a system that was not based on power over, but that was based on power with. And we did not know how to do that. And we did not know how to work with each other. We were forging relationships and building relationships at the same time that we were trying to build a movement and we had political differences, and we did not know how to deal with those in any kind of respectful way. The one model we had was confrontation politics, and we used that on each other. And that was not the most effective thing. That was injurious. We hurt each other. And I think into the (19)80s, when, was it Rush Limbaugh that created the term feminazis? The damage of that. Young women today, "No, I am not a feminist." Even older women today, "I am not a feminist," because they have that right-wing media created image of what feminist is. And then it is just the standard thing, we all know that [inaudible] said, " Well, you believe in blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And, "Of course I believe in all those." "Well, that is what feminist is." "Yeah, but I am not a feminist." The word became so-
SM (01:49:46):
Wow.
SW (01:49:47):
...[inaudible]. And that is true of many moves. And that is true of many- [inaudible]
SM (01:49:52):
How do you deal with the criticisms like, well, I know David Horowitz has written about it, but how do you respond to critics who say that, "The women's movement, like all the other movements of that era, is more about indoctrination than education. And it is part of the new left. The new left has taken over."
SW (01:50:13):
That is bullshit. I do not know. How do I respond? It is bullshit. It is reactionary bullshit. Indoctrination? I do not know. I do not like to waste my time with working against those kinds of statements. Spend all your energy matching is just, it is bullshit.
SM (01:50:47):
Who stands out as the-
SW (01:50:49):
It was not a perfect movement. I think to expect a movement to have perfection, it is a crazy expectation. And I think that to make those kind of sweeping statements, there is an arrogance to that that I just find so offensive that I do not want to be in the same room with the person that would make that kind of a quote.
SM (01:51:18):
Right.
SW (01:51:18):
So it is like you just waste your time.
SM (01:51:26):
Well, the other thing here is that, one other criticism might be, do you think that the movement's criticizing the stay-at-home moms has helped the movement in any ways? Because some moms may have wanted to go out and work, but others wanted to stay-at-home and raise the kids. And that is the mothers who were in the (19)40s, (19)50s, and early (19)60s, you know, who raised a lot of the boomers.
SW (01:51:47):
No, I think if you want the indoctrination. Indoctrination came from the way that we were depicted incorrectly in the media. There was this Shulamite Firestone wrote book in which she talked about biological and [inaudible]. I bought that book early on, that was an idea that we played with. And I think our goal was to create options for women. The media created an artificial war between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And the economy is what created, women having to go out into the workforce and not have an option. You know, it is a middle-class luxury for women today, being able to think about being a stay-at-home mom.
SM (01:52:46):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:52:52):
Most families have to have two people working. And part of the reason is because women do not get equal pay for equal work. And there is no legislation prior to this [inaudible]. And now we have respect better, but we still do not have equal pay or equal rights guaranteed. And seminars still making 78 cents on the dollar to men are making. And we are in the United States, and in economics we are beat up in every single area of work. And if people are being laid off, and, and, and, and. It is a false fight between working moms and stay-at-home moms. And there were some women in the movement who made statements about an end to motherhood, an end to the nuclear family. [inaudible] family being based on male power was one of the things that we went after, not the family unit, but the idea of the fatherhood knows best, the head of the family is going to make all the decisions, and who has the right to beat the wife into submission until she just go along with it. In the (19)60s, wife battering was not a crime. It was not punished. It was a domestic dispute and cops did not want to get in the middle of it. So it was as it should be and it was really not an option. You stayed with your husband. You know, it was your fault. Have to figure out what you should do different.
SM (01:54:57):
What-
SW (01:54:59):
So I think those are the real issues and it is a diversionary tactic to get people looking at some false issue like some division between working moms and stay-at-home moms, which only affects a wealthy, privileged part of the population, anyway, even considers staying at home. That is bogus, in my mind.
SM (01:55:17):
Who stands-
SW (01:55:17):
That is a diversion from the real issue.
SM (01:55:27):
Who stands out, especially for young Boomer women that-
SW (01:55:31):
What?
SM (01:55:33):
Who stands out as the number one role model for Boomer women and-
SW (01:55:38):
For what women?
SM (01:55:41):
Boomer.
SW (01:55:43):
Oh, Boomer.
SM (01:55:44):
Yeah, the female Boomers. So was there one person in that late (19)60s, early (19)70s, through the (19)70s, into the (19)80s that stood out more than anybody else?
SW (01:56:06):
That is an antifeminist question.
SM (01:56:06):
Oh, it is?
SW (01:56:06):
Yeah. We were creating a leaderless movement.
SM (01:56:06):
Okay.
SW (01:56:07):
And I think that we were inventing ourselves, and a movement, and what we wanted. Now, the media created spokespeople, the media created leaders, the women's movement did not.
SM (01:56:25):
Okay, well, that is important. That is a magic moment in the interview, because I just learned something, because I am really into leadership. I am always into, well, what makes a leader, and how do they evolve, and where do they come from, and all that other stuff. And can I ask one other thing, though? If it is a leaderless movement, who were some of the Boomers that may have been in their late teens and 20s that have really gone on to be outstanding leaders today?
SW (01:56:55):
I think that if you look for leaders, you miss the movement, then and now. That if you looked for an individual, you look for five outstanding people, you are going to miss that this is an entire movement. And there are some who gained more visibility for whatever reason within the movement. When we first started out in women's liberation in Sacramento, the media was always saying to us, "Who is your leader? Take us to your leader. We want to talk to whoever is in charge." And they were nuts, because we would say, "We are all in charge. You can talk to any of us, because we have to get the spokesperson. We are all spokespeople." And they demanded that we give them a spokesperson. And sometimes we could not get any media coverage if we did not. You know?
SM (01:57:52):
Mm-hmm.
SW (01:57:53):
And I think that there also, I was a radical [inaudible]. There were other tendencies to this feminism. And so you had NOW, which was liberal feminists and that was based more on the-the male model of leadership is power down. So you could come up with women who were presidents of NOW and women who were... Gloria Steinem, to me, has become a leader because... I do not even want to say leader. Nobody follows Gloria Steinem. Nobody follows anybody. But I think where Gloria Steinem has become a really important symbol of the movement, and representation of the same power of the movement, and the continuing growth of thought, she wins out. " I shall not [inaudible] in the age."
SM (01:59:05):
What-
SW (01:59:05):
She is the poster child for that. And she is willing, she is so adept at, you listen to anything she says, or you read anything that she says, and if she gets credited, she always says, "I was part of a movement."
SM (01:59:23):
Huh.
SW (01:59:25):
"I did not do this. I was part of a movement."
SM (01:59:25):
What-
SW (01:59:26):
So she never let the media- [inaudible]
SM (01:59:32):
What do you and what do members of the movement think about people like Phyllis Schlafly, and Anita Bryant, and female leaders, who may not support, conservative leaders support the movement?
SW (01:59:50):
I think every movement has people who do not identify with their class. I think Mark called it false conscious. You know.
SM (02:00:06):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:00:08):
[inaudible] part. You do not expect that everybody's going be part of what you are fighting for. I think it was Lucretia Mott who said, "The death of the slave is exemplified by how strong he holds on chains." I am paraphrasing, but there is something to that effect- that it is an indication of the degree to which we are oppressed that we embrace our oppression. And there are also women who exploit their anti-ness in this culture because the media is always looking for, "Let us look at the other side." Even when there is not another side, they create one. So they interview a feminist that, "My God, we got to have an anti-feminist, here, and a really good woman. Or we got to have a Black who's opposed to Black rights." You know?
SM (02:01:09):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:01:13):
[inaudible] will not it? And so they create artificially, these people who nobody in the movement would pay attention to that the media has all of a sudden created them up to be a big giant. What do I think of them? I think it is absolutely to be expected that there will be. There will always be some men who are stronger advocates of women's rights than some women. There will always be some white people who will be stronger advocates of, you know-
SM (02:01:56):
Mm-hmm. One of the things, Johnetta Cole, with- [inaudible]
SW (02:01:59):
...the-
SM (02:02:03):
Johnetta Cole used to be the president of Spelman College. She wrote a great book. And she talked about some of the sensitivities within the African American female community with respect to being identified with the women's movement because they were identified with the civil rights movement. So she brought up, they wanted to be involved in the movement, but they needed to be more identified with the civil rights movement. And-
SW (02:02:34):
[inaudible] That was a piece of an issue. And I think that that also was one that the media picked up. All that stuff is really so superficial that I think the focus on that stuff is really to not understand what the [inaudible] was about. That is really [inaudible] communication in the (19)60s. You know, that is not what it felt like to being inside it.
SM (02:02:58):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:03:01):
There was always dialogue, there was a racism, of course there was racism. The culture was rampant with racists all of a sudden, because we were involved in the liberation of women. Did that mean that we checked our racism at the door? I do not think so. There was classism. There was sexism in the African American movement. But being involved in the movement, we were working with that. It was in process, it was in dialogue. It was not status. But when it got to be looked at through the static lens of the media, which did not understand what was going on, that this was a process. It was like, "Okay, I am going to take this still photo of this and I am going to freeze this event in time to say, 'This is what is going on.'" And it did not characterize what was going on.
SM (02:04:03):
Two-
SW (02:04:03):
There was a constant looking at racism, looking at sexism, looking at classism, looking at homophobia, looking at ageism, looking at ableism. One thing would lead to another, would lead to drawing awareness of one thing in another. You know, in the last interview I told you how that happened with my daughter-
SM (02:04:25):
Mm-hmm.
SW (02:04:26):
...with my daughter and then my son was children's liberation. That was part of the strength of the movement, was that we were all dealing with these issues. And yeah, people wrote about it when we were in process. But I think to take those writings that were happening in process where we said, "This is what the problem is, we got to deal with it, is to ignore the dealing with it."
SM (02:05:00):
Two things here, reaction to two different areas. The burning of the bras, why did that take place? And did it have a positive effect? And secondly is Playboy magazine, which is Hugh Hefner and the sexual revolution. And I know that it is a very sensitive issue on college campuses today, women's bodies and a lot of them do not like Hugh Hefner, and what he stood for, and everything. Just your thoughts on the women's movement, how they looked at Hugh Hefner in that Playboy movement, and then whole, maybe it was just the media with a burning bras, but just those two things.
SW (02:05:38):
Well, the bra burning, as you know, it never happened. And [inaudible] been, it is done to death, but it never happened. And yet the question keeps coming up. And it is like, "Ho-hum. Come on, ask me something important." But the effect of it was that was very important. It became a way of trivializing the movement. It became a way to not have to deal with it seriously. "They are just a bunch of bra burners." Same thing happened in the 19th century with a bunch of [inaudible] wear." Well, the burning of the objects at the Miss America pageant, which they actually did throw in makeup and whatever. That was a symbolic destruction, a symbol of our [inaudible]. It was, "We are not just sexual objects." And I think that was the whole, Hefner is soft porn. It was the objectification with the violence turned down. Larry Flynt, was not that his name?
SM (02:06:58):
Yes.
SW (02:07:04):
The one who did the woman upside down in the meat grinder. Now, he was pornography with the violence turned up loud. And the violence is there, the objectification is there. What it does is its training manual for young males and perpetually adolescent adult males who connect power and sex, and the connection of power and sex to the culture is very strong. And pornography is the training manual for it, the indoctrination. If the women are commodities to be consumed, and, "I have the power to either violently or with just mild power." You know.
SM (02:07:59):
Mm-hmm. Another question, the Women's Vietnam Memorial was built in 1993. Actually, it was-
SM (02:08:03):
...memorial was built in 1993. Actually it was opened up in 1993. I am sure you know, everything Diane Carlson had to go through and how she was treated on the hill for even thinking of doing this. And the prejudice, even in the Vietnam veteran community in the very beginning was a big roadblock. They seem to forget that now, everything's hunky-dory, but I know what she had to go through. Were the women's movement working at all with a lot of the female veterans of the Vietnam War when this memorial was being built for the idea? Is there a linkage there?
SW (02:08:35):
I do not know about that.
SM (02:08:40):
Okay, because I know that...
SW (02:08:44):
[inaudible] I mean, you are talking about a movement that is so diverse and that is so decentralized now and that is operating in so many different fronts. There is so many different areas. There is no way any single person can have the knowledge of everything that is going on in the United States. I think that is the strength of it.
SM (02:09:04):
Sally, what reading... why did the ERA fail? I remember my boss was Betty Menson at Ohio University on Lancashire campus. She was one of the leaders in the state of Ohio and trying to get this passed. And I can remember sitting in my office, I think it was 1973, and the vote was taking place in Ohio at that time, see if it would be passed. And it did not pass in Ohio. And boy, she was very disappointed. But why did the ERA fail and why was there so much resistance to it?
SW (02:09:38):
The same reason it failed last time through it. It is still on the table. And, with a Democratic majority and Obama's president, we may still join the civilized world and have equal rights to have been protected in the time too, before I die. But the reason that it failed when it went almost to the edge, was the same reason that we are really at risk of not passing a healthcare bill, right now. The insurance company. The insurance company put tremendous amounts of money behind the care, because it is not in the interest of corporations and insurance companies for women to have equal rights. If you can bill women and men in different ways for insurance, your benefit, if you can make more money off women and off their labor. I mean, if you had to suddenly pay women equal with men in this country, look what that is going to do to corporation? If you lose that 25 cents in profit, but you are getting off every woman's dollars. You know, for every man you pay a dollar, pay the woman 78 cents. Who was keeping that profit? [inaudible] And so, it was a well... and that has been well documented. It was a well-orchestrated, well financed, that they hired some token right wing women, Phyllis Schlafly before she became the poster child for Anti-ERA. My God, you are going to have go to the bathroom in the same bathroom. The world's western civilization will crumble as women and men are in the same bathroom. Well, guess what? We are in the bathroom a lot on airplanes and number of other places and the world seems to still be operating. But, it was those incredibly stupid things that were the arguments against it. But Phyllis Schlafly was a spokesperson for... She was a well-recognized right-winged [inaudible] before she became the paid gun of the corporate [inaudible] Still post-ERA.
SM (02:12:21):
What does the Vietnam Memorial mean to you?
SW (02:12:27):
I went there once and I was moved. I am much more moved by the movie the Winter Soldier Investigates.
SM (02:12:42):
And why is that?
SW (02:12:44):
I mean, the Vietnam Memorial is like a senseless death. I mean, okay, here is a death count and here is the names of all those men who died unnecessarily. That is what I see when I go there.
SM (02:13:09):
What does Kent State and Jackson State mean to you?
SW (02:13:17):
It was when the government brought the war home against its gun.
SM (02:13:24):
What does Watergate mean to you?
SW (02:13:35):
The truth.
SM (02:13:36):
What...?
SW (02:13:36):
You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. In this case it was [inaudible] Richard Nixon.
SM (02:13:43):
What does Woodstock in the Summer of Love mean to you?
SW (02:13:48):
The Summer of Love means commercialization of something that was much deeper than that characterization of it. Woodstock is the place that the [inaudible] went through.
SM (02:14:10):
The what went through?
SW (02:14:13):
The [inaudible] on the East Coast.
SM (02:14:14):
Oh, okay.
SW (02:14:14):
It just became legendary to most of us on the West Coast.
SM (02:14:20):
Yeah, there were 400,000 people there, but if you talk to everybody, there might have been 10 million. What does 1968 mean to you?
SW (02:14:37):
(19)68 is the Worldwide Revolution State, for me. It means Rudy the Red in Germany. It means Danny the Red in France. It means the moment when we really believed that we could turn the world around, in a brief period of time.
SM (02:15:02):
What does counterculture mean to you?
SW (02:15:06):
A label that somebody attached at a later date.
SM (02:15:11):
What do the hippies and yippies mean to you?
SW (02:15:15):
The yippies! I love that one. Put the yip back and hippy. The hippie again, I mean, once the term was created, the movement was in decline and almost dead.
SM (02:15:34):
How about the Students for Democratic Society and the Weathermen?
SW (02:15:47):
SDS was... boy, you know what comes to my mind? What was the support hearing statement? What was that even called? Was not that the first?
SM (02:15:58):
Yes.
SW (02:15:59):
And it is like reading, okay, here is our manifesto, here is... here is truth. And SDS became legendary, it was much more on the East Coast, early on. And then the split with the Progressive Labor Party - the PLP, and just if you vote. And then the Weatherman. Is it time for an armed revolution? The folks from mild arm struggle is the highest form of struggle. And the arguments over, does that mean it is the most important? Does that mean it is the last-ditch effort when nothing else makes... when all else fails? That is what you have to go through. That means Bob Dylan and Subterranean Homesick Blues, which was our national anthem. "You do not need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." It is the movement growing out of the lyrics of the troubadour of our generation. It means that because of people that died were principled. And it also means to me, personally, watching males pull guns just like the males that were, I do not know, being indoctrinated to carry guns as a symbol of man hooding Weatherman carrying guns, a symbol of manhood. And women trying to be as tough as the boys. Especially, it means to me being told by a weather woman, a weatherman, woman. If you are to be a true revolutionary, you have to be prepared to give up the kids.
SM (02:18:40):
Well, how would you talk about black power and the Black Panthers?
SW (02:18:46):
The Black Panthers, what comes to mind immediately is the government's systematic execution of them.
SM (02:18:58):
Yeah, what were your thoughts on... There is actually seven that really...
SW (02:19:01):
[inaudible] What?
SM (02:19:01):
There is actually seven that really stick out here. Of course, Bobby Seal, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Kathleen Cleaver, H Wrapped Brown, Stokely Carmichael and Fred Norman. Those are the ones that are known all over the world.
SW (02:19:24):
But the blunt... but in Oakland, they were feeding the people. They were really enhancing the lives of people. And I think that the media created leaders, and to some extent they were leaders of the movement. I think to concentrate on their activities, is [inaudible] what the Black Panthers were doing in the community. And they were feeding the people first and foremost. They were taking care of the needs of the people.
SM (02:20:10):
The other one here is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
SW (02:20:14):
Yeah, VVAW. My vision, my dream was that there would be a political coalition between VVAW and the Women's State. And we did that in Sacramento, we worked together really closely and did a lot of stuff together. That was a powerful, powerful coalition.
SM (02:20:33):
They took over when SDS was failing. They kind of rubbed up the anti-war movement. And the last one word here is enemy's list. When you hear about that enemy's list.
SW (02:20:47):
Yeah, that does not conjure up anymore [inaudible] enemies.
SM (02:20:57):
That was the Richard Nixon's enemies list.
SW (02:21:00):
Oh, okay. And that is important. That is indicative of how it was sort of like Richard Nixon is the President of the United States. Richard Nixon is a corrupt man who I do not recognize as a lead...as my leader. It was like, Richard Nixon's going to go off and do whatever he is going to do. I am going to be part of a movement to stop before I could be part of the movement to turn this country around. And so, it is not focusing on Richard Nixon. I was focusing on the work I was doing in that. But we were...
SM (02:21:46):
You, you have made comments on Richard Nixon and I was going to ask what you thought of him. Now I am just going to mention some names. This is toward the end of the interview here. You have men made comments on Richard Nixon. What about Spiro Agnew?
SW (02:22:00):
Oh man. They were just so indicative of everything that was wrong with the country.
SM (02:22:14):
And what were they indicative of?
SW (02:22:22):
Of power that was not used for the good of the people. Of corruption that was just a given and a normal part of daily life. Of a level of lying that was standard procedure.
SM (02:22:46):
Okay. Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, the yippes.
SW (02:22:50):
Yeah, they were funny guys. I liked it when they threw dollar bills at the on the floor at, what is it? Wall Street?
SM (02:23:05):
Yep. Dollar bills. And of course Jerry Rubin, remember the story in his book 'Do It!', when he went into a bank and wanted to use a restroom. Do you remember that story?
SW (02:23:17):
I do not.
SM (02:23:19):
Well, I will mention it here. In his book, 'Do It!', he went into the... you know how he always looked with a bandana and the beard and everything. And he went into a bank and they might have been having a rally someplace, but he had to go to the bathroom and he went in and the policeman said, "you have to leave." "Well" he says, "I got to use the restroom." And he says, "No, we are not going to allow you to use the restroom." So he put his pants down and did a dump right in the middle of the bank. Unbelievable. How about Timothy Leary?
SW (02:23:56):
The opening of consciousness.
SM (02:24:00):
Eugene McCarthy?
SW (02:24:03):
Liberal.
SM (02:24:05):
George McGovern?
SW (02:24:08):
Liberal. But with more integrity.
SM (02:24:15):
How about John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy?
SW (02:24:25):
You know, that was a different time. That was an earlier time. That was the time when, for me it was the horrible time.
SM (02:24:44):
How about Lyndon Johnson?
SW (02:24:48):
Hey-hey, LBJ how many babies did you kill today?
SM (02:24:52):
Hmm. How about Hubert Humphrey?
SW (02:24:57):
Bah. That is my response.
SM (02:25:03):
Okay. Robert McNamara?
SW (02:25:08):
McNamara, watching that movie of him coming to grip to some extent with his behavior during that time. You know the movie I am talking about?
SM (02:25:21):
Yes.
SW (02:25:21):
About a couple of years ago? Yeah, That was dangerous.
SM (02:25:27):
George Wallace?
SW (02:25:30):
George Wallace, the poster child for Southern rights.
SM (02:25:37):
Ronald Reagan?
SW (02:25:45):
A man who had Alzheimer's when he was President of the United States and nobody pulled him out.
SM (02:25:55):
How about Gerald Ford?
SW (02:25:59):
He could not walk and chew gum at the same time.
SM (02:26:01):
Jimmy Carter?
SW (02:26:20):
A man whose integrity has grown geometrically in my eyes, and I think he is since he was President.
SM (02:26:21):
Dwight Eisenhower?
SW (02:26:25):
A guy who we quoted about the Military Industrial Complex. And maybe it was still possible to be a Republican with integrity before Nixon.
SM (02:26:48):
How about Benjamin Spock?
SW (02:26:55):
Well, he had a hell of an impact on [inaudible] and not all of it good, but a lot of it good.
SM (02:27:06):
Daniel Ellsberg?
SW (02:27:11):
Truth teller.
SM (02:27:14):
Daniel and Phillip Berrigan?
SW (02:27:19):
I think the reason I do not hold the entire Catholic Church in contempt. Examples of how even in an obsolete and corrupt institution, there can be [inaudible] integrity and goodness. And that would be true, the whole Dorothy Day of which they were part in arm.
SM (02:27:53):
Barry Gold...
SW (02:28:06):
The guy who cut my hair now in Syracuse is a product of that world in friends [inaudible] but still does not work in our area.
SM (02:28:08):
Barry Goldwater?
SW (02:28:17):
If you think Goldwater, I may be liberal, but to a degree I think everybody should be free. But if you think I am going to let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter, I would not do it for all the tea in Cuba.
SM (02:28:30):
How about John Dean?
SW (02:28:40):
Well... what do you say about being able to live through a [inaudible] The crooks get caught and the crooks are held accountable, and the crooks are in the highest office [inaudible] It was a vindication.
SM (02:29:13):
William Buckley?
SW (02:29:21):
A smart conservative.
SM (02:29:26):
Okay. George Bush Sr?
SW (02:29:27):
Yes. And arrogant. Who?
SM (02:29:32):
George Bush Sr? Who said the Vietnam syndrome is over, took us to the Gulf War.
SW (02:29:40):
Hey you know, it is just more of the same. I think that at some point it starts looking like is the Principle President and oxymoron? Is there something inherent about the land between the office and the political processes embedded in a for-profit world, where it is impossible to have all these communications. Because it just becomes another farce.
SM (02:30:26):
How about, lastly here, George Bush and Bill Clinton, because they are the only two Boomer presidents. Do they define the Boomer generation by their actions, even though they are both...
SW (02:30:39):
They define what I just was talking about. The impossibility of principle politics in a for-profit system.
SM (02:30:52):
How about, and again, even though...
SW (02:30:54):
The accident of their time of birth does not have a whole hell of a lot to do with their behavior.
SM (02:31:02):
Gloria Steinem?
SW (02:31:05):
I think I have talked about her.
SM (02:31:08):
Okay. Bella Abzug?
SW (02:31:10):
Yeah, she is another person that got a lot of spotlight and was doing good work along with thousands and millions of other ones.
SM (02:31:21):
Betty Friedan?
SW (02:31:22):
Same thing.
SM (02:31:24):
And Shirley Chisholm?
SW (02:31:26):
She opened the door...Betty Friedan opened the door with her book, to a lot of reflection. And the book was important.
SM (02:31:41):
When the best books are written about the legacy of the Boomer generation. It could be... it is usually 50 years after an event or a period and we are approaching that, but particularly after Boomers have passed away, what do you think historians and sociologists will be saying about this Boomer generation when they are writing it in books for future generations?
SW (02:32:08):
I think it depends on how many voices from that time period they witness and the variety of voices that they witness. That will depend... that will be how good their history is.
SM (02:32:25):
All right, I am looking and see if I have anything else here. I do not think I do. Is there any questions I did not ask that you felt I should have asked?
SW (02:32:35):
I cannot think of any.
SM (02:32:37):
I think I have covered about everything. I wrote a whole extra set of questions here. I know one person who... A critic of the women's movement wanted me to ask a question, I have not really been asking it, but I will... Why have the women's movement not made more criticism of Muslims for how they treat women, instead of trying to defend their rights constantly here in the United States?
SW (02:33:08):
I think there has been a lot of criticism of the behavior and the criticism makes me a little observant, because we are criticizing a religious tradition where women had property rights 500 years before they had them under Christianity. And it is also an easy target to point to another culture and say, "that religious exploits women." "That religious is bad." When I think, the absence of looking at the effects of Christianity in our own culture, might be a more productive use of our time.
SM (02:33:55):
And my very last question is something that you have heard before and it is just a general comment that I have heard for a long time, is when women take over leadership roles, they will take on the same qualities of men and they will start getting sicker earlier. They will die of the same illnesses. It is just part of the nature of the human species. When you hear that, what do you say?
SW (02:34:25):
I think that is not got anything to do with the human species. I heard clueless about what the human species is. If we generalize from our particular society at this particular moment in history, I think that the goal of the revolution in its largest, broadest form of this social, cultural, economic, political, spiritual revolution is to do away with power-over, and to establish a system of power-with. And that means leadership takes on a very different form. And that price that you are talking about, the level of stress is the function of a system of power-over, is the price that the oppressor pays. Will women move into that? Yes they will, black. Yes they will. Will gay and lesbians? Yes they will. There are people that will move into that and are moving into, and we will see that as progress. I think a deeper progress is a real transformation of human relationship is when we end the system of power-over. End the price that both the oppressed and the oppressor pay in that system. The leader and the lead, if you will. To end that we move to a system of power-with. And then those stress things fall away, work with people. It is a very good model.
SM (02:36:24):
But you finally, my last, I have said this twice already, but this thing about the Women's Movement, as particularly when Boomers were young, the late (19)60s and early (19)70s, right through to today, the role that the women's movement has played in linking up with the GLBT movement, the Chicano movement, Native American movement, the Anti-War, Civil Rights, Environmental Movement, Disability Rights, ageism, and even mental health issues now, which is a big issue with women. Because there is a lot of movements. David Oaks, I do not know if you have ever heard of David, you ought to link up with him. He is really leading the mental health issue. He was a former student in Harvard, he is out in Oregon. Just your thoughts on how the Women's Movement has worked with these groups over the last 40 years. General thoughts.
SW (02:37:18):
Well, I think it is not just the Women's Movement. I think that of the linking of the struggles, that is what I was talking about earlier. The interplay. That we all needed to deal with each other's issues if we were to work together. And I think that has been one of the real strengths of this movement in its largest sense. And it is an imperfect thing, it is one that he keeps raising contradictions, but out of those contradictions comes transformation.
SM (02:37:57):
Very good. Well that is my.
(End of Interview)
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner
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Wagner, Sally Roesch ; McKiernan, Stephen
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audio/wav
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Authors, American; Lecturers; Civil rights workers; Women's rights; Women's studies; Wagner, Sally Roesch--Interviews
Description
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Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner is an author, lecturer, and activist. She was a founder of one of the country’s first Women’s Studies programs and one of the first women to receive a Doctorate in the United States for work in Women’s Studies. Wagner received her Bachelor's degree and her Master's degree in Psychology from the California State University in Sacramento. She also received her Ph.D. in History of Consciousness (Women’s Studies) from the University of California in Santa Cruz.
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Binghamton University Libraries
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ND
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In copyright
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eng
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Sound
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McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.169a ; McKiernan.Oral.10.2016.169b
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2018-03-29
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McKiernan Interviews
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158:01